Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Obocchama-kun grabs you with a joke and then asks you to commit to it. Shooting enemies is the sensible option, but the ability to jump into their faces with the protagonist’s buttocks is the sort of deliberately ridiculous attack that makes a licensed action game memorable. That contrast gives the early levels a useful spark: you are not merely moving through a standard side-scroller, but doing it with a hero whose combat style is proudly absurd.

The structure is straightforward and arcade-minded. You push toward the end of each level while dealing with two enemy types, then face a boss or, on some stages, a special challenge instead. That clear finish line makes it easy to pick up and understand, though it also means the game lives or dies on whether you enjoy repeating that basic run-and-fight loop. If you want layered exploration or a constantly expanding set of objectives, this is likely to feel narrow.

Power-ups help keep a stage from being entirely routine. Weapon upgrades make the shooting option more useful, while an ally summon can support you for the remainder of the level. The transformations are the bigger curiosity: changing into forms such as a dog or a blind man fits the game’s deliberately odd sense of humor and breaks up the expectation that the hero will always behave like a conventional platform-game lead. The payoff is a brisk, eccentric action game whose strongest idea is simply how unapologetically strange it is.

Graphics

This is a 2D side-scrolling game centered on the anime’s protagonist, with enemies running around each level and bosses waiting at the end. The most distinctive images are tied to its comedy: watching the hero attack with his backside or transform into a dog gives the action a cartoonish, knowingly foolish flavor rather than a serious arcade edge.

Story

Obocchama-kun draws its character and tone from the TV anime, itself adapted from a manga, but its story delivery is secondary to getting through stages. You should not come in expecting a plot-heavy adaptation; the game’s identity comes through more in its protagonist’s bizarre attacks and transformations than in a detailed narrative arc.

That is not necessarily a flaw for this kind of action game. The licensed material supplies a ready-made comic sensibility, and the game uses that sensibility to make familiar goals—reach the end, beat the boss—feel less anonymous. A special challenge replacing a boss also gives the stage endings a little room to surprise you without changing the basic format.

If you already know the anime or manga, the attraction is seeing that peculiar world translated into direct platform action. If you do not, the game still communicates its broad joke quickly: this is a hero and setting willing to be weird for weirdness’ sake. Just treat the license as flavor, not as a reason to expect an involved adaptation of its source.

Overall Experience

Obocchama-kun is the kind of old platformer you remember less for its route through a level than for the fact that its hero can fight by jumping butt-first into enemies. It has a clean, immediately understandable objective and enough stage-to-stage wrinkles—upgrades, an allied helper, transformations, bosses or special challenges—to avoid being completely one-note.

Its limitations are equally plain. The central routine remains reaching the end while confronting a small set of enemy types, so the game will not convert you if you need platformers to continually reinvent themselves. Frustration can set in if the novelty of the joke wears off before the stage rhythm does.

For the right mood, though, that simplicity is part of the charm. This is worth a look if you enjoy early-1990s licensed oddities, compact arcade action, or games whose sense of humor is stranger than their systems. Everyone else can reasonably admire the premise and move on, but fans of goofy 2D action may find that the weirdness carries it farther than expected.

Retro Replay Score

6.5/10