The PlayStation Portable was home to a fair few oddities, with two big titles coming to mind, famed for their charmingly simple looks and catchy music. The one I'm more familiar with will appear elsewhere on this 1001 list, but the other is the rhythm strategy side-scrolling beat 'em up, I guess, that is Patapon.
You are the Almighty, God of the Patapons, beating the drum that leads them towards... It.
What is "It", anyway? I've no idea, but it's all the way over at Earthend, presumably quite far to the right. Get your rhythm going and watch your believers march to the beat of the drum.
Fun Times
The Patapons are a bunch of walking eyeballs, armed to the teeth (do they even have teeth?) and afraid of nothing that stands in their way - or they were before they fell on hard times, as briefly told in a sepia-toned history lesson at the start of the game.
The parchment artwork is replaced by what might as well be placeholder text that instantly cheapens the experience of Patapon before it's even begun, but luckily, the key ideas and striking artwork lay just beyond this black screen. You're asked to beat the drum. Pon. Pon. Pon.
An advisor guides us through the camp bit by bit, starting with the all-important quest for food.
Once a mission begins and you issue your first four-note command, you're away. There's no pausing to think about the next move, no time to plan out any great strategy. The only time you have to think about what next step to take is the time it takes for your Patapon to sing their response to your drum. Seconds, basically.
If you keep the rhythm, drum, song, drum, song, you'll see your combo meter rise, where it will eventually turn into a fever and your Patapon will get stronger and the music louder, and good times are had by all.
Fail to hit the beat or press the wrong button and that combo falls flat on its arse, often with your Patapon questioning whether you're really cut out for this Almighty God position we find ourselves in. It's the only rest you'll get, with nothing happening until you start drumming again, but don't lose the rhythm in the middle of a fight - you don't want to be silent when being attacked.
Helpful visual clues fill you into how to time the beat, the edges of the screen subtly flashing when you should be hitting a note, and the Patapon themselves will give hints as to what they're capable of, their massive eyes looking angrier when they're in range of an opponent.
After our hunting session, we get to see that first hand on some folks our own size.
A fearsome melee combatant is our first new unit, adding to the default spearmen that have been bopping along to our beat since the start, and these units can be given new arms and armour to increase a load of stats that I simply wasn't expecting to see from a game that looked so chill from the outside.
I'm on quite the warpath now. Patapon isn't set up to give you multiple approaches to your problems. I've just two tunes to my powers, go forward and attack, so that's what I do, mission after mission, seeing where our warriors will end up, and what spoils they'll find on their travels.
With Guitar Hero, the head bobs come from the music you know and love. With Patapon, it comes from the need to stay alive and on top of the situation. It comes from playing in sync with your followers. A pata pata pata pon here, a pon pon pata pon there, your hopefully expert timing being reinforced by the excitement the Patapons feel at your competence before they desire another bar of the drum.
It's an infectious beat, and it's so far made up of only "Pata" and "Pon", square and circle. Simple. Addictive. But what's next?
But it's not going to get too hectic in this mission. There's only one target for us here, and he's a biggun.
Our third beat, "Chaka Chaka Pata Pon" is a defensive one. I don't know what it does, exactly, but I can get a rough idea - stop fighting for a moment and brace for impact. It's probably really useful when faced with a fire breathing monster tens times your size, for example.
This fight was somewhat long, as my foe kept running away once he'd taken a fair old chunk of damage, and usually after eating or otherwise killing my Patapon. To know how much health a target has left would be rather useful - you know how healthy your Patapon units are - but I couldn't see any indicator of his status other than a brief sigh and unhappy looking expression, right before he perked up and demolished another unit.
I didn't exactly have the strongest of forces going into this fight - I didn't bother with any hunting in between missions to get some extra food, mostly because nobody appeared to complain about the lack of it. It's used for getting new troops, though, and padding out my forces would probably have been a wise investment of my time.
I had spearmen, axemen and a bowman at my disposal, and disposed of most of them were by the end of this fight. If a unit dies, they drop their hat, which you can pick up to revive the unit back at camp. If this guy eats their hat, well, the cost to bring your Patapon back to fighting strength just went up, and you'll need to hunt around for more meat and Ka-ching and other odds and sods to create a new army.
With just a single bowman remaining - my flagbearer doesn't do anything but inspire everyone towards success, or maybe it's his job to interpret my drumming. Either way, he's not a fighter, but my bowman is, and I kept the fever going long enough so that he was able to shoot more arrows than usual an ultimately fell the foul beast.
Final Word
And that, after about an hour, was a good time to call it, especially because I had one very unhealthy bowman forming the bulk of my army, and an awful lot more fighting to do before I got to Earthend in search of the elusive It.
Patapon gets much more action-packed, from what little I've seen of it, with loads of units filling one half of the screen, all angry and animated, hurling spears and swinging clubs and axes into what is often just as massive and angry an opponent, be they a force of little creatures or a giant boss.
I caught a glimpse of the mission map, and boy does it scroll. You might find yourself taking a unit on hundreds of missions if you can keep them alive well enough. How many of those are unique missions, and not simple hunts for food? I don't know. But I do like the look of an upgraded horde of Patapons, let me say that for sure.
I don't know how grindy Patapon is, or how repetitive, or even how complicated the commands you learn and put to use will get. As the kind of player who glosses over vast stats screens and opts for the "Equip the fancy stuff for me" button, maybe my playthrough of Patapon will hit a wall faster than it should. I don't know, but I'll find time for some more of it.
I've got a copy for my PSP, no idea where I picked it up. I don't think I got this way back when. I played a demo, I'm sure, but I was more interested in the other weird-looking musical offering, as we'll find out later.
If you like this, though, it's had a few sequels and even a PlayStation 4 remaster since, so there's plenty to sink your teeth into. I guess it's not as repetitive as I might have imagined then? I suppose I'll just have to dive in and find out sometime. Pata pata pata pon.
Fun Facts
The design of the Patapon had nothing to do with the game. They were created by a French artist, Rolito, five years earlier. When game designer Hiroyuki Kotani saw them, he imagined them going to war, got in contact with Rolito, and asked him to come up with the universe in which they live.
Patapon, developed by Pyramid, SCE Japan Studio, first released in 2007.
Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2008, via emulation.