Binary Land is about a penguin couple navigating a maze to reach a caged heart. A simple enough premise, however the twist is that you control both Gurin and Malon at the same time. You get to pick which one you want to control of course, but the other penguin will reflect the chosen bird's movement. The maze is filled with spiders and cobwebs. Gurin and Malon are luckily armed with what I suppose is bug-spray, which will get rid of the spiders and cobweb. Later on, you will have to contend with Fireballs and Flying Birds. Fireballs act like spiders, but can not be defeated with the bug-spray. Flying Birds can swap the positions of the penguins, which can actually come in handy some times. There's a chance a random item can spawn in the maze. Some items just give you points, but one item, the whale, gives you invincibility. If one of your penguins ends up dying, you have to restart the level.
This game is rather simple and easy to play, even when it gets "harder" in the later levels. I only played the Famicom version, but apparently there are versions made for the other Japanese home computers at the time. The MSX version seems to make you play as two humans. I prefer the penguins instead, they have cute sprites. The game uses classical music, you'll mostly be listening to Je te veux by Erik Satie. Not a bad song and the rendition of it on the famicom sounds fine to me.
There are some secrets in Binary Land. Holding A+B on controller 1 and 2, then pressing reset puts the game into "Love Story" mode. This renames Gurin and Malon to Kiku and Megu. This is a reference to one of the programmers, Kikuta Masaaki. And I assume 'Megu' is a reference to his wife? You can also make the penguins have sex. Mashing them against eachother a bunch of times spawns a little penguin that runs around and destroys enemies. Yeah, having sex is a game mechanic here.
Do I recommend Binary Land? Yes. It's a good game to pick up and play to kill some time. It's not very mechanically deep nor does it give you much reason to go beyond like, level 10. But if you're on the bus, or sitting around with nothing better to do, this game would definitely help pass the time. Give it a shot if you're looking for a replacement for the many shitty phone games out there.
