Virtually Overlooked: Photograph Boy
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative.
With the combination of the Wiimote and the Virtual Console, it would seem that the point of the Wii is to simultaneously provide new kinds of play and classic games from the past. Irem's Photograph Boy ( Japanese title: Gekisha Boy), released in Japan for the PC Engine (Turbografx-16) is both at once: a completely unique experience that came out in 1992 and had seemingly no influence on game design until Pokemon Snap.
Photograph Boy belongs to a genre populated only by itself and its Playstation 2 sequel: the nonviolent side-scrolling rail shooter. And if, for some reason, novelty isn't enough, Photograph Boy is fun!
Photograph Boy casts the player as a young newspaper photographer, sent out into the streets by his boss to get pictures of anything noteworthy. Each picture nets more points for the photographer at the end of the level. And there is plenty of weird stuff in the community: in a given outing, the player can see muggings, superheroes, spacecraft, a flying Delorean, wanted criminals, guys slipping on banana peels, and a few aliens masquerading as humans. Get enough points, and you please your boss and advance to the next level. Fail to excite your boss, or run out of film before the end of the level, and you repeat the level.
Why the game hasn't been announced for Virtual Console yet: No good reason yet. Hudson have been amazing about releasing Turbografx-16 games, so it may only be a matter of time!
Why we think it should be on the Virtual Console: We'll start by explaining how the game works, mechanically. The directional pad controls a targeting reticle and your character simultaneously: the reticle is controlled directly, and the direction of motion affects the speed of the character's movement in the forced-scrolling level. Aim the reticle at an object, push button I to snap a picture, and you get awarded points. If you get a picture of a particularly interesting event (a plane crash, a skating accident, the Statue of Liberty's skirt blowing in the wind) you receive extra film or a lens-widening power-up. While you're taking photos, obstacles such as skateboards, flower pots, and bouncing balls will approach, and you can either take a picture to get rid of them (which costs film) or jump to avoid them.
It's a delightfully complex mechanic that makes the game challenging, and requires memorization of both photograph opportunities and obstacles-- you have to know when a plane crash is going to happen so you can snap it, and you also have to know when a knife is going to cross the screen so you aren't stunned and unable to take the picture when it happens. We hope this sounds like fun, because we're misrepresenting the game if it doesn't.
Titillation is unfortunately a part of the game, although the garish art style certainly didn't seem designed to excite any virtual voyeurs. Your character sneaks around with a disturbingly lascivious look, and a lot of the photo opportunities involve taking pictures of women. It's sort of disappointing, but the whole game is presented in such a juvenile, Mad Magazine-esque form that we expect the game to be somewhat crass. Anyway, it's expected from a photography game, and probably the first aspect the designers came up with. It shouldn't be a problem even for Nintendo.
Slightly off-putting graphics and questionable content aside, Photograph Boy is one of the weirdest games on the TG16 (which is saying a lot!) and deserves the wider audience that the Wii can provide. Please, come in to the comments thread and pine endlessly for obscure Turbografx-16 games with us!
