EVIL MIME: The Blue Mime is the most common, so I figured he deserved a spot. Don't think it's just him though, as this game is overrun with evil mimes. Blue, red, pink, yellow, they're all there. EVIL MIMES. How can you not love a game like this? The blue ones do this wacky little sidestep walk in your direction until you stick whack them upside down.

SPRING MIME: Same as Bluey, except for two reasons. One, he looks eerily similar to the cartoon Conan O'Brien from Late Night. Two, his weapon of choice is a slinky. A damn slinky. He just stops, and slowly but surely attacks you with a pointy little slinky. It's brilliant.

PIILOWNINJA: So yeah, in later levels, these giant pillows with chubby ninjas on them come flying at you, and some of them shoot things. Run of the mill in this game, baby.

SCUBA GUY: He just kind of climbs walls and spits at you. But isn't he cuuuuute?

STONED HEAD: A version of the last boss. I just thought he looked funny.

OK, enough of this tomfoolery, let's get to the meat and potatoes.

This shouldn't take long. I've already described all of Niki's radical moves, right? Well, A jumps, B attacks. Gee, that was tough. You'll take these abilities ... excuse me; radical abilities, through eight right-scrolling levels of pure foolishness, all with the same bouncy, bubbly tune playing in the background. Are you ready?

Too bad. We're going in.

Why can't they EVER switch things up and fill the first level with lava and make it inside of a castle? Anyway, lots of grass and hills (big surprise), and you're first introduced to the evil mimes. In addition to the blue and red variety, there are pink ones that stand in one place and jump occasionally. And evil birds, you can never forget the evil birds. Eventually you reach a windmill, which if you jump around and swing your stick like an idiot in front of, takes you to a bonus room. There are numerous places like these throughout the game, but I didn't know that until after I beat it, and damned if I'm playing through it again just for this review. But all of that is irrelavent - when compared to DEATH BREATH.

Aside from the plethora of nutty ass enemies, the promise of a major foe called Death Breath was the other thing that hooked me. And LOOK at him, that's got to be the stupidest looking boss of all time. His head, which of course is 3 times the size of his body, looks like a swollen, deformed penis covered in syrup. Getting past his hilarious appearance (eventually), he has two main attacks. One, he tries whacking you with his giant dickhead over and over. Failing that, he blows, well, his death breath at you. It doesn't really hurt you or anything, it just keeps you at bay. When you get a hit in on him, he says "UGH", which is common to several bosses, and may distract you if you're laughing too hard. Also of note is the "hurrr! hur hur!" background music that's supposed to signify the breathing of Death Breath, even though it continues after you kill him. After you beat a boss, a thing appears, and if you whack it, you get a bonus.

And THIS nifty message:

Starting out, you get a little change of scenery, as you hop pits of water while avoiding evil birds that do more than just sit in one place, like the ones from the last level. Oh, I didn't yet mention it, but all levels are broken up into about 12-15 mini-sections, as the bottom of the subscreen helpfully illustrates:

It just changes as you go along, so you can see how close you are to the end at all times. After about 4 in Round 2, you enter a forest. But look in the trees - that's right, yellow mimes. And this, my friends, is EXTREME MIME GUERILLA WARFARE. That's right, these little bastards camp out in trees and bombard your ass with mime bombs. You actually can climb up and knock the shit out of them if you so desire, but it's not really worth it, so only do it if their pasty white faces are about to make you snap.

The next boss is SPIKE, and he kinda sucks, although there are some redeeming qualities. Number one, he looks like a little grey alien wearing a red bandana, that's got to count for something. Two, he also exclaims "UGH!" when you hit him. And finally, he sometimes mixes things up and chucks a softball at your ass. Hm, I guess he wasn't so bad after all.

This is your token mountainous hippity hop hop level. In addition to the standard fare of enemies, there are also weird little things in pointy hats that ride rocks until you knock them off, at which point they hop around like doped up dipshits. That's really all there is to it, except for cloud hopping. But what game doesn't have cloud hopping?

HORNED WITCH: This bitch scares me. She has this glamqueen/kabuki thing going, and it's just unsettling. Most unfortunately, she does NOT say "UGH!" when you attack her, but rather splits up into many pieces, which get smaller and smaller until they eventually vanish. The last one seems to nip at your ass quite aggresively, but shouldn't be too much of a problem. Don't worry, things are about to pick up.

See, here we go. This is one of those levels that are split into two different areas, each having absolutely nothing to do with the other. You begin in the ice cave. All right, simple enough. Then, perhaps tired of their treatment at the hands of ninja-types in similar games, these little frogs ahoot blasts of fire at you while maintaining that smooth little smile. Not too bad. So then what? Cats start dropping from the ceiling, of course. No joke, have a look; it's an ice cave, and these damn chubby cats just fall on you out of nowhere. I'm still trying to figure this one out. But there's not much time, as you'll soon exit the cave and go through the most annoying part of the game by far: bubble jumping. Kid Niki may be radical, but rising bubbles hurt him. And they seem to be homing bubbles. At least if you do the random sword swing on top of that fish, you go to a bonus room. Quite obviously, this is the best level in the game.

