PCE Review #2: Mizubaku Daibouken

Game: Mizubaku Daibouken
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Format: HuCard
Release date: 1992

One way to translate the Japanese title of this game into English, or so I’ve been told, is to call it Water Bomb Adventure. That’s certainly an apt way to describe this quirky little platformer, which stars a platypus–yeah, I know the folks at Taito say he’s a hippopotomus, but there’s no way the paunchy protagonist is anything other than an Ornithorhynchus anatinus–who throws, you guessed it, giant balls of water at innumerable foes as he waddles through levels pulled from the pages of Platformers for Dummies. His journey–to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend, naturally–begins easily enough, with straightforward stages filled to the brim with enemies who put up little to no resistance, but it rapidly rachets up in intensity. That’s OK, though, because the Parasol Stars-esque sights you’ll see and the hummable tunes you’ll hear along the way help make it all worthwhile–assuming, of course, you didn’t drop too much cash to procure your copy of the game (an unfortunately all-too-common occurrence given its Bubble Bobble connection).

See also: Previous PCE Reviews

One down, three to go …

It’s been a while since I last bought a PC Engine game. In fact, I don’t think I’ve added to my (still small) HuCard and CD collection since early this summer.

Well, the drought ended yesterday afternoon when a well-cared-for copy of Mizubaku Daibouken (aka Liquid Kids) arrived on my doorstep. I’ve wanted the PC Engine port of this Taito platformer for a while, but I held off on buying it until a few weeks ago because of high price it tends to command on eBay.

What changed a few weeks ago? I found a cheap-ish copy, that’s what. Actually, I wouldn’t call it cheap, but it certainly was cheaper than the other complete copies of the game that have appeared on the popular auction site in the last year or so.

Anyway, now that I’ve checked that game off of my to-buy list I can turn my obsession–er, attention–toward the other titles included on said list, namely, Gekisha Boy, Parasol Stars and Rainbow Islands.

Mizubaku Daibouken = Bubble Bobble 4?

At least, that’s what the editors of TurboPlay magazine suggested all the way back in 1992–just before Taito’s Mizubaku Diabouken (aka Liquid Kids) hit the streets in Japan.

My initial reaction to that suggestion was something along the lines of “nuh uh!”–but after giving it some consideration my reaction has softened a bit.

After all, the series’ other (actual) entries–Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars–don’t share enemies, protagonists, settings or weapons, so why would part four–with its waterbomb-wielding platypus–be any different?

All that said, Mizubaku Daibouken isn’t, as far as I can tell, officially called chapter four of the Bubble Bobble saga–although I suppose that may have been something the game’s creators considered early on.