Diet Go Go

Think of a cross between Bubble Bobble, Snow Bros and Rod-Land and you might, just might get an insight into the sheer lunacy that was Data East’s Diet Go Go.

Like many other single screen platformers of the time, the aim of the game was relatively simple: clear all the enemies from each stage and pick up any goodies that they left behind. Unlike its peers though, Diet Go Go placed you in the lycra-cladded bodysuits of two Japanese teenagers who were desperately trying to avoid putting on weight.

The outrageously cute duo would jump around the screen and bombard their foes with what looked like small pink apples. When an enemy was hit, it would immediately start expanding in size and would slowly begin to rise to the top of the screen. Jump into it and the deflated foe would zoom around the level taking out any monsters that were foolish enough to get in its way.

Of course, your numerous foes – many of which were nauseatingly cute – were far from defenceless and would bombard you with a variety of food. Should any of it hit you, your cute teen would immediately gain weight and lose a considerable amount of speed; getting hit again would cause you to lose one of your three lives. Enemies could still kill you with a single touch though, so it was always best to avoid them all together – although this in itself was far from easy due to the sheer number of them on-screen.

Eventually you’d reach an extremely memorable boss that often came equipped with a variety of interesting attacks. An oversized crab, cute vampire and a giant wooden marionette were just a few of the highlights, but many more wackier foes lay in wait, providing of course that you were skilled enough to reach them.Diet Go Go may not have been a well-known arcade game and we’ve never seen a home conversion of it, but that’s just made the experience of playing it all the more sweeter for us.