Japanese Wii games offer players not only more choice in the amount of software available in the United States, but also a closer look at the weird, wacky, and extremely fun games released only in Japan. I say weird and crazy, and Japanese games are often weird or crazy, but more importantly, they’re also a lot of fun to play, often very unique, and offer players a larger sample of games than just arcade games. run-of-the-mill first-person shooter.

In this 12-part series, I’ll be covering some of the most unique and bizarre Japanese games now releasing on the Japanese market. I’ll also cover 3 or 4 games that will be released soon as they have all the details online. The difference is that with these preliminary articles, I won’t be able to go into too much detail when it comes to gameplay.

For American and Canadian readers, and also for European and British readers. I feel it is very important to point out that in order to play these games, you will need to install a Nintendo Wii Mod Chip on your Wii console. Once installed, you’ll be able to play all the latest Japanese games (and European gamers can play the latest US releases too). There are several options for Nintendo Wii Mod chips, and while I won’t make any recommendations, I will tell you that the one installed on my Nintendo Wii is the WiiKey chip. It has never failed and works with all Japanese and European games on the market to date, and of course it allows me to play my US released games just like I used to.

In the first game of my Japanese game review series. It’s a dog’s life on Dog Island. This cute and wacky game immediately made me think of Nintendo’s NintendoDogs series for the Nintendo DS. However, the fact that these titles share a theme of dogs is the only thing similar in the two games. It’s also important to note that NintendoDogs was exclusively for the Nintendo DS handheld, while Yuke’s The Dog Island is available for the Nintendo Wii (perhaps with an NDS version to follow).

Now, instead of just raising and caring for your dogs on Dog Island, like you would have done with NintendoDogs, there are so many more things to consider and do. The story begins in a small town somewhere, we don’t know where this small town is, but we know it’s a small town nonetheless. And as usual in small towns, it’s the day of the big party and you’ve won the official party scavenger hunt. Being the good-natured kid that you are, you decide to give your prize to your little brother, who coincidentally ran away from home against your mother’s wishes and instructions. The problems start when your brother collapses. Turns out he has a disease and the ONLY way you can cure him is to take him to a place called Dog Insland and get some medicine. Of course, this involves a journey through the dangerous seas on a pirate ship, but he decides to accept the challenge.

The problem does not start OR end here. There are many enemies standing in your way as you explore the world of Dog Island. If you even get close to snakes, boars, or gorillas and they growl at you (or in the snake’s case, hiss) and give you menacing looks, your life meter will deplete. They don’t actually attack you in any way, but it seems that just looking at you in a threatening way is enough to end your life.

You don’t actually have any attack options per se. And the enemies you walk past may be asleep, in which case they can’t damage your life level. They may also be awake, aware that you are there, but peacefully going about their business as usual. In fact, you have a way of, well, an attack of sorts. You can sneak up on your enemies and bark at them. Depending on the strength of your bark, you can put an enemy into a kind of stun.

While this might seem a bit silly, did I mention that it was a weird and crazy game, all the enemies and life meters aren’t really the main point of this game. Your dog’s main role in Dog Island is to collect things. Actually, instead of saying that the goal of this game is to collect things, it would be more accurate to say that the goal is to collect smells, new smells.

All in all, it’s a very different game from the similarly themed Nintendo DS game, where you just feed and care for the dogs, rather than control one of the 48 available pets. While this all seems silly and not very appealing as far as video games are concerned. Dog Island kept me playing for an hour and a half in one go. Most likely, he would have played longer, but he had to move on to the next game. If you are interested in this type of Japanese game, I highly recommend it.