/vr/ - Retro Games

Kuru Kuru Marumaru is a driving sim with a unique, cartoony visual style that is very well-realized. You play as a teenage boy who wants to obtain his driver's license to impress girls, basically. Unfortunately the seemingly normal-looking driving school that he signs up for is a hellish training ground that will put him through fifteen dangerous challenges such as driving along a mountainside while avoiding falling boulders, venturing into underground caves, or even driving along the sea.

The game puts you in the driver's seat from the first-person perspective, so it is indeed closer to driving sims than racing games, and you'll need to get a hang of the controls before you can successfully pass even the basic tests. Obviously there is a dating sim element as well where you romance many girls that the protagonist is interested in; these are presented in neat visual novel-style character portrait dialogues along the main character's colorful hometown. Deciding which girl to prioritize will determine your ending once you clear the game, so while it's not terribly long, it does boast some replay value. Aside from the dating sim portions, Kuru Kuru Marumaru is playable without knowing Japanese. It also has a surprisingly large amount of voice acting for a PSX game.