Man, even I don't know who this game's supposed to appeal to. Now I'm not saying that this is a bad game, but rather that the game doesn't offer any compelling reasons why you should spend time with it. Oh, it tries (maybe), but it never really excels at anything. The characters have only half-defined personalities; the plot's not that enticing; and the gameplay's so thin that the game feels more like a proof of concept than it does something you'd want to play for a significant length of time.

In fact, why don't we start there? Most of the game's dedicated to exploring the world of...I don't think it ever gets a name (not counting the Nipopo Mirror World or whatever). But who cares about names when the world's offering you so much already? I mean, you get all these cool areas like frog bath houses and mysteriously Jewish caves, and they all sort of bleed into each other, creating a feeling of interconnectedness and progress throughout the game. Plus you get to fly on a broom with child-like glee! What else could you want? Well, besides a reason to explore all of it. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. Akazukin doesn't so much offer you these areas to explore as force you into them over the course of the game. The world's only barely larger than a thimble and ferries you from event to event with alarming rapidity, so exploration for its own sake is out of the question. And for reasons that I hope will soon become clear, there aren't any real significant rewards for going off the beaten path. The game ends up feeling like a chore; like you're simply going through the motions to get to its better parts.

By the way, what are those better parts? I don't know; I'm here to talk about the combat. Occasionally, the game will take a break from aimless wandering around and instead let you mercilessly beat another living being to within an inch of its life. You get to fight! You get to use magic! You get to....wait, that's pretty much it. In fact, that's probably the greatest weakness the battle system has: its simplicity. Sometimes, it works out. For instance, the clear bars for HP and MP and the face buttons being used for battle actions (perhaps it's best just to see) make battles very user friendly and incredibly easy to jump into. But then you look at what you're actually doing in battle and realize that it's not worth your time. There's no variation in the battles at all. You're simply applying stat boosts to all your guys before throwing everything else you have at the enemy. No reason to think things out or try alternate strategies; win one battle, and you've essentially won them all. If there's any incentive to trying different things in battle, I have yet to find it. Most of your attacks are equally effective and the game unfailingly upgrades your strength at pre-determined intervals, so your very first fight is going to be exactly as easy as your last. Again, it feels like the game's wasting your time rather than engaging it.

Strange, then, that there are only a few battles in Akazukin Chacha, and that almost all of them come at the end of a chapter. (By the way, this game has chapters.) This suggests two things to me. First, the developers probably weren't aware that, by reducing the number of times I entered battle, they were actually drawing attention to their own flaws. But more importantly, I think these battles were intended as some sort of reward; as a climax to whatever story arc you've been bumbled your way through. This blows my mind in so many ways. What am I supposed to find rewarding about these experiences? How can these battles claim a sense of gravitas when they're all equally easy? Why would you end major parts of the game on such weak notes? Why would a game starring an eight year old girl even have a ba-

Oh, yea, that reminds me: you're probably not supposed to play this game for the story. Or, more importantly, the characters, because that's really what the game's all about. You get Chacha, the...actually, I can't really remember any of the characters' disparate personalities, Riiya's idiocy aside. It's nothing to do with the quality of the writing. I mean, yea, it's just as simple as the rest of the game, but this doesn't harm the game like it normally would. Zany antics and ritualistic squirrel baby sacrifice see fit to that. No, the weak characterization has more to do with presentation. (A little with the writing, as well, but mostly the presentation.) Because of the SNES' technical limitations, characters can really only express themselves by moving around, hitting each other a little bit, and maybe even showing a facial expression. That may not sound like a big problem, but it certainly becomes one when the game's relying on this expression to establish personality. It's almost sad, really. The story could've been at least a little entertaining if the characters were more capable of expressing emotion. But alas, it seems that two or three expressions are not enough, and the game as a whole feels flat, uninteresting, dry, and unentertaining.

Actually, now that I think about it, those three words sum up the game really well. Think about it: the battle system is flat, eschewing complexity and challenge in favor of absolutely nothing; the world is dry, not giving you any decent motivation to stray from the beaten path; and the story is uninteresting, largely because of how limiting the presentation can be. It's like the game's too simple for its own good; like it has all these potentially neat ideas that it's too lazy to flesh out into something worth your time. So are there any reasons why anybody should play Akazukin Chacha? There's always one: because I say so. And I am a cruel, horribly indifferent monarch. SO SAYETH THE KING.

Review Synopsis

• No, I think I summed it up rather well in that last paragraph.

I believe this next video explains itself.

