Game cover
Ichigeki Sacchuu!! HoiHoi-San for the Playstation 2 was released on November 11 2003, published by Konami, and developed by Ivy-Arts.
The game underwent development at the same time as the original run was being serialized in Dengeki Daioh, coming out just 3 months after it began serialization.
On the hunt
The game is a pretty straight-forward search-and-destroy action game. You drop into a level with an objective (usually kill x number of bugs) and you must try to survive while exploring and killing bugs. The only way to lose a level is by depleting all your energy, which goes down gradually and when taking damage/bumping into objects. Levels tend to have a recharge point where to refill your energy, with the downside of a time loss proportional to the energy refill.
Each level is graded from F to A, with the grading variating based mainly on time and damage taken. The actual ins of the grading system are a bit obscure, but from observation, it takes a lot of things into account, like the type of weapon equipped the number of shots fired, the number of times damage was taken, the ratio of meele kills vs ranged kills, etc. In general though, worry mostly about time and damage. The final grade of a level affects the amount of money gotten and the playing of certain cutscenes. Getting an A grade can trigger a bonus cutscene in some levels and unlock special items.
Getting an A grade also triggers a special animation if HoiHoi-San has the broom item unlocked
Levels also have “hidden” areas and bonus items. Locked behind elevators that are only activated when getting A ranks on specific levels.
On your first play-through you might find the starting gun and katana to be very dinky. Don’t worry, there’s a whole arsenal of weapons to choose from, as long as you have the money. The shop is one of the most important parts of the game. Here you get everything including individual ammo cartridges (yes, shooting costs you money) and permanent upgrades. The first one you might want to aim for is a battery upgrade, since some maze-like levels later on are almost impossible without at least 1 upgrade. The other thing you buy of course is costumes, accesories, and voice-boxes. They don’t add anything to your bug-killing capabilities, and some even just take up weapon slots uselessly, but they are cute, and thats all that matters.
Each outfit (except for the HoiHoi Color line) has two unique animations on the main-menu screen for each trigger button. Some have an extra one if you have their matching weapon equipped.
The voice module accesories give HoiHoi-San the ability to talk, each with different voice lines and different “personalities”, some voiced by pretty well known VAs.
Voice Modules and VAs:
Give them a listen on The Sound Resource
The other head accesories are pretty simple extras, cat ears, glasses, the stuff. Sadly the head accesories and voice modules share one single slot, not to mention some useful items do too. So you’ll have to balance aesthetic sensibilities with functionality. Which is a bit lame.
There’s a total of 17 different outfits to unlock through the shop and by completing missions, plus 10 accesories including voice modules and 3 special weapons to match their respective outfits. In total, weapons amount to 20, with guns all having their own type of ammo. There are 3 permanent upgrades and 2 equipable head accessories with special features.
100% is a pain in the ass
If you haven’t noticed, there is a LOT of buying in this game, if you are interested in trying out all your options of course. Which means you will be grinding for money and replaying levels over and over just to get to the next cool weapon or outfit. You could stick to the same combo of meele weapons forver and never set foot in the shop again, but if you care for getting all A grades, you’ll be replaying them a lot anyways. Add to this the clumsy camera controls, language barrier, and a few frustrating levels here and there, and I would not blame you if you told me you tried playing this game and hated every second. But, in my opinion, when you actually get some mastery over the controls and have a good weapon set-up, its pretty fun!
All worth it for this.
Check this guide on GameFAQS if you are interested in playing, its the only one around and its pretty thorough all things considered. Shout-outs, and thanks BakaOrochi. o7
Dash attacks are incredibly important if you are only using meele weapons. It makes weapons lose all their wind-up and increases the resulting damage significantly.
If a flying enemy is too far away from you and you only have a meele weapon, by dash attacking towards the ledge, in such a way that you dont bonk against it, the hit-box of your swing can reach them. Only tested with the Excalibur, results may vary.
Bit tricky
For some reason, I have made it my life mission to rip all the assets from this game. If you are interested, check out The HoiHoi Ripper project