N+

In this review we're going to review the topic of this month's design: Cho Aniki. It's a game which may surprise all who don't know about it, and it is written in all its glory by a good friend (who wants to remain nameless in case of death threats). Now, without further ado...

How do I love Cho Aniki? Let me count the ways.
I love it to the depth and breadth and height
The male member can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of flexed muscles and virile grace.
I love it to the level of every day's
Most bulging pecs, by sun and MEN'S BEAM light.
I love it freely, though Virtual Console took my money;
I love it purely, for it is ambrosia and manly honey.
I love it with the passion put to use
In my old boxers, and with my childhood's faith
In wonderful gameplay that I seemed to lose
With next-generation games. I love it with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if Nintendo choose,
I shall but love its sequel even better.
- With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

IN+troduction

Do you fall into one (or more than one) of these four categories: (a) women who enjoy playing with Wii, (b) men who enjoy playing with Wii, (c) men (and women, but especially men; let us be equal-opportunity offenders of sexual mores, political correctness, and common sense alike here) who enjoy playing with Wii-Wii, (d) Håkon Lie? If so, Cho Aniki is a game worth of your time and money. In fact, until Nintendo sees fit to release Ai Cho Aniki¹ on Virtual Console outside of Japan, it -- along with Cho Aniki Zero for PSP -- is beyond a shadow of a doubt the MANLIEST² celebration of MANLY ATTRIBUTES³ available on ANY MANLY⁴ console (that's right. My Wii has a six-pack. And tight Speedos. In that order) in the English-speaking world.

Okay. At this point in the review you're probably wondering if the game's any good. I wouldn't blame you -- there are tons upon tons of games⁵ that consist of a single ridiculous gimmick that becomes preternaturally boring in short order. Let me assure you that Cho Aniki is not one of these. If you can (but why would you want to?) look past the mostly-naked, gyrating men fused with biomechanical components of all shapes and sizes, there's an incredibly (some would say surprisingly) decent shooter within. Sure, it can feel frustratingly hard⁶ at times, but whenever you do die you never feel like it's the game's fault. In that respect, in the world of Games Whose Design Documents Were Written By Someone On Drugs^TM, Cho Aniki is more of a Dangun Feveron than a Stalin vs. Martians⁷.

In short: why are you sitting here reading this and not playing this game already?

Story (The LameN+ of Samson and Adon)

Yes, one exists.

For ten years running, the ruler of Planet Builder -- Bo Emperor Bill⁸ has been the champion of the Intergalactic Bodybuilding Contest. However, the Emperor was ill at ease -- his planet's supply of Protein was running out! Therefore, he ordered his armies of darkness (and perfectly oiled pecs) to invade nearby worlds in order to exploit their Protein resources for the greater glory of the Builder Empire. Unwilling to allow the Builder Empire to continue on its evil ways, the gods send their warriors -- Idaten and Benten -- to administer a royal beatdown on the forces of Bo Emperor Bill. These two celestial champions are joined by series mascots Samson and Adon, and thus does the manliest saga of the manliest war in all creation unfold its wings.

In short: no, I'm not making this up. See for yourself.

AmbieN+ Graphics

When you play this game, you become well aware that it is a product of an age before unlimited art budgets and abundant graphical horsepower. Examine the pixel art that came out of the 1980s and especially the 1990s, and you invariably come out with an amazed sense of what is possible with a limited color pallette and an even more limited number of sprite layers. What is possible in this case? Men. Lots of men. Big, burly men. Little, cherubic men. Men with mechanical appendages where they really shouldn't be. Men diving from biomechanical trains. Even a MEN'S BEAM⁹ for good measure!

