For all the shitty business practices regarding game preservation today, it's cool that changes in gaming culture and development tools have allowed previously cancelled projects to get a second chance. We've seen it with releases of previously cancelled ports (Darius MD, Mad Stalker, 40 Winks), and full versions of previously unreleased games (Ultracore, Starfox 2, Nightmare Busters). Clockwork Aquario's another entry for this growing library of lost relics, and while it's definitely not as good as a finished version could have been, what's here is a sweet little gem regardless.

Clockwork Aquario's a previously cancelled arcade action-platformer by Westone, of Wonder Boy fame. The game was location tested multiple times, but was met with mixed reactions, and inevitably cancelled. Gameplay revolves around using a grab-and-throw mechanic to defeat enemies and pop balloons. There isn't much meat to the game as far as platforming or combat goes, so it's clear the intention was for people to play it as a score-chasing game - and yeah, it's pretty great in that regard. There are lots of opportunities to chain bounces, pummels and headbonks together to get nice score bonuses while watching foes clatter around the screen. Scoring isn't as deep as it SHOULD be though - time and life bonuses are oddly absent, and so scoring is built purely around taking your time to set up enemy combos and defeat everything. It's weird.

Besides the gameplay loop, the other thing that really carries Aquario is the style. The kid's shonen theming of the Wonder Boy games is excellently repurposed into a setting that feels one-half Laputa, another half Twinbee. All three playable characters are distinct in both design and playstyle, and express themselves beautifully through their animations and reactions - Huck being the hot-headed speed character, Gush being the stoic heavy-hitter robot, and Elle being an all-rounded floaty type. The setting and overall vibe is completely unique to this era in gaming, and has a lot of the character-driven appeal of games like Mega Man.

But God, 20 bucks is a hard asking price. I didn't personally mind the price cause I'm a fucking psychopath, but even when factoring in multiple playthroughs and different character types, I don't feel like there's enough meat on this game's bones to justify the price unless you're REALLY a sucker for arcade-y stuff like this. This style of gameplay honestly would've been better suited for a proper console platformer - hell, I'm kinda surprised it never got repurposed as a PC-engine or Genesis game back then. Would've been right at home.

I do hope Aquario succeeds financially despite its shortcomings. Westone's properties have been getting a lot of love from 2nd and 3rd party developers in the last decade, and I think Aquario is absolutely deserving of a sequel that expands the gameplay into something larger and deeper - ideally, something in a vein akin to Mischief Makers. And if it doesn't, this is still a nice little time capsule of an era long gone.

I think it's really cool that the developers were able to piece together this collection of archival work and what work had already been done and finish making the game. Unfortunately, I can absolutely see why it was canned at the time. It's fine, I guess, but some of the sequences feel like total BS (those rolling enemies when you're going uphill on the rainbow, the crab boss, the tedious nature of the final boss if you can't guess the right direction to throw the bombs to get some extra hits in), and sometimes the collision system has you getting hit when you could SWEAR you were landing on an enemy, not bumping into them from the side. If it goes on steep discount again, it might be worth picking up, but I don't think I'll be revisiting it any time soon.
Played in single player mode.

I love the huge, colorful sprites this game has got but not much else about it. The game is designed with enemy placements that often seem to require foreknowledge. Either hitboxes or the game's control also felt a little odd--I would sometimes feel like I should have hit an enemy before they hit me. It feels like it's a little too easy to get hit by enemies especially considering you can only take two hits before taking a death. The stage design itself isn't anything special either, with one of the game's five stages even being an auto-scroller. I love that these developers have done the work to resurrect this game, but it's not something that's really worth my time outside of historical curiosity.

Clockwork Aquario is an arcade platformer from Wonder Boy's Ryuichi Nishizawa. Originally developed in the early 90s, it was rejected after a poor response from location testing, and sat on the shelf until ININ Games started working with the guy to do a bunch of Wonder Boy rereleases in the 2010s. Preservationists may applaud them for finishing and releasing the game, but it's easy to see why it was originally denied release. It's not very interesting, and it's about ten minutes long.

It's still a really good-looking game, and the soundtrack is great. Bright and energetic presentation. It's the kind of thing I can imagine CVG printing three screenshots of, and me becoming obsessed with for decades afterwards. It compares pretty well against flashy 2D Saturn platformers like Super Tempo and Tryrush Deppy, in that regard. But like those games, it's not actually much fun to play.

You can bounce on enemies, pick them up, and throw them. Sustaining bounces or lining up a few enemies in a row will increase your score. It's fine. The level designs rarely do anything ambitious or interesting, and you're sent off to the end of level boss before you've had the chance to take anything in.

ININ have attempted to give it a premium release, and even produced an elaborate "Ultra Collector's Edition" which still hasn't sold through, years later, but it's hard to imagine anyone who would care that much about the title if not for its "lost game" status. I'm a little annoyed for anyone who spent more than a tenner on this.

This modern release features a gallery of concept art and notes from the developers. It's easy to sympathise with them, especially for the great work they put into the art and soundtrack, but every veteran developer is sitting on a graveyard of amazing rejected pitches and promising projects that were canned before announcement. Publishers are constantly chewing out games that don't seem commercially viable, and it's easy to see why that decision was taken with Clockwork Aquario. It's really not very special, and anyone who would convince you otherwise is naive to the nature of the industry.

It's currently on sale for about two quid on digital storefronts, and I had enough Gold Points on my eShop account to get it for free. If you're really into peppy 90s spritework and high energy synth soundtracks, you might get something out of it, but it's unlikely to make much of an impact. This was only ever going to be a game that got passing curiosity from arcade visitors until the queue for Virtua Fighter died down.

One of the more worthwhile candidates from recent years for a Noclip documentary. I can't help but want to peer behind the veil and see how they published and repaired a bad dump of a missing & presumed dead arcade project from 1992. Clockwork Aquario hit my aesthetic taste just right, so I spent a couple of years after hearing of it praying to jeezus for a chance to see it in action; it's a rare treat for something like this to come out at all.

Not much to write home about here. It's okay! Studio Westone's DNA is plenty apparent in Clockwork Aquario's design, very much feeling like a Wonder Boy game with an arcade platformer spin. Chunky sprites and heft to the character movement as you break and throw stuff. It does some fun stuff with its scoring system that encourages greed and dastardly deeds, but on the whole, it's an alarmingly easy game. Vague memorisation of level layouts in its short 20-min runtime will have you chugging invincibility powerups effortlessly, and it even gives you them during boss fights which totally trivialises them. The difficulty settings at the frontend of this release sadly only seem to change your continue count, rather than anything gameplay oriented... vvvv little meat on this bone. Clockwork Aquario particularly shines in its 2-player co-op - some much-needed chaos is filled in by you bouncing off of / getting thrown around the screen by your partner.

Loathe as I am to admit, the urchins at the ""location test" (toesucker convention) were probably spitting a few kernels of truth in their assessment that ultimately buried this game for thirty years; Clockwork Aquario only barely works - and why would I pour coins into a middling platformer when the fightgame scene is blowing up? It's, on the whole, an excellent thing that the gaming landscape has shifted to a point where it's viable to restore and publish niche treasures like this, and I'm very happy for the closure and cute sprites.