Momotaro Dentetsu 12
Legendary Peach Boy Momotaro has been in many a video game. Mostly RPGs and board games, but a few platformers and such snuck in there. Here I'm talking about Momotaro Dentetsu 12 on the Gamecube, the 12th entry in Hudson's train-based board game from the property. This series is extremely prolific, having originated on the PC Engine in the late '80s. For such a long series, though, there is very little out there to clue us westerners in on how the hell to play it. So, I'm going to put the best explanation I can out there in case you're the board gaming type.
So, for starters, you'll choose the length of the game in years (each turn is a month), select your map, the number of players (along with human or com), and name the players. A tip, when naming characters, selecting alphabets with the shoulder buttons will give you English letters. Done? Now we can start.
Each player controls a train, and a destination is randomly chosen. The goal in the end is to be the man with the most money, and the best way to start is to be the first to reach said destination, so start making your way there. In the meantime, here is what the spaces do. Blue spaces grant you a random amount of cash, and red do the opposite. Yellow spaces grant you a random item or effect, almost exclusively for the better. Stars are shops, where you can buy or sell items. There are property spaces on which you can invest money on shops and housing, which has a year end dividend. Rainbow spaces are teleporters that will zoom you across the map to other teleporters for the low cost of all your on-hand cash, and question marks seem to allow gambling. Then there are the stations, which are your destinations and also work like properties, and some sort of robot factory where you can spend money on a robot, but I haven't completely figured that out yet.
Got it? Okay, so really make sure to be first to hit the destination both for the payoff and for what happens next. You must land exactly on the destination for it to count. Once you do, you'll get a payout, and then... sweet lord. The giant-ass baby known as the god of poverty shows up. He'll attach to one of the other players, usually the one with the least money, or more likely the one farthest from the destination, and every round steal a crapload of money from them. Have him attached too long, and he'll transform. He has three other forms, and you don't want to see them.
There's another baby form, which is gentle and steals less. The other two, though, steal way more, and also cause natural disasters that can cost you more, send you to the hospital, or worse, to hell, where every space costs a ton. So, you don't want this bastard anywhere near you. You can pass him off by touching another player, so playing hot potato there can get nasty and derail you from reaching your next destination, and you want to get there, if for no other reason than to get the jerk to latch on to someone else.
Other random events happen, such as Santa showing up at Christmas to give someone money (I saw him visit someone in hell once... awesome), and minigames of chance that will award someone a ton of cash, so being at the right place at the right time can be a big deal.
That's really it as to how to play. Get money, don't lose it, and use your items judiciously, and you just might win. It's very chance heavy, but it's a blast with friends once the god of poverty makes a mess of things. If you dig board games, give it a go. It's fun and colorful, and since these games have been indecipherable to the west, they don't cost much of anything. I like it a lot.
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