Syobon Action
Gameplay. The player controls a kitten-like character (with an appearance similar to Toro Inoue) who must venture through side-scrolling platform levels similar to "Super Mario Bros". The game consists of four levels (six in the online version) riddled with traps designed to trick the player, and abuse their previous knowledge of Super Mario Bros. gameplay, including normal-looking ground tiles that fall away into pits, blocks that sprout spikes when touched, a coin block at the start of a level that goes up when you try to hit it, enemies that spawn nearly on top of  the character, deadly background scenery, coin blocks rigged at the edge of a pit to cause the character to fall down, and a Mario-style flagpole that kills the character in two different ways, either by falling over or shooting a laser towards the player character. Despite the surprise factor of these traps, the levels do not change between plays, allowing the player to memorize their locations and patterns and eventually make progress. Some designers have commented on how the game requires the player to think logically through trial-and-error in order to complete the game at defeating the  main antagonist called Onion King. The player has infinite lives. Development. "Syobon Action" was released as freeware for Windows in February 2007. The game was designed by independent Japanese game developer "Chiku", and was inspired by "", a similar game released through the Japanese 2channel message board a year prior. Chiku chose to make his game a spoof of "Super Mario Bros." due to its massive recognition and popularity. The first stage was completed in three days and presented at a cultural festival hosted at his college campus, becoming the most popular work presented. A video showcasing the demo was uploaded  to his Niconico account a few days later and garnered over 1000 views shortly after, which prompted Chiku to make the demo a full game. Three new stages were produced within the span of two weeks. The music of the game consists mainly of covers of songs created for other video games such as Spelunker, Ghosts 'n Goblins and Puyo Puyo. Reception. "Syobon Action" was generally received positively, though the reviews note the intense and often frustrating difficulty of the game. It was recognized as a game that "systematically disrupts every convention of 2D platform gameplay", and that success in  the game often relies on both trial-and-error-like strategies and the player's ability to use counterintuitive strategies to avoid obstacles. "Open Syobon Action" was downloaded alone via SourceForge.net over 150,000 times between 2010 and 2020.