I guess you can't have everything, as GREEN GRUB isn't the most exciting of bosses. You'll see THAT shortly. By the way, unlike most of my reviews, I am NOT making any of these boss names up. They all appear before you enter each level. That's why it's so damned funny. For Grubby, all you really have to do is take out his midsection. Next.

This level is pretty good as well. You start in a wacky bamboo forest, and have oodles of fun trying to distinguish Niki from the decidedly fucked up masked hornet enemies you see above. Soon you enter a weird area in which everything is black except for you and the background, but that's OK, because for the first time, you get to fight human enemies that aren't mimes. They look very similar to the guys from Kung Fu Heroes, but maybe that's just me. As far as scenery in the later part of the level, well, there are dojo type things, as well as the ever-popular Buddha. But that's nothing in comparison to the MAD MONK.

The Mad Monk SO kicks your sorry ass. Look at him, he looks like Baraka from MKII in a frilly dress. Not even Death Breath can top that. And that's not even the half of it: Monk attacks you with his WORD BALLOONS OF DOOM. That's right, he goes into these funky dance steps, then throws out a "fool" that rains down on you. He even has weird symbols and F-Bombs (no comment) that he can utilize. Ah yes, and I've waited until now to let you in on another boss trait: they can knock the stick out of your hand so that it turns back into a sword, then you have to go fetch it. Hehe, look at that Mad Monk go.

I'm reminded now of Round 2, although this level is entirely stonewall. Not much here, except for the most aggressive birds of all, but there are a few things. Number one, the debut of SCUBA GUY. Also, there are the weird little orange mimes that have the strangest ability of them all: stacking on top of one another. After they do that, they're pretty easy to knock off, but again, the laughter distraction is always a factor. Hey, I think this might also have been the first time you get attacked by Pillowninjas. Good old Round 6.

There's nothing really spectacular about the SAMURAI GUARD. He just kind of shuffles toward you, painfully keeping his crescent stick thing raised in the air. That's when you realize he's all too invincible to your radical attacks - or is he? Best boss strategy ever: to beat him, you have to sneak in and bounce your sword off his nuts. Take a look, I couldn't make this stuff up unless I had been playing Monster Party for several hours under heavy doses of Egg Nog.

We's be getting to the nitty gritty. This level is all about the scenery, as there's nothing really new. The blue mimes do make a comeback, as well as certain other enemies, only in greater numbers. Then they throw in some background tigers. It's all lead-in anyway, you see, for you're about to go face to face with the man himself.

The STONE WIZARD. The evil being that took the Princess, covered her in a hobo blanket, and tied her in a compromising position. We can't have that, can we? I really don't care either way, actually, but I want to get this over with. The Wizard can be tough, that is, until you get past the substantial amount of fire he shoots at you. You see, if you get close enough and time your hits so that he doesn't knock your stick away, you can smack the crap out of him until he UGHs his last UGH. If he does render you weaponless, you have to get through the fire again. Beat him, and you save the Princess, and get a princess bonus to boot. However, in his infinite stupidity, Kid Niki decides to go after the Stone Wizard. This is why there's no sequel.

Round 8 takes place across the rooftops of the Stone Wizard's palace, whom I might add has absolutely nothing to do with stones, except perhaps for his mental state. He shows up several times throughout the level, actually, prompting you to defeat him in several mini-battles. He even brings back the damn bubbles, for goodness sake.

You eventually catch up to him for one final battle, in which he shoots lots of bouncing fireballs at you. No harder than the previous fights. This time, he's done for good, and you can revel in all your ninja glory as the ending makes you feel especially radical.

Yep, so at first glance, this seems like your typical platformer. But I think you know me a little better than that by now. This game is chock full of mimes, mad monks, Death Breath, and loads of other strange crap you won't find anywhere else. Plus, I don't think I've said the word "radical" so many times in one sitting at any other point in my life. And that just makes me feel awesome.

NEW! Added 12/21:

A couple of additions to this glorious review. First of all, Timmy was nice enough to actually scan the Kid Niki cartridge for us, so we could see the box/cartridge art in all its glory:

Not only is it blindingly pink, but it was licensed by Data East, the very folks who brought us Karnov, which definitely explains quite a lot. But that's not all.

Every once in a long while, even Polas himself is wrong. This time however, I'm glad I was. Brought to my attention by bigtime gamer-type dude and top notch retro fan ScientistPG, a Kid Niki sequel DOES exist, although it was only released in Japan, which explains how it passed through the Retro Radar undetected. But upon learning of its existence, I began to play it, intending to post a few screenshots in this review, maybe compare the two. Then I played more. And more. And eventually, all the way through, at which point I realized there were no other options. What did I do?

The only thing I could.

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