About A Game: 50 Pinch Barrage!! (3DS eShop)
50 Pinch Barrage!! (ピンチ50連発!!) from the Nintendo 3DS eShop is a nice little challenge platformer. It was developed by Mobile & Game Studio, later known as just "Game Studio". As their name implies, they seem to have worked mostly on mobile games, especially for Japanese phone platforms like G-MODE. Among other games, they made a G-MODE port of Sorcerian, contributed to Kingdom Hearts: Coded, and even worked on Okamiden, the DS sequel to the painterly Zelda-like Okami.
(EDIT: Very surprisingly, this game recently got re-released on Switch and Steam!)
It seems that the game has been delisted from the 3DS eShop at some point, since I can't find it on Nintendo's eShop websites. I wonder why that would happen, since it's not based on a license, and the dev studio still seems to be around. The official website of the game is still up though: https://www.gamestudio.co.jp/pinch50/index_noa.html
Here's the trailer for a little impression and the amazing title theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Kg0Wkn4Kw
The game is a mechanically fairly simple, challenge style platformer in the vein of old Japanese platformers like on the Famicom. I feel like the game might be based on some specific games I can't quite recall or do not know; especially the design of the main character with the orange jumpsuit reminds me of something. It's probably the kind of game that Pole's Big Adventure on WiiWare is a parody of. Thinking about it, I suppose Pitfall might be a good reference for how this game plays, with its rather short platforming challenges, vines, crocodiles and so on.
The protagonist has crashed on a volcano island, and you are tasked with running and jumping through 50 short sections to escape. On your way there are many traps, including crocodiles, rolling and falling boulders, big deadly spikes, minecart rides, and natives trying to feather you with arrows. While some stages can take a bunch of trial-and-error attempts, the traps are mostly benign and do not reach the meanness of 1001 Spikes or I Wanna Be The Guy-likes. Most of the time, the traps aren't sprung on you completely out of the blue. Any hit will kill you, but only sends you back to the start of the current section, and there are no limited lives to end your run.
Gameplay is well-suited to playing on-the-go, because the stages are fairly short. Even with retries, most stages shouldn't require more than a few minutes of attempts.
The game only uses the top screen of the 3DS, and does not use any 3D gimmicks as far as I could tell. The lower screen only tracks your current play time.
Interestingly there is no background music during gameplay, only nature sounds.
When you finish the game, it replays your whole run at high speed while the credits roll on the bottom screen. Finally, it presents you with your final playtime and number of deaths. In my run, it took me 2:15:50 and 370 deaths in a single session.
The developers might have intended for speedruns of this game, since it tracks completion time and number of total completions. There is no speedrun.com page for the game, but I found at least two speedruns on youtube, the fastest time being this Japanese run in 14:40 in-game time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOFFIB_W_Ec
Here's my playthrough, in case you'd like to see more of the game. It's pretty fun if you're looking for a little challenge on your 3DS.