Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
If you tuned in last week for the glorious return of Hamster Thursday, you... well, you
saw some geese, first off. And then you saw a Nintendo 64 version of the venerable Hamster
Monogatari franchise that looked, admittedly, almost identical to the various Game Boy Advance
versions I've already covered. Well, here's a real treat for you: the original, first-ever,
Hamster Monogatari! And it looks absolutely identical to everything else. These are totally
the same hamsters you've seen over and over again. Heck, I changed the hamster's name
to PS1 just so I couldn't cheat and just use footage from the N64 version. Though it would
be kinda obvious, because any N64 footage wouldn't be broken up by loading screen after
loading screen after loading screen.
The 5th generation was a strange time for gaming, after all, because being cross-platform
meant having to deal with cartridge-based media on one hand and CD-based media on the
other. Plenty of games failed to cross the divide unscathed. Good games. Mega Man 64.
Enough said. Hamster Monogatari, though, feels as comfortable in this PS1 version as any
of the carts that would eventually succeed it. Though it wasn't the first in Culture
Brain's series of small-animal-raising simulations - that honor goes to Ferret Monogatari, which
predates this beast by a couple months - this version codified the mechanics that would
be almost laughably unchanged for years: You've got a hamster in a cage, with changeable amenities
you buy from a shop, you raise said hamster by giving it a training regimen to boost its
stats, and then you make it compete for your glory in races and whatnot.
Yep, it's exactly the Hamster Monogatari you expected, right down to the weird pseudo-evolution
your hamster undergoes a month into your care, and the encyclopedia of hamster formes. As
your hamster grows, it'll learn tricks, which might just consist of looking side-to-side
or acting all tough like it doesn't REALLY NEED YOUR SUNFLOWER SEEDS, MAN, when in fact
it's all just an act it's working on for the next talent show! These and other competitions
will unlock as your hamster levels up and can take part in more and more events, with
its performance dependent upon your abilities with the controller as well as the stats you've
been developing.
And now we come to the time in every Hamster Monogatari review where I lambast the ridiculous
compatibility checker, brought to you by this seriously-creepy hamster in gypsy robes. I
still think it's a stupid waste of space in any game, but they're dead-set on including
it, so let's see how well Yoko Kanno and Motoi Sakuraba would get along. Turns out, they
make beautiful music independent of each other, but not together. Shame, really. So now, if
you really must raise your hamsters at home as opposed to on a portable system, and if
you only have an import PS1 on hand for whatever reason, you too can join in the fun of Hamster
Monogatari. I'd like to thank our eternal Hamster Queen Felicity in Worcestershire,
who is probably STILL on queue for those boxing day whatevers. I still doesn't get it. Does
George Foreman show up and grill meat pies for everyone in line or something? Meat pies
are a thing, right? I heard that on Shaun of the Dead.