A strange wave to surf, then, in making a beat-'em-up in the imperiously 2D Crayola-style of PaRappa the Rapper, even when bathed in the Family Friendly aura of the N64.

True, there have been many cutesy cartoon fighters before and after: Waku Waku 7 and its purple belly/buttock-slapping Mauru, Battle Circuit, Comix Zone, various super-deformed pocket/petit titles, et cetera. Normally such idiosyncrasy never straddles the Pacific and is safely hemmed within the shores of Crazy Old Nippon, confined to a niche console like the Neo-Geo. But the odd oddity sometimes reaches the US like an internationally wandering drunkard and, on an even rarer good day (or during the death spasms of certain consoles sputtering flatulently for new software) PAL-land. Rakuga Kids is such an oddity. So much so in fact, that the US was never treated to its offbeat charm and it skipped that territory entirely, only being released in Japan and Europe.

The backstory of Rakuga Kids (the title being a Romanised play on words of the Japanese "rakugaki", meaning "scribble" or "graffiti") concerns Twinkle Town, a magical place whose founding fathers might have been *whisper* wizards. One day the Twinkle Gang find some *whisper* magic crayons which, utilising a conceit that harks most famously back to 1930s animation classic 'Out of the Inkwell', cause whatever is drawn with them to spring to life! Unfortunately, the older brother of one of the gang is a mean bully, and steals some of the crayons in order to bring bring his own terrifying renderings (truly, we've had nightmares) into the real world. Thus, the nice kids' characters have to do battle with the mean kids' characters, in order to secure the fate of Twinkle Town! Can you feel the drama?

Utilising/stealing the classic six-button Capcom Low-Medium-High Punch/Kick configuration and mimicking much of the SF move list (faux dragon punches), Rakuga Kids features, by turns, an endearing and troubling cast of characters. Set within a world of yearning, potentially disturbed children and their "imaginary" fighter creations, who battle on their behalf from the subconscious, you're already in weird Freudian territory (that old opium-guzzling sex tramp knew a thing or two about the beast in the playpen). Japan, it seems traditionally has no problem with depicting playground battles: indeed it is rich source material for manga, anime, film and videogames - Ichi 0 and Rival Schools, for example. Imagining such a thing in a Western context is a little harder - just look at the fuss over the not-even-released-yet Bully/Dog Eat Dog/Romanes Eunt Domus. British Bulldog, you say? Ban this evil filth! Renegade? Featuring teenagers? Let's change it in localisation to feature drug-peddling Rastafarians lingering ethnically in subway stations, because that's far less damaging to society. D.A.R.E., kids.

In Rakuga Kids' defence, the children themselves do not do battle directly, but, as has been established, through their proxies, who tend to embody facets of the kids' ambitions or upbringing: Clione's fighter Beartank would seem to exist because her stage consists of a toy factory backdrop, her family business. Andy's fighter Astronots - complete with cute puerile misspelling - is an extension of his desire to be an astronaut when he grows up.

As mentioned, the game chooses to ape Yoshi's Island/PaRappa's 2D-in-a-3D-world cutout-style graphics, resembling a children's storybook. Selecting a pairing of child (evil overlord) and fighter (indentured phantasmagorical gladiator) you - in a combat engine that superficially aspires to semi SF Alpha/Zero levels but usually only pesters the word "pedestrian" - thrash seven shades of kindergarten krap out of your opponent in an oddly stilted environment. We say 'oddly stilted', because the game doesn't try to embrace the then-fashionable vogue of 2.5D fighters with vaguely 3D features like sidestepping. Instead, the action, depending on which character is advancing, scales in and out (slightly) and askance to the 2D plane, favouring the attacker. This occasionally makes things difficult to discern, partly because of the low resolution but mainly if one is already leaning to the left or right because of some kind of paroxysmal vertigo.

Graphically, there's little it can be directly compared to, as Konami take the cutout style of PaRappa, Switch, et al/the hand-drawn aesthetic of Yoshi's Island one step further by having the game look - outside of the curiously anodyne, Americanised rendered portraits of the children - as if the sprites have actually been drawn by said children, in line with the concept of the game. The characters the kids have created are chunky and emboldened with (some elements are only half-filled-in, like a juvenile has quickly scribbled something out), in most cases, either a deliberately exquisite number of frames of animation or a purposely crude, choppy feel to them, as in certain idle animations.

Several characters, such as the by turns cute, mechanical Beartank and sleazy Mamezo, are wonderfully expressive and their transformations between various forms are often delightful. Mamezo in particular will turn into a sly little blob if performing low attacks and, in a sort of dream logic, will metamorphose into a utilitarian arrow-headed form for jabbing at an opponent or a giant anvil for slams, et cetera.

An additional eccentric touch is the choice of "painting" and "drawing" modes, the latter being an "outline-only" effect where backgrounds and character fills are removed, leaving only silhouettes. It's amusing for a few seconds, and then its complete worthlessness sinks in. The game also (in a strange presentiment of Virtua Fighter 4's "AI System") features a Training mode, where the game will (allegedly) learn your fighting style and then proceed to fight for you if you select Battle mode. It's quite odd and doesn't really work, still, points for trying. It's quite baffling though why anyone would want the CPU to fight in their stead in a beat-'em-up.

