233. Asmik-kun Land (Graphic Research, Famicom, 1991)

Asmik-kun Land is a simple platformer starring the pink dragon mascot of Famicom publisher Asmik. Nothing about Asmik-kun Land is terribly original, the game even straight up tells you that there are going to be 6 themed areas before you start playing. 

Gameplay takes the form of a slow platformer. Asmik-kun's jump leaves little to desire, and his only attack is an inert little puff of air with barely any range that he can shoot out, but he is as cute as he is sluggish. Enemies and backgrounds are also plenty fun and colorful, and there is even some text that is used in a novel way as greenery details. The music is also very above average for a Famicom game.

Every time you kill an enemy, they turn into an egg that you have to pick up or it hatches and goes away. At any time you can pause and enter a store where you can buy powerups using these eggs as currency. You can also exchange eggs for points or spend them all to turn over a card for a chance at extra lives. The first item that I bought and used was a roll ability, which was useful because it turned moving into an attack. There are also a wide variety of other useful items, from a speed up to a time stop, and various other offensive and defensive maneuvers, though they all last for a disappointingly short amount of time.

An early level has a bunch of colored balls you can jump on as platformers. While it is never explained, jumping on the yellow balls puts Asmik-kun into a hiccup state where his movement (including jumping) is interrupted every few seconds by a hiccup. The animation is cute but the effect is devastating, it reminds me of a proto-"Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" moment.

Asmik-kun Land is another relatively easy Famicom platformer with non-traditional boss battles (I even started a tag). At first I was disinterested upon seeing that the boss fight would take the form of rock-paper-scissors, but that is only a piece of the picture here: winning a rock-paper-scissors match allows you to progress down a set path, with the boss at the end, but after you reach the halfway point, an enemy spawns at the beginning who is now chasing you, but can only move forward if you lose a rock-paper-scissors match. Even when you win, you have to tap A while you fiddle with a Tony Hawk-style balance meter, with your taps only moving you forward if you're in a certain range. This mashing up of ideas worked really well, even if the first boss only ever threw paper.

3/5, like if Kirby lacked most of the stuff that made Kirby good