Hebereke's Popoitto

Hebereke's Popoitto
One of the weirdest names in a video game.
Protagonist(s): Hebe Genre(s): Puzzle Platform(s): Sega Saturn PlayStation SNES Release Date: Sega Saturn JP: March 3, 1995 EU: December 1995 AU: 199? PlayStation JP: May 26, 1995 EU: March 1, 1996 SNES JP: July 28, 1995 EU: September 30, 1995 Developer(s): Sunsoft Publisher(s): Sunsoft Country: Japan Series: Hebereke Predecessor: Hebereke's Popoon Hashire Hebereke

Hebereke's Popoitto, known in Japan as Popoitto Hebereke (ポポイっとへべれけ) and Hebereke Station Popoitto (へべれけスてーショんポポイっと, Hebereke Sutēshon Popoitto), the latter being a name only used for the PlayStation version, is a puzzle game developed and published by Sunsoft. It was first released on the Sega Saturn on March 3, 1995 in Japan, and has ported into other platforms ever since. The game was never released in America in any form.

Bad Qualities

Generally

1. Popoons and Poro-porous can't be connected diagonally, unlike its prequel.
2. When the game was bought over to Europe, they still kept the following things that the prequel suffered:
   • Hebe and Oh-Chan weren't changed to Bop-Louie and Freeon-Leon, respectively, though the other characters are left unchanged in Ufouria as well, albeit with their names being changed. This led to some people thinking that the characters were either new or that they are ripoffs of their Ufouria counterparts.
   • The voice clips are left unchanged, likely to save localization costs. In fact, some lines can be misheard, for example, in the Sega Saturn version, "shori" could be misheard as "sorry", which can fool people into thinking Hebe is apologizing.
3. The name. While Popoon is an onomatopeia for a blob falling, Popoitto has no exact meaning.
4. The countdown on the continue screen hasn't been optimized for 50hz.
5. Pen-Chan and Unyon have incorrect colors.
6. The Poro-porous can't stop moving. This could be considered difficult for most players. Heck, even the viruses in Dr. Mario (the game that inspired Popoitto) don't move, making this an unnecessary feature.
7. The European box art looks nothing like Hebereke. This was thankfully an exception for the SNES version (pictured).

PlayStation

1. The character select theme in Popoon mode is still ear-grunting, with random voicelines of characters.
2. The cutscene theme sounds more like a boss fight. There were also some voiceclips of some random girl plastered onto it.

SNES

1. The game feels like a prequel, as evidenced by its filesize. The prequel is 1MB, while this game is 512KB.
   • Due to this, the voice clips had to be removed in this version. In addition, the "2-player Popoon mode" was also removed.
2. The Japanese-exclusive Project EGG version is just an emulated port, just like in other games.
3. As it was the case with the prequel, the game is region-locked, which can turn off import players.

Sega Saturn

1. The second stage theme sounds a bit generic, mostly due to a lack of a bass instrument.
2. The stage clear theme doesn't sound like a stage clear theme at all, instead sounding more like a "hurry up!" jingle.

Good Qualities

SNES

1. The graphics are quite decent for a SNES game, to the point where the Popoons and Poro-porous look like pre-rendered sprites.
2. The soundtrack sounds so cool to the point where it sounds like it belongs in some dance party.

PlayStation

1. The staff roll theme is so relaxing to listen.

Sega Saturn

1. The fourth stage theme sounds so relaxing. It almost sound like something you hear in a café.

Reception

The game received mixed to negative reviews. The German Total! magazine gave it a score of 3 out of 5, while the (now-defunct) GeoCities site Who ate the Flying Chair? gave it a score of 1₂ out of 5.

Trivia

• According to an unknown source, there was once an arcade prototype, which has yet to be found.

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