Ame no Hi wa Oisogashi (Rainy Days are Really Busy, for a literal translation) is one of the best examples of Hudson Soft's ability to take a random idea and make a great game out of it. You play a tenant who just moved into an old apartment at the beginning of rainy season, trying his best to keep the water out of his home. There is a lot going on in this game. You don't die or lose a life, but once you hit 2500 liters of water on your floor, it's game over. However, you have a variety of ways to slow down the flow, and even bail out some water if you can find the right opportunity.

You can catch water in your cup so it doesn't hit the floor to begin with, or use your cup to scoop some water out of the floor. Then it's a simple matter of throwing it out the window. Well... actually it's not quite that simple after all! You have meddling neighbors on either side of you, and if you throw the water out and it hits them, you lose points, and they throw the water back into your apartment. It's partially a matter of timing, but they will suddenly appear even as your water is about to cross their location, so it's also a matter of luck. The safest way is to time it so it hits a rat as it scales your building, because that gets you points, and their bodies block the neighbors from getting hit.

There are also nails that fall down from the ceiling, so if you catch them or pick them up off the ground, you can throw them back into the ceiling. This plugs the hole and prevents the water from leaking in as fast. Over time, they loosen and fall back down. If you don't catch the nails, they'll be under water, so you have to search for them blindly if you don't remember where they fell.

One clever thing is that the stages are days, and the first day is June 1st, so we can imagine this is the rainy season. Eliminate all the rats by hitting them with water, and you move on to the next day. To be very clear, this game does not want you to have points. You lose points for hitting your neighbors, and when you clear the day, well, using my game for example, I got 20 points as a bonus, but I lost 77 points for the 770 liters of water on my floor, and I lost 5 points for the unreturned nail. Brutal! I imagine it's not as bad once you develop skill. After a couple of tries, I was getting the hang of it and I managed to make it to June 4th.

This period is also peak Hudson Soft cover art!