shrine to chuchu rocket gba

chuchu rocket is... a very fast-paced action-battle-puzzle game? i think? it's a strange little game.
it was first released in 1999 for the dreamcast, then ported to game boy advance in 2001 as, surprisingly enough, the first sega title released for nintendo???
(it also received a wii u port, and for a brief period from 2010-2015, even mobile ports!)

i first learned about the game through the 2-in-1 cartridge briefly mentioned in the last sentence on wikipedia here.
this cartridge was actually a huge chunk of my childhood, being the only (legit) multi-game cart i owned pre-ds r4 cards. (shh)
i'd sit for ages trying to solve the levels, even on my chunky old ds when i lost access to my gameboy for a while.

but this page will focus on the gba "port".

gameplay

there are mice known as chuchu. there are cats known as kapukapu. (you do not need to remember this, the game calls them mice and cats.)
they do... as cartoon cats and mice do.
you are on the side of the mice, and you navigate them away from the cats. simple premise.

your goal is to get the mice to the rocket, from wherever they are in the maze. your goal is also to avoid getting cats to your rocket.
cats are slower than mice, and eating mice does not stop a cat from moving.

mice and cats go forward until they hit a wall, at which point they turn.
to control them, you are given arrow tiles that you can place. if a mouse/cat steps on an arrow tile, it will turn and go that direction.

small notes:
- turning priority: right, then left, then 180
- if a cat touches an arrow tile, it will shrink. if another cat touches that shrunken tile, it will disappear.

battle

there's a 1v1v1v1 mode and a 2v2 mode. you either play with the 4 of you against each other, or in teams of two.
these battles are meant to be played with other players, but i've managed to hook up me vs 3 CPUs before (or me and CPU vs 2 CPUs).
you're assigned a colour, and you're tasked with getting the highest score by getting mice in your colour's rocket.
1 mouse = 1 point, but a cat in your rocket will tank a chunk of your score (usually 95-99).

there are also special cats and mice:

stage challenge

you're given 3 arrows again, but this time you have to meet certain criteria within a time limit of 30 seconds.
examples: guide all mice to a rocket / feed a cat all the mice in the level / collect 100 mice / cat soccer

puzzle

per stage, you're given fixed arrow tiles, i.e. 1 up tile and 3 left tiles.
you have to use the limited resources you've got to get all the mice home, with no time limit.
the catch? you immediately lose if you lose a mouse, or if a cat hits your rocket.

this is by far the largest gamemode - there are 2500 player-made puzzles stashed in the back corner of this rom.
2500 unique levels from the old dreamcast online uploads, on top of the defaults, stashed away in a left-right bumper menu..

let's create

all versions of the game let you build custom stages. you can place walls, holes, mouse spawnpoints and rockets as you choose.
you may be tempted to make a level that funnels mice straight into your rocket, but remember red mice...

gba also throws in a very very basic character maker - you can make small sprites with a 4-frame-long walking animation.
in the settings menu, you can set mice or cats to show up as these sprites whenever you play!
(since you can't download characters from the internet because gameboy, you can instead "download" template/default spritesets from the help menu.)

red mouse events

(i don't know the formal name of these)
exclusive to battle modes.
when a red mouse touches ANY rocket, one of the following events will randomly roll and last for 10 seconds. they also override each other.

...so give it a try! ^^

image sources: @darkmiguel993, @worldoflongplays, @longplayarchive (all YouTube)