N-Europe

Not even Wii Sports?

Having just read the rather confusing interview in Nintendolife I feel the developers are sending out a few mixed messages about the game. ”After announcing the game the other day, a lot of people have referred to this game as being heavily inspired by, or a heavily similar game to the Chibi-Robo series.  But I think that’s just because they’re looking through these lenses that are tainted with their experience of having played Chibi-Robo.  And actually, this is its own very different sort of game.” Surely part of the reason this is getting so much attention is because it’s being thought of as a spiritual follow-up?  They’ve advertised it as being a little robot who traverses the house cleaning up mess, solving problems, meeting a kooky cast of characters and being careful because it has a limited battery life before needing to be recharged. Whereas Chibi-Robo was all about being a little robot helper who traverses the house/garden, cleaning up mess, solving problems to spread happiness to the humans and cast of kooky characters it meets, all the while being mindful that it has a limited battery life that needs to be regularly recharged…

I’d never played a baseball game before, but got quite excited that this was coming out (to this day I’m not really sure why!).  HMV used to show me the release dates and when I went in to pick up this newly released title… well it has disappeared from the list and no-one had any idea when it had moved to.  Months down the line I spotted it in the wild and I found a similar experience to you. It was alright, and while it could end up anywhere I was able to get bat on ball. The major issue I found, which I really should have known, was that it was still just baseball.  Nothing more, nothing less.  No bells and whistles, so while I played a decent enough game, matches weren’t quick and got repetitive quickly. I haven’t bought a baseball game since.

Onegai Monsters   JP release: 9th April 1999 PAL: release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Bottom Up Publisher: Bottom Up N64 Magazine Score: N/A In the world of Onegai Monsters, when kids turn 10 years old, they can become a monster trainer. They collect their first monster from their local professor. These monsters are part of different elemental types, and will fight each other in turn-based battles before gaining enough experience to evolve into a new form. The concept sounds interesting and I’m surprised nobody else has tried to do something similar. Onegai Monsters has a fairly impressive overworld map, and it looks like there is a lot to explore – unfortunately, you don’t get to do this at all, as you can’t leave your starting village. Instead, you send your monsters out to explore for you and watch them move around the map, only having input when a battle starts. While I had a lot of translation issues with the game, I know that this is something that is true. So if all your monsters are out, all you do is wait (especially when they sleep) – although luckily there is a fast forward feature. The battle seems interesting, although far too complicated for Google Translate to handle the job. While for the most part it seems similar to Pokémon, however you can move forwards and backwards, which likely has some meaning and tactics to it, although there is an “auto” button to let the computer decide what your monster does. Defeating a monster will also add it to your catalogue, so you can try and discover all 500 monsters. The ones I encountered seemed quite decent. But, unfortunately, there’s a lot of text. I was unable to figure out how to get more eggs to hatch new monsters. I bought stuff from the shop I got my first one from, and I sent my blob called Bob out on adventures, yet never got an egg. There are other aspects, like matching food colour to element type to have even better stats. It’s an interesting looking game, but I’d need a translated version to be able to understand more. Remake or Remaster? The concept of sending monsters out seems more suited to a mobile or idle version of this. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Onegai Monsters