Adult Games #4

Celery (1989)
By: Parsley Genre: Action Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: NEC PC-98 First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Nothing

Many of the few 'adult' games I've looked at so far have been obscure arcade titles but most of them have also been Japanese. I guess our Far-Eastern friends are a little keener on mixing gaming and nude girlies than us Western prudes - so much so, in fact, that a few of the systems native to that region are positively heaving under the vast weight of games featuring saucy minxes of all descriptions. One of these is NEC's Windows-based micro, the PC-98, so when I decided to start covering more of its games I suppose it was inevitable I'd encounter a nudey example at some point. It was actually the rather amusing name of this one that caught my eye but it didn't come as too much of a surprise to find... that's right, naughty girlies!

They're naughty schoolgirls as far as I can tell, actually, as well as a few flight attendants and things of that nature, which makes this game even pervier, and its premise isn't much better. It's apparently set in the city of Kanazawa which has just been struck by an unusual tornado which whisked away only the clothes of all the young female inhabitants! Your job is to catch them as they fall back to earth in a series of single-screen stages. You do this by using the mouse to control what initially appears to be a bat from a Breakout-style game but, upon closer inspection, is actually two disembodied hands holding a laundry basket! Simply move this left and right (and a short distance up and down as well) to collect items of clothing and bonuses whilst making sure to avoid rocks which break your... umm, basket.

Each stage features a different girl and different clothing items to collect, although they'll usually include blouses, skirts, shoes, and bras. You'll need to collect five of any given item to see it removed from the girly at the end of the stage which comes after a certain amount of items have dropped down the screen. You'll also find stages now and then featuring a girl who's already nude but shyly (or teasingly) covering herself. On these you need to collect feathers instead of clothing to tickle her so she... you know, moves and shows the goods. All stages feature tonnes of other items drifting down the screen as well though. Many of them can be collected for points (including poop for some reason) while a few others can help or hinder your progress.

One of them widens your basket, for example, which is mighty handy but also leaves it more prone to boulder strikes which deplete your power-meter, quickly or slowly depending on their size. Above the power-meter is another showing the time you have left. Some items will either remove a chunk of this or increase it, while others will increase or decrease the rate at which items fall which potentially allows you to finish a stage quicker and get a bigger time bonus, but is also much riskier. One reason for this is, from the third stage onwards you'll start to encounter bombs, each of which will cost you a life if you fail to collect it. Also falling down now and then is an exit door which brings the stage to an immediate end. This is presumably so you can skip stages to get to your favourite girl or something.

This probably all sounds immensely frivolous and amusing, and it can be mildly addictive to start with, but it doesn't take long to realise that it's one of the most pointless games ever. Usually this kind of game is simple but pretty good fun with the naked girlies just there as a bonus, but here the nudity is the only point of playing - the actual game really isn't much fun at all. The visuals aren't too bad in terms of detail but they're small and repetitive, and the sound is non-existent aside from a jingling points-tallying sound at the end of each stage, neither of which really help prolong interest in this strange and really rather poor game. The controls are a bit irritating but it's just not very interesting or enjoyable. If naked anime chicks are your bag, there are many better ways of seeing them than playing this oddity.

RKS Score: 4/10