About A Game: Hachiemon (GBA)
Hachiemon is a mascot of the Japanese TV station "Kansai Television" (KTV or Kantele for short). Since his introduction in 1995 he appeared in various clips and ads to promote the station. He's just kind of an egg-shaped thing with very prominent lips (which is why I lovingly call him "lip egg"). His description on the KTV website (https://www.ktv.jp/hachiemon/) notes that a particular charm point are his "cute buttocks".
For some reason, this little goof got his own licensed game in 2003 on the GBA. And it's actually pretty good! Developed by Natsume and published by Namco, the self-titled Hachiemon is a platformer that starts off fairly standard and a bit simple, but develops some nice mechanical depth as you get into it.
Bandai Namco's website for this game is surprisingly still online: https://www.bandainamcoent.co.jp/cs/list/hachiemon/
At the start of the game, Hachiemon and his friends are relaxing on Hachi Isle, when suddenly everyone's lips disappear, except for Hachiemon's. So it's up to him to figure out where the lips went and get them back.
Every stage has a little cutscene before it where Hachiemon talks to someone, often someone who lost their lips. A cute detail here is that the lipless characters can only mumble incomprehensibly, with subtitles showing what they're actually saying. Of course most of this is lost on players who cannot read Japanese. But there is still more than enough charm in the game that avoids the language barrier, especially in the visual designs.
Most of the creatures in the game have the same big lips as Hachiemon, and look very goofy with them. There is a series of stages set in the city of Osaka, where most of the "enemies" are laughing housewives, and the boss fight is against a sort of office building combining mecha. The boss fights in general are often inventive and silly; the boss of the very first stage is some kind of muscle guy, who will literally throw you straight into space if you let him grab you. Another boss fight features two lovey-dovey fish parents with their child.
When Hachiemon stands idle for a few seconds, he gets a strained look and then farts, to which all characters on screen respond by falling over. Hachiemon even has a few voice clips in his typical deep, lethargic voice.
I was lucky enough to catch a live stream of my friend, the wonderful barleybap, who live-translated the game while playing. The writing of the game is cute and funny, and Hachiemon himself appears as a loveable, somewhat dumb goof who speaks in a strong Kansai dialect. I highly recommend barleybap's streams of the game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1298679501
The goal of every stage is to collect at least a certain number of the lips that are hidden everywhere and to reach the exit. Hachiemon has some interesting moves available to achieve this, many based on his lips. Giving enemies a quick smooch stuns them for a bit, with them getting rosy cheeks from the embarrassment of your display of affection. Your lips can also be thrown as a boomerang, to attack and to grab items. The best and most versatile move is to grab onto platforms with your lips. Hachiemon's lips are quite stretchy, so you can pull yourself toward walls or ceilings, and even slingshot yourself to out-of-reach places, or "handstand" by grabbing the floor and stretching away. Lastly, Hachiemon can roll to clear away enemies or obstacles.
Many stages also provide certain transformations which change your skills. By eating different takoyaki, Hachiemon can transform into a samurai, a fish, a blob, a mole, a tiny Hachiemon, and others, all with their own skills and restrictions.
Finding enough lips for the stage requirement is not very difficult, at least on Normal difficulty, but if you want to find all the lips, it's very much necessary to go through the stage carefully and explore every nook and cranny. This often requires full use of Hachiemon's skills, e.g. to climb and sling yourself along a ceiling. There are also many invisible items and blocks in stages, which can be revealed by hitting them, or by pressing a button near them which lets Hachiemon exclaim "Kantele", the name and slogan of his TV station. This slogan might also be a pun on the Italian word "cantere" (to sing).
I played on the lowest difficulty, called "normal" or "ordinary", which still provides some challenge in later stages. In the highest difficulty, stages get downright Kaizo-like, with lots of spikes, more enemies, and shorter stun periods for them. Difficulty also changes the required number of lips for stages.
Beating the game adds a little statuette to the title screen, in my case apparently in bronze, so I assume that higher difficulties will reward players with a silver or gold statuette. Collecting all lips in all stages, including the additional stages that unlock after beating the game, seems to only net you a different title screen. This isn't much as a reward I suppose, but I very much enjoyed looking for all the lips in all stages.
To close this post, here's my longplay, getting all lips on normal difficulty: