Wai Wai World

At a Glance: Following in the footsteps of Pepsiman, Trojanman, and BenGayman, you find yourself the symbol of the corporate world. You punch low sales where it hurts, and laugh in the face of market loss. Your enemies have dollar signs in their eyes after you deliver your special moves. But could this sweet business dream turn out to be a nightmare underneath? I've watched The Corporation and I have a subscription to Adbusters, so I can safely say I know everything about the evil sides of corporations. I immediately felt uncomfortable with my role as a corporate stooge for the money-centric cashocracy, but I put down my granola bars and toughed it through for all of you.

Platform: NES (Download Emulator here - 192k)

Download: Download ROM here - 64k

Game Plot: Dr.Cinnamon, a guy who apparently has been in some Konami games, needs to save KonamiWorld. Thankfully, Konamiman arrives to fight the power. You travel from each Konami World and free captive heroes to combat the oncoming menace. It's like Kingdom Hearts, only with a lot more head banging Moai heads and a lot less Squaresoft brand eyeliner. This is similar to when, as a kid, you decided the most interesting thing the world could ever produce was a fight between Godzilla, Superman, Spiderman, and a steam shovel. Why this does not warrant a game but Wai Wai World does, I cannot say.

All of your allies must be freed from cages that are hidden throughout the level. This requires you to hunt down a key, then free the ally, then find their special weapon, then later find other weapons hidden in the level, then douse yourself in konami-brand gasoline and set fire to yourself in protest. And although you can free your allies from the cages in this game, you can never free them from the oppression companies like Konami put on their lives.

You have many allies that you acquire in this game. Simon Belmomt, that kid from Goonies II, and King Kong are all guys you can bring with you on this adventure to defend the people who made Top Gun and Ski or Die. Two of these said allies appeared as globs of textures and words because a glitch in my game version. But, thankfully, their portraits on the top of the screen were left intact so I can confirm that they are some kind of fat guy and a hippie. Feel safe in knowing that gluttony and not knowing what time it is can be called upon to save a planet from impending doom.

Not only all of this, but at the end of the level you have to cart your pitiful self all the way back to your teleporter because Konami is full of cheapskates. Capcom shells out the money to teleport Megaman around when he needs it, why do I have to run all the way back to the beginning of the stage?

Enemies: Enemies vary from stage to stage, from crabs to guys who dangle around by strings in new and interesting fashions. But one feature remains constant: enemies that appear out of nowhere at speeds you can barely fathom with your commercial-eroded brain. The game seems to start off making you believe in yourself when you start off able to pummel enemies with your lightning-quick laissez faire fists. But, like any company that promises to treat its workers kindly, you will ultimately realize that this is a lie. Due to this game, I've found myself randomly entering stores and houses fist first, just in case some undead Chinese man with a spear tries to attack me. It's worked well so far.

I can't believe these corporations can't take the time to realize that these blobs of jelly and zombies are people too. They just don't want some big-wig company pushing over their houses and making way for their new pizza offices and burger parking lots. Enemies? See, even this category name is not politically correct. I demand it be changed to "peoples and/or creatures with alternative viewpoints which may be contrary to my own."

Weapons: Your fists and feet seem to work fairly well, making various rodents and creatures explode after being served your righteous corporate justice. But upon receiving their beating, the creatures sometimes drop items for you to enjoy or cry upon looking at. Some of these items are hearts. Some of these items are strangely suggestive collectibles that remind me of things that I found when I started following desperate housewives through grocery stores. Both of these items will not heal the pain corporations cause us when selling our brain waves to the government.

I came to disappointment when I realized my puny Konami hide could not withstand the might of my enemies' touch. I guess Michael Moore was right, corporations aren't right about everything. Let that be a lesson to all you out there who don't buy his new book, audiobooks, movies, tv series collections, his collection of wild thoughts published in book format, supplementary reading material for his latest film, and the soundtrack for Fahrenheit 9/11.

Each character has their own special weapon, ranging from the famous cross that you throw around in Castlevania to some sausage gun you use as Konami Man. Just like everything else in the corporate world: first you use your fists then you resort to pork based weaponry. This symbolizes gluttony or something that I read out of a novel that uses words like "dystopia" and "nihilistic".

Levels: 6. Locations include the pirate ship from Goonies, the haunted hall of Castlevania, and the infernal boogerpalaces of the Japanese Hell. You travel to each stage using a teleporter that is manned by a penguin. If I was a konami scholar, I would be able to tell you exactly where this penguin comes from and how he fits into all of this. But, as you can see from reading this review, I'm a very popular and funny guy who doesn't wear superman underoos to bed and talks to plenty of girls without crying uncontrollably. The penguin's name is Pentaro.

The final levels of the game include a top-down shooting part. I don't generally try to include my very personal bias into reviews, but the concept of making me do something the game gave me no warning about is very tedious. If I'm playing Mario, I don't want to play a teethbrushing portion I have to beat. And if I'm playing a smorgasboard of characters I marginally care about, I don't want to have to fly around in a little jet shooting down flying rice balls.

After this, you are treated to a wonderful seizure inducing vomitball of an alien final world. Any intelligent species that can travel to our planet while dealing with a blinking lightbulb will have so much built up rage that I doubt any force we have on this planet could destroy it. Our only hope would be ravers armed with an assortment of deadly pacifiers and those glowsticks, but with spikes in them. This is the part where you are supposed to laugh.

Number of Bosses: The bosses sit around, prancing about as they wait for you to enter their domain so they can dance with you. Starting this game I was worried that the bosses would stomp all over my KonomiAss(tm). I was surprised to see, considering how these bosses took you the entire game to defeat in their own titles, that the lack of skill it takes to defeat them in this game is almost laughable. An example of this is beating the hell out of Dracula with your feet. Apparently, Simon Belmont needs a whip but all you need is some superbabe android and a fistful of justice. Corporate feminist style.

Defining Moment: Watching the blow dealt to the corporations as their genital-control conspiracy died as Konamiman bit the dust just by touching polar bears that shoot bullets out of their mouths. Oh, the sweet poetic justice.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Kevin "The Goblin" Wilson