Relationships, pfpth! Who needs 'em? - Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak

Hamha, everyone! Welcome to this Let's Play of...



Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak!

A game released for the Gameboy Advance back in 2003, this title is set in the world of the Hamtaro books and anime, which is essentially a hamster's eye view of Japan. (One of the early English episodes of the anime featured a summer festival, complete with all the usual trappings like kimonos and fireworks.) From this premise, the show followed the adventures of a group of hamsters (or ham-hams, as they often call themselves), their fun often reflecting on or getting entangled with situations the human characters around them found themselves in.

If I were asked to describe the overall feeling of this franchise, I'm not quite sure what I would say, beyond the fact that it's fairly light-hearted and cheerful... It certainly feels more like an anime than a western cartoon too. This comes through well in Ham-Ham Heartbreak, despite the somewhat serious premise of its plot.

...Oh, I should probably stop rambling and get onto explaining what this game's about, shouldn't I? ^_^: Yes, well... Heartbreak is going to be a game of three goals, which I will be covering shortly during our first few updates. Gameplay is largely that of an adventure game, with a few minigames and side activities added here and there for the player to enjoy. The thing that separates it from most of the genre is that we're not going to be searching for a multitude of miscellaneous items in order to solve ridiculous puzzles... Instead, we're going to be learning special words (86 in total), in order to get the response we want out of NPCs to solve our puzzles!

Sadly, the nature of this game means that audience participation will be somewhat lacking, as we will see soon enough... But I do encourage everyone to suggest things for me to try and show off, and I am able to give you a vote on something right now!



Tyrants, meet our two main characters... They have canonical names and personalities as characters in the rest of the franchise, but I'm going to leave choosing the names I use up to you! There's seven letters to work with, so let's see what you can come up with. (If there are suggestions that I feel are truly inappropriate, I reserve the right to veto them. This is a last resort, of course.)


Canon name: Hamtaro
A cheerful little hamster, Hamtaro is friendly and courageous, real main character material... He's even a (nearly) silent protagonist for this game, only getting around one line outside of participating in use of our special words. He's also a touch on the naive side, as we're going to see quite a bit during this story. Lovey-dovey remarks tend to provoke a tilt of the head and a quiet Heke?, essentially the Ham-Ham equivalent of "Wha...?".


Canon name: Bijou
As you might be able to draw from her name (which apparently means a 'small, exquisitely wrought trinket'), this petite mademoiselle speaks with a French accent in the show... She's generous, and simply loves the blue ribbons she wears. But her most noticable characteristic would probably be the huge crash she has on our male lead, which he is naturally too clueless to notice.

In the interests of making this LP as complete as I possibly can, I shall be providing links to music and the little animations that accompany our special phrases once we gather them, as well as uploading videos of major scenes to Youtube. I'll have the first update up soon, so cast your votes in the meantime!

Squall & Rinoa. Because I Can�. :V

notsureifserious.jpg

Bijou actually means what s/he said it means, thats why I'm not sure.

I'm a sucker for cutesy stuff sometimes, I hope this is as saccharine nonsense as I want it to be. Name choices: Hamlet and Ophelia. :3

Also TK can you delete your post and repost it after mine so we can do custom titles correctly thank you.

Yes, and "Hamtaro" means "To ponder upon a profound question before/during sunrise." It's a little vague on the time but as you can tell this game is absolutely brimming with symbolism.

Bijou is Japanese for "pretty girl" or "beautiful lady" or whatever you like. Apparently the name Kala mentioned is French and the character speaks with a French accent so...

Heh, that's actually kinda fitting. I approve.

Perhaps his orange colouring is supposed to represent the sunlight shining on him, then? Either way, it's an interesting tidbit. I might add it to his bio if I get confirmation.

(Bijou is also a cocktail, a type of vial and a Queen song. Make of it what you will.)

The game's certainly cute, though not quite as saccharine as say... the new My Little Pony. We are dealing with heartbreak here, folks.

I don't think I'm going to see another option that makes me laugh like this one does.

I vote for Tefari and TKFlash

Lan and Mayl

Male protagonist oblivious to anything that involves the opposite gender and affection sounds right.

