The Great Giana Sisters

Our preview a couple of weeks back laid down the context for this title from Spellbound Entertainment. It was pretty controversial in its time – a direct competitor for some of that precious NES market, which was locked into the first decent wave of home consoles. Giana Sisters (or, as it was called then, The Great Giana Sisters) was released on the Commodore 64 and ported to a few other machines, but ended up relegated to pirated copies only when Nintendo demanded it was pulled from shelves. Why? You only have to play it to see that it’s a shameless rip off of Super Mario Brothers.

Now it’s on the DS, and laying aside the WTF? factor, how does it fare as a possible purchase for the average platform fan? Well, some of you might remember I was sort of positive about the whole experience around preview time – yeah, it’s a copy, but it’s an ok game in its own right and a worthy addition to the 2D scrolling platformer genre (which is neglected nowadays). Now, after a few weeks playing it and progressing through the levels that are moronically easy and insanely tough by turns, some of the shine has worn off.

Giana Sisters can never be a great game. It’s far too similar to its muse material, and the fact that Nintendo had it successfully shut down says a lot about how close to the bone they cut. The story is wafer thin – I am still not exactly sure why this girl is wandering around turning from blonde cutie-pie into fire-engine red hellraiser. There are gems to collect, and enemies to bop upon the noggin… but what else?

Not a lot, actually. This game has become alarmingly repetitive far too soon. One thing I can say for it is that it has mileage at least in terms of places to go, even if the basic idea is invariable from level to level. There is a massive amount of levels locked within this thing, somewhere in the realm of 80, and a number of worlds across which to spread them. On each level you will quest for either a red- or blue-flag finish, and this will depend on the colour of gems you collect. Poking around the game’s screens with the stylus, I found my way to the ‘extras’ section, where one can perform such delights as adjusting the volume of the music, or, thankfully, watching the intro. To have labeled this area extras is more than a little misleading, but I was still able to get a bit of a handle on the game’s story.

A girl is hoarding gems in a treasure chest and makes the totally amateur mistake of going to sleep. They fall into into a vortex which whisks them off to another world, and spills them in the process. That’s sort of… it.

In-game, to go from regular Giana to ‘punk’ Giana, you need to hit a block and get a beachball. When you grab the beachball, you morph into your character’s punk version, and can then shoot fireballs, as well as sporting a new do. Fireballs kill enemies, and if an enemy touches you, you’ll shrink. Next time they touch you – yeah, dead. And this is all starting to sound VERY familiar…

The enemies get progressively harder, and the level layouts are less easy to navigate, but herein lies the only real challenge. Floors might start vanishing from underneath you, piranhas start leaping from bodies of water, and the owls that on earlier levels just plod along awaiting a good squishing start to come packed with projectiles and eye-patches.

Some of the levels seem to have had some real thought put into their layout. One aspect of Giana Sisters I really liked was the process of getting from one end of the fairly short spaces to the other as quickly as possible (there are time bonuses involved) while collecting the maximum amount of gems. The controls are very basic, and allow you to focus all of your attention on avoiding the game’s pitfalls and zipping along firebombing your hapless foes. The main problem with this game is that it has absolutely no depth. In this day and age, developers can’t get away with producing a one dimensional gaming experience in two dimensions.

Visually and aurally I stand by my original assessment: for what it is, it's pretty good. Everything is colourful and friendly, or dark and dangerous as the level dictates, and the music is easy to bop along with. The sound effects, again, are very basic, but do the job.

Also mentioned in the preview was touchscreen compatibility, which I had hoped would sort of open this game up a little. Short of holding your stats as you progress, there are two buttons on the right of the screen – one for using gum, which will encapsulate you in a bubble and allow you to float – and one for using soda, which you can use in a squirt-bottle to solve basic puzzles. Okay – a nice touch, if you'll forgive the pun, but not enough to lift this title out of the realm of mediocrity.

So – people who should buy this game: fans of the original or those looking to recapture a simpler time (you'll probably be in your late 20s or early 30s now). Otherwise, diehard fans of the side-scrolling platform genre. People who shouldn't: everyone else. The DS already has plenty of fun and fanciful distractions, and Giana Sisters isn't one of the elite.