Platform: Game Boy (Original)
Year of release: 1992
Genre: RPG/Platformer/Puzzler-ish(?)
No doubt those of you that have played Link's Awakening remember Prince Richard:
That fella in the top right. Locked out of his castle, your job was to get him back in. He's a reference to this game and I was always curious about the game he actually came out of, Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK had a small bit about For the Frog the Bell Tolls when I was growing up (or it could've been any other myriad of magazines that I was reading - honestly I have memory problems in general, so this might be a bit patchy in places), so when I was in Japan in August I came across a boxed copy of the cart in a Book Off for about 2000Y and figured I'd give it a shot.
Except my Japanese is awful and whilst I could fuddle through the game so far I struggled, so I just used the fan translation instead ultimately. It reminded that the game existed though!
So the game is about Richard right? I mean he's the character they chose to bring up again - nope. Prince Richard is an ancillary character, our true Hero is Prince [Your Name here] of Sable.
Prince Sable is an awesome character in my eyes, he's a complete cliché but he works fantastic in the universe. The game starts off with Richard and Sable dueling, with Sable getting his arse utterly handed to him before they're both told that Princess Tiramasu of the Mille-Feuille Kingdom, is in danger from King Delarin. So taking all his money with him, he runs off after Richard so that one of them can be the first to save the Princess.
Except he gets left behind, because Richard is a dick. Sable gives chase and shows his love for fixing problems with money left and right giving everyone who gives him information money, as well as being slowed down by the villagers at the request of Richard, that dick. He's constantly trying to catch up with Richard, grabbing weapons and armour as he goes along, until eventually for some reason everyone starts to think he's a Croakian - the games antagonists army. Beats the living crap out of him, his money is stolen and he wakes up in a hospital. Running off to find his thief, you make your way through a forest to eventually find a Witch. She convinces you to drink a potion and you get turned into a frog after falling into cold water at the bottom of a well.
This is where the games main mechanic comes into play, transformations, Sable gets a two transformations over the game, a Frog and a Snake. The Frog lets you jump higher, prevents you from being attacked by Croakians (who love frogs despite working for a giant snake) and eat small insects to regain health but you can't fight. The snake lets you crawl into small gaps, turn weak enemies into blocks (or whip them out the way) but cannot jump. Where as Sable's normal form can use tools like saws, pickaxes and swords.
Combat is kinda pointless in all honesty and the weakest part of the game, it doesn't act as actual combat so much as a way to farm money to buy items or as an alternative to a dungeon key. Throughout the game you'll need to search areas for items to increase Sable's strength, attack speed and life. You can also buy shields, to reduce the damage you take, at shops throughout the game. Fights are decided by this information (Power, speed etc) and deciding if you press A or B (B escaping the battle or using an item). There's no real input otherwise and it can sometimes be irritating since the hitboxes on enemies are a lot larger than you'd expect - often you end up hitting the wrong thing in an area where you're supposed to be avoiding fights, and boom back to the hospital of the nearest town you go.
Second thing that happens is a mixture of platforming and puzzle solving, puzzles in this game are super simple - nothing will ever confuse you or set you back for greater than a few minutes. Most puzzles are making blocks as a snake, or finding the right way to transform and slip through areas. If you've played Link's Awakening think the 2D areas from there, which isn't too shocking since this game is somewhat an engine test for Link's Awakening (as far as I know).
You go between dungeon, to town, to dungeon via the world map which has one of the best overworld themes I've ever heard, infact I really enjoyed the games music overall.
Listen to this majesty. That's not to say it's all greatmusic, some of it just hilariously bad with random pitch spikes but at least they tried.
The real selling point of this game is the writing though, the fan translation is of astonishing quality with lines that just remind me perfectly of Nintendo games from that era. The game guides you from area to area used a sequence of vignettes that tie together the overarching plot perfectly, knowing how simple the idea behind the plot is the game never takes itself too seriously. One area in particular raised a smile for me with you needing to go to "Nantendo" to acquire an item. The writing is strongest in quick one shot jokes that only really work in the setting.
To the credit of the translation it makes some things that would work mainly in Japanese work in English in an interesting way - one character named Jinbee is a Japanese salesman who speaks in broken English. You can guess how this went in the original.
Honestly, I couldn't recommend this enough to someone looking for a quick enjoyable game. You can find the translation here. I played through the game on my GBA Everdrive on my Micro. Furthermore there's a DX patch in the works since the GBC remake was cancelled.
Anyone else play through this? Oh and any recommendations like this?
