Narita Boy

Players seeking a virtual oasis slathered in the most intricate and bizarre 1980s aesthetics will likely find solace in Narita Boy. Few games have oozed with such reverence from every line of code, like a sweaty cocaine-fueled partygoer dripping sweat from every pore in a club called Technoir.

Imagine Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Hotline Miami. Just without so much bloody violence. Instead, imagine Tron‘s general premise. And Ready Player One, with just a bit less referential mouth-frothing.

Baffling is one common adjective I would use while describing Narita Boy. Visually, the game is baffling in how it mocks the cathode ray tube televisions games first splashed their pixels on. Players will watch the actions on screen unfold with a foggy bloom as a simulated wave shudders down the edges. It’s baffling how a game from 2021 astutely mimics a coin-operated arcade cabinet of yore.

But then there is the other baffling side of the coin. How can a game so drenched in dedication to a decade of source material fumble key components that made those adventurers and platformers so classic?

Narita Boy is a baffling game to dissect because it absolutely astonishes with complex world building, making even the most rote gameplay sequences thrillingly cool. Yet it also manages to have enough hollow bones to keep it from standing as strong as it could.

Developer Studio Koba has lovingly borrowed the skeleton of Tron‘s narrative and adapted it with their own flavor. A programmer known as The Creator has developed his own console–the Narita One–and a smash hit game–Narita Boy–that has rocketed him to stardom. Deep in the code of The Creator’s version of Narita Boy, its world, the Digital Kingdom, has thrived. The Digital Kingdom is as much a real place as Earth, or whatever simulation we could possibly be living in. The denizens of the Digital Kingdom worship The Creator as his work has willed them into life, flourishing with religion and society.

A rogue program known as HIM has managed to break through its code and fractured the mind of The Creator, allowing HIM and its Red Stallions to begin a takeover of the Digital Kingdom. Thankfully, the Narita Boy protocol activated, sucking in a real life player of the game and placing them in the Digital Kingdom as the Narita Boy in hopes of restoring the mind of The Creator and bringing peace to the construct of ones and zeroes.

Make enough sense? Feel free to nod or shake your head, because it’s one of the least verbose ways to describe what is happening in the Narita Boy players experience. The game within a game or world within a world trope can often be a tangled but unique web.

Studio Koba nobly wades through these murky waters. There is an obvious love and attention to detail for the Digital Kingdom. Players will come across walls of exposition and a glut of terminology that reads as technobabble but does make sense in the grand scheme of things. Frequently, the Narita Boy will meet a program he can talk to just like any other villager or NPC of a fantasy game. Engaging them in conversation will open up a dialog bubble that can take up a chunk of the screen.

It’s truly fascinating stuff to read. One might call it pretentious just on the basis of the writers seemingly drinking their own Kool-Aid. Though I won’t go so far as to compare it to Tolkien’s dense world building, Studio Koba presents Narita Boy and the Digital Kingdom as a real place that has an unfathomable number of stories tucked away in its history. This is as much a fantasy yarn as it is a tale from the dawn of the digital age.

The number of proper nouns thrown at the player will feel like a deluge that never stops. Early in the story and deep into it there were moments I felt overwhelmed but just let myself be swept up… and I think that’s the intent. The Trichroma, a blue, red, and yellow force acting as the literal heart of the Digital Kingdom is constantly referenced. As is the Techno Sword forged from its energies. As are The Creator and Motherboard and Baba and Lord VHS. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Every new area of the Digital Kingdom, even if it’s just a one-screen room, has a name.

Narita Boy‘s world is often at the intersection of indulgence and ingenuity. Those individually named levels mentioned? It’s completely unnecessary. Players could have passed through screen after screen and been none the wiser and likely no less entranced had that room or chamber or throne been a nondescript place. But instead, Studio Koba went the distance and named each damn location of the Digital Kingdom, each one as technologically luxurious and mythical as possible. That’s not just a waterfall it’s “Inside the Creator’s Tears.” …What?

I sound flummoxed by this part of Narita Boy but in fact, I’m transfixed. In the language of Narita Boy, this all makes complete sense. Why wouldn’t a world created by code slap a label on anything and everything? Every fiber of the Digital Kingdom has this almost monolithic quality where something awe-inspiring or haunting is right around the corner.

That quality also applies to the visual tone players encounter across the game. Narita Boy is, without a doubt, one of the most aesthetically striking games I’ve played in recent memory. Studio Koba has interpreted forest animals, places of worship, endless deserts, and bustling towns to logically reside in the Digital Kingdom. Players will pass through a door and see a towering humanoid figure with a screen for a head resting in a chair. Next they will watch the figure blast a ray of light out of its face onto the ground where a circle of worshipers are praying.

