Märchen Maze

The player must take control of Alice, as she makes her way through nine different isometric worlds, blowing bubbles at enemies to knock them off the platforms and collecting various powerups along the way; holding the fire button down generates bigger bubbles, but if it’s held down for too long, it will burst and she will start blowing a new one. The enemies, not to be outdone by a ten-year-old girl, shall retaliate by firing marbles at her (which can cause her to fall over the edge of the platforms unless they are avoided or jumped over) – and though the game credits E. Shitara as Alice’s voice, the only time you hear her voice is when she says “OW!” after taking a hit. The seventh, eighth and ninth worlds are also palette-swapped versions of the second, fourth and first ones respectively which suggests that they must have been added later in the game’s development to pad it out a bit; however, they feature different enemy types (and bosses). In 1998, the Naniwa (the game’s equivalents of Tweedledee and Tweedledum) went on to lend their name to one of the new stadiums (the Naniwa Dome), for the Namco System 12-era World Stadium games – however, they did not appear in the Namco All Stars’ lineup.