Manual Stimulation: Alien Syndrome (Game Gear)

I don't know if I've made this clear here, on Twitter, on Facebook, or elsewhere on the internet, but I adore Alien and Aliens. 

I'm specifically talking about the classic horror and sci-fi films, of course; not the, uh, beings from outer space in general.

I mention that because it should go a long way toward explaining my attraction not only to the 1986 arcade version of this game, but the boiled-down Game Gear port from 1992 I'm highlighting in this post.

After all, there's little denying Alien Syndrome was heavily inspired by James Cameron's classic 1986 sci-fi action film, Aliens.

This isn't to imply Alien Syndrome offers nothing new or unique. The enemies and especially bosses it throws at players are a world away from the ones found in the aforementioned flick.

To be honest, the low-level aliens you fend off in this Gauntlet-esque, run-and-gun shooter tend toward the lackluster. Thankfully, the end-of-stage guardians more than make up for it.

This version of Alien Syndrome isn't a straight port of the quarter-munching original, by the way. According to the intro, the Game Gear version a follow-up set five years in the future.

I can't say that's immediately noticeable while playing the portable iteration, but it's a nice bullet point all the same. 

Something else that's worth noting about this release is its brevity. The game offers up just four stages. Successfully finishing them is no easy feat, though, so at least there's that. Still, few are going to describe Alien Syndrome for the Game Gear as a meaty experience.

Most who play it are likely to call it a tense and thrilling experience, though. It absolutely nails that aspect of the source material. As such, playing through it again and again—or at least more than once—is joyful rather than annoying.

Have any of you played the Game Gear port of Sega's Alien Syndrome? If so, what did you think of it?

See also: the Bubble Bobble Game Gear instruction manual

Manual Stimulation: Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World (Famicom)

No joke, the English version of Taito's Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World, called Panic Restaurant,  is one of my favorite side-scrolling platformers around.

Which isn't to suggest it's one of the best side-scrolling platformers around. It's not. It's probably not even one of the best platformers released for the Famicom or NES.



Still, I adore it. Why? For starters, I've never been shy about admitting I love games that feature food. Well, that's pretty much all you encounter while playing Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World, which is set in and around a restaurant ("Eaten").



Food's about all you encounter while flipping through the Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World instruction manual, too. Food and people who make food (like the cute chef showcased on the manual's cover and on pretty much every interior page), I mean.



Thankfully, the Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World manual follows in the glorious footsteps of many other old Taito game manuals and depicts all of the above-mentioned food and food-making with the most brilliant of illustrations.

The illustration that serves as the backdrop of this booklet's "story" page (see above) is a perfect example.



None of the other drawings that fill the Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World booklet are as massive as the one that sits behind its story text, but most are just as adorable.

Manual Stimulation: Don Doko Don 2 (Famicom)

At the end of my post about the Don Doko Don Famicom instruction manual, I mentioned that the manual you see here makes its predecessor "look like something that was pulled from the gutter."

Harsh, I know, but I stand by it. I mean, just look at the cover of the Don Doko Don 2 manual, below. It alone is more stupendous than anything you'll find in the first Don Doko Don manual.



Don't take any of this to mean I think the original Don Doko Don manual is a stinker. I think it's pretty snazzy, actually.

Maybe not as snazzy as, say, the manuals publisher Taito created for the Famicom Disk System version of Bubble Bobble, or the PC Engine ports of The New Zealand Story or Mizubaku Daibouken, but still worth the occasional ogle.



I say without hesitation, however, that the Don Doko Don 2 instruction manual is snazzier than all of the above-mentioned booklets--perhaps combined.

Every page of the Don Doko Don 2 booklet features something fabulous, usually in the form of a stunning drawing.



OK, so they're not all as jaw-dropping as the gigantic one that opens the Don Doko Don 2 manual. But, really, not every illustration can be of a huge, crying, king-turned-into-a-frog, right?

At any rate, the pages that follow shine a light on the game's story. Besides all of the art they produced, I also love how the designers who worked on this booklet used pops of red and pink to add drama and interest to the proceedings.



The spread above educates readers on how to play Don Doko Don 2. There's not much to tell them, however; as is the case in the original Don Doko Don, in part two, you dispatch enemies by smacking them with your mallet, picking up their squished bodies, and then tossing their corpses at oncoming clueless baddies.

Manual Stimulation: Don Doko Don (Famicom)

Don Doko Don is one of those old games that avoided pinging my radar for a lot longer than it should've done.

