Get Info: #maboshi

The making of MaBoShi

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of an almost forgotten WiiWare game called MaBoShi. I’ve posted a review, the staff roll/credits (for the first time in English), written an FAQ strategy guide, managed to score 1 million in its “circle” game on my Nintendo DS, created a way for you to play it more easily on your iPhone, and even finally succeeded to make my own version of the “circle” game over the course of many years. I never miss an opportunity to wax lyrical about its genius, so here I am once again to keep the fire burning.

MaBoShi was published in 2008 by Nintendo and developed by Mindware Corp who have a long and well respected development history. The game was critically acclaimed on release, which might come as a shock if you’ve never heard of it. It was somewhat inaccessible: it was a hardcore arcade title only available digitally on a console that was maligned as being “for kids”. To give a sense of time, the App Store on iPhone was barely a month old at the time of MaBoShi’s release.

As part of the release promotional campaign Micky Albert of Mindware Corp gave an interview with WiiWare World (now Nintendo Life) which can be read in two parts. The team effort of the development of the Wii game is detailed in that interview. However, if we dig a little deeper we can find the true origins of the game in a couple of prototypes created by a Japanese indie developer. Over the years I have pieced together the interesting story of how MaBoShi came to be.

The Long Tail

Kuniaki Watanabe (“kuni”) is probably best known for his PlayStation open world exploration and crafting game Panekit, released in 1999. This was a product of Sony’s ゲームやろうぜ! “Game Yaroze!” development programme (not to be confused with PlayStation’s 「ネットやろうぜ」 “Net Yaroze” dev kit). Panekit offered the type of easy, freeform crafting that would later appear in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and even later in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Most famously Panekit took 13 years to become profitable.

In more recent years he’s written a book on game design, 組み立て×分解！ゲームデザイン (“Assembly × Disassembly! Game Design”), that goes into the mechanics that are used in his games, including MaBoShi. It’s only available in Japanese but has a very friendly manga-style presentation and the game design techniques are easily understood.

Throughout the past 30 years kuni has been an indie developer, developing for many platforms using a range of tools. And this is where we pick up the origins of MaBoShi.

Hot Soup Processor

HSP could be thought of as a Japanese equivalent to something like BlitzMax, given that it started life as a version of BASIC, or perhaps Love2D for a rough equivalent of its capabilities.

ONION software, creators of HSP, hold the annual HSP Program Contest and the results for all of these have been archived over the years. Nice work, ONION! We can do a web search of that domain to find mentions of kuni.

Mosser

We find one entry in HSP Program Contest 2004 called Mosser. A quick look at the image below shows that it was an early version of MaBoShi’s “square” game, which later evolved into Flametail on DSiWare in 2010. Mosser was awarded first prize in the small game category.

One of the judges was none other than Micky Albert of Mindware Corp—the company that would go on to develop MaBoShi! He and the other judges were very impressed with the gameplay and depth even at this prototype stage. Kuni would win a PlayStation Portable and some pinball art donated by Mindware who were a sponsor of the event. You can read the judges thoughts and the game can be run in old versions of Windows.

Circular

Kuni would create prototypes in Flash Lite, which was a version of Flash that was suitable for running on low powered devices, including Japanese feature phones. If we search archived versions of kuni’s old websites we can find a download from 2003 called Circular. You can play this in your browser thanks to Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and Ruffle, a web-based Flash emulator.

Circular is obviously an early version of MaBoShi’s “circle” game.

All bar one

So we have found two of the three games in MaBoShi, which leaves us with the “bar” game. I spoke to kuni and he mentioned that this did not exist as a prototype prior to work commencing on MaBoShi, so it was created for the game when it was decided that a third game would be welcome.

Missing in action

At the time of release there were a couple of English videos of a “making of” developer interview shown in both North America and Europe that have since been lost to time. Nintendo Europe were kind enough to respond to my request about these videos, but told me that their archive currently only goes back to 2012 so we’re sadly out of luck. Here are references I have found to the airing dates for video 1 (Dec 2008) and video 2 (Jan 2009).

These include the juicy fact that the game was initially green lit for the Game Boy Micro (a small Game Boy Advance, marketed as being suitable for one-handed play for Japanese commuters) alongside the bitGenerations series, Polarium, Rhythm Paradise, but after the sales of the Micro were less than anticipated the development was moved to DS and eventually to Wii.

