It’s hard to come at the king. Many have tried to one-up Mario in the realm of mascot platformers, yet most contenders gave up long before the PlayStation 2, let alone the PSP. Who would be so out of their mind as to charge headlong into a genre many believed was all but dead on anything outside Nintendo’s catalog? Backbone Entertainment and Konami, that’s who! Out of a scrapped Spyro spin-off came a cult classic series of adorably edge 3D platformers with more bite than the Jersey Devil.
Death Jr. stars its titular protagonist (DJ for short), the middle school student heir apparent to the Grim Reaper. His best friends are other horror homages, including Pandora of Greek Myth, conjoined mad scientists, an unborn experiment in a jar, and (an implied formerly crucified) girl who’s pretty chill about having holes in her hands. Oh, and Dead Guppy. We can’t forget Dead Guppy…
Together, this band of misfits are left to navigate the truest horror of all: public school. It’s a very Grimm Adventures of Billy & Mandy sort of tale, with a field trip gone wrong ripping a hole in reality that DJ has to undo if he wants to avoid being sent to military school. Plus, every one one of DJ’s friends is in mortal peril – even Dead Guppy – if he doesn’t act fast.
Beyond that, the story is fairly forgettable, if amusingly tongue-in-cheek, with mild attempts at swearing on top of grizzly, stylized gore. You go through stages at your own pace, unlocking new tools and weapons as you navigate twisted alternate realities full of cartoonish demons. Nothing truly horrifying, but there’s plenty Samurai Jack-tier viscera going on, looking just monstrous and low-poly enough to skirt by the ESRB ratings board, C4-laden hamsters and all. The same goes for DJ’s arsenal of guns and his scythe, leaning into the Ratchet & Clank side of things. It fits the image of the PSP at the time as the ‘grown-up’ alternative to the kid-friendly Nintendo DS, even if that attempt at maturity is intensely adolescent.
Despite clearly pushing up against a tight budget and the PSP’s hardware limitations, Death Jr. plays incredibly well. That’s no small feat, especially considering the PSP had two fewer triggers and only a single analog nub that has to pull double duty for movement and aiming. Thankfully, the camera system opts for one of the better PS1 styles, letting you rotate it left and right, while embracing a hefty dose of auto-aim with your guns while you strafe around. Nothing comes close to the scythe in terms of utility though – equal parts a platforming marvel and a deadly weapon in the heat of combat. Your scythe lets you double jump, glide, wall-jump, hang from hooks, and mantle over ledges.
DJ’s Reaper heritage comes into play whenever you need to break open a gateway. Rather than going on a collect-a-thon for items, you gather the souls of your enemies, expending them to clear passages. Combat is never particularly taxing in normal encounters, but there are some late-game stages and boss fights that will have you clinging to your last (after)life. Putting it lightly, the bosses are just as twisted as the rest of the game, with a literal meatgrinder of a slaughterhouse duel in particular being so absurd that it lives up to the level’s name ‘Udder Madness’, as you can see below. Rotary gun udders, spare ribs as cover – Death Jr. always goes for whatever it sets out for, however bewildering the ride may be.
This dedication to the bit is what makes Death Jr. so endearing, regardless of how adolescent it may be. It’s like Dreamworks back in its Shrek era – it’s dumb, crass fun, but it’s well-made dumb, crass fun. Sure, there’s nothing here that wouldn’t feel out of place in Hot Topic, but the grumpy cartoon aesthetic works, in particular thanks to its pulpy, retro-horror art style. In fact, it works so well that there were bold, ambitious plans for Death Jr. Comics by gothic comic maestro Ted Naifeh and Rogue One’s Gary Whitta, and even film rights were tossed around, sadly never coming to fruition.
Yet Death Jr. wasn’t over quite yet. The seeds of success had been planted, and soon spread from Sony’s handheld to the realm of Nintendo – but that’s a story for another day.