Sanrio Timenet: Kako-hen (Game Boy Color, Japanese Import) - Authentic Imagineer Hello Kitty Monster RPG, Tested

When Sanrio did Pokémon

In the middle of the Pokémon boom, Sanrio made its own monster RPG: Sanrio Timenet, published by Imagineer in November 1998 as two versions at once, Kako-hen (Past) and Mirai-hen (Future), each with its own monsters. Catch them with Get Cards, teach them skills, battle and trade over a link cable. Japanese Wikipedia is blunt about how closely the items and mechanics follow Pokémon. This cart is the Past version.

The Time Pillar has broken and split the world into past and future. Each version starts in its own era, the two meet in the middle, and finishing the game sets the present right.

Hello Kitty runs the shop

The Sanrio characters are the people you meet, not the monsters you catch. My Melody, Keroppi, Pochacco, Tuxedo Sam and Bad Badtz-Maru turn up across the two versions, and Hello Kitty runs the healing stations and shops. The one Sanrio character you can catch is Hangyodon, the fish-man, who is also the final boss, powering up from Hangyodon to Great Hangyo to Hangyodon Robo.

The scenario writer, credited as Sakuramaru Yamada, is Kazuki Sakuraba, who won the Naoki Prize, one of Japan’s top literary awards, ten years later.

About the Japanese

It is a story RPG in Japanese with no English version, on a black dual-mode cart that plays on an original Game Boy too. A Hello Kitty game for Sanrio collectors, or for anyone collecting the Pokémon era’s stranger branches; the others in the shop are Medarot, Devil Children and Pokémon Card GB.