Looking back the Nintendo DS was really an innovative little handheld. The two screens, and touch input were not at all a common feature back then. Unfortunately most of the big developers had no idea what to do with them. That’s where the smaller companies come in. Because of the ease of development, and how cheap it was to actually publish a Nintendo DS game we saw a lot of smaller releases for the platform. Most of this was shovelware. There’s no denying that fact. Then there are the hidden gems. These are the titles that were amazing, few played, and even less remember. Big Bang Mini is one of these such titles. It had a budget price tag and was advertised as a puzzle game. The platform was flooded with these so Big Bang Mini went mostly ignored. Today I’m here to talk about why you should play it.
Big Bang Mini is kind of hard to describe. On the surface it looks like a puzzle game. It’s actually a shooter of sorts, and a very unique one at that. Big Bang Mini is also focused around fireworks as its primary concept. That may sound familiar to those who picked up a PS2 at launch (Fantavision, anyone?) but Big Bang Mini is unique even when compared to that one. The goal is simple and straightforward here. You have a small item that you can’t let be hit by any projectiles. If it is touched by any of them you have to start the stage over from the beginning. The primary twist comes in the fact that you don’t move around with the directional pad. Instead you touch and drag this little icon to move it around.
What’s interesting is the fact that the play field takes place on both screens which allows for a vertical orientation. The game is completely two dimensional and you view the action from overhead. The enemies exist only on the top screen, and you can only move your piece around on the bottom one. Foes will shoot projectiles down below and you have to dodge their shots. Easy, right? You can fight back by swiping on the touch screen which causes fireworks to shoot upwards. As the game explains it this action is performed like you’re striking a match on the touch screen, but much gentler. You can fire these off at a variety of different angles and you’ll need to in order to dispatch the constantly in motion enemies.
When you destroy enemies and other environmental objects stars drift down to the lower screen. You have to move your little block (or snowball, or whatever it is depending on the stage) to collect these. Doing so fills a meter on the left side of the screen, and when it’s full you move on to the next phase of the level. This can get very tricky because you’re constantly dodging bullets. Gameplay is very frantic because you cannot move while shooting. You have to physically remove the stylus from the touch screen to switch between dodging and firing shots. This takes some getting used to because you have to focus on two things at once, but cannot perform both actions at the same time. Needless to say Big Bang Mini is very challenging, but also highly addictive and quite rewarding to play.
You can’t just blindly shoot fireworks either. The developers realized players would resort to just spamming the attack, and they came up with a clever method to discourage this. Every time one of your shots misses and touches the edge of the screen it causes a ricochet effect. Your fireworks scatter into multiple shots in all directions, and these too can hurt you. They go right through enemies however. This makes each of your attacks more significant. If you shoot too many of them you’ll have a whole lot of things to dodge in the next few seconds. This is a really unique aspect of the game that I haven’t seen replicated anywhere else.
Each new ‘world’ also introduces new mechanics. In an underwater area you have to collect air bubbles to stay alive while in another the constantly blowing wind changes the trajectory of your shots. These twists go a long way to keeping the game interesting from start to finish. There are even power-ups including homing shots, and ones that allow you to draw temporary barriers to shield you from incoming projectiles. There are a whole lot of ideas thrown at the wall here but I really like how you’re not overwhelmed by them. This also helps to help differentiate the stages from one another. You also have some really over the top boss encounters that are both challenging and hilarious. In particular I found the mohawk walrus bizarre. Another one has you battling against the literal alphabet. These developers had no shortage of crazy ideas.
Big Bang Mini has no shortage of game modes. The standard mode of play is arcade, and up until this point this is the gameplay I’ve been describing. You also have an endless option where you simply play until you die and rack up high scores. These are stored on an online leaderboard which has long been defunct, but at the time of release I’m sure it was a cool idea. Big Bang Mini also supports two players going head to head. Things get a little strange here because you’re required to hold the system on it’s side. You compete against each other in similar gameplay to arcade mode with several different power-ups making their way over. I haven’t had time to test this extensively but what I played was fun. There’s also an alarm clock using the game’s music, as well as a video wherein you simply watch fireworks.
The best way to describe the graphics in Big Bang Mini is ‘busy.’ In every single scene of each level both screens are absolutely full of mayhem. With the neon lights it kind of hurt my eyes to be honest, but in the best way possible. Everything in the foreground is rendered in sprites and these all look quite nice. The animations are pretty limited, but honestly you’ll be hard pressed to notice with all that’s happening. Thankfully the framerate stays steady and the engine is competent enough to handle the carnage. Backgrounds are all rendered in beautiful 3D and feature a lot of animation. These really take advantage of the processing power of the hardware. With that said you’ll hardly have time to look at or enjoy them. The soundtrack has often been hailed as amazing but personally I wasn’t a very big fan. I hope you like electronica.
We loved Big Bang Mini so much it made our list of the best Nintendo DS Hidden Gems!
