"It's like Mario meets Bubble Bobble meets babies."

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is a 2D platformer where you control a baby named Upa who has been given a magic rattle. Upa must go through seven cheerfully themed worlds to get to a goat demon and rescue a treasure chest full of other babies. Yes, you read that correctly.

As a baby, you crawl instead of walk. However, this doesn’t stop you from jumping ridiculously high. As if that didn’t defy the laws of physics enough, Upa’s jumping momentum completely ignores any and all obstacles in its way. Low ceiling? No problem! Upa waxed his head apparently so that he can skid it along the ceiling allowing him to jump just as far as if there were no ceiling at all. That’s one forward thinking baby!

Health is divided into hearts. Though you only start with two, you can find items that will increase your maximum up to a point. There are a few other powerups including a time-stop and invincibility. Invincibility grants Upa the ability to run on two feet at high speeds for a short time in addition to preventing damage. It looks extremely ridiculous.

Shaking his rattle, Upa can instantly inflate enemies into balloons. Thanks, magic! Once enemies have been given “the Dig Dug treatment”, Upa can either ride on top of them as they slowly float upward or ram into them. Once an inflated enemy has been rammed, they will be sent flying and will ricochet off any walls they come in contact with, taking out other enemies along the way. If you’re not careful, enemies can ricochet back into you, causing damage.

Each of the game’s seven worlds is divided into three stages. At the end of nearly every stage, you will fight a boss. This boss is almost always the same, but with different platforms set up. The creature can only be described as what would happen if Birdo and a pig had a baby.

Though the different platforms mix up the specifics of how you must ricochet enemies, the formula plays out the same every time. Birdo-pig shoots out three enemies at a time and you need to inflate them and send them flying toward it. Once you’ve done it two or three times, you’ll dread the next. Occasionally, the boss wont be Birdo-pig, but the strategy will be nearly identical.

The stages themselves are very short. This is a good thing because the game has literally no checkpoints whatsoever. While there were a few digging and swimming based levels to mix things up, most of the level design felt very uninspired.

Bio Miracle‘s difficulty is pretty inconsistent. While most levels feel like a cake walk, others have unexpected projectiles and platforming segments that are harder than levels appearing later. At times, the game would even fail to respawn an enemy that was necessary to reaching the next area.

Why did I pick this game?

Though pirate copies under the title Baby Mario appeared in certain retail outlets, Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa never officially came to North America until its Virtual Console release in 2008. Having never run into Baby Mario, I wanted to try it.

I love 2D platformers, especially from the NES era. I figured this game would be yet another gem that people outside of Japan were deprived of until Virtual Console, like Sin and Punishment. I had also played a version of Parodius with Upa as a playable character and was curious to see the game he originated from.

How does it hold up with time?

Unfortunately, Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa isn’t a very good game. The platforming feels very sloppy, the difficulty is uneven, the levels are bland, and the game is very repetitive. It was Nintendo of America’s decision to turn the game down for quality reasons and I now understand and agree with their decision.

Tags: 2-D, babies, Baby Mario, Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, Dig Dug, Famicom Disk System, Friday Old Games, import, Konami, NES, platformer, virtual console

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.