Whip! Whip!

Alright shut the fuck up already, I’ll review a Switch indie! Yeesh! Of course now Switch fans will be pissed at me for picking a couple “Nindies” (Christ I hate that term) that I didn’t like. But my heart was in the right place, especially with Whip! Whip! I mean, look at it! It couldn’t be more clear what developer Alpha-Unit was aiming for. It’s Bubble Bobble run through the homebrew filter. That’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard of. Who doesn’t love Bubble Bobble? I mean, *I* don’t love Bubble Bobble. I don’t hate it either. I’m totally indifferent to bobbling bubbles. But again, have a look at Whip! Whip!

Bubble Bobble, only with girls dressed like cats, or possible cat people that defeat enemies by wrapping their whip around them and flinging their feline bodies into them. Alright nerds, stop what you’re doing. I can hear you playing Rubble Knobble.

And keep in mind that sequels (or spin-offs, I’m not exactly clear on the nature of them) to Bubble Bobble removed the dinosaurs in favor of cutesy little kids peeing out rainbows or smacking enemies with umbrellas. Now let me ask you: would you believe that Whip! Whip! was an unreleased early-90s third spin-off/sequel/spinquel to the franchise that was just now found in a vault under Taito’s headquarters?

Because it totally is.

Okay, no, it isn’t.

It’s an original game designed to pay tribute to the franchise. But you could believe it. It’s that convincing, aesthetically at least. From the character design to the nods to Bubble Bobble in level and enemy design, right down to the fact that if you kill three enemies at the same time, bubbles with letters rise up from the bottom of the screen, and if you spell something out you get a free life and get to skip a level. If you are so drunk on nostalgia that you wake up having pissed your Mario PJs while clutching your SNES Classic controller in one hand and a classic issue of Nintendo Power with the pages stuck-together in the other, NOTHING I’m about to say will matter to you in the slightest bit. In fact, you left as soon as you saw the first screenshot.

Hello, everyone else. Yea, I didn’t have any fun with Whip! Whip! at all. Not even a little bit.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with me being a child of the 90s/00s who has zero nostalgia for the source material. Nor is it because the game is broken. It controls smooth and accurate. The concept of lassoing enemies and flinging yourself into them to defeat them is cute. And I’m always, always, impressed when a game comes this close to looking like and feeling like the game it aims to pay tribute to. It’s more difficult than people realize.

Do you know what’s not difficult? Whip! Whip!

♪ Oh oobie do, I wanna be like you! I wanna walk like you, talk like you too! ♪

In the spirit of Bubble Bobble, I rounded myself up a playing partner. The only one who was willing to play with me is in her late 40s, never heard of Bubble Bobble, and hadn’t picked up a game controller since before the world ever heard of Monica Lewinsky. So clearly I had my work cut out for me, right? Wrong. Together the two of us absolutely CHEESED the game in under an hour. And by cheesed I mean we made NO effort at skill, finesse, or not dying. As a result the average stage lasted just seconds. We died, but there was no consequence besides a bit of downtime while we restarted after gaming-over. But the dying was a result of the lack of trying and/or caring. And, in my case, in a desire to just get it over with. I was bored right from the start. It’s safe to say Whip! Whip! wasn’t made for me.

Under an hour. And in that not-even-an-episode-of-Game-of-Thrones length, we later admitted to each other we lost track of which one of us was the blue one and which one of us was the red one a few times. And it didn’t matter. The letter-bubbles didn’t matter. The boss fights (which are the only remotely clever action bits in the game) didn’t matter. We massacred Whip! Whip! without a single fuck given. And it was so boring the entire time. I’m sure fans of the game will accuse me of “playing it wrong” and, hey, you’re probably right. But isn’t it up to the developer to make sure I play it right in the first place? Not that it would have mattered. I just plain didn’t enjoy it. Amazing effort though. Whip! Whip! was made for a different audience, and they’ll get to it right as soon as they wash their Zelda bed-sheets and explain to their parents those sticky stains are really the result of a spilled milkshake.

Whip! Whip! was developed by Alpha-Unit
Point of Sale: Switch, Steam

$9.99 cracked that whip in the making of this review.