Reading list

“1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” (Tony Mott, et al) right opposite Spelunky
Tiny Cartridge guest review by Anna Anthropy
TV ad/commercial that inspired MaBoShi’s effect system
Patent application US20090093314 describing MaBoShi’s effect system
Patent application US20110165940 describing Flametail’s power-up system

Per-game skins in the Delta classic video game emulator for iOS

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 19:55:00 +0000

Apple recently changed the App Store rules to allow emulators, which means we’re now seeing emulators for classic video game consoles available for download! This is great news for a retro gamer like myself. Delta is one such emulator that currently focuses on Nintendo platforms: NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, SNES, N64 and DS.

I thought it would be fun to play my favourite Nintendo DS game: MaBoShi. This is an odd choice of game for a few reasons, but it really tests what Delta and the melonDS emulation core can do.

Immediately I noticed that the Nintendo DS emulation quality is high: MaBoShi’s mosaic transitions are shown, whereas in other emulators such as DraStic or DeSmuME they are not. That’s a good start!

When good isn’t good enough

But, we can see some odd things about MaBoShi:

it is played with the DS rotated on its side
the second screen goes mostly unused

And there are some other things we can’t see:

it doesn’t use the touch screen
only the D-pad is used during play (and Start button to pause)

Usually, when I play this game in an emulator I activate single screen mode and forgo seeing the high score, which is no big deal as the game ends at 1 million and that’s always my goal.

So I looked into the Delta docs and skin docs and find that the options to show a single screen, or rotate it, are controlled by the skin (visual theme) you are using.

Reading further into skins the capabilities seemed quite comprehensive, so I began to hatch a plan… maybe I can create a custom skin just for MaBoShi?

I love it when a plan comes together

Here’s the feature list I came up with:

show the main game screen
show only the score from the secondary screen
remove all controls other than the d-pad, start and delta button

I achieved this goal as follows:

define two seperate screens to split the DS image
rotate each of the screens
overlap the screens so that only the score from the secondary screen is visible
rotate the d-pad direction controls
made the touch/game screen a big button
make empty space equivalent to nearest button
create a nice PDF to show the buttons visually

If you’re interested in the JSON associated with this skin, here it is on GitHub.

Maximum joy

Installation and download instructions are at the bottom of the page, but here’s the final skin:

Installation

To install the skin you need to do a little bit of busy work, but boy is it worth it:

Install Delta and get it running DS games (check this video)
Create a folder called Delta in your iCloud Drive so you can easily store/retrieve some downloads
Download the following files:
- MaBoShi.nds.zip game file
- MaBoShi.jpg artwork
- MaBoShi.deltaskin custom skin
Open the .nds.zip game file in Delta
Tap and hold the game icon to show a menu
Choose “Change Artwork”
Select the .jpg you downloaded earlier
Choose “Change Controller Skin”
Select the skin using the + button and set it as both Portrait and Landscape skin for the game

Check out my MaBoShi Guide at GameFAQs to learn more about the game and how to play it. It’s essentially a one button game so isn’t affected by the lack of physical buttons.

Gaming Advent Calendar

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At the start of December I decided to do a sort of “gaming advent calendar”, a single-tweet review of a bunch of my favourite video games. I’m collecting them here for posterity. Hopefully you will find something of interest in the list.

Each tweet contained:

hashtag #GamingAdventCalendar
title & year
text review
YouTube video link
4x images (box art, flyers, screenshot, etc)

Here begins my #GamingAdventCalendar for 2022.

Twenty-five of my favourite video games between 1st and 25th December. Just for kicks!

🧵

1. Flicky (1984)

I adore this so much I own an arcade cabinet! It’s deterministic (no randomness) so you can figure out a repeatable route and turn playing into a zen experience. Controls use leaf switches so feel very analogue. Video

2. Pebble Beach no Hatou (1993)

Or any of the “New 3D Golf Simulation” series; I play the Japanese Mega Drive versions. Great golf, majestic music, super stylish interface & box art, and a tea break after hole 9. Play with CPU overclock! ⛳️🏌️‍♂️ Video

3. Runabout 2 (1999)

This sequel fulfilled the promise of the original and took it to great heights, delivering an almost perfect game of chasing, collecting and crashing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s like Crazy Taxi! Video

4. Orbital (2006)

Available for both GBA & Wii this is slow motion Katamari Damacy with gravity. You control a star that can absorb smaller stars and crash into larger ones. Two buttons: attract/repel control your orbit & trajectory. Video

5. DigitalGlider Airman (1999)

An immensely rewarding glider sim with perfect difficulty curve and lovely, mysterious vibe. But playing this as an arcade game won’t get you far: it requires thinking, planning & minimal/accurate input. Video

