In Antarctic Adventure, you play as Penta the Penguin who is tasked to run through Antartica to various "Stations" held/owned/run by various countries. Along his/her way, (s)he must jump holes in the ice, avoid the water, catch fish, grab flags, and avoid Sea Lions that pop out of the holes in the ice. You have a timer and have to make it to the Station before the time runs out or it's game over. It's basically a "racer" that mixes in some "platform" elements. Penta and it's child Pentoru became the early mascots of Konami before Castlevania came around (1985-1986ish).

Maybe it's the middle-aged me talking but this game always was a little funny, actually anything involving penguins to me is a bit funny, because of how around 1993 or 1994, my mom apparently started seeing Penguins all over the place, and designated it as "1994 is the year of the Penguin" - so the year of the Penguin became a somewhat funny in-joke for awhile. It also did not help that me and my wife took a trip to Europe and visited Holland, stayed with her friends with some small children, and in between episodes of the low-key nightmare fuel that is Barbarapappa (aka, uncanny kids shows), we got the other uncanny nightmare fuel in the form of a penguin named "Pingu!" - man, I love Pingu! Seriously, a stop animation kids show with a creepy seal, walking beds, and pissing every-freakin where....LOL!!

So coming back on track, Naturally I'd like a game like this where we play as a Penguin that dons a propeller hat and runs around jumping over seals, and also plays like a driving game. That's kind of why I like it, it is surprisingly immersive for an older Famicom title. Out of the three, the Famicom version is my favorite, it just controls the best of the three. It sort of sits in this happy zone between the Atari 2600 games that are goofey simple, and the earlier black-box NES stff that's a hair more complex, but still fairly simple compared to say, oh, Super Mario Bros. 3 or Dragon Warrior/Quest IV.

I bought the Famicom cartridge on E-bay in July 2024 while we were shopping at Target and I was getting a little irritated at standing around with a hurt knee. I saw a copy for about...$14 including shipping total, and got it home....and of course, it did not work at first. I think the previous owner tried to clean it or something and put the PCB in backwards. It was pretty corroded inside as well. I cleaned it up using some 1000 grit sandpaper and acetone and it's clean as new.