TGS '07: Duel Love: Koisuru Otome wa Shouri no Joshin Hands-On

TOKYO--If you would have asked us years ago whether a Japanese male-cheerleading sim would ever hit North American markets, we would have told you a snowball had a better chance of landing in h***. Elite Beat Agents proved us dead wrong. But from what we saw of Namco Bandai's Duel Love, it's hard to imagine the game ever coming to America. Why? Because the part we saw on the show floor was a male sponge-bathing sim.

Perhaps that's not entirely accurate, given that you aren't bathing men; you're wiping sweat off of their naked torsos. Appalled? Curious? Read on, it gets better, or maybe worse. When we began the playable demo, we were asked to choose between two boys, a redhead and a brunette. From there, the game went to a locker-room scene, where the boy we chose said some things in Japanese. Then the game began.

The fellow's upper body fills both screens, and as droplets of sweat appear on his stomach and arms, you have to quickly remove them with the sponge, which is controlled by the stylus. At first, the guy just looks annoyed. But as you sponge, the sweat comes faster and faster, while the background turns from light blue, to red, to rainbow with sparkles.

Then the game ends. Or at least, a very small portion of it. However, judging by the fact that what we saw was a minigame, we think it's probably safe to bet that Duel Love is a collection of shorts, like WarioWare. Whether it ever comes to the states likely depends on the minigames not shown, but regardless of its future, Duel Love was easily the strangest game that we saw at the Tokyo Game Show.