"Cuz today I found my friends, here in my head"

Mr. Chin’s Gourmet Paradise is an odd title, and playing it always leaves me with the vague sensation that I’m missing out on something really important.

Given that it’s so old and obscure, the instructions have long since vanished, and the game simply launches into action without so much as an explanation, we are left to try to piece together what exactly Mr. Chin is doing, and why he is doing it.

Is he an Asian relative of Mario? Perhaps he was adopted as a brother for Mario, seeing as Mama Mario was told she could never have another kid. But along came Luigi all the same. A miracle! Mr. Chin felt unwanted—an outsider. Rejected by the Mario clan and forced to eke out a meagre existence in a lowly Game Boy title while the Super Mario Brothers went on to become legendary and rich, Mr. Chin still managed to steal a few of their secrets and use them in his own game. A screen full of platforms built with blocks that could be broken by jumping into them from below. A pipe that allows fast travel between one end of the screen to another. The ability to run and jump. Yes…Mr. Chin was good…just as good as those damn Mario Brothers.

Bitterness festers, and dementia begins to set in. Mr. Chin spends some time in jail, and starts to believe that he is being chased by little balls of fire. One wears sunglasses; another has big lips. But Mr. Chin can kill the fire with lasers. He sets down a device at one end of the screen, then runs to the other side and sets down another, creating a beam of electricity that fries any fire-blobs caught in between. This turns the fire into things that Mr. Chin can eat. Yummy running food on legs. Radishes…onions…it’s hard to tell exactly what they are. Mr. Chin’s gourmet paradise of bitter, eye-watering raw vegetables.

All good fantasies must come to an end, though. If hit three times by the enemies, Mr. Chin is thrown back behind bars and given a white and black striped jailbird suit to wear. The game is over for the time being, but a simple pressing of the Start button can begin the process all over again.

Scenery starts to repeat itself after the 10th level or so (yet the difficulty is increased because more enemies are added), making for a very repetitive hallucinatory episode. Still, one feels obligated to give Mr. Chin his few moments of delusional happiness and help him to eat as many yummy vegetables as he can before being jolted back into the cold, hard reality of the slammer.

So to summarize: leap platforms and slide through the odd pipe, like Mario. Set laserbeam traps to fry little moving balls of fire, which then turn into vegetables. Eat the vegetables. Repeat until the stage has cleared, upon which Mr. Chin can do it all over again in a new stage with slightly rearranged scenery. Aim for a high score, but keep a pencil and paper handy as the game will erase your score when the system is turned off.

Poor Mr. Chin. His game just needed a few more levels and a little more variety. I enjoy setting laser beam traps and eating whole raw onions as much as the next person, but it quickly starts to lose its appeal amid drab and predictable scenery.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/03, Updated 05/06/03