So, I just thought of another set of article ideas of which the amount I can write is dependent on what's available in the Pico library. This will take a look into some of the aspects of the Japanese Pico library that can be rather offsetting to someone who sees it as just a "Edutainment" machine.
Today I'll write about how many Japanese developers had the idea to traumatize kids with early experiences in literal luck-based gaming.
To give a nice idea what I mean, I'll embed a video of this game... but in particular I'll say to take note of the mini-game that's about 24 minutes in.
Click here to jump to the mini-game being discussed.
In this tooth brushing mini-game, you choose one of the teeth and pray to your deity that it has plaque on it. If not, the plaque monsters assault you. There is no apparent way to tell beforehand what the correct areas to brush are, making this basically consist of "click somewhere and hope I don't screw up".
I'll just say that that is not quite how I'd try to teach my kids dental care.
Just to let you know I got multiple examples to go on here, here's a video with the luck-based minigame from "Pocket Monsters Advance Generation: Hiragana! Katakana! Kakechatta!"
You see, the Japanese Pico library consists of this often. It's... sort of disturbing, in a way. Why would you make a kid go through luck-based minigames? To teach how failure can be random? To teach about the cruelty of the world we're in? To teach kids that they're puny mortals who need the grace of Buddha to pass a minigame?
There aren't any elements of these in internationally-released games. In fact, a whole page of casino-themed minigames was removed from "Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld". Now, what do they expect kids to learn from Casino minigames? Hopefully it's how to copy with a gambling addiction...
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