6. Kururin Paradise (2002)

This 2nd GBA game in the series gets my vote as best, tho they’re all great. It dials the concept up to 11 with enhanced level design, goals & controls. On a beach holiday I was so engrossed I got sunstroke. Video

7. A Little Bit of… Nintendo Touch Golf (2009)

This DSiWare reworking of the original game throws out online functionality and adds an extensive Challenge mode to reinforce the core. Mod your device and download it @internetarchive!) Video

8. Smashing Drive (2002)

Superb port of an arcade game people think is like Crazy Taxi but is more Out Run with mad shortcuts! Extended play rewarded by seeing more wow moments. I’m yet to see them all. Crash into King Kong’s bits! Video

9. Polarium Advance (2005)

After seeing a prototype Nintendo demanded a version of this for DS, but the GBA version is more refined & released later. Daily puzzle mode will last you a year. One-handed control for commuting is genius! Video

10. Excite Truck (2006)

An amazingly well-balanced game. Criminally overlooked, maybe because it’s Wii, or only has motion controls? This is a tour de force of close and clever racing; an adrenalin rush like no other once it clicks! Video

11. Downhill Domination (2003)

I often wonder if the developers of Excite Truck were inspired by this game? It’s certainly as close a relative as I’ve found. It features same BIG AIR adrenalin rush, impossible powers and close racing. Video

12. Pilotwings (1990)

One of my fondest memories: my dad playing hang gliding stage on repeat as a relaxation tool. I loved the surprise & delight of the secret levels that were unlocked for being good at the game: I can still do it! Video

13. MaBoShi (2008)

This inventive action game is 3-in-1: Circle, Square & Bar. Circle = physics, Square = turn-based, Bar = Reaction. Circle is quite possibly my favourite game of all time. You can play today using Wii & DS ROMs. See: blog.gingerbeardman.com/2013/06/29/maboshi/) Video

14. GTi Club: Supermini Festa! (2010)

This is a port of the 3rd game in Konami’s arcade series. Developer Genki added online multi-player & extra features to the console versions. You can still play it online today with a modded Wii! Video

15. Bubble Bobble (1986)

Maybe the greatest ever arcade game!? A tour-de-force by the late, great Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji, this game has perfectly balanced gameplay, 2-player perks, 100s levels, inventive power-ups, and hidden secrets. Video

16. Magical Puzzle Popils (1991)

Is a highly original puzzle game with mind-bending level design feat. portals and other cool stuff. Created by MTJ (Bubble Bobble) & Jun Amanai it is largely unknown as it is only for Sega Game Gear! 🧵 Video

It’s my birthday! SO… more about POPILS:

whilst trying to 100% the game, my friend Jamie “Junosix” Hamshere and I reverse-engineered/hacked/patched the game to make the step and sub-step count always visible. This makes it easier to beat stage targets! www.smspower.org/forums/16730-MagicalPuzzlePopilsGGHackHelp

I also discovered a few other previously unknown things: debug mode (step count preview, level select), alt credits, and most notably secret stage 0 that had only been hinted at in the Japanese manual [segaretro.org/images/e/e0/Magical_Puzzle_Popils_GG_JP_Manual.pdf]> (https://segaretro.org/images/e/e0/Magical_Puzzle_Popils_GG_JP_Manual.pdf) these are documented at TCRF: tcrf.net/Magical_Puzzle_Popils

I’ll summarise my complete POPILS adventures in a future blog post, because it’s worth it. But not today. See you in a bit for the big birthday blog post, and tomorrow for the next entry in 🎄

17. Boogie Wings (1992)

This “shmup” contains more ideas than any other single game. At every turn you think you’ve seen it all: you have not. Game designer Kazuyuki Kurata called it a day after this, his only game. A masterpiece. Video

18. Sideswiped (2009)

Crazy, fast, manic, 60fps. There’s racing, plus so much more. My favourite mode involves juggling exploding cars and traffic cones to keep your multiplier and have the road ahead in a constant state of explosion. Video

19. Guru Logi Champ (2001)

Dev COMPILE made games of all types for their Disc Station compilations. Related to those is this puzzle game: rotate the field & pull/push blocks to compete the picture. Sort of Magical Drop meets Picross. Video

20. The Italian Job (2003)

A short 60fps mission-based driving game like “Driver”. Tight arcade controls, demanding targets, interesting env. Story mode echoes movie plot. Stunt mode involves driving elaborate scaffolded courses. Fun! Video

21. Donkey Kong’s Crash Course (2012)

A motion-controlled mini-game in Nintendo Land on Wii U. Navigate the maze-like stages using all your skill and dexterity. A forgotten prototypes that made it into a real game! 100% pure Nintendo. Video

