I’d argue that it’s not a retro piece, at least not in the conventional sense. On the one hand, it’s a nostalgic piece to people who were either around when this 80s futuristic aesthetic was considered edgy, or for those who missed out the first time and want some Tron-like action. The scales are equally balanced here as there’s an abundance of jumping, combating Stallion minions and bosses, to quite a bit of backtracking for disks or keycards. This is achieved through mostly platforming and combat. Once inside the Digital Kingdom, you’ll encounter several High Priests expecting your arrival, foretelling prophecies and providing you with the bare minimal guidance required to complete your mission: defeat HIM and restore The Creator’s memories. That doesn’t mean that Narita Boy is pretentious or anything this is a passion project from Studio Koba, and having read a few things, it’s taken some time for this to get into the wild. You will be able to make sense of it it just takes a bit of time to digest. You don’t have to identify as a programmer, but there’s a mixture of jargon and extravagantly titled characters that it all gets a little too confusing for its own good. What is a little confusing is the terminology.

You see, Narita Boy is a game within a game, but the concept isn’t that hard to understand. With a legion of Stallions, HIM eats away at The Creator’s worlds, all the way down to the source code.

Playing as the boy of the title, you get wrapped up in the Digital Kingdom to rescue The Creator’s memories as they are slowly corrupted by a virus named HIM. You can call it a Metroidvania, but I’m going for a less specified description. But why are we looking at the behind-the-scenes when we haven’t tackled a synopsis? Narita Boy is Team17’s ( Blasphemous, Rogue Heroes)latest that I’m calling an action platformer.

Narita boy eat coder