Description of game

I feel like anytime think I’ve seen it all, a wild Japanese appears and proves me wrong. And it was no different in the case of Magical Cat Adventure. To be true, I don’t have the slightest idea what is all about. The japanese version contains an opening scene where some kind of excuse story is presented through a series of images accompanied by japanese subtitles. But if you don’t know japanese, and I bet that is mostly the case, you’re on a same boat with me. To cut it short: you’re a weird ginger colored cat, that can run, jump, duck, and throw projectiles at its enemies (we’ll talk about these later, just wait for it, you’re gonna like it). There are several types of projectiles and you can switch between them by picking up powerups dropped by strange flying trunks once you shoot them down. But as to why is this cat called magical, aside from obviously being bipedal and sentient, I have no idea. The enemies… Oh the enemies...! My… a jumping mushroom? A squirrel? An ostrich and cute little ducklings that want to eat you alive? Now, what the heck, Japan!? Ducks are supposed to be cute and nice, how can you change them into blood-thirsty monsters? Just how? How do you even come up with something like that? All and all, Magical Cat Adventure is a quite OK run’n’jump side scroller. It presents you with a diverse set of environments and a bunch of levels to beat: you’ll run through a wonderful hand drawn forest, crawl through dungeons and caves, you’ll visit a castle and fight pirates onboard their pirate ship. Gameplay-wise I would probably describe it as Sonic the Hedgehog meets Mario and Contra. The graphics are nice (and—I gotta admit—also kind of cute). And it is even more admirable in that regard, when you consider that it is the only title the studio that produced this game has ever released. Yet it is this ‘WTF’ side of things that—at least for me—somewhat ruins it all. Of course it’s a game originally intended for kids, and kids, as long as you give them their eye candy, do not require much of an explanation, I guess. A boss that looks like a green robotic marionette that throws ball lightnings at you and spawns evil ducklings? Well, what the hell, why not… But even though one usually doesn’t play arcade games for their intricate storylines, what’s missing on the story-side must be always inevitably balanced gameplay-wise. And here it’s just not the case. It is a blend generic run’n’jump game. Magical Cat adventure is quite OK, but nowhere nere captivatin enough for a sane person to get through the whole thing, unless provoked or challenged to do so.