The Worst, Most Expensive Wii Game You’ve Never Heard Of.

Here at vpgames, we stock up on the hot-selling video games (your Call of Duty’s, GTA’s and Mario Kart’s of the world), and we special-order the rarer, slower-moving games from our suppliers.  But once in a while, a game comes along that defies all logic.

Marble Mania: Kororinpa is that game.  We ordered 3 of these for the Christmas Season last year, and they sold out in about 3 hours. Naturally we tried to order more, but the game was out of production. We were able to find some more copies from an alternate supplier, and they were going for $109 each new, and $79 each used.  At one point, this game was going for $119 on Amazon, and nobody here had any idea why.  I was desperate to play it and see what all the fuss was about, but we could not hold on to a copy longer than a few hours before it sold.

Now that the Christmas season is over, the price has dropped a bit and we finally had a chance to play it. We understand when a game goes out of print, the price goes up. But $120 each? That’s just insane. So, we set out to find out why a no-name “Marble-Mania” ripoff game for Wii continues to be so popular.  The verdict: We still have no idea why.

Even though the Nintendo Wii is a unique platform that brings new ideas of gaming to a much broader audience, that doesn’t mean that Nintendo always licenses good games for the console. That being said, Kororinpa: Marble Mania is one of the better – although not necessarily good – games to take advantage of the Wii’s unique motion controls. In the larger scope, the game falls short with its original content.

This is a classic case of too little too late. While I liked the colorful backgrounds and playing levels, I felt that I had already played Marble Mania before. Marble Mania is just another “Marble Madness"-type brain teaser. You control a marble. No, actually, you control gravity. You tilt gravity to make the marble roll. Over and over and over. Is it repetitive? You bet. Is it Addictive? Kinda. The only motivation to keep playing this game is to get to the next level to see if it gets any better. It doesn’t.

The one part of the game I did enjoy was the feature of collectable marbles. If you get tired of playing as a marble, that’s when you can choose to roll around a different item. These items are panda and pals. Some animal marbles (and watermelon marbles) roll faster or slower than others.

Flatulent Panda is fuzzy is the best of these little “perks”. That crazy Panda, he rolls a little less hurried. This helps you roll him across the hardest, roller coaster-esque mazes, and wobble him across tightropes made of warped, wooden floors, riddled with nutty dents, bridges and ramps. Not necessarily the best level design for these types of settings.

While the environments are ever-changing, and the puzzles with them, guiding marbles around mazes sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s a physics challenge. Your marble/panda always starts someplace silly, like rolling along an empty highway suspended 40 stories in the air, above a city, while a blimp putters around. Some of these puzzles while challenging, don’t bring anything new to this Wi-iish-marbley-game genre.

You don’t have to push any buttons. You balance and twist your wireless Nintendo Wii remote in your hands, and the game reads those movements as a means to change gravity. Changing gravity forces the marble forward, back, left and right along the highway’s curves. There are lots of obstacles such as potholes and killer laser beams. Other things on your path help you, such as magnets, conveyor belts and cannons that shoot you someplace safe. Again, nothing new here. Smells to me a bit like Monkey Ball.

But to the game’s defense, it’s the gravity that gives you fits. It changes suddenly, as if you were walking down stairwells in an M.C. Escher illustration, but then the gravity of the stairs changes to adhere to the wall or ceiling.
I don’t have young kids, but if I did, I wouldn’t force Kororinpa: Marble Mania as a punishment on them, instead I’d lock them in the basement with a carton of cigarettes, a five gallon bottle of water and a ration of Saltine crackers.

Final Verdict: 3 out of 5 Stars.  A decent game, but definitely not worth $120.

*Update* The Sequel, Marble Saga Kororinpa, is now available from Amazon for $27.99.  That is of course, until the stock runs out.

Ian Simmons