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Playing this game has made me realize something that average video game playing has not: the sun is really bright! And hot! It’s, what, 150 million kilometers away? Where’s all of that heat coming from? I mean, it’s not like the sun has a fusion core or anything! Oh wait.

Boktai: The Sun is Rather Astoundingly Bright is a solar powered game. Not to say that it runs off of light, but instead requires that you “collect” it’s energy for use in the game. Specifically, for the vanquishing of the undead with the Gun del Sol, a weapon that focuses sunlight into a powerful beam. The sun hitting the system enters the game via a small solar sensor on the back of the cartridge, which sticks out from behind the Game Boy a bit. It will work with either model GBA, but is more convenient when placed in the top of the original. Also, the GBA looks perfect in direct sunlight, negating the need for the back light. More also, my shiny platinum SP creates a constant, annoying glare that I can do without.

Even with the bright SoCal sun beating down on Boktai: This Game Should Come With Sunblock, the in-game meter that shows the sun’s brightness never fills up all of the way. What would it take to max it out, a super-nova? And there’s no tricking this thing, either. Lamps won’t work, so you’ve got to play outside (actually, at a friend’s house I tried the game under a heat lamp they have for their lizards and got one bar on the meter to fill in, roughly the same as a very overcast day, and not nearly enough to effectively play the game).

You may be thinking that this game is just a ploy to get kids to go outside once in a while, but there’s another side to Boktai: Skin Cancer is a Small Price to Pay. While the sun is your main weapon against the undead minions (where I would prefer a shotgun or perhaps a chainsaw or perhaps both) it can be your enemy as well, allowing foes to detect your position through a devious technique known as “seeing you.” And thus a stealth element is introduced. You may think that it came out of nowhere, except you’re forgetting that the game was designed by acclaimed Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima. Or possibly you never knew. Or cared. If you’re anything like me, you fall into the last category. I owned MGS for about a week and a half before I got bored with crawling around on my stomach and sold it back, but not before I made everyone laugh by running away from gunmen while hiding under a cardboard box. Good times. That doesn’t explain where I was headed with this paragraph, though, and to be honest even I’ve forgotten, so let’s just call it a day.