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Have you ever walked into your local video game store and seen a game that had the most unappealing box art? So unappealing that you questioned who in their right mind would buy such a game? Well, what happens when you get one of those games as a gift from someone who perhaps doesn't know your taste that well?
Most of us, while happy and flattered, would probably sell the game back if it was something that we assumed wouldn't be of our own interest. The other half would keep the game in hopes that one day it would reach the top of the backlog pile and perhaps be a diamond in the rough. Any of us who have seen it can safely say that while Suikoden's original box art was one of the most hideous ever made, the game itself was one of the most engaging story-wise, and is still praised as being one of those gems that we all wish we could have an opportunity to play.
I have found my diamond, in my otherwise destructive backlog pile, and it follows the description of being a game that looks unappealing, but in fact is a treasure that most of us probably overlooked. I am referring to Magical Starsign, a game that has some of the plainest looking box art, but has been nothing but a ball of absurd and out of the box humor.
While Magical Starsign has one of the shallowest plot lines I've played recently, possibly on par with Summon Night: Twin Age, the game makes up for it with fun, simplistic controls and characters who are out of the ordinary. The game, despite its plot, is driven based on its quirky-ness. How many games have robots wanting to be romantically involved with a human or sentient radishes who will tell you how the weather is or why they are so sad? The game also features a character that for me, is irresistible to my own personal sense of humor: Twigadamus, who yes, is the game's version of Nostradamus except that...he's pointy.
Sometimes the best games are the ones that refuse to take themselves seriously. These games, however, will often get a bad rap because they don't follow any sort of particular mold. For example, if I proposed the idea that I wanted to make an RPG that starred 80s pop flop Rick Astley saving the Internet*, how many people would actually want to play it? Not many, unless the plot was too good to be true. Many of us said this about Operation Darkness, and others probably had to double-take on what Earthbound's plot was actually about. While Magical Starsign does not impose the black humor of my examples, the game in its own right shares its own brand of absurd comedy that for some people might be as powerful.
Magical Starsign falls into that category of games that is labeled lighthearted. It's not trying to be the RPG version of Alice in Wonderland, but it is trying to suggest that despite the situation the kids are in, that their motives and what they are trying to accomplish: i.e. save their stunningly beautiful and elegant teacher, is the only goal that they need to complete. Everything in the dialog always leads back to the main plot point, and when the kids all interact with each other, or with the secondary cast like the Traveling Puddy or the Otter Pirates, it's trying to remind you that even the worst situations can still have an element of fun.
Like novels, sometimes the plainest or the ugliest covers can be worthwhile. If we judge a game based on the cover art we may end up missing out on something that may just tickle our fancies in ways we never thought imaginable. Sometimes we have to give up our biases to see things in a different perspective before we can truly make our judgment call. Sometimes, however, we need a game that will take us out of comfort zones to show us just how absurd the world can truly be.
*Half-credit for the concept goes to my boyfriend because he helped dreamed up the idea.
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