Willy Wombat

Hudson Soft's legacy is honestly pretty staggering. It's hard to overstate the sheer quantity of games they put out during their heyday beyond Bomberman, Mario Party, and all their first-party output on the PC Engine. And even more, it's truly impressive how good a ton of those hidden Hudson Soft gems are. Bulk Slash for the Saturn, Blender Bros and Ninja Five-O for the GBA, Doremi Fantasy for the SNES, Kororinpa for the Wii, the list goes on. But one of the most interesting and ambitious Hudson Soft projects is Willy Wombat, a Japan-only 3D platformer for the Saturn and a collaboration with Westone of Monster World fame. The Saturn is famously not a console that does well with 3D platformers, there are some notable entries on it (Burning Rangers, Croc, Ninpen Manmaru) but it doesn't hold a candle to the PS1 or N64 in this area. So let's take a look at what Hudson Soft was able to accomplish with their take on the genre.

On the surface, Willy Wombat seems like your average mascot platformer, with a edgy main character that looks like a cross between Sonic and Batman to boot. But in actuality, this is a surprisingly bleak game?  The general set-up is that Willy Wombat takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that houses a single idyllic city called Prison that promises eternal life for labor. The titular Willy was the head of the police force in Prison but he suddenly leaves and sets out into the world to find six Miracle Gems, all the while the rest of the police is pursuing him. It takes a while for the plot to fully unravel, but the story eventually evolves into this Matrix-esque dystopian narrative about free will and oppression that I really wasn't expecting from this 3D platformer. It's a bit on the nose but it's not especially badly written either, and boasts a fairly moody and grim tone aided by its muted visuals and great atmospheric, noir-esque soundtrack. That being said, there is one notable issue with Willy Wombat's story and that's the voice acting. Despite being a JP-only game, Willy Wombat actually has full English voice acting with Japanese subtitles which would be really cool if the voice acting didn't actively detract from the narrative. As I mentioned, this is a fairly dark and mature story but the voice acting across the board is upbeat and cartoonish. It's like if Sonic Team told the voice cast to act like they normally did for Sonic Frontiers, it just doesn't fit the tone the game's going for, and it makes it hard for me to get invested in the stakes of it all.

In terms of the gameplay, Willy Wombat once again feels really unique from everything else at the time. It's undeniably a 3D platformer with fully 3D rendered environments, but it goes for a distinct top-down, almost isometric perspective that plays out more like Sonic 3D Blast than anything else. The difference with Willy Wombat's approach though is the fact that you can rotate the camera a full 360 degrees, so you always have the ability to adjust your angle and see things more clearly. The controls are fairly tight too, and you get both analog movement and the ability to turn on a dime ala tank controls, which gives you a solid amount of freedom for navigating around the world. That being said, it's not perfect. Walls can still block your view, the depth perception can certainly mess you up if your camera is positioned the wrong way, and using analog movement with a d-pad never feels great, I do think Willy Wombat has its fair share of awkwardness. But overall, I'd say this is a pretty cool evolution of the isometric platformer that does a noble job at fixing a decent amount of the genre's shortcomings.

The combat in Willy Wombat is ultimately pretty basic, but I think it's pretty well-built around this top-down perspective in its own right. Willy has both an infinitely spammable melee attack with a fairly wide hitbox, along with a slightly slower ranged boomerang attack that can pierce multiple times, allowing you to deal with waves of enemies with relative ease. I always felt like 3D platforming combat is at its best when it utilizes ranged projectiles since it encourages the player to move around during combat, and I'm impressed that Willy Wombat generally gets this right in 1997. It's quite fun to figure out the perfect spot that lets you take out all the enemies in a room as quickly as possible, though once you find the optimal strategy, I rarely struggled much with combat encounters since you can almost always deal with enemies from afar. This also applies to the game's few bosses which can all be taken out fairly quickly due to how just how good your ranged options are.

As far as level design is concerned, Willy Wombat is once again a bit of a mixed bag. It starts strong with the Cave Of Zibet stages which have a Doom-y dungeon crawler-y feel to them, taking place in fairly enclosed and segmented areas filled with hidden doors and secrets around every corner. They manage to balance a pretty even split between platforming, puzzle-solving, and combat encounters, all of which are done reasonably well. The Detriam City stages are even better with each stage taking place in a unique setting ranging from a wrecked highway to dingy sewers, all of which are fun to explore. And while the Megalo Canyon stages start to get a bit more linear, it still has some fun setpieces like Indiana Jones-style boulder chases. Overall, I'd say the first half of Willy Wombat is pretty great, it's able to balance all of the game's action-adventure elements and create sprawling environments that are fun to explore. But as the game goes on, it starts to get a bit more gimmicky, for lack of a better word.

The Morwegian Woods where Willy Wombat's worst traits really start to show, as it boasts multiple levels with restrictive timed gates, confusing teleport rooms, an abundance of backtracking, and cramped layouts that shove most of the collectibles into obscurely-hidden side rooms. The Ruins Of Khuf is a bit better as it's focused almost entirely on puzzle-solving and packs a killer atmosphere, but while some of its puzzles were genuinely fun, it still felt like the actual level design took a hit to compensate. Thankfully, the final area, Tron's Castle, was a step back in the right direction. A hard but generally well-designed final gauntlet that tests you on all of the game's mechanics, often at the same time, while also introducing some new stuff as well. It's not perfect, some of the platforming felt imprecise with the perspective and these stages have a tendency to permanently lock you out of getting gems if you're not super thorough, but it was a solid ending to the game. Despite this though, I still generally felt that the second half of Willy Wombat was a lot more inconsistent than the first sadly.

Considering how short many of the Saturn's 3D platformers are, I was impressed with how beefy of a package Willy Wombat is, boasting an impressive 27 levels across its six worlds, each filled to the brim with collectibles. Each stage has around 50-100 gems to find that can net you tokens you can use for saving, there's three hidden tomes to find that can allow you to unlock spells, a ton of health upgrades scattered across the game, and even some entirely optional Hu Cards that you can only find by revisiting stages. While the Hu Cards do feel a bit like forced padding, the vast majority of Willy Wombat's collectibles are satisfying to find and the game does a good job of making it clear how much you've collected and how much you still have yet to find. As I mentioned, the only place where finding the collectibles actually became an annoyance was in the final area, but most of the time, the exploration was one Willy Wombat's strongest aspects.

Overall, Willy Wombat is a solid take on the isometric 3D platformer that stands out as one of the more ambitious Saturn exclusives for its impressive length, fully 3D explorative environments, and bleak story and tone. While I do think there are a lot of little issues that prevent Willy Wombat from being an especially great game, like its inconsistent level design, occasionally awkward controls, and unfitting voice acting, it was a pretty consistently enjoyable experience from start to finish that I feel had the potential to be something truly special.

3.5/5 Stars