Incredible Crisis reflects the unwavering confidence of games past. It is as difficult as it is, no more, no less. It controls as it does, simultaneously frictive and greased. It is without concession. If you want to save yourself from RSI and headache, buy a third party controller with a Turbo function. The absurdity of its premise is a thin layer of superglue binding together its constituent parts. That veneer of a mini-game compilation belies a series of primarily deterministic action-based tasks peppered with obtuse trivia questions and agonising maths homework. In theory, it should all come together to form a weak whole, yet a phenomenological indescribable something makes it greater than its parts, similar to Artdink's No One Can Stop Mr. Domino or Kaze no NOTAM.







It's that I keep thinking about America's Funniest Home Videos when I play it.

By being a quirky low budget minigame collection, this game is destined to be a very uneven experience. Some of these minigames are dreadful (weighing groceries to swap for a golden treasure with an impossible amount of items to weigh up with and barely any time, snowboarding away from snowmobiles by having to constantly, rapidly tap left and right on the D-pad, pedaling on a bike by alternatingly, rapidly pressing triangle and X while dodging objects for a few minutes) and the occasional instance of minigame repeats really sticks out in a bad way (did we really have to do that get water out of a boat with a bucket minigame THREE times?) AND the game peaks in its first quarter with Taneo. But this game charmed the pants off me and I love revisiting it every so often, especially when I’ve got an unsuspecting friend over who has no idea what they’re in for.

This was a fun little game that sadly, due to issues I was having with my emulator, I wasn't able to get past the next section and got stuck. Real shame as I was having such fun.

The game is essentially a story focusing on the Yamada family and what they go through in a single day where the strangest and most absurd of things happen including the father getting chased by a giant ball through the offices, elevator breaking and even fighting off an alien invasion!

Every level is almost always a QTE minigame or something time based regardless of the aforementioned being chased by a boulder, sneaking out of a bank robbery, playing a musical charm, searching for the sweet spot and ect. It's certainly a lot of crazy fun and I can't wait to get a working emulator to return to this at somepoint.

Stream + gameplay

The power of ska compels you to power through a wacky cast of characters stumbling their way through a completely ridiculous plot of the worst day of their lives. This game is carried primarily by its charm and humor as you mash your way through a sort of Warioware-meets-Rhythm-Heaven mini-game adventure over the course of about an hour. Each game is generally straightforward, only requiring one or two inputs from start to finish, but unfortunately things get bogged down by some of that classic PS1 jank. Dodging obstacles that appear 3 feet ahead of you because of the draw distance, a stealth game with a margin of error so tiny that winning feels like a glitch, and a "save the sinking boat" game that goes on for way too long and for some reason repeats THREE times (the developers even call themselves out by labeling it "last time, we swear," so they knew it was a bad idea) all work against this game being a true classic. Add in the sheer amount of button mashing that is required in multiple games and you end up shaking the pain out of your hand during loading screens asking, "Why would they make you do that?!"

Overall, it's still a bit of a hidden gem with a lot of spirit and a terrific soundtrack. It's just a shame that a couple of poor design decisions stop it just short of actually being "incredible."