You will backtrack quite often to use these technokeys to progress. As you traverse the world, you will meet NPCs, one strange digital being after another, collecting technokeys (floppy disks) to unlock your way to the next. It’s set up like a metroidvania, but a metroidvania in five stages. At the same time the Red Stallions, the army of HIM, stand in your way. Narita Boy’s job is to find the shattered memories of the Creator and piece them back together, restoring his mind and saving the world. It’s a stellar piece of world-building that just effortlessly draws you in, even if for some, the masses of expository dialogue from NPCs, priests, and strange programs will be a turn-off. But here it’s elevated, given ancient substance, through a high fantasy lens. Narita Boy employs that Matrix/Tron idea that all characters and NPCs are code, programs written with specific purposes. There’s lore everywhere, so much so that my short explanation here barely scratches the surface of the deep mythical feel of the narrative in this game.
It’s ambitious and heady stuff, setting you on a journey across five different realms including the yellow, red and blue beams of the Trichroma, whose energy powers everything. So yeah, only the very existence of the Digital Kingdom is at stake. 20 pixels of condensed power, he is the only one who can wield the Techno Sword and stop HIM from destroying everything.
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He is like Bastion become Atreyu in the Neverending Story, or Neo come to free the Matrix, a mythical messiah character. While innocently playing video games, you’ve been whisked into the Digital Kingdom to live out the ultimate escapist fantasy. You play as Narita Boy, the fabled hero from beyond the source code. Only a backup code, created to summon a hero from the real world, can hope to save it. When one of the program supervisors, HIM, of the Trichroma, the three-coloured force at the centre of the Digital Kingdom, decides he can rule over all, he reaches across the realms, through the 4th wall and injures the mind of the Creator, shattering his memories and spelling doom for the Digital Kingdom.
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Meanwhile the Digital Kingdom, the world of the Narita Boy game, had transcended its binary code and become a real place, existing within the digital realm, so strong was the creator’s vision we assume. It was a hit, propelling him to geek stardom, but his life wasn’t as rosy as the media made it seem. Back in the 1980s (because everything recently is set then) a genius developer referred to simply as the Creator, invented the Narita One console and a game called Narita Boy. The narrative of Narita Boy is probably its strongest element, so let’s start there. Does it live up to the four year wait if you were part of the kickstarter, or is it a disappointment? Part Metroidvania, part 2D adventure platformer, Narita Boy lures you in with its striking pixelart visuals, and distinct synth soundtrack. Heroes from outside the world coming in to save it. It’s the Never-Ending Story crossed with the Matrix. It’s like the world inside Daft Punk’s helmets. It’s a distillation of Tron and The Dark Crystal, combining high fantasy with retro sci-fi in a way that’s somehow modern and ancient at the same time. It takes the escapism, that world beyond the screen and it mythologises it. It’s a technological Narnia where from the moment you boot up a game, or slot in a quarter, you’re somewhere else. And that world is being created inside that console, somewhere beyond the screen. It’s time to be a warrior, a tomb raider, a superhero, a Narita Boy, anything but yourself.
You press that power button, hear the startup chime on your flashy console, and you know you’re about to get whisked away from your everyday life. The world of the Digital Kingdom is certainly striking, but does it live up to its promise? The Finger Guns Review.įor many of us, games are escapism, pure and simple. Four years after its Kickstarter, 2D adventure Narita Boy is finally here.
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