The GameBoy Advance has had a lot of amazing and unforgettable games. But amidst all of these amazing titles stands a forgotten Hideo Kojima game — a unique and intriguing, and fun game titled, Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand.
The concept is as indulgent as a Kojima game could ever be: you play as young vampire hunter Django (named after a famed spaghetti Western hero) who fights immortals with a solar-powered gun. Like your namesake, you drag bosses into a solar pile driver in a coffin.
So what makes this game unique? Embedded in the cartridge is a solar sensor for, well, detecting sunlight, and that’s what makes the game unique: actual, real-life sunlight affects your gameplay experience, as sunlight affects in-game events. For example…
Some indoor levels have skylights that let the light in, for instance, a feature you could only discover if sunlight was striking the cartridge's solar sensor...
Some puzzles required you to track your position by the direction of Django's shadow—which could only be seen under real-world sunlight. Others required you to bend the fourth wall by flipping your GBA upside-down to see through illusions. Some sections even required you to block sunlight from hitting the cartridge with your hand in order to deactivate traps or trick bosses.
This would mean that you need to play the game at daytime if you want to have that full, gameplay experience. That, or you could just cheat the sensor with a backlight.
It indeed was a unique game. Unfortunately, unlike other Hideo Kojima games, this lacked in popularity for many reasons, and eventually became a forgotten classic. But for people who have had the chance to play this game in their childhood, like Jean-Karlo Lemus’s story in Ars Technica, this was an unforgettable Hideo Kojima game.
(Image Credit: Konami/ Ars Technica)