Originally Posted by Outdated Review

TOKYO--Few games at the Tokyo Game Show 2005 stood out like Loco Roco, a quirky platforming game that lets you assume the role of a little orange blob, rolling your way through brightly lit levels and eating as you go. In some ways, it's an amalgamation of a few different game mechanics that we've seen in the past, particularly those in Kirby's Tilt and Tumble and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. But despite the familiarity of some of its aspects, Loco Roco is a unique and truly enjoyable game, and we had a blast playing just the demo level. From what we could see, Loco Roco also seemed to be the most popular download at the PSP hot spots all over Sony's booth.

Your character is no more than a blob with a simple face and a sprout atop his head, and his only movement, other than those you provide for him, is that of his mouth, which goes from a little line smile to a circle, indicating that he's about to eat something or that he's been knocked up into the air. Despite the total lack of emotion in this simplistic character design, he's both lovable and cute, as he smiles and chomps and rolls around. The game's control is as simple as the character design, but it works surprisingly well. Using only the triggers, you can hold down the left trigger to tilt the level down until you reach an angle of about 45 degrees to the left, and your character will roll left when you do so. The same can be done to the right, and if you hit both triggers together, he'll do a little jump into the air. And that's it. Like in Jungle Beat and other games using this simple kind of maneuvering, the trick is in getting everything on the level, not necessarily just getting to the end. The first time we played through, we finished fairly quickly, but we found at the results screen that we had missed most of the level's pickups.

On the second go-through, we found that there was a lot more to the gameplay than at first glance. It seems pretty straightforward; as you roll through, your character will eat the flowers that cross his path. Of course, it's your job to navigate him into them and away from the burr-shaped enemies that litter the environment. The catch is that the more flowers you eat, the bigger your character gets, and this impacts his ability to move around. As he widens, he requires more momentum to get off the ground, which means you have to play through more quickly, risking missing valuable flowers for consumption. Should you knock into one of the burrs, which were the only damage-dealing creatures in the demo level, then your character loses little pieces of himself, until presumably they're all gone and the game is over. Of course, you still have the opportunity to pick up the pieces after they've fallen off, much like the rings in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

The other major gameplay mechanic occurs when you come across an area with an entrance smaller than your pudgy little blob. At this point, you double-press the circle button, which summons electricity and breaks you up into a bunch of tiny blobs, the number of which depends on how big you are at the time. Then, you must use the tilting mechanic to roll all the blobs safely together to the end of that section, and assemble them into one single happy rolly guy again. Some of the level traps you encounter, like jet streams of air that you can hitch a ride with, require that you're broken up into little pieces, presumably because the air couldn't move the larger creature on its own. Of course, this is essentially what makes the game feel so well put together. Whether going around loop-de-loops or trying to work your way up seesaws, and no matter at what weight, the game is extremely responsive to your weight and the angle at which you're tilting it.

Everything about this game is charming, from the bright graphics and environments adorned with polka dots, to the cute little grunts and pops that the character makes when he bobs around. The music, which is on a fairly short cycle, is so catchy that you probably won't find it annoying, even if you should. And the gameplay, which is so simple, is surprisingly rich, with all the hidden areas and pickups that you can find along the way. It's hard to find fault with what we saw from this game so far, except to say that it doesn't currently have a North American release date. We look forward to spending more time with Loco Roco and providing more information as it becomes available.

Originally Posted by scotty

can anyone rip that really annoying song? I want to piss the hell out of a certain friend by blasting that out of my mp3 player...

Originally Posted by l33dagame

WOW.. is this game really that fun??
I like Katamari so much... and is this game better than katamari??

Originally Posted by Elixir

Katamari and Loco Roco are two entirely different games.

Originally Posted by Elixir

It's like Katamari

Originally Posted by Krelian

Ehhh?

Originally Posted by Krelian

And does this game require firmware 2.7x?

Originally Posted by 1up imbecile.

With all the buzz over the upcoming LocoRoco, it's hard to find many faults. It has a quirky Japanese culture theme a la the Katamari Damacy series, along with simple gameplay mechanics that even mom and dad could pick up on. Throw in colorful and vibrant Samurai Jack/Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends esque graphics for the game's cast and a killer original soundtrack and you have an amazing recipe for success. Seemingly, the only thing that could ruin this game is poor execution in game design, which anyone who has played the demo or previewed the game can tell you, is not the case. For a game that 1up.com's Sam Kennedy claims is the "happiest game ever made", and one that could easily be aligned with Nintendo's Touch Generations, what could possibly be wrong?

