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PlayStation Basement #85 - Pu-Li-Ru-La

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on April 11th, 2020.

Welcome back to the PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!

This spring has been a pretty weird time. The international health problem has affected us all with businesses closed, people out of work, and rapid changes in plans. For this chaotic time of change, today’s game is the very weird Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears, released by Taito in August of 1997 in Japan. Originally released to arcades in 1991 as Pu·Li·Ru·La or Pu-Li-Ru-La or even PuLiRuLa, Xing ported the game to PlayStation and Saturn six years later as part of their Arcade Gears series. This series is basically what you probably think it is: console ports of arcade games. Pu·Li·Ru·La, in particular, is a beat-em-up game with a cute but surreal theme. Radishland has had a number of towns and villages lose their Keepers, people who turn keys to power gears that control the flow of time in each location. With these people being kidnapped, all sorts of weird things have turned up. It’s up to our heroes Zac and Mel to get the keys back.
Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears has some cover art that looks good but is hindered by the series it was released into. The cover image is a beautiful design of the two heroes playing musick amidst many other characters. The figures all blend together psychedelically. The issue I have with this cover is that the beautiful image is surrounded by a plain white border. This border takes up a similar amount of space on the cover as the actual image. Within that border we only have the game’s title and some of the Arcade Gears designation that is also within the main image. It’s really a bad way to present this colorful game.

The graphics within the game are more of this beautiful imagery, this time in-motion and without a huge border. The graphics are all 2D and very flat in their appearance. Many of the human and animal characters look like they could come from a Hayao Miyazaki film. Moving beyond the fields our heroes know, we come to some truly strange locals: vortexes to outer space, walls of eyes, crystal mountains, and even a tower with legs and a door in between. It’s all very surreal, shades of M.C. Escher geometry or René Magritte dreamscapes. Little weirdos live beyond the walls. Men emerge from microwaves. Birds fly with electric fans. Bearded jellyfish commit to the air. It’s a weird place beyond the fields you know.

As for sound, the game makes a lot of Taito-esque noises. Similar to Bubble Bobble, Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears has carnival and fairy tale musick to accompany the journey of the heroes. The musick is not a rockin’ action OST or anything like that. In fact, the musick emphasizes mystery more than high-energy battles. Sound effects are cute but kind of small. Voices echo with odd tones, and crystal jinglings follow the visuals of many things in the game. It’s a pleasant listening experience.
For all of the weirdness, the gameplay is pretty basic. Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears is a very standard beat ‘em up. You can do a few different attacks, jump, and use magic. Most enemies are defeated in only a few strikes and turn into animals that can be collected afterwards. Magic is limited but can be very powerful. There are many effects, and it can feel very random as to what happens when the magic button is pressed. Sometimes a fairy might appear and turn all of the enemies into pigs or dogs. Sometimes a strange purple superhero might appear and do a dance. Sometimes a man might descend in a microwave and take the enemies away with him. The effect is actually determined by the score of the player using the magic. Two players can play at once and even combine magical effects to create a huge explosion that can be seen from the air. The bad guys throughout Radishland won’t stand a chance.
Overall, I liked Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears. With only seven levels, it is not a very long game. My girlfriend and I completed Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears in under a half-hour. Sometimes our attacks didn’t seem to connect with enemies, and sometimes enemy attacks seemed to hit when I wasn’t sure that they should. These technical problems didn’t really make me upset with the game though. Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears is just too fun to look at; I enjoyed seeing the wonders of Radishland in its uncontrolled, Keeper-less state. Now, with Radishland saved, we return to our own weird world.
Pu·Li·Ru·La Arcade Gears receives a Good.

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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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