A playthrough of KID's 1999 Japan-only action/racing game for the Sony PlayStation, Pepsiman.
Played through on the normal difficulty level. The entire game is also in English, making it nice and import-friendly.
Pepsiman (ペプシマン) is yet another one of those completely bizarre games that we never received in the West. It features Pepsiman, the Japanese Pepsi superhero mascot, coming to the rescue of helpless, parched Pepsi-loving victims of circumstance. A delivery truck breaks down and people are waiting? Oh no! People are trapped in a burning building and emergency services can't get to them? Ahh! These scenarios and more await our intrepid capitalistic champion of high fructose corn syrup. It's pretty surreal.
It plays likes Temple Run except that it's not endless, and each level has cans that you can collect to unlock features like different costumes and the expert mode. It plays surprisingly well - there are no problems at all with the controls, but God is this game difficult. I really practiced a ton before recording this: the last two stages are absolutely brutal. Like NES-era hard. It's all pretty enjoyable though once you take a break from raging.
The graphics are really nice and sharp - surprisingly so for a PS1 game - and the music is quite the novelty. Granted, every tune is a remix of the mascot's theme song, but you get it in all sorts of styles. I'm a big fan of the boss stage dubstep/rave mix. The lyrics... or lyric, to be more exact, is pretty hysterical. Every five seconds you'll hear it singing, "Pepsiman!" That's about it, really.
I don't particularly like the video clips though. That man that is (I guess) representing America is pretty thoroughly offputting. He reinforces loads of hilarious stereotypes, but he just makes me cringe in an, "Ugh, that's nauseating," kind of way. His Japanese-friendly English lines are pretty damned funny though. Pepsi for Pizza! and Pepsi for TV game! Made me laugh. And his shirt had me in stitches every time I saw it. He's reminds me of Roseanne Barr in that he's funny, but he's also a thoroughly embarrassing ambassador for a nation of over 300 million people.
So, it's not just a completely odd advertising vehicle, but Pepsiman is legitimately a pretty good game.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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