For the first time the next Happy Chicken project will be crowdfunded. That’s right… we’re on Kicksarter now with a little something called Game Girls Go!, and let me tell you: it is awesome.
We have the girls: all professional Japanese idols who have appeared on various TV programs around Japan.
We have the games: Tons of retro games and consoles at our disposal.
We have the permission: It took almost two years, but we finally have the companies behind the games on board to legally use their products.
What we don’t have, is you.
That’s right, we have Japanese developers on board. This news came midway through the campaign, and it is absolutely huge. It means more than just having rights… it means they listened to what we had to say, saw the demo footage, and thought it was a fun, viable idea. That means the only “what if” scenario is, what if we don’t get funded.
It’s been really difficult to get the word out about Game Girls Go! Me, I don’t tweet… I only keep a small amount of Facebook friends (99% are actual people I know in real life)… and I’m not a member of any large game community or forum or message board. It’s like I’m living in the 90’s; but then I really liked the 90’s.
As I said above, Game Girls Go! has been in my head for around two years. These kind of things morph. You get an idea and have to refine it. I think Game Girls Go! came from two places: there was an idol photo book here in Japan that featured girls in various states of undress posing with retro game hardware that I thought was a great idea; and I’ve always been fascinated by the crazy things idols were made to do on Japanese variety shows. Here’s an example:
So I took those two ideas and, just like the man walking with his tub of peanut butter colliding with the woman walking with her chocolate bar, I created a better beast. No, not the delicious, mouthwatering goodness of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (where’s my money, Hershey’s?) but the greatest show about video games… ever.
The concept is simple. We take a Japanese idol, like these:
These four idols are already booked to appear on the show.
and put her in a room with 3 retro games on 3 different retro systems. If she’s able to complete a set amount of challenges in a set amount of time, she wins a prize. If she can’t… well, I’ll refer you to that YouTube clip I posted above. But the show is so much more than just girls in bikinis playing games. As you can probably tell by looking around my blog, I love retro games. So it was important to me that the show have a heavy dose of gaming history thrown in. I want people who watch the show to learn about games and gaming history.
That’s why in Game Girls Go! we feature history and strategy segments for every game that’s played plus we highlight the systems themselves. As I say in the Kickstarter video, by the time you finish watching Game Girls Go!, you’ll be a gaming genius.
So please support us in this endeavor. I honestly believe that folks are going to like the end result.
HCKblog 