Video games - Umihara Kawase

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	Video games - Umihara Kawase

Umihara Kawase (Japanese: 海腹川背) is a 19 year old Japanese school girl who has somehow become lost in a world of mutated salt-water and fresh-water creatures. Designed by the illustrator Toshinobu Kondo, she wears her school uniform along with a bright pink rucksack.

The Umihara Kawase games are platform games whose main distinction is their tranquil fish and bird infested worlds and the Tarzan-esque gameplay nature.

The name is written as four kanji characters: umi, hara, kawa, se meaning sea, belly, river, back. This is an extraction from a Japanese kitchen idiom "Sea fishes are fat in the belly; river fishes are fat in the back.". Shun means "in season".

She was first seen in the eponymous Super Famicom release of 1994 and later the sequel and re-release of Umihara Kawase Syun (海腹川背・旬 Umihara Kawase Shun) for the Sony Playstation in 1997 and 2000. Very little information is known about the developers behind the Umihara Kawase series such as whether TNN and Jackpot are the same company or if copyright was merely transferred, who Japan Clary Business are...

Gameplay

The game world of Umihara Kawase is constructed from a set of interconnected levels known as fields. Each field connects to one or more fields deeper within the game via doors.

Fields are enclosed areas containing a number of static and moving platforms, ladders, spikes, enemy sea-life and one or more exit doors. The doors are often positioned in hard to reach places and it is the players goal to plan a safe route to one. Each exit door in a field takes the player to a different field.

One completes the game by finding a safe route through the fields and finding a door to exit the world. Each of the Umihara Kawase games contains multiple routes through the fields and multiple exits.

The Umihara Kawase games have simple controls, she is able to run, jump, climb onto ledges, climb ladders and most importantly throw her fishing line.

Her fishing line when thrown will hook onto nearly all surfaces within the games. When the line is firmly hooked onto a surface or an enemy fish the line is able to take her weight. From here Umihara is able to swing between platforms, lower herself down to other ledges and swing herself up to higher ledges. Due to the rubberised nature of her line she can also catapult herself great distances by stretching the line to breaking point. The line can also be used to stun fish and reel them in, once reeled in Umihara will store them in her rucksack and score points in doing so.

While the controls are simple and responsive, an uncomprimising physics model means that graceful control of the games swinging techniques will not come immediately. Out of this though too comes great scope for advanced techniques through full utilization of the physics. Perfect execution of techniques such as the one and two step rocket jump are required both in later fields and for those who intend to improve their field completion times.

The games contain 1ups in the shape of Umihara's pink rucksack but no other collectibles are present.

Umihara Kawase

Japanese: 海腹川背 Ref: SHVC-ATAJ-JPN. RRP: ¥9,800

Umihara Kawase contains a total of 49 fields of which four are exit fields and six are boss fields. The game makes good use of the SFCs colour palette for digitized photographic backgrounds. The rope physics often strain the Super Famicoms CPU leading to slow down. Of the Umihara Kawase games the original contains the largest variety of enemies, their quantity in numbers is high throughout the game too while the sequels focus more firmly on field design with enemies providing minor obstacles to progress.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Umihara Kawase ]

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