Noobow (1992)

"N" Game Completed!
#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Alright, two consecutive election campaigns have put me waaaay behind, so gods bless short little hidden gems like Noobow.

Now, as a general rule, when faced with a big list of ROMs, I go and look for games I've never heard of with a translation patch. Why? Because, assuming the game is neither based on an anime, nor extremely horny, it's usually been translated because it's good. And that's exactly the case here.

Noobow is one of those games where you're just kinda like, "Ohhhhh, THAT'S where that mechanic came from?" It's a puzzle-platformer with a casual pace that relies heavily on item interactions, and figuring out what item does what, and in what context to use it, is the primary goal of the game. You have blocks you can pick up and stack, you have a jackhammer that will destroy specific blocks, stuff like that. An early puzzle gives you a bucket, and you gotta figure out what to do with it. It's not HARD, per se, I was able to beat the game in about 2 hours... But you definitely have to stop and think about the correct order of events, and consider how the items you have will interact with the obstacles impeding your process.

But perhaps the greatest draw here is the goofy art style. For the Gameboy, sprites are really detailed and emotive, and between levels, you get these cool little still-image "cutscenes" with more detailed art and a little story blurb. It's just a cute little game, and given its prices on eBay (about $40USD), I suspect it has something of a cult following in Japan or in the import scene.

But you know the best part of Noobow? This friggin reindeer. I mean - LOOK AT IT!