Left in Japan Itadaki Street Special - The Good Monopoly

If you’ve been living for a while, you probably know about Monopoly, the classic board game about getting richer than the other players by purchasing property and have them go bankrupt. It’s fine, a pretty good time killer with friends, but in my experience it gets boring because we reach an impasse and nobody can win. Maybe we’re doing something wrong? Anyways, although it’s a board game, it also appeared in videogame format throughout several platforms. There were even some clones that put their own spin into it. One of them is Itadaki Street, also known as Fortune Street, which was originally created by Yuji Horii, the mind behind Dragon Quest. In this review, we (Aziamuth and Yuu Suzuki) will explore what we think is one of the most beloved entries in the series: Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special (Itadaki Street Special for short).

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (BY AZIAMUTH)​

Itadaki Street Special features a great selection of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy characters. It even includes some Heroes (you have to unlock them, though)​

Despite being two of the most well-known JRPG franchises, prior to Itadaki Street Special there weren’t any crossovers of any sort. This is most definitely because Dragon Quest belonged to Enix, while Final Fantasy belonged to Squaresoft (prior to the merger), but even then I don’t see why they couldn’t do some type of crossover except that maybe they thought it could be too expensive. Oh, well, I suppose better late than never. Luckily, thanks to the merger that happened in 2005, such a crossover became a reality! And what better way than with a silly board game that you can play with friends? Personally I’d prefer an RPG, but this is fine as well. Anyway, as with most board games in a console, you have single player and multiplayer modes, which are practically identical, except that on multiplayer you can play with friends, which in my opinion is much more fun because playing against the CPU gets tiresome at some point.

No matter who you compete against, you have two options of gameplay, which we'll talk about later. Both are different, but have the same objective: become rich at the expense of the rest. This IS a Monopoly clone, after all.

ANOTHER FRIENDSHIP KILLER FOR THE TRENCHES (BY AZIAMUTH AND YUU)​

This inocuous business proposal can mean the difference between life and death.​

Itadaki Street Special has you starting by choosing a character. When you control them, there’s virtually no difference between them, so choose your favorite (CPU controlled characters have levels, which I assume means how good it is at taking decisions, but I wouldn’t know since the English translation isn’t complete. There’s also Sphere mode, which we’ll talk about later). And you have a lot of options to pick from, in both sides! Dragon Quest gets characters such as Young Terry, Yangus and Bianca among others, while Final Fantasy gets Auron, Vaan and Squall among others. I think it’s a really good selection that doesn’t focus too much on a specific game, although there’s a lack of characters previous to VII in the case of Final Fantasy, which is a shame.

Just like with characters, there's great variety between stages, but on a more significant level.​

After choosing characters, it’s stage time! And unlike characters, stages ARE very different. Some are very straightforward and even boring, such as Trodain (a pity that Aziamuth's favorite game gets treated like this…), which is 8 shaped and has nothing in particular going on. Others, on the other hand, have special and unique mechanics and gimmicks, such as Besaid (although it looks like Kilika). In our opinion, this is one of the most fun stages in the game, because it has Sin attacking select areas while swimming counterclockwise. If he gets, you get to visit the notorious and evil Island™ where you have to get lucky to be able to escpae. If that’s too much for you, you also have the city of Fortuna from Dragon Quest V, which is full of casinos, and even the Thunder Plains from Final Fantasy X, which although it isn’t particularly exciting on its own, its unique topography allows you to create tolls that are able to punish the AI and your friends for playing. It’s really evil, but also very fun. Overall, there’s a great variety of stages, so it’s not that bad that there are mediocre stages here and there.

