Mat Sephton, aka gingerbeardman (Mastodon, Bluesky), creator of a GotY Playdate game, spent some time tracking down the origins of MaBoShi, aka Maboshi’s Arcade, one of the most unique and distinctive independently-made WiiWare games. He blogged about it back in 2013 (anna anthropy did so too back then). Since then there have been DS and iOS remakes of the games, although they all lack a special gimmick of the WiiWare version.
(Aside: did you know that I believe very strongly in the power of hyperlinks? You should too!)
The arcade hosts three games, and they all would have been terrific on their own. My favorite is the Snake variant, a genuinely novel take on the concept and the one I’ve gotten the furthest in. But the cool thing about the Wii version is that up to three players can play at one. Each plays their own games and has independent progression, but intriguingly, their games are not entirely separate. Things that one player does in their game can affect, either positively or negatively, the events in adjacent games. Even if you don’t play with other people, random attract mode games will start up on adjacent screens, and provide a bit of variety to your game.
All three games are demonstrated, on Wii, in the following video (18m). Just watching it makes me want to dig out the Wii U where my own bought copy of the game lives and play another round of Square.
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