So once upon a time, Hudson - in between making Milon's Secret Castle and Bomberman and...
um...
Mickey Mousecapade...
came up with a romp through traditional Japanese mythology called Momotarou Densetsu.
Yes, it means "The Legend of Peachboy."
Deal with it.
This series only ran for a few games between 1987 and 1993, because it was soon overshadowed
by this series, Momotarou Dentetsu.
Yes, it means "The Electric Railroad of Peachboy."
Deal with it.
And, since Japan apparently really loves roll-and-go board games, it's a roll-and-go board game
with some real-estate speculation, planes, trains, boats, and some fat kid chasing you
around looking for handouts.
Two to four players, human- or computer-controlled, each take charge of their own railway and
holdings consortium, taking turns throwing the dice and travelling throughout Japan and
to nearby locales up to and including Hawaii for crying out loud.
(Yeah, that's a long time in a plane.)
Depending on where you land, you stand to gain or lose some tens of thousands of yen,
or perhaps pick up a card for use later like it's Mario 3 or something.
At intervals, you can hit the stations that stud the various railways of Japan, whereupon
you can spend your hard-earned cash to invest in restaurants, resort hotels, and other attractions
designed to fleece hard-earned yen from from the beleaguered businessmen who need a moment's
respite from their workaday lives.
Through intelligent investing, and let's be reasonable, a hell of a lot of luck as everything
fixates upon dice rolls after all, you've gotta build up your portfolio and make BANK,
kinda like Monopoly with less linearity and not nearly as many threats by your grandmother
to cut you out of the will.
Awright, I'll admit, I was a bit lost as this copy didn't come with with instructions at
all and there isn't an in-game help function.
Perhaps an understanding of the Momotarou Dentetsu series is just a cultural thing in
Japan, as there's been like a bajillion releases in this series, stretching from the Famicom
to the GameGear to the PS2 to the iPhone.
It's left that silly RPG-wannabe Momotarou Densetsu in the dust and replaced it with
demons and animals running transportation services.
It's fairly ambitious, and it kinda has to be, as it finds itself competing with any
of a number of Game of Life clones, Itadaki Street, and then the likes of Mario Party
where it certainly loses out in the field of N64 controller destruction.
The game runs, at the rate of one turn every month, for one to five years, with each "year"
taking an average of a half an hour.
And, since it's a Japanese game that takes place over the course of several in-game years,
it STARTS IN APRIL.
It always starts in April.
Hamster games?
Start in April.
McDonalds Monogatari?
Starts in April.
Super Momotarou Dentetsu II isn't a must-import title unless you've got every inch of your
body tattooed with Hudson Bees and you're an absolute hardcore collector, but it is
cool to experience so you can get an idea of the lineage behind games like Mario Party
or Dokapon Kingdom or... well, we even got a flavor of Itadaki Street here in the states,
so we'll go with that too.
Just...
can you tell this fat kid to stop following me?
He's seriously creeping me out.