Narita Boy is a spectacle. It’s impossible to describe the invisible threads my wind was weaving with in an attempt to make some sort of sense out of everything I was seeing. It’s all so unfathomably weird but so fucking cool. Perhaps the reams of text will inevitably make your eyes glaze over as they build towards a conclusion. But nothing can prepare you for the intensely unique and special things the Digital Kingdom has to show you.

Maybe on a second playthrough, the tangled web of pronouns will speak to players with more clarity. But the real meat and drama of the story unfolds when players discover the Creator’s memories they are attempting to restore. In small bursts, players will unlock the history of the Digital Kingdom’s architect and it can be touching, likely being written from a place of love or real world experience. And yes, even these have a tendency to look cool, taking place in subdued greyscale. Of course, players also access these memories in a strange void that has a fetus or embryonic creature floating in the background. It made me think of Neon Genesis Evangelion at times and that is never a bad thing.

The game begins to falter when its near immaculate veneer is stripped away and the nagging shortcomings of gameplay and traversal rise to the surface.

I’ve seen Narita Boy describe as a Metroidvania. Considering I began writing about games when “Souls-like” was turning into a household name, I sympathize with slapping on a genre label with such a large umbrella. Does a game shove you through a modicum of backtracking? Well, someone out there is going to call it a Metroidvania. Narita Boy in no way feels like that type of game. Maybe in its days of being conceptualized before and after Kickstarter there were mechanics in place where players would obtain an item and use it to unlock a long-forgotten doorway or previously inaccessible corridor.

In direct opposition to the joy I feel when discovering a new traversal or combat tool, Narita Boy left me reeling when I had to backtrack. Early in the game, I scratched my head in confusion after being sent off to find a couple of door keys. I left a small hub-like area, took an elevator up, and was given the option to go left or right. I took the path right got an NPC to give me a third of a sequence that could be used to open a path. After eventually opening up the path, I got a key, had to ride back down the elevator, opened the door with a key, received another key, rode the elevator back up, unlocked another door, went back to the elevator with a new key, and then unlocked another door.

Did that sequence have to unfold exactly like that? Maybe not. Maybe there was a more elegant way that completely eluded me. Still, Narita Boy is not great at having players backtrack. There’s no map to speak of and I think it would instill the game with a better flow or at the least a better sense of direction. Despite having memorable scenery to help with directions, it’s not easy to parse your way through the Digital Kingdom.

Worse yet, that sequence I described involved some “tricky” platforming. I say it like that because the Narita Boy doesn’t control the best while in the air. Jumps are tangibly floaty and it’s easy to over-correct and skid off a platform. That backtracking scenario stung a lot more because there was a decent amount of jumping from small platforms to big ones. There is a dash action that can also be performed in the air but it takes a bit to grasp, especially when gauging the physics of jumping.

Combat fares better and actually falls more closely into a Metroid-style of progression, at least in terms of fending off death. Using the Techno Sword, players have the ability to slash at foes or charge up an attack for a wide, devastating swipe. Frequently, new moves are unlocked that allow players to put new foes to task. Directional sword slices easily damage aerial enemies. A screen-wide eye beam can obliterate a straight line of Red Stallions. Players unlock helpful familiars that use flashy attacks. A shoulder charge is unlocked that is used to bash purple walls and stun enemies who hold shields. And the Narita Boy can be infused with a color of the Trichroma to engage in Wildfire attacks that inflict more damage to enemies of the same color while also increasing damage received.

Players will find a balancing act with charging up energy used for attacks or a healing move. Fighting the legions of HIM is not complicated as most enemies can be beaten with a remedial combo attack. Combat is never intensely difficult though there will be times where the numbers that spawn on players will either be overwhelming or time consuming. Either way, death sucks.

Though I never found combat in Narita Boy to be mindless or exhausting, it only rarely rises to the occasion. Boss fights can be gruesome and weird encounters where players try to stay alive while figuring out the pattern. Think Mega Man‘s contained robot masters and you’ll have the right idea. Slicing a Stallion in half looks brutal and the frenetic synth music that plays over the action is unrivaled. In fact, most of Narita Boy‘s music aligns perfectly with its world building. Both the ears and the eyes will perk up by the special combination found here. But again, those are parts where players aren’t actually playing the game.

Narita Boy is an enigma. I can think of few other games that absolutely nail their sense of mood. This is a feast for the eyes and ears; a buffet of weird terminology, enthralling spectacle, and unquestionably cool aesthetic choices. Narita Boy will have its fan base purely because it does a specific set of things extremely well. However, there will be players who find themselves at odds with how this universe feels to play in. It may be an action platformer but it does not shine at those things. Yet I can’t help but recommend Narita Boy because, despite gaming’s current obsession with 80s culture, it’s so artful, abstract, and different. Certainly there is familiarity here but I guarantee that the Digital Kingdom will remain in your memories for weeks to come.