This was a game I saw in a mid-roll section of Game Center CX months ago and wrote down the name because it looked fun. It'd actually been so long since I'd written it down that I'd forgotten what it even was, but 400 yen made it a difficult deal to pass up when I finally came across it. Turns out it's a cute little action puzzle game put out by SNK in 1990 (known also as "Dexterity" in PAL territories but oddly enough never released in North America), and I was correct to write the name down! It took me about two hours over two play sessions to beat the Japanese version of the game on real hardware via my GameBoy Player.
Being a very early GameBoy action puzzle game, Funny Field doesn't really have a ton of story to speak of. You're a cute little boy out to save your cute little princess friend after she's been stolen by a ghost, and you've gotta flip these tiles to do it! Does it make a lot of sense? Of course not. But that doesn't matter. We're here to fight monsters and flip tiles, and the narrative conceit does exactly as much legwork as it needs to to further that goal x3 The gameplay is quite simple. It's 30 stages + one final boss fight and a smattering of bonus stages, where the principle gameplay is to flip over all the tiles in a stage from white to black. Flipping tiles also works on Othello rules, as if one black tile is flipped on one side and then you flip another (unobstructed) tile vertically or horizontally to it, all the tiles in between will also become flipped. But there are enemies hopping across each stage here to heck you up and will also cause mischief by flipping tiles themselves! Different enemies have different behaviors and priorities, from the snowmen out to murder you good to the ghosts who will flip a row one tile at a time until they run out of your stuff to mess up. One touch from these fellas and you're dead meat, so your one defense against them is to get them caught up in those series of tile flips between black tiles to weaken them, and then pick them up and ping them at a wall or another enemy. You've only got so much time to finish each stage, however, and as the clock gets closer to 0, the enemies enter a faster panic mode to make your job all that much difficult! This last point is really the only bit of the game I'm not a huge fan of, as it punishes you for getting unlucky with random enemy behavior or just taking a smidge too long. Enemies never walk on bridges, so on harder stages, it can be easier to just wait on a bridge for time to go up and lose a life to get more time rather than eat lives trying to salvage a desperate situation with fast moving and vengeful (not to mention respawning) enemies. It's a simple little game with three lives (though you can find more as well as other powerups by pushing boxes into corners in stages) and three continues, but it's hard enough that it'll likely take you a few tries to see it through to the end. The presentation is quite good for a GameBoy game of the era. The graphics are always clear and it's never a trouble to know what to do, and the enemy and character designs are cute and appealing as well. There're only a couple music tracks, but they're jaunty fun that fit the game really nicely. Verdict: Recommended. It's a little harder than I'd like it to be in some ways, but Funny Field is a really good little game. I'm not sure it's good enough to warrant an import for all but the staunchest of GameBoy fans, but if you don't mind emulation or can manage to find a copy cheap despite the shipping cost, this is a really fun way to spend a few hours.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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