QuickSpot
	Genre: Casual (Puzzle) Developer: Namco Bandai
Publisher Region Released Namco Bandai NA 03/13/2007 Namco Bandai JP 02/09/2006
AKA: Unou no Tatsujin: Soukai! Machigai Museum (JP)

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Staff Review

Review by Gary Hartley
November 24, 2009

During an impromptu trip to Japan several years ago, I found myself in a dingy bar hidden away from the garish neon lights and rampaging giant moths that typecast Tokyo. Here, draped in designer shadows and served only the smoothest sake by pandas on roller blades, I first met Hideo Yoshizawa.

<Hideo Yoshizawa: Hartley, you devilish rogue! This time you will get your comeuppance!

He strode into the room and slapped the drink out of my hand, startling a nearby panda and causing my adoring entourage of tiny Asian girls to scamper off to the safety provided beneath the skirting board. I was confused.

<Me: I am confused.

Yoshizawa, a man made immortal by his hand in the original NES incarnations of Ninja Gaiden, stands with an unwavering finger pointed at my very heart. He growls out his words, but then repeats them in a normal voice so the listening public could understand.

<Hideo Yoshizawa: You are my nemesis! And I will break you!

I was intrigued.

<Me: I am intrigued.

<Hideo Yoshizawa: I will produce a simplistic spot-the-difference game for Nintendo‘s DS system!

<Me: *GASP!*

<Hideo Yoshizawa: My reasons for this? Spite! I will force you to employ more than the magazine standard of 500 words to review such a simplistic game by cramming it full of delicious extra options! Mwahahaha!

<Me: I accept your challenge! But the words spent to describe this surreal exchange that we are locked in right now will not count towards the total tally.

<Hideo Yoshizawa: Agreed!

Several years later

Despite Yoshizawa’s efforts to foil his proposed duel of wits by never releasing his spiteful game PAL-side, a serendipitous visit to the ‘States allowed me to pick back up the slightly rusted gauntlet thrown down so many years previous. Hideo’s game is called QuickSpot, and it’s so ordinary and uninspired, one could be forgiven for making up a ludicrous backstory just to make the experience slightly more interesting.*

The game can be summed up succinctly as Spot-the-Difference and a touch screen. For the most part, both screens show similar pictures and you need to ring the differences you spot. There’s a couple of ways you can do this: there’s an against the clock race to work out your eyes, or a more relaxed non-timed event that often secures much more subtle changes to search for. For the latter, there’s 50 pictures to painstakingly search, and Namco-Bandai have not been shy in whoring out their various franchises to star in these twin static pictures.

But just because Yoshizawa’s chosen to throw glances back at his previous work in such titles as Ridge Racer and Klonoa, it doesn't help elevate his game beyond the humdrum. I’ll give my villainous rival credit: it’s doubtful a better constructed effort can be pieced together from what QuickSpot is. There’s an appreciated effort at including multiplayer options (even if some of them require their producer’s optimistic hope that up to three of your friends will own the games as well as you) but there’s only so much you can squeeze out of squinting at a picture until all the colours blend together and the resulting image demands you take the stylus to the windpipes of any ginger people that happen to be around.

(HonestGamers.com does not, in any way, endorse the repeated stabbings of anyone based on the unfortunate colour of their hair)

In an attempt to offer up something completely new, and no doubt bloat my word count, Yoshizawa also included a fortune telling mode that had you spot the difference in such a way that would predict your future! It does this by presenting a still with multiple differences and basing your fortune on the selections you make. I chose Romance for the means of this test, and received the following message:

Better stay away from Romance.
No matter how broken-heated you are, people aren’t going to care.

Nice try, Hideo. But your attempt to dampen my courageous heart will be foiled.

Aside from the loose claim of being another one of those brain-training games you should all feel guilty about making popular, QuickSpot has very little long-term appeal. Despite the numerous attempt to re-categorize itself, it is very much a one-trick pony. Though that can be claimed of many games, not so many are built around a singularity quite so uninvolving. The main action involved here is gormless staring -- Hideo Yoshizawa’s mother clearly never taught him that staring is rude.

* I, of course, need no such charade. Everything mentioned above is undeniable fact.

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