Arcade Archives: Kitten Kaboodle

[tepidsnake]

Watch on YouTube

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Kitten Kaboodle (Konami, 1988)

PSN
EU
US

Seitch
EU
US

Both the Japanese (Nyan Nyan Panic) and English (Kitten Kaboodle) ROMs are included. The manual has a full guide with pictures of all 50 (!) stages showing the secret entrances for the shops, casinos and bonus games. Preference Settings allow players to adjust game speed, add an extra digit to the score display and show the current round number at all times.

Two adorable kittens find themselves stuck in 50 challenging mazes! This is a late '80s take on Sega's Pengo with a fresh coat of paint and a few bells and whistles added. Taking an older arcade game and dressing it up a bit is actually a bit of a trend with Konami arcade games around this time- there was also Fast Lane which updated Head On and Battlantis which is Space Invaders if you made it terrible. Ahem. Anyway, here you have the block-pushing of Pengo used to defeat the constantly-spawning enemies, but rather than have a set number of enemies to wipe out, each enemy you defeat drops a key, so grab four and the door to the next round opens! There's also a jump button used for dodging enemies and destroying blocks if you want them out the way, and special blocks strewn around each round can be matched up in sets of three for special effects like invincibility, time stop and screen-clearing bombs. It's a decent Pengo variation for what it is, plus it shows off some of Konami's scaling effects, just like City Bomber!

Probably the most interesting wrinkle here is the plethora of secret screens, found by destroying specific blocks on every round- these can take you to a bonus stage or, more intriguingly, a shop with helpful items and a casino where you can gamble your score! See, your score is actually money, which can be exchanged for goods and services or gambled away on a slot machine. This makes it one of those arcade games where you can actively bring your score down, even back to zero if you want. There's also boss sections that are basically Penguin-kun Wars where the computer is very difficult to defeat. To be honest, I've never actually beaten this game because 50 stages is a lot for a game like this, but the presentation is definitely very cute, and there's something pretty funny about losing a good chunk of your score to a slot machine run by a rabbit in a Playboy bunny outfit. Well, I found it funny anyway.

As an addendum, Kitten Kaboodle is something of a milestone release for Arcade Archives if you're the type of person who looks to the sky when they hear the name 'the Microsoft Game Room', as it's the 19th Konami arcade gamethat was included on that service to make it over to Arcade Archives. There's also only 19 games left, some of which like Devastators and Galactic Warriors have had no other home ports before or since. So, for fun, here's those games still stranded in the Game Room, let's hope they get free someday...

Strategy X (1981)

Video Hustler (1981)

Amidar (1981)

Mega Zone (1983)

Gyruss (1983)

Juno First (1983)

Super Basketball (1984)

Scooter Shooter (1985)

Galactic Warriors (1985)

Konami GT (1985)

Iron Horse (1986)

Battlantis (1987)

Rack 'Em Up (1987)

Hyper Crash (1987)

Blades of Steel (1987)

Trick Trap / Labyrinth Runner (1987)

Devastators (1988)

The Main Event (1988)

M.I.A. - Missing in Action (1989)