Pocky & Rocky with Becky

"A cute shooter/adventure"

I'd better start with a disclaimer: I suck at shooters. ^_^; I bought this game mainly because of the cute design and the fact that it has shrine maidens (or miko) in it.

Kiki Kaikai Advance is, as the name suggests, the GBA revival of an old franchise - one which dates back to 1986, in fact, and saw release in the United States as Pocky and Rocky on the Super NES. The original games were created by Taito, but Altron took on the task of developing a new game in the old mold for the Game Boy Advance (while Taito published the resulting game). Kiki Kaikai Advance was released in Japan in October 2001; the American version, Pocky and Rocky with Becky, is due out sometime in 2002 after Natsume finishes the localization.
Incidentally, even though this game is going to be recognized better under the Pocky and Rocky title, I'm going to stick with the Japanese names throughout - Natsume did a lot of Americanization in the course of translating, including a ton of name changes.

As old as the original Kiki Kaikai is now, a lot of gamers may not be familiar with the series. The storyline is fairly simple: a shrine maiden and her allies must fight their way through waves of spirits and monsters in order to seal several powerful demons and restore peace to the land. In the original game, there were only two characters to choose from - Sayo-chan (Pocky), the shrine maiden, and Manuke (Rocky) the tanuki, a mythical Japanese creature resembling a raccoon; the sequel added the choice of quite a few partner characters.
In Kiki Kaikai Advance, though, you can only use one of three characters: Sayo-chan (Pocky), a second miko named Miki-chan (Becky), and the tanuki Manuke (Rocky). It's strictly a single-player game, despite the cooperative nature of the SNES games - you're on your own for this game.

Story: There's not much of a story here - a few still frames and some text to set up the quest, and (presumably) some more of the same at the end if you get that far (I haven't yet); along the way, you get some dialogue from the boss at the end of each of the seven levels: trash talk beforehand, a grudging recognition of your power and ability after. The overall story covers your quest to re-seal a great legendary demon which has broken free from its imprisonment (and revived quite a few other evil spirits in the process).

Gameplay: Pretty straightforward for the most part. The D-pad moves you around, the A button tosses an attack (ofuda or spirit-ward 'cards' for the miko, leaves for the tanuki) and the B button is used for a defensive move, swinging your oharai wand or tail to knock opponents (or *some* attacks) away. Pressing A+B simultaneously, or either the L or R buttons, activates a full-screen attack but uses one of your 'bombs' (crystals). You can find power-ups by putting out lanterns with your wand/tail, hitting certain points on the 'map,' or destroying a series of odama.
The trick is that this game is, at least by my standards, hard. As stated above, I'm not a big fan of shooters generally - and Kiki Kaikai Advance at least looks easier than some of the shooters currently on the market, but it's easy to get tagged by something you don't even see coming ... and unlike the previous games in the series, you don't have any life meter - you get hit, you lose a life; lose all lives (you start with three, you can stockpile up to nine) and you're asked if you want to continue.

Audio: Nice music, decent sound effects. Nothing overly special, but it's pleasant to listen to.

Video: Again, nothing overly special - this is basically a 2D game, but there's some very nice use of layer effects and the GBA's rotating/scaling capabilities. Nothing on the order of what Nintendo did in the Super Mario Advance games, but this is a shooter rather than a platformer.

Difficulty: I touched on this in the Gameplay section, but the truth is that your mileage may vary. If you're an old-school shooter veteran, you'll probably consider this an easy game, except for the occasional visibility problems; if you're new to the genre, this is probably a good game to try out.
The first level is, as should be expected, fairly easy overall, particularly once you learn what to watch out for. The second level (which is the farthest I've gotten so far) is considerably harder.

Replayability: Once you learn how to beat the game, it may be fun to play through when you have some time to spare - there are only seven levels, not particularly long (again, so far), so it can potentially be played through in one sitting if you have a couple of hours on your hands.

Language barrier: This game is scheduled to be released in America by Natsume, so there's no particular need to import it unless you're either impatient, or (like me) a raging purist - Natsume's translation takes out some of the more obvious Japanese cultural references.
If you do import it, then the language barrier (such as it is) shouldn't be a problem at all - most of the text is in hiragana, with some katakana and a handful of kanji. (Besides, who plays a shooter for the story? :)

Rent or Buy?: Most people would probably be better renting this game before they put down the money for a purchase - not that you're likely to find it for rent before Natsume finishes translating it. If you like it a lot after renting it, or if you're a big fan of quirky Japanese games, you might want to buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/02, Updated 04/06/02