Perman Part 2: Himitsu Kessha Madoodan wo Taose! (1992)

"Paaman (or quite possibly Parman) is a comic in Japan which is done by the same guy who did Doraemon. Like that wasn’t already obvious just by looking at ‘em. All of the four characters that you have the choice of controlling have the amazing ability to fly in an amazingly awkward fashion. I don’t think there’s any difference in who you want to pick though. What’s awkward about flying is, if you’re flying Up and want to go Left, you don’t just automatically go Left when you hit the control pad… you go diagonally, then you go left. And you don’t sit still if you let go of the control pad, you have to hit A to stop. And then you have to hit A again to fall to the ground and walk around like normal. Which is all very weird. But you can jump REALLY high, so that’s cool. There’s a side view, where you can fly, like what I was just talking about, and there’s a top view, where you walk around inside of buildings and stuff. You can’t fly though, but you can jump, which is pretty useless. What’s cool about this game is the sheer amount of fun crazy bonus rooms you can go into. I’ve found the “fly-around-and-break-crates-for-a-while” fun bonus room, and the “jump-around-on-these-tiles-but-they-break-after-you-jump-off-so-you-can-only-jump-on-each-tile-once” fun bonus room. And sometimes at the end of these rooms you can earn neat stuff, like new weapons or weapon upgrades. Sure beats your crappy punch."

• Release Date: January 20, 1992
• Developer: Irem