Poinie's Poin

 I played a very bizarre game called Poinie's Poin.

It's a PlayStation 2 game released by Sony in 2002 in Japan only.

Despite being a Japan-only release, it inexplicably contains an option for English, including a full English dub too.

The game is a short and simplistic, colourful, childish 3D platformer game, starring a weird pink baby thing named Poinie.

Poinie has the power to use "poins", which are round jelly bubble things, to manipulate the emotional state of people around him. Blue poins make sadness, yellow poins make cheerfulness, and red poins make anger.

One day in Jelly Town, Poinie gets distracted by a TV. Now he's lost sight of his mother and can't find his way home. Poinie wanders around town and finds Lilin, a girl who is being chased by Lolo, a mean girl who has an evil plan to poison everyone in Jelly Town with poisonous poins. Lilin gives Poinie a wisecracking yellow poin with a duck face, named Poin, who gets attached to Poinie's rear like a tail, and acts as Poinie's partner for the duration of the game. Poinie must use the power of poins to undo the damage caused by Lolo's poison poins, while also trying to find someone who knows how to get him home.

The gameplay is not very complicated. You've got a handful of short and simple little 3D platforming stages, where you need to un-poison the NPCs by throwing the correct coloured poin at them. You also need to throw poins to occasionally solve environmental puzzles too - like if you need to get a big flowerpot out of the way, turn a nearby NPC angry with a red poin, and they'll knock it over. Or if you need to fill up a lake, turn a nearby npc sad with a blue poin, and they will cry tears to fill it up. Things like that.

The game isn't anything special from a gameplay perspective, but it does have a lot of silly style to make up for it. 

The game is full of ridiculous slapstick - there's like three different cutscenes where Jelly Town gets destroyed in some way or another (but it's always fine again afterwards), and I particularly enjoy how bizarre the game's English is. Characters have ridiculous catchphrases that they say all the time, like "Coolio to the max!", or Poinie's personal favourite, "Yippie yo! You can't touch this!" which he says after every boss battle. 

Mean girl Lolo likes to say "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!", and the brash bulldog chef guy likes to say "Bombdadidydabombbomb!". ... My favourite character is Pillow, the duck who talks in long-winded sentences. When Poinie asks Pillow about how to get home, Pillow responds with: "A House? A home, a domicile, a place of residence? A place to hang your hat, to call your home, to put your feet up?". Despite being a Japan-only game, the English in this game is quite well-written, even though there are also a lot of typos and other errors in the text.

And the game even has some risque language and a few swears for good measure - which is particularly unusual to see in what is otherwise supposed to be a kids' game, but it does add to the slightly unhinged vibe the game has. ...Actually, the game does ask for the player's age when you first boot it up - and I've heard that the game self-censors itself and cuts the swears out if you input an age below 18. Which is something I have never seen a game do before. ...Not sure how true that is since I didn't try putting in a lower age myself, but I can't think of another reason as to why the game asks for your age anyway, so it's probably true.

(the only other game I know of that asks for the player's age is Mischief Makers, but it only affects the ending cutscene there)

Anyway. I really like Poinie's Poin. It's short, it's extremely silly, it's very unique, and while it's not a gameplay masterpiece by any means, it's certainly a fun time while it lasts.