PlanetDreamcast | Features | Previews | Ooga Booga

Ooga Booga Bust out your tribe mask, Ooga Booga is coming to your Dreamcast. - by Vash T. Stampede Dreamcast owners envious of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros., rejoice!. Ooga Booga, developed by Sega's American sports guru Visual Concepts, may be just what the witchdoctor ordered. Set up with similar frantic pacing and four-player action (both online and off), Ooga Booga offers players the opportunity to compete for the favors of the island volcano goddess Ooga Booga. Players will take the roles of one of four Kahunas, each representing an island tribe. The winning Kahuna gets the blessings of the goddess. The losers get sand kicked in their faces. The game is presented with cartoon-style visuals and a fairly unique Polynesian/Tiki atmosphere, that makes itself felt in all aspects of design. Characters all wear elaborate masks and the island settings are used to create unique environments for the game's various challenges. Hakuna Matata! My Biscuits are burning, my biscuits are burning! Of course, competing for the affections of a goddess means taking off the kid gloves and going for broke. Kahunas can toss shrunken heads at one another, hop on animals for mounted attacks, and cast spells to zap their opponents. Shrunken heads can also to be used to power Tikis, stationary cannons that fire on any opponent who comes into range. Tikis can be damaged and destroyed, so players shouldn't count on them to do all the hard work. Ooga Booga comprises a number of different events. Smakahuna is the basic, anything goes, brawl. Beating up the other Kahunas scores points. At the end of a round, the Kahuna with the most points wins, with the ultimate winner determined by a best-of-three scoring scheme. To turn it up a notch, players can try out Rodeo, where all four Kahunas compete for the one boar on the island. Only the player riding the boar can score points, but everyone else will have fun trying to knock him off! Lastly, Boar Polo mode forces players to try to knock a large boulder "ball" into a goal in order to score points. The best way to move the boulder around is with the boars, but the boars get irritable if they take too much abuse. An island full of angry boars is not a pretty thing. Players who get tired of being stuck on the ground can attack their enemies from the air using a toucan, and unlike Nintendo's Super Smash Bros., ring outs merely force players to swim back to shore. Watch where you fall, you never know what you could land on. The lights, the colorful lights...I can see the music. Players begin with access to four different Kahunas: Fatty, Twitchy, Hottie, and Hoodoo, each of whom has a special affinity that sets him (or her) apart from the others. Fatty, for example, is big and strong, but also very slow. Twitchy, by contrast, can move with extraordinary speed, but goes flying from virtually any impact. Along the way, players will have the opportunity to unlock new characters, new masks, new spells, and new arenas in which to blast their friends. With its stylish visuals and varied gameplay, Ooga Booga looks like a promising multiplayer game. Unfortunately, it will also be one of the last on the Dreamcast, as Sega's 128-bit system hulas off into the sunset. Ooga Booga is rated "E" for everyone and is currently slated for a September 12th, 2001 release date. Essential Links: Sega.com - The official website for Sega, with a brand new design! Previous Features Comments on this feature? Have a question about Phantasy Star Online Version 2? Mail Feedback.