Kid Niki 3

Kid Niki 3
1993/Irem
....Review by Polas - 5/10/02....

It's been too long. Unbeknownst to all outside of a select few, several months ago I was proven wrong once again when I stated that I had covered every game in my beloved Kid Niki series, thanks to a benevolent soul known only as Mr. Brown. He provided a brief message as well as a mysterious file named "YANCHA3", which I couldn't get to work. Now, my Polas skepticism kicked in, thinking that although Mr. Brown meant well, this could be the third installment of a different series, especially since I was warned of drastic gameplay changes. But next to my Polas skepticism is my Polas curiosity, and remembering that the Japanese name for Kid Niki is in fact "Kaiketsu Yancha Maru", sure enough, I soon found a "Kaiketsu Yancha Maru 3" at some obscure foreign site that I'd probably never be able to find again. I played ... and my wildest dreams were confirmed.

All reservations were now out the window, thanks to the game's opening cutscenes:

Yes! Not only is that Kararakuri, the last boss of Kid Niki 2, but returning as the the head honcho of the series once again, and sporting a stylish new bathrobe at that, is the incomparable Stone Wizard. These two have joined forces to kidnap the Princess one more time, do or die. What happens next? Well, before I can let you go any further, I have to make sure you've already completed BOTH previous Kid Niki reviews, or else the forthcoming stuff will make even less sense, and probably not be as funny. Ready? Here we go.

As you can see, while Karara and Stoney were busy grinning evily over their latest diabolical plan, Kid Niki's main squeeze was able to write him a note and send it to him via paper airplane. She must be damn good at it, because it shockingly flies straight to Niki, who doesn't seem all too thrilled at first to be caught up in yet another wacky adventure. However, he sucks it up with a smile and flies into the title screen, and thus begins our journey ... will the third time be a charm?

COIN: The coin, as always, is pretty much useless, serving as nothing more than a means of accumulating points. However, in Kid Niki 3, bonus rounds can be accessed by collecting enough coins in a level, unlike the "wild swinging of stick in front of windmill" method from the original game.

KEY: Keys have inexplicably become the focal point of the Kid Niki experience, putting more emphasis on strategy and exploration, and less on fucked-up enemies and bosses. I'm sure you can imagine how I feel about that. Oftentimes, keys will be placed in some out of the way locations, so you'll need to utilize some of Niki's NEW radical moves to grab 'em.

LOCKED DOOR: This may shock and astound you to find out, but yes, this is where them shiny keys go. The Stone Wizard has apparently littered Kidnikiland with these in order to hinder our hero's process, because as mentioned, they're the backbone of gameplay. Increase in abundance every level. I know, the surprises never end.

HEART: The heart is many things to many people; to some it signifies love, to others, it's a life-giving organ, it can serve as an intangible feeling, but in this game, it pretty much just refills some energy, necessitating the rest of this filler paragraph.

SPRING: Boing, and all that good stuff. I often wonder why so many games go with "springs"; ever since Super Mario Bros. had that weird green one, almost all games decided to use them, instead of trampolines, rubber flooring, or perhaps really strong fans. No, there's no point to any of this, but you try coming up with a paragraph describing what the hell a spring is good for.

SCROLL: Everyone likes invincibility, and as such, you're gonna LOVE invincibility that also turns you red! Eh? EH? ....eh.

1-UP: Yes, calm down, the Princess' head is still an extra life.

All right, now that the items are out of the way, it's time for the best part of any self-respecting Kid Niki game.... The enemies!

SCUBA NINJA (1): Seriously, do you ever think about how the bad guy bosses think up some of their stupid-ass enemies?

Stone Wizard: "All right, we need a new brand of generic henchmen for this one."
Kararakuri: "Why not use the ever-powerful Ninja Mimes again?! "
Stone Wizard: "Oh yeah, that was great, stealing my Mime idea and giving them all flattops. You even took their slinkies."
Kararakuri: "Hey! Half my budget went to resigning Death Breath; why do you think he isn't in this one? And what about those stupid Scuba Guys you had? They looked more fit for Bubble Bobble!"
Stone Wizard: "OK, OK ... how about we take the Scuba Head, and put it on the Ninja body?"
Kararakuri: "Won't that be a lot of work?"
Stone Wizard: "Nah, we'll just plaster a Snifit from Mario 2 onto a gangly grey body, give it a pompom hat, and clone it a bunch of times."
Kararakuri: "GENIUS!"

