If Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon were to get together, trip on acid,
and make a baby, then that baby is Chulip. Chulip is a bizarre
adventure game that was released several years ago in Japan and has
just now been translated and brought to the states by Natsume. Chulip
is an innocent and simple title in that it’s about kissing, only
kissing, and nothing but kissing. Chulip is also very weird to say the
least.
Chulip’s story goes like this. You and your poor father move into the
slum that is Long Life Town. On the way there you have a dream where
you meet the girl of your dreams and kiss her under a tree and live
happily ever after. Once in Long Life Town, surprise, you see the exact
girl from your dream, and then make it your mission in life, just as
every normal boy does, to kiss her under the tree on the hill and live
happily ever after. However, you can’t kiss her right away. Oh, no! You
have to pucker up with everyone and everything in Long Life Town first!
After all, what respectable young lady wants some inexperienced tongue
down her throat? You will have to do tasks for people around Long Life
Town first in order to kiss them, which increases your heart, brightens
the other residents dismal lives, makes you more attractive to the
girl, and betters your reputation in the town. The town’s folk are
about as strange as the games scenario, and there are a plethora of
them to lay your lips on both above and below ground. For instance
there is Yodzilla, a blatant rip off of Godzilla, a ninja, Onion Lady,
who is literally an onion, a giant bobble headed policeman, and more.
You interact with them by initiating a conversation by hitting the X
button. When this happens you will be treated to a string of gibberish
pouring out of your speakers, which sounds like broken Japanese. The
Square button brings up your inventory. The circle button cancels
actions and allows you to run, and the Triangle button has you kiss
people.
Graphically, Chulip is pretty ugly, and by no means anything special to
look at. Even though it’s been out for a number of years in Japan,
Chulip still looks like something you would see on the Playstation 1 as
opposed to the Playstation 2. The artistic appearance and visual style
of Chulip is definitely unique though, and more than makes up for the
technical short comings of the graphics.
You can, and will, rummage through the trash for food and items in
Chulip. You will see some of the other residents of Long Life Town
doing this as well, so there is a little bit more to the game than just
Kissing. While not a pleasant feature, it is an important one and
really highlights how poor both you and the other residents of this
town are, as well as show how hard the poor have it in real life.
However, besides this you are basically just going to be going around
and kissing people. The above ground residents all have certain
conditions you must meet by performing tasks for them in order to kiss
them. In order to find out what these conditions are you must talk to
them. Unfortunately, your conversation will give you little to no
direction for what you need to do in order to stick your tongue down
their throat. Meanwhile, kissing the underground residents is
accomplished by sneaking up on them and laying a smack on their lips at
just the right time during the brief few moments of each day when they
come to the surface. It should be noted that brief here means brief.
Most underground residents are only on the surface for a few minutes,
and of that time there is only an open window of a few seconds in which
you can kiss them. If you aren’t quick enough and don’t time it just
right then expect to be clobbered, because the underground folk are not
the most friendly, and be handed the game over screen where Mr. Yamada,
who is an angry walking telephone pole, will run up and kick you while
you’re down. Once this has happened to you are few times, you will
realize the only way to really nab the underground residents is to camp
their pop up zone and try kissing them repeatedly until you get them
and are seeing stars. This makes much of the game very boring, tedious,
and monotonous, not to mention frustrating, and really subtracts from
the fun. Fortunately, Natsume included a full blown walk through in the
games manual to try and remedy this problem. The walk through takes
much of the stress out of playing the game, but also shortens the game
considerably as well, since you can easily beat Chulip in less than 12
hours if you follow it.
Overall, if you are the type of person who values the quirky and
different, or are just looking for something totally bizarre, then look
no further than Chulip. Also, if you are a collector, you should
probably get your hands on Chulip ASAP, as it is a Gamestop/EB Games
exclusive, meaning no one else will ever sell it. Natsume is also only
doing one printing of this game, and they aren’t printing a lot of
copies, so when they are gone they are gone, which makes Chulip true
collectors material, and a bargain at only $19.95. If you don’t fall
into either of the two categories of people just mentioned, then stay
away from Chulip. Chulip is strange, very, very, very strange to say
the least, and may be lethal to those not actively seeking its
strangeness.
