Sodatete! Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking

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Sodatete! Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking
System(s): LCD
Number of players: 1-2
Official in-game languages: 日本語
Release Date RRP Code JP 200x

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Sodatete! Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking (そだてて！ムシキング) is a set of handheld LCD games based on the Mushiking franchise.

History

Development

The Sodatete! Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking LCD games were created by Masahiro Sakurai, famous for creating the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series. Sakurai's involvement with project started when he was approached by then-Sega executive Tadashi Takezaki, requesting the idea of crossing the Mushiking franchise with handheld digital pet games like the Tamagotchi and Digimon line of games. Thus, Sakurai wrote proposal during Golden Week and assembled it in the form of a PowerPoint presentation on May 9, 2005, explaining how the games' mechanics would work. The general idea of the games in the final product stayed more or less the same as the proposal.

A small team was assembled to design the LCD game, with Kan Naito of Dragon Quest III and IV fame handling the programming. The development team took into consideration how different growth stages in digital pet games will be stronger or weaker than others, and took care not to lett players run into a wall in battles. Various other features, such as having the Mushi graze on its meals instead of consuming it instantly, were added to give players a stronger sense of raising their pet. The development board for the LCD games was a regular piece of wood just under one square metre with circuit boards attached on top.

Shortly after making the proposal at E3 2005, Sakurai was approached by Nintendo to make Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This resulted in the development of both games overlapping with one another, with Sakurai often having to hide the development board when he needed to work on Brawl. At the time, Sakurai worked remotely, and only had a few in-person meetings alongside key staff at Sega headquarters. Outside of those, development was accomplished through email and online communication.

As a result of the work management, Sakurai was never able to test the game on a production handheld before it was done. This led to the LCD games being shipped with a bug in that the Mushi would become hungry at a faster rate than intended, likely due to differences in processing speeds.

Sakurai's proposal document shows that six different model designs were proposed, but only two designs, Kabuto Mushi and Nokogiri Kuwagata, entered production. The LCD games were also proposed to be able to dock into a Card Base peripheral, allowing the user to scan their Mushiking cards to acquire new skills and food for their Mushi, though this feature was not implemented into the final game. Other features, such as aerial battles and food wars, never made it to the final product.

Releases

Code	Name	Box scans	Images	Region	Date	Price	Documentation	Description
HCV-0701	Kabuto Mushi (カブトムシ)
HCV-0702	Kabuto Mushi (カブトムシ)
HCV-0703	Nokogiri Kuwagata (ノコギリクワガタ)
HCV-0704	Nokogiri Kuwagata (ノコギリクワガタ)
HCV-0705
HCV-0706
HCV-0707

Promotional material

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  Press release (2005-12-15; JP)

External links

• 
  Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games - Sodatete! Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking [Game Concepts]