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-- Get Off the Phone and Play --
Ah, if Alexander Graham Bell could see us now. Once upon a time, phones were
only good for talking...and then you couldn't move very far because the stupid things were
attached to a wall. My, how far we have come when you can get online with cellular phones and
download original Sonic Team goodness that will go with you everywhere your phone can. The heck
with all that "Sonic J" and "Sonic Bomb Squad" nonsense, this is the real stuff straight from
the masters of twitch action. (I almost make this sound exciting, don't I?) For the price of
¥300 per month, owners of NTT's i-mode 503 series cell phones will be able to enter Sonic Team's
"Sonic Cafe" and download various mini-games based on various Team titles. There are four
games to kick the Cafe off:
NiGHTS: -- Y'know those overhead segments in the original NiGHTS? This plays sort of like
a cross between that and traditional Snake. You start off controlling just the purple cranium of
our favorite dream being. I bet you already know what to do with those blue circles. For each
Blue Chip you collect, a star appears behind NiGHTS. The stars trail behind NiGHTS like a long
tail, which is used to Paraloop Nightmaren by circling around them. As you advance and the
trail of stars grows longer, it becomes possible to Paraloop multiple enemies at once and score
big chain reaction points. The game ends when NiGHTS gets trapped in one of his own Paraloops.
There will be an online score ranking for top players. Okay, so it's not exactly NiGHTS 2, but
having Dreams Dreams as BGM should help you get into the mood. Just be careful you don't start
singing alone on a crowded bus, people will think you're funny or something.
ChuChu Puzzle -- I guess I'll never get my NeoGeo Pocket Chu² (Sonic Pocket and Puyo Pop
are only entertaining the first 200 or so times), but this looks like the next best thing. It
plays and looks just like the real deal, right down to the grid parameters (12×9). There will be
more puzzles available for downloading, including user-made puzzles. So how do you make your own
i-mode Chu² challenges? Weeell...
ChuChu Edit -- Hey, what is there to be said? Design and upload your own original puzzles
to be played with ChuChu Puzzle. Like the Dreamcast version, the game checks to make sure your
puzzle has a solution before allowing you to save it. So don't get any funny ideas, you twisted
sadist.
Samba de Amigo -- It's Samba without the maracas. Seems pointless, but hey...what the
heck else are you gonna do when you get that Latin urge sitting in an airplane? Apparently, ten
keys are used despite the fact that there are only the usual six indicators. There are three
difficulty settings, and a new song will be made available to download each month.
The Sonic Cafe service kicks off on January 26, and from then until February
4, there's going to be a free trial period. More games are promised in the coming months, so if
you live in Japan and happen to have an i-mode 503,
hit the cafe for the goods. As for
the rest of us...don't feel too bad, we've missed out on bigger things before.
-- Green Gibbon!
Compiled and arranged by Jared "Green
Gibbon!" Matte. Hosting provided by Emulation Zone and
Emulation World.
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