The best kind of ridiculous.
Jump and use the horizontal bar to propel yourself through the wall of the second-story apartment, then use your super-bouncy ball to take out the robot before he reaches the finish line. Beware the box-people who speak only in "jumma"s!
Yet another insane Japanese game that will never make it to America. Tomarunner is a foot-racing game where your opponents include a robot, a kappa, an angel, a masked roller-skater, and a boy with Big Boy hair. You run around a variety of tracks including mines, buddhist temples, busy streets, hotels, beaches, and castles, busily shoving your enemies out of the way while bouncing off the walls and flinging yourself around with vertical and horizontal bars and flying through people's living rooms all in the name of finding a shortcut. Weapons include heat seaking missiles, mines, and super-bouncy balls. Various items on the track include speed boosts, lightning (to smite thine enemy), bombs, and protective baby chicks. It's really fast, it's really fun, and it will deeply disturb your friends.
The graphics are a cartoony combination of 2D and 3D; not super-realistic, but certainly above average. When you blast through someone's house, you can tell that you're stepping in a birthday cake and they're all looking shocked. Everything looks good and makes sense. Even though the normal mode is split-screen (so you can see what your opponent is doing) there's still plenty of detail in your half-a-screen to tell exactly what's going on.
Awesome music. Some of the best Playstation game music I've heard in a long time. Even the worst tracks in the game are exceptionally good. This is definitely a soundtrack I'd want on CD. Most of the tracks are techno-y and they all fit the racing mood and the individual racetracks.
Very good play control once you get the hang of it, but some of the enemies are almost impossible to beat. There's also virtually no way to shake the homing missile once it's fired at you, and once an enemy has a decent lead you've pretty much lost the race.
You run. You race against weird opponents. You beat everybody and you get magic shoes. What more is there to life? There are cutscenes between the races that give you an idea of a plot, but several of them are various email messages your character receives, and therefore not very helpful if you don't understand Japanese.
Otherwise, however, this game's pretty easy to get the hang of even if you don't grasp the Japanese. X is jump, square is run, O is dash. L1 is left hand, R1 is right hand. Use these to grab poles and bounce off bouncy-walls. Use both to grab horizontal bars and vault over hurdles. The first option is a tutorial. The second option is the normal game. The other options are vs. games, combo attacks, and option mode. Set up your weapons and special items before the race starts, and go go go!!
Overall a terrific game, and a great break from the run-of-the-mill, boring car driving games. Next time your friends tell you how excited they are that they can race in a Honda Civic in the newest racing game, tell them that YOU can race as an evil robot with a big purple horn, and watch them get really scared and never talk to you again. This is another must-have for your "Japanese Stuff That Will Never See American Release" Playstation collection.