BUT HOW DO YOU PLAY THE VIDEOGAME? (BY AZIAMUTH)​

Leveling up is an important part of the game because of the advantage it provides.​

Speaking of gameplay, I haven’t properly explained the objective. I only said that you have to get rich at the expense of your opponents, but how do you do this? It’s simple: acquire properties, just like you would in real life. Every player starts with the same amount of cash, so it’s fair for everyone. After getting assigned your turn orders, it’s all about throwing the dice: you can roll from 1 to… I believe it’s either 7 or 8. I don’t know since I don’t care that much about maths. Anyways, roll the dice and land in a spot. There are several types of spots:

• The most common ones are the property spots. If it belongs to the bank, you have the option to purchase that property.
• Afterwards, you have the poker spots. These spots have suits of cards on them, and you have to collect all four of them. If you do so and return to the bank, you’ll level up, giving you an impressive amount of money and a noticeable advantage.
• Afterwards you have the empty spots. These spots do nothing, but you can build something in there. Some of the choices are pretty whatever, but some can be extremely detrimental to the other players, especially depending on the stage picked.
• Last, but certainly not least, you have miscellaneous spots. The Bonus Cut spot gives you money if a player has to make a payment during that turn, the Holiday spot makes your properites unavailable for one turn, and the Casino has you (or every player) play a random minigame to earn cash.

With this information, it’s clear what you have to do: get as many properties as possible, drive bargains with others to get specific spots (whether it’s trading, buying from the other players or from a bid) and make them go bankrupt. The most desirable way to do so is by acquiring a whole lane of 4 properties (marked with a border of the same color). The more properties of a certain lane you have, the stronger they become, thus taking away more money from fools who land on them. This is what we experts like to call “a hydrogen bomb”. And, of course, to get rich, you have to spend money: by investing on your properties so that they can later be sold for a better price that the one you paid for said property, or to get a cut when another player lands in a property that doesn’t belong to you.

The Treasure Hunt is one of many minigames from the casino. Here, you control Alef to find something within 3 tries.​

At the end of the day, Itadaki Street Special is a lesson in economy: to become rich, you have to get rid of your morals and utterly destroy your opponents. It goes without saying that this gameplay loop is very fun, addicting and, as expected, a great way of making your friends hate you. Now, what if you are a stupid loser who doesn’t have any friends? Well, too bad, because playing against the CPU isn’t particularly exciting. And not because you can’t sense their suffering, but because the CPU doesn’t care about haggling, selling properties or buying for you. If you offer them a deal, they’ll always reject it. BORING! In the end, the one that reaches the target score wins. Simple, right? Yeah, it’s that simple. Luckily for us, we have not one, not two, but TWO ways of experiencing the chaos of Itadaki Street. Both share the same skeleton and objective, but play fundamentally different. But first, let’s talk about the not so fun part: the single player, which Yuu will cover.

THE SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE: OR WHY YOU SHOULD ONLY FOCUS ON PLAYING WITH FRIENDS (BY YUU)​

Single player has you completing objectives in order to progress.​

Yo! I’m here to talk to you for a while about the single player modes and experience of Itadaki Street Special. First I have to say that I was using a fresh save, why doing that? Well because I hate myself and second, so I can see the differences, we always used a 100% save for playing between friends and we never experienced the true feeling of losing a stage against the AI and having to try it again and again… AND AGAIN, because this game it’s to a degree a RNG based party game, like most ones from the genre. You will learn how to play the game better against friends, to be honest. The AI can’t do certain mechanics just because it’s not a human being with its own decisions (wow, that sounds familiar). But probably you will come with a strategy after a while, since the plan is pretty much always the same: create a hypothetical hydrogen bomb and let the couching black mages fall into your 3000 Gold value trap somewhere in the Thunder Plains…

Interestingly enough, that’s also a viable strategy in multiplayer, but for now what you need to know from me is: which modes does this game have? ‘kay, small Terry, I will answer that. First we have “Tourney”, and as you can imagine this is, well… A tournament in which you need to beat a couple stages per difficulty level but if you beat one stage and fail the second one, oh boy.. You better prepare yourself for doing that difficulty tier again and hearing the same song in loop, because each stage has one iconic theme from their respective game, for example Besaid has Zanarkand theme… in loop. To make things worse, stage requirements don't make each one of them shorter, so you will be there listening to the track for a while.

"Oh, boy, I can't wait to be blessed by Fortune in these Streets, achieving victory!" The always reliable Vivi Ornitier:
​

Luckily you can speed up AI actions and animations! So not everything is that baaad, except when you are winning and someone suddenly goes to top 1 even if they were losing and didn’t had any houses… I’m still salty about Vivi, I will get you one day. But what about the other modes? Besides Tourney mode, you also have Sphere… Tourney… Yeah. Wait, you thought you could play it right at the start?! HA HA HA HA! Anyways, Sphere Tourney is like normal Tourney, but in Sphere mode (more on that later). It doesn’t have anything in particular in comparison to its multiplayer incarnation.

