Tapir is a main character from the 1991 famicon platformer game Cocoron and also a character i really enjoy!! Cocoron is a very very delightful game i reccomend it very much if you are a fan of famicon platformers and also i will be spoiling the game a bit? tapir is very vital to the story and why i like him so much so if you don't want spoilers for the story or about him just watch out! its a simple story but it surprised me a bit!
What's Cocoron?
like i mentioned earlier, Cocoron is a famicon platformer! it was devolped by Takeru and published by Sur Dé Wave, being released in 1991 and fan translated to english in 1999! Cocoron is a game all about dreams and going through a wonderful dream to save Princess Rua! a really stand out feature for cocoron is that has character customization!!! you can assemble a character out of a lot of different pieces which have unique health, weight which changes how high you jump and even sometimes unique abilities! its one of my favorite games ever and i love it a lot, but its time to get to what this page is about...
Who's Tapir?
Tapir describes himself at the start of the game as a wizard of the dream world and acts as a sort of helper or guide through most of the game, giving you new characters everytime you defeat a boss and helping around! he has a very upbeat and silly feeling to his design and tone and is very very charming i think! however, during the game after beating one of the bosses they bring up the existence of a strange wizard, which begins to put a bit of suspicion towards Tapir... when you do save princess rua from an egg (very egg focused game) she reveals that tapir was who trapped her and also the fairy cocoron (him and his sister cocorin are important! name of the game...!) and that he is truly a baku!! i wasn't thinking very hard about the idea of tapir being evil when i first played since i just liked him too much so i was surprised! despite him being revealed at this point, tapir talks basically the same but almost comes off as eerie now! laughing as he happily says your dream is about to end before your final fight with him! once you defeat him cocoron arrives and places him in an egg and says that'll keep him quiet for a while! maybe he'll return one day...
Tapir plays such an interesting role in cocoron and is all around such a fun character in my eyes, and as said throughout is one of my favorite characters ever! a very interesting thing about tapir in relation to cocoron the game itself is how much he's basically the mascot of the game, despite cocoron being the title character and barely in it! tapir has so many pieces of offical art when compared to the other characters, who usually only have 1 or 2 pieces! he's on the boxart, title screen and is the first thing you see aside from a logo! he's even the narrator of a Promotional video they released around the release of the original game!! the twist of tapir being the villian is so surprising with all this, normally with platformer games like cocoron you would expect the villian to be more off to the side, even if they were a twist! also with cocoron being an action game, theres not a lot of dialogue to characterize most of the cast like the bosses, who get a maximum of 3 lines (titania, the fairy queen, only gets one...). however, i think despite this, tapir is characterized a lot, he has an opening monolgoue, an introduction to the dream world, and 2 pieces of dialogue before his two fights! tapir is a very whimsical character, constantly laughing and whisking you away to a wonderful dream world of his and your creation. tapir almost comes off as a fairytale storyteller type character, at least to me! tapir can also come off as very mysterious in his own way, one of the characters when you return to them again referring to him simply as "a monster with strange powers" which is so fascinating...
I've covered most important character details of Tapir present in the game, but theres one more source of info that really helps paint the picture of Tapir... the Cocoron manual! it's just the manual included with the game and is mainly there to provide gameplay info, but it sort of surprisingly gives a lot of insight into tapir in some parts! it's all in japanese but i think ive gotten a clear enough idea of whats being said to share my thoughts here... you are entering the true I Love Tapir zone
Right out of the gate, I think Tapir is the narrator of the manual. this is implied and can be inferred by quite a few things in it i think, most prominently the opening of the manual and Tapir's character description. most of the opening of the manual is pretty close to Tapir's monologue from the opening of cocoron. however, the first page has a very different tone and an unclear speaker. its an almost poetic and quiet excerpt of something watching the street lights slowly go out, as the stars in the sky slowly light up. considering this excerpt ends with "now, onto the world of dreams..." and has the same formatting as Tapir's later monologue, sure seems like tapir says this, but its a really different tone from how he usually talks! we shall return to this later
wip!!
More about Cocoron
cocoron was only released for the famicon in japan, but 2 whole ports/sequel games were planned for the pc engine and sega cd! both of them were seemingly finished but neither were released sadly in any form... the two games are PC Cocoron and Pop'n Land which earlier in devolpment was actually just called cocoron 2! if you wanna know more about it these twopages have quite a bit of info! the first one linked is in japanese you might need to find some way to translate it but its still very helpful!
with these other 2 cocoron games existing its interesting to think about how tapir might've appeared in them and if anything had changed! there a lot more screenshots available from PC Cocoron then from Pop'n land and a couple do feature tapir, a couple even of his boss fights! he definitly still played a sort of villian role in both games but i'd still love to see what more they had to offer if they ever surface someday..! some reports of Pop'n land state that it did have animated cutscenes and i've seen a couple of photos of them but none of the available photos feature tapir... i imagine he appears in at least one! an interesting thing about his portayal in Pop'n land is that i think he doesn't have a real twist moment from what i can figure out! from the few pictures of that one it looks like you're guided by Cocorin and Cocoron throughout and a few magazines even start their summary with saying you need to find tapir and stop him! its a very interesting change to wonder about...!
Tapir Gallery
since tapir is a very central character to cocoron, there are quite a few pictures out there of him! click on a picture to open a full view of it and hover over it for more info!
Tapir Fanart Gallery
what can i say... i've drawn him a lot of times.. currently a WIP!
Cocoron merchandise
cocoron was very clearly planned to be a series considering they had 2 (maybe even 3) unreleased ports in the works, so the thought of if cocoron has merchandise is very fun! and from what ive seen it had a few actually! in a character design contest for the unreleased ports run in Famitsu, it lists prizes that were awarded to i think 300 winners! here's an image of the advertisement itself, open the image in a new tab to see in full!
this image does also mention the 2 unreleased ports but also brings up the mysterious third one "Super Cocoron"?? it doesn't even list what console its for... the main interest is the contest prizes, listed near the bottom! the three prizes listed from the bottom to the top are the cocoron original telephone card, cocoron original jigsaw puzzle and the cocoron original piggy bank! the only one of these ive seen is the telephone card which has art of tapir thats already been shown on this page, the other two are a sort of mystery of what theyre like!! the jigsaw puzzle might just be the same art used in the magazine advertisement which was used in other marketing material or could be original! im extremely extremely curious about the piggy bank though!!!!!! i really really hope that its some sort of 3d sculpted thing... it could just be a little box with cocoron art plastered onto it but i dont know! ive browsed around a bit and havent found a trace of it so if any denizens of the web reading this has any info or pictures of that piggy bank please feel free to send me a message! if it was just a straight up figurine of tapir i would be so utterly delighted...
Anyway, thats all for now! tapir and cocoron itself have become some of my favorite things ever and i wanted to make a page to share it! there is a bit of documentation already online about cocoron but i really wanted to talk about tapir and collect things ive found while searching the web! thank you for reading!
