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PlayStation Basement #87 - Iwatobi Penguin - Rocky X Hopper

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on April 25th, 2020.

Another week, another PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is 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!

Today is World Penguin Day. Beginning in 1972 with a personal event from Gerry Wallace of Alamogordo, California, the holiday is now a day to celebrate the yearly migration of Adelie penguins north from Antarctica. Did you know about World Penguin Day? I’m just guessing that you probably didn’t, but here is a game that you probably have not heard of either.
Iwatobi Penguin – Rocky x Hopper was released in Japan on this very day in 1997. Developed by F2 Company, who only worked on the 1999 RPG Purumui Purumui besides this game, Iwatobi Penguin was published by Nippon Rental, who also only worked on one other title (Parlor! Pro 2). Taking on the role of either Rocky or Hopper, the player must succeed at various mini-games to finish a tough game show and win the grand prize.
The cover art for Iwatobi Penguin is simple but effective. Showing our two heroes on the cover with the title text below on a white background, the emotions of the characters really help make this a fun cover. It probably could have used some more background graphics, but I think this cover is pretty fun.
Graphically, Iwatobi Penguin continues to shine with fun characters. I love how the different cutscenes, which the game is full of, will show the characters making big gestures and showing emotive expressions. The lively cast includes other penguins, a walrus, and the somewhat villainous, at least in appearance, host of the game show. The cutscenes do include small clips that repeat a bit, but it’s not the end of the world. The fact that Iwatobi Penguin includes humorous commercials for hair gel created by our heroes, presumably as part of the game show process, helps make the game feel very silly and light. This makes the weird looping cutscenes feel a little less annoying, as this is a very silly world. As per the in-game graphics, they are fine. Obviously, this varies by the minigame played, but the animations are awkward for a few of them. I think that F2 Company could have upped the graphical capabilities a bit for a game from 1997 (this was three years into the PlayStation’s life cycle), but nothing is particularly bad either. The cutscenes make up for any complaints I have for the in-game graphics.
The sound design to this title is pretty weird. The exaggerated voice-acting and energetic sound effects make this like a cartoon. Some of the musick has that same bright quality too. The majority of the musick is composed of new versions of classic disco tracks such as “Stayin’ Alive”. It surprised me at first, but I think it fits really well. There’s even a dancing club mini-game for all of these disco tracks.
So that dancing club minigame isn’t the best thing ever. It could certainly be better in a few ways. That’s true here for many of the minigames. Iwatobi Penguin includes races, Olympic jumps and vaulting, battle games, and that dancing game among a few others. Some games, such as one that is a fight over the control of a crown at the end of a time limit, have some mostly okay collision detection that could be fine-tuned. A small few games, such as the chicken race, are hard to understand without knowledge of Japanese. The dancing game has some odd timing that I don’t exactly understand but was easy to do once I did it in full once. Mostly, though, these games are quick fun. I loved the juggling race and shell-collecting games. The computer isn’t the most fun to play against, but other players won’t play so same-y as often. You can even play with three friends. Iwatobi Penguin is kind of a small-scale Mario Party for the PlayStation.
I really liked Iwatobi Penguin – Rocky x Hopper despite the few hang ups I had with it. The gameplay could certainly be fine-tuned to iron out the inconsistencies that I noticed, but this is a fun game. I didn’t get the chance to play it with any friends yet, but I’m sure it will be a blast. I hope you have fun for your own World Penguin Day.
Iwatobi Penguin – Rocky x Hopper receives a Good.

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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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