I'm still the midst of working my way through Narita Boy, but picking apart its melting pot of pop culture references is often just as satisfying as its side-scrolling combat. Name me a cooler-sounding sword, I'll wait. It's a game that knows 100% what it's about, where everything you see and hear is there for a reason, and where all the extraneous, rose-tinted fat has been excised to create a lean, laser-targeted platforming adventure that's both a love letter to all things PC and the wider landscape of the era. That might seem a bit overkill at first glance, but when you learn early-on in the game that the Digital Kingdom's creator once hailed from Japan (and the city of Narita, it turns out), it's one of the many elements of Narita Boy that suddenly clicks into place. Your trusty Techno Sword has a distinct anime-esque Power Rangers vibe to it as well, as this multi-purpose weapon is both a sword, shotgun, baseball bat and whacking great laser beam all in one. It's a world where coding and computer science have been given the cool 80s treatment of a Saturday morning cartoon, where Trojan viruses are reimagined as swaggering Stallions (geddit?) and the all-seeing, all-knowing Motherboard is a robed, womanly seer. And when that happens, the Digital Kingdom will be lost forever. Literally, in the case of the latter, as a mysterious rogue entity known as HIM (yes, in all-caps) has started infecting this place with corrupted code that's slowly destroying all the programs and protocols that live inside this 80s-infused digiscape, as well as the memories of the Digital Kingdom's creator. You play as the titular Narita Boy, a game-obsessed lad who's been called into a world known as the Digital Kingdom to save it from ruin and corruption. You can get more articles like it, alongside an ad-free version of the site, by becoming a supporter today. It was first published on March 31st 2021. ![]() This article was originally exclusively available to RPS supporters. It's a game that's as much about old tech as it is indebted to it, and anyone who's ever tinkered about with their PC and still reminisces about the 2D action side-scrollers of their youth will find a lot to love here. ![]() But this is no mere nostalgic landgrab for those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s. It's awash with neon blues and rainbow-coloured light refractions, and the edges of the screen even flicker and bend like you're playing it on a CRT television. Take one look at Studio Koba's retro platformer Narita Boy and you could easily mistake it for a new kind of Tron game.
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