Granted, this series hardly is a household name outside of Japan--despite the fact that Taito, the company responsible for developing and publishing it, previously gave the world Space Invaders, Qix, Chack'n Pop, and Bubble Bobble, among other classics.



At any rate, I remained blissfully unaware of Don Doko Don's existence until sometime after I became obsessed with the PC Engine.

You see, Taito ported this single-screen platformer, which stars a pair of mallet-wielding dwarves, to NEC's diminutive console less than a year after its original arcade release in 1989, and just two months after the Famicom port that's the subject of this post.



Why didn't I hear about Don Doko Don for the Famicom before I heard about its PC Engine iteration? I haven't the slightest idea.

At any rate, and as you might suspect, the instruction manual that came packed inside copies of the Famicom port of Don Doko Don is quite similar to the PC Engine port's manual.



The two booklets aren't identical, however. Take the spread above. The pair of illustrations you see here are completely different from the ones you see on the corresponding pages of Don Doko Don's PC Engine booklet.



For the record, I prefer the unique illustrations in the PC Engine release's manual to the ones used in the Famicom release's manual.



All that said, most of the drawings in these two manuals are the same. Generally speaking, though, the ones in the Famicom manual are given a bit more space to breathe than are the ones in the PC Engine manual.



The drawings highlighted on the last few pages demonstrate to readers Don Doko Don's main gameplay loop, which involves whacking enemies with your trusty hammer, picking up their smooshed bodies, and then tossing them at other unsuspecting foes.



The next handful of spreads focus on educating players about the particulars of each Don Doko Don stage. For example, the first world is forested, contains trees that spit out baddies, and features a multi-jack-o'-lanterned boss.

Manual Stimulation BONUS: Hello Kitty World sticker sheet

I'm a sucker for games, especially old Japanese games, that come packed with sticker sheets.

Sadly, I don't own too many of these treasured goods. In fact, I can only think of four examples at the moment: Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, PoPoLoCrois Monogatari, and Rhythm Tengoku.

Four examples other than the one I'm discussing and highlighting in this very post, I mean.

Funnily enough, I didn't even realize I owned this sticker sheet until I pulled my copy of the 1992 Famicom game out of the closet to scan its instruction manual.

To my utter surprise, stuck inside the pages of the Hello Kitty World manual were the stickers you see here.

Truth be told, I'm a bit miffed this precious sticker sheet focuses entirely on Hello Kitty, aka Kitty White.

Granted, she's the star of the show--er, game--and this sheet only contains eight stickers, five of which are pretty darn small, so the lack of any Mimmy or Tippy stickers makes some sense.

Something that makes a lot less sense: none of these stickers directly refer to Hello Kitty World. (Erm, except the one at the top.) It's almost like Character Soft, the publisher of this Balloon Kid knockoff, just took a few existing Hello Kitty illustrations and slapped them onto the sheet you're ogling now.

All that said, I'd rather get a sticker sheet than not get one, so please don't take what I've written so far to be serious complaints.

See also: scans of the Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, and Rhythm Tengoku sticker sheets

Manual Stimulation: Hello Kitty World (Famicom)

I've been a huge fan of Hello Kitty World ever since I first became aware of it well over a decade ago.

This isn't because I adore Hello Kitty, mind you. Although I think she's cute enough, I'm hardly obsessed with her or anything of the sort.



I am slightly obsessed with the Character Soft-published Famicom game that stars Kitty-chan (as well as her sister, Mimmy), however; or at least I've been obsessed with it at various points in the last 10 or so years.

The reason: it's basically a re-skin of one of my all-time favorite GameBoy games, Balloon Kid.



OK, so this Japan-only release from 1992 is more than just Balloon Kid with Alice's sprite swapped out for one that resembles the iconic Sanrio character. It's not a whole lot more than that, though.

For example, the playfield in Hello Kitty World is, or appears to be, much larger than the one in Balloon Kid. Also, the former seems a tad slower than the latter, though that, too, may just be an illusion.



Sadly, I can't tell you how Hello Kitty World's story, which is shared with readers of the game's instruction manual via the pages that precede this sentence, differs from that of Balloon Kid, or even if the two differ at all.



Speaking of the Hello Kitty World's manual, the spreads above and below explain this game's controls, start screen, and more.



And the next two pages of this instruction booklet discuss Hello Kitty World's dearth of collectible items.



I believe the following spread further educates players about how Hello Kitty World works, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

To the person who pointed out two pages were missing from my post about the Magical Puzzle Popils manual: that's no longer the case

Three or so years ago, someone pointed out that two pages of the Magical Puzzle Popils instruction booklet were missing from this old "Manual Stimulation" post of mine.

