GENRE
	Party
	DEVELOPER
	Taito
	PUBLISHER
	Majesco
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-2
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	No
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

Most gamers know that there are significant cultural differences between games developed in Japan and those made in the States. As a result, some Japanese titles run so counter to American tastes that publishers don’t even bother to bring them over. Thus, when a title as bizarrely quirky as Furu Furu Park winds up in the West, one has to wonder what so emboldened the publisher to localize. It's hard to say, but it does seem that if Majesco was looking to corner the "most bizarre game ever sold in America" niche, they’ve got a good shot. Just don’t expect a deep gaming experience while you’re at it.

visuals

The sights of Furu Furu Park represent a serious disparity between art direction and art execution. The style of the game is eclectically superb, with a virtual smorgasbord of cutesy, chibi avatars, green pigs, funny little men, giant guys with afros and android martial arts masters, just to name a few. Each minigame intro screen is a stylish rotating 3D image that demonstrates the appropriate gestures for the forthcoming game. Everything in Furu Furu Park is beautifully busy, with splashes of color and a lot of flair.

The problem is that none of it is even remotely system-pushing. Games run at a low framerate, animations are choppy, characters look like cardboard cutouts and backgrounds look horribly low-res. It’s as if someone took brilliant art design and then proceeded to code it for Dreamcast.

audio

Peppy, pop-style electronica pervades the music in the game. Gamers who are used to the music of, say, the Mega Man series will find the soundtrack to sound similar. It’s actually pretty catchy, if not especially varied. The sound effects, likewise, are fittingly bombastic, but none of them really stick out. Voice work is nonexistent.

gameplay

Furu Furu Park consists of 30 different minigames, all of which fall under one of four categories: Technique, Balance, Power and Brain. (Insofar as we can tell, there is only one minigame that falls under the Brain category.) Technique games emphasize specific motions, Balance games emphasize tilting, Power games emphasize speed, and the Brain game emphasizes memory and recall.

Some of the games are bite-sized versions of retro titles. The game is developed by Taito, who brought some of its old arcade classics back for this compilation. Unfortunately, the implementation of these nostalgic games winds up being a serious letdown. Furu Furu’s version of Arkanoid -- one of the more polished games in the collection -- consists of just one brief level that is a breeze to complete. The same is true for Bubble Bobble, which shows up for a single round before coming to an abrupt end.

The rest of the minigames are a varied set, with many of them going beyond bizarre. There is, for example, a hammer throw event where the player swings around and throws three muscular dark-skinned men with enormous afros. Another surreal offering is a music-based rhythm minigame that consists of revving a motorcycle and honking a horn to a rock tune. The most eclectic, however, might be the sushi-eating contest, which involves rotating a sushi bar to align specific sushi dishes to specific characters.

All this style in presentation, however, belies a underwhelming substance. Many of the minigames, for one, are much more interesting in theory than they are in practice. A second problem lies in the fact that some of the control schemes don’t work all that well; a few of the games are unresponsive to the motions in question, especially where tilting is involved.

Furu Furu really annoys in the little things, too. There is no IR functionality whatsoever in the game, which relegates menus to cumbersome d-pad driven affairs. The loading time for each minigame (including cutscenes) is pretty long, especially given how short the minigames are. There is no retry option for each game; to try a minigame anew, one has to go back into the minigame and endure the same loading / explanation / cutscene introduction. Some games claim you "fail" despite earning a sizeable number of points, while others "clear" you despite subpar efforts. When scoring, the game only allows room for three initials, rather than full names. The game’s auto-save feature is not on by default; players who don’t rummage through the options to turn it on will find their high scores lost when they shut off the game.

It is worth noting that are two ways for a solo player to experience the action -- through free play and through something called rank mode. Free play is just that; a player can choose any of the thirty minigames to play through at will. Rank mode is only marginally different, as it involves the player choosing five minigames and getting a ranking from a green pig after each round. Of the two, most players will probably find the rank mode to be more or less unnecessary and will opt for the free play.

multiplayer

Furu Furu Park offers multiplayer for two players -- those looking for four-player party games will not find it here. Some of the games involve the two players taking turns, while others involve the players in simultaneous action. To their credit, a couple of them work decently enough, including an adventure-style stage that feels like a co-op action game. Most of them, though, are basically just two players going at a pedestrian minigame.

The game makes an attempt to mix things up with a few different multiplayer modes: free battle, love challenge and panel attack. The free battle mode is the two-player counterpart to free play, essentially allowing two players to battle it out in any minigame. The love challenge mode, which bizarrely purports to test the love compatibility based on multiplayer gameplay, is a weak second option that is basically a dressed-up rank mode.

The panel attack mode is probably the game’s most interesting mode. In this mode, the various minigames become a giant board, with the object being to win spaces on the board. It’s an interesting twist on the traditional minigame competitions, although it does not overcome the myriad of other shortcomings inherent in the minigames themselves.

overall

For all the flair and weirdness of Furu Furu Park, the real meat of the product -- the minigames -- ends up being a thin and unimpressive experience. The games are novel but unsatisfying, the different modes are not really interesting, and the game is littered with frustrating design gaffes. It also doesn't help that the game only supports two players, a faux pas in modern party games.

The game compensates for these deficiencies somewhat by being a budget-priced game, but in this case, the cost-benefit doesn’t really seem superior. With so many great party games out there, like the Raving Rabbids series (the first Rayman is currently just $10 more than Furu Furu Park) and WarioWare: Smooth Moves, it’s hard to justify this one even on the virtues of its lower price tag. A player is better off spending more and getting a superior product.

5.0/10