Arcade Memories - Kiki Kai Kai

What has to be purely nostalgia reasons, I bring you my look into the Taito arcade game, Kiki Kai Kai.
KKK (oh, what a poor acronym that turned out to be) was a staple in my arcade diet. It was a regular in my local Fish 'n Chip shop, and would go away only to return many times through-out my childhood.
To start off with, to play this game at any adult age would have to be one of those "WTF!??" moments. Of course, no child would ever question the design or ideas used in the game. It just was and is.
Okay, to elaborate somewhat, let me explain to you, how I understand it, what the game is about.

In the beginning you are standing by what looks to be some sort of fireplace. Fanning your fireplace with a pair of nun-chucks. Or a fan. One of the two, I'm not quite sure.

Suddenly, a boat full of medieval Japanese guys appear in the black ether in front of you. They are promptly hoisted away by what looks to be tiny babies in white jumpsuits. I'm guessing this is against their will.

This is now where the game starts. It's a top-down shoot-em up in the same vain as Mercs (only not so pretty).
At your disposal you have your pair of nun-chucks (or a fan, whatever you want to call it) for close quarter combat. Or you have odd card-like projectiles for taking down enemies at a distance. Power-ups are scattered across the way which can improve the distance your projectiles go, or the size and strength. These power-ups can be obtained by successfully shooting a group of flying cherries (or roasted chestnuts, it's down to interpretation), or taking out the flames in the stationary lanterns which are placed through-out the landscape.

To say the enemies are odd would have to be an understatement.
Let me just list for you the baddies that you face in this game. Or at least what they would seem to be on the screen.
Your main foe is the ghost. A fairly easy enemy to overcome, until the later stages when they start shooting you. You also have hopping chickens, deadly flying watermelons which shoot from wooden wells, spinning umbrellas, yellow smiley faces, and heads on a stick which shoot out from their house. If you take too long and don't move forward quickly enough, skeleton's will rise up from the ground and come after you. Of course.
And that's just a select few of the oddities you will face!

At the end of each level you have a boss battle. Now, there's a trick to killing the first two bosses in this game. The first boss you simply hang to the right-hand side corner, firing as fast as you can while dodging the hot ashes he fires at you.
The second is even easier.
You just stand in the top-left hand corner and fire! He can't touch you! A good example of this is in the screenshot to the right.
It's funny to think that I found out about these little tricks from watching some other kid play this game in the Fish 'n Chip shop. God knows where he found them out. This was well before the internet could be found in most homes!
After those two boss battle's you're own your own! As I have yet to find any trick to kill them.
Once you destroy a boss, you rescue one of the guys from the boat featured in the intro sequence.

The game isn't without it's flaws however.
The main gripe is with the collision detection. It's really bad. Enemies can be almost another body length away from you yet will still register a hit. Thus losing a life.
Another really bad design flaw is in the special orbs that you can collect. Hidden about the landscape are magical orbs that, when activated (pressing both buttons simultaneously), will do one of two things. Either freeze enemies around you, or destroy all enemies on the screen. It depends on the colour of the orb. The problem with this however is that death in the game is quick and swift. You have no forwarning something is about to happen. You'd need super-human reaction time. And because finding orbs is very difficult and very rare, you don't want to go wasting your special magical orbs without proper provocation.
Which leads me onto my next gripe. Any precious orbs you collect are taken from you in death!
So you may have 3 orbs stashed away, but one stupid ghost touches you and they're all gone!

During the game over sequence you are presented with a 'number match' that displays a randomly generated number. The purpose of this, still to this day, confuses me. As it doesn't affect anything.

The difficulty level is extremely high. Even 20 years on I find it difficult to get past the 4th stage. In fact, I don't think I've ever beaten the 5th. And the only reason I get that far is because I remember the patterns of some enemies.

While my explanation of the background story may be somewhat 'interpretive', you have to remember that the arcade game didn't come with a backstory or instruction manual . Because of this I would recommend that the curious read the Wikipedia link on the game.
It is also interesting to point out that a sequel/remake was created for the SNES. However, it was no longer called 'Kiki Kai Kai', but 'Pocky & Rocky'. In this you could select from the original character, and what appears to be a raccoon.

Remakes of the original game were included in various Taito game compilations on the Playstation and PSP.
It was even released on NES back in the day!

So the legacy lives on in this slightly obscure, yet enjoyable top down scroller!