The 1001 book that I'm going through for all these wonderful games doesn't always show any images from those games, and the pictures it does show are often one of the first sights you'll see in the game, as though they've only played a game for twenty minutes. Which is fine, by the way. I don't want spoiler images, do I? But if you're going to use an image, wouldn't you use one that's representative of the game as a whole?
So how do you sum up a weird action-platformer boss-rush about a girl and her manipulative scarf? How do you sum up Stretch Panic in a single image? Even the screenshot above doesn't sum it up. It's going to need some explaining...
Fun Times
From the start, Stretch Panic makes very little sense and makes even less so as it goes on. You star as an unusual little girl whose sisters get kidnapped, I think, by a nefarious box or gate or something. They're turned into monstrous beings, and it is up to you and your scarf to save them.
You're dropped face first into the hub world, clawed scarf wrapped around your neck. You have 0 points, an empty star, an eyeball thing and no idea what on Earth you need to do, but here are the controls: the left stick moves your feet, the right stick moves your scarf, L1 locks on/resets the camera and R1 grabs whatever is close enough for the scarf to grab.
So you slowly wobble around this place and see what you can interact with. A giant golden bell is a first obvious choice, and it comically stretches in ways bells just shouldn't do. With a whip and a crack, the bell is rung, and the screen fades into...
... what the... is that what I think it is?
Holy Mother of God it is. What in the absolute hell have I been pointed towards by this 1001 list? Did it mention anything like this? No. No, it hasn't mentioned this at all. I need to back out of here and find some kind of game...
Six doors line the room, and in Super Mario 64 style, they're locked behind a points system, and I've not yet found any points. The 'EX' door is plucked open without any trouble, so wherever it leads probably has a bunch of points, and hopefully some gameplay mechanics to find them.
Well, this is simple, but it's progress. Now, where are the points?
Gosh. Ok. This is a thing, then. This is Stretch Panic. Is this going to be the image to sum it up as a game?
No, God, no. No, it isn't. There are better alternatives. My animated scarf is grabbing physically impossible breasts. Please tell me there is a point to this.
There are points somewhere in these things. Lord, I hope there are other ways to score points...
And now she's using her breasts as a helicopter, of course she is.
Frustrations
Moving around this relatively featureless level is slow, both in terms of actually moving your character and in getting the camera to show you what you want to see. Once a target is in view, locking onto it will reveal a weak point that you can grab onto with your scarf, before stretching it, or plucking it, or slapping it, or just somehow manipulating it until you get a single point.
You use your scarf to fling yourself across the level, too, by grabbing the earth and shaking the right stick a bit - at least, that's how I got things to work. There's no tutorial that I've seen. This is very much a weird playground to explore, though there's nothing much to find right now. Just what is the point of this game?
Heading back to the hub, I wondered what was behind one of the doors.
Further Fun Times
The answer is one of my sisters turned into a ridiculous boss in need of being defeated so that her spirit can be saved or something. This is the meat of the game: boss fights. Fights were you run around a giant robot, in this case, looking for a weak spot to pluck with your scarf for maximum damage.
You can sort of slap and pinch for some light damage, but can also firmly grab something and then waggle the stick until you are flung headfirst into your target, for 100% damage. Why it's a percentage, I don't know, because both you and the boss have health represented by stars, which fill up as each hit comes in. You've got closer to 1000%, rendering the percentages silly, is what I'm saying.
If you manage to get a weak spot directly, you speed the fight up - handy when the camera is garbage - but if you press L3 and R3, provided you have 5 points available, you unleash some sort of super attack, where an extra two arms come out of your scarf and slap the crap out of the target.
Yeah, I don't blame you if you don't know what's going on from the images. The camera is that bad, and the HUD doesn't exactly help either.
Eventually, I saved my sisters' soul and was dolloped back into the hub world, face first, as always. With one point remaining, I opened another door to another boss fight. I mean it when I say they're the meat of Stretch Panic, they're everywhere.
This one saw a bunch of... worshippers?... distracting me from slapping the innocence out of someone who just wants to sing, it seems, but who turns rather nasty as time goes on. It took a while for me to find a useful way to deal damage, and I know for sure it wasn't the way the fight is intended to go, but I got the job done before I was done in myself.
Except, actually, I didn't. While I defeated the boss, I didn't save my sisters' soul because I didn't perform my super duper attack. The one that costs 5 points. Each time you use it. Whether you defeat the boss or not.
I'd literally have to farm points from impossibly proportioned women to spend them slapping nightmarish creatures with my scarf.
What the hell is Stretch Panic trying to achieve here?
Final Word
What can I say that hasn't already been said by countless YouTubers reviewing weird Japanese games? Stretch Panic takes interesting manipulation mechanics but has you grabbing ridiculously proportioned breasts. Why?
You could point to the 'story' which has something to do with vanity, and the sisters' sole interest in life to be beautiful, but it's still ridiculous. You could point out that you need something obvious to grab on to and understand the mechanics, but that's a stretch, and hey, stretching's a mechanic too, but seriously, that's bloody ridiculous.
The 1001 entry makes zero references to this. The closest it gets is when it says that 'the great joy of Stretch Panic is ... pinching the flesh of the game's bizarre bosses, twanging them where it really hurts.' It then immediately sums up the game, though: 'It's quite unlike anything else available.'
Stretch Panic defies expectations. It is pure nonsense. It's technologically... alright... if a little fiddly to control and get to grips with. Above all, it is different. Is that enough to warrant a look, and time playing it? No. You ought to play Stretch Panic because of the whole scarf thing, not because of the jiggle physics. Though I am aware that the two are very much entwined here.
I have only a passing interest in seeing the other bosses, but I've no interest in working for it. Stretch Panic can go back on the shelf for a long time.
Fun Facts
Aside from 'action', 'platform', 'video game' and 'Treasure Co. Ltd.' being links to Wikipedia pages, there is just one other linked word in the main body of the Stretch Panic Wikipedia entry: 'breasts'.
Stretch Panic, developed by Treasure, first released in 2001.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2001, via emulation.