Oh Sunsoft. I am still in awe with the fact you are still, somehow, alive and kicking. Not long ago, the company decided to release a sequel to a dormant game of their from the NES/Famicom era, Ufouria: The Saga 2. That game had no right being as adorable, polished, and fun as it was. That being said, it was clearly a sequel to a game very few, if any, people had any kind of nostalgia towards. The ideal solution would have been adding the original game, also known as Hebereke in Japan, to the Nintendo Switch Online NES catalogue, but I guess no one is adding games to these libraries anymore. Japanese publisher City Connection decided to resell the ROM for a few bucks on normal storefronts instead.

Time to work on your knowledge over Nihongo.

If you thought that Konami’s re-release of Hudson Soft’s Felix the Cat was already barebones, well, let’s just say that Hebereke Enjoy Edition makes that collection feel like Rare Replay. What we have here is just one game. You get Hebereke, and only the Japanese edition of it. Even though there was an actual Western release (the original Ufouria: The Saga), that version is barely even remembered in this collection. You can take a glance at the Western box art… sort of. The only NES package included in the Extras menu is a German one. It’s almost as if they weren’t able to procure a decent NES package on eBay or at Sunsoft’s archives and just decided to slap some scans of a German box.

It’s quite odd that you have a separate health bar for boss battles only.

As for the game itself, it is an adorable 2D platformer with an impressive degree of freedom given to the player right from the getgo. It is a proto-metroidvania, just like its successor. Walk around the small map, with no guidance whatsoever, look for boss battles, recruit new folks for your team, use their abilities to traverse obstacles. It’s not exactly complex, but it’s still a bit confusing. The problem lies on the aforementioned lack of an English option. Even though the menus are in English, the entire game, which is oddly text-heavy for a platformer, is all in Japanese. I have no idea of what is going on because of that annoying issue. The manual is in Japanese as well.

If you’ve ever wanted to take a peek at the German box art for Ufouria: The Saga… boy, do I have a game for you…

The emulation itself is decent enough. The controls are responsive, there are save states, there is a rewind function. It’s not like this is poorly put up; there’s quite a bit to like in this game. It’s really colorful, it’s quite innovative for its time, and considering the fact it was made by Sunsoft, the soundtrack is excellent. But the problem with Hebereke Enjoy Edition is that it’s a single ROM, with no regards for localization whatsoever. It is a good game, and worth checking out if you loved Ufouria: The Saga 2. But Sunsoft and City Connection could (and should) have done a lot more to entice fans of the franchise and appeal to newcomers. With so many games in the series available in other platforms, an entire retro collection could have been created instead of this barebones pseudo-remaster of a single Famicom title.

Hebereke Enjoy Edition is available now on PC and Switch

Reviewed on Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Hebereke Enjoy Edition was provided by the publisher.