I love video game villains.

DEFORMED MICROPHONE (1): You try and do better. These things don't pose much threat, but they are pretty irritable, likely due to, well, looking the way they do. So they can hop after you pretty good, and packs can be dangerous.

WALKING NINJA DEATH STAR (1): Keeping with the "all enemies must now be three shades of grey" motif, I don't know, I guess they figured giving a ninja throwing star some legs would be much more effective than having the Scuba Ninjas throw them at you. Don't shoot the messenger.

STONE TINKLER (2): OK, while some of the rest of the enemies may not be as great as they have been in past games, this guy absolutely takes the cake. Yes, you're seeing correctly, I have not altered this in any way, it's a stone statue of a boy that dilligently jerks his ding-dong at you, playfully squirting you with a blast of water from his nether regions. If this wasn't Kid Niki, the absurdity and plain weirdness of that alone would probably warrant a review for this game regardless.

EVIL DUCK (2): Good to see that Kid Niki enemies are using nonsensical word balloons once again. The Evil Duck skims the water, keeping an eye out for our hero. When he does, he exerts his exclamation, and spits a blue thing at you. It can nail you if you're on land, or it can sink down and get you in the water. Evil Duck, resourceful. Blue thing, dangerous.

BLUE THING (2): Well, there it is.

EGGPLANT BUG (3): What IS it about Nintendo games and eggplants? I know they were prominent in some of the early ones done by Nintendo, but this thing makes me believe that the eggplant thing is bigger than we know. There's nothing special about his attack or anything, he's just an eggplant bug. It's just that I was afraid that if I didn't include him, Eggplant Wizard might show up at my doorstep tomorrow evening and turn me into the smelly vegetable Kid Icarus style.

BANANARAMA (3): We're all well aware how effective the tried and true banana peel is in the realm of comic mayhem, causing its victim to hilariously slip and fall 99% of the time. What then, if the forces of evil could master a flying banana peel, spinning toward you at a frantic rate, sending you images of imminent doom? Can such a thing exist? This is Kid Niki, baby!

PISTOL PETALS (3): There are many games that feature evil plants that spit fire or something of similar destructive nature. Is that good enough for this game? Bite your tongue. Rather than a simple bullet-spitting flower, The Stone Wizard opted for a flower with a hand that emerges to fire a gun at you. I bet you wish you possessed HALF of that sheer geniusness.

FEATHERED FOOT (3): Yep, it's a white, hairy, severed foot with a green feather-type thing protruding from it. Come on; we've seen a degenerate wang bending statue, flying banana peels, flower/cowboy hybrids, I'm supposed to get excited over a manic hopping foot? Yes, we've been spoiled.

BUMBLE COPTER (4): It was between these guys and the rabid bats, but even though the bats are more vicious, flying toward you and dropping vertically as soon as they find you as opposed to wavering about aimlessly, the Bumble Copter has a propeller and a stinger coming out of his face. Sorry, Batsie.

FANDANGO (4): Sure, it's just a purple fan in the clouds that attempts to repel you. It's not even that hard to jump over if you're careful. But I'll be damned if I don't get a special feeling in my colon whenever electric fans are used for dastardly purposes.

HARMAKILLO (4): If my lame enemy name doesn't get you, the bullets will. It would seem that firearms are very liberally dispensed at Evil HQ, which explains how a flower guy and an armadillo both ended up with one. This annoying fellow can only be bested when he comes out of his shell to fire on you.

DEATH BY VANILLA (5): I'm sorry, but ice cream, even flying horizontally at your head at 60 MPH, isn't going to hurt. I don't know whose idea it was to shoot the damn things that way instead of the more logical "pointy tip of the cone side-first", but I hope they're reading this and realizing that their decision was even stupider than my idea to profile this entire game.

PARKA NINJA (5): Ahahahahahaha, they put the Scuba Ninja in a fruity parka and taught him how to ice skate. Look at him wobble! Ahahahaha, and so forth.

