ACA NEOGEO Blue’s Journey

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Blue’s Journey is an Action-Platformer released in 1990 in Japanese arcades, and on the NEOGEO home console in 1991 as a launch title, with a port to NEOGEO CD in 1994. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Blue’s Journey has charming, colorful visuals depicting your hero and friendly NPCs hailing from a nature-loving kingdom vaguely reminiscent of the titular land from the film Ferngully, complete with an environmentalist theme. The gameplay, meanwhile is deceptively challenging, and you’ll be thankful for the unlimited continues this release permits you, because you’ll need them.

It’s not just the unforgiving two-hit health system that’s the cause of this challenge. Your character has an awkward vertically-oriented jump that’s difficult to use with precision, your attack is at times unreliable, and enemies are often too fast to respond to in time. This definitely isn’t the family-friendly game it appears to be.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

In the end, it’s hard not to be charmed by Blue’s Journey’s adorable presentation, and the gameplay can be fun… when it works. But frequently as you play, you’ll be cursing that one jump the game’s odd physics made you miss, the attack that didn’t happen for some reason, or some other frustration that will result in your death. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend this game unless you’re very patient and don’t mind using up countless continues as you play.

tl;dr – Blue’s Journey is an Action-Platformer with an adorable presentation and an environmentalist message, but it’s filled with numerous frustrations that make it harder than its appearance would lead you to believe. Unless you don’t mind dying countless times, this one probably isn’t for you.

Grade: C+

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