The Nintendo 64 is not well known for its status as an import friendly console. It’s not that it’s particularly difficult to do so, rather, there just isn’t a compelling line-up of software to bring overseas. While doing research on the topic I stumbled upon Getter Love!! Chou Renai Party Game. This turned out to be a dating simulation board game for the Nintendo 64, and based on how quirky it sounded I just had to add it to my collection. Getter Love (as I’ll refer it it from here on out) is certainly unique, but I’m not surprised it wasn’t translated into English.
In Getter Love you play as one of four high school boys in Japan. The youths one day decide to compete against one another to see who can get a girlfriend first, and thus begins our scenario. Along the way they’ll need to compete with rivals and even each other to get the girl of their dreams. It’s all pretty silly stuff, and I’m sure only the most hardcore of anime fans will actually enjoy the plot on a serious level. I found it hilarious, and to be honest, I liked the characters.
Despite the absurd nature of Getter Love it plays somewhat similar to traditional board games. What I mean is that you and the other players choose what you want to do, and then the actions are carried out on a game board that represents the city. It features various locales such as a bar, park, library, burger joint, etc. Where the game separates itself from traditional board games is that after making your selections you watch your characters (and various others) moving about in real-time. The city is rendered in 3D and you view the action from a skewed overhead perspective. There are no ‘spaces’ or dice rolls here.
As each character reaches their desination the screen moves to a static view from inside of it. You’re given several different options here, but the most important of them is the ability to interact with one character that is presently at the place. This can be one (or more) of the girls you can date, a rival, or a few other special ones that have different effects on gameplay. You can only interact with one character per turn so you must choose wisely. At the shops you can also opt to spend your turn purchasing items instead that can aid your character in their love life.
After you’ve played for a few in-game days a love-meter will suddenly pop up. This displays your affection levels with each of the women. When you reach the highest level you can ‘profess your love’ for them during your turn and essentially win the game by doing so. You’ll need to spend your turns wooing one of the available women. Players can compete for the same one, and there are even non-playable rivals that are also thrown into the mix. You can get better at Getter Love through repetitious play; the girls all have presents they like/dislike, and also different locations that they frequently visit.
There’s more to manage in this game than it sounds like up to this point. Each participant in the game has a limited amount of money. Like in real life gifts cost money, and dates do as well. You also have two bars that drain as you play. While I don’t know their exact meaning (I’m not a Japanese speaker after all and followed a translation guide to play this game) one seems to indicate your character’s cleanliness while the other their mood. When these are drained your options become limited only to just returning to your character’s home to waste a turn showering. It took me a while to grasp the concept because of the language barrier, but it does add strategy to the game.
It might sound like the game takes a long time to play but actually, that’s not the case. By board game standards Getter Love is very fast paced. There’s a save feature, but as long as you have an hour (or sometimes two) you can play straight through the game. Honestly, the most time consuming part of this game is wading through all of the dialogue. You have to sit through it for all four players, or the CPU controlled enemies if you can’t wrangle up enough humans to play with. At specific points in the game you have to compete in very generic mini-games, but these are far and few between.
Getter Love has a downright difficult learning curve to it. This is made worse with the language barrier. There’s a great translation guide available online that will teach you how to play, but even after playing several games with it (and even winning) I still struggled at times. The random element fits the board game motif and ensures that no two games will be played the same. Also, you can throw in the human element and with all the variables there’s actually a lot of replay value with this one. And now we come to the one million dollar question. Is Getter Love any fun? In single player it’s mildly enjoyable, but I imagine multiplayer can get pretty heated and frantic. I’ll have to update this review if I wrangle up a few friends to play it with me.
Getter Love!! is one of those Nintendo 64 games that focuses more on sprites than polygons. All of the characters are hand drawn and have avatars that appear during dialogue. Furthermore, the backgrounds at each of the locations are static images. These have quite a bit of detail for the hardware, and look pretty nice. The character sprites are pretty basic and look like something that could have been done on the Super Nintendo. At least there are small animations. I really like how most of the choices you make are indicated by both icons and text. It makes following a translation guide easier. The only part of the game that pushes the hardware are the town scenes. These are fully polygonal, and though simplistic, run rather well.
The music in Getter Love is super bouncy and some of it is inspired by Jpop music. That point is sure to turn away some potential players, but I found it fairly inoffensive. The soundtrack is composed almost entirely of the familiar bleeps and blips Nintendo 64 owners were forced to sit through with almost every other game. Nothing sounds redbook quality, but that’s to be expected given the cartridge format of this title. There are a few tracks that sound like voices in the background, and even have gibberish spoken. It sounds decent, but is nothing special. The sound effects are all pretty high pitched but that’s clearly to make them stand apart from the music.
Getter Love!! is not the best game on the platform, even in this genre. The Nintendo 64 was a haven for party titles with an emphasis on multiplayer. Had this one actually been localized I’m sure it would have been lost in the shuffle. The concepts that fuel this one aren’t something that’s particularly mainstream in the West. With that said, Getter Love is mildly enjoyable. It has enough of its own features to make it unique from the Mario Party line. The focus on the dating aspects of it are weird at first, but it’s kind of fun. There’s a sense of accomplishment when you succeed after memorizing routines and items to use. I’m sure this one will be frantic and addictive with more players. If you don’t mind using a translation guide I recommend giving Getter Love a shot.
