202. Parasol Henbee (SAS Sakata, Famicom, 1991)

Parasol Henbee is a Famicom platformer based on a 1989 anime series of the same name. The anime focuses on Henbee, a weird looking creature with a magic umbrella who can (according to Wikipedia) fly and do magic, as well as talk to animals and "fulfill everyone's dreams". Luckily, my dream is to play a halfway decent Famicom platformer.

After a cutscene showing some buddies in danger, the very first interactivity Parasol Henbee presents you with is a screen where you enter your age. This is effectively the difficulty selection, which is broken down thusly:

0-5: Easy
6-9: Medium
10-20: Hard
21-34: Medium
35-99: Easy

While the easy difficulty is a huge step away from the other two with its 30 lives, hugely increased attack range, and larger health pool, the hard and medium difficulties are more in step, with only minor differences, though medium is a bit more fun if you're just looking to explore the game. Hard mode also removes an ability where ducking while holding your parasol makes you invulnerable, but since I'm 30, I didn't have to deal with that.

Gameplay in Parasol Henbee mostly revolves around your umbrella, which you can jump with to float down, drop it down on enemies, or hide under it to avoid damage. You can also shoot out a rainbow, kind of like in Rainbow Islands, and you can upgrade the range of the rainbow so it is more effective. The best part of the controls scheme is the novel approach to running. If you press select, Henbee will get into a ready position, after which pressing left or right will start him running in that direction, and he will continue running until he is damaged or you hit the opposite direction. This is a great kind of stick-shift gamefeel and I wish the levels were built around it more.

The levels themselves are the most lackluster part of Parasol Henbee. Not to say that they are terrible, but the platforming is pretty uninspired. The pacing is nice, though: levels are short and interrupted by shops or boss fights, so it all breezes along, I just wish the core platforming had a bit more meat on its bones. While some boss fights are more standard platformer boss fare where you just have to attack an enemy a certain number of times, others are more inspired, including a mash up of rock-paper-scissors and sumo wrestling, as well as a kind of memory match game where you have to build Henbee's face before the boss can build theirs.

4/5, a basic platformer with some cool control / boss ideas and a difficulty age gate