219. Doki Doki Yuuenchi: Crazy Land Daisakusen (KID, Famicom, 1991)

Doki Doki Yuuenchi: Crazy Land Daisakusen ("Heart-Pounding Amusement Park: Crazy Land Operation") is a Famicom platfomer that was released 2 years later in Europe as The Trolls in Crazyland, re-skinned with a troll doll license.

Getting the control basics out of the way: your character (who is a kid with a baseball helmet) has a nice fast walking speed, but the jump is only ok, as it kills your momentum, despite going fairly high. Like many platformers of the day, there is a significant knockback when you get hit, and knockback does lead to a large percentage of my deaths, especially as later levels tend to have a lot of instant-death water / pits.

Your main attack has your character kicking a ball and there's a nice wind up to it, but it does take a while to come out. One interesting thing that Doki Doki Yuuenchi does mechanically, is that your remaining HP is also your attack type. Your character starts out blue, but each hit changes him to a different color with a corresponding attack. There are also heart pickups that will restore you to the previous color if you've taken a hit. Each attack is more useful the lower your health is, so there's an interesting tradeoff.

The stages are short and (mostly) sweet with a lot of variety. This is one of the better soundtracks on a Famicom game, so it's even better that levels are short because it means you get to listen to more new tunes. A few levels in there is an auto-scrolling roller coaster stage that was a ton of fun and felt better than a lot of those Donkey Kong Country mine cart levels. The first boss was a giant flying sentient pipe in the shape of a Native American's head...it tried to drop balls on me. Doki Doki Yuuenchi also has no HUD, so it was confusing to pick up clocks without knowing what they do.

4/5, KID does it again, a fun platformer with some cool ideas, but the whole thing isn't fully baked