Dreamcast Retrospective Day 7: Ooga Booga

Despite the Dreamcast’s relative obscurity in the gaming world, there are a good number of its titles that have become fairly well known, many of which have already been featured in this retrospective.

This is not one of them.

Ooga Booga may not have the popularity of Crazy Taxi or Space Channel 5 or Jet Grind Radio, but it definitely has the fun to compete with the best of its better-known peers.

It belongs on that special list of games, and every true gamer possesses such a list, that I can claim to have heard of and adore but nobody else has any idea what I’m talking about. 

Ooga Booga is a simple title and, as the name subtly hints, is not a serious one.  It is a relatively straightforward action game that, because of its simplicity, still manages to retain its charm and fun factor to this day.

You played as the Kahuna, or witch doctor, of one of four charming tribes: Hottie, Hoodoo, Fatty, or Twitchy.  The goal was to compete on mysterious island arenas for the favor of the Volcano Goddess by battling the other tribes.  Each tribe has their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as a special ability.  Other weapons at your disposal include shrunken heads, which can be collected from all around the levels and thrown at your opponents, and spell tokens, which you can pick up to use spells such as mines, fireballs, lightening, tornadoes, and meteors, among others.  You can also catch one of the creatures of the island, either a boar or a bird, and run around on it and attack other players.  Finally, you can claim Tikis using shrunken heads as payment and they will act as automatic turrets, attacking enemy tribes whenever they come near.

It is simple, arcade-style fun, and incredibly addictive.  There are even multiple match types to change things up.  Most time will be spent in Smakahuna, which is a free-for-all match type where each tribe competes for points earned by attacking other players.  In Rodeo mode you can only score points by attacking enemies while riding an animal, and in the wonderful Boar Polo mode, you ride on boars and play what is essentially a very bizarre game of soccer, using the boars to push a giant ball down the arena, around obstacles, and into the opponent’s goal. 

By playing the single player Tribal Trial mode you could unlock not only expected game content like spells and creatures, but also new Kahunas, stages, and other wacky fun things.  Or you could just use the cheat codes, which were awesome and numerous.  The unlockable characters were simply awesome.  You could play as Death, Disco Dude, a Leprechaun, a Pirate, and more, all of which had plenty of charm and personality.  There were also multiple decorative masks you could unlock for each character.

Like so many titles on the Dreamcast and so many aspects of the hardware itself, Ooga Booga was ahead of its time.  It came too late in the Dreamcast’s life cycle to catch on with anything even approaching a large audience and, let’s face it, the game is a little too weird to be tremendously popular anyway.

But the game is a great example of a terrifically addictive party game that is a blast when you get a bunch of friends together to play it.  It would be a truly perfect fit in the modern gaming landscape as a downloadable title on Xbox Live Marketplace or PlayStation Network, or even on the Wii, complete with a few modern conveniences and online play with a nice broadband connection.  I doubt there’s anywhere close to enough demand for such a remake to actually happen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep the dream alive.

The game did include online play that was a lot of fun in its day.  It wouldn’t exactly have given Xbox Live a run for its money, but but it was still fun, and better than anything else at the time.

As it stands, it might feel a little dated, but I can almost guarantee that if you get a group of people together to play this game and go into it with an open mind, then you’ll still end up having a blast. 

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 6: The Internet Experience

A recurring theme of this Dreamcast retrospective is that Sega’s ill-fated console was, in more ways than one, ahead of its time.

Nothing demonstrates this more aptly than the console’s attempts at Internet integration.

Yes, the Dreamcast connected to the Internet, a fact that is easy to forget when online connections are taken for granted among today’s hardware.  Hell, even portable hardware can go online now.

But back in 1999 things were quite different.

No other console had really tried to make the Internet a vital part of its strategy before.  There were perhaps nibbles at it here or there, but nothing significant.  With the Dreamcast, Sega saw the future of gaming and attempted to be the one to start the revolution.

Given what they had to work with, I’d say they did an admirable job.

There’s only so much you can expect out of a console that only comes equipped with a 56k modem.  How quaint that now seems.  Still, Sega made good on its inclusion.  Slow as dialup access may be, it was still a bold move to pack a modem of any sort in with the console at the time.

The Dreamcast was no Xbox Live, but it outdid Sony’s console until perhaps the PS2’s later years and blew Nintendo’s GameCube out of the water, plain and simple.

Not bad for an “outdated” console that launched in the dark ages of the 1900s. 

The list of games that featured online play is pretty impressive.  All number of genres are covered.

NFL and NBA 2K1 and 2K2.

Bomberman Online.

Chu Chu Rocket.

Phantasy Star Online.

Worms World Party.

Alien Front Online.

Ooga Booga.

Quake III Arena.

Daytona USA.

And a number of others.

You have sports, multiplayer RPGs, racing games, action games, puzzle games and more all covered. 

Ok, so it was a little clunky, it was dialup, there was lag, etc., etc. 

This was 1999!  Cut them a little slack.

Ok, so the Internet thing started to reek a bit of desperation when Sega started giving their consoles away for free when you subscribed to their online service, SegaNet, but it’s hard to blame Sega for doing whatever they could to get their consoles into people’s hands by that point.

I would not particularly look forward to going back to the Dreamcast’s online services today, but at the time they were revolutionary.  It was also yet another sign that Sega was simply too far ahead of the curve for its own good.  You couldn’t accuse them of that for their other consoles, part of their reoccurring problems with hardware, but with the Dreamcast they finally did really get it right.

Sadly, it just wasn’t enough.

People didn’t trust Sega enough by that point.  Their game was over.

It didn’t help that the PS2 loomed on the horizon, adding yet another bullet point to the long list of areas where Sega missed its timing.  Its graphics were revolutionary for the brief period they held the spotlight until the PS2 came out, but with Sony’s box on the horizon, they couldn’t generate the sales necessary to support the console.

I love my PS2, don’t get me wrong.  It was a true gem of a console in its own way.  But the PS2 wasn’t the console that I went online with for the first time. 

I remember it well.  First I had to fish through the piles of demo discs I had looking for the latest version of the Dreamcast web browser.  Then I’d pop it in and wait for it to load.  The soothing sounds of the screeching modem soon followed and, shortly thereafter, I was surfing the Internet on my television through my Dreamcast.

Yes it was slow.  Yes it was awkward.  Yes it was quaint.

But damnit, it was cool at the time!  It made my Dreamcast seem more important than just a lousy game console, even if I didn’t use the feature much.  In another example of Sega hinting at being ahead of the curve, it gave me a glimpse into the future of gaming, where consoles really are more like little computers and media machines than the dedicated game players they used to be.

I suppose it’s yet another example of a great memory I have of my wonderful days with the Dreamcast of an experience that wouldn’t really hold up today. 

But that’s what makes the Dreamcast even more special to me and the many other fans it has to this day.  It was a period in history that cannot be replicated.  It gave us memories that, for one reason or another, will never quite be matched.  Even if it may seem quaint today, it was glorious then and it shall forever remain glorious in our minds. 

I certainly wouldn’t want to have to go through it again, but some part of me still misses that special screeching noise of the Dreamcast’s little modem hogging my phone line.