Over 40,000 tumblr notes for this one image of a vintage handheld game (I saw it on Rising Tensions).
Reasons for the popularity of this pic: (i) innocent (ii) "girly"/pink (iii) nostalgia for simpler times and games (iv) for millennials, imagining a world less horrendous than the present one (without having actually lived through, say, Reagan) (v) the anomaly of a game that doesn't appear to be based on violence but rather something pleasant like flower-picking or -arranging (vi) beautiful Japanese woodcut-style design of the LCD graphics.
More images of the game can be found on the sites Handheld Empire and Electronic Plastic. According to the latter, the manufacturer was Morioka Tokei; Liwaco (an acronym of Liebermann, Waelchli & Co.) might have been the European distributor.
Still looking for a narrative describing the gameplay but EP tags it "girls" and "action." Screenshots from Handheld Empire allow us to make a few educated guesses. A Little Red Riding Hood character is picking flowers:
There are some smaller people sitting on top of the mushroom who raise flowers above their heads in joy (after LRRH brings them to them?):
But ah, speaking of Reagan, there is a wolf in this garden! (Just as there was kleptocracy in "Morning in America.") Perhaps the wolf steals the flowers and/or has the little people "treed" atop the mushroom? Any information or guesses about what's actually going on here are welcome.
