Game

Sutte Hakkun is a fascinating little game by Nintendo, made for the SNES. Sort of. See, the SNES had an add-on in Japan called the Satellaview, which allowed you to download games via satellite broadcast. A lot of the more popular games for the system are the Nintendo properties, like Mario and Zelda, and those are cool. They were like, weekly broadcasts with voice and a story and whatnot. This is not one of those kinda things. This is a collection of puzzles, which were broadcast, with new ones being added every now and then, until they released the whole thing as a stand alone cartridge. In 1998.

1998 is a very late time to be releasing Super Famicom games, but what do I know? Sutte Hakkun has since become a kind of dark horse cult favorite among the people who’ve ACTUALLY tried it, cause it certainly never came out here. What’s it like?

Game

In Sutte Hakkun, you play as, well, Hakkun. He’s a little glass bird thing, and he’s pretty cute. He can move, jump, and succ. If he sucks and there’s something to suck up, he’ll grab that thing into his body, which he can then carry around and spit back out somewhere. Things like blocks, rocks, little dog friends. You can also hold the spit button and a direction to place things more deliberately and specifically, which is useful. You can also suck up colors. There are three colors, which will effect objects in a specific way depending on the color.

If you have a red block, it’ll move up and down. Blue blocks move horizontally. Yellow blocks go diagonally. You can also color the dogs, which will become bouncy and squishy if red, walk back and forth if blue, and slam the ground over and over if yellow. That last one is good for hitting switches.

Other than that, you’ve got rocks, smug little mother fuckers which can break glass floors if dropped from high above and cannot be moved through. Blocks CAN be moved through btw. The rocks also limit your jump. You’ve got fake blocks that can’t be sucked up but can be scared away by sucking at them. And uh… I think that’s it!It’s not an overly complex system.

Game

But with those simple foundations comes a very deep and enriching experience. Sutte Hakkun is some REALLY good puzzling. Puzzles get very brain tickly, and what starts as a simple cute time will make you sit there like Gendo for like 3 minutes trying to figure out wtf to do.

The game ALSO has a score system, a rather unique one. It’s based on movement. If you move, or do ANY action, the number goes down. Try and get the highest score. That’s it. It’s not really something you need to interract with much, but it’s cool to have for those into it. There’s ALSO some bonus levels you can unlock after the game is done, which is really cool. This game’s got a shocking amount of depth. It’s also real pretty, the music is very nice, and its cute and charming as hell.

All in all, I had an fantastic time playing Sutte Hakkun, and if you’re into puzzlers, especially puzzle platformers, it comes highly recommended. I basically haven’t had this good of a time with a puzzler since I picked up Ice n’ Fire. I wish we had gotten more from this little fella, but apparently there are some Satteliview levels that didn’t get ported to this version, so maybe I’ll have to check those out someday.