Rob’s Video Game Reviews: Gekisha Boy (Irem, PC Engine, 1992)

For some reason–maybe because of its greater power, or relative newness, or the fact that it was the underdog through two eras of gaming–the PC Engine had the strangest overall lineup of games in the 8-bit generation.  In addition to two fusions of sports and adventure gaming, two Gigeresque pinball games, the infamous Toilet Kids, and plenty of other examples, we have Gekisha Boy.  This offering from Irem (best known for classic shoot-’em-up R-Type) was released only in Japan and could almost be considered a forerunner to Pokemon Snap or Beyond Good & Evil if not for how relentlessly weird and juvenile its sense of humor is.

In Gekisha Boy, you play David Goldman, a young man whose dream is to become a Class S photographer.  While enrolled at the prestigious LA Photography School, his parents are killed in a plane crash.  Depressed, David decides to drop out, but the school’s dean realizes his potential and tells him that all he’ll have to do to graduate is take eight incredible pictures.  David will do this by going to eight different areas and taking pictures of all the outlandish things he sees, avoiding the various hazards that plague all photographers such as Coke cans, flying arrows, and meteorites.

Gameplay in Gekisha Boy is pretty simple.  After receiving your objective from the dean, you travel along a slowly autoscrolling scene filled with various objects and events to photograph.  You can move back and forth within a limited area, as well as jump over obstacles that get in your way.  The camera’s focus is represented by a box which you can move around with the control pad, and pressing a button will take a shot of whatever is within the box.  You have a limited amount of film which is lost when you’re hit by the hazards, but you can get more by photographing certain things, as well as power-ups that make your cursor go faster or become bigger.  You get points for taking pictures, and you need a certain number of points to pass each level.  Getting the picture that the dean wants gives you a big bonus, but doesn’t appear to be necessary.

By themselves, these gameplay components would make Gekisha Boy rather average despite the novel concept, but what makes the game interesting is the stuff you have to photograph.  The dean at LA Photography School has some pretty out-there ideas about what makes interesting content for pictures.  In the fourth level, for example, he asks you to don a SCUBA suit and capture the image of a fish wedding, complete with fish priest.  And the subjects of the eight pictures aren’t the only strange things to see in this game; you’ve got half-naked women and panties floating down from the sky, a Native American in full costume scalping a cowboy, and even a couple of cameos from popular celebrities of the 80s.

Gekisha Boy’s graphics complement the goofiness.  Aside from the brief between-level cutscenes showing static images of Space Moose look-a-like David and the stern old dean, the people are all deformed caricatures with giant heads and exaggerated features.  The scenery further evokes a sense of oddness, with levels ranging from a trip through the graffiti-covered ghetto to a journey back in time to the Old West.  And there are a lot of things going on at any given time, with the hazards bouncing at you and the objects in the background doing all sorts of acts begging to be photographed.  There’s no slowdown in all of this, and there’s even a nice wireframe effect that “zooms in” on whatever you’re photographing, which pauses the game temporarily and gives you time to figure out what to do next.

Between the weird concept, the common appearance of almost-nude people and unusually violent situations, and the various bits of rude humor, it’s not hard to figure out why Gekisha Boy wasn’t released in America.  As JJ & Jeff for the same system showed, it would’ve been possible, but it would’ve also stripped out what makes a game where all you do is take pictures so fascinating.  Nevertheless, fans have translated the small bits of Japanese text and Gekisha Boy is now plenty playable on an emulator.  Go play it and have fun with naked men coming out of giant clam shells, a huge squid fighting a whale, and flying cars that look suspiciously like the DeLorean from Back to the Future.