Mister Mosquito and the lost age of weirdness

The early 3D era was a pretty wild time in video games. A lot of blunders were made, many early experiments don’t hold up, and developers were still trying to figure out what to do with this new dimension of depth. Around the turn of the millennium, hardware improved and so did ambitions. There was a period of pure madness, as everything was thrown against the walls to see if it would stick.

A lot of attempts from Japan failed to cling to the North American market, but that didn’t stop publishers from trying. While we missed out on a lot of Love-de-Lic’s best experiments, we somehow managed to get games like Incredible Crisis, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Robot Alchemic Drive, Katamari Damacy, and Disaster Report. Most publishers knew that these were risky endeavors, but many big names braved the Land of the Rising Sun’s strangest titles in hopes of landing an audience.

Mister Mosquito is one such game that came to us from Eidos Interactive’s “Fresh Games” label. That particular subset of games didn’t work out, but at least we got Mister Mosquito.

Mister Mosquito puts you in the shoes of one of nature’s most frustrating abominations and sets you loose on the Yamadas. They just want to bicker like a normal family, but you’re about to crank their aggravation up to eleven in your quest to store up enough blood for the winter.

Your objective is to jab your mighty proboscis into the exposed weak points of each family member. From there, you draw as much blood as possible while avoiding any infuriated hands. At times, this is as straightforward as locating the right vector, while others task you with distracting your target meat bag and exposing their weak point. Don’t mistake it for some sort of puzzle-stealth title, however; the real difficulty comes from staying alive, as death can come on swift wings.

The Yamada’s quickly become tired of your itchy antics and start throwing down various poisons and mosquito coils. Those are difficult obstacles to avoid in midair, but if your wings get clipped, it’s probably by the Yamadas themselves. Get too greedy while drawing blood, and a single smack can spell your end.

The concept of Mister Mosquito is weird enough on its own. It’s one of those curious interactive explorations into the life of another species that seems to crop up occasionally. However, it’s made stranger by the narrative you become a part of. The Yamada family slowly loses their mind to your incessant pestering. Watching them go from a family with petty problems to one united under the banner of coping with an infestation is a compelling framework.

Mister Mosquito is, however, a dizzyingly short game that extends its playthrough using old tricks like collectibles and a second quest. It can be completed in an afternoon.  That is probably for the best, as the concept would be stretched beyond its limits if it went on for longer. However, while it was released at a bargain price in 2002, that’s hardly what its disc goes for now, and without any sort of reissue, that’s a major shame.

Unfortunately, Mister Mosquito failed to impress in North America. It did well enough in Japan that a sequel was produced, Ka 2: Let’s Go Hawaii, but there seemed to be no interest in localizing it for western audiences. The developer, Zoom Inc, dropped off the map for a while afterward before developing a few Wiiware titles and vanishing for good.

Eidos’ Fresh Games label made a few more attempts before admitting defeat around the time they were acquired by SCi Games in 2005. At that point, the period of weird, experimental games had dried up as the new generation of consoles dawned.

We’re living in a time where weird and unique games sit alongside mainstream titles. The indie scene has proven that sometimes stranger is better. Suddenly, bizarre projects like Goat Simulator have an audience. Still, it’s worth looking back to the days when developers were in unknown territory and success wasn’t just without guarantee, but not even likely. It’s surprising to think it was only 20 years ago.