A Bishi Bashi birthday bash
Konami's multiplayer minigame masterpiece demands your ATTENTION!
Bishi Bashi Special turned 20 last week and I missed it. Sorry, Bishi Bashi Special. It won't happen again, Bishi Bashi Special. How embarrassing. Now I'm a bashful bishie, Bishi Bashi. And I'm special. (This is your best intro ever, Stu - Ed)
Anyway. What's Bishi Bashi Special? If you are American, you definitely don't know, because it didn't come out over there. Finally, a win for us Europeans! (Remembers Brexit) Awwww. But, no, it was a Japan and Europe release only for PlayStation, which was a somewhat rare thing. Rarer yet, it was really good and fun. I've already written about it, actually. But I will do so again, because more people need to play it. I shall endeavour not to repeat myself.
It compiles two extant Japanese compilations, meaning it's something of a compilation ouroborous, which is somewhat interesting in and of itself. In-game it's essentially down to two options; Super Bishi Bashi or Hyper Bishi Bashi, but (in my humble opinion) all the best games are in the latter. There's a game called "Beans" in which two cartoon caveman have massive digitised human heads - presumably one of the developers or something - and they've got to collect beans thrown at them from all angles. It's ridiculous, stupid, memorable stuff.
An absolute stone-cold classic is "Hyper Pie Throw", which has you take control of a just-married bride who absolutely bombs it away from the priest, bridal train held-aloft by her committed husband, and yeets a cream pie into the throng of assembled well-wishers. It's controlled like something from Track and Field, which makes sense given the developer. Konami, in case you didn't know. The developers of Track and Field. That's why it makes sense. Because they developed both Bishi Bashi and (FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, WE GET IT - Every living human being on the planet).
I'm a big fan of "Guitar", too; it's Konami's Guitar Freaks in all but (partial) name, with a pretty decent song to go with it. There's even a mechanic involving a guitar shape flying up the screen that I've never understood, but somehow managed to trigger on occasion. Also known as the absolute best kind of game mechanic.
God, what else? Ooh, how about rhythm action game "Perm" in which you mash buttons to the beat in order to make a disco dancer's afro increase in size until it's so enormous it obscures the HUD. Or, moving over to Super Bishi Bashi, that game where you just mash buttons to shake up a can of pop. My mum liked that one. Or the tie-break game from Hyper where the two player characters wrestle one another by, again, mashing buttons.
It shouldn't have any replay value, really; the games are always the same. A lot of them are quite similar too, and the ones involving memorising the colours of the DualShock face buttons are a tall order with any kind of third party controller. But somehow this proto Wario Ware is still bloody brilliant, even if I can't convince any of my friends to play it, ever. I hate my friends. Are you reading this, friends? I despise you.
