Boing! Docomodake DS Review

Product tie-in games are nothing new. Countless websites have Flash-based timewasters devoted to their products, and there have been many interactive advertisements on the consoles, such as the much maligned Yo! Noid on the NES or the awful (if free) Yaris racer on the Live Arcade or even the just plain silly, as with Dorito's dinosaur versus delivery truck game, Dash of Destruction. Not dissimilar from their film-based counterparts, these "advergames" are rushed and derivative, seeking only to get you to buy more crap (or even destroy the competition, as with Coca Cola's Pepsi Invaders on the Atari 2600). However, there are a small few where the branding is ultimately irrelevant and the game itself can stand out through the clutter of its peers to be one fine platformer, such as MC Kids or Cool Spot. Thankfully, Docomodake is in the latter category.

You may be thinking, "what the hell is Docomodake?" and that would be the proper response for the Western audience. The Docomodake Family are the mascots of NTT docomo, Japan's premiere cellphone provider with over half of the market share. The Docomodake brand itself is wildly popular, selling various merchandise on an almost Hello, Kitty level, so it's no surprise such a popular mascot received an advergame on the country's most popular platform. Initially, the real surprise was that this game saw the light of day on our shores at all, as we have zero connection to the mascot and are not even remotely NTT docomo's target market. However, upon playing the game, I can see exactly why it was ported overseas: it's excellent.

Docomodake is a simple sidescrolling puzzle platformer, consisting of 50+ bite-sized levels, each never taking any more than five minutes to complete, making it a perfect on-the-go DS title. The various set pieces are familiar: block puzzles, weighted platforms, killer death spikes. What makes the game shine is the abilities of the titular Papa Docomodake, who is off on an adventure to find his family who have gone missing in preparation for an upcoming festival. Besides running, jumping and rolling with the d-pad, the touch screen is used to partition Papa Docomodake by touching him and dragging off pieces with the stylus. The more you do this, the more little Papa clones there are and the smaller your player becomes. There's a multitude of uses for this mechanic. To squeeze through a small opening, split off into as many tiny pieces as possible. Use pieces to weight down a scale platform and get past or drag a tiny Papa to press down a button to open a passage. Pick up pieces to hurl at enemies or break blocks. Or my personal favorite: stack pieces on top of eachother to form a ladder for Papa to climb. The list goes on, and each use of Papa's segmenting power is inituitive and interesting. The mix of puzzle platforming and miniature players can't help but remind of the GBA's exceptionally underrated Mario VS. Donkey Kong.

The difficulty curve is fairly consistent. To the experienced gamer, many of Docomodake's puzzles won't be a challenge once you fully understand all of Papa's capabilities. The game grades you on the percentage of treasure you manage to collect in each stage and your completion time. I got 100% on most levels with a time of under 2 minutes and still received a C a good deal of the time, so this game can become a speedrunner's dream (or nightmare, depending on your level of optimism) if you so choose to be a completionist. The game itself is fairly short, lasting only three hours or so, but at Docomodake's 20 dollar price tag, it's nothing to gripe about.

Boing! Docomodake DS, with its immense charm and creativity (not to mention some nice music), stands out as one of those obscure gems that, sadly, few people will ever invest in. If you're a casual handheld/on-the-go player who wants a mix of cute and loveable little mushroom folk and clever puzzles or a hardcore gamer looking for a game to actually show you something new, you simply cannot go wrong with this title. Score yet another point for Nintendo's unbeatable pocket champion.

Final Score: 8.5