GBAtemp book game club #69 time. The club is one of a handful of series we have around here that aim to highlight interesting games to play but where the others are about us reviewing the title this one is more about those wishing to join in discussing it.
The leaked code, commercial releases, homebrew games and ROM hacks for the GBA, DS and Wii will be what provides most of our selections but there are to be occasional asides should the DS be able to emulate something. This said if the franchise or game has notable entries on another platform then we will try to at least mention it in passing.
The selection process itself is not going to be shared however we are not aiming to make another greatest ? games list as those are done elsewhere and they frequently omit many of the new and interesting games that companies have attempted over the years.
This said special reasons (anniversaries, new releases and such) and themes might crop up over the course of things with them being noted when they do happen. There may also be runs posed (complete the game without....) or challenges which might even have ROM hacks to help that out. For the most part, seen as we are a weekly series, it will be one game per time unless there are very similar sequels or we are setting out to compare and contrast competing titles.
#69 - Juka and the Monophonic Menace (GBA)
Southpeak Games did publishing on this one and where they are often a shovelware and old franchises and NA releases of popular European games publisher they do occasionally have some interesting things (a couple of weeks back we highlighted Ninjatown which they published). The game itself was made by Orbital Media, Inc. who seem to have more or less fallen off the face of the earth but before they did that they did a few really interesting GBA games. The GBAtemp Recommends! series already highlighted their superb racing game Racing gears advance and Scurge Hive frequently finds itself on lists of underrated games, this however is about Juka and the Monophonic Menace so on with that. If ever there needed to be a case made of why trying to categorise things into broad genres is an increasingly irrelevant concept this would probably be one of the key pieces of evidence in it; some have called it a simple RPG, others pushed it towards adventure and others somewhere else again and each can have a case made for it.
The story itself, while enjoyable, would be at home in just about any fantasy setting save perhaps for the slightly musical theme of many enemies but it is solid and dodges many of the tropes and clichés. Gameplay wise it is classic isometric puzzles, towns and such although battling takes place in level and in real time which means we would probably recommend it most to fans of Zelda games and previous game of the week Summon Night - Swordcraft Story 2 and if nothing else makes a somewhat nice game to avoid having to make a massive commitment to play and/or introduce someone to this style of gameplay.
"Why play this when I can just play Zelda?" or was Orbital Media, Inc. the star the shines very brightly for a very short amount of time?
gbagotw should get you other links in this series
