TGS 06: Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon Hands-On

TOKYO--Every year Square Enix's booth is one of the busiest on the Tokyo Game Show floor, and 2006 is no exception. There's so much foot traffic there, in fact, that the only time you're permitted to stand still within its confines is when you're in line to play a game--in which case you could be standing still for a very long time. Not so in the case of Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon for the Nintendo DS, though, not because it isn't popular, but because you only get to play for a very short time. Our first session after waiting in line for five minutes, for example, lasted under three seconds. Fortunately, we fared a lot better on our second visit, playing for all of two minutes and achieving a high enough score to earn ourselves a Chocobo-styled DS bag.

Although Square Enix's TGS press kit shows that Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon is clearly a role-playing game of some description, only three minigames from it were playable at the booth today. All three of them were played using the stylus, all three of them presented you with a "Game Over" screen as soon as you made a single mistake, and all three of them rewarded speed above anything else.

In the first game, around 25 playing cards, each with a different character on them, appeared on the bottom screen, and our goal was to hit the correct card as quickly as possible when we saw a character run or fly across the upper screen.

The second game saw the touch screen divided into nine squares via a series of white lines drawn over the top of a woodland scene. Our Whack-a-Mole-style objective was to tap the squares that a certain kind of monster appeared in, while leaving another type of monster alone. The game started out at a sedate pace but became more difficult as the monsters started to spawn in numbers and were often partially obscured by plants and other environmental objects.

The final minigame, which we were able to download a demo of at the Square Enix booth so as to avoid standing in line for a third time, divides the touch screen up into a 5x5 grid and then places an arrow in one of the squares. The size of the arrow and the direction in which it's pointing determine which square you're supposed to tap next, and you keep doing that until you reach a square with a gold crown in it. This game was arguably the most challenging of the three, but after spending some time practicing with it, we have achieved a prize-winning time by clearing three boards in less than 17 seconds.

It's unfortunate that more of Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon wasn't being shown at the Tokyo Game Show, but we had a good time checking out the minigames nonetheless. The game is currently scheduled for release in Japan on December 14, and we look forward to bringing you more information just as soon as it becomes available.