Game Center CX Season 2 – Back to Contents
#4
「コナミワイワイワールド」だヨ！全員集合！
This is "Konami WaiWai World!" All Members Assemble!

Chousen

Konami’s all-star action platformer is the challenge this time. Konamiman and Konami Lady must rescue six of Konami’s heroes in their own game worlds. This time, Arino has the strategy guide right off the bat — two of them, in fact, thanks to the staff.

Arino begins in the Goonies stage to save Mikey. Unfortunately he falls into a pit and is instantly switched to Konami Lady. He dies again and gets a Game Over, which is where he decides to look at one of the guides. It seems the best place to start from is the Goemon stage, so Arino starts over there. He gets about halfway through the stage when he spots a certain enemy and then instantly pauses. It’s a dragon, one that looks mighty similar to the one from last episode’s Ghosts ‘N Goblins. Arino even reels in despair in the same fashion as last time.

He heads in a little kamikaze-style, but manages to beat the dragon without harm. And it wasn’t even a real boss! Yet he gets a key from it, and that lets Arino open the cell that holds Goemon. One down, five to go. Arino heads to the Castle(vania) stage next. He reaches the boss room and gets a little scared just because the music changed. He creeps forward and the giant Tadpole boss leaps in, crushing Arino within seconds.

He tries again, now having revived his three heroes, but the boss still manages to take down all of them. Arino rolls up his sleeves and gets ready to try again. He decides to use the tag-team technique to conserve health, but by the time he gets back to the boss he only has two characters left and they’re both distressingly low on health. Arino manages to get ahold of the boss’s pattern, however, and defeats it safely with Goemon. From there he saves Simon Belmont, who kicks ass the rest of the way through to the exit.

Arino writes down the password for this point in the game, and then heads back to the Goonies stage. Simon and his whip are a great help here, but Arino misses a jump early on and accidentally kills him. Luckily Arino has a password now, so he just starts over and uses it. He does much better the next time, going all the way to save Mikey.

Arino heads to the city stage, where Mikey’s small size helps in getting through tight passages. But the enemies here are pretty tough, and it takes Arino a few tries to get through to just the halfway point, but then he accidentally kills Goemon. Right about then, AD Sasano steps in with the Joycard controller and offers it to Arino. He accepts, as his thumbs have been taking a beating so far. He reaches the boss, Boss Konga, and the turbo on the controller is a great help. King Kong is saved!

The next stage is the "hell" stage. Here Arino finally learns to use Konamiman’s cape to fly through the level. But then he remembers the note he wrote down on the blackboard about a hidden item back in the Goemon stage. So, using the cape, he grabs the item (the power-up from Gradius) as well as Goemon’s maneki-neko item. Then it’s back to the castle stage to get Konami Lady’s ray gun.

Back to hell. Arino gets to the boss but nearly gets ravaged trying to hit its weak point while its henchmen enemies dart along the screen. He manages to beat it just in time with King Kong. Here he rescues Fuuma from Getsu Fuuma Den. Now there’s just one more hero to rescue: Moai Alexandria from Gradius. Arino beats the boss by throwing Kong’s bananas at it, and then rescues the big stone head.

With all heroes accounted for, Arino can now open the third garage in the hub stage and then head for big boss via either the Vic Viper or the Twinbee. Arino breezes through the shooting levels, but dies during the boss fight. A couple more losses, and Arino decides to take the Twinbee instead. This time he destroys the boss. Surely it should be all over.

Not quite. One final platforming stage is left, and it takes place inside the boss. Arino struggles with some nuisance enemies and gets chased by a miniboss. But he ends up getting chased up to the boss chamber, so it’s not all bad. Well, actually, it is: the final boss lets loose with beams and amoeba enemies, but as Arino gets close and attacks with Kong, his energy doesn’t deplete that much. He keeps up the offensive and eventually, the boss explodes.

Arino applauds himself, but then immediately grabs the controller, as a countdown timer has started running! He starts rushing up the stairs out of the level. He pauses to check if any character is faster than the other, but he just takes Konamiman through the whole thing. He then, makes a wrong turn, sending the staff into a panic.

He gets up to the ship platform! He’s safe! He runs up to the hatch and immediately dies. Oops. He spent so much time congratulating himself earlier that he shaved off too many seconds! Arino starts over from the shooting stage, cursing himself along the way. He gets back to the boss and does a much better job running out this time. After 12 hours, he finally beats the game, and can applaud himself safely.

I’d Like to Meet This Man: Hideo Kojima

What would a show rooted in Konami nostalgia be without a chat with the company’s biggest star: Hideo Kojima? Arino visits the man and the two discuss Kojima’s entrance into the industry, his favorite games (Xevious, Mario, Dragon Quest) and the difficulty of making MSX games. There’s plenty of talk of Metal Gear as well, including MGS3: Snake Eater. Kojima demonstrates the game to Arino, particularly Snake’s vomiting.

Game Collections: Tecmo