Girl’s Garden

Genre: Action Developer: Sega Ent. Publisher: Sega Ent. Players: 1 Released: 1985

“Minto’s so dreamy. I love his cute little blue shorts, his blue-and-white-striped shirt, and his matching blue hair. I mean, I know it’s brown hair on the box, but that’s just like some artist’s interpretation of Minto. I know where Minto lives. I see him at his house with the little heart on the roof all the time. Sure, he can’t spell so well with his giant house-spanning ‘welcome’ mat, but I can look past that. Because of the cute outfit. I want him to notice me, but I’m just pink-haired girl in a pink dress, which in Japan is just plain Jane vanilla. I know he has a crush on Cocco, but I need to stand out. I need…”

… a bouquet of flowers. Boys love flowers, right? Minto seems to go crazy over them. Maybe that’s a red flag in my pursuit, but I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes to win his affection. The thing is, Minto only likes the flowers growing around his house, and his lot is infested by bears. Like, really mean bears, too, and they’ll chase and maul someone if they get too close. It’s why Minto doesn’t have a mailbox. Maybe that big ‘welcome’ mat is for some drone delivery thing? I dunno. I’ll have to ask him once I gather up enough flowers to impress him. I read in my mom’s Cosmo that men love ten flowers. Not nine. Not eleven. It has got to be ten. Then, once I get my bouquet just right, I can march myself over to his house and deliver them, and then we’ll live happily ever after… until the next round.”

Girl’s Garden for the SG-1000 is an adorable game and one of the highlights of the system. Much in the way that ColecoVision’s Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle showed that game assets can create actual artistry beyond the bare minimum for gameplay, so too does Girl’s Garden, a game full of detail and charm well beyond what was expected on the system. It’s more thoughtful and charming than Smurf, too – the timer in Smurf is a bland “energy” meter which depletes over time, while the Sega game uses a visual indicator of Minto walking toward Cocco and away from the main character, Papri, a cute idea which also reinforces the theme of the game. When the Smurf dies because he touched a spider or some tall grass, he just teleports on his back, but when Papri dies from a marauding bear, she bursts into tears and rightly so. We take these little touches for granted now, but you rarely saw these kinds of charming details in a game at the time, especially on a home console release.

Boot the cartridge and right at the title screen, we get to see our pink-haired Papri walking straight up to the Minto outside of his house, and if you allow it to play out, a large heart appears over their heads. Overhead is the bubbly title in a two-color playful font designed to look like smoke billowing from the chimney. A landscape of grass, shrubs, and trees fill out this little scene, and below, the game implores the player to “PUSH START BUTTON!” The game showcases excellent color usage, including a rather vibrant and clean-looking house along with different shades of green for overlapping trees. Remember that the SG-1000 is limited to a single color per sprite – the typical way to extract more color for details is to overlay sprites, but then the system runs afoul of the horizontal sprite limits and can flicker. Girl’s Garden, on the title screen alone, casts aside those limitations with ease.

The game starts with Papri ready and waiting outside Minto’s house. Nestled along a picturesque mountain range and without a neighbor or telephone pole in sight, Minto certainly has no method of reporting his pink stalker. Place looks remote enough to where he’d be home-schooled, but at least it’s a nice enough house. His family has done a terrible job on his fencing though, leaving gaps on the bottom and sides large enough for you (or the bears!) to pass through. Yes, this is bear country, but we’ll stick to this being Japan and not Illinois. We see mountains, trees, and lakes off in the distance, and once Papri starts walking around, you see… parallax scrolling? In an SG-1000 game? The clouds are always wafting right, and the mountains behind her and the tufts of grass in the foreground all shift at different rates to give the illusion of parallax scrolling. The scrolling is choppy is due to the game relying upon the background layer to create the effect and put so many objects on screen, but while it’s certainly something you’ll be aware of during play, I never found it to be distracting while running around gathering my flowers.

The flowers S-L-O-W-L-Y cycle through six “animation” frames, and only the fourth one in which the flower has fully bloomed will count for our bouquet. Flowers are collected when walking over them as you’d expect, and the game will even rotate through four different flower types from round to round for some extra visual variety. If Papri gathers a wilted flower on its last breath, then she loses half of her gathered flowers. That’s also the penalty for death, either by falling in water, getting eaten by a bear, or grabbing the skull item that a bee will sometimes drop. Most of the items provided by the bees buzzing by are helpful and can include extra hearts (lives), a full bouquet, or fruit for points; but these items are open season for the bears as well. The layout of Minto’s yard also changes over time, and you can expect to see more water hazards and rocks blocking your path as you progress through the game. The restrictions in terrain are truly what help the bears become more of threat, although even a purple aggro bear trying its best to maul Papri can’t pass over any rocks or flowers in its path since they’re background tiles, too.

If the player clears two rounds, the game ushers in the “CHALLENGING STAGE” that uses giant versions of Papri and the bears, which in turn activates a special mode of the SG-1000 to display sprites four times their normal size. During the normal rounds, Papri can drop a honey pot to distract the bears, but here she has to jump over waves of running bears, and the inability to adjust the jump and the enormous hitbox ensures this bonus level lives up to its name. We all know Minto loves his flowers, but he’s also impressed by Papri’s complete disregard for her life and lack of self-esteem, and he’ll reward her with bonus points if she survives all 20 bears. Yuji Naka noted in an interview that later stages require the player to bounce off the side of the screen to clear some bears. I’ll take his word for it, as these stages are too difficult for me to clear them all and because he should know since he developed the game.

Girl’s Garden is mostly remembered as being where Mr. Sonic the Hedgehog got his start at Sega after being instructed to design something which would appeal to girls. Sega was so impressed by Naka’s efforts that it released the game. It’s also an early title for famous Sega composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi, who people know from his classic Space Harrier and After Burner songs, though he only worked as a programmer on Girl’s Garden. Funnily enough, one of the more impressive things about Girl’s Garden is its varied soundtrack, which makes an otherwise short and repetitive game feel especially polished. There are a couple of distinct tunes for the main game and the bonus stage, along with a handful of jingles that include a rendition of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” for when Papri successfully wins Minto’s affection. You won’t be playing these in your car, mind you, but what Tohru Nakabayashi and Katsuhiro Hayashi did here is enjoyable enough while playing the game.

I’m not the target audience for Girl’s Garden, but I still find it to be a nice time and am impressed with how well it executes its vision so far as the hardware will allow. Anyone who has an SG-1000 will do well to seek out Girl’s Garden as it’s a unique and fun little game with a bit of interesting Sega history attached to it. It’s also playable on the Mark III/Master System (but with a darker color palette) or on the Nintendo 3DS via Sega 3D Reprint Archives 3: Final Stage (which requires two other games to unlock and will likely cost as much as the SG-1000 and game). Regardless of your choice, Girl’s Garden on any system is worth a play, and I will definitely revisit it when I hook up the SG-1000 for some fun.