3 Choume no Tama - Tama and Friends - 3 Choume Obake Panic!! Review by: AngelicDirt - 4.6/10
Tama and Friends - 3 Choume Obake Panic!!Mass hysteria, dogs and cats living with each other, blah dee blah dee blah... This is the world of a young cat named Tama and his adventurous friends. Where cars are your biggest fear and Slingo will save your soul.
For a short while, "Tama and Friends" was an early morning cartoon, slated as one of those shows that would teach kids values and other sickening things like that; Much like "Hamtaro" and "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", there was a lesson at the end of every show, dropped like an anvil on the minds of kids 7-10 years of age in the old fashion of splattering enough paint at wall to see if anything will catch. In Japan, though, these little guys are just cute and toyetic and ended up with at least three games.
The story of the game is much like the story of a handful of episodes from the show. Tama's official-unofficial girlfriend (you know, because grade-schoolers...), Momo, has gone missing and you and your palate-swap friends must sniff out clues, get past bullying bulldogs, and brave ghosts, rats, and nattering mini-games to find her. Knowing the show, this can only end in a wild misunderstanding and the cast laughing it off, mocking your efforts in the process.
This being a mini-game game, your life is measured in paw tokens. They're probably called 'Tama Tokens', or something equally cute, but I'm gonna call them paw tokens to annoy those who understand the Japanese language. You spin a roulette at the start to get your first fill of them (2-10 of the little hit points), and then you traverse a main map to activate cutscenes, games and the like. There also seems to be a free mode where you can play any opened game you like and a password system made up of the faces of your friends and that bulldog guy I mentioned.
The graphics are quite good for the time, utilizing the GB to an acceptable extent. It didn't help, however, that Tama and his varied friends aren't all that varied. In the cutscenes and the Slingo-like mini-game, all of them are either the same wide-faced cat or the same tall-faced dog. While this makes for easy animating and was a minor point of fridge humor for the show, it gets hard to tell them apart.
The sound on the whole is charming at first, but lacks variety. Makes you feel like they should have worked on it more. The game, being in another language, had me stuck looking around on the map and now the song of that screen shall haunt my dreams for about a week or so. It's literally why I had to stop playing. Also, when hurt, you make a generic GB 'thud' sound. A little disappointing, but better than if they tried to emulate a cat sound.
The difficulty is actually pretty easy. You'd think that simple plunking wouldn't work in a game from the land of the rising sun, but it does. The grinding game is obvious grinding game and the platforming isn't too-too bad.
Somehow, I still want to play. For all its problems, I want to play just to see if I can finish. The platforming mini-games are fun, the Slingo/Pachinko thing was fun, and, dang it, I wanna see if we get Momo back. Not a spectacular game, but it's a game. Worth trying out of boredom, but, not unless you're a masochist... like me... I'd spend only a limited amount of time plunking at it. It amuses me with its bootleg-ness.
4.6/10. Would play again, if only to take in the horribleness.
Graphics
7 Sound
4 Addictive
6 Depth
3 Story
4 Difficulty
4
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