Although looking very similar to Super Monkey Ball, Kororinpa has several different features that make it less of a clone to Sega’s popular franchise, and something more similar to the old Labyrinth toys where you would guide a ball through a seemingly complex maze. Firstly, instead of guiding a monkey in a hamster ball, you’re guiding a marble through a maze. There’s also the ability to turn the world a full 180 degrees allowing the world to be toppled upside down causing the marble to fall onto a new platform as if bond by the laws of gravity. Like Super Monkey Ball, over slanting the Wii remote will cause the marble to spin out of control and fall of the edge making you start again from the beginning of the level.
This could possably be one of our staff member's bedroom.
As you guide the marble through the maze, you have to collect all the red crystal shards to open the goal that takes you to the next stage. This isn’t as easy as it sounds – often the shards are in some of the more complex places forcing you to tilt the Wii remote in various manoeuvres to reach them. In turn, this means you can’t simply take an easy route to goal as you’ll have to explore the entire maze. Hidden green crystals are also collected to unlock bonus stages. By completing mazes under a certain time period, you’ll either be reward a gold, silver or bronze medal that goes towards unlocking one of twenty different marbles or unlockable game content such as a sound test mode. Each marble has different imagery (eg. one takes the form of a panda while another takes the form of a penguin) and different levels of Response, Speed, Slide and Bounce allocating replay value for players to try out each on different levels. Some marbles even have magnetic abilities allowing you to attach yourself to a metal rod and progress through a level.
To get a better view of your surroundings, the camera is placed slightly above your marble giving an almost bird’s eye view of the level as apposed to Super Monkey Ball’s camera system which was set behind the monkey. This is largely due to the emphasis of dropping the marble through holes to reach different platforms, which would otherwise be unnoticeable. There has however been a few reports indicating the camera system is not perfect. Apparently, when the marble is placed between two platforms, it causes the above platform to become transparent but occasionally, the transparency effect doesn’t occur causing announce as you blindly guide the marble. At this stage, we can only hope the PAL version doesn’t suffer too much from this.
Tallying at over 50 levels, Kororinpa features some wide variety of environments. You can expect several domestic sceneries including a garden filled with ladybugs and a child’s play room with toy aeroplanes and building blocks in the background. There’s also space scenery with moving satellites in the background and even a busy city block complete with heavy traffic and skyscrapers. Reaching platforms doesn’t necessarily mean you have to tilt the Wii remote either. At times, you’ll come across canons that launch your marble onto a higher ground. Aside from this, footage clearly shows various loop-like bends you have to cross to reach the goal.
We ran out of cannon balls so we've opted to use marbles instead.
Multiplayer makes an appearance via two-player splitscreen action with the option of having the screen split vertically or horizontally in the options menu. Essentially, it’s a race between you and a friend to see who can get through the maze faster.
While Hudson Soft’s Kororinpa may look like a Super Monkey Ball clone at first glance, there are more than enough differences between the two to hold interest. However, there is a little concern to the fact there’s really only 50 levels and a basic multiplayer mode on offer but we have high hopes the game will prove to be as addictive as other puzzle games available on the market and as such, have high replay value.
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