The graphic design of this game is, simply put, a glorious vision of male beauty (preferably -- and usually -- in tight Speedos) combined with nightmarish biomechanical contraptions out of an H.R. Giger nightmare¹⁰. This makes good sense given that the art for this game was largely done by the same guy who did Gynoug¹¹. The animations are detailed, the enemies are so wacky and varied that you can't help but exclaim WHAT. THE. HELL. IS. THIS. on a minute-to-minute basis, you crack a smile whenever the TWO MANLY BODYBUILDERS come to serve as your options¹², and you're left wondering if this series ejaculated its entire wackiness factor load prematurely, on the first installment¹³.

In short: though Cho Aniki never won any awards for groundbreaking visual effects, its pixel art was (and still is) considered to be very competent. If, however, there were any awards for sheer imaginative wackiness in graphic design, there'd be rioting on the streets if this game series weren't an immediate contender for #1.

Music CoN+eN+

The music of the Cho Aniki series has traditionally been considered its greatest asset. No composer who has been tapped for the honor of composer for a Cho Aniki game has emerged unscathed -- even the usually sober style of Taku Iwasaki stood fully erect and was subsequently transmogrified into a orgiastic carnival of unrelenting, undefeatable manliness when he was hired as composer for Ai Cho Aniki¹⁴. But in the beginning a young composer named Koji Hayama created the heavens and the earth the original soundtrack to Cho Aniki, and the world has never been the same ever since.

The game shifts musical styles with the facile manly grace of an American football player doing ballet¹⁵, going from dance to mambo to techno to pseudo-classical within the span of several minutes. Each and every song you hear is unrelentingly upbeat and unrelentingly MANLY from beginning to end. Seriously, this soundtrack makes a strong case for being one of the best soundtracks in video gaming, period. Koji Hayama considers this to be one of the best soundtracks he's ever done, and it's plain to see why. And to top things off, Japanese sales figures from the 1990s indicate that the soundtrack sold better than the game itself.

In short: SEXY DYNAMITE FOREVER!!!

gameplay adveN+ure

You control Idaten or Benten, maneuvering your character against waves of oncoming foes. As you defeat enemies, they release Protein capsules that you (or your options) can absorb in order to increase your maximum firepower. Something that's always been interesting about the Cho Aniki series is that your options (Samson/Adon) need to be powered up independently of your main character. Something that I also find interesting is that your options have (hidden) life bars of their own -- when they take enough damage, they'll die. You can arbitrarily adjust the speed of your character (just as you can in the R-Type series), and you can send your options on targeted crash attacks (which has the potential of depleting their life quite quickly). Other than that, controls are exactly what you'd expect.

Another similarity that this game has with the R-Type series is that the game is fairly slow-paced, and that the enemy isn't so much the monsters onscreen as it is the environment and pattern recognition¹⁶. This is not a bullet-hell style game by any stretch of the imagination; bullets are relatively few in number, and well-demarcated on screen. While, in this respect, Cho Aniki does not break any new ground, it executes its basic elements very well; as noted in the introduction, you rarely (if ever) feel as if the game has cheated you of a life.

Finally, consider this. There is literally no other game series in all the world that will inspire you, of your own free will, to yell a strong, lusty "MEN'S BEAM!!!" whenever you unleash your pure white beam of manly charged destruction upon your hapless foes¹⁷. That's gotta count for something, man.

In short: MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN'S BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!

N+ summary

• Game: Cho Aniki
• Developer: Masaya
• Genre: Shooter
• Players: 1
• Wii Points: 900
• Release Date: 8 September 2008
• Rating: ESRB E10+¹⁸
• Supports WFC: No
• Supports Manliness: Definitely

N+ points

• N+ Fantastic (?) storyline
• N+ Fantastic (!) graphic design
• N+ Even more fantastic (!!!) music
• N+ Solid shooter mechanics
• N+ High difficulty
• N+ MEN'S BEAM!!!

N- points

• N- Dated presentation
• N- Not particularly innovative
• N- High difficulty
• N- Where's my Ai Cho Aniki, dammit?

JudgmeN+: 69 out of 10

foo+Notes

acknowledgmeN+s

• All screenshots are courtesy of vgmuseum.com