Music: Lemonade - Mitsukiyo
Dr Slump Longplay footage from:    • Dr. Slump Longplay (PS1, English Tran...  

---

Note: I left the section in about Mario's run animation, just because it's kinda cool to see that connection getting drawn by Shigeru Miyamoto. I do however find it a bit of a stretch in retrospect to say she was an inspiration when Miyamoto only really used her explicitly as a simile of what they ended up with. Maybe I've just thought too hard about it.

---

Dr Slump is a PS1 game based on the comics by Akira toriyama. It follows a ridiculously strong robot girl called Arale who just wanders around getting into trouble. She feels like a prototype of young Goku, except instead of finding her destiny she finds pornos in the principles office.

The game has Toriyamas signature style all over it but a super confident use of polygons and a vibrant colour palette are really what keeps this game looking so fresh today. It has that super hot Megaman legends treatment which has slowly been creeping into the Indy scene recently. If it wasn't for some bizarre control schemes and an on rails camera you could almost trick me into believing it was some wank off itch.io. the graphics were enough to get the hacker Hilltop to do a fan translation into English, which is how many of us will get to experience it today..

The game feels slice of lifey with different zones breaking up the game world and NPCs playing out events. you're essentially bumming around finding the out who will trigger the next event and hunting turds that appear around the map. It sounds boring but I found it quite satisfying as it drip fed me new skills. For example after witnessing domestic violence I learnt how to punch. The other half of the game is a 3D platformer with pretty low stakes for failure, which is good cause i don't know who's more of a threat, the giant dinosaurs or the camera. The camera seems more efficient at killing me I know that much.

This game is doing a mile a minute Jokes and I found myself genuinely laughing out loud at parts. whether it be from Hilltops excellent translation work or the physical comedy of animal abuse, there was always something to surprise and delight. And that is the most corporate endorsement I will give this or for that matter, any game.

Arale, while not being well known here in the West had quite an effect in Japan, her original running animations (from the cartoon not the game) served as some of the inspiration for Mario's run animation in Mario 64 which is a fact you'll see done to death on social media at the moment. This running style lives on to today in some of the biggest games on the planet. (Genshin, Dragon Quest builders)

While we're on the topic of goofy ass running, Arale also inspired Masashi Kishimoto, creator of Naruto, to get into art. I myself spent my formative baby rat years drawing Trunks over and over. While Pokemon was hotter than hot when DBZ was coming out, it never inspired me to draw the same way DBZ did. The style was just so inescapably iconic. I wanted to draw exactly like that, And I wanted trunks little mcdonalds golden arches fringe. I gave up hope getting his little crop top jacket so I settled on black sweat pants, which I thought looked pretty close to what Trunks wore. So thanks for the bad fashion advice asshole. I wore those sweatpants for YEARS and thought I looked like I could take on Cell. I didn’t look like I could take on an entry level job at a supermarket.

Toriyama was able to have a crazy impact across multiple fields, leaving an indelible mark on a generation, and an influence on all generations to come, whether they're familiar with his work or not.
We spend our lives convincing ourselves that we have no impact on the world around us, at best wandering from scene to scene finding the next NPC cutscene to participate in. Toriyama showed us that you could change the course of someone's life with dumb drawings and silly jokes. As you go about your day remember that you have an even bigger impact on the lives of the people around you than Toriyama ever could. And if you think you don’t mean anything to anyone, you’re wrong.

So is Dr Slump any good? Yeah why not. It feels like playing a chill saturday morning cartoon, which is kind of my vibe recently.

Rest In Piece Toriyama. You changed the world, but not as much as I’m about to change the life of my neighbour when I throw this brick through their window.