Magical Date (Playstation)

 Back in the ancient past when I reviewed Graduation, I mentioned that I've never been able to do well with the stat-heavy micromangaement of games like that and Tokimeki Memorial. Which is kind of a shame, as when I was about 14, the idea of there being games themed around dating like that was really interesting to me. Of course, none of them were available in English at that time, so the distant curiosity is all there was. And by the time translations for them did start to appear, I'd already long since lost interest in them! If only I'd known back then about Magical Date: Doki Doki Kokuhaku Daisakusen (Magical Date: The Great Heart-Pounding Love Confession Strategy).

 

This is a game about going on dates, and though I'd not played it until the recent translation patch came out, it would have been almost completely playable without Japanese knowledge. And almost as importantly, without an interest in complex and detailed stat management. Instead, it's a collection of minigames, all completely unrelated to the situation you're in. You pick one of three girls, and then a date destination. You're then shown a path made up of a few squares leading to the destination, each of which represents a mini-game. You could compare the set up to Bishi Bashi, or Tanto-R, but personally, it feels to me a lot like Tenkomori Shooting, but without the shooting (mostly). Maybe it's just the polygons making me feel that way, though.

 

The games are pretty varied, there's stuff that really takes advantage of being in 3D like identifying a giant 3D letter that you can only see from the sides, or counting the number of cubes in a rotating formation. Simple classics like the old "find the pairs of cards" memory test, and skill/reaction type games like flying a seagull through some rings (this once being excellently entitled "Seagull Aeronautics"), shooting down Adamski-type UFOs with your laser eyes, or punching giant faces that grow out of the walls. One per date, you'll also be asked a series of yes or no questions by your paramour, and while you can't lose lives in these bits, you are still scored on them, and doing well and increase your affection meter a stage. These parts are the only ones (that I've encountered) that would have required Japanese knowledge if the game hadn't been translated, and like I said: even they aren't super-important. Possibly a concession to the fact that you're expected to know which answer would be preferred, when the questions are being asked by an approximation of a mid-90s Japanese teenager as written by who I assume was an adult male game developer.

 

Magical Date is a decent enough game, but unless you have someone with whom to play it competitively (The empty space for a second player is marked on some screens with "Love Rival Wanted!", so I guess you're both vying for the affection of the same girl, rather than some kind of boy versus girl aggressive date situation), it probably won't hold your attention for long. The big draw is probably the very charming mid-90s polygonal graphics, which are admittedly very nice, and the minigame format means that there's a bit of variety to them to, unconstrained by the necessity of any kind of cohesion. Download the fan translation, play it for a while, take some screenshots or gifs, and move on. Though I do think it would've got a lot of playtime if I'd known about and been able to get a copy of it back around the year 2000.

Yokushin: Gigawing Generations (PS2)

 Alongside Gunbird 2, the Dreamcast port of the original Gigawing was one of the shooting games that really got me interested in the genre. At the time, I'd seen nothing like it before: not only was it my first danmaku STG, with enemy agression like I'd never seen before, but it also had some other elements that added their own spice. The story scenes between stages, where characters melodramatically despaired about the cruelties man inflicts upon man, as well as the specific horrors of the war unfolding before their eyes. There's also the soundtrack, while not exactly to my tastes, does a great job of setting the mood, not just while you're playing, but also with specific situations, like how the game over music is so calm and relaxing compared to the noise and chaos of the game, and cuts in so abruptly as soon as you die, giving the feeling of a soldier dying on the battlefield and immediately finding themselves in paradise. The most important, and most famous ingredient of both the original Gigawing and the series in general, though is its scoring and self-defence system, that are intertwined as one.

 

By holding the fire button for a few seconds, you emit a forcefield that reflects enemy bullets back at them, doing big damage, and turning them into medals. Each medal you collect increases the value of every subsequent medal, and also the multiplier constantly applied to your score. By the end of the first stage of the first game, you can easily get your multiplier into the millions, with your score already reaching the tens of trillions. The second game leant really hard into a bombastic look and sound, with a WWII-like fantasy setting. It also added an optional "reflect laser" weapon, which converted enemy bullets into auto-aimed laserbeams instead of directly reflecting them. It also added cascades, whereby having a large amount of medals onscreen at ones would magically cause big golden waterfalls of hundreds more medals appear out of nowhere.

 

That absurdly long preamble, despite not mentioning Yokushin Gigawing Generations, says so much about it. The unfortunate fact is that, as much as I love the first two games in this series, I just don't care for this third entry. Now, I don't particularly dislike it. It plays fine, and it can get its hooks in your for an hour or so here and there like any half-decent STG can, but it makes me feel nothing. It's just there, existing. It doesn't have the melodrama or the aesthetics of the previous games. Though the numbers have gone up in regard to the multiplier and the score, the cascades and reflect laser are both gone, too, and that really feels like a step backwards.

 

Everything about this game looks, sounds, and feels cheap in a way that its forebears didn't. To use a cinematic allegory, think of the ninties live action Addams Family movies. The first two were theatrical releases, with lavish production design, great scripts, and perfectly-cast actors. Then a few years later, there was a third, straight-to-video movie entitled Addams Family Reunion. Barely anyone's heard of it and even fewer have seen it, there are no returning cast members, and it looks like an episode of a kids TV show (because it's actually a pilot for one, the somehow even cheaper The NEw Addams Family). Yokushin Gigawing Generations is the videogame equivalent of Addams Family Reunion: it's not painful to watch or anything, and while it's a massive step down from what came before it in every way, if you really want some more Gigawing, that's what you technically get here.