Crayon Shin-Chan: Ora to Shiro wa Otomodachi da yo
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 Not a great way to start making Shin-Chan games, even despite some effors being put in.
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Crayon Shin-Chan: Ora to Shiro wa Otomodachi da yo is a 1993 video game for Game Boy released by Bandai only in Japan. It was the first video game based on the Crayon Shin-chan series. It was a success as around 300,000 units were sold in Japan.
Gameplay
An action game where you control the main character, Shinnosuke Nohara . There are 4 stages in total and each stage has a set goal that must be achieved. There are mini-games along the way and by completing them the number of remaining games can increase.
Bad Qualities
- The problem with this game is that it barely had barely any challenges like in many Japanese games on Game Boy, as not only does the enemies are dumb but also there's a lot of other problems that aren't even funny.
- The platforming is extremely bland, being almost non-existent because when you jump, it feel way too heavy but even then the platforming is easy and never get any harder.
- It is extremely short, lasting only for 10 minutes, which is unnaceptable even for a 1993 Game Boy game because many games at the time lasted for 40 to 1 hour.
- It's even worse when you know that there's only 4 levels in the entire game, and they are are so easy to rush out, which is why the game is so short.
- There's no checkpoints, which mean that if you die then you must restart all over again.
- There's a bad and good endings, which is poorly put here because instead of being based on mini games or anything like that, you had to find Snowy, but it is so hard to do so and if you fail then you get the bad ending and you must restart to get the good ending, making all of this very tedious.
- While the gameplay is not bad, it is very boring because of not only being too easy as stated before, but also it is boring in the way that there's not that much that happen in the game.
- Generic level design, which feel like a rip-off of the Super Mario games only with Shin-Chan being here.
- There's not any boss fights in the game either, especially that this would had helped make the game much harder or longer but no, even the other Game Boy games aside from the final boss from the second game and excluding the fourth game with it's actual boss fights had the same problems of this game lack of bosses.
- The mini games are pointless because even if you lose then you can still continue and you receive zero punishment, making the game even easier than it's already is, and thus the mini games are just padding and fillers to make the game a bit longer but it doesn't work.
Good Qualities
- The sequel, Crayon Shin-Chan 2 is much better and had more challenges, despite still being a pretty generic game.
- Good graphics, being very faithful to the show art style, even if the sequels are better looking.
- Decent, responsive controls, despite the jumps being heavy.
- The soundtrack is quite decent, especially that the music is quite catchy and can be nostalgic to some peoples, although not as much as the 3th and 4th games.
Reception
The game received mixed reviews, in the Famitsu magazine, the game got a score of 23/40. The reviewer said that Shin's slenderness was well expressed and that the action and minigames, such as the Excite Bike-like tricycle race, were fairly well done, but also said that the weapons ran out quickly and that it would have been nice to have been told the password after finishing the story.