Collection essentials #491: Mister Mosquito (PS2)

This game sucks. (But not in the usual way)


One of the appeals of playing video games is getting to be and do things you can’t be or do in real life. Have you ever considered what it’d be like to be…a mosquito?!? The developers of this game did, and decided to give it a pinch of Japanese weirdness to create a rather amusing game.


This game is about a mosquito who finds himself in the home of the Yamada family. And, as you’d probably expect in a game about being a mosquito, the objective is to suck the blood of the Yamadas. Each level involves the Yamada family going about their business around the house, while you fly around and try to do your thing without being detected. Certain parts of the Yamadas’ bodies will be vulnerable to some blood-sucking at specific times, and sometimes you’ll have to even manipulate the environment somehow to get them in the state that you want them in. Once you’re “locked in” on the skin, you must rotate the right analog stick at a certain speed. 


It’s evident right when you start the game up that you’re in for something quirky and funny. Booting up the game lets you know that it contains “Scenes of explicit itchiness”, and it begins with a strange narration where a woman talks about the season of summer and then your situation in the Yamada household, letting you know that it may come as a surprise that you are not welcome there because you make them feel itchy. The voice acting is just that appropriate level of cheese to add to the game’s charm and humor. 


There was a sequel to this game also on the PlayStation 2 that takes place on a Hawaii vacation, but sadly, that game was only ever released in Japan and it currently has no translation patch. I’ve never played it.


I’m not positive when I specifically first heard about this game, but it was probably sometime in 2004 on the TV channel G4techTV. I thought it looked really amusing, but it was a long time before I got to play it. This was one of those games where I thought, “I’ll pick it up at a game store when I see it,” but in all my years of game shopping I just could not for the life of me ever find a store that had this game. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought it on eBay, and thankfully it wasn’t that expensive when I did. And the game lived up to my expectations when I finally played it.


Mister Mosquito isn’t the greatest game in the world, and the controllers are merely serviceable and not the best. There’s not a ton of content here, either. It certainly does feel like a budget title. But it does its thing well enough to stand out and be quite enjoyable and memorable, in my opinion. In modern times, if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, you can download and play it on modern platforms for free. If it sounds amusing to you, I highly suggest checking it out. It really does suck, in the best way!

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