(Please note – this is a review of the version of Pocket MuuMuu (aka ポケットムームー) that is available through the Japanese PSN Store for Vita)
A tech demo for Pocketstation using the Jumping Flash! IP, Pocket MuuMuu isn’t anything special and isn’t worth your time whether you’re a fan of the series or not.
| Developer | Sugar & Rockets; SCE Japan Studio |
| Publisher | |
| Franchise | Jumping Flash! |
| Genre | 3D Platformer |
| PSTV | Yes |
| PSN | JP only |
World-building & Story
Pocket MuuMuu is a spin-off to Sony’s Jumping Flash! series, that follows Robbit as he lands on a new collection of islands created by Baron Aloha, the villain to the first two titles. This time though, there’s no world to save – the goal is simply to play a variety of Pocketstation mini-games to earn money, which in turn is used to buy more games an additions for a customisable island you have access to.
That’s it in terms of plot – you’re given some brief (humorous) introductions from the Baron himself and can interact with various Muus scattered around, but there’s precious little else to latch into here. Of course, that isn’t the point of the game and doesn’t exactly deviate from the previous titles which also contained little in the way of story.
Presentation & Sound
Seemingly just reusing assets from the predecessor titles, Pocket MuuMuu is graphically simple and appears to be a much earlier PS1 game than it actually is.
So you can expect to see all the standard elements here – basic but colourful environments without much in the way of detail (although I did appreciate things like the little sliding doors on the shop) alongside familiar enemies (i.e the odd-looking blonde-haired men on bikes, green walking chicks) and little quirks like seeing Robbit’s shadow when he jumps. There’s nothing new here – even Baron Aloha’s model is ripped straight from the first Jumping Flash!, but as there’s no action elements here things feel a lot more dull and static.
I should briefly mention the Pocketstation games too as they’ll form the bulk of your time playing – obviously, I’m sure these were perfectly serviceable in the 90’s being played on a Tamagochi-sized device, but here you’ll be playing them on Vita’s screen through emulation and they’re only simple pixels (like early Atari 2600 titles) and as such, really don’t hold up – I found them quite difficult to make out at times.
At least the soundtrack is that likeable mix of quirky, catchy tracks – although with only two playable worlds, there’s a limit to the variety here.
Soundtrack highlight – World 1 (Night)
Gameplay & Content
Depending on your viewpoint, there’s either quite a lot to Pocket MuuMuu or absolutely nothing at all – I fell into the latter camp, meaning this was a disappointing return journey to the Jumping Flash! world for me.
So your basic goal, as explained to you in a little talking head section at the beginning, is to earn money and unlock Pocketstation games or items to use in your customisable world. This is done by playing the mini-games and doing well – for those who don’t know what Pocketstation is, it’s a small device that connected to the PS1’s memory card slot and could play simple games that could be continued once the device is disconnected from the console. It was only available in Japan (despite nearly being released in the west) and remains a niche oddity.
For lack of a better way to describe them, Pocketstation games are very basic. There’s stuff like a very straightforward racing game (go forward, dodge cars) or one where you have to match shapes by rotating them – nothing overly complicated. The best ones I came across were Astro Fighter, a quick reaction test where you have to shoot incoming aliens and Drop Zone, which plays a little bit like Copter Game meets Downwell as you’re constantly falling down a hole and have to dodge the walls. There’s also various little apps like calculators and the like, but I didn’t spend any time with these.
They can all be accessed by one of the worlds (which is basically a glorified menu), but the other two worlds contain a little more to do. One of them is basically a hub that has a shop (to buy new games), a lottery and Muus to talk to (you can also visit Baron Aloha’s dojo to get tips on how to ace the mini-games). The second is basically a blank slate that you can build on – placing jump pads, elevators etc which again are purchased with money earned from the mini-games.
Which brings me nicely back to my main point here – Pocket MuuMuu is designed around playing these Pocketstation titles dozens of times to earn money, but they’re just not very interesting games therefore my interest waned almost immediately. I’m sure if you owned this peripheral in the 90’s it was a better proposition – you could download lots of stuff to it, grind high scores when you were away from home then upload them when you get back – but the package being offered on PSN is a poor one without it.
As such, it’s difficult to score Pocket MuuMuu – but I can only really review it based on what I played, which was a shallow and ultimately pointless selection of mini-games wrapped in a Jumping Flash! skin.
Ease of Understanding
There’s a lot more text and reading involved in Pocket MuuMuu than previous Jumping Flash! titles, which makes it a slightly difficult import – but I still managed to get through just fine with a little help from Google Translate. The Pocketstation games are easy enough to play due to their simplisticity.
Conclusion
An experiment with a now-defunct peripheral, Pocket MuuMuu may have worked at the time it released, but playing it in a modern environment – especially as a spin-off to two enjoyable Jumping Flash! titles – exposes it as a rather shallow waste of time that I can’t recommend.
3.0/10
kresnik258gaming 