I took the bus into town to buy LocoRoco when it first came out for the PSP, back in – crikey! – 2006. I remember this because I took the bus home, too. And I remember because halfway through the trip, a grey day with low clouds and the promise of rain, I briefly pulled the LocoRoco box out of the bag to take a look at it – and it was like the sun had risen, all of a sudden, on the top deck of a 46 to deepest Hove.
LocoRoco still has this magic. It still , as interior designers like to put it. The hero of the game is a blob of yellow , that glorious, heroic yellow that I think might be called Yolk in the paint catalogues. They have a dinky little emoticon face. They roll around colourful 2D landscapes collecting other blobs, and then either moving on as a rushing, bubbling, babbling gang, or coming together to form larger blobs. A to B over glorious ’70s wallpaper terrain, singing the whole time. LocoRoco could not be happier.
LocoRoco Remastered – Launch Trailer | PS4 Watch on YouTube
The controls are beautiful. Just looking at screenshots now, 14 years after I first fired it up, I can remember the feel of the PSP triggers as you tilt the screen left or right to roll LocoRoco around or press both down to make them jump. The levels are made to be turned in your hand this way – they look bucolic but they’re actually pretty mechanical. Up and down you rock them, back and forth, as you coax LocoRoco to the next goal.