Uchuu Daisakusen - Chocovader Contactee (Arcade)

 So, Chocovader was an early 00s toyline in Japan, made up of little plastic figures disseminated via Kinder Surprise-style hollow chocolate orbs. Most, though apparently not all, of the figures were based on descriptions of aliens given by people who'd encountered them in real life (plus a few inspired by pop culture aliens, like the xenomorph and Dan Dare's enemy the Mekon). So they are Chocolate Invaders. There's a Game Boy Adance game based on the toys that I think is some kind of Pokemon-like monster catching RPG, but this arcade game is a fast-paced minigame compilation more along the lines of Bishi Bashi Special or Tanto-R.

 

Building on the toyline's concept of taking inspiration from real alien encounter reports, a lot of the minigames are actually based on the events described in those reports. For example, there's a report that in 1979, a group of tiny angel-like aliens broke into an old lady's house and caused mischief, messing up her christmas decorations and such. So one of the games has you playing as one of those aliens, repeatedly jumping on the old lady's furniture, trying to bounce as high as you can before the time limit runs out. You play as the alien in all the games, and there's a kind of silly-but dark feel to a lot of them.

 

You'll play as a classic nineties Grey, choosing the right shaped metal implants to put in people's brains, the Flatwoods monster building up energy to mass-abduct people from an urban area, and a whole bunch more, based on stories of which I'm only vaguely aware. After each game, you're given a score, a success percentage, and a letter grade, and the same will happen at the end of your credit, which gets you a go at four minigames. 

 

There are, of course, high score tables for every individual game, as well as for an entire credit, but what's really interesting is a feature that's now long since abandoned: an internet ranking! The cabinet itself wouldn't be linked to the internet, but instead, you'd be given a password along with your score, and you'd be able to input that password at the website abduction.jp (which now contains information on a "Class Action to end Parental Child Abduction In Japan", though you can see the high score table on the Wayback Machine). There, you'd be able to see your place among the best players in the land until about 2003, which appears to be when the site was taken down.

 

Chocovader Contactee doesn't have the insane manic excitement of the Bishi Bashi Special games, but I do like it a lot more than the Tanto-R games, and the theming is really cool and pretty unique among arcade games. It's a shame (though obviously not a surprise) that the high score website is no longer online, but I think it's still worth a bit of your time as a silly curio if you're interested in aliens or paranormal stuff in general.