cute things have for us today a board-game style puzzle compilation, full of... pain.

Let's admit it. It's about pain. The pain of waking up on a monday Morning and stumbling

into the office, after barely being able to order my morning chai in intelligible sentences,

only to be immediately put to work doing crosswords in Japanese. Fortunately, most of the clues

are other Sunsoft games, so I was able to put my knowledge of Alien Syndrome and Ripple

Island to use. I blame Felicity in Worcestershire. She's obviously behind this plot. Seriously,

who could spot the differences between these pictures on a MONDAY? I ask you!

In case you're not watching this on a Monday, or some other time when you can, y'know, commiserate

with my plight, lemme lay it out for you. The moderately absurd cast of Hebereke have

taken to this Game-of-Life-style board, to spin a spinner and travel around, doing a

puzzle each time they're brought to a stop. There are four main styles of brainteasers

presented: Spot-the-difference challenges, crosswords, picture reassembly puzzles, and

"find this guy in a crowded area." That's it. That's pretty much all you get to go on.

And there's a huge gulf between the difficulties of these things - the crosswords tend to be

a bit on the kanji-intensive side, and the difference-spotting is bleeding miserable

on an upscaled television, while there's no excuse whatsoever, WHATSOEVER for ever failing

the other two games. Seriously. Thus, the game becomes less about "Solve the puzzles"

and more about "Avoid the ridiculous ones." Yeah, good luck with that.

There's a single-player mode that takes place over three maps, and a "Party Mode" designed

for two to five players - yes, five, gotta love those multitaps - which takes place over

the same three maps. Hey, don't fix what ain't broken, right? Well. Don't fix what works

to a moderate degree, but still leaves one wanting. Ultimately, the massive gulf between

the "easy games" and the "hard games" makes this whole package kinda frustrating. There's

really nothing really notable to it: the sound isn't anything to write home about, the largely

static bitmaps that you have to pour over to find some thread out of place are kinda

grainy... it's like Sunsoft realized that they had a real hit in the original Hebereke

AKA Eufouria and then just left it in the open air to shrivel and die. Granted, this

is the same group of people who gave us Mystery of Atlantis, Ikki, and any number of other

soul-crushing aberrations, so I'm not quite sure I'd put it past 'em.

Were I in a situation where I absolutely needed a strange, very Japanese Super Famicom party

game to amuse a group of people... well, I would seriously reconsider my choices in life.

Pull out Itadaki Street, pull out any of those weird-as-hell life simulator games... Or Bomberman!

Everyone plays Bomberman. But just remember Hebereke as an awesome platformer, and not

for this. Hebereke's quote unquote delicious puzzles left kind of a bad taste in my mouth;

maybe they just needed some more salt. Or bacon. Everything's better with bacon.