A difficult platformer with characters from the Konami world. You can play with Simon Belmont, Moai, Kong, Goemon, and others. It was never released in the U.S., but appears to have a fan-made translation patch.
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This is a game I've known about for ages, but only got a proper look at a little while before I ended up buying it when I caught an episode of GCCX it was on. I then luckily managed to find one being sold in my town, and was super excited to finally give it a go. It definitely wasn't what I thought it'd be, given that it was a Konami game released in 1988, but that was more often a good thing than a bad thing XD. It took me around four hours to beat the game on the original hardware.
The world is under threat from the evil alien Waruda, and he's locked up just about all the Konami heroes that could stop him! But fear not, as Dr. Cinnamon has a plan to save it! Enlisting the help of Konami Man and Konami Lady (as this game has co-op play~), he uses his teleportation machine to get them to where they need to go so they can save all the captured heroes to finally take down Waruda once and for all. This is in a certain respect an adventure game, but the story is all just silly fun to enable the crossover goodness, and I'm all good with that~.
The gameplay involves you going to several side-scrolling worlds to rescue the Konami hero trapped in each. You start with Konami Man and Konami Lady, but you'll eventually come to rescue Ganbare Goemon, Simon Belmont, Getsu Fuma (from a Japan-only Konami RPG of the same name), Mikey (from the Goonies), a walking Moai head from Gradius, and even King Kong (who Konami also made a game or two about). Each character has their own method of attacking, as well as nominally different attack, defense, and speed values.
You can pick from any of the first six stages, but there is actually an order you have to play them in due to the Metroid-like style the game is put together. The levels are often fairly linear with some limited branching paths, but each character has an attribute or ability special to them that will allow you to progress through a certain other character's stage. For example, King Kong can jump higher than any other character, so only he can get over the relatively high wall blocking progress the hell stage that Getsu Fuma is hidden at the end of. Each character has their own normal attack, but each also has a projectile weapon that can be found hiding somewhere (almost always in their own stage), but the thing is that they themselves must pick it up. There are even some passive pick ups that effect everyone, like boosting your attack or defense permanently. The game also has some interesting but ultimately effective ways to control all of these characters and weapons with only two buttons. You press up and jump to change character outside of the pause menu, and down and jump to change from melee to ranged weaponry and back. It can get a bit confused at times, but it all works pretty darn well in the end.
Though the main way this isn't the typical Konami game from this era is in its relatively fairly challenging (as opposed to frustratingly difficult) difficulty, there are absolutely annoying, janky things about it in places. For starters, each character only gets one "life" at a time, so if Goemon jumps down a pit and dies, you'll need to play as someone else until you can bring him back. Meaning if he dies before he gets an item only he can have, you gotta exit and come back to try again. This can be extra annoying if the only character who can actually progress through a roadblock in the current area dies, as then you're basically forced to game over and continue to progress.
When you continue, you return to only Konami Man and Konami Lady alive back at Dr. Cinnamon's base, where you can revive dead characters at any time. However, it costs 100 ammunition to bring characters back from the dead, and having to grind out 600 bullets (at five at a time) even from safe, easy grinding spots takes a while and is just so annoying. Especially given that this game is far from easy, it's just not so hard compared to other Konami games from time. It's not a deal-breaker, and the game does have an eleven-character password system you can use if you don't mind going back to before the things you just did at the cost of having whoever was alive then back again, but it's still an unfortunate annoyance that really doesn't respect the player's time.
The presentation are really nice. The levels all look very different from one another, and the characters sprites are all well designed, if a bit simply animated. What's both cool and unfortunate is that the stages themselves don't usually have music. Instead, the characters have their own music, almost always an upbeat iconic tune from the series they're from (for example, Simon has the Vampire Killer theme). Thankfully, it's all good music that's well mixed here, but it's an odd quirk nonetheless.
Verdict: Recommended. It's got some annoyances in its design, but Wai Wai World is overall a very surprisingly solid and well-balanced game, particularly for when it came out. It isn't a particularly expensive import, and it's also not a game where text is all that important either, so there isn't much of a language barrier if you're willing to stumble through the dialogue sequences you gotta do to get your passwords and revive people. If you want a more linear Metroid-like NES game with the difficulty balancing of a Mega Man-type game, you'll likely find a lot to enjoy with this game.
The world is under threat from the evil alien Waruda, and he's locked up just about all the Konami heroes that could stop him! But fear not, as Dr. Cinnamon has a plan to save it! Enlisting the help of Konami Man and Konami Lady (as this game has co-op play~), he uses his teleportation machine to get them to where they need to go so they can save all the captured heroes to finally take down Waruda once and for all. This is in a certain respect an adventure game, but the story is all just silly fun to enable the crossover goodness, and I'm all good with that~.
The gameplay involves you going to several side-scrolling worlds to rescue the Konami hero trapped in each. You start with Konami Man and Konami Lady, but you'll eventually come to rescue Ganbare Goemon, Simon Belmont, Getsu Fuma (from a Japan-only Konami RPG of the same name), Mikey (from the Goonies), a walking Moai head from Gradius, and even King Kong (who Konami also made a game or two about). Each character has their own method of attacking, as well as nominally different attack, defense, and speed values.
You can pick from any of the first six stages, but there is actually an order you have to play them in due to the Metroid-like style the game is put together. The levels are often fairly linear with some limited branching paths, but each character has an attribute or ability special to them that will allow you to progress through a certain other character's stage. For example, King Kong can jump higher than any other character, so only he can get over the relatively high wall blocking progress the hell stage that Getsu Fuma is hidden at the end of. Each character has their own normal attack, but each also has a projectile weapon that can be found hiding somewhere (almost always in their own stage), but the thing is that they themselves must pick it up. There are even some passive pick ups that effect everyone, like boosting your attack or defense permanently. The game also has some interesting but ultimately effective ways to control all of these characters and weapons with only two buttons. You press up and jump to change character outside of the pause menu, and down and jump to change from melee to ranged weaponry and back. It can get a bit confused at times, but it all works pretty darn well in the end.
