Thanks to Hamada for helping with edits.
I began my “Beat the Backlog” journey by reviewing Tomena Sanner, a WiiWare side-scroller unlike anything else I ever played. It was unabashedly quirky, enough so for me to enjoy it despite its mundane gameplay. So for the twentieth installment in this series, I figured it’d be fitting if I revisited my WiiWare library to unearth a similarly goofy game. Something bizarre and flamboyant, a title no one else would discuss this long after the platform’s discontinuation. I instantly knew which game to load: Muscle March. Bandai Namco only published a few titles under the WiiWare banner, and this arcade-style romp was easily the most eye-catching one. But is its eccentricity matched with equally fabulous gameplay?
A marriage between Hole in the Wall’s premise and Cho Aniki-esque caricatures, this colorful romp certainly met my criteria. (Image: Bandai Namco)
Muscle March stars six bodybuilders and a talking polar bear, all of whom are playable and functionally identical. Spilt into three stages with three acts each, every act opens identically: a thief absconds with the bodybuilders’ protein powder, spurring four of them to give chase. So a conga line of five burly figures led by the thief run amok, with your character of choice tailing at the end. When the villain approaches a wall, they’ll make a gesture – moving their left arm up and right one down, for example – and then crash through it. In turn, you mimic their pose, courtesy of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck’s motion capabilities. Incorrectly copying a pose hurts you, and if you take five hits, you have to restart the act from the beginning. After some time elapses, a fellow weightlifter will slip on a banana peel, ejecting them out of the action. As your colleagues drop like flies, it’ll ultimately come down to you. By this point, things become considerably harder; you have less reaction time to emulate your antagonist, and they’ll flail their arms around before settling on a pose, aiming to disorient you. A prompt eventually appears, instructing you to rapidly shake your controllers to snatch your foe. If you’re not fast enough, they’ll evade you and the hijinks continue. When you finally nab them, another thief arrives and pilfers your powder, beginning the second, faster “Workout” act, and catching that thief initiates a stage’s final “Max-out” act. All three levels sport a unique environment – a city, village, and space station – though their differences are purely cosmetic.
There’s very little meat to Muscle March. Aside from the three main levels, there’s an endless mode, you can view the credits whenever you want, and… that’s it. March’s endless romp reduces your stamina down to three hearts and offers support for up to four players. Attaining a high score is the sole impetus to replay it or the main stages, and avoiding damage increases your combo. Clearing a stage grants you one of twelve rankings, with “Muscle God” being the highest. Which title you obtain is determined by what your highest combo was, your “pose rate,” how many continues you used, and how many total walls you cleared. But the game oddly doesn’t bother keeping track of rankings and scores achieved in the main levels, a glaring omission considering several of its contemporaries do. Visually, Muscle March looks like it was made on a budget, but considering WiiWare’s strict memory limitations, emphasizing personality over graphical detail was the right call. Its J-pop soundtrack and stock sound effects, meanwhile, suit the scantily clad protagonists’ plight perfectly.
Once this prompt airs, keep your Wii Remote and Nunchuck positioned upright and waggle them slightly. You’ll move much faster than if you shake them how Muscle March tells you to. (Image: Bandai Namco)
And unsurprisingly, the Wii Remote’s imperfect motion controls mars the experience. All you need to theoretically do is point your motion-capable devices up or down (do not attempt to actually mimic the thieves’ poses, doing so confuses the game), but they can struggle with even that. There’s also a slight delay between you posing and the game registering it, a potential issue during the hectic “Max-out” segments. Nothing here is as frustrating as, say, FlingSmash, but it’s enough to neuter a potentially decent time-killer. It is, however, possible to cheat: if you pause just before you hit a wall, you can adjust your pose, unpause, and make it through unscathed. So while that’s likely an oversight on the studio’s behalf, there’s an option to compensate for March’s control issues, I suppose.
Speaking to Muscle March‘s simplicity and dearth of content, this is the shortest piece I ever penned for Source Gaming. Everything the game has to offer can be cleared within a half hour, a short length that left some dissatisfied upon its release (notably, it cost 800 Wii Points in Japan, but its price was reduced to 500 here). Nintendo closed the Wii Shop Channel years ago, meaning Muscle March – and the whole WiiWare library – is regrettably now inaccessible. Some titles, like Mega Man 9 and LostWinds, survived its termination by releasing on other storefronts, a luxury Muscle March went without. A decade removed from its humble launch, it’s hard to imagine Muscle March getting another chance. If this curio does ever reemerge, it’s a title I could only recommend to a select few. Muscle March‘s value lies primarily in its campy personality; there’s nothing else like it, and I’m happy to own it for that reason alone. But if you want to witness that personality in all its girthy glory, you can always watch a playthrough.
Notably, the guy in the metallic blue getup is always the thief during “Max-out” acts, while every “Warmup” and “Workout” segment boasts a unique foe. (Image: Bandai Namco)
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“a title no one else would discuss”
I feel this describes a lot of the games I’ve covered in this series, honestly. Anyway, since Sony will soon shut down the PlayStation 3, Portable, and Vita stores, I’m looking to download some games off the former two while I still can. If you have any recommendations, friends, feel free to share them with me here or on Twitter – and who knows, I may review them in the coming months and years.
Whoa, never heard of this game until now (maybe I didn’t play as much WiiWare games as I thought I did back then lol). I was just about to write that Muscle March reminds me alittle of that shoot’em up game that also has a bunch of musclar people but which I forgot the name of, then I saw the name Cho-Anki under the top image and got reminded, thanks! ^^
Hey, Greatsong!
Muscle March is an obscure one, that’s for sure. I wasn’t sure what to make of it when it was released, but decided to buy it and fulfill my curiosity when Nintendo announced they would close the Wii Shop Channel. Source Gaming alumni Nirbion spoke highly of it too, which further inspired me to download it. Muscle March isn’t a title you should lament not having played, but its unabashed quirkiness amused me enough for the half hour the game spans. Plus, it’s likely never getting re-released, so I’m happy to have it in my collection. Sadly, I’m starting to run low on WiiWare games in my backlog…
I actually never played a Cho Aniki title, but it’s a series I plan to try eventually (it’d certainly fit in this series, what with how weird and obscure it is). I first heard of the series years ago, prior to Super Smash Bros. Brawl‘s release. I read a discussion somewhere online speculating what, if anything, inspired its Gooey Bomb item, and someone suggested it could be a Cho Aniki reference, citing a similar item it has.