Kuru Kuru Kururin has a very bizarre and dumb name, though it makes more sense once you know it describes the Japanese explaining of a sound for something twirling in the wind. I can see why it never officially made it to America, since it was only released in Japan and Europe, despite being published by Nintendo themselves for the Game Boy Advance in the early 2000s. Nintendo made it available a while back in the Nintendo Switch Online GBA catalog, so I decided to give it a try, and oh boy, was it not even close to what I was expecting.

Judging from the cover alone, I thought it was some kind of weird puzzle game. I was expecting something more like Mario’s Picross than anything else. Instead, I’m controlling some kind of weird duck-alien creature who has to fly a helicopter, of all things. Looking at the box art, never once did I imagine it was a helicopter.

It’s still a puzzle game of sorts, but all you see are the twirling blades, which don’t spin all that fast. The concept is relatively simple. You use the blades to move around, but you can’t hit the barriers. I opted for the easier mode with the shorter blades instead of the longer ones.

There are plenty of levels where you use the helicopter to navigate your way through and either clear the stage or rescue some of your family. Every level is unique, and there’s a good bit of variety here. It’s just not a great game for me, though, because even on easy mode, I found it more difficult and frustrating than it should be. Eventually, I hit a point I couldn’t get past, even with the rewind feature on Nintendo Switch Online to easily backtrack.

I can kind of see why this was a minor hit in Japan, but on the flip side, I can definitely see why Nintendo decided against releasing it in the United States. It probably would have sold maybe 10,000 copies at best here. I’m really glad I never picked it up for my GBA, even as an import.