FREEZER BURN (5): Oh man, it keeps getting weirder. From a guy inside a flower, to an armadillo, to a .... robotic mouse in a refrigerator? Your guess is as good as mine as far as this latest entry into the "hell, we'd hand out a shotgun to Ray Charles as long as he sits quietly in Level 3 and waits for Kid Niki to come and kill him" category. Kill him after he emerges to shoot, and/or after you're done shaking your head.

ANGRY TEAPOT (5): Well, it's not the guy with the stove on his head, but it'll do. The Angry Teapot rolls around on the floor, jumps around so that you can kill him, then rolls some more if you fail. The Angry Teapot is a simple being, put into this ice-themed level solely ... well, I can't really say why he was put into the ice level. But hey, you're lucky you have an Angry Teapot at all. So there.

THIS THING (6): Just some sort of robot propellor with its tongue hanging out, but since it's practically the only enemy in the sixth level, I figured I'd list it. More on how miserable these things make your life later.

FLASHER (6): If you can think of a better way to close out the enemy section than with a shady guy wearing a bowl for a hat that exposes himself to reveal a cannon that fires a homing missle, I'd like to hear it .... on second thought, no I wouldn't.

It's now time to get reacquainted with the most radical Kid ninja of all, of course I refer to the legendary Kid Niki. Niki seems to have changed for the better since game #2, which I credit to a sleek new black ninja outfit, ponytail, and a heap of plastic surgery.

Now, although Niki has retained some of his awesome moves from his last adventure, including the upward and downward thrusts...

...he's actually merged his previous two weapon concepts into some sort of energy staff.

His magic powers all but evaporated, Kid Niki can shoot full-screen energy waves with his new staff, as well as perform a pogo-bounce. He also learned how to do a Mega Man slide...

But his sweetest new move involves the stick. For you see, Kid Niki can now perform the SPINNING STICK JUMP:

As you can see, when you're jumping toward any type of block or ledge, you can whip out that big ol' stick of yours .... and hold down the B button to use it as a lever to propel Niki spinning into the air. Mastering this move is neccesary to climb, grab keys, and fighting bosses, so you'd damn well better master it. And finally...

Kid Niki can still die with the best of them.

The subscreen has been completely stripped down and thrown into the upper left corner like so many others before it, and here's what it looks like:

Points, Energy, and of course, keys. It's all about the keys. Stupid keys. But don't you worry, because three times around, we're once again ready to START THE JOURNEY.

STAGE 1: It's here where we first see Kid Niki 3 harken back to the days of the original; repetitive poppy tunes, simplistic artwork, predetermined level order, and so on. On the flipside, it's also noticeable that the gameplay has been substantially reworked - as mentioned earlier, finding keys and unlocking doors is now the basis of the entire game, with the crazy enemies taking somewhat of a backseat. How DARE they try and legitimize my series by replacing nonsensical crap with viable gameplay elements. Anyway, after the typical level one grassy setting, you enter a yellow building with lots of ledges that force you to get accustomed to the spinning stick jump.

I'd have to say that the biggest disappointment of this game are the bosses. As stated before, it's pretty obvious that the budget for this game was pretty low. Not only is the simplistic art style back, but they hacked off 2 levels, not to mention that Death Breath and Mad Monk probably quit while they were ahead, and are now retired and living the good life, hamming it up with King Hippo and Elec Man. As a result, we get crap like FLAMEHEAD CLOWNPANTS. He has a very Mega Man boss-like shield, and shoots pieces of it at you individually, but some clever wall flipping will leave Kid Niki unscathed. Hit him and see the one thing they did retain, the wacky, comical expressions of pain and suffering.

STAGE 2: For the first time, Kid Niki plunges into the drink; love 'em or hate 'em, it's the infamous water level. Niki propels himself with his staff through the water, but he can't use the damn thing, so you're pretty screwed if a shark is coming, a mine is dropping, or a duck is spitting something downward, unless your reflexes are pretty good. I'm not even going into the Stone Tinklers again, they speak for themselves. Luckily, not much time is spent on solid ground, so you won't run into them except for certain stretches. There are more keys to collect, but nothing too strenuous. That's yet to come.

The boss of this level is the DEMON DIVER. You'd think going from fire to water would be a little easier; well, you're wrong, because this guy is a lot easier than ol' Flamehead. No stick spin required, just hop over his swoops and charges, dodge his blue energy shots and hoozah, you can recognize 3rd grade-level patterns, as well as escape the level. I didn't think you had it in you.