You know, I'm starting to think that maybe playing games based on old and esoteric animes probably isn't a good idea. In fact, I think I'm starting to notice a few similarities between these two games. Remember how Akazukin Chacha was an overly simple game that didn't know how to tell an entertaining story? If you do, then you sort of have my opinion of Wonder Momo. (Incidentally, you should probably see a doctor if you don't remember. You've just read the damn thing.) The only difference between the two is that Wonder Momo has some pretty good ideas deep down somewhere. It's just that it never really cares enough to expand on them.

Or, rather, it has one good idea: framing the game as a play.....sort of like Akazukin Chacha, now that I think about it. But whereas that was mostly window dressing that had little effect on what you were doing, here, it's impossible to ignore. Each sta-er, act, opens with the curtain rising, the audience ready to see Momo materialize out of thin air (actors do that, right?) to assume her role as the hero of this story. Her fellow actors enter stage left so that she may high kick them out of existence. Repeat that a few more times, maybe with some asshole blinding Momo with the flash on his camera, and then.....scene. Pretty cool concept, right? It's like you're acting out a story!

What story would that be? I've no goddamn clue! And herein we encounter Wonder Momo's amazing lack of effort. This whole theater idea requires narrative context or some sort of planning on the designers' parts if it's gonna work, and Wonder Momo has neither. It makes no attempt to explain just what the hell's going on, instead simply dropping you into the latest pointless skirmish. It doesn't even have to explain what's going on through words, either, although Wonder Momo does have them (more on that later). It could subtly create context by carefully planning out how and when enemies appear on stage. Or maybe it could've changed the backdrops to signal where Momo is in the story. Hell, Wonder Momo could've been a perfect example of telling a story through gameplay and level design rather than through direct narration.

Instead, the game eschews such conventions in favor of the innovative strategy of doing absolutely nothing. Enemies jump on scene apropos of nothing, and none of the enemies are specific to any one level. Hell, an ice pillar could rise up out of the beach and the game wouldn't bat an eye. But that may be because that actually happens. Oh, and speaking of beaches, that's about one half of the levels you'll be playing through. Just beaches and mountains the whole time. No rhyme or reason or story explaining why you're exploring these areas. Just beaches and mountains. In fact, the most sense I could make of the game was the following: Momo is the town alcoholic, drunkenly kicking the shit out of anybody with the audacity to socialize at the many beaches and mountains. Somehow, this leads to Momo toppling a secret military organization. And then the play just ends. Is it because that's where the story ends, or because the audience has long since stopped caring and left the building? I believe that's for us to decide. And I decide that it sucks.

But at least the game has a back-up plan, right? Actually, I'm pretty sure that was the back-up plan. They probably thought that if the game's set-up went perfectly, then I probably wouldn't notice how shallow and repetitive the gameplay behind it really is. Alas, the theater motif has fallen flat on its face, and now, every last mechanical fault stares me directly in the face. The enemies, lurching onto the stage in boring and predictable patterns; the stage design, limiting you to flat expanses of nothing for twelve whole levels; the controls, preventing you from kicking and turning at the same time without the main character suffering an epileptic seizure; the transformations into Wonder Momo herself, leaving the gameplay completely unchanged; I can appreciate the suck in them, one and all. True, there's some fun to be had in grabbing a power-up and watching Momo spin in place like a maniac, but that's not really enough to compensate for all the shortcomings the game has, is it?

Oh, and did I mention that sometimes, the game likes to break up the action just to show you pictures of Momo? Possibly with some commentary on her part that I didn't bother reading? Well, it does, and it's disturbing, to say the least. The pictures get more and more sexual over time, from her just sitting in a field (and erasing the lower half of her body) to what you see above. Why does the game give you these images? Why do they expose more and more of Momo as time goes on? Who the hell can say? I'd guess that it's supposed to be for the sexual thrill if not for the lack of sexuality elsewhere and the lack of any actual nudity anywhere in the game. Maybe it's a look into the "actress's" personal life off the stage? I have no idea. It really just takes you out of the moment and makes you feel needlessly perverted.

But in the grand scheme of things, that's probably the least of Wonder Momo's problems. We still have to deal with much larger problems like the complete lack of a story, the shallow gameplay, the....no, wait, that's about it. Still, those are some severe problems to deal with. As it is, Wonder Momo feels horribly empty and does little to justify its otherwise good ideas. Yes, it can be fun to do things because you're playing for an audience, but that idea alone isn't enough for a strong game. If you want me to stick around, you need to do something with those ideas; something to engage my time and make me feel like what I'm doing actually matters. And no, almost naked teenagers don't count. They never count. Never.

Review Synopsis

• The Thousand Year Door proved how fun playing for an audience can be; how can it go wrong here?
• Well, how about forgetting to include a story to make sense of what the hell you're doing?
• And forgetting to make your mechanics more complex than "kick dudes until there are no more dudes to kick"?