Hero Kid

If you were to look for a game that perfectly encapsulates the "budget Game Boy" energy of the Watara Supervision, Hero Kid is perhaps the most honest example you could find. Released in 1992 and developed (predictably) by the Thin Chen Enterprise team under their Sachen label, it is a side-scrolling platformer that doesn't shy away from its influences. It feels like a curious blend of Super Mario Land and Wonder Boy, stripped down to work on a system that had a fraction of the processing power and a much more temperamental screen.

The game puts you in control of a stout, brave little character who has to journey through a series of increasingly hazardous levels, ranging from prehistoric jungles to cavernous underground ruins. The movement is classic platforming fare; you spend most of your time gauging the distance between floating platforms and timing your jumps to avoid falling into pits or touching wandering enemies. What sets it apart from a standard Mario clone is the combat. Rather than just jumping on heads, your primary method of dispatching foes is a short-range projectile attack. You have to be quite precise with your positioning because the range isn't massive, which often leads to tense "stand-offs" with enemies that are pacing back and forth on narrow ledges.

As you progress, the level design starts to lean into more vertical challenges. You aren't just moving left to right; you are often climbing ladders and navigating multi-tiered screens where a single missed jump can send you tumbling back down to the start of a section. The difficulty is surprisingly high, partly by design and partly due to the Supervision's infamous directional pad, which requires a firm thumb to register diagonal movements. There is a certain satisfaction to be found in mastering the slightly heavy physics of the protagonist, learning exactly how much momentum you need to clear a gap while simultaneously dodging a flying enemy.

Visually, Hero Kid is one of the cleaner-looking titles on the handheld. The developers clearly understood the limitations of the Supervision’s four-shade greyscale LCD. Instead of trying to cram in too much detail that would just blur during movement, they used bold, chunky sprites and high-contrast backgrounds. The main character has a decent amount of personality in his animations, and the enemies - varying from strange bipedal creatures to aggressive birds - are easily identifiable even when the screen starts to ghost during a quick descent.

The sound is typical for a Sachen production: a high-energy, chirpy chiptune loop that plays throughout the stage, occasionally becoming a bit of an earworm if you’re stuck on a particularly tricky platforming section. It’s accompanied by the usual assortment of "blips" and "crunches" for jumping and attacking. While it might lack the refined polish of a first-party Nintendo title, Hero Kid has a rugged, underdog charm to it. It’s a solid, meat-and-potatoes platformer that proved the Supervision could handle multi-layered scrolling and responsive action, provided the player had the patience to deal with its old-school challenge.