Review: Hurry Up Hedgehog!

Platform: Nintendo DS/DSi

Publisher: O-Games

Developer: Ivolgamus

# of Players: 1-6 (Wi-Fi/Hot Seat)

Official Site

Score: B-

Having grown up playing plenty of board games as a kid before moving onto electronic entertainment, my interest in them has never really left as I've gotten older. It's been pretty interesting over the years to see how different game developers translate classic table games into virtual form. Some conversions succeed better than others, but it's certainly an odd balancing act at times. Go too far from the spirit of the original version and it's sacrilege to the hardcore fans of the old game. On the other hand, too dry a digital translation, and modern gamers will ignore the product for something shinier with more moving parts. O-Games' Hurry Up Hedgehog! definitely leans more into the latter category, but there's a fair amount of depth under the simplistic presentation. If you're a fan of classic board games with up to five like-minded friends, the game offers up quite a decent (if rather plain-looking) gameplay experience.

Of course, the Negative Nellys out there will only glance briefly at the name and cover art before going on the rambling rampage about this being a Sonic the Hedgehog rip off, when in fact, they'd be deer in headlights roadkill dead wrong. Fact: the game is actually based on a well-known (well, at least in Europe) German board game called Igel Ärgern (roughly translated as"Hedgehogs in a Hurry") that's still quite popular almost 20 years since its creation. In fact, not only is the board game still available, you can also play an online version of it, if that's your cup of tea. It's a sort of Backgammon/racing/strategy game hybrid and compared to the original the DS version plays exactly the same, even allowing for similar rules customization that gives you up to 32 game variations.

As a single player experience, it's more of a "practice against the AI" deal and much like playing any board game alone, it's not as much fun as it is with friends. For the purposes of this review, I rounded up five of mine and invited them to drop by and play the game hot seat style. The thin manual lays out the game's rules in a simple manner, but once you start playing, it all clicks nicely. The game board is a 6x9 grid divided into "lanes" or "tracks" and each player gets four hedgehog "pieces" that can either be placed randomly or (through changing a parameter in the game options), manually along the six spaces in the far left column. The goal is to get three of your four pieces to the opposite end of the board before the other players by moving pieces up, down and forward a single space at a time. Here's where things get fun: thanks to the movement limitations, you or the AI or a live opponent will be forced at some point to move a piece that's not yours, often into a favorable position.

Or not so favorable - there are pits that can easily be avoided if you're lucky, but more often than not, you'll have a piece or two bumped into a pit by an opponent from behind or the side. In fact, tweak the rules and you'll have a couple of games with amusing bits of pit bumping, column shifting, limited lane use and other tricky elements. Add "Doping On," which disqualifies the first piece to cross the finish line and again, once you're into the game, you'll want to play a few times more than you'd care to admit. Of course, keeping a tally of wins and losses on a notepad somewhere for bragging rights could be a part of your plan as well - it's up to you.

Visually, things are cheerful and bright as can be for a board game, but don't expect much if you buy your games for graphics or presentation elements first. Something ridiculously familiar hit me as soon as I saw the title screen's New Game lettering and upon checking the game credits, yup, it's Nordcurrent's Segej Kravcenko (Atlus' wacky mini-game collection, 101 in 1 Explosive Megamix) handling the programming here. He didn't do the character art, which is a bit too bad, as the game could have benefited somewhat from his surreal stylization. Sure, the animated hedgehogs on the top screen are sort of cute if you're about six years old, but compare these guys to the original, more whimsical Frank & Doris game art:

Now, who would YOU want to see on that top screen? I prefer the guys on the right. They're a lot more expressive and heck, you certainly can't say they look anything like Sega's Sonic, right?

The game boards are presented as flat 2D art and come in six styles. It would have been nicer to see either more boards or the ability to create/edit your own. Everyone in the group of friends I sat down with to play against agreed on this point, but it was also noted that if this were a board game, you really wouldn't get six boards in one box. One friend noted that the game pieces looked like Tribbles, which had everyone cracking up. Of course, if this were a Star Trek: Igel Ärgern game presented in 3D with those Tribbles, it might draw a bit more attention. Probably from a mob of irate Trekkers who'd want to beat up the folks responsible, but it would at least get noticed a lot quicker that this one. Sounds and music are fine - the hedgehogs make silly noises and the tunes are unobtrusive, so nothing offends on the sonic front unless you're really picky.

In the end, you have a straightforward translation of a board game that doesn't do anything "new" visually or "innovative" with the stylus or touch screen, but so what? It does what it does well enough that non-biased gamers will enjoy it a hell of a lot more than those that want every game to conform to a set of often arbitrary rules. It's all too easy to unfairly criticize games these days for not having "state of the art" graphics or "innovative" gameplay, and that's really too bad in this case. Had this been gussied up with high-definition 2D or 3D visuals, power-ups, a story mode and anime artwork, it would probably be a sleeper hit over the Wii Channel, XBLA or PSN. But it's not flashy or sexy at all and by sticking to its roots, it's going to have limited appeal. Which is actually kind of comforting in an oddball way...

Not every game on every console needs to apply to whatever "today's standards" claim to be as long as what's in the box is entertaining to a segment of the user base, no matter how small. Graphics purists and those wanting touch screen elements up to the armpits will no doubt kiss off Hurry Up Hedgehog! as too budget looking and playing even for its price point. However, considering the original has given its fan base hours upon hours of enjoyment, it's certainly worth a look if you're interested in the games others around the world have enjoyed and want a bit more variety in your collection.