Hamtaro

Hamster tennis anyone? How about volleyball? Or, if non-traditional sports are favored, try a little birdback riding. These are just a few of the sporty games offered up on the latest Hamtaro game from Nintendo.

Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games features those adorable hamsters from the Hamtaro television show, also showcased in the Game Boy Advance game, Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak. Unlike Ham-Ham Heartbreak, Ham-Ham Games isn’t an adventure game, but instead offers a slew of field and track events in a tournament-style setting. Who knew hamsters were athletically inclined?

There are fifteen events in all, initially offered up in a tournament format over the course of seven days. These events are: volleyball, tennis, hammer throw, diving, sailing, archery, birdback riding, swimming, hurdles, synchronized swimming, pole vault, carrot pull, triple jump, marathon, and the 100hm dash. Each event is played in order in the tournament schedule, available after players sign in on Hamtaro’s team.

Upon first starting, players must sign in by making a player card with personal information. This player information is saved each gameplay on one player slot, a strange feature which means that only one person can effectually play at a time, unless players want to share the same saved game. The first event is announced, and Hamtaro must travel to the venue site in order to play the event. Once arriving at the event desk, Hamtaro has a choice of entering, practicing, setting the difficulty level and reading a basic tutorial on how to play the game. After entering the event, Hamtaro’s team will have to beat out three other teams to place first. Once all the events have been played, the games will be unlocked for a free-play mode.

These games are varied in content and skill level, and many are surprisingly entertaining and well-designed. The best games are the tennis, volleyball, marathon, diving and archery events. The worst ones are the sailing, birdback and carrot pull events. Tennis and volleyball both feature tight controls, with fairly realistic effects and opponent AI, depending on the difficulty level chosen. Practice is definitely recommended! The marathon is a rhythm-matching timing game which is quite fun, and the diving is a button matching game, which is also fun but very difficult. On the other hand, sailing and birdback riding are clumsy affairs, and unduly frustrating due to sloppy controls. The carrot pull game doesn’t make any sense (players are supposed to pull the heaviest carrots by gauging when the character’s mouth is the widest, but in the actual gameplay this didn’t appear to matter), and is boring. But a couple of blah mini-games out of fifteen isn’t a bad ratio, especially considering the great quality of most of the others.

When Hamtaro wants to take a break from all this physical exertion, he can talk to the many characters who populate the Ham-Ham world, watch TV, change costumes and explore the areas for sunflower seeds, the local currency. Sunflower seeds will buy more costumes.

The hamsters look exactly the same as on the cartoon and handheld games, but are a little larger in comparison to the environment. Of course, cuteness abounds in great pastel splendor! The music is pretty average, and while matching the theme adequately, isn’t anything above average for a GBA game. Players can change the music in the clubhouse, for a different tune the next day.

This is a great collection of mini sporting games on the GBA, and one that has been thoughtfully and carefully designed. Young and old players alike can find much to enjoy and appreciate, with the wide variety of games and different difficulty settings. However, the utter lack of a multi-player option (what were the designers thinking? Why wouldn’t you have the option for head-to-head racing in the race events, and some friendly competition in the volleyball and tennis games?) is a slight drawback, as is the equally strange decision to not allow multi-player save slots. There is a linking capability to trade player cards with, but this doesn’t really add much to the game.