Puzzle & Action: Ichidant-R (1994)

picked this up on the switch. this game is so much fun, such a hoot, such a thrill, that when i play it i think 'why is nobody else talking about this.' fortunately here on grouvee a few others are talking about it too. and i get why they are!!

i think wario ware comparisons are apt for sure. the games are fast, weird, and require a number of skills that you either have or don't. there are a few minigames in here, where playing them i think 'ah... this is what the wario ware/rhythm heaven team were thinking of, especially in the orbulon section.' i love the wario ware games, played 'em to pieces, but they sometimes leave an itch for the game to get just a little harder, just slightly more in depth... ichidant-r scratches that itch.

some of the games are not very good or specifically require skills im bad at. i would prefer they are all good, but its also part of the game design. you pick which game you play next... if you go for a bonus heart, you may get stuck sharpening pencils or making skewers and you cant get past until you win the game... it's a real risk-reward assessment.

other notes:

1. the rpg in the genesis version is funny. its cool. i like it a lot even though i dont speak japanese... its conceptually funny enough that it doesnt matter that i cant read it.

2. the game gear version of this is actually really clever and good in many ways. they take out stuff that you just cant do on a game gear and add some new games. some are fun. the samurai one is easy but its fun. the monkey game is much harder with the lower resolution. its worth looking into if you really enjoy the arcade one.

3. i feel like there's a huge gap of quality between sega's arcade games and sega's console-only games. i think this is for another review, but their arcade games + ports of those are just a delight, where i often feel like their console-only games (not all of them, but strangely independent of genre) leave me with a rudderless stranded feeling that i have thought of for most of my gaming life as 'the sega effect' and i say this as an enormous fan of sega games and consoles. i think that their split attention between arcade and home console is responsible for this, but again, this is for a future review. anyhow, as an arcade game, i can see myself sticking at the machine plopping in quarters until i beat the thing or run out of money. its just got a fun hook.

anyhow i would recommend playing this game. the arcade one ported to the switch specifically b/c that ones in english.

This game is a good for a laugh with friends. In Ichidant-R, you play a series of simple mini-games similar to those found in Mario Party and Warioware (but with early 90s pixel graphics). The mini-games here are not as frantic and shortlived as the ones in Warioware, but they have that same strange and eccentric goofy vibe to them. In practice the mini-games are more similar to those of Mario Party, explaining a task to complete and competing with your friends to be the first to succeed. There are twenty mini-games in Ichidant-R -- some are fun, and some are not -- but with friends it's pretty entertaining either way.

Example of a good mini-game -- You have an above-view of a complicated overlapping train track, and have certain track squares you can rotate to try to lead the train (which is always moving) over all the randomly-placed coins. You have to plan ahead accordingly... but you have to be quick about it. It's a mad scramble -- very easy to mess up repeatedly, but also entirely feasible to make a quick clean sweep and feel super-accomplished about it.

Example of a bad mini-game -- Spin the joystick as fast as you can to sharpen the pencil first. Lame.

Looking through them all, I'd say it's about 1/3 good mini-games, 1/3 okay ones, and 1/3 stinkers. But regardless, it's still a hoot in general, and worth picking up if you want to amuse your retro gaming friends for a weekend gathering for a couple hours. That's why I picked it up at least!

On New Year's Eve some friends and I played the following games on Switch together:

• Ichidant-R: Puzzle and Action -- a ridiculous mini-game collection (leans slightly more toward a Wario Ware feel than a Mario Party one) -- this was a hoot for four players, with me as the Japanese translator lol (that vampire coffin game!!!) -- I love that Sega actually brought this over for release outside of Japan
• Samurai Aces -- a good vertical shmup that reminded me a lot of Aero Blasters (which makes sense, because same creator) -- this one features fighter planes in the samurai era somehow
• Sengoku 3 -- a NeoGeo classic beat-em-up with modern-day ninjas killing lots of zombies -- this plays extremely well, I highly recommend it to fans of the genre
• Money Puzzle Exchanger -- a NeoGeo classic falling blocks puzzle game -- feels like a variation of Magical Drop, but it turned out to be way more addictive than I expected to be -- a huge plus for its so-bad-it's-good Engrish all throughout