STAGE 3: The third level, just like in the original, is the mountain level. This time, however, instead of just looking like a mountain, it's built like one, as there are an abundance of multiple levels, accessible only by the Spinning Stick Jump. In addition, spikes are rampant, making precision all the more important. If that wasn't enough, the keys are hidden a lot better in this one, forcing you to actually think instead of happily bounding along slaughtering banana peels and those weird evil sunflowers. There's also a part where you use the staff to paddle a strange little boat up a waterfall, but you're used to stuff like that by now, I'd imagine. Although the level can be a bit taxing at first, you'll breath a sigh of relief when you reach the boss, STUMPY.

Stumpy is just a mentally dull orange guy with a stump for a head, but the bad guys couldn't get anyone better from the union, so they just took Stumpy and gave him a big hammer. The hammer's greatest asset is that it can block Niki's shots, so shooting the Stumpster in the ass will be neccesary. His main attack is smashing the floor to stun you, then running at you, so either carefully placed jumps or some clever stick-spinning will put you in position to end Stumpy's miserable life. On we go.

STAGE 4: Ah, bringing a new setting into the Kid Niki world, it's the desert, complete with quicksand. This is a pretty short level, so to make up for it, you're constantly bombarded with a barrage of bats and bees. Go alliteration. If you sink in the sand for more than a few seconds you're done for, but after that, you head to the skies. With falling clouds and fans galore, getting the keys can be a bother, but like I said, the level's short, so quit your damn whining. Besides, if there's any standard boss that deserves to be in a Kid Niki game, it's this one.

That's right, it's WATOOTSI, the deadly, ....horn-blowing ninja master. This guy actually presents somewhat of a challenge, at least compared to the previous three. He'll take one row of clouds (top or bottom), hop across spitting his deadly musical notes at you, then spin around the screen in a tornado that causes some decent damage. It's all about maneuvering, and believe me, Polas knows maneuvering. We're nearing the end, and things are about to get interesting.

STAGE 5: This level, on top of having the same music as the intro for some reason, kind of looks like a cross between Flash Man's stage in Mega Man II, and that last level from the Kirby NES game. However, that's where the similarities end, as the slippery floors and rows of spikes all over the place will challenge even the most hardened Kid Niki gamer. In addition to the flying ice cream at every part of the level and the bad guys mentioned above, there are also a slew of killer penguins nipping at your ninja heels. Not to mention that once you infiltrate the building, the walls and ceilings are lined with spikes in addition to the floors, so you damn well better have learned to slide and stick jump by now.

Bringing new meaning to the term "skater chick", here's KARATE ICE SLUT. She isn't too tough compared to Watootsi from the last level, but she's also invincible while she's spinning. Speaking of which, during the spinning, she'll shoot one or two icicles from ... beneath her skirt, then gleefully spin towards our poor Niki, who'd better hope the Princess isn't watching this on closed circuit from her cage. Look at the Ice Slut, she even gives Niki and upskirt view while bulging her eyes out to distract you after you get some hits in. That's it, this boss fight disgusts me, I'm going to the last level.

STAGE 6: Here it is, the final level. The Stone Wizard has fallen on some hard times, and as such has been forced to relocate from his grand castle to another evil bad guy mainstay, the abandoned warehouse.

Don't think you're getting off easy, however, because Stoney has an unlimited supply of those damned robo-copter tongue things, which dart at you while you're trying to navigate spiked platforms, rolling carts, and weird little men that expose themself. Not only that, but this level features a mini-boss....

MIRROR MATCH!

Your doppleganger decked out in old-school Niki colors isn't difficult at all to dispatch, as long as you avoid the falling pink spikes and Dark Niki's somersault spins. This battle basically divides the level in half, although the second part is where those annoying giant orange gears are. Ah well, it matters not, for the end IS near.

