Bishi-Bashi Special - PSX - Konami - £29.99 - Out Now

Purple bananas, flying pigs, Jeremy Beadle, crazy wigs - all things that we'd consider as a bit "mad" yeah? And I'll bet you like to think of yourself as a bit "wacky" as well don't ya? Yeah, you're the kind of guy (or gal) who's always up for a laugh, likes playing "crazy" practical jokes every so often - clingfilm on the toilet seat, that kind of thing.
Well let me tell you something my frivolous friend - nothing, I mean NOTHING will prepare you for Bishi-Bashi Special on the Playstation. You think you're mad? Baby, B-B-Baby you ain't seen nothing yet!

I'll warn you now - Bishi-Bashi Special is one of those games you're either gonna love or hate. Y'see to call it "a game" is a bit misleading in itself really, cos it doesn't have a plot, a goal or any characters of any sort - it truly is in a league of its own. Comprising of a total of 150 mini-games, Bishi-Bashi Special is the first of many "party" games which have become phenomenally popular over in Japan.

Basically, this new type of game is NOT for the solo gamer (as the name suggests). It's designed to be played by two to eight people - rather like a modern day board game - with the only aim being to beat your fellow Bishi-Bashers, and thereby securing your status as the coolest guy on the block. Ahem.

Soooo, you choose how many people you want to play, you choose how you want to play it (round-robin, league, knockout etc.) and then you start playing proper, challenging your mates to the many "games" on offer.

And boy, what games there are! Seriously, the guy who came up with these must have had something loose in his head, cos we are talking s-t-r-a-n-g-e. There are far too many to list here, but some of my favourites include:

• "Perm" where you have to make your on-screen 70's disco-diva dance to the music thereby making his perm grow - biggest perm after 30 seconds wins.

• "Mechanical Pencil-Basher" where you have to bash the buttons on your joy-pad repeatedly to make the leads from your lead-pencil fall out -first player with an empty pencil wins. Oh yeah, and who could forget

• "Uncle Launcher" in which you fire loads and loads of little red-pant-wearing-men from a big cannon onto a big stage….I swear I am not making this up.

As far as graphics and sound are concerned….let's just say that the Playstation isn't exactly pushed to it's limits ok? I mean, at times we are talking Commodore 64 or Spectrum standard here, if you remember those old contraptions. But y'know, that's half the charm of this game - it really is a true original - and for that, Konami should be applauded for releasing it over here.

As I mentioned earlier, this game isn't really for playing on your own, so if you haven't got any Playstation-loving friends then you really should steer clear cos the one-player mode (despite being very user-friendly and well designed) does get very boring, very quickly.

Yeah I know, you're probably still none the wiser about Bishi-Bashi Special, all of that is probably as clear as mud eh? But look, the best way to sample this game is to just play it and make your own mind up about it. Maybe renting it out when you've got some mates over would be a good idea - y'know instead of renting a movie or something?

One thing's for sure - as you turn off your Playstation after that first play, you'll all be saying the same thing: "What the heck was that all about then?!!?"

- Eddy Vista