Pikachu5 is a platformer where you must switch between five different Pokémon, each with their own unique ability, in order to pass obstacles.
The game is more commonly seen as generic reskins, such as Gardman and Wonder Rabbit. Its original Pikachu form had not been properly found until surfacing on a random unlicensed PlayStation 5-shaped console ("Retro Station NX-85") in 2022.
Unused Graphics#
A few unused sprites of Pikachu, Nuzleaf, and Combusken. Pikachu appears to be climbing, Nuzleaf attacking, and Combusken jumping (as opposed to flying), actions which those respective characters cannot perform in-game. These graphics are intact in most reskinned variants.
The Pokémon icons from Pikachu5 are still present in the data of Wonder Rabbit, Five Kids, and Monster Brother unused. Ironically, this was the main indication of the games' Pikachu origin prior to it actually emerging.
Revisional Differences#
Pikachu5 |
Gardman |
Wonder Rabbit |
|---|---|---|
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Diveman |
Monster Brother |
Five Kids |
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There are five known reskinned variants of the game:
- Gardman (换装人 Huànzhuāng Rén, "Clothes-changing Person") replaces all characters with men wearing helmets. Two variants are known: one on a 72-in-1 multicart with the cartridge code XB805 without any cutscenes, and one on a standalone 60-pin cartridge from Shenzhen Nanjing Technology (cartridge code NJ053). The multicart variant has empty CHR data whose tiles are arranged in the nametable such that it would display "NATURE COLOR GAME" along with the TWCS logo, both belonging to Nice Code. Only Nanjing's version adds new cutscene graphics with Chinese text, doubling the ROM size from 256 KiB to 512 KiB in the process; this is actually a common treatment from Nanjing on previous games by Nice Code staff, such as Primitive Man and Primitive Woman getting cutscenes in their Nanjing versions (Primitive and Primitive II).
- Wonder Rabbit and Diveman, released by Power Joy Ltd. on their later "Power Joy"-branded plug-and-play consoles such as the Power Joy Navigator, with Wonder Rabbit additionally seeing wide distribution on dreamGEAR plug-and-play consoles. Splitting up the game's four levels across two titles, Wonder Rabbit, changing the characters into five rabbits, contains levels 1 and 2, while Diveman reuses the character graphics from Gardman (and has a rather badly-replaced skull on the title screen) and contains levels 3 and 4. Both variants drop the original cutscenes from Pikachu5 completely.
- Diveman itself has a version that removes the title screen that is more commonly seen in the plug-n-plays that include it.
- Monster Brother and Five Kids, released by Fuzhou Waixing Science and Technology on various plug-and-play consoles and multicarts, similarly split up the game's four levels across two titles: Monster Brother, keeping all characters from Pikachu5 except for Pikachu itself, contains levels 1 and 2, while Five Kids uses modified character graphics from Gardman/Diveman for levels 3 and 4. Both variants also completely drop the Pikachu5 cutscenes.
- Monster Brother has an earlier version with no copyright notice on its title screen, and a later version with a Chinese copyright office registration number, stealing tiles that had been previously used to spell "Monster", so it just says "Brother 2007SR02108".