Karara had some 'splaining to do after screwing things up as Last Boss in Kid Niki 2, so he's out to show he can get the job done this time. Ridding himself of grey skin, intimidating size, and the power of illusion, the once fearsome enemy now looks like an evil midget in a bathrobe. His attacks are another story; he'll take four hops of varying height, then either launch 5 fire rings, or crash down some lightning that spreads across the floor. Kararakuri may be the toughest of all bosses so far, but wait! This battle was merely a diversion! HE'S GETTING AWAY KID NIKI FOLLOW HIM RESTORE PEACE TO THE LAND

After presumably stashing the Princess in a safe place, Stone Wizard begins the eternal struggle. Although you can't see it below, the screen is constantly scrolling to the right, making things all the more difficult. Meanwhile, Stoney is floating up and down while blasting his homing flamethrowers at you, with a line of particularly nasty spikes lining the floor.

The best strategy is to get in as close as possible to land multiple hits, making sure to always have sure footing while avoiding the fire. There are small hearts that you'll pass on occasion, which makes this battle quite a bit easier. After you take down Kid Niki's arch nemesis, The Stone Wizard completely goes full circle from "wizard" to "mad scientist", jumping into the ever-dangerous STONEMOBILE.

At this point, the screen starts moving up and down to throw off your balance, and the floor will kill you in about three hits, even though the spikes are long gone, but this is Kid Niki, logic means nothing. To survive, Niki must use his radical, yes, radical ninja jumping skills to hop across the constant stream of imitation bullet bills. You'd think Stone Wizard would just stop firing, knowing that the floor causes pain, but he's pretty stupid, which you definitely should have figured out by now. After a whole lot of direct hits to the cockpit, VICTORY IS YOURS.

The Stone Wizard bites it once and for all, as you get to watch the (presumably) happy ending.

Please. Like you need a conclusion. Kid Niki is obviously the greatest video game trilogy of all time. The third installment may not have the charm of the first, the sheer madness of the second, or even Death Breath, but with a pack of enemies that hold their own with those of the past, and the general gaming insanity you'd expect to experience, Kid Niki 3 is a worthy finale to the series. It ... IS the finale, isn't it? ISN'T IT?

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	COIN: The coin, as always, is pretty much useless, serving as nothing more than a means of accumulating points. However, in Kid Niki 3, bonus rounds can be accessed by collecting enough coins in a level, unlike the "wild swinging of stick in front of windmill" method from the original game.
	KEY: Keys have inexplicably become the focal point of the Kid Niki experience, putting more emphasis on strategy and exploration, and less on fucked-up enemies and bosses. I'm sure you can imagine how I feel about that. Oftentimes, keys will be placed in some out of the way locations, so you'll need to utilize some of Niki's NEW radical moves to grab 'em.
	LOCKED DOOR: This may shock and astound you to find out, but yes, this is where them shiny keys go. The Stone Wizard has apparently littered Kidnikiland with these in order to hinder our hero's process, because as mentioned, they're the backbone of gameplay. Increase in abundance every level. I know, the surprises never end.
	HEART: The heart is many things to many people; to some it signifies love, to others, it's a life-giving organ, it can serve as an intangible feeling, but in this game, it pretty much just refills some energy, necessitating the rest of this filler paragraph.
	SPRING: Boing, and all that good stuff. I often wonder why so many games go with "springs"; ever since Super Mario Bros. had that weird green one, almost all games decided to use them, instead of trampolines, rubber flooring, or perhaps really strong fans. No, there's no point to any of this, but you try coming up with a paragraph describing what the hell a spring is good for.
	SCROLL: Everyone likes invincibility, and as such, you're gonna LOVE invincibility that also turns you red! Eh? EH? ....eh.
	1-UP: Yes, calm down, the Princess' head is still an extra life.

