Tang Tang - Every Masterpiece has it's Cheap Copy...

24/03/25

Huh. It’s not surprising that there are a number of Game Boy Advance games that are essentially rip-offs of previous, more successful puzzle arcade games… but the fact I played two of them, back to back, without even meaning to is a hell of coincidence. I should go buy a lottery ticket. I’d liked to say Tang Tang was a better game than Wacky Stackers, but whilst Wacky Stackers was ‘simply’ a boring, mediocre, but acceptable clone of Puyo Puyo, Tang Tang feels like a unashamed reproduction of a much stronger, better-made game - and the fact that it’s issues are so much more intrinsic leaves behind such an inherently flawed game.

Oof, Tang Tang is a weird one. From what I can gather - though I struggled to find any hard developmental sources - Tang Tang is essentially a reskin of Tecmo's arcade/NES classic, Solomon’s Key, released onto South Korean arcades in 2000 as Tang Tang. The game would later come to the USA the next year, published bizarrely enough by Take-Two Interactive, best known for owning Rockstar Games. For all intents and purposes, Tang Tang is exactly the same game as Solomon’s Key, sans a handful of aesthetic changes, feeling like a very ‘legally distinct’ kind of deal.

Tang Tang is a very simple game, keeping with its roots as an arcade game and a reproduction of another arcade game. Levels consist of various layouts of blocks, with each block around the size of your character, and inhabited by a number of creatures who’ll blow you to smithereens from a single touch. You play as one of four little Bomberman-esque guys, who in most of these single-screen levels must collect a number of coins to open the door to the next stage. Your Little Guy has an extremely limited, but somewhat adaptable moveset; you can jump around one block upwards and two to the side, and by holding Down and the A button, can fire a limited amount of projectiles as a kind of ‘get out of jail free card’ when you find yourself cornered. You’ll only get three of them per world - which consists of five levels a piece - so make those shots count.

But the core gameplay element that sets Tang Tang - or rather, it’s inspirations - apart is the ability for your Little Guy to create blocks, both for the act of platforming and to defend yourself from the various creatures hellbent on blowing you to the aforementioned smithereens. In that sense, each level is its own little puzzle with the same handful of steps - how do I get the coins to unlock the exit? What’s the best way to avoid enemies? Am I putting myself into *more* danger by jumping or placing a block here? It’s a nice little puzzler of a kind I hadn’t played before.

After completing the five stages in each ‘world’, your Little Guy will have to take on one of five different bosses, where you now have the ability to fire your gun without any real limits, weaving between the boss's pattern based movements and attacks, and essentially shoot them until they're dead. Whilst nice as a change of pace, these stages really feel at odds with the rest of Tang Tang; the block-based gameplay and platforming feels almost ancillary to just blasting through these bosses as quickly as possible. They’re not even challenging in the slightest, especially after you work out their movement patterns. They’re fine - just really forgettable.

At its very core, I like playing Tang Tang’s main puzzle-platformer levels. There’s something satisfying about using the block mechanics to build your way around a stage, blocking out enemies and their projectiles and all that jazz. I kind of wish it didn’t have a ~100 second time limit on its stages, as the game puts a lot of emphasis on planning out your path, your strategy. But with the time limit - likely a hold-over from the game’s arcade version - there’s always an element of panic and the need to go faster and faster which makes the game feel like it’s at odds with itself - especially when you get into the later, more complicated stages. When everything works, it’s really good! Managing to sneak through a sea of projectiles without firing a shot, just blocking and dodging rules - it’s just a shame it was so rare that the game really came together that way. It’s satisfying in that old-school arcade way - funny that - that the game works as a bit of a time-waster, but after the first few runs, the cracks begin to show in regards to the game’s overall quality and sense of longevity.