I want to say this game is going to be perfect. I want the game industry to see that this is just one of many examples of how to make an original game that people are naturally going to want to play and love instead of using some business model of making games that only need to be marketed to sell.

But alas, there's one thing that sticks out about this game that's too hard to simply overlook. Likewise, if this example is ignored now, where does the buck stop? And what the hell could I possibly be talking about?

Why Racism, of course.

First, let's make a couple things clear before we go on. For those of you who think that racism is simply not liking someone because of the color of their skin, you've simply just heard of the rabbit hole. For those of you who would go so far as to label me as a racist for making an issue of this? 1) see the point I just made and 2) we're talking about issues of race that have been so deeply set in our minds from the things around us (TV, media, print, news, role models, crime, EVERYTHING) that for many people it is extremely difficult to call these things out. This is racism to the point where it's so disguised and not addressed that as a society we tend to think it's ok when in reality it detrimentally affects the way we and others think about ourselves and each other.

How does all of this relate to LocoRoco? First examine exhibit A. These are the Moja Corps, the main antagonist of the LocoRocos. From Sony's official LocoRoco game page: "The peaceful world of the LocoRoco are under attack by the not-so-nice Moja Corps! These evil outer space creatures have come to take the LocoRoco from their land of blowing flowers, lively creatures and pastel scenery."

Exhibit A: "Shake Them Dreads"

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6...parison7gb.jpg

Seems harmless enough.

However, consider exhibit B. Here we have an image taken from wikipedia.org's entry for blackface.

Exhibit B: Golliwogg the doll

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/5...liwogg19nl.jpg

Need I say more? (and i'm not trying to point out copyright infringement)

In short, the blackface originates from traveling minstrel shows in early 20th century America that mainly involved white individuals who would paint their faces Black and act out common negative stereotypes of Black people, creating a racist caricature. In response to a significant Black population in the US, these images were later deemed taboo and for the most part, these days, rarely appear in popular culture unless as a satire or critque of racism and race relations. Today in virutally any public sphere in the US, a depiction of a blackface character is not met without much murmurings and harsh criticism.

In comparison, some countries such as Japan (where LocoRoco was developed) do not have significant Black populations and so Blackface images can come about without any criticsm. The images are also then okay to be labeled as the enemy or even serve as representations of Black characters in general, despite the racist images they perpetuate. That and I hear that Japan is just a very racist culture. Otakus please open your minds for a bit.

Furthermore, one could also equate the "invasion" of the Moja and the fleeing of the LocoRoco's to Black slaves being brought to America and the very common practice of today of white flight; but we're not even going to go there.

I'm not accusing the developers of being racist, nor am I accusing LocoRoco of being a racist game. I simply hope believe that this is a product of unchecked institutionalized racism that need's calling out.

A perfect example of this scenario can be seen with Capcom's recent PSP update of the original Mega Man, Mega Man Powered Up.

Consider exhibit C and D. In exhibit C we have the original Japanese version of the tar-baby boss Oilman which fits a very simillar description to our Moja Troop. Exhibit D is the altered American version where the black skin has been changed to blue, and the red lips are now a non-offensive yellow.

*note, C & D were blown up from smaller pictures, hence the poor quality and the fading of the colors.

Exhibits C and D: No muss, no fuss

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/5...1bigger2ww.jpghttp://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5...2bigger0xo.jpg

Exhibit C-2: "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay"

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/8...manshot6ta.jpg

To bring this all back to LocoRoco, I propose a simillar color pallete change (dosen't have to be the same colors) to the Moja troop. Never would I dream of having Sony not release this amazing, original product stateside, but I do feel these racist undertones, whether intentional or not, would stop me as well as others from fully enjoying this game. Almost every article on this game praises the bejeebus out of it, but does no one notice what i've pointed out?

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/7...enshot15bn.jpg

When interviewed by 1up.com, creator Tsutomu Kouno said that he "really focused on creating a happy game because there's too many 3D shooting games, killing people and stuff." I very much so want to believe in this man's philosophy behind his game but why is it that this "feeling comfortable game" makes me feel so edgy?