Koneko no Daibouken: Chibi-chan ga iku (MSX, Casio, 1986)

Courtesy of Odino, on Gamefaqs

The MSX remains the most well known of the Japanese gaming computers of it's day in the West, mostly due to the Metal Gear series. However, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a casual retro gamer who could name you a game on the platform other then Metal Gear. At most you will find a Castelvania fan who is aware of the severly altered version of the first Akumajou Dracula for the MSX, but that's about it.

As such, developers and publishers who released a large part of their output on the MSX are equally as mysterious, the watch maker Casio being known primarily for it's electronics and wristwatches outside of Japan. Between 1984 and 1987 they released at least 23 games for the MSX, before moving on to the next level and releasing their own console, the Casio Loopy. And they did what all sucessfull game companies did and made a console specifically targeted at girls (or rather at the vague idea of what girls would find appealing, mostly coming from middle aged men in business suits).

Pictured: Failure

And judging by the vast amount of nothing you know about this system and it's extensive, 10 unit library of female-oriented romance and dress-up games, it's safe to assume Casio was never that good at this whole "video game" thing. Probably the most interesting of their MSX games is Moai no Hihou, simply because it's a basic puzzle game where you break blocks and try not to screw yourself over in the process of making a path to the exit, the interesting part being that the game boarders and between level cutscenes feature Moai heads, despite them not seeming to feature in the actual game itself.

To be fair Casio also released the PV 1000 (and the PV2000 home computer version) console in 1983 and it's pretty sad that that console had more games on it then Casio's 32 Bit Pièce de résistance that came out more then a decade later, and most of these were actual games (like Dig Dug or Pooyan).

Todays subject was released by Casio in 1986, bearing the name Koneko no Daibouken: Chibi-chan ga iku. It stars a cat going through screen infested with vermin as he tries to get to the end of the level. However there is something oddly familiar about it, like I've seen it befo-

And it's all downhill from there.

Koneko no Daibouken is an all out clone of Super Mario Bros., released a year prior to this game.You collect items to increase your size, decrease in size after you are hit, make your way to the end of the level, enter a building and then have a balloon rise up from the roof.

You can also collect items to be able to shoot (the first one is actualy completely useless as the straight shot fails to kill some enemies on the ground) oh and there's some enemies you can kill by jumping on them from above.

There are three worlds, Peach Town, Apple Town and Lemon Town. Their names have nothing to do with the levels themselves however. Each "town" consists of 6 levels, two of them forest, one a cliff, one a log jump, one a

.......and the final one being a city overrun by giant ants. The levels don't realy change up at all from one world to the next. In fact when entering the same level type in a new town you will notice the game simply plops you down a bit into the exact same level as before, except they add a few new rooms before the exit.

Then when you get to world 3 they do that again.

Another interesting thing to note is the flower which you collect for points. The white flower that is, the red flower shrinks/kills you when you touch it.

Beyond that there isn't alot to say about the game on it's own because it's such an obvious knock off.  The game can't scroll so you just get warped to a new screen once you go far enough to the right, there are no bosses or anything to spice up the gameplay, the enemies are boring and uninteresting and the whole thing feels empty and uninspired, or rather too inspired to bother to come up with anything of it's own.