As a fighter then, and ignoring the cosmetics for a moment, Rakuga Kids is predicated on the notion of "crayons". That is, the player utilises the crayons in their possession (gained by filling a "magic" bar, in typical attack/defence charging Capcom/SNK fashion) in order to perform super specials. These take three forms: attack, counterattack and defence (although you would be hard-pressed to tell them apart!). The game, being intended as a beat-'em-up for kiddywinks, lets you perform magical moves incredibly easily, with just a flick of the right shoulder button (a more complex variant is available for grown-ups and the less lazy), although it does feature more complex fighting mechanics such as 'Cancels'. The magical super specials are usually imaginatively designed, and it's quite a while before they become tedious to watch, if ever! Some of the more outlandish include a moped-driving dog who runs over your opponent whilst delivering a pizza; being flung into a plummeting elevator; and an attack that ensnares the opponent within a spaceship, sends them hurtling out into the cosmos, only for the victim to be thrown back down from the heavens. A rabbit driving a taxi also makes an appearance, but then again that's not very unusual!

The really memorable element to Rakuga Kids, though (an element that is also truly, truly creepy) is Mamezo, the fighter of the bully Val. A resolutely unpleasant yellow-and-green character wearing a cape, Mamezo gobbles like a turkey, a definitively horrific sound. He taunts his opponent by bending over, his single strand of hair forming the shape of a heart, parting his cape and wiggling his naked buttocks whilst braying "nya-nya-na-nya-nya-nya!". His ranged attacks consist of utilising his entire body as a sling and thrusting his (now-elastic) hips forward to launch projectiles at his opponent. The true phallic unpleasantness of this act cannot be verbalised. He can also melt himself down into a little yellow blob which "thrusts" upwards bulbously to strike. Freud. Field Day. Mamezo is particularly unsettling because so much of his design seems predicated on sexually suggestive notions, however adolescent. And the leering, somewhat cartoon-like "predatory" nature of his appearance, all sickly-green-caped tiptoeing, scuttling, thrusting and flashing, would be enough to get more than a few child psychologists hot under the collar.

Problems, problems, problems... where to begin? The game is ludicrously slow-paced (and further blemished by slowdown, especially in the PAL version, which at least runs full-screen). Some characters are rather overbalanced - the accursed Robot C.H.O. who, when AI-controlled, will electrify himself in a Blanka stylee anytime you venture near him, and then slap you silly! However he is utterly useless when player-controlled and Darkness is just overpoweredness incarnate. Games drag on for far too long, based on an evil combination of underpowered specials (some characters' magic attacks, for example Astronots', however spectacular, have all the effectiveness of a light sneeze), slooooow charging of the magic bar and far too much character energy, that being a needlessly engorged primary/secondary SNK-like system.

Given that the N64 is usually considered a hinterland for beat-'em-ups (outside of the disappointing version of Killer Instinct that eventually appeared, most of the platform's pugnatory library consists of games like Dark Rift and its shoddy ilk) and Nintendo's still-vaguely-breathing family-orientation policy, it's not that much of a stretch to see the commercial void Konami thought it could fill with Rakuga Kids. Sadly (or inevitably), the bizarreness of the concept/execution did not prove a draw. This is not, after all, the same consumer furrow that PaRappa/Lammy plough, the rhythm-action crowd proving a bit more cosmopolitan in their tastes than those who simply wish to lay the smack down. This is a fighting game, and one that, although simplified from its inspirational SF mechanic, is still a bit convoluted for the pre-teen/tweenager market. So, in that sense, the game sells itself on its notion of an innocent childhood glee a la Yoshi's Island, yet is too complicated for its own good. It's also not hard to see why Konami decided to forgo releasing this in the US: in later years after all, that nation's mainstream gaming press would criticise SNK's Cool Cool Toon for being kiddified and fey. Indeed, many contemporaneous reviews of Rakuga Kids imports similarly pointed to its cutesy-ness as being its main undoing.

Quite why Konami (or BMG) thought Europe would be more open to its charms is puzzling, when beat-'em-ups (however outlandish) are less of a staple here than in the US. In an era of Killer Instincts, Tekkens, Toshindens and Virtua Fighters, the quaintness of Konami's worldview in hoping that this would seize the popular imagination is quite endearing. In a sense, they were ahead of their time: Dreamcast Powerstone 1 & 2 were rooted in the same appeal zone, although not as dedicatedly and almost abstractly preschool as Rakuga Kids set out to be. Compared to a Western analogue like Clayfighters, said title (which would be considered cartoony and twee in the West) would be the equivalent of a Sam Peckinpah film compared to the innocuous Rakuga Kids'.

Konami obviously intended a sequel, based on some of the various characters' endings in story mode, and had high hopes for the franchise. In particular the curiously melancholic, underdesigned and somewhat stoic character of Bear/Beartank (whose signature is blowing a bubble of snot out of one nostril) made his way into GBA outings Wai Wai Racing/Konami Krazy Racers and, somewhat bizarrely, Castlevania: Castle of the Moon. This sort of mismatched cross-pollination is hardly new to Konami, or Japanese gaming - though one only has to look at the recent pairing of Solid Snake and certain escaping simians (or indeed a forthcoming melee of Wii) to see it's a device Konami and the industry have not yet tired of.

Whilst there are many things to relish in Rakuga Kids (certainly, we will never see its like again), such as the quite considerable quality of its animation and somewhat perturbing schism of childhood naivety and phantastical violence, inevitably it's a quirky back-catalogue oddity at best. A memento of a time when such whimsical games could be considered marketable in the West by a major developer/publisher.