Poinie's Poin is a 2002 Japanese-exclusive PlayStation 2 Platform Game, published by Sony Computer Entertainment.
The game takes place in the bright and colorful town of Jelly Town, which is full of colorful, bouncy floating orbs called poins. When ordinary people touch poins, it causes them to undergo a temporary and harmless change in emotions: Yellow poins cause happiness, blue poins cause sadness, and red poins cause anger. The hero, Poinie, is a hyperactive toddler who is pure (and, uh, stupid) of heart enough to be able to manipulate poins instead of being affected by them.
One day, Poinie wanders away from home, and, since he's a small child, he doesn't know how to get back. While looking for someone to help him, he discovers a girl named Lilin being chased by a girl named Lolo. Lolo is a bully who's using poisonous Poins to change the feelings of people all over Jelly Town. Now it's up to Poinie to use the Poins to change their feelings back... even if all he wants is help getting back home. He'll have the help of Lilin, a talking, duck-faced poin just called Poin, and all of Jelly Town's Eccentric Townsfolk.
The game is a 3D Puzzle Platformer where Poinie must use the Poins to help people who have had their emotions poisoned by Lolo. By changing the moods of the characters he meets, he can have an effect on the environment, such as causing an angry character to knock over a tree to make a bridge, or making a sad character cry on a plant to make it grow. The game also has a large focus on boss fights, which require the player to figure out what emotions to make a boss feel to "defeat" them.
Notably, despite being Japan-exclusive, the game contains a full English script and dub! The script was written and produced by the same team behind the Japanese dub of South Park, so there are a handful of surprisingly vulgar lines for what's clearly meant to be a game aimed at kids.
This game contains examples of:
- Adorable Evil Minions: Lolo's minions, the Hellneows, are adorable evil cats.
- Ambiguously Human: Just what is Poinie? He looks somewhat humanoid, but his lavender-colored skin and giant red nose make him look less so. Plus, there are several NPCs clearly meant to be humans, and Poinie doesn't look like them. It's eventually revealed that he's an alien.
- Boss Game: A downplayed example. There's plenty of platforming and a big hub world, but the boss fights are a big focus of the game.
- Cartoon Creature: Many of the inhabitants of Jelly Town are these. Poinie himself seems to be some kind of... clown person...? Not all, though.
- Catchphrase: The game is swimming in them.
- Poinie: "Yippee yo! You can't touch this!"
- Poin: "Hey, green! Either pee or get off the pot!"
- Lolo: "Nanny nanny boo boo!"
- Bon Jovie: "Love and Soul de Relax!"
- Cool Big Sis: Lilin, who helps Poinie learn to use poins and generally looks after him.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Poin (the character) is a living poin.
- Expy:
- Poin both sounds and acts like Cartman, which isn't surprising considering the Japanese South Park dub team did the English version.
- The way Pillow talks, in short, disconnected sentences, many of which are pop culture references, is very like that of the Butterfly from The Last Unicorn.
- Heart Container: Golden Eclairs increase Poinie's life bar.
- Kid Hero: Poinie is so young he can't even read and needs Poin to read signs for him, but he's still saving Jelly Town.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Pillow. Everyone thinks Pillow knows everything, and while it's true he does have some knowledge, if he doesn't know something, he'll blatantly make up an answer.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Jelly Town has Funny Animal residents (such as Pillow the duck and the Hellneows), human residents (such as Lilin and several NPCs), and Cartoon Creature residents, as well.
- Ocular Gushers: Characters using blue poins will often have these. In some puzzles, you even use them to fill puddles and water plants.
- Precision F-Strike: As mentioned above, there are a few instances of profanity in the dialogue that, considering the overall tone of the game, come across as extremely jarring to say the very least.Poin: I ain't playing wetnurse to some wetass, suckling, sucker.Tommy: Whooh, Poinie, your mom is bitchin'...Nasties: Just make poin yo' damn self./Watch 'yo damn self.
- Puzzle Boss: Many of the bosses have some puzzle elements, as you'll need to figure out the right-colored poins to hit them with to counter their emotions. But perhaps the most puzzly is Jack, who is angry because all the water in his lake dried up. Rather than defeat him, you must figure out how to refill his lake.
- Quirky Town: Jelly Town. Even without the poins floating around, the inhabitants aren't quite all there.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Poinie loves all kinds of donuts, but especially eclairs.
- Verbal Tic:
- The Henchies have one, oh yes they do. They always end their sentences with confirmations, oh yes they do.
- The Jungalians MOKYU have one, too!
