Originally released in 2001 for the Game Boy Colour, and published by Capcom no less, Toki Tori may well have been missed by a large portion of Nintendo gamers first time out.
The game follows a chick, Toki Tori, and his continual quest to rescue siblings who are still eggs (Awwww!). These must be gathered on each level using the available tools, which are introduced as the player progresses through the four worlds. Using these tools effectively takes careful, creative planning.
The game’s puzzles are clever, but make one wrong move and you could be spending a long time scouring the screen trying to figure out what to do next, only to see that you simply employed the use of your tools in the wrong place.
Luckily you can just select retry when this happens, but this is also a little bit of a problem. Even though the puzzles are excellent and can be quite tricky, the ability to retry a level at any point proves detrimental to the difficulty.
The gorgeous sprites hold up so incredibly well, and the chip-tune soundtrack is timeless. The puzzle-orientated gameplay is a breath of fresh air in this age of samey shooters and charmless avatars.
For anyone who grew up on games like Lemmings or, if you’re as old as I am, games like Dizzy, Toki Tori proves an essential purchase. For everyone else? The game comes fully recommended although it isn’t huge with just four worlds, but some of the levels will have you scratching your head for many an hour.
The only real complaint I have for Toki Tori is that the wait for the Wii U sequel is going to hurt. In the meantime, download this timeless game or if you don’t have a 3DS (why not?) download the brilliant WiiWare remake.
Version Tested: Nintendo 3DS
Review copy provided by Two Tribes
