天下制覇

 

Wherin I ramble semi-coherantly on maids, Touhou and Wario Ware.

Well, it was Friday when I started writing this… then Dreamhost went down for two hours for maintenance. Bah, whatever.

I’m really not certain what I’m going to do with myself on Fridays nowadays. I’ve already grown somewhat tired of the cavity inducing Shugo Chara which leaves… absolutely nothing else even on, let alone anything worth watching. Where’s my Potemayo or… heaven forbid… even Tokyo Majin to fill in the void? Meanwhile, I still keep waiting on Kekkaishi’s raws to get somewhere that I can actually access them, though with the show losing its major sponsor, getting bumped out of its primo-timeslot and apparently going to enter filler/anime original territory, I’m not overly excited about the outlook.

On the other hand, it does give me time and an excuse to go rerecord some old doujin games to rebuild my decimated youTube videos, so in light of me playing one of my favorites from start to finish today, let’s go with that for now and see how the mood takes us.

Mawaru Maid-san wo Nemigi is a clone of Nintendo’s Wario Ware games. Like Wario Ware, it’s essentially a collection of fast paced minigames and you quickly bounce from one to the next with a couple brief seconds in between them and the only instructions generally being a single word thrown up on the screen before you’re forced to play.

Wario Ware Inc

MMwN is very much the same deal, though for having such an easy and blank slate to work with, it does a remarkable job of directly copying very little from Wario Ware. There are a few things here and there… the bug trying to avoid being stepped on, or the parking game, but unlike most clones, DNA Software did an excellent job in making it feel like a new game instead of just a reskin of the pre-existing games. It is helped in that department a little bit by the relatively few minigames and levels compared to the real Wario Ware games, and the challenge on some of the games is a tad bit off-kilter, but otherwise, they did an absolutely excellent job in recreating the hectic pace and the constant demand for attention.

As I mentioned, there are a relatively few number of stages… only 4, plus one ‘last’ stage where all the games are available and start on the second level of difficult, plus a final boss. The first two stages are the relatively bizarre and surreal type of randomness that the Wario Ware games tend to default to, but the third and fourth stages are simply elegant in content and execution.

MMwN Stage 3

Stage 3 is the Comiket stage, made up entirely of things based on various Comiket publications, including other games. Platine Dispositif’s games especially make multiple contributions to this set, but there’s also a fair bit of Marimite stuff as well as a good old shootout in the Comiket halls for the boss stage ending with blowing up a giant flying Comiket building. The normal Wario Ware games tend to have stages like this… based on Nintendo’s old games… but this stage pulls in some really esoteric stuff that I’m not even certain avid Japanese doujin gamers are aware existed.

MMwN Stage 4

Stage 4 is the Touhou stage, based on all manner of doujin games based off a doujin games. Follow me for a moment here… a doujin game of minigames based off of various doujin games based off of a doujin game. I think I can see infinity. They manage to hit nearly everything based on Touhou that was around at the time of its release, from the Touhou Captain Tsubasa clone, to Super Marisa Land. It even ends with Meiling starring in a Kung Fu clone through the Scarlet Mansion. I’d be remiss in my duties as a Touhou fan if I didn’t admit that I probably had a little more fun than I should have with this set of games.

MMwN Final Boss

The final boss is the last thing that really deserves mentioning. The Wario Ware games tend to go out without much of a bang. MMwN, on the other hand, creates a huge planetary boss fight and weaves it within the mini-games. Sure, it sacrifices a bit of the randomness, but it so seamlessly bounces between the ‘plot’ (such as it is) and the games, that the first time or two through it, it’s very easy to lose just because you haven’t quite realized that you’re supposed to be doing something at all.

That’s really all I have to say about the game. It’s not particularly long and it’s anything but deep. It’s still a fun little afternoon waster to keep around on the ol’ laptop to blow the occasional 15 minutes on, and the scope of knowledge that the developers display is quite impressive. In short, even as just a clone of a more popular series, it’s still a damn good game. Don’t take my word for it though, go play the demo for yourself.
http://mawaru.nemigi.org/nemigi_webtrial_c69.zip

Maybe next week we’ll check out some time travelling bunny girls and the magicians out to kill them. Or then again, there’s always the exploits of Boxing Allstar Ayu Tsukimiya to check into. Maybe Fridays won’t be such a bust after all. Just the thought of getting to stage another Ayu vs Chise vs Arcueid vs Chiyo battle royale makes me a little frisky. On the other hand… one doujin game rerecorded… another 25 or so to go. Oi.