This may be the tenth time mentioning this fact in my VGamingNews career, but it’s actually relevant this time: TAITO’s The NewZealand Story is the first game I have a vivid memory of playing. Standing in the corner of the pool room of the Boarhound pub, I’d be given a handful of coins to play on the cab, keeping me busy while my mum and dad played pool on a Sunday afternoon. As colourful as it was brutally unforgiving, I have very fond memories of steering that little yellow kiwi around, peppering baddies with arrows.
Imagine my joy then, when I heard that bitobit were releasing a remake of the arcade platformer on Steam, under the moniker The NewZealand Story: Untold Adventure! It was a game I simply couldn’t ignore, since it features so heavily in my own gaming lore.
For those players who don’t yet groan when they get up off the couch or complain about how often they have to trim their ear hairs, I’ll offer a recap of The NewZealand Story. You play as Tiki, a sweet little kiwi (the bird, not the fruit) who needs to save his girlfriend and a bunch of his pals, after they get kidnapped by a big and (presumably) evil walrus. A platformer in the most classic sense, you only need to worry about two buttons – one to jump and the other to shoot. The levels act like small mazes which Tiki has to overcome by jumping, swimming and flying on hover-contraptions, racing to find your caged buddy at the end before the timer runs out. In true arcade style, you’ll find weapon pickups to change your attack style, fruits and goodies that score points, and bonus letters that offer continues. Every few levels is punctuated by a horribly overpowered boss, designed entirely to steal your hard earned money as you throw coins into the arcade cab, trying your best to get further than before.
Oddly, considering this remake is subtitled Untold Adventure, it seems to be showcasing an adventure that has very much been told before… namely because it’s almost a one-for-one port of the original game, only with a fresh coat of paint. Realistically, it’s much more of a remaster than a true remake.
So, it’s ‘out’ with the pixel art visuals of the 80s and ‘in’ with the 3D (ish) graphics of the modern era – how does that shake out? In my opinion, honestly, not great.
The entire game has been reworked with 3D models that are inspired by their original pixelated sprites, now given a polished comic book style and presented in a 2.5D. Individually, I quite like the new models, but when they’re layered on top of the level backgrounds, things get a little dicey. The backdrops are loud and colourful, which sounds nice, but it’s incredibly easy to lose track of what’s in the foreground and what’s in the background, and I regularly got hit by things I just didn’t see. There’s also a certain mobile phone game ‘sheen’ about everything that gives a rather cheap look when viewed en masse.
Gameplay wise, things are almost exactly what you’d get if you fired up the 1988 original. The level designs are the same, as is the progression and, for the most part, so are the bosses. And, you know what? That’s fine. The original was fun to play and that’s the same here. Perhaps the most positive change is the addition of a few extra hitpoints and the ability to continue where you left off, which both make for a significantly less punishing experience.
Sadly, what’s also the same are the plethora of oddities that plagued the arcade version. Getting out of the water continues to feel clunky as hell, and there are times when enemies just don’t behave as they should. Perhaps the most egregious non-change is the level music though: a 30 second jingle that loops ad nauseum, ensuring that any significant time spent with the game will be spent on mute. I understand staying true to the source material, but these are all things that could and should have been addressed as part of a remake.
On reflection, New Zealand Story: Untold Adventure feels like a remake without a clear audience. New players are likely to find the whole thing rather thrown together – the story is wafer thin, the physics are something of a mess and the gameplay lacks depth. Returning players won’t worry about any of those things, as they’re more likely to understand “that’s just how arcade games were back then” – but since this new iteration does next to nothing better than the original, why remake it at all? A rather messy jumble of old gameplay in new clothes, this version of The NewZealand Story is less ‘proud kiwi’ and more ‘ugly duckling’.
Recommendation Score
In the interest of full disclosure, VGamingNews was provided with a copy of the game in order to conduct this review.
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