	DEFORMED MICROPHONE (1): You try and do better. These things don't pose much threat, but they are pretty irritable, likely due to, well, looking the way they do. So they can hop after you pretty good, and packs can be dangerous.
	WALKING NINJA DEATH STAR (1): Keeping with the "all enemies must now be three shades of grey" motif, I don't know, I guess they figured giving a ninja throwing star some legs would be much more effective than having the Scuba Ninjas throw them at you. Don't shoot the messenger.
	STONE TINKLER (2): OK, while some of the rest of the enemies may not be as great as they have been in past games, this guy absolutely takes the cake. Yes, you're seeing correctly, I have not altered this in any way, it's a stone statue of a boy that dilligently jerks his ding-dong at you, playfully squirting you with a blast of water from his nether regions. If this wasn't Kid Niki, the absurdity and plain weirdness of that alone would probably warrant a review for this game regardless.
	EVIL DUCK (2): Good to see that Kid Niki enemies are using nonsensical word balloons once again. The Evil Duck skims the water, keeping an eye out for our hero. When he does, he exerts his exclamation, and spits a blue thing at you. It can nail you if you're on land, or it can sink down and get you in the water. Evil Duck, resourceful. Blue thing, dangerous.
	BLUE THING (2): Well, there it is.
	EGGPLANT BUG (3): What IS it about Nintendo games and eggplants? I know they were prominent in some of the early ones done by Nintendo, but this thing makes me believe that the eggplant thing is bigger than we know. There's nothing special about his attack or anything, he's just an eggplant bug. It's just that I was afraid that if I didn't include him, Eggplant Wizard might show up at my doorstep tomorrow evening and turn me into the smelly vegetable Kid Icarus style.
	BANANARAMA (3): We're all well aware how effective the tried and true banana peel is in the realm of comic mayhem, causing its victim to hilariously slip and fall 99% of the time. What then, if the forces of evil could master a flying banana peel, spinning toward you at a frantic rate, sending you images of imminent doom? Can such a thing exist? This is Kid Niki, baby!
	PISTOL PETALS (3): There are many games that feature evil plants that spit fire or something of similar destructive nature. Is that good enough for this game? Bite your tongue. Rather than a simple bullet-spitting flower, The Stone Wizard opted for a flower with a hand that emerges to fire a gun at you. I bet you wish you possessed HALF of that sheer geniusness.
	FEATHERED FOOT (3): Yep, it's a white, hairy, severed foot with a green feather-type thing protruding from it. Come on; we've seen a degenerate wang bending statue, flying banana peels, flower/cowboy hybrids, I'm supposed to get excited over a manic hopping foot? Yes, we've been spoiled.
	BUMBLE COPTER (4): It was between these guys and the rabid bats, but even though the bats are more vicious, flying toward you and dropping vertically as soon as they find you as opposed to wavering about aimlessly, the Bumble Copter has a propeller and a stinger coming out of his face. Sorry, Batsie.
	FANDANGO (4): Sure, it's just a purple fan in the clouds that attempts to repel you. It's not even that hard to jump over if you're careful. But I'll be damned if I don't get a special feeling in my colon whenever electric fans are used for dastardly purposes.
	HARMAKILLO (4): If my lame enemy name doesn't get you, the bullets will. It would seem that firearms are very liberally dispensed at Evil HQ, which explains how a flower guy and an armadillo both ended up with one. This annoying fellow can only be bested when he comes out of his shell to fire on you.
	DEATH BY VANILLA (5): I'm sorry, but ice cream, even flying horizontally at your head at 60 MPH, isn't going to hurt. I don't know whose idea it was to shoot the damn things that way instead of the more logical "pointy tip of the cone side-first", but I hope they're reading this and realizing that their decision was even stupider than my idea to profile this entire game.
	PARKA NINJA (5): Ahahahahahaha, they put the Scuba Ninja in a fruity parka and taught him how to ice skate. Look at him wobble! Ahahahaha, and so forth.
	FREEZER BURN (5): Oh man, it keeps getting weirder. From a guy inside a flower, to an armadillo, to a .... robotic mouse in a refrigerator? Your guess is as good as mine as far as this latest entry into the "hell, we'd hand out a shotgun to Ray Charles as long as he sits quietly in Level 3 and waits for Kid Niki to come and kill him" category. Kill him after he emerges to shoot, and/or after you're done shaking your head.
	ANGRY TEAPOT (5): Well, it's not the guy with the stove on his head, but it'll do. The Angry Teapot rolls around on the floor, jumps around so that you can kill him, then rolls some more if you fail. The Angry Teapot is a simple being, put into this ice-themed level solely ... well, I can't really say why he was put into the ice level. But hey, you're lucky you have an Angry Teapot at all. So there.
	THIS THING (6): Just some sort of robot propellor with its tongue hanging out, but since it's practically the only enemy in the sixth level, I figured I'd list it. More on how miserable these things make your life later.
	FLASHER (6): If you can think of a better way to close out the enemy section than with a shady guy wearing a bowl for a hat that exposes himself to reveal a cannon that fires a homing missle, I'd like to hear it .... on second thought, no I wouldn't.