Asameshimae Nyanko (SNES)

Othello is a classic strategy board game that's been around since at least the late 19th century, and has been adapted into videogame form many times over the years, dating back all the way to the Odyssey2's Dynasty. Rock Paper Scissors is an even older game, though it's a lot less strategic, and really more of a way of randomly deciding things than an enjoyable pastime. Asameshimae Nyanko is a game from 1994 that bravely seeks to answer the question "what if we combined the strategy of Othello with the randomness of Rock Paper Scissors, and there were also lots of kittens?"

Yeah, so this is a game of othello in which the piece are not small black and white discs, but blue and pink kittens. For some reason, you also get to pick which breed of kitten is used before you start a game. There's also a few locations to play in, too, like a roof in the city, a grid of rocks in the wilderness and a luxurious carpet in a remote palace. The different locations do offer slightly differently shaped boards, but are otherwise just cosmetic changes like the kitten breeds. The big difference between this game and a normal game of Othello is that after each turn, the current player can choose one of their opponent's kittens to take, and this dispute is decided in a seperate little one-on-one battle.

As you might have guessed, these one-on-ones are where the Rock-Paper-Scissors element comes into play. You press A, Y or B on your controller, your opponent does the same, and a winner is decided. I've only played single player, so I can't tell you which button beats which, but I'm not sure it really matters that much. It's not just the one solitary kitten that's at stake, either: if the kitten changes hands and this causes two kittens of that colour to surround a line of the opponent's kittens, that line is taken, as if the changed kitten was placed as part of a normal move. (I know that sentence is confusing for people who don't know how Othello is played, but I'm assuming those people are in the minority.)

Asameshimae Nyanko is a very well-presented game. The kitten sprites look cute, and though there would be a risk of them looking lifeless when placed on the board in large numbers, the game cleverly animates each kitten individually, so they're all doing dfferent things at any one time, which really adds a lot to the character of the game. It looks really great in general, actually, with nice, soft colours and well-drawn sprites and backgrounds.

Unfortunately, there's really nothing more to this game than playing one-off games. There's no kind of story mode or arcade-style mode with opponents of gradually increasing difficulty, so playing single player is an experience you'll get bored of in less than half an hour. On the other hand, if you can somehow convince someone to play a partially-randomised videogame adaptation of Othello with you, then Asameshimae Nyanko is that game!

Beast Saga Saikyou Gekiotsu Coliseum (3DS)

There's a fondly-remembered 80s toyline called "Battle Beasts." They were simple figures with a simple concept: little rubber figures of anthropomorphic animals wearing armour that was an aesthetic mix of medieval knight's armour and futuristic power armour.For some reason, though, it never got the big relaunches that lots of other 80s toylines did, until 2013, when the new toyline Beast Saga debuted in Japan, along with a new cartoon to promote it. I don't think either of them ever reached the west, though apparently the cartoon did get an English dub that aired in parts of Asia.

So, not only is this game a toyline/cartoon tie-in, but it's a modern one, too, and neither of those things bode well for its quality. It's an arena-style fighting game with a setup that's vaguely similar to some of the Gundam arcade games, whereby each fight involves two teams of fighters. The teams might not have the same number or strength of members, but both team has an equal value of battle points, and each member is worth a different amount of said points. When a character is knocked out, they're out of the battle for a short time, and their team's BP is reduced by that member's value. When a team has no BP left, they lose. Some stages in story mode also feature monoliths at either end of the arena, which result in instant defeat if destroyed.

It's very simple to play: you have buttons for chain attacks, strong attacks and projectile attacks (which can be charged), as well as a button for rolling/dodging, and a button for utilising super attacks once your meter is full. The story mode has an interesting layout, being made up of several multi-part arcs, with more being unlocked as you finish them. There's a main storyline with numbered arcs, as well as side stories in which you play as villains and such, which is a cool addition.

I've mostly been positive about this game so far, but I have to break it to you that that most hated bugbear of the modern action game rears its head: levelling up. It's not too bad, though, as levelling up doesn't appear to have too massive an effect on your character's performance, and from the few hours I've played so far, the game does still seem to be getting harder rather than easier, as is often the case in action games with levelling. Plus, levelling doesn't affect anything in the game's free battle mode, which presumably is also the multiplayer mode, so that's a plus too. Though another negative is that even after a couple of hours' play, more than half the characters in free battle mode are still locked. That's incredibly annoying, though I guess it's better than locking them behind a paywall.

Despite its faults, I still like this game. It's a fun little casual knockabout of a game, and the characters are mostly really cool-looking, which I guess they'd have to be ifthey want to sell any toys. If you have the means to play it, and you can track a cheap copy down, I'd say Beast Saga is worth a look.