Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand Review

The hook is hardware. There is a solar sensor in the cartridge, and the gun you use to destroy the undead runs on light it genuinely measures from the sky around you. Playing at night or in winter or through a window meaningfully changes what you can do, and the endgame requires charging the weapon in real sunlight to finish off bosses permanently. It is one of the most literal marriages of a physical object and a game design anyone has attempted.

Underneath the gimmick sits a competent top-down stealth action game, with dungeons that mix light puzzles, coffin hauling and enemies only vulnerable when exposed, all built on the same instincts as the designer's better known work. The problems are obvious in hindsight. The sensor degrades with age, the design punishes anyone living somewhere overcast, and modern rereleases have to simulate the very thing that made it special. As a game it is good rather than great. As an artifact of a period when a designer could get a peripheral built into every copy, it is unrepeatable.