Arcade Game Review : Mikie (Konami, 1984)

Mikie
Published by : Konami (1984)
Re-releases : Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC

Mikie is definitely in contention for the most bizarre game ever made. Some high school kid gets ants in his pants, and decides to bump his classmates out of their seats using his ass. He has to pick particular ones that have hearts under them though, because collecting all of these unlocks the classroom door and allows Mikie to make a break for freedom. Mikie has to be careful, as once he gets up from his seat his demonic professor rushes after him and will murder him on the spot if he touches him (all Mikie's butt assaults are temporarily forgiven, however, if he simply takes a seat at an empty desk).

Once Mikie absconds from the classroom, he bursts out into the hallway where he has to dodge Stinky the Janitor. Devil Professor is also hot on his heels, but you can comically use doorways to slap him in the face and send him flying. Mikie's first objective in his plan to escape from this horrible institution involves freeing captured hearts from the locker room, but this is the farthest I have ever gotten as at this point the chase is joined by some random chef, and these three fearsome foes combined are just too much for me.

Seriously, like most of these really weird Japanese games from the 80s, it's hard to appreciate simply due to the game being way too difficult. Mikie's pursuers are just about as fast as he is, and with three of them bearing down on you it's too easy to get cornered and too hard to stop and headbutt the glass barriers which house the hearts you need to proceed. And when you lose all three lives, you return right to the beginning in the devil teacher's classroom and must do everything all over again.

One last interesting point of note is that the soundtrack is made up entirely of digitized versions of Beatles songs ("Hard Day's Night" is the theme that plays initially). As to whether Konami actually paid the Beatles for the use of these themes is open to speculation.