April 25, 2003 - Look out, Nintendo freaks! Pikmin and Animal Crossing probably struck you as being just a bit off center from the gaming norm. Made in Wario (Wario Ware) probably made you look at that Nintendo label differently than before. But GiFTPiA, which just arrived to Japan this week, is the clincher. Nintendo has gone completely batty.
Everything about this game suggests that during its development, development team Skip was under the influence of something we'd like to get our hands on. Just check out the premise. It's a special day on Nanashi Island -- the day that island resident Pokkle becomes an adult. But something is amiss. In addition to an unseasonable typhoon, Pokkle is nowhere to be found. Eventually, once all those waiting in attendance at Pokkle's coming of age ceremony have given up and gone home, Pokkle shows up, having merely overslept. This doesn't please the mayor one bit, and Pokkle finds himself in prison for treason.
The mayor gives Pokkle a way out of jail by allowing him to do volunteer garbage-collection, but there's still the sticky matter of the missed coming of age ceremony. Without attending such a ceremony, Pokkle is doomed to remain a child forever. A fancy coming-of-age ceremony is pricey, though, and this time around the mayor insists that Pokkle pay the required 5,000,000 moneys ("money" is the currency on the island).
In GiFTPiA, you play as Pokkle and attempt to earn 5,000,000 moneys. There are numerous ways to do this. You can collect pineapples that grow about the island and sell them at the convenience store. This will earn you 30 moneys a pop. Alternatively, you can go fishing in one of the three legal fishing grounds on the island. A big fish can get you 1,000 moneys, assuming you're lucky enough to catch one.
But the best way to earn moneys is to take up part time jobs, listings for which are posted on a billboard in the city hall. The first job we took up was easy enough. The unseasonable typhoon had destroyed signposts throughout the island, and the mayor asked us to replace the destroyed signposts with new ones. Doing so took just a few minutes and earned us 5,000 moneys. Now we just need to do that a thousand times and we'll have enough for the ceremony.
There are other ways to earn moneys, including some that are more directly related to the story. Moneys that you've earned can be stored in an account using your cash card and the ATM machine located in the city hall.
You're not free to go about endlessly taking on jobs and earning moneys, though. Pokkle is a kid, so he can't stay out all night. When playing the game, a counter slowly counts down how much time you have remaining before you have to return home and go to bed. When your remaining time gets low, spirits appear around your head. Run out of time, and you're sent home and penalized. Currently, we can stay out for just a few minutes before having to rush back home. This limitation will apparently disappear as Pokkle grows up and is allowed to stay out more.
Rules, such as your curfew, seem to be big on Nanashi Island. Pokkle, beause of his heinous crime, starts the game out attached to a chain ball and with his face blurred out (because it's apparently illegal to show the face of underage criminals). Now over an hour into the game, the chain is gone but Pokkle's face is still blurred out. Plus, Pokkle is under the constant supervision of Mappo, the NPD (Nanashi Police Department) police robot. Mappo makes sure Pokkle goes only where he needs to go and also offers up occasional advice. He's also the first to jump in whenever you break a rule such as being too loud in the city hall library.
While not so much a rule, you have to also keep track of Pokkle's energy level. Moving around consumes calories, slowly emptying Pokkle's heart containers and slowing him down. To continue merrily about the game, you have to eat food, from pineapples to fish that you've caught. You can also collect new heart containers which, as in Zelda, increase your life (the game even plays the little chime that Zelda plays when you get a heart containiner).
That seems to be the gist behind GiFTPiA. There seems to be much more complexity on offer down the road, though. You can purchase an array of items from the convenience store, whose purpose is unclear to us at this point -- perhaps there are some puzzles in store (hopefully involving the toilet paper on sale at the shop). The game also locks off much of the island, only offering up the immediate surroundings of Pokkle's home and the city hall from the get-go. We presume that as the story progresses we'll gain access to other areas, including the hot spring, beach and mountainous areas that are shown in the instruction manual.
If the premise isn't enough for you, wait until you see how it's all implemented. Cell shading has been done quite well on the GameCube before, and it's used just as well here to paint Nanashi island as a bright, colorful place. The game is fully voiced, but not in Japanese or English. Instead, the developers have cooked up a special language which sounds like a mix of Japanese, Vietnamese and maybe an African language-or-two. The exaggerated animation of the oddball characters as they speak in the language is enough to keep things interesting, even if you can't read the Japanese subtitles.
Best of all is the soundtrack which has influences, believe it or not, in Sega's Jet Set Radio. Nanashi Island has its own radio station whose broadcasts are blasted throughout the island and serve as the background music for the game. Songs played by the station include happy, bubbly gaming tunes, alternative rock, R&B and even French songs! The game's instruction manual actually has a list of twenty bands whose music is featured on the station. Bet you never expected to hear the finer selections of "Redneck Trio" and "Fuzz Proposal" in a Nintendo game.
We stopped playing GiFTPiA (remember to keep your i's lower case, kids) because we were stuck, unable to find a new part time job. However, we can't wait to go back and try more of the game in order to see what other peculiarities Skip and Nintendo have cooked up. Who knows, maybe we'll eventually earn the requisite 5,000,000 moneys and make Pokkle into an adult.
