Penguin-Kun Wars

"Vegita gets deranged and edgy, Penguin-Style!"

Penguin-Kun Wars. The name is synonymous with a lot of things, mainly ''Penguin'' a small, flightless birds that are indigenous to Antarctica, and ''War'', an event where lots of people die. While this game is pretty much exactly what those definitions hint at, I'd prefer to come up with something else with which to relate the game to - craptastic gameplaying. Now, before I go on my rant, I figure I should give you the usual lowdown on the game.

The Aforementioned Lowdown.
This game, released in 1985 by Ascii, was probably based around some sort of children's game. I honestly don't know. The premise of the game is that you take on the role of the cute & cuddly Penguin, and you play Penguin-Kun Wars against several other cute & cuddly animals. Now, that alone will make your average gamer violently ill (''Oh boy, cute animals playing games! I HAVE to see this! BLEEEEHHH!!!''). However, when you factor in the game itself, you get a migraine and the urge to test out the effects of Nitro Glycerin on a Famicom Game Pak.

Gameplay: The gameplay has your kawaii penguin tossing little rubber balls back and forth along a table. Your opponent, another disgustingly cute animal (only smaller, 'cause he's far away), will be doing the same from the other end of the table. The point of the game is to successfully throw all of the balls to your opponents' side. If you take too long, a small bumper will appear and move back and forth along the middle of the table, reflecting the orbs any which direction it chooses (it's a picky bumper). Getting socked by one of the balls will cause your character to fall over and cry for a moment, giving your opponent an opportunity to win the round (if they're quick). If the full 60 seconds for the round runs out, then whoever has the least rubber balls on their side wins the round. 2 rounds wins the match, and they move on (elimination-style) in the tournament. In between Matches, you get to play an even more ridiculous game - this one mimics air-hockey, except it starts throwing in rules that I don't seem to follow. You apparently can grab the ball at times, or reflect it at a strange angle...I don't know, I've only been in it twice.

Graphics: The graphics are your standard 1985 8-bit work. Few colors and 2-frames of animation - which are usually just the same sprite flipped over, giving the illusion of motion - were the highlight of the graphics for this game. Oh yeah, and it's bad enough that you have to play as animals, but they go to absurd lengths (hey, it's 1985 - at the time, these were absurd lengths) to make them look cute. If your character gets hit, they cry and shake their arms like someone just dropped fire ants into their shorts. If they win the match, they jump and down, happily, as if THEY just dropped fire ants down someone's shorts. If they lose, they jump up and down, pouting. I know I did that a lot while playing this game...

Sound: There wasn't much to speak of. Therefore, I won't speak of it. Besides, the focal point of this game was the game itself, not how it looked, sounded, or ticked off the purchaser of the cartridge.

The Rant.
First off, do I even need to mention the fact that the game is called ''Penguin-Kun Wars'', yet the only penguin in the game is YOU? Wouldn't a title like ''Penguin-Kun versus lots of other Animals Wars'' be more appropriate? Or how about ''Shoot me in the face, this game makes me want to retch''? I think that would do better...

Actually, I think my main gripe is with the game itself. Now, it SHOULD be simple - you just have to knock the balls over to your opponent's side. Since they will be throwing them back at you, you're going to have to find a way to trick your opponent into getting hit, so you'll have an opportunity to chuck more rubber at 'em. Now, that sounds easy enough, until you realize that you can throw the balls just as fast and walk back and forth at the same speed as your opponent. This means that the balls are going to be travelling at exactly the same time, most likely reflecting off of one another back at you. Therefore, you are most DEFINITELY going to be at a stalemate until one of you gets hit by a ball, or you happen to reflect a ball off of another, causing them to travel at different speeds towards the opposite ends of the table.

Now, let's be honest here - how many of you can, on the fly, calculate the ratio speed and trajectory of a rubber ball rolling across a table? Now, how about being able to calculate exactly when and where to throw a rubber ball so that it collides with this ball? This isn't quite as difficult, since you can easily memorize the path of the ball and estimate where the two paths will cross...however, in order to effectively play the game, you have to be able to also estimate the exact point you want the balls to collide so that they will bounce off in your favor. Pool is a difficult game because you have to strike 1 ball (the Cue Ball) into other balls, sending them on a different course so that (hopefully) they will end up falling into one of six holes along the edge of the table. This is the equivalent of someone rolling the balls around while you're trying to make your Pool shot. That's not very nice at all, now is it? Now, I can imagine MAYBE calculating this sort of thing with 1 ball being thrown at you, but there are 5 balls on each side. That's a lot of computations you have to do in a moments' notice. Does that sound fair to you?

Now, you can blindly start throwing balls, but the problem is you're not a computer; the majority of us aren't going to be able to gauge the correct timing for the release of the balls, thus making the option of reflection to gain the upper hand out of the question. This leaves 2 other alternatives - striking your opponent, or waiting for the bumper to show up and depending on luck. You'll most likely want to go for striking your opponent...why is this bad? Let me tell you...

Going on the attack is quite difficult. Sure, by all rights it should be easier - you're not worrying about throwing a ball and having it collide with another ball in mid-movement towards you; you're simply trying to make the ball hit a horizontally moving point. Since you know where the balls are on the opponent's side (you can see them), you can also successfully gauge where that point will be, and guesstimate where/when to throw the ball to hit them. Now, why does this most often fail? First off, you have little-to-no control over the ball, so you're most likely going to have to throw the ball straight-on and hope it hits. This will fail because your opponent is already headed for a ball, so by the time your ball hits the other side of the table they will most likely have already thrown another ball and stopped yours from hitting them. Therefore, you are forced to either go by luck, or (once again) try to reflect the ball off of others. Doesn't this sound fun?

If you decide you'd much rather wait for the bumper, you're still going to have to hold 'em off for 30 seconds until it can show up. Therefore, you're left with either hitting your opponent (mostly luck), reflecting balls (mostly skill which you probably don't have), or going off of luck (which is hardly a skill). I would suggest you do none of these, and play Pong with the game itself.

The Finale.
Where did Ascii go wrong? I mean, the game obviously requires a LOT of mental prowess just to handle the beginning stages, yet it was clearly geared towards children with its colorful animals and written-with-shaped-balloons title. I'm convinced that this game was some sort of testing device developed to breed super-intelligent beings, yet somehow got marketed as a video game. This game is reminiscent of Hydlide (another horrible, horrible NES game) in the sense that it's extremely challenging, and there is most likely a way to go through the game - however, to undertake such a task is madness, and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. Throw the cartridge away, children, before it drains you of your self-esteem and your soul! A kid's game should not cause one to cry! AHHH!!!!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/26/01, Updated 10/26/01