Please don't bother, I was just joking. Ham is the first syllable of hamster and Taro is a common Japanese boy's name (or part of a boy's name) like in Momotaro.

Anyway the "words" feature of this game sounds pretty interesting and I am looking forward to the LP!

:3c

Oh, gosh. I loved watching this anime so much when I was a kid, and I'm trying not to flip out in a girly mess right now...

.......

HAM-HAMS KAWAIIIIIIIIII <3<3<3<3<3

... sorry, that just kind of slipped out. Anyways...

This is obviously the correct choice and I will accept no heathen nonsense to the contrary.

I like this. A surly Hamtaro sounds rather appealing.

"..."

...

oh no, now we're obligated to spend the rest of the page and a good deal of the next in nothing but ellipses! What have we done!?

...

(Now we break into lengthy, internal - and emo- soliloquies.)

I never watched this show, but I own copius amounts of toys from its Burger King promotion. Anyway, will you be adding dialogue to the game or simply using running commentary? Because if you're doing the former, I'm going to go with Squall and Rinoa too, and you better make them act the part.

Otherwise, I like Hamlet and Ophelia.

Well, it seems like people have come to a consensus... But I'll give another ~40 minutes to make it an even 24 hours voting, then call it.

I was going to go with transcribing dialogue as-is, then adding in my own remarks... The FFV LP among others seem to suggest that tyrants enjoy their Talking Time, and who am I to deprive them of that?

If you transcribe I promise I will not read this LP. Summarize instead.

If you summarize I will be unlikely to read this LP. Transcribe instead.

I approve of the hive mind's decision on Squall and Rinoa. I also can't help but note that as such a cutesy game about hamster love, odds are against a minigame at the end where you have to catch and eat as many of your own young as possible, leaving the target audience forced to deal with the harshness of nature totally unprepared when playing this pushes them into buying their own mated pair of rodents.

...Very funny. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to conduct my LP the way I want to. X3

We will have a minigame or two, but nothing quite like that.

EDIT: Okay, time's up! Looks like we're going to be following Squall and Rinoa on this adventure!

By the way, this is completely off-topic but I have a character in the story I'm writing named Kala, so I always think of her when I see your username. She's a minor Mary Sue who is 9 billion years old (young for the species) and can travel through time and between dimensions at will, so it's not a bad association.

Anyway, I don't particularly care if you transcribe or summarize, but I was asking if you would be inserting additional dialogue or not (like Bartz's ninja obsession and Faris's earmuffs in the FF5 thread).

Heh, Kala's actually a roleplaying character of mine... She's a bit more mundane than that, though.

On the subject of extra dialogue, probably not. The game is quite well-written, even if it does beat you around the head with the obvious sometimes (which may be a hint it was intended for a younger audience).

...Besides, I wouldn't dare add to a certain character's dialogue, and they get far and away the most of it.

So tell me about your character.

Anyway, I just feel like it shouldn't be Squall and Rinoa unless they're going to act like Squall and Rinoa.

I have only read 3 LPs on this site so far (yeah, yeah I know) but I already have a preference for transcriptions. I mean, you shouldn't write out every single little thing if it's not important or interesting, but I like seeing the actual dialogue.

I unashamedly watched a lot of Hamtaro on Cartoon Network back in high school. I stopped watching only when the sophistication and technology levels of the hamsters really got out of hand. Having rainy day adventures or talking about sunflower seeds is one thing, but organizing a costumed performance for a little girl in the middle of the night and building a theme park? Yikes!

Although my vote has lost I kind of feel like drawing a Squall Ham-ham now.

THIS. THIS MUST BE DONE. DO IT!

This isn't really the place for that, and besides... the site I use them on is down right now, so I can't access the bio I wrote up. ^^;

And I am sorry that you feel that way, but the hivemind has spoken. I was planning on throwing in a "...Whatever" or two, though.

Heh... I'm sure the tyrants would get a kick out of that.

But would you? How could you not? I mean, unless you were some sort of soulless hamster-playing abomination against nature.

.... of course, you're not, are you? are you?

Slander, I say! I'm no abomination... I just roleplay as one sometimes.

Anyway, I'm working on the first update now. Expect it up soon.