Kubo 3 (Famicom) (Review)

[fcgamer | 4,719]

On Friday I received a package in the mail containing copies of Kubo 3, a game released on the Famicom this year and on the NES previously. I had picked up the NES version previously, as I really liked the idea that it was a father and son team making the game, and I wanted to show my support; unfortunately I never had the opportunity to play the game until yesterday, as my NES is basically a token machine now, way too finicky for actually running games, with one wrong bump from kitty sending it into a reset or glitch mode.

Before even discussing the game itself, the first thing I noticed was the high quality of the game cartridge. The cartridge shell felt on par with something from back in the day, and I also appreciated how the manual was in both Japanese and English, something that would also make it into the game itself.

When Kubo 3 starts up, the player is able to choose between languages (English or Japanese) as well as difficulty (normal or hard). A nice opening sequence runs, and then it's off to the races.

We immediately find ourselves at a crossroads of sorts, with our hero, the loveable cowboy space turtle standing in the middle of the screen. After exploring the overworld for a spell I finally made my way to one of the stages, a water stage. Here, the hero swims in the deep ocean, before fighting against an octopus boss, and then he returns to the overworld.

The overworld acts as a connection to the various stages in the game, which consist of an ocean stage, the sky, the underground, the cemetery, and the enemy castle. Hidden in the overworld (on normal mode) is a gun, and once you find that, you can go around shooting bushes on the overworld. I had a lot of fun just exploring the overworld, and I even started longing to see what lies beyond the boundaries of trees, hoping that there were other hidden rooms and areas, that's how captivated I became with it.

Although short, the stages are really fun. The enemies were funny, such as the goofy zombies and the flying carrots, and I had a lot of fun transversing the stages. The water stage even had multiple paths!

I felt that the music also matched the game well. Each track fit each stage nicely, and the overworld track just gave me a nice feeling when exploring the map.

Overall, I really had a lot of fun playing Kubo 3, with my only complaint being that I wanted more So after playing through the game several times, I then jumped on YouTube to check out Kubo 2, sadly the video I found for Kubo 1 looked to be very very early. I hope to be able to play these two earlier Kubo games at some point too, but until then, I'll work on playing through Kubo 3 in hard mode.

Overall, this I highly recommend this game.

 

[dale_coop | 162]

Thank you @fcgamerfor that great review and having played KUBO3. The project itself is more an adventure than making a commercial game. My son wanted to make that game... and he (we) spent days, weeks, months working on that.
All the designs (player, monsters, levels) are made by SJ with NESmaker. I worked on the technical part (custom scripts, bug fixes, ...)

About KUBO 1 & 2, don't expect too much, those are not real games... just a few levels Seiji made while he was learning the tool. It will be just demos/prototypes of what KUBO3 became.

Thank you for all the support (and excuse-me, again, for the issues with your order)