22. Llamatron (1991)

Jeff Minter improves on Robotron by adding elaborate power-ups, enhancing enemies, and channeling Monty Python. Round up animals, avoid radioactive rain, shoot a screaming Mandelbrot set! Assisted by an AI droid? Video

23. Sheep Raider (2001)

A “despicable” 3D puzzle platform stealth game dressed as TV show. Beautifully presented, supremely self-aware, inventive puzzles anchored in the Looney Toons world, good difficulty curve, secrets, jazz …nice! Video

24. Pang (2010)

All prior games in the series are perfectly distilled and stretched across dual screens. A more perfect difficulty curve I am yet to find. Extended play is mind-melding: you begin to think like the level designer! 🤯 Video

25. Winter Gold (1996)

Part Amiga demoscene production, part SNES technical showcase for the Super FX 2 chip, 1–8 players can compete across six winter sports events. Downhill and luge are my favourites. Very fun! Happy Christmas 🎄 Video

26. BONUS! A Little Tree (1995)

This wonderful animated story book by Thoru Yamamoto 山本徹 @thoruman is one of several Christmas-themed works he created using HyperCard on Macintosh. Play/download this, See The Sky and ZiZi Christmas archive.org/details/thoru-yamamoto-hypercard-stacks Video

Credits: MaBoShi (WiiWare)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of the best (according to MetaCritic, and IMHO) Wii games is a WiiWare game called MaBoShi that is now mostly lost to time in that Nintendo have closed the Wii Shop Channel. Of course, there are other more nefarious means to procure the game, but I’m not going to go into those here.

Anyway, I still play this game regularly (still not managed 1Million on Wii but have on the DS download version) and recently unlocked the Staff Credits (Staff Roll).

Staff Credits

Producers

Mikito Ichikawa
Satoshi Kira

Director

Mikito Ichikawa

System Design

Mikito Ichikawa

Game Design

Kuniaki Watanabe
Mikito Ichikawa
Jun Shimizu

Programming

Kotori Yoshimura
Tadashi Itō
Kuniaki Watanabe
Jun Shimizu
Mikito Ichikawa

Design

Reiko Sato
Hiroki Takahashi

Artwork

Toki Kando
Takanao Kondo

Sound

Daisuke Shiiba
Johan Krafft

European Localisation

Edoardo Dodd
Miguel Ángel García Segovia
Carsten Harmans
Kay Hermann
Geraint Howells
Sonya Mazet

NOE Localisation Management

William Romick

Debug

DIGITAL Hearts CO. LTD
Super Mario Club
Shigeo Kimura
NOA Product Testing
NOE Testing Team

Project Management

Hiroshi Sato
Toshiharu Izuno

Special Thanks

Koji Sato
Toru Inage
Kenta Tanaka
Kozo Makino
Rumiko Hoshino

Executive Producer

Satoru Iwata

All Rights, including the copyrights of Game, Scenario, Music and Program reserved by

Nintendo
Mindware

Addendum

During a chat with Kuniaki Watanabe by Twitter DMs, he outlined the responsibilities of the team:

Programming

Kotori Yoshimura (Wii system, Bar game)
Mikito Ichikawa (NDS system)
Tadashi Ito (Square game)
Jun Shimizu (procedural level generator for Bar game)
Kuniaki Watanabe (Circle game)

Game Design

Kuniaki Watanabe (original game prototypes)
Mikito Ichikawa (reconstruct for Wii)

Level Design

Mikito Ichikawa (Bar game)
Kuniaki Watanabe (Circle game)
Jun Shimizu (procedural level generator for Bar game)

Graphic Design

Reiko Sato

FAQ: Maboshi’s Arcade

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a video game FAQ and uploaded it to GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/wii/946472-maboshis-arcade/faqs

Review: MaBoShi

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 00:25:58 +0000

Three games for the price of one in this innovative WiiWare title. Six if you count the fact that you can download a version of the game over Wi-Fi to your Nintendo DS to play on the move.

WiiWare is the downloadable game service on Nintendo’s Wii home console. It lets you download smaller sized and lower priced games direct to your console, and offers a distinctly different range of games than you can pick up through more traditional retail outlets. The channel showcases game concepts that may not have been profitable to release elsewhere. It’s astonishing that without WiiWare, MaBoShi may never have seen the light of day. Each of its three game concepts are so unconventional and slight that I think most gamers might not give them a second glance, even at this very affordable price.

