Regardless if it's a US or Japanese one, edutainment games have always been a hit-or-miss platform. Despite every effort to make it as entertaining as possible, several have resorted to cutting out the quality and settling with just presenting the main subject, which in turn makes it too academic and therefore less fun for people like you and me. Still, there are a few noteworthy ones that were able to pass the message along without leaving hardcore gamers high and dry.
Kotoba No Puzzle: Mojipittan is one of the few successes in that respect. It was not just able to make it as an effective edutainment game, it created a nationwide craze in Japan that continues to persist up to this day. Mojipittan started out as a nondescript arcade puzzle game, but has become so popular that many versions have been released for various systems like the PS2, Wii, DS, PSP, and even mobile phones. The secret lies in it's innovative gameplay mechanics and hypnotically addictive background music.
Miss Choice sez: You lose, yellow freak. Purple rules all!!!
(For clarity's sake, the subject for review is the PSP version, titled Mojipittan Daijiten)
The gameplay is deceptively simple. You are given a board with randomly placed Hiragana character tiles, and the object is to add a tile on a blank square adjacent the given characters to form a word. In versus games, you have to build as many words as possible to have your color dominate the board and meet the specified minimum number of tiles (it varies from board to board) in order to win.
Sounds like Scrabble? Well, not quite. In Scrabble, you can only find an opening to build a word when you get the necessary letters. In this game, you have all the Hiragana tiles at your disposal (ditto with your opponent), but you can only use one per turn. Therefore, it takes a certain amount of strategy, planning, and a good command of Japanese vocabulary to excel in this game, since the tide can turn at a wink if the other player places one character tile that in turn would build a multitude of words and erase more than half of your colors on the board.
Aside from the Versus games, there are also two kinds of single-player puzzle games: Fast-paced word puzzles that require you to meet a minimum word count or fulfill certain conditions within a time limit, and ones with more complicated conditions sans a time pressure. Completing certain puzzles will unlock a subject dictionary, which can be viewed any time at the library section. It also serves as a checklist for words that you have or haven't used in the game. All in all, there are 100 subject dictionaries to be collected. If you manage to complete the whole set, your next challenge will be getting all of the words in every book, which range from about 120 to 400 words each.
20 Combos... hmmm... you are learning, grasshopper...
If you're studying Japanese and have gone beyond the basic level, Mojipittan also has a word search function, where you can find out the meaning of certain vocabulary words (naturally, slang and complicated foreign code-switching words are not included) and how they're written in Kanji (if applicable). So in a pinch, it's like having a pocket Japanese dictionary in your PSP.
Music also plays a role in Mojipittan's success. While most edutainment games have boring, generic tones that sound like they were taken from elevator music, Mojipittan has a slew of quirky and catchy tracks that add to the game's excitement. The most well-known is it's carrier song "Futari No Mojipittan" whose melody has been used in several parody songs known among otaku fandom. In my opinion, the PSP remixes of Futari No Mojipittan, Words Words Of Magic, Piacevole! and Bambini are the catchiest yet. Don't believe me? Download the tracks and listen for yourself. Bandai Namco Games Japan is offering the aforementioned tracks as free downloads in their official site.
So if you're a Japanese language student looking to up your stock vocabulary a notch the fun and addictive way, start playing Mojipittan. Just be sure to have a Japanese-English dictionary close by if you're just starting out, though.
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