Japanese preschool journalism simulator.
I don’t know Japanese, but I would like to know better. There are a lot of cool games out there that don’t show an official English translation for some reason. I became a fan of his Yakuza series around 2010. It had to wait three years for Yakuza 5 to be released as a Western version (first digital only!) before it became a big Sega franchise. I’ve imported many other games with no luck (look at Yokai Watch 4).
Shin-chan: My Summer Vacation with Professor ~Never-Ending Seven-Day Journey~ feels like a game that was supposed to stay in Japan. This is a life-slice adventure game about the protagonist of the gag manga “Crayon Shin-chan” over 30 years ago. It is also the spiritual successor to the “My Summer Vacation” series developed by Millennium Kitchen. These games, each following a Japanese child spending his summer vacation in rural Japan, never went Western. The only game this developer has had before is Attack of the Friday Monsters! Tokyo Story on the 3DS eShop.
I’ve always wanted to play my summer vacation game, so I’m very happy that this title has spread all over the world. The end product is a good one – sometimes very good!
Shin-chan: My summer vacation professor and I follow 5-year-old Shinnosuke Nohara on a week-long trip to visit his mother’s childhood friend in a rural community called “Aso” (a play set in the actual city of Aso, Japan). ). When the Nohara family reaches their destination, the deranged professor gives Shinnosuke a camera that generates an illustration each time he takes a picture. Everything proceeds as normal over the holidays until the same professor uses time travel technology to summon a dinosaur and wreak havoc.
It’s the overarching plot that defines the game, but it’s mostly played for goofs.
This game is a third person fixed camera adventure game (think old Resident Evil) where you move from one area to the next to explore Asso. Break it into a day/night cycle where you wake up, do your morning exercises, and have breakfast as a family. After that you are free to do whatever you want.
You can catch fish and bugs, deliver goods to small businesses for cash, talk to community members to learn more about them and the town, and do other small activities like fun rock-paper-scissors -Battler on base to make dinosaurs fight each other.
My personal favorite is the newspaper subplot run by Cap, the elder of the family you’re visiting. As you advance the main plot, you can submit this progress as an “article” to the newspaper. This article gains readers and advances an interesting story that Shinnosuke tries to win. A date with a young staff member. Well, mostly entertaining except for the late game plot development which falls into somewhat uncomfortable territory.
These days, it takes about 20-30 minutes on average (you can adjust the length of the day in the settings), followed by a 5-minute or so night segment where you can check out the characters before going to bed.
The play experience of Shin-chan and the professor during summer vacation is overwhelmingly calm. Most of the gameplay is pretty simple. For example, catching bugs and fish is a greatly scaled-down version of what you do in Animal Crossing. Also, most of it is exploring and talking to people to advance the low-stakes story.
Incredibly relaxing. It’s a special experience to run through rolling fields and watch your dad drink beer in the dim light of a restaurant beverage machine. At its peak, the best moments here are pulled back to the best moments of my childhood playing Animal Crossing for the first time on the GameCube. The game is very beautiful and its sound design is top notch.
This is underpinned by a strong cast of characters, each with their own little story. We invested in small moments of the drama that was happening.
I think the joke could have been punched a little bit, but it can also be pretty cute and funny at times. (Dangerously close to “Exercise? I thought you said extra fries!”). I’ve seen enough anime to know that the game matches Crayon Shin-chan’s humor to some extent, but I felt that the comedic aspect of this franchise was underutilized here.
At the end of the week when Shinnosuke and his family return home, the professor uses his time travel ability to reset the week – hence the “endless” part of the title. , the week is repeated. It took me just over 8 hours in a few loops to solve the story, but I was so engrossed in the game’s features that it took someone else 4 or 5 loops to solve the whole thing I’m not sure. Based on my experience, I think it’s mostly on rails.
Either way, this brings me to my biggest knock on Shin-chan, me and the summer vacation professor. By the beginning of the final week, I had fully completed most of the available side quests and ran out of a day’s clock to see how the story progressed and wrapped up. There are also several cutscenes and bits of dialogue that repeat weekly and/or daily to slow the pace and players have completely squeezed the juice out of this game’s map by that point.
We also covered a small issue with the game’s fixed camera perspective. I know this is how other Millenium Kitchen games do it, but the orientation of the game is a bit confusing and I often entered the wrong screen. It gets a little annoying when the progress of the day is locked to screen changes. I don’t hate perspectives per se, but the navigation needs a bit of work.
Shin-chan Summer vacation with me and the professor ~Never-ending 7-day trip~ There are good things, and there are good things. If you love old Animal Crossing and modern Persona games, you might be deeply addicted to some of the living experiences here. However, it’s not perfect. I think the mileage varies on some of the slower aspects. What time is alive!