By playing single player, you can unlock 16 characters and 4 players. Most stages suck and are boring to play in single player, and the only cool thing about them is that you can experience things like a FFIX stage with the 3D from the PS2. Also, by achieving 100% completion you’ll have access to the aforementioned Sphere Mode to play with your friends. And now, back to Aziamuth with the specifics on the modes. See ya!

NORMAL MODE: STARTING SLOW AND EASY (BY AZIAMUTH)​

Aside from blessing you (or cursing you), each Venture card represents a specific moment from the series.​

The Normal Mode (for lack of a better name) can be seen as the “base” game, what I assume is how previous entries were played. It plays pretty much as I previously explained, with an added twist: every time you land in a poker spot, you’ll also be able to pick between several cards called Venture cards. What card you’ll get is a complete mystery (because they are always placed in random spots), but the effects are consistent. For example, card 94 will summon either Eiko Carol, Torneko Taloon or the Imp from Dragon Quest, which will roam the map for a certain amount of turns, and you land on the same spot as them, something will happen. The coolest thing about these cards is that they are references to iconic moments from the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy franchise. Some of the Venture effects are good, some are bad and some are neutral (such as the previously mentioned characters). Also, if you line up several cards in a row, you’ll earn bonus gold, which is always nice.

Overall, Venture cards are an interesting idea, and a good way to get introduced into the world of Itadaki Street because the rules are easy to understand. However, if this is too simple for you, I have good news for you.

SPHERE MODE: AN UNIQUE BUT FUN TWIST (BY AZIAMUTH AND YUU)​

Whenever you acquire a Sphere, it gets attached to the side of a dice, so one side it's empty, it's very possible that you can't summon an effect. ​

Sphere Mode was introduced in this version of Itadaki Street for the first time, and I’m not sure if it ever came back. At the very least, it wasn’t present in Fortune Street for the Wii. This is a special mode that’s not available from the start, but rather you have to unlock (more on that later). What differentiates the Sphere mode from the Normal mode is the presence of a Job/Class system similar to an RPG, as well as skills (aptly called Spheres) that allow you to ruin your opponent’s game experience. You have jobs like Thief, who can poison enemies and make them lose money (don’t do that, I will hate you if you do it and I will hope you burn) or a Mage that can burn properties to make them give less money, amongst many others. Each character has one default job but it can be changed in the character selection screen… which is appreciated, because some jobs aren’t as powerful as others. This is because despite the fact that most Spheres are shared, some are unique to specific jobs. This results in a big imbalance which I’m not a big fan of but, to be fair, it's completely expected. Still, Sphere mode is really fun, and a very good alternative if you get bored of the Normal mode.

SOME TECHNICAL WORDS: OR THE BORING AND LESS SUBJECTIVE STUFF (BY AZIAMUTH)​

The scenarios are fairly detailed despite the simplicity of the graphics.
​

Outside of gameplay, there’s not much to say about Itadaki Street. The performance is pretty much what you expect: it works fine and there’s no noticeable frame drops or anything of the sort. Graphically, it's good, albeit graphically simple. All of the stages are recognizable and, personally, I like the chibi style of the models, it makes all characters look cute, even the most hardened ones like Cloud or Squall. The biggest problem, I’d say, is the music. It's not that the songs are bad, or that they sound poorly (although, in my opinion, the Dragon Quest VIII soundtrack sounds worse in comparison to the original release), but as mentioned by Yuu, there’s only one song per stage, which becomes repetitive soon, even with such a variety of stages. On the other hand, the sound direction is good, because the choice of songs is still good, and the sound effects fit the theme of the game. Last, but not least, the game wasn’t released outside of Japan, so it’s not available in any language other than Japanese. Currently, an English translation exists, but it’s very incomplete: it only covers the menus (which is more than enough) and some miscellaneous stuff such as minigames and the Venture cards. The rest is not translated, but you don’t really need it to enjoy the Fortune Street experience.

