I must admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the term ‘cute em up.’ It’s usually an apt description of these games, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It seems like these games generally get a leg up in reviews just because of the aesthetic they use. One of the most famous of the old cute ’em up titles is Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams. The name Cotton itself will make any retro collector start sweating just at the mere mention of its name. These games will cost you an arm and a leg. The topic of this review, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, is the first installment and one of the most expensive of the bunch. I had to import this one because I wasn’t willing to pay the incredible price. While Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams is decent it’s clearly not worth the price tag.
Unfortunately my version is in Japanese so I don’t have any idea what is going on. Not that it matters much anyway. At least the video sequences are voiced and feature a fair amount of animation. They’re pretty impressive considering the hardware. Moving on, you play as the witch named Cotton who flies atop her broom and fires beams of energy at her enemies. Gameplay itself is in the vein of your traditional side scrolling shooter. Your weapons are all magic based (hence the witch motif) and she has access to a few different types. Despite the variety they all only shoot straight forward. These are all based on the basic elements and specific enemies seem to be weak against certain attacks. Remember, I have no way of reading the manual so I’m just basing this off of my gameplay experiences so I could be wrong.
The developer, Success, took notes from Konami’s Twinbee franchise by carrying over a few elements from that franchise to here. Most notably is that you can only select which power-up you receive by shooting them before they fall. Here they’re gems and the color cycles as you shoot them (ala Twinbee). You use this to determine which style of power-up you’re going to get. It was an interesting mechanic in Twinbee and it’s still just as neat here. It adds new layers of strategy because you have to dodge foes all the while being distracted shooting power-ups. Making them land somewhere you can safely pick them up is a challenge in and of itself. I’m happy with the power-up system despite it being such a blatant copycat. At least they didn’t rip off something more generic like the likes of Gradius.
The first real issue I have is that the enemies and their patterns are largely boring. There just isn’t a lot to them, and their simple movements and projectiles are too predictable. The environments are also bland and have little in the way of original hazards. It’s all highly derivative of games we’ve already played. It really does feel like the developer depended too much on the cute aesthetic to sell this one. On the plus side I did like the family friendly horror theme, and the opening stage with the night sky and full moon was a lot of fun. I did wish it was more of an emphasis rather than the whole cute angle. The most interesting sections of Cotton however are when the scrolling is forced upward instead of to the side. This isn’t an unusual for the genre, and it isn’t particularly inventive in this case.
What I was most disappointed in was the boss encounters. Other games of this kind tend to have awesome screen filling bosses that have attack patterns which keep you on your toes. Unfortunately I just thought ‘been there, done that’ all the way through. That’s not to say that it isn’t challenging because it is. This is only because the game throws a lot your way. None of it however is particularly inventive. Cotton Fantastic Night Dreams is a one hit you die affair, and you’ll need at least some skills to be successful here. To ease your frustrations the developers included several options (which come in the form of fairies that move in tandem with Cotton). The impressive part of this is that you can have upwards of six in your corner. Given the ancient hardware this is quite a feat.
If Cotton has one major thing going for it then it’s the graphics and music. This is by far one of the most colorful games on the platform. The depth of sprites is truly impressive. Animations are a step above your typical Turbografx fare. Cotton’s hair and clothes move in the wind and the enemies animate smoothly making them easy to see especially against the dark backgrounds. The system wasn’t capable of sprite rotations. In the first boss encounter the ground moves up and down and the engine tries to emulate rotational effects with this. The result is a little clunky as sections of the ground rise and fall. Another issue I have is that your shots don’t animate particularly well. They seem to warp across the screen instead of being properly animated (regardless of shot type).
The art style here is a little zany, but that comes with the territory. While Cotton and many of the characters are drawn in a typical Japanese cutesy manner enemies and environments tend to be much darker by contrast. In typical CD fashion you have several animated sequences (these even feature voices in the Japanese version) that are charming and full of character. Of course, it’s tough to follow the story because it’s not in English. I still found these videos hilarious and fun in most cases. As can be expected in the soundtrack takes advantage of the CD format and it sounds amazing with redbook quality. You have a lot of bouncy rock and pop themes and I enjoyed pretty much all of them. Unfortunately I found the volume on the music is lacking and most of the time the sound effects kind of drown it out.
I’ve been very critical of this title due to its high price tag. This is to hit home the fact that this isn’t exactly a necessary title to play for fans of the genre. Cotton doesn’t hit any particularly innovative notes. The stage design in particular is pretty standard by genre standards. The power-up system is a blatant rip-off and the enemy patterns are fun to memorize. Unfortunately, there are so many better choices which cost only a fraction of this one. Even by Turbografx and PC Engine standards this isn’t even one of the best picks. Still, it’s enjoyable, and I will put my salt aside by hesitantly recommending it. Please don’t spend you life savings on it though.
