"With the pro-weight-loss message in this game, I guess it's no surprise that Konami went on to create Dance Dance Revolution years later."

Dream Penguin Adventure is one of many Konami games featuring an early character that's relatively unknown in the West. In this case, it's Penta the Penguin, who starred in Antarctic Adventure and played a minor supporting role in Wai Wai World. While Antarctic Adventure was an over-the-shoulder racing game of sorts, Dream Penguin Adventure is different. Very different.

Here's the premise for Dream Penguin Adventure, and I'm not making any of it up. You see, Penta is fat. And by "fat" I mean that he's as round as he is tall, he can barely move, and he can't stop stuffing his face with food. His "dream penguin" girlfriend Penko gets fed up with her partner's gluttony and decides to shack up with Ginji, a guy who's so styling that he goes everywhere in a top-hat and shades. Penta's obviously no competition as he is, so he decides to do the only thing he can do--follow the couple through six stages of danger, losing weight as he goes along by fighting the members of Ginji's gang, and then beat the crap out of the flightless fiend himself.

The first five stages alternate between platforming and side-scrolling shoot-em-up. In all of the stages, Penta's primary objective is to make it to the end of the level and defeat the boss (if applicable) before time runs out. His secondary objective, which is nearly as important, is to get below his goal weight before the stage ends. He does this by picking up Fat-B-Gone bottles which are either lying around the stage or gotten from enemies. He also gets clocks to increase the time remaining, which is helpful because Dream Penguin Adventure doesn't give you a lot of time to complete most stages. Penta can't die, but instead obstacles hold back his progress. Enemies throw food which Penta can't help but eat if it gets within range, and if he collides with a hazard he gains weight and/or loses time. If he runs out of time or doesn't get to his weight goal, he gets the snub from Penko and the game is over.

When Penta loses weight, he becomes a more effective fighter. At first he's a slow blob who can only belly-flop his enemies, but he gets more speed and better weapons the thinner he gets, culminating in a pretty quick (for a penguin) guy who squawks at his foes to defeat them from long range. When Penta gets to his minimum weight, he gains a special effect that can only be gotten once per stage (or if Penta gets fat and then thin again); in the platform levels he becomes invincible for a limited time, while in the shooter levels his airplane's shots turn into powerful missiles until he gets hit or the stage ends. When this effect is activated his weight goes back up quite a bit, so be careful on stages that have low weight goals.

The stages have a lot of variety and are suitably silly; on his quest, Penta will have to go through the pyramids of Egypt, an archipelago on the open sea, and--poor Penta--a giant cake. The bosses are the same way, including the barrel-throwing captain of a pirate ship and a flying pig fortress. The final stage (which happens after Ginji gets desperate enough to kidnap Penko) is a short platforming romp in Antarctica followed by a 3D shooting battle with Ginji's airplane, which happens to have fists. There are two endings depending on whether or not you make your goal weight at the end of the last stage; both of them are funny mostly because of the cute graphics, and the good ending is cheesily ironic. There's also a second quest to beat which features the same stages with more difficult weight goals.

I'm not sure why Dream Penguin Adventure wasn't released in America. Its only real flaw is that it's short, even with the second quest. There's nothing about it that Nintendo would have found amiss, and there are plenty of other games just as quirky that came out here at the time. And the fact that Penta is also in other Japan-only Konami games isn't necessary knowledge to understand and enjoy the game perfectly. The only thing I can figure is that Konami thought we'd be too sensitive to the subjects brought up in the game. You know, because we're all fat and stupid. But that just makes Penta more sympathetic!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/06