Though the main way this isn't the typical Konami game from this era is in its relatively fairly challenging (as opposed to frustratingly difficult) difficulty, there are absolutely annoying, janky things about it in places. For starters, each character only gets one "life" at a time, so if Goemon jumps down a pit and dies, you'll need to play as someone else until you can bring him back. Meaning if he dies before he gets an item only he can have, you gotta exit and come back to try again. This can be extra annoying if the only character who can actually progress through a roadblock in the current area dies, as then you're basically forced to game over and continue to progress.
When you continue, you return to only Konami Man and Konami Lady alive back at Dr. Cinnamon's base, where you can revive dead characters at any time. However, it costs 100 ammunition to bring characters back from the dead, and having to grind out 600 bullets (at five at a time) even from safe, easy grinding spots takes a while and is just so annoying. Especially given that this game is far from easy, it's just not so hard compared to other Konami games from time. It's not a deal-breaker, and the game does have an eleven-character password system you can use if you don't mind going back to before the things you just did at the cost of having whoever was alive then back again, but it's still an unfortunate annoyance that really doesn't respect the player's time.
The presentation are really nice. The levels all look very different from one another, and the characters sprites are all well designed, if a bit simply animated. What's both cool and unfortunate is that the stages themselves don't usually have music. Instead, the characters have their own music, almost always an upbeat iconic tune from the series they're from (for example, Simon has the Vampire Killer theme). Thankfully, it's all good music that's well mixed here, but it's an odd quirk nonetheless.
Verdict: Recommended. It's got some annoyances in its design, but Wai Wai World is overall a very surprisingly solid and well-balanced game, particularly for when it came out. It isn't a particularly expensive import, and it's also not a game where text is all that important either, so there isn't much of a language barrier if you're willing to stumble through the dialogue sequences you gotta do to get your passwords and revive people. If you want a more linear Metroid-like NES game with the difficulty balancing of a Mega Man-type game, you'll likely find a lot to enjoy with this game.
A game that dares to ask “what if EVERY Konami game had Castlevania’s awful stairs?”
Recommended if you like classic Konami characters such as Simon Belmont, Goemon, uh Getsu Fuuma Den I suppose, and I dunno is TwinBee in this too? Kind of funny that the theme song for each character plays when you select them, and not during that character’s level, which means if you want to you can go through Dracula’s castle jamming to Goemon’s goofy feudal Japan tunes.
Also recommended if you love riding the rightmost edge of the screen’s goddamn nutsack to scroll forward. Konami sure thinks you do!
Recommended if you like classic Konami characters such as Simon Belmont, Goemon, uh Getsu Fuuma Den I suppose, and I dunno is TwinBee in this too? Kind of funny that the theme song for each character plays when you select them, and not during that character’s level, which means if you want to you can go through Dracula’s castle jamming to Goemon’s goofy feudal Japan tunes.
Also recommended if you love riding the rightmost edge of the screen’s goddamn nutsack to scroll forward. Konami sure thinks you do!
Game Review - by Spinner 8
Konami just kicks ass. Not only do they make some rockin games like Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Tokimeki Memorial (of course), but they even make some crazy stuff like this game. You take control of Konamiman, and you go around places and rescue characters from other Konami games, like Goemon and Simon Belmont and stuff, and then they become playable characters. Pretty freaky eh? Fortunately the game never takes itself seriously, which is definitely a good thing, since it’s not all that great of a game. It’s too damn hard! And what the HELL is up with the scrolling? It’s not difficult kind of hard so much as it’s an unfair kind of hard. Like, the scrolling. (editor's note: the scrolling is due to the game's co-op focus needing both players to be on the same page, also there's a patch to fix it now!) Or, little monsters jumping at you and hurting you when you first appear on screen, and even if you DID have time to react, you could do nothing to stop it. NOTHING. Why do people like this game? I mean sure, a bunch of Konami characters in one game is kinda neat, but the game is really bad! Just go and play their separate games, for God’s sake.
Konami just kicks ass. Not only do they make some rockin games like Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Tokimeki Memorial (of course), but they even make some crazy stuff like this game. You take control of Konamiman, and you go around places and rescue characters from other Konami games, like Goemon and Simon Belmont and stuff, and then they become playable characters. Pretty freaky eh? Fortunately the game never takes itself seriously, which is definitely a good thing, since it’s not all that great of a game. It’s too damn hard! And what the HELL is up with the scrolling? It’s not difficult kind of hard so much as it’s an unfair kind of hard. Like, the scrolling. (editor's note: the scrolling is due to the game's co-op focus needing both players to be on the same page, also there's a patch to fix it now!) Or, little monsters jumping at you and hurting you when you first appear on screen, and even if you DID have time to react, you could do nothing to stop it. NOTHING. Why do people like this game? I mean sure, a bunch of Konami characters in one game is kinda neat, but the game is really bad! Just go and play their separate games, for God’s sake.
This game is awesome. Sidescrolling platformer that crosses over pretty much all the konami IPs at the time. You got your goemon, castlevania, moai kun, goonies, twinbee, getsufuumaden, gradius, even mfin king kong is here. The main characters are konamiman and konami lady which go hard. The levels are all designed around each characters games and each character can be freely swapped between once found. Konami is too lame to do this concept anymore.