Thanks to officially supported emulation on today’s consoles (via Virtual Console, XBLA, and PSN), we’re seeing more and more games given a second life through digital distribution. Recently, it was announced that two Dreamcast games would be coming this year as downloads for Xbox 360 and PS3.
Considering that the Dreamcast is easily this blogger’s favorite system, now is the perfect time to talk about other DC games that I’d like to see show up in the future. ICG is going to refer to these pleas for re-releases as “revival requests.”
The first game to be featured is an import gem called Cool Cool Toon. This one is a bit of an oddity in that it’s a rhythm game developed by SNK, a company typically known for making fighting games (King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown). Regardless, it is made of equal parts amazing art style, good music, fun dance choreography and solid gameplay, resulting in pure awesomeness pressed onto a disc.
Cool Cool Toon hit Japan just two months after Jet Set Radio (Jet Grind Radio in the US), which is typically credited with ushering in cel shading as a mainstream art style for games. The best way to describe CCT‘s look is as cel shading without the borders between colors, and it still looks great today.
In the game, the main characters get pulled into Cool Cool Town from their own world, meet Yusa (pink rabbit above) and basically have to dance in order to clean up the town and find a way back home. Nothing too deep, but it doesn’t need to be.
The world feels very much alive. Colors are vibrant and random objects will pulse or move during each dance (called a “flitz”). Everything meshes so well that you almost feel privileged to be getting a peek into the world of Cool Cool Toon. The only negative is that this is the only peek we get – the game never got a console sequel.
Playing the game requires you to simultaneously move the analog stick on the controller to specific positions and hit buttons in time with the music. Imagine that if you’re not touching the analog stick, your cursor is resting in the center of a circle. Move it in any direction and the cursor moves to the outside of the circle. Rings that slowly close in on button icons act as cues to let you know which one to hit next. Finally, parts of the circle edge will turn blue, in which case you will have to hug that edge in one smooth motion. You can see all of this in motion in our gameplay video.
Difficulty starts out reasonable but ramps up fairly quickly. Don’t worry, though, because it’s so addictive that you won’t mind replaying each song to get better! Pretty soon you’ll be pressing all four buttons (A, B, X, or Y) and even trying to hold the analog stick halfway between a full press and resting position on the trickiest songs.
Character designs get downright wacky – in a very good way. Many of the characters are lovable, and the ones that aren’t are at least interesting to look at.
To top it all off, the game offers a decent number of costumes for a bit of personalization.
So how good are Cool Cool Toon‘s chances of being re-released? Let’s examine the pros and cons:
Why this game is a good candidate for revival:
- Controls translate well to modern controllers. (Xbox 360 controllers have exactly the same layout; only colors would need to be swapped. PS3 controllers also have an analog stick + 4 face buttons.)
- It contains no licensed content. Music and characters are, I believe, entirely original.
- SNK is still alive today to approve it. (It technically went defunct in 2001 but lives on as SNK Playmore.)
- Thanks to art design choices, it still looks good ten years later.
Factors that could hurt its candidacy for revival:
- It was never released in English. There are some minigames mixed into story mode that can be very difficult without an understanding of Japanese. Luckily, the story is minimal and a translation would not be impractical.
- A (relatively) small song list of around 25 songs. Given that this would become a digital download and likely priced in the sub-$20 range, I can’t imagine this being much of an issue.
Time to start crossing your fingers. Watch for more “revival requests” in the future!
Original release year: 2000
(Character art source: official game website)
