Let’s start with the obvious – why the Japanese cover this time? Because for whatever reason that’s the version of the cart that I own! Near as I can tell they’re identical beyond the title – the game is as language independent as it gets. Truly box pushing has no borders.
Anyway, Catrap! The history of this one is similar to several other GB puzzle games, which is to say it’s a Game Boy port of a preexisting computer game made by another studio. The premise is, uh, weird! Our heroes (named Catboy and Catgirl) are minding their own business when they’re suddenly turned into cat people. Which means their names are just…that? Already? Regardless, our heroes are so motivated to de-cat themselves that they beat the everloving shit out of several Spirit Halloweens’ worth of spookingtons to do it, and somehow that solves the problem! Fuck yeah! Violence wins!
The Sokoban comparison is obvious and certainly not invalid, but Catrap feels meaningfully distinct for several reasons. It’s got gravity, for one! You still move and push on a grid but it resembles a platformer, only you can’t jump. The vast majority of the puzzles involve finding ways to push and drop boxes into the right spots so you can bump into an enemy, at which points you’ll punch their lights out with an animation I never got tired of. Beat down all the baddies in the level and you win! Simple as.
By far this game’s most standout design feature is its phenomenal undo/redo function. Since all you need to play is a dpad, A and B are committed to undoing as many steps as you’d like and redoing just as many if you rewound too far. I cannot adequately emphasize how much better the experience of solving these puzzles is made for this inclusion. I’m very much an experimenter, someone who likes to visualize by touching the thing, which older Sokobans typically punish by forcing a full restart. You may recall that Boxxle, cursed be its name, allowed you to take a whole 1 step back! Catrap is almost shockingly generous for a game of its era, providing considerable quality of life without compromising its challenge in any way. It predates a lot of other time-rewind-type games, yet I’d argue Catrap handles it better than several far newer titles!
I haven’t even gotten to some of the game’s more ambitious qualities! A bunch of levels feature both characters and have you switch which one you’re controlling, effectively turning the other one into a block (and also swapping between their two different music tracks, which is a nice touch). There are a lot of creative uses for this freeze’n’swap and I found those puzzles to be by far the trickiest to get my head around. It also has an entire level editor, and the manual goes so far as to include even more than the base 100 if you just can’t get enough ghostbusting. That’s a lot of game for your 90’s dollar, especially this early in the console’s life!
Turns out I am absolutely down to shove boxes for 100 levels if my time is respected and I get to concuss a mummy. I cannot adequately explain nor justify why the objective being “I want to punch that ghost in its stupid face” motivated me so much more strongly than box reorganization. Maybe that’s explanation enough? Regardless, this is a welcome deviation from traditional Sokoban while still offering the same level of satisfaction you’d expect from its crunchy 100-step puzzles, and it’s aged like a fine catwine. If this never came out back in the day and dropped on Itch.io tomorrow the puzzle sickos would still be feasting.
Wack Game Boy Zone 