Bio Miracle Baby Upa Review

Konami is/was an interesting company. They brought us games like Castlevania, Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Gradius/Life Force, Suikoden, DDR, and a ton of licensed stuff other than the Turtles. Now, to be fair some of those IP’s came around after Bio Miracle Baby Upa but not all of them.

Someone over at Konami thought it would be a neat idea to have a baby star in an action platformer arcade game in which your magic rattle causes enemies to inflate and then you have to bat them around at other enemies. But here’s the kicker folks. You can only bat these inflated baddies at 90 degrees or 45 degrees. Maybe straight up and down… I don’t remember. Oh an you’re a baby.

Here’s the story. As far as I can recall it anyway.

Upa is a warrior prince. And he’s doing warrior prince things. One day he breaks a jar that has an evil goat demon spirit thing in it. That goat takes all of the people in the kingdom and turns them into babies and kidnaps them. Which sounds like a terrible idea to me.

Anyway, Upa somehow was overlooked in the great baby napping of eighty six and he’s found by a fairy who, for some reason, was also crammed in that jar with Goaty McGoatface. She gives Upa that magic inflato-rattle and sends him off to save all the people and the kingdom and, maybe even, the world.

That’s an idea for sure. It’s a little different, but a little not. But you’re not here for the Shakespearean level of writing. You’re here for baby’s inflating pigs and throwing them into walls.

There’s so many things wrong with this.

Gameplay is pretty standard side scrolling action platform stuff. Travel sideways across the screen, use actions to platform. Avoid enemies, collect goodies, get points and powerups and extra lives.

If you’ve seen other similar games like Monster In My Pocket, Monster Party, Time Zone, that Noid game, the non Othello Spot game you have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Playing the actual game is pretty good. Upa, although a baby, is surprisingly agile and can jump really high presumably without the use of his legs since he can’t stand up. The rattle is a decent enough weapon but you really want to get comfortable with bouncing the inflated enemies off of walls and each other. It’s the best way to handle things.

You go through a couple of stages in each world and then you fight a boss. Then you move to another world with it’s own little theme and do it all over again.

There’s also some bonus stages that I vaguely recall that involve digging.

The graphics are good. Nice and crisp like you’d expect from a Konami/Capcom/Nintendo game on the NES. You can (almost) tell what things are but you’ll totally be able to tell what’s coming to hurt you and what’s coming to help you.

Backgrounds are varied and… interesting… There’s a world that’s all about stationary. One that’s all about dairy products. It’s kind of a Katamari vibe if you think about it.

The game does, however, have that flickery thing that these Konami games at times had when they’ve got that little HUD on the lower section of the screen. Monster In My Pocket did this bad and one of the TMNT games wasn’t great with it either. It’s a hardware thing but by this time I think they’d be aware of it enough to work on it and make it less annoying.

It’s not unplayable, but it’s annoying.

The music is VERY Konami. See they had this great little thing with their tracks. Konami was always great with their voices, especially the drums. They’re absolutely recognizable. Take a track from this game, TMNT2, Jackal, Contra… play em side by side and you’ll see what I mean.

Most of the songs in the game are very upbeat and happy and that fits with the overall style of the game. Gonna win any awards? Nah. But the songs fit the situation and that’s all that really matters I think.

At the end of the day this is a pretty standard little NES action game form a developer that knows what they’re doing. It’s a little quirky given the situation but it’s still a fun and playable game.

If you want a recognizable setup with a different scenario give this one a try.