Unfortunately, that comment came in while my husband and I were on sabbatical. I didn't have my copy of this Sega Game Gear puzzler or access to a scanner at the time, so I couldn't rectify the situation then.



I finally rectified it the other day, but who knows if the person who made me aware of the gaffe is still waiting to see the full Magical Puzzle Popils manual?

In the off chance they are, I decided to publish the post you're reading right now to let them know it's finally available in all its "Magical Guide" glory. (Click on the link above to see it.)

That's not the only reason I'm publishing this post, though. I'm also doing so because I want more people to know about this wonderful Game Gear title, which the late, great Fukio Mitsuji developed for the now-defunct Tengen.

If Mitsuji's name doesn't ring a bell, he's the brainchild behind two games you should know well: Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands.



Unlike that pair of Mitsuji creations, Magical Puzzle Popils, renamed Popils: The Blockbusting Challenge when it hit European store shelves in 1992, challenges your brain rather than your reflexes.

Popils is just as cute as those classics, though, if not quite as kaleidoscopically colorful. It also matches their blissful soundtracks.

Add it all up, and you've got one of my five favorite Game Gear games. Is the Magical Puzzle Popils instruction manual a favorite, too? I'll let you be the judge of that.

See also: five Game Gear games you need to play as soon as possible

Manual Stimulation: Hoshi no Kirby (GameBoy)

I don't know about you, but something I expect from any Kirby game manual is a ton of adorable illustrations of the pink puffball himself.



Sadly, the Hoshi no Kirby instruction manual disappoints mightily in that regard.



Sure, it offers up a few nice Kirby drawings, but I thought I'd find a lot more than a few in this particular booklet.



Oh, well. It's still worth ogling. One case in point: the rather fabulous border that lines each and every page of the Hoshi no Kirby--Kirby's Dream Land elsewhere in the world--manual.



Seriously, it's bubblegum pink and it's filled with stars. What more could you ask for in this kind of situation?



This booklet is similarly filled with screenshots of the game, of course. Normally that would prompt an unenthusiastic yawn from me, but here they're colored to complement the rest of the manual's color scheme, so instead it produced a mildly appreciative nod of the head.



This next page, on the other hand, is like a stab through the heart. No one at HAL Laboratory or Nintendo could be bothered to whip up some line drawings of Hoshi no Kirby's items?



The game only has a handful, after all. Plus, I can't imagine reproducing them in illustrated form would be much of a challenge.



To be honest, the only illustrations that impress here are found on the Hoshi no Kirby instruction booklet's last couple of pages.



These pages detail the game's five stages, by the way. Speaking of which, I love their names--especially "Float Islands" and "Bubbly Clouds."



Now that you've taken a gander at the Japanese Kirby's Dream Land manual, what do you think of it?

See also: my Hoshi no Kirby review, some photos of the Hoshi no Kirby GameBoy cartridge and box, and scans of the Hoshi no Kirby Famicom manual

Manual Stimulation: Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle (GameBoy)

Fun fact: Pokémon developer Game Freak had a hand in making the Super Famicom version of this adorable puzzler.

They seemingly had nothing to do with the original GameBoy release, though, which hit Japanese store shelves back in early 1994.



So who made it? Access, a company I'd never heard of before I started researching this post.



Sadly, I can't tell you how the two titles compare to one another. Based on what I've seen of the Super Famicom iteration, its gameplay mirrors what's offered up by the GameBoy cart.



As for what Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle's gameplay is like, imagine your typical match-two puzzler. (Yes, I said "match two" and not "match three" here.) Then alter that image in such a way that you can flip each of the game's pieces to see their backsides.



Sadly, that aspect of Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle isn't as thrilling as it may sound, but it still adds a unique twist to this overdone--at the time, in particular--genre.



With that out of the way, let's focus on the Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle instruction manual.



As you can see, it's very yellow-orange. It also features some nice illustrations of cute animals.



I think it could feature a lot more of the latter, though. I also think it could feature bigger and better illustrations of the game's puzzle pieces.



In the end, the Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle manual is more about explaining how to play the game than it is about forcing oohs and aahs out of readers.



To be honest, I can't blame the designers at Victor Interactive for going this route. Instruction manuals are supposed to educate people, after all.



Still, a little visual pizzazz would've gone a long way here, if you ask me--especially given this game's youthful target audience.

See also: photos of Nontan to Issho Kuru Kuru Puzzle's box and cartridge