MaBoShi takes advantage of few of the Wii’s features but still delivers a solid and innovative experience. It allows players to use their Miis as avatars in the game, send replays to other players via WiiConnect24, and also has the previously mentioned Wi-Fi download to Nintendo DS. But there is no sign of motion control. In fact, whilst the wii remote is used as a pointer for the game menu, MaBoShi is firmly a one button game. Or perhaps that be three one button games, as there are actually three main game modes: Circle, Bar and Square. Each mode is played differently, but with the same objective - to score one million points. In the Wii version there are three game panels on screen, allowing simultaneous multi-player.

With multiple players the game adds an extra feature into the mix, known simply as the Effect System. Destroying an enemy will cause a bubble to appear. This bubble moves across the screen and over other game panels where it can affect other games in progress. This means that players managing their own separate games may be influenced by these effects eminating from other game panels, and players may therefore choose whether they wish to help or hinder their fellow players. It’s not often you get to choose whether to play cooperatively or competitively, and I really like this aspect of the gameplay.

Circle mode - my personal favourite - finds you in control of a constantly rotating circle, able to switch the direction in which it is spinning by pressing the A button. By controlling the speed and momentum of the circle, you must guide it around the screen. You can use the variety of dynamic obstacles that appear on screen as a means to achieving the precise movement required to collide with the enemies and collect bonus multipliers. The aim of each round is to collide with all enemies as they appear onscreen, before they move off the game area. It is game over as soon as one enemy leaves the play field. The depth of control in this game mode is simply astonishing, and infrequent taps of the A button allow almost analog control of speed and momentum. Special mention must also go to the level design in this game, as it is balanced to perfection. In fact, if you’re good enough to score a million you will most likely do so near the end of all available 40 levels.

Bar mode sees you manoeuvring a rotating bar through a vertically scrolling level. The bar rotates around a core, which only moves using the momentum created by the bar and only when the A button is held. The bar can be used to defeat enemies and smash blocks, but if the core touches an enemy or a block the game ends. There are also pinballs, powerups and much more to contend with. I find this game the most difficult of the three.

Square mode sees the player controlling a single block that leaves a trail of fire behind. This trail of fire can burn obstacles, and can even set other parts of the trail alight. You must navigate around the screen, at your own pace, setting fire to all the obstacles with the help of the occasional bomb, whilst keeping an eye out for bonus multipliers. The screen scrolls when the player moves, and if an obstacle or part of the trail of fire hits the bottom of the screen, the game ends.

Created by Japanese pinball experts Mindware Corp, and based on pre-existing prototypes created by team member Kuniaki Watanabe, MaBoShi is a triumph of game design and deserves your attention. If you fancy a challenge I can heartily recommend trying to reach one million points in one or all of the game modes (I’ve only managed to do it myself in circle mode on the DS download version) - the game has a lot to offer if you’re willing to give it a try. Nintendo seem to be of the same mind, as they recently released an updated and expanded version of the Square game for their DSiWare download service under the name of Flametail (USA) also known as Trailblaze: Puzzle Incinerator (EU) and Moyasu Puzzle: Flametail (JPN).

Get Info: #maboshi

The making of MaBoShi

The Long Tail

Hot Soup Processor

Mosser

Circular

All bar one

Missing in action

Reading list

Per-game skins in the Delta classic video game emulator for iOS

When good isn’t good enough

I love it when a plan comes together

Maximum joy

Installation

Gaming Advent Calendar

1. Flicky (1984)

2. Pebble Beach no Hatou (1993)

3. Runabout 2 (1999)

4. Orbital (2006)

5. DigitalGlider Airman (1999)

6. Kururin Paradise (2002)

7. A Little Bit of… Nintendo Touch Golf (2009)

8. Smashing Drive (2002)

9. Polarium Advance (2005)

10. Excite Truck (2006)

11. Downhill Domination (2003)

12. Pilotwings (1990)

13. MaBoShi (2008)

14. GTi Club: Supermini Festa! (2010)

15. Bubble Bobble (1986)

16. Magical Puzzle Popils (1991)

17. Boogie Wings (1992)

18. Sideswiped (2009)

19. Guru Logi Champ (2001)

20. The Italian Job (2003)

21. Donkey Kong’s Crash Course (2012)

22. Llamatron (1991)

23. Sheep Raider (2001)

24. Pang (2010)

25. Winter Gold (1996)

26. BONUS! A Little Tree (1995)

Credits: MaBoShi (WiiWare)

Staff Credits

Addendum

FAQ: Maboshi’s Arcade

Review: MaBoShi

How to play

Links