Kororinpa: Marble Mania

 

    So since Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz was a pretty bad marble game, the obvious solution would be to play more marble games, and hence, Kororinpa: Marble Mania by Hudson Soft. If you're anything like me, you looked at that title and thought “what the heck is a Kororinpa?” I had a feeling that it was probably a portmanteau of words that made sense in Japanese, like how Katamari Damacy roughly translates to “clump soul”. Doing some cursory searches online, “koro” simply means for something to roll, sensible for marbles, while “rinpa” was a historical school of decorative art that had a heavy emphasis on nature. I feel like I'm way off-base with the latter, not that it matters much, as in-game, it simply uses the term “Kororinpa” to refer to a stage.
    So about those stages, and by extension, the controls. Like with Banana Blitz, it requires holding the Wii Remote forward at a level angle, and tilting it around to tilt the stage, thus moving your marble. Different marbles can be selected from the main menu before you begin a stage, unlocking more as you complete the game, with each one either altering the physics of the marble in some way, or are just there for the sake of looking cute. Unlike the Super Monkey Ball games, however, there's no limit to how much you can rotate a stage; while those had a maximum limit on the angles possible, here, you can turn the stage on its side or even fully upside down if you want. It makes it so the later levels resemble less of a traditional marble maze and more of a Perplexus sphere, making you alter gravity constantly in order to reach your goal. There's also crystals that can be picked up within each level, with red crystals being required to open the goal, and green crystals being an optional challenge to eventually unlock secret stages with.
    Personally, even though it uses a similar control set up to Banana Blitz, I found this to be way more manageable and fun to control. I never had to move the controller that much for it to register which way I was twisting, with it also not being too sensitive or twitchy. The tilting itself is also eerily accurate considering this game came out long before Wii MotionPlus was introduced, so stuff like thin passageways or tight turns were never an issue. It also meant I could pull of some neat trick shots when needed; there was one level where I forgot a crystal earlier on, but I was able to tilt the level back, launch the marble up, and catch it with the other end of the level. On the subject of the crystals, I like that the lack of lives and the requirement to pick the red ones up means that there's actually a point to having collectibles in the level, making you engage with the level design more and be more daring when needed. It makes for a game with an incredibly well-balanced difficulty curve, getting considerably challenging without going overboard.
    There are forty-five levels in total, with fifteen secret stages to unlock by grabbing the aforementioned green crystals, and a mirror mode once you complete the main stages. The main stages are split into groups with different visual themes, consisting of a garden, candy world, city at day, toy world, and city at night. Going on about aesthetics further, while it can be a bit plain at times, there is something of a bespoke charm about it. The visuals are clear enough to make the marble rolling easy, while having some quaint dioramas in the background, like a variety of baking supplies lined around a table in the background of the candy world. The music is also rather charmingly whimsical, exciting enough to motivate you while being calm enough to not get on the nerves while repeating stages, with the secret stages being host to some great remixes of music from classic Hudson Soft games like Bomberman and Milon's Secret Castle.
    Of course, even with forty-five stages, their short length means that the main game can be beaten in about two hours or so if you're good enough. This is where the multiplayer comes in, because in a surprising rarity for marble games, it has an actual multiplayer mode. Every stage from the single player mode can be played within it, and you both race through each level within split-screen, trying to get a better time than the other. The different selectable marbles actually come into play quite a bit here, as it means there's some strategy in choosing either an easier to control but slower marble, or a faster but more unwieldy marble. The split-screen does mean that the visibility becomes a slight issue, as you can only see so much ahead of you, but it overall is a fun time, and contains some quality of life features to keep the pace up if one player is lagging too far behind.
    Safe to say, I came away from Kororinpa: Marble Mania quite impressed. Considering how I routinely bounce off of other games similar to it, I was surprised by how much I got into this game and how much fun I was having. Perhaps the aesthetics of it are a bit dry and could leave some wanting more, but the core gameplay is solid enough to where it doesn't matter that much. Plus, lucky me, there's a sequel called Marble Saga: Kororinpa that is supposedly even better, and I can't wait to play that when I eventually get around to it. I think I'm mostly good on marble games for now, though, and I probably should stop for a while so I don't start unconsciously rolling my food around on the table.