3RRDC ChuChu

While the current state of online gaming on consoles has grown in size
and variety, we must always remember that before Xbox live and PS2
online there was the Dreamcast, the first console to really push
network gaming. The Dreamcast launched with titles that had
downloadable content, such as Sonic Adventure, but still DC users
would have to wait until the Spring of 2000 to actually a play an online
game. That game was Sonic Team's ChuChu Rocket: a puzzle game of
mice, cats, and the rockets that blast them off into space. Sounds
trippy? Imagine playing it with real people over the web!

In the instruction manual you will note that the four different colored
chu chus have names, but in the game there is no story and these
names are not brought up. Seems like a last minute thing just to add
any pinch of story they could. In a nutshell, the mice want to get away
from the cats because they are trying to eat them. So if they can
escape in the rockets they will avoid being eaten. The story is damn
near non-existent, but Sonic Team wasn't pushing for a story here:
they were pushing for some wild online gaming.

Game play is simple. You are given a grid and there are walls in it. Kind
of like Pac Man. By using the four face buttons on the DC controller,
you place down arrow panels in the four primary directions. These
direct the mice around. Try to point them in the direction of a rocket
and the player who gets the most mice in their rocket by the end of the
time limit wins. Cats will eat your mice and if they touch a rocket, you
lose 1/3 of your total. There are also special power-ups that can speed
up the gameplay, make it cats only, mice only, and other fun goodies
just to spice things up. The game play is very easy to figure out, but in
order to pass some of the puzzles later in the game, you will need
serious skill.

Of course, not everyone had their Dreamcast on the web so there had
to be a variety of modes to keep all the offline players happy. The main
menu sees a stage challenge, a puzzle mode, team battle, 4-player
battle, and also the network and homepage modes. There are a ton of
puzzles to play through, and you only are given a few moves to make
the mice get to the rockets. I won't lie, I had to use a strategy from a
magazine that showed the answers to the latter puzzles.

Offline multiplayer is good fun, but this isn't the kind of game that I can
play for hours on end. There's a lot going on, on the screen, so it's not
boring. It's just that it all seems the same. There are tons of grids to
choose from, but grids are grids. Just after a while I'd rather play
Powerstone 2 or Unreal Tournament for some 4-player goodness.

But let's talk about online mode. It's no longer with us as Sega took it
down some time ago, but I was able to experience it. Online chu chu
was great. You could chat with people before a game and people could
make puzzles and upload them to the servers so you could try and play
through them. However, if there was one thing that sucked about
online Chu Chu, it was that it lagged like it was its job. Seriously, for
such a simple looking game it lagged with a vengeance. I'd play games
like Starlancer and Quake 3 online and they ran very smoothly, but Chu
Chu was a lagging fiend, which affected the gameplay. Still it was fun.
Shame it's gone now.

Graphics are colorful and simple. The Chus look cute and the space
cats are funky and crazy looking. Add in some retro rockets and
checkered grid backgrounds and on style alone the graphics hold their
own. But again, it just seems like the same old same old, over and over.
No cut scenes or stories, which could have incorporated spruced
things up a bit. Graphics are easy on the eyes, which is good since you
have to keep an eye on a lot of mice.

Upbeat tunes litter the game as do high pitched voice samples.
Pounding fast tunes really get you into the mood of launching your
rocket, so the music fits the game well. It's been 5 years and I still
remember a lot of the music so it worked well. The voice samples are
also very distinct and easy to remember, much like the high pitched
voices in the more current Bomberman games.

There's enough replay here in the gameplay to keep you coming back.
Add in all the puzzles including making your own, as well as the 4-
player battles, and the replay is actually pretty good. Sucks that the
internet mode is no longer with us, as that added even more. So while
Chu Chu suffers for the online content being taken away, it still
survives. You can also unlock different characters to replace the Chu
Chu mice, like the chao from the Sonic Adventure games, and the little
nightopian angel thing from Nights. That's cool.

All in all, not a bad game. Certainly, It saw better days with the
internet, but as it stands, I can still recommend this as a good puzzle
multiplayer title. So if you and your friends want a more relaxed, less
violent, multiplayer bash, then try Chu Chu out. It's not the most
advanced game, but it's a good time, and it even challenges the mind
with some of those puzzles. Rocket on Chu Chu. Rocket on.

Review by: Orochi Sonic