Classic: Obake

By: Derek Yu

On: August 9th, 2007

Obake

Calling Obake (meaning) a mixture of Super Mario Bros. and Kirby wouldn’t be too misleading. In this platformer you play a ghost who can hop on your enemies’ heads and then (by pressing down) possess them. Other than being cute as hell, there is a lot of diversity in the enemies (moreso than Kirby I would say), and the levels are designed thoughtfully around this idea, with lots of secret passages that can only be accessed with certain skills.

Some of the enemies are just awesome, like the giant pig in a runner’s outfit that charges through blocks, or the monkey who can turn into a lightning bolt. Anything that moves is fair game to our little hero. (Seriously, the pig cracks me up so much. He’s so buff!)

Unfortunately, the game won’t run unless you turn on Japanese language support or you have a pretty old patch. I only managed to find one site that had a patched version of the game. The link is here. But the game still crashes for me on exit, even with the patch.

But it’s worth it!

  • pkt-zer0

    Tried AppLocale to get around the crashes? If not, it could be worth a shot.

  • mr

    I was wondering when this great game would show up on the site! I don’t know a way of turning off fullscreen mode though. Regardless, it’s probably truer to the spirit of old 16-bit Nintendo games than the average Mario clone.

    (Favorite transformations: gravity robot, sword-wielding witch)

  • Monothu

    The patched version of the game can be gotten at Home of the Underdogs as well. Also, you failed to mention the brilliant Let’s Play for the game by Ultrajman. Now if only Shih Tzu or someone would translate the game…
    Below are links to things I mentioned.

    http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=5044
    http://www.youtube.com/user/UltraJMan

  • King-N

    Wow, Great Game!

  • Davide “Gendo Ikari” Mascolo

    Nice to see Obake here! I reviewed it long ago for GameHippo, and a user there made the patch – I won’t be surprised if the patched version at Caiman used that. I still have the original patch somewhere.

    Some years later, I’m still convinced that Obake could have been a little more challenging, but that doesn’t detract too much from making it one of the best freeware platformers around.

    Remember that, after you beat the final boss, by pressing X in the level selection screen you can choose which body to have right from the start of a level. This is important to get all the Gs and unlock the final levels.

  • Just-Me

    Nice 1…it will be a pleasure if i can play this on my PSP…

  • http://www.alexandershen.com Mr. Shen

    You know, I couldn’t resist but link to the pig that Derek so eagerly loves.

    http://www1.neweb.ne.jp/wb/samona/obake/char/char05.html

  • merkwuerdigich

    Good news, everyone!

    The beta version of Harvest is now avialiable: http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest/download-now/

  • merkwuerdigich

    Oops, sorry for the typo.

  • Monothu

    “Good news, everyone!

    The beta version of Harvest is now avialiable: http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest/download-now/

    How is that at all relevant to Obake?

  • Monothu

    The patched version of this game can be gotten at Home of the Underdogs as well. You also failed to mention the brilliant Let’s Play for the game by Ultrajman. Now if only Shih Tzu or someone would translate the game…

  • makeshifter

    awesome game just wish i could read japanese

  • Advenith

    I have just four words for you:

    1. This
    2. game
    3. kicks
    4. ass.

  • mr

    Eh, I’m not in too much of a hurry for an Obake translation. Unlike Cave Story and La-Mulana, it’s pretty easy to figure out what to do without one.

    (Also unlike Cave Story and La-Mulana, the token “hidden difficult bonus part”, while harder than the rest of the game, is really not *that* much harder than the rest of the game.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Walters/26611660 Michael Walters

    Where can I get it?