Por partida doble: Sutte Hakkun

Yep, yet another unreleased in Europe Japanese game I've tried lately. There's several possible translations on the title, actually. The problem is how to translate "-kun" which is a suffix used for subordinates (at the office) or teen boys (everywhere). "-chan" is easily "Lil' BlahBlah" and "-san" is either "Mr." or "Mrs.", but "-kun"?

And there's "suu" and "haku". The first verb can either mean "to breath", "to smoke", "to suck" or "to inhale". And "haku" can mean "to spit" or "to vomit". So the name means something like "cute thing which sucks stuff and then spits it somewhere else".

Let's see... "Adolescent Suck and Spit"? Uggggh, BAD mental image. Bad, bad. "Lil' Smoke and Vomit"? Ew. Er... "Mr. Inhale and Exhale"? That sounds like if he was having a baby. No, definitely you can't just go on and translate it directly. Let's settle for "Mr. In and Out"... that'll work.

Well, on with the game itself. It's a puzzle game, by Nintendo, made in the last dying breaths of the SNES (that is, '97-'98). It has the same feel as Yoshi's Island (Super Mario World 2), that is, crisp controls and nice but not overdone graphics. It IS obviously in Japanese, but you don't really need it once you know how the game works.

The objective of the game is to, in as little moves as possible, obtain all the rainbow crystals scattered around each level. The starring character is a crystal figurine with a long beak, with which it can poke, extract and inject color ink and suck and spit blocks and a few special characters.

When you start the game, and after selecting a save slot, you're sent to the School (Hakkun Goya, I think) in Happiness Island (Shiawase Shima), where you can learn all about how the game works. See, that's one of the lessons. The character is right between a Makkun filled with blue ink, and a jar of blue ink. See the Rainbow Crystal over there?

The character can suck ink from anything that has ink in it: blocks, characters or jars (jars never run out of ink). Then you can either inject it somewhere else or discard the ink, by pressing Down on the D-Pad.

You can also jump 1.5 blocks high, and walk 0.5 blocks without falling. You can hold the beak button to touch blocks at exactly 0.5 blocks above you, and if you jump holding it, you can touch stuff while falling easily. If instead of just pressing the button when spitting a block, you hold the beak button, hold Up and release the beak button, you'll spit it 0.5 blocks above. It's handy, trust me.

Using the L button, you can target a particular block you want to hit for a few seconds. Especially useful when there's a few closely overlapped. The R button is for moving the camera around the level. Start will pause the game and open up a menu with the following options:

Quick Save: Saves the progress on the level. Which means that if you're just about to do something risky or which requires precise timing, you can save and if you fall on spikes, off the level or you just get stuck, you can start again from there.
Quick Load: the Quick-Saved progress will be automagically loaded when you're busted (by falling on spikes or off the level), but you can do that here manually.
Redo Level
Return to Map
See Hint: tricky tricky. You will be given a hint to solve the level, BUT in the map screen, there'll be a message saying "hinto wo michatta!", that is "You ended up having to see the hint!". The game says it'll affect the ending.
See Solution: If you still don't get it after the hint, this option will appear, which'll show a demo of how solving the level optimally. As the previous option, there'll be a message saying "You ended up having the see the solution!", and it'll affect the ending even more.

There's a few elements to consider on each level:

Blocks: Most basic element, you can place them anywhere (even inside walls). Doesn't move unless inked. With red ink, it moves vertically. Blue, horizontally. Yellow, diagonally. The point of origin and direction depends on where you injected ink and where you were facing then.

If you were facing right when you injected blue ink into a block, it'd move to the right, for example. Blocks don't move indefinitely - they move back and forth every 2 blocks. If you want it to keep going on, you'll have to extract the ink when it's moved 2 blocks away and then inject it again.

Makkuns: these weird fat fellows are pretty handy. Unless blocks, they can't be placed anywhere: only on the floor, never through walls. If you spit it into the air, it'll fall down until it reaches the floor. You can't stack any Makkun, Rokkun, Burokkun or Tsubokun together: they'll blow up.

And Makkuns can be inked. Red inked Makkuns are squishy (biyobiyo makkun) and will let you jump 3 blocks rather than the usual 1.5. Blue inked ones are walky-walky (tekoteko makkun) and walk onwards until they reach an obstacle, then they go back, and so on - they're useful for crossing spiked floors (togetoge). Yellow ones fall on their behinds periodically (shirimochi makkun), triggering special switches which change the color of all jars in the level.

You can also suck Makkuns, turning temporarily in one. No effect with this: that just means you can transport one. You can jump over them. They can't be put on blocks, like Rokkun, Burokkun, or Tsubokun. They'll just go through them like if they weren't there.

Rokkuns: (Rock-kun) As the name implies, they're big heavy rocks. You can only suck them and spit them. When you suck one, you become heavier, jumping only 1 block. You can spit them and jump on them to evade spikes. Another use is to break glass floors. Any Rokkun, or you transporting one after sucking it, which falls from a height higher or equal to 1.5 blocks will break glass floors upon contact.

See, that's Hakkun after sucking a Rokkun, and two glass floors. Text: "Glass floors can be broken by falling from a height of 1.5 blocks using Rokkun's weight".

Burokkuns (Block-kun) and Tsubokuns (Jar-kun): they're fake blocks and fake jars. You can spot them because they have eyes. See:

"This block with the freaky eyes is Burokkun. It's a fake block."

"This block which is making such weird eyes is Tsubo-kun. It's a fake jar."

They're only good to be poked in a certain direction. They can't be sucked, they can't be stacked and they can only be on the floor.

Spikes: They hurt. Duh.
One-direction Floors: You can only go in one direction through them. When pointing down, you can only fall through them, and when pointing up, you can only jump up through them.

See them, right next to Hakkun? By the way, that's the Area Select part right before playing. You can either press the red button to select the level, yellow to return to the map, or R to look how it is. You can also move up and down to change the level, and left-right to change the stage. On the center of the screen, you can see how many rainbow crystals there are and what colors you can get from the jars (only red here).

And what's left... just one more thing: you'll unlock more levels as you go on. After completing 25 levels, you'll be granted access to the Relax Island (Nonbiri Shima), with stages 4, 5 and 6. Stage 4 is getting pretty hard. There's a third island yet whose name I still don't know. Here:

Happiness Island is the upper-left one, Relax Island the one on the lower middle.

On Relax Island, there's the Ongaku Goya (Music Cabin), a SFX and music testing screen. You can only listen to stuff you've already heard before (i.e.: previously played levels).