Ninpen Manmaru

On one hand, this game is fascinating as it seems to be the only 3D platformer exclusive to the Saturn. It had some other 3D platformers but all the other examples are best played elsewhere, specifically Tomb Raider or even Croc. I don't count Nights Into Dreams as a platformer and I don't count Bug! as a true 3D game.

The level design isn't bad at all, at least of what little I played. It has a cutesy aesthetic that is typical of a game like this from this era, plus it's directly based on a Japanese kid's cartoon so it makes sense.

Unfortunately the game is ruined by a terrible control scheme. Croc gets hated for its controls and understandably so, but I'll take that game's tank controls over this any day. The single thing that brings this game down is that when you go left or right on the dpad, instead of turning like in a game with tank controls, it makes you run in a circle. If you haven't played it it might not seem that big a deal but it makes positioning yourself a nightmare, and sometimes you need to do so in order to make certain jumps. Needless to say, I didn't play this for very long before getting frustrated with the controls. Using the 3D controller doesn't change the control scheme like using analog in Croc does, it's the same either way. This game could have been a decent, if typical, 3D platformer, but in execution it's nothing more than a noteworthy piece of Saturn history.