The Ginormo Sword Prequel: How Big is Yours?
The English version of Ginormo Sword, which you can play by clicking here, has been making the rounds for at least a month (and in Japan, it’s called Thick and Long, My..2). I was turned on to it via TIGSource, the raddest Indie gaming blog, and it left many of us helpless, stranded with pitiful levels of productivity.
Masquerading as a generic mouse-guided action-RPG, Ginormo Sword’s true potential shines through when you pay your first visit to the blacksmith. Only then do you realize that in addition to raising the attack power of your sword when you level it up, you also are given the choice between a length or width extension. Ginormo-er and ginormo-er. It’s a big game with sixteen world map squares full of monsters to conquer, requiring pornographic amounts of gold to afford all the crazy armor and magic. I got halfway through and was satisfied with my largeness…
Until today! I thought it would be a good idea to revisit Ginormo, so I headed over to Babarageo (famed also for the Uchu Force shoot’em-ups) and saw, to my surprise, not one Ginormo Sword game, but two. Apparently, the Japanese were privy to something the English audience wasn’t—a previous version! Happily I dove right into the original Futonaga.
The premise is the same, but the scope is smaller. One screen, several areas, several types of enemies, and a big demon nasty. There is just one store, and you’ll buy everything you need there (which actually does eventually include one badass, spreading “Psycho Shot” magic spell if you get far enough). The main advantage, besides not eating away your entire life, but just an afternoon or so, is that the sword grows so fast.
In the sequel, the fee goes up in price with every level, but here a +1 only takes 100 gold. Once you start knocking off higher level enemies that drop almost 100,000 in a shot, you can go up 1,000 levels in an instant, so don’t be alarmed by the slow start here. At first I couldn’t even tell if it was working or not, but sure enough, I can swipe at enemies all the way across the screen now.
“Since for some reason the previous work was hugely popular, I got excited and made a sequel. I did a variety of scaling up,” said Babarageo in his Japanese note on the second edition. I love being able to trace the evolution of games like this, and it’s good to know the original much more simplistic version still exists.
Screen disclaimer: No, your sword of such a puny size will not be over level 300,000. It just so happens there is an option to shrink your thick, long weapon without compromising its attack power, which I used to so as not to serve you all GINORMO spoilers. ;D
