#patchwork heroes

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100万トンのバラバラ (Patchwork Heroes) is a 2010 Playstation Portable game resulting from the long-lost initiative Playstation C.A.M.P.! - the acronym standing for Creator Audition Mash-up Project. The young talent search and networking programme focused on assembling teams for the development of unique and bold projects, while providing them the needed financial backup and technology. Some of the most original and independent-minded games in Sony’s catalog such as Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!, Trash Panic, Mugen Kairou, Rain or Tokyo Jungle resulted from this noble, if short-lived project.

Hyakumanton’s premise is as simple as it is eccentric. In a peaceful world where man lives in relative harmony with nature, a fleet of giant flying fortresses, making use of unearthed technology from a bygone era, is threatening this balance. As a member of the resistance, the fledgling sky captain Titoru leads infiltration missions for the purpose of sawing these mammoth warships into small pieces until their structure is compromised and they fall to the ground. However, its frantic, arcade-style action is upset by a number of original proposals that make this portable gem quite unlike any other.

For each mission, Titoru is accompanied by other freedom fighters who represent the number of available lives before game over. Every time the party is hit by a projectile from a defense weapon or hurt by a sentinel bot, one of the party members perishes. To deepen the wound, their profile photo, name and age are shown prominently so as to associate the player’s failure with a sentiment of remorse over the death of a character.

Another great example of a excellent Sony game they didn't marketing, Patchwork Heroes was a 2010 PSP title that only got a digital release in western markets. The game itself is a rather cool modern take on classic arcade games like Qix and Dig Dug II.

The aim of the game is to saw apart flying battleships before they reach your home town and cause havoc. You play as Titori and it's the job of you and your team to rescue prisons and cut down the ship at the same time by cutting off sections of them one at a time. The larger the sections you cut off in one go the more you score and there are plenty of power ups to help you cut down the ships quicker. However, be prepared for the battleships to fight back with robots, repair drones and gun turrets.

It's a quality game with a great art styles and brings back a rarely used genre with some fantastic new ideas. The one thing holding Patchwork Heroes back, was Sony and their lack of support for it and the fact that in 2010 the PSP really was as dead as the Dodo in the west. This is one game that could have done with a home console port at the same time as it deserves a lot more success.

Hyakumanton No Bara Bara was easily one of the most fascinating games of its era, having the right amount of originality and classicality. It perfectly matched the form and function of the Playstation Portable, a system too often misconstrued by developers as the scrapyard for defective and stripped-down versions of popular home console games.

Marlene belongs to @hauntingmiser