To start with, the game isn’t particularly honest with its amount of content; despite the game touting having over 120 levels, this is a white lie at best. Realistically, the game’s level count is closer to 30, but depending on which of the four characters you choose, the general aesthetics and minor details of the levels will change, along with altering the order you fight each of the game’s six bosses. Additionally, whilst the base mechanics and obstacles you’ll encounter are fine, there isn’t a gigantic amount of variety on display - you’ll have enemies floating back and forth, projectiles to block and dodge, but they never quite do anything truly amazing with Tang Tang’s base mechanics. These are more nit-picky complaints, but the game begins to diverge even from this sad, yet acceptable mediocrity.

Sometimes the game won’t work and will just ignore your inputs; multiple times I’d try to throw down a block to deflect an enemy’s approach; sometimes with multiple spaces to spare, I’d hit the right inputs or whatnot, and… nothing would happen. I’d just stand there as the enemy soared into me, and bang, another life gone. The game’s reliance on treating it’s bullet system as a ‘last resort’ is confusing, as many enemies feel designed to be removed from the puzzle, but if you’ve used all of them in the first or second stage, sometimes you’re just shit out of luck and have to kind of brute force your way through levels, dying a few times along the way. In regards to how the game feels, the most baffling control decision is easily that of the ‘shoot’ button; the game otherwise doesn’t utilize the Game Boy Advance’s shoulder buttons whatsoever, so the fact you have to make a decently complex combo input - at least, when you’re trying to build blocks and deal with foes at the same time - when a simple tap of the L or R button would suffice is just utterly insane to me.

It’s these limitations - both inherent to the game, and bizarrely enforced by the developers - that really hurts Tang Tang. I saw some reviews refer to this game as being decently easy, and whilst I didn’t find it ridiculously difficult, wrestling with the controls and some of the jankier elements of the game led to a decent amount of game overs. Now, despite the game both having a Continue game option AND warning you that selecting New Game will reset your progress… no matter which you click, you’ll be starting over from the very start of the game, regardless. Now, it’s not a very long game - a good run will take you between half an hour and forty five minutes - but there’s certainly a bit of a learning curve that running out of lives and having to go back through the same amount of stages again and again is not fun. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even have this complaint if the Continue ‘option’ existed and then I’d just treat it as the arcade title it is, but why put it in if it doesn’t work!? Is it a bug? Is it an oversight? Either way, it sucks, and confusing to boot. In regards to how the game feels, the most baffling control decision is easily that of the ‘shoot’ button; the game otherwise doesn’t utilize the Game Boy Advance’s shoulder buttons whatsoever, so the fact you have to make a decently complex combo input - at least, when you’re trying to build blocks and deal with foes at the same time - when a simple tap of the L or R button would suffice is just utterly insane to me.

I do like how the game looks, though - it has a bit of a cheapish design to the whole thing, but something about the game’s general aesthetic and bright, contrasty colours really hits with me. I really dig the game’s backgrounds - shoutout to the Ice world, with the big snowflake-icicle thing floating about in the background. The backgrounds and general visual identity of Tang Tang gives the game a very cozy look to it, I kinda love it. The music, on the other hand, is very forgettable, with only a single song for each of the game’s worlds, and each of these are so simple that I genuinely had to google a Let’s Play to confirm it wasn’t just a singular, repetitive song playing the entire game over. It’s not bad! Just… completely forgettable, and those six or so songs might as well be a singular song.

There’s some fun to be had in Tang Tang, but there’s nothing here that you won’t find in the objectively superior Solomon’s Key, and the myriad of weird design decisions and potential bugs - chiefly the lack of an actual Continue Game option - just further drag the game down. Even once you’ve mastered its interesting gameplay premise, it lacks the amount of content, nor playtime to really stick with it for any real amount of time. Come here if you want a puzzle-platformer unlike anything else, but unless the game really speaks to you, Tang Tang just be gazed at as a curiosity, nothing more.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Tang Tang on the Game Boy Abyss! Man, we’re inching towards that big one hundred mark; I think it’s a pretty easy goal to hit that by the end of the year, though I’d like to review a few more games than that! As always, you can find me over on BlueSky and Twitch at GameBoyAbyss, and email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com and cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any requests or questions! Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next time!