Did You Know that Klonoa Had a Game on the Wonderswan? Wait...Who's Klonoa?

The phrase "Who's Klonoa" has been uttered more than once in the esteemed halls of video game fan forums, YouTube comments and Discords. This is usually followed by some schmuck who knows too much about platformers to push up his glasses and inform you on this criminally underrated series of games that Bandai-Namco refuses to touch these days (despite Klonoa 1 and 2 getting nice remasters back in 2022 which you should play). I have been on both sides of this question and after breaking through to the other side of knowing what a Klonoa is, I can safely say I am glad I did.

Klonoa made his debut on the Playstation in 1997 with his Door to Phantomile. A 2.5D platformer that combines tricky jumping, branching paths and unique boss fights to create a game that reviewed well at the time. Platformers then were either going full 3D or just vanishing, so Klonoa tries to fill the gap for 2D style games of its era, however it did not sell well and now is one of the most valuable games to buy a physical PS1 copy for. I have a friend who is willing to sell it to ya for $600 ($500 if you get on his good side).

Despite this slow start, Namco was determined to have their mascot platformer much like Nintendo, Sega and Sony had at the time, so it was only fitting to give Klonoa a handheld journey but where would he go? The Gameboy? Game Gear? Lynx? What about the N-Gage? NO, YOU FOOLS! It was Wonderswan’s time to shine!

Now you may be asking yourself (or me) what in the world is a Wonderswan? Well, my friends, the Wonderswan is the handheld console you see above this text. This handheld was released in 1999 by Bandai. Developed by original creator of the Gameboy, Gunpei Yokoi, this machine competed with the Gameboy Color and Neo-Geo Pocket Color by having no color which allowed a longer battery life and a smaller price point. Bandai was planning to partner with Mattel to release the handheld outside of Japan but that fell through for unknown reasons. Despite this, the Wonderswan managed to sell over 3.5 million units in its lifetime, which is a respectable number but the release of the Gameboy Advance in 2001 meant that most handhelds could not compete with Nintendo's mind for portable game devices. The Wonderswan did get two revisions in its life, the Wonderswan Color and Wonderswan Crystal as well as boasting a library of over 100 games! Not a huge number, sure, but the game quality is surprisingly high. Full of console exclusives and ports from various companies like Square, Capcom and future merger partners Namco. One of these games was Klonoa: Moonlight Museum, released on May 20, 1999.

Of course, this game has never released outside of Japan nor on other platforms, so I am emulating this with an English translation ROM hack. If Bandai-Namco (or Bamco) is reading this, hi and I'm sorry. You should make all these other Klonoa games playable so weirdos like me will buy them. I have a physical Switch copy of Phantasy Reverie Series dammit! Don't believe me? Hold on...

There! Eat it Bamco! Like a power pellet. Anyway uhhh, where was I? That's right! This pretty banging game.

The Plot of the game is rather simple. Klonoa and his good buddy Huepow discover that the moon has been broken up into fragments and stolen by some artists who take said fragments to the Moonlight Museum. Each artist traps them in a painting which is the five sets of levels that Klonoa goes through. When you beat each level, you can escape that painting and move on until you defeat all five artists and restore the Moon to its glorious self. A very basic plot, but it allows for some cute images of the characters in between the worlds to keep you going.

But how does the game play?

This is a 2D puzzle platformer where you must guide Klonoa through these rather non-linear style levels to get the three stars and open the star door to go to the next level. There are also thirty gems you can find in each level which nabbing them all will get you a perfect rating after you beat the game. Along the way, there are numerous challenges and obstacles in your path, but Klonoa has a way of defending himself. His main ability is shooting what's called the Wind Bullet, which is a force from his giant magical ring that allows him to grab various enemies and other objects in the world and can use them to attack other enemies, destroy barriers or jump even higher. Klonoa's jump is very similar to Yoshi in that while in the air, he can glide for a little bit. In fact, the Klonoa series has various nods to Nintendo platformers like Yoshi, Kirby and Mario yet Klonoa blends all of it together to make it stand out from the pack. He has no other offensive manuevers so mastering the Wind Bullet is required to beat the game. Thankfully, it isn't too difficult to do.