FINAL WORDS (BY AZIAMUTH)​

I almost forget to mention that you can change the settings to your liking! With this, you can make everybody go bankrupt.​

Yeah, we like Itadaki Street. It’s good fun with friends. From what I’ve seen, this is the best version because it’s the easiest to emulate while being the most fun. The Wii version lacks soul and the Final Fantasy characters are replaced by Mario characters, but the AI sometimes accepts your deals (which I think is a pro as it’s more believable) and is translated in multiple languages, the DS version is too simplistic and I’m not sure if it has multiplayer, and the PS4 version can’t be properly emulated at the moment. As for the versions prior to Itadaki Street Special, I can’t really tell you anything about them, but I don’t think they are worth it in comparison to Special. If you’re in the mood for a party game but are tired of Mario Party, give Lady Luck a chance. You won’t regret it!

 

[Dany28]

Nice

 

[Yousef]

Neat! I actually find it really cool that these two did in fact crossover together, even if it’s in this admittedly underwhelming fashion. I imagine it’s for budgetary reasons as you outlined already though.

Personally however, JP game devs’ obsessions with board games actually continues to bewilder me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s novel to take inspiration from pre-digital, physical games like board games, card games, etc. But those were seldom solo experiences, while video games are an inherently solo venture, more especially with RPGs.

That said, great review you guys! I’d love for all three of us to get together one day and do one giant collab article haha since I’ve had more free time lately. We could probably revisit that “top 5 games of all time” idea! Or perhaps wait a bit till December to create a GOTY write-up.

 

[Aziamuth]

Neat! I actually find it really cool that these two did in fact crossover together, even if it’s in this admittedly underwhelming fashion. I imagine it’s for budgetary reasons as you outlined already though.

Personally however, JP game devs’ obsessions with board games actually continues to bewilder me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s novel to take inspiration from pre-digital, physical games like board games, card games, etc. But those were seldom solo experiences, while video games are an inherently solo venture, more especially with RPGs.

That said, great review you guys! I’d love for all three of us to get together one day and do one giant collab article haha since I’ve had more free time lately. We could probably revisit that “top 5 games of all time” idea! Or perhaps wait a bit till December to create a GOTY write-up.

Yeah sounds nice, hit us any time

 

[Yuu Suzuki]

Neat! I actually find it really cool that these two did in fact crossover together, even if it’s in this admittedly underwhelming fashion. I imagine it’s for budgetary reasons as you outlined already though.

Personally however, JP game devs’ obsessions with board games actually continues to bewilder me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s novel to take inspiration from pre-digital, physical games like board games, card games, etc. But those were seldom solo experiences, while video games are an inherently solo venture, more especially with RPGs.

That said, great review you guys! I’d love for all three of us to get together one day and do one giant collab article haha since I’ve had more free time lately. We could probably revisit that “top 5 games of all time” idea! Or perhaps wait a bit till December to create a GOTY write-up.

Any idea is good for me at any time, like he said: just write us whenever you want!

 

[Anim8rDude Anim8rDude]

One of those series that I always knew existed but never really played them. And what I mean by that is that I tried Wii Fortune Street on actual hardware a long time ago, the game ran at 15-20fps, & the performance & how complicated it seemed (at a glance) turned me off lol.

Now with that being said, I never knew this PS2 game existed and this looks charming as hell! The character selection & the sphere mode you described seem dope. I was kinda thrown for a loop because all the menus & even the cover art made it seem like I was looking at PS1 game. But then googled the year... 2004!? Interesting.

 

[Mendax89]

Looks interesting.

 

[Aziamuth]

One of those series that I always knew existed but never really played them. And what I mean by that is that I tried Wii Fortune Street on actual hardware a long time ago, the game ran at 15-20fps, & the performance & how complicated it seemed (at a glance) turned me off lol.

Now with that being said, I never knew this PS2 game existed and this looks charming as hell! The character selection & the sphere mode you described seem dope. I was kinda thrown for a loop because all the menus & even the cover art made it seem like I was looking at PS1 game. But then googled the year... 2004!? Interesting.

I'll admit that I only played the Wii version through emulation so I don't know about the mentioned performance issues... in retrospect, there is a chance that this one on original hardware also has them... the world may never know...