Did you do it? Did you make the tragic, terrible mistake of buying the dreaded…Roll Head?
Far and wide, I’ve seen the Internet lamenting the folly of the Roll Head. “It was 200 bolts!” cries many a jilted gamer. “I figured something so expensive had to be good! I thought maybe it would let me play Mega Man 9 as Roll! But…all it does is change Roll’s costume in the menu screens to give her a black jacket over her dress.” Bitter tears have been spilled over this expensive mystery item in Auto’s shop — a useless, cosmetic piece of nonsense whose acquisition is quite possibly the biggest mistake you could possibly make while playing MM9.
I think it’s likely that the Roll Head might even trump the infamous Chrip-Chrip Shoes from Board Game: Top Shop as the single biggest unexpected screw you in the history of games with commerce. (The occasional boneheaded shenanigans of MMO publishers notwithstanding.) For those who didn’t play Top Shop — that is, most of you — it was, as the title suggests, a board game similar to Monopoly, and earnings could be used to buy goodies in the shop. Most of them had obvious benefits, but one of the pricier items was the mysterious “Chrip-Chrip Shoes.” What could they be? Bedeviled with curiosity as we played the game, Jess finally decided to buy them, hoping for some sort of competitive advantage. What he got was…a pair of shoes that made his character emit tiny bird-sounds as he walked around the board. And nothing else. They were Chirp-Chirp shoes, mangled by the translation difficulties that plague a $10 video game. Yes, all that effort wasted on a tragically mistranslated bit of useless footware.
As far as I can tell, everyone who has ever played Top Shop has experienced the horror of discovering the true nature of Chrip-Chrip Shoes for themselves. And I figure the number of people who will heart-wrenchingly discover the truth behind the Roll Head has got to be a few orders of magnitude larger than the paltry handful who have even heard of Top Shop, meaning Capcom has created far more pervasive and widespread suffering. And that is awesome.
Although I suppose I might feel differently if I were the one buying the damn things myself. Thanks for sparing me the pain, suckers.
In other news, I had a dang good interview with the producer of Valkyria Chronicles the other day and it is now online for your enjoyment.
It… it was the first thing I bought ;_;
Oh, the “screw you” moments in Top Shop run far deeper than buying Chrip Chrip shoes. The dreaded (and completely random) E Cards can do everything from upgrading all of your stores to bankrupting all of your stores, from giving you $10,000 to giving you… Chrip Chrip shoes.
All right, fess up Parish. Did you know what these shoes did before we started playing this game together?
I’m pretty sure the ‘black jacket’ is actually her MM8 dress, in 8-bit form. But yeah, I bit on it, and was pretty upset (though thank goodness it wasn’t MM crossdressing as Roll, like I’d previously thought).
Anyway…screw Protoman, I want Roll Mode.
You gotta admit, though, the Mega Man 8 dress is pretty cute (it was the first thing I bought too, I was so excited when I thought Roll was playable *whine*)
chrip-chrip shoes sound bloody fantastic. it reminds me a lot of philippe’s (achewood) new shoes — http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/uua5bRX7t
The Chrip-Chrip Shoes actually make me really happy. As happy as the UFO in the “Miss” card graphic.
It makes me so happy to run a website where I can mention something like Top Shop and the readers will promptly begin discussing its mundane details.
The dress is a huge rip-off. Maybe if they were clearer in what you were buying.
Almost as big a rip-off is the hairstyle book. Charging for playing as a helmetless Mega Man? I can understand that. Having to re-buy whenever you die? Or to change back? That blows. I’d rather have dropped the 200 there and been able to switch back and forth at will.
Yup. I got screwed over by those damn shoes, and it pretty much put me off that game forever. Well, that and the incredibly sluggish, inert gameplay. And this WAS multiplayer, so I was allegedly getting the most out of the game.
I brought Board Game: Top Shop over to my friend’s house a few times, and they ended up buying it.
And then beating single-player mode. What the hell. It’s a great “socialization” multiplayer game, because you can have conversations during downtime, but single-player?
Shooter: Starfighter Sanvein is freaking awesome, though. One of those games that looks rather weak at first blush, but turns out to be a lot of fun. (Less so Shooter: Space Shot.)
Why all the angst? Roll tells you what it is when you select it. Does no one read the TEXT?
Yeah I was a bit put off by this too, since I bought it right before the final stages and the money’d have been much better spent on E Tanks. However, I figured it was probably intended for players who are running through the game five times a day and have lots of excess bolts to waste.
I’ve heard she has other costumes, like her outfits in Legends and Battle Network. I just figure most players are too pissed to try again. Still it would have been nice to be able to switch between purchased costumes without dropping anymore bolts.
At least Auto got to watch Roll change her clothes.
@Daikaiju: Actually, you’re right. Read the fine print, ladies and gent. It’s 200 screws better spent on E Tanks and even Beat.
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for that amazing interview with the producer of Valkyria Chronicles…you guys really went in-depth, and you had some brilliant follow-up questions and comments. My anticipation for that game has now reached a vigorous froth.
Board Game: Top Shop remains (along with Metal Gear Solid) as the last of my once mighty empire of ps1 games. But, to be fair it, (along with Metal Gear Solid) is one of the few ps1 games I’ll go back to again and again.
As for the Chrip-Chrip shoes, I wasn’t angry when I first bought them, because really, how can you be angry while playing Board Game: Top Shop?
(also, there was a multiplayer tactics-lite game that came out in that series of Genre: Nonsensical Subtitle. I can’t recall what it was, other than you hunted for treasure against obnoxious card-stacking AI, and it really wasn’t that good. But my soul can rest easy if anyone can remember the name of it.)
I gave my copy of Top Shop to my ex, because he and his current boyfriend play it for HOURS. Seriously, they’re more addicted to it than I am to games in general.
Hey guys, I here we can get some pretty good deals on health insurance here.
CJ, the game you’re looking for is “Battle Hunter”, and it was pretty good in multiplayer, unique at the very least.
Thanks for remembering top shop, btw
I only played Top Shop 2 or 3 times before deciding I had no patience for it. My friend I was playing against instantly cut the game off after mistakenly purchasing the Chrip Chrip shoes. We played oceans of Battle Hunter, though. I got too caught up in being able to collect disks with BGMs and new “desktop” backgrounds.