Cocoron

Cocoron is a Nintendo Entertainment System game released in 1991 by Takeru Entertainment.

You are brought into a world of dreams by a Dancing Tapir named Tapir. He informs you that Princess Rua has been kidnapped by Evil Forces, and you are the only one who can save her. However, what starts as a simple Save the Princess Plot becomes a lot more once you realize the truth of the dream world...

This Game Contains Examples of...

 * All Just a Dream: Well, the game DOES take place in a Dream World...
 * Ambidextrous Sprite: Not just for characters and enemies, but attacks as well.
 * Back Tracking: You have to travel between each of the different areas several times, exploring all the paths so that.
 * Bottomless Pits: Common in the sky areas and the endgame.
 * Character Customization: With 24 head possibilities, 16 body possibilities, and 8 weapons, there's over 3,000 possible character combinations. On top of that, all the different heads, bodies, and weapons actually effect how the game is played, affecting how fast your character is and how many Hit Points they have.
 * Character Select Forcing: Certain body types have incredibly useful/important abilities.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Harvest Moon and Flint lose interest in killing you after you defeat them and become your allies. No such luck with Titania, Ice Dragon, or the Joker.
 * Difficulty Spike: One level has you navigate a place filled with cacti by jumping on flowers that open and shut. One mis-step or mis-jump lands you in Cacti that causes massive damage. If you don't have access to a flying character, this is beyond Nintendo Hard.
 * One consolation is that flowers do not close if you're standing on them. The jumps are still very hard anyway.
 * Damsel in Distress: Princess Rua, and also
 * Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Everything from Armadillos to Penguins.
 * Evolving Weapon: Your weapon becomes stronger as you collect powerups.
 * Jack of All Stats: Hero heads and Cyborg bodies strike a balance between HP and Weight.
 * Let's Play: By Deceased Crab
 * Level Ate: The Milk Sea is filled to the brim with various dairy products.
 * Mighty Glacier: Armor Bodies and Warrior Heads are strong and have loads of HP, but tend towards being extremely heavy and slow, making jumps a problem.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
 * No Export for You: This game was never released outside of Japan. In fact, almost the only way to play this game anymore is via Emulation. A Fan Translation of the ROM is available.
 * Nothing but Skulls: The area near Trump Castle.
 * Point of No Return: With the game's autosaving feature, once you've rescued the Princess and go to the Endgame, there's no turning back except by starting a new game.
 * Santa Claus: Has been frozen in a block of ice by the evil Ice Dragon. We did mention that this is a dream world, right?
 * Secondary Character Title: Strangely, the game is named after neither you or the princess you're trying to save. It's named after Cocoron, a fairy-like child who is also a captive. You don't even see him until the end; instead being advised by his brother Cocorin.
 * Shout-Out: One of the Jet bodies looks just like Astro Boy.
 * One of the heads looks like a Gundam.
 * Unmoving Plaid: The spots on Tapir's pajamas barely move when he does his little spin animation.
 * Vaporware: All that remains of the PC Engine version is a couple of pictures in a japanese games magazine.
 * Vaporware: All that remains of the PC Engine version is a couple of pictures in a japanese games magazine.