Thank you ININ Games for sending us a review code!

Cotton 100% is based off of the 1994 side-scrolling shoot ‘em up, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams. This Switch remake offers a more vibrant color palette compared to the original Super Famicom version. Other enhancements like cheat codes and save states are available. In order to use the cheat codes you have to beat the game first which defeats the purpose, but ensures that you “git gud” at the game.

Sadly, in order to figure out the game’s premise you’ll have to rely on the Nintendo eShop page if you can’t read Japanese. I don’t know why this port hasn’t been translated. It’s hard to get into a game or attached to its characters if you can’t understand what they’re yammering about.

The story is as follows: the world has fallen into darkness and the fairy, Silk is looking for help. A young witch named Cotton has no interest in helping her, until her favorite candy (willows) are promised as a reward. In order to get to her sweet rewards, Cotton has to shoot down hordes of monsters and bosses across seven stages. At the end of each stage is teatime where she’ll have to try and catch as many falling tea bags as possible.

Many of the enemies will make appearances throughout the games. The flying eyeballs are in every stage. If you’re hoping not to see certain enemies like the archer or beam shooting toads again after completing a stage, you’ll be disappointed when you see them in later levels. Each stage has a mid-level boss and an ending boss, all of them are unique. Many of them I was happy not to see again after beating them. The final boss is quite challenging so you’ll want to have plenty of lives/credits to spare before confronting her.

Before launching the campaign, it’s worth checking out the configuration menu to increase the number of lives you get per credit. Unfortunately, there is a maximum of three credits, but you can get up to nine lives per credit if you set it as such. Once all of the lives and continues are spent the game will end. Extra lives can be found in many of the stages, so keep an eye out for them.

Save states are great and I made a save state for each stage I cleared without losing any lives. This method can save you from replaying levels that you have already mastered and gives you more time to perfect your strategies on the harder stages.

When launching the game, you can choose between multiple difficulty levels and attack/magic configurations. The star magic spell does significant damage to the bosses and in some cases will one-hit kill them. Some of the bosses are relatively easy and not worth wasting this spell on as you have a limited number of uses.

Overall, Cotton 100% is as much fun as Cotton Reboot! which I recently played and reviewed. That entry is well polished, fun, translated, and forty dollars. Cotton 100% is just $15 but without the translation, it’s a missed opportunity. It’s relatively family friendly with cartoon violence, magic use, and the fairy silk wearing a bikini. If you enjoyed Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, you’ll want to check out this modernized version.