case 002 - ddr for your hands

A while back, I was at a friend's house, and she was showing me her large game collection. She has a ton of games, but says she probably hasn't finished half of them. (I can understand that... Lord knows I have all those N1 games sitting on the shelf, begging to be played while I run through Disgaea 2 a third time. Yeah, I have my priorities straight, you know.) We're both busy girls pretending we're adults, so we don't have the time to sit around playing video games. But can spend hours upon hours in front of the computer.

Her favorite game genre happens to be... Uh. I think dating sims, so she has a ton of them, but they are in Japanese. I, myself, would probably like playing a dating sim, since I'm ridiculously romantic. But I can't read the Japanese like she can. Angst.

In any case, we were going through her games and decided it'd be fun to play all the multi-play DS games she had. We could both have fun that way, and I'd get to learn about these games that I didn't have. So she pulls out Elite Beat Agents. And I'd seen the box before. In all honesty, I thought it looked stupid.

Well. I was wrong.

We started playing it. And I did poorly the first time, but I couldn't put it down after that. Lucky for me, she let me borrow the game. Cha-ching! Unlike her, I've got a better sense of rhythm (she said so!) and music. After taking it home and playing from the beginning, I quickly got the hand of it. I even went on Limewire to download the soundtrack. The game is so much fun, I can't stand it.

Like 80% of the things I own, the idea for EBA came from Japan. The artwork was anime-styled, and only Japan would think about making a rhythm-based game for the DS. But when I asked other people about the Japanese version, all I would hear were things like: It's completely different.

What does that mean? I figured, okay, so maybe a few stories are different. I looked up some information on the game and realized it was way more different than I could imagine. For instance, instead of the game being about awesome agents encouraging people, the Japanese game's main characters were cheerleaders. Sounded exciting. I shelled out 60 bucks and bought the Japanese game about a month later.

W-well, when I got it, I wasn't expecting an entirely new game! Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! is very humorous, like EBA, and the artwork style is the same. All funky sounds are the same (in the stories, at least. The sounds that happen when you click your stylus on the numbers are different; In ouendan, you get sounds like cheers and whistles. In EBA, you get... I don't know. agents going 'hey!')... But every story is different. The two games are so different that they are both enjoyable. But you wouldn't be able to play ouendan without understanding a lot of Japanese culture, so that's why they had to change it. But for those who do understand, and like Japanese music... it's good! I was pleasantly surprised, and I like both games.

I did go around and grabbed a script so I could understand the stories. And I found song translations. I only knew one song from the soundtrack, and that was READY STEADY GO, which was the second opening for the anime, Fullmetal Alchemist. Though, after hearing the songs and downloading them, I've found there are several I like even more. So I have two homemade CDs now, one with the EBA soundtrack, and the other with the ouendan soundtrack. Fun stuff.

I find the graphics fun and likable. The art isn't first class, but it's fun for the styles of the games. And both the ouendan and the agents are 3D rendered and run smoothly, even if you miss a beat and they have to stop, they start over again cleanly. The dances are all different... Meaning there are no dances that the cheer-squad and agents share. I think that is pretty awesome. So much care was taken into making the English version just as good as the Japanese version. No short-cuts, and there were even extra stages and bonuses added to the English game that weren't in the Japanese one.

Gamewise... I haven't gotten far on either game. The levels are very hard, and it takes time to beat the last few levels. I've gotten through both easy versions, but have yet to beat the normal versions. But that's a good thing... meaning I'm still playing and enjoying the games, and didn't just beat them once and throw them off to the side.

There was a sequel made for ouendan, and I hear one for EBA is in the works. I don't know if this has been confirmed yet, but I hope there will be another one. I adore the agnets. Agents Spin and Jay are so cute! I mean. Um. Hi.

I know a lot of people do not share in my love for EBA. I've heard fans saying they like the Japanese version better. Just a few days ago, I read a review that said EBA was tasteless. ...Um. What? Most of the things in EBA were jokes. And if you look ouendan, you can find just as 'tasteless' jokes in there. (one of the arguments in that article was pointing out the starlets in the Material Girl stage. It said the game was promoting things like Americans wanting to be rich and pig-headed and... I don't know. I played through the ouendan stages again, and saw different things that also seemed 'wrong'... what about where the little girl idol falls for the boy after he beats up her old boyfriend? Or when there are blond, big-nosed Americans in the Matsuri stage that say things like 'LOOK' and 'HELP'? If you point fingers at a game that is meant to be funny, I don't think you have a sense of humor. EBA has very American symbolic things in it, and, of course, America's culture does deal with wealthy people... The girls in the Material Girl stage were a lot like girls who had been characters in television shows or parodies. There was only one thing in EBA that made me do a double-take, and that was when the wealthy oil tycoon went back to his wife after she basically threw him out of his own mansion and kept his money. But, even then, that story was meant to be taken with a grain of salt. The Agents were meant to have a Charlie's Angel's feel to it. Why is that wrong? It certainly would not be the first game to have a parody like that! Because one game is about a girl missing her dead father instead of a wife missing her dead husband doesn't mean one is better than the other. Wow, I didn't understand the article's argument for THAT one, at all...)

Coming off of my soapbox... Look. You can either like the games, or not. And if you like one better than the other, that's your prerogative. I like them both. Each of them have something that makes them unique, but are similar enough to be linked (also, I like secret agents in general). I would like a crossover! Can't you play as the agents in the second ouendan game somehow?

Agents are... GOOOOOOOO!!