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### KunKun & KokoKun [SMS]

#### http://www.smspower.org/

#### Reviewed By Dudley

When you read the name KunKun & KokoKun did you think we were dealing with a kids TV show staring two cute aliens, or is it just me? Personally I think it would be a superb name for a cartoon. Or it would if Omar Cornut (also author of the 'Meka' emulator) hadn't swiped the name to use it for this homebrew game, which appears to instead star a couple of bowls of Jelly. They may be alien jelly, but this is not stated.

K4 is actually a decent little platform/puzzle game, the object of which being to traverse the obstacle packed levels, collecting what I'm fairly certain are flowers and then delivering them to your sweetie (KokoKun). You'll also need to open doors by flipping switches in order to access the whole map, and your life is made considerably harder by cannons firing balls across the level and by pits of acid that kill you instantly upon touch.

The controls are simple and responsive, and the game is set up with a tile-system where you can either move one tile either side, climb ladders with the d-pad or leap over obstacles using the two buttons on the controller. The graphics are also pretty detailed for an SMS game, with a lot of tiles on screen and it moves at what can only be described as a perfect framerate. I'm not sure how well this would translate to a normal RF lead powered TV though - the contrasting colours could blur quite badly, so playing is recommended via an emulator or by using a SMS with scart/RGB output.

There are other downsides to the level of detail too, even on the harder levels there aren't that many animated obstacles to avoid and there's absolutely no sound of any description at any point in the game (neither spot effects or music). Some of the other standard platform controls are also missing, such as the ability to direct your falls (although this doesn't matter a huge amount in a game that leans towards puzzle gameplay).

It's also quite a thin game - there are only a total of four levels, and with unlimited restarts and the ability to commence from any of the first three means that if you're any good there's probably only a couple of hours play to be had in KunKun & KokoKun.

Ultimately though, two hours play from a free 8KB game is a pretty sweet deal. If it were possible to add some sound, some more levels and perhaps even a level editor then we'd have a truly excellent Master System title that would have stood up as a real release 20 years ago. As it is, Kunkun & Kokokun provides an amusing but unfortunately short lived diversion.

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Homebrew games for Sega's 8-bit console are few and far between and KunKun and KokoKun is also an unusual game in it's own right since it's not so much a platformer as a puzzle game that just happens to have gravity. After playing it for a couple of minutes it becomes obvious that quite a bit of thought has gone into this game, with the room layouts being detailed and pitched at about the right difficulty level. The simple controls, which cause Koko (I assume it's Koko... perhaps it's Kun) to either 'step' one length or jump twice as far (via the directional jumps assigned to the two pad buttons) mean that there's no messing around with trying to make difficult, pixel-perfect jumps or being splattered by a cannon ball that I swear was nowhere near me, officer. And although it does take a little getting used to, the jump controls soon become pretty intuitive and work well as the player becomes more practiced.

The graphics throughout are quite sparse and, whilst they do the job and are fairly detailed, they're never going to be particularly memorable. The minimal size of everything on-screen occasionally makes discerning details difficult (there are a couple of places where what looks like a wall isn't) and generally the display looks a little cluttered. KunKun and KokoKun themselves, considering how tiny their sprites are and that they're only coloured blobs, are fairly well animated (the jump animations in particular work well) and rather cute in their own amorphic way. Also, whilst some of the presentation leaves a bit to be desired, there are a couple of nice touches such as our hero calling out his (or possibly her... come to think of it, who knows if they even have genders!) beloved's name if left alone and a heart floats up above the captive love interest's head in classic arcade game tradition.

All this cuteness aside however, KunKun and KokoKun does have an air of something that hasn't quite been completed, almost like a teaser or preview. There's absolutely no sound after the Master System boot logo, no on-screen prompts or scoring (apart from the name of the game at the top left of each screen and that's actually there for a reason!) and the included levels are over almost before the game has had a chance to get going! Which is a bit of a shame really because I enjoyed playing this game for the short while that it lasted and would have liked to play further; all it really needed to make it really special would be just a bit more depth, some polish around the edges and preferably twenty or thirty levels with a more shallow difficulty curve overall. But to end on a positive note, KunKun and KokoKun shows what I'd consider a lot of promise for future productions from the same team, so fingers crossed (unless you're an amorphous entity) that they produce another game soon.

T.M.R

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Graphics: | 88%
Sound: | N/A
Game Concept: | 90%
Gameplay: | 80%
Lasting Appeal: | 53%

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