Game:

C.A.T.: Cyber Attack Team (2003)

Duration: 2:10:54

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Whelp... finally got that Japanese Xbox to play my Japanese games, and after I spent a few days playing some of them, I gotta say that they're... pretty weird. Considering that Microsoft's system was a huge flop in Japan, there aren't a whole lot of JPN exclusives (most were ported to PC or other systems), but the ones that exist weren't exactly system sellers. They were released in fairly low quantities, were often rushed to market, and most of them had low budgets, but they still maintain an air of intrigue if for no other reason than that they're on the Xbox and there is very little information for them, so we'll be spending the next few weeks adding Japanese Xbox oddities to the rotation.

That being said, you probably already read the title and have a lot of questions, so let's talk about "C.A.T.: Cyber Attack Team". If you ever wanted a game with a few futuristic elements, simple isometric tactical gameplay and the day-to-day shenanigans of moe characters who tread too closely at times into "Tokyo Mew Mew" territory, then you've probably found your game. What appears to be the only game ever developed and published by the duo, Medix and Hyde, C.A.T. was released in 2003 for Xbox gamers starved for a Japanese style strategy game and it, albeit barely, gets the job done. The game is broken up into episodes that have an adventure segment, a combat segment in the middle, and a concluding adventure segment, and combat is very formulaic in nature.

The game involves the adventures of three thirteen year-old school girls, Strawberry, Apple and Apricot, as they go to school like normal girls but are actually part of a covert operation known as the "Cyber Attack Team" who jack into a sophisticated computer terminal to stop cyber crimes orchestrated by an advanced super computer humanoid named Maria. She has gone rogue and wants to shut down all the networks in the world and eventually rule both cyberspace and Earth. While the main trio transform into cats, it's worth noting that the other supporting characters do not and this just makes the choice for them to be cats seem even more odd (nevermind that the main character is named STRAWBERRY or Ichigo, the same name as the protagonist from Tokyo Mew Mew).

The game doesn't have much plot... you learn a TEENY BIT about each character (such as Ichigo being an anime gamer otaku, Apricot being...abnormal, Yuuna being an international miko, etc.), but the rest is gleaned from the manual (such as their ages, nicknames, quotes, etc.). There are, surprisingly, a few moments where you can make choices that have subtle differences on the plot and dialogue, but most events boil down to random filler like going to the beach, clamoring for takoyaki, and other non-essential fluff. The game's got a comfort food sort of appeal in the plot department as long as you don't take it seriously.

The combat has just enough bells and whistles to qualify as an entry-level tactical game. There are no level-ups to be gained, no equipment to deck out your characters with, nothing much in the way of terrain advantages or disadvantages, and just a smidgen of mission diversity. Every mission involves you protecting a CPU with critical information from cyber fiends, but the placement of your team, the types of enemies, and other conditions change. Some stages will have you fend off enemies until help arrives, others require you to defeat all enemies within a certain time, then some have you choose paths to split up, etc. Character parameters automatically scale as you go through the game and new abilities are gained by grabbing crystals scattered across levels which come in the linear, seismic and support varieties. While you can tell what type of skill a crystal is, you can't tell WHAT skill it is until someone gets it, so knowing ahead of time would've been nice. Each character has different elemental affinities which can eliminate obstacles in your path (fire melts ice, explosions destroy barriers, etc.) and balancing your team is key late game as bosses become heavy hitters.

I appreciate the game allowing you to focus on the tactics as opposed to grinding levels and the combat is fairly snappy at 15-20 minutes on average. The "SP Distribution System" is also pretty cool as it allows you to leverage between turn order or additional skill points for special attacks. I can also say that you can skip just about everything or speed through it quickly and the game has low load times, which is a nice touch. As a whole, the game won't convince you to grab an Xbox if you didn't have one already, but it's a cheap (albeit rare) title to add to the collection and short (~9hrs). The last thing of interest? The characters were designed by Atsuko Nakajima (who worked closely with Rumiko Takahashi) with song lyrics sung by Komori Manami (the voice of "Jam" from Guilty Gear, etc.).

This is a video with plenty of footage to sample. The combat is naturally much darker than the adventure segments. Enjoy.