What makes this game more of a puzzle type is the way the levels are presented. As I said earlier, these levels are non-linear (for the most part) so you have to find your way around. Sometimes you end up collecting keys that can open doors to further progress. Later in the game you use bomb enemies to blow up certain types of barriers to your progress and various other challenges. Now this is a portable game, so it is not a very long experience, but it is not too short either. Many times, I find portable versions of game series to be too short and too lacking in the features that make their big brother console titles stick out. Not here. This is a very respectable size and length for what it tries to accomplish. In fact, this is almost a dry run for the two Gameboy Advance Klonoa games that were released years later (both of which are well worth your time). Those games have the stronger hardware behind them to give them more full experiences, but this game takes full advantage of what the Wonderswan could do. I personally don't think this game could even exist on the Gameboy or Gameboy Color. Despite the lack of color, the graphics are very impressive. The backgrounds have all this nice detail and smooth parallax scrolling going on. The enemies are all well-done sprite work, and our boy Klonoa as well reminds me of the Genesis Sonic games when it comes to the animation and personality, they give him. His walk cycle is great, I love the animation of him doing his Yoshi flap and they even have the famous "WAHOO" voice sample at the start of the game and when he jumps. All the charm present in his previous outing is present here and I ate it all up.

I talked about many positives about the game, but are there any downsides? Well, not every game is perfect (I'd argue none of them are) and this has some of its own issues. First, I did not like the music in this game. The quality of the audio is good for a handheld of this era but the music I did not find to be that good. Most of them are rather short snippets of song that tend to be repeated over and over again. Some of these levels later in the game can take a long time to finish so you are just hearing this droning kind of half-music almost and it is a shame when other titles in the series have strong music. After you beat the game, you unlock a set of challenge levels, the EX-world they call it, and these are new levels that have a timer and are rather difficult to do. I'm not the biggest fan of these types of levels in platformers, especially after getting a perfect in the main game. However, I tried to play these and my emulator goofed my save files and I was only able to do one. I watched the others on YT and it was more of the same. They are fine, but I wish these challenges were more spread throughout the main game, maybe give each level one of these challenge stages at the end to really put an exclamation point on the end of each world. Also, the lack of boss battles really prevents the artist characters from being more than just cutscene fodder at the end of each world. I like all their designs, but we never get to combat them for their moon fragment which makes the games levels start to blend in after a while.

I almost forgot to mention, there are vertical levels. Most of the games are played in a horizontal type of fashion, with the screen in between your hands on the controls, but the Wonderswan has this ability to play games from a vertical position. If you refer to the picture of the console I showed, you can flip the handheld so the two sets of four buttons are on the bottom and act as your controls. At first, I thought this made the game unplayable on emulator because I was having issues getting the game to keep going on my Anbernic so I put it down. Then, one day I put the game in retroarch, looked through the Wonderswan core options and what do ya know? The beautiful bastards had already figured it out! So, I was just being a dummy dum and finally that allowed me to play it properly. The vertical levels aren't that different from the horizontal ones except that they have much more verticality to them with fans that blow Klonoa very high up in the air. Level design and puzzle elements remain the same but I like how it gives the game a bit of variety for what it is.

Overall, this game I think is a must-play! If you are a fan of platformers, handheld games or Klonoa, this is a game that sadly fell through the cracks that you must experience. I really enjoyed my time with this one over the few days I played it. This game reminds me of why I like Klonoa so much and how it's a dormant franchise that needs to make a more notable comeback. I read an article about this game getting a remake of some kind and I would be for it! Just to give it a modern upgrade to the graphics but keep everything else I think would get this a new legion of fans. Hell, Bamco should just do a collection of all the other Klonoa games. WHERE IS MY KLONOA BEACH VOLLEYBALL DAMMIT?!!?!?

For a number rating, I would go a 9 out of 10. An A Grade for our furred friend and his companion. Let me know if you liked this review and if you want me to do more. Make sure you listen to the 3DO Experience every week and enjoy all the other great content on here. Until next time, WAHOO!