Japan Gaming Guide

Sneaking onto the Wii Virtual Console last week was a game you probably won’t be familiar with, based on a sport you might not have heard of. We try to pick the most obscure titles for our VC reviews, figuring that you can already find reviews of the most popular titles if you look for them. So here goes with Appare! Gateball for the PC Engine.

Gateball is basically a Japanese version of croquet. The rules are similar – players use mallets to hit balls through hoops. If you get your ball through a hoop you get a point and another turn. If you hit another ball, you get to put your ball next to it, and whack it in the direction of your choice – through the hoops if it belongs to your team, out of the play area if it doesn’t. Teams are divided into red and white, the team with the most points at the end wins. Simple.

Now Gateball is a sport that anyone can play, and like all such sports it’s very popular among the elderly. Appare! Gateball pits a team of old timers against a team of young whipper-snappers. Age against youth in a bitter fight for bragging rights.

One thing that’s really good about this game is the characterisation. You choose your team from a selection of bizarre looking people, most of whom are very much the wrong side of 40. It gives things a sense of fun, and makes the game a bit more interesting than a plain old croquet simulator. There’s an Elvis impersonator, a fierce old lady with a broom (who wouldn’t look out of place in Biohazard 4), and a cuddly old gent, all of whom play largely identically.

The game itself is fairly primitive, but surprisingly fun for a short while. You aim with a cursor, then have to stop a moving power bar to play the shot, and it’s pretty enjoyable. Honestly! OK, it’s enjoyable for a couple of games, and then it starts to get a bit repetitive. There’s really not a lot to it. The game has a few options, but most of them don’t make much difference. You can choose to play on clay or grass, which doesn’t seem to make much difference other than the colour of the pitch. There’s the choice of simulation mode or action mode, simulation mode being the same as action mode but without the power bar. You can choose the difficulty and match length, but since the easiest setting is too hard, and the shortest length too long, these aren’t too much of an asset to the game.

So is it worth a download? Well, it’s basically 600 points for the chance to laugh at some cartoon pictures of old people. We found this pretty funny for twenty minutes, but doubt we’ll ever play it again. If you want a very briefly amusing twenty minutes, and the chance to learn an entirely new sport then give it a shot. If not, there are a lot of excellent VC games out there to choose from.

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