Games of the Abstract: Klonoa - Door to Phantomile (1997)

 

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

One Player

Sony Playstation

 

Klonoa, in mind of the attempts to revive the series from a 2008 remake to a 2022 remaster with its sequel called the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, was clearly a franchise and a titular character that was loved by its creators at Namco. Created by Hideo Yoshizawa, it would have been a real shift from a man who bring to be the original Ninja Gaiden games trilogy between 1988-1991, but alongside helping create Mr. Driller, another Namco cult favorite, his career is full of idiosyncratic games and characters, to which Klonoa the cat person with winged ears he can float with stands out among Namco’s catalogue. Humorously, this was originally meant to be a tie-in game to Spriggan, the manga written by Hiroshi Takashige and illustrated by Ryōji Minagawa¹. The license fell through, and alongside the production deciding to deliberately create a lighter and cuter work in tone in contrast to a large proportion of the Playstation software catalogue¹, they had probably dodged a bullet too; alongside licensed games not being easy to preserve due to the license needing to be renewed, the 1998 animated film adaptation of Spriggan, absolutely distancing the adaptation to the original long running source material, was a mess that would have tied to the game like an albatross even if they were very different takes on the source material.

As the original plan after this was also ditched, to be a grittier science fiction game with a robotic protagonist², we instead got this beautifully lyrical work that, to my utter surprise gets bittersweet and sad as it is also is a truly creative and whimsical 2D.5 platformer depicting the world of dreams. Klonoa with his friend Huepow, a sentient blue orb creative, find themselves accidentally brought into a world threatening story which I came to know the game for from an Official UK Playstation Magazine demo disc, one of the many demos from my childhood which left a mark but I never got to when the full games were not ridiculously expensive on the second hand market. The set up from that demo, the first “Visions” (i.e. the first level), has the pair encountering an evil figure named Ghadius, who has kidnapped the maiden from the moon kingdom who sings the song to reinvigorate the dream world, Klonoa and Huepow the ones to stop him and his minions. Huepow himself is a prominent gameplay mechanic as, set in a linear gameplay route per level which yet exploits three dimensions, Klonoa uses his magical ring containing his friend to inflate and use enemies as weapons to throw at others (or breakable objects) or to double jump with.

The game’s virtue, even when it gets harder among the visions, is how crisp mechanically this all is, using this simple and idiosyncratic mechanic to figure out how to get forwards or access the unlockables, namely a certain number of imprisoned victims of Ghadius who, six per stage, unlock a bonus “Vision” when all found. This review covers the original 1997 videogame, where as much as the emphasis is on polygons being a new factor for the fifth generation of videogame consoles. It was, bluntly, a huge flaw in hindsight as it ostracised sprite and 2D games, regardless of their virtuesw, with the irony those games will have aged better. Klonoa is a delicious irony as it is a polygonal game but is “2D.5” in how this is locked on linear levels where you cannot wander in open space, but there is an inspired use of level layouts in and out of the fore and backgrounds.

Levels literally weave into each other, as alternative routes (to complete levels, like finding four seals, or to find bonuses) can go in the screen over and under the path you are on, whilst certain challenges mean lobbing minions directly at the camera or into it off your platform. It still stands out decades on, especially as the aesthetic is beautiful. It is cute, even to the point this was criticized back in the day for the voice acting being so overtly cute, high pitched noises, it was dubbed too much³, but the entire presentation is a standout. Literally taking the dream logic as its premise, the world has no overt high lights in terms of levels, but the aesthetic nature of them all is spectacular. Barring the level where their evil shadow versions can appear, even the enemies are cute, like a cat creature in a spiked ball contraption zooming about or giant minions you can inflate and use as platforms.

It is then, with surprise, how sad and macabre the game gets as for anyone who only played the demo as I did, you still get this sweet and vibrant story, where the leads are matched by goofy side characters, only with sudden shifts into tragedy. You do not expect a character to tragically die, or the bitter sweet ending of Klonoa and Huepow’s story, but that it pulls these moments off is a testament to Hideo Yoshizawa and Namco for achieving a fun platformer which pulls the heart strings. It is a well made game, which helps so much as even the fiddliness of some of the later challenges thankfully are contrasted by a) there being a save system, b) the chance for many lives to be acquired, and c) the mechanics being so solid the game itself is stretching them in inspired ways without the gameplay itself, enough that you could have had a bonus set of levels which could be about using these techniques. The sequel Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil came, for the Playstation 2 in 2001, and whilst there were spin-off titles over multiple systems at this time, it seemed sadly Klonoa would not be continued after this as a franchise. Clearly it is with love that this character however was brought back, as this first game got the 2008 remake for the Nintendo Wii, then was compiled with the sequel in the 2022 collection, through that version. This is a beautiful epilogue even if the original game, not the remake, is worth preserving by itself.

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1) INTERVIEW: Hideo Yoshizawa and Keiji Yamagishi, written by Heidi Kemps for Gaming Moe on March 27th 2018.

2) "今回のエッセイスト グラフィックデザイナー・荒井 佳彦： OUTER VISION 1：前身を考えよう". written by Yoshihiko Arai for Bandai Namco on March 6th 1998. Archived from the original on September 3, 2018. Retrieved September 3, 2018. [Japanese Only]

3) Klonoa: Nothing a little penicillin won’t fix! Review, written by the GR Staff for Game Revolution on June 4th 2004. A review where the criticism for the cute tone, especially the voices is brought up: "All of the conversation in Klonoa is comprised of annoying-as-hell squeaks and distorted human voices. Huepow’s voice is especially nerve-wrenching: it’s almost exactly like Beaker’s voice from the Muppet Labs (i.e. “Meep-meep-meep! Meep!?”). This is something you definitely want to skip while playing."