Publisher: Nintendo
Release: 2001
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Genre: Puzzle
Eastern hardcore stuff as that may sound, it goes a long way in easing accessibility to players from any background—often through unexpected routes. The most superficial one—presentation—is nailed from the charming intro cutscene on; the nicely paved difficulty ramp is very well thought, such as the almost completely self-explanatory level design, which demands mastering techniques at a good pace. Other solutions merge with the gameplay unusually well, like the ‘wire’ (an Arkanoid-esque ship, actually) shortening in easy mode in order to keep the carefully put together hazardous environments intact.
But it’s in its simple yet clever control scheme where Kuru Kuru Kururin truly shines. If the task of controlling the ship alone wouldn’t require anything other than the very D-pad (rendering a plethora of extra buttons useless) on the other hand the same GBA D-pad had an inherent built-in issue: not being analog. So this was one of those “a good idea is something that can rather solve multiple problems at once” (quoting Miyamoto’s later statement for the ages) cases, and Eighting delivered: the A and B buttons were used for an incremental speed control, creating another quasi-analog mechanic that made up for the lack of a proper input.
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| The ship's auto-spin must be used in favor of traversing the environment |
As with other Japanese games/tech from the early 00s (Sega’s swan song, the Dreamcast, as an unbeatable example) Kuru Kuru Kururin was a bit too ahead of its time for its own good: the perfect platform for it, the mobile market, was still toddling around at the time. But it still holds up quite well today, even within its elegant limits.
