Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue

Hello Kitty protects Sanrio Town from the Block alien invasion

NA release: 16th August 2005
EU release: 9th September 2005
JP release: N/A
Developer: XPEC Entertainment
Publisher: Namco (NA) Empire (EU)
NGC Magazine Score: 60%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

Hello Kitty is a cartoon cat that took a lot of inspiration from Miffy the rabbit and is probably the most successful marketing campaign in existence. Despite no notably popular media, it’s a global merchandise phenomenon. Of course, they still made some media to cash in on its success, it’s just none of it is that well known.

Roller Rescue is a low budget video game based on Hello Kitty (it was strangely a GameCube exclusive in America and a PS2 exclusive in Japan – but fully multiplatform in Europe), and involves wooden block aliens invading her town, it’s up to Hello Kitty to fight those aliens while her family just sits at home. You’re probably expecting a cute 3D platformer to follow on from this story, but this game subverted my expectations: Hello Kitty Roller Rescue is a beat-’em-up.

You have a few basic moves and combos, as well as a special attack that kills all on-screen enemies. In each area, there will be a few types of enemies, including little cube enemies that do nothing but run away and cower – but Hello Kitty still needs to curbstomp them – no prisoners taken from this vicious cat. On some levels you can have a partner with you, but they’re so bad at following you that they’ll teleport to your side every five seconds (the sound gets annoying).

If you’re wondering about the whole rollerskating part of the game: it has zero impact on anything. Hello Kitty moves as though she’s on food, turning and jumping with no issues. My only guess is that the developers struggled with making a walking animation so just put rollerskates on Hello Kitty to avoid it.