Hello Kitty no Onnaru Mail

"No dog would savage a postwoman this cute, even if she is a cat!"

''Hello Kitty, I want to play!!''

''What would you like to play, little girl?''

''I wanna go on the internet Kitty and less of the 'little' I'm gonna be twenty-eight this year you know''

''Well in that case you have come to the right place littl.. er, strange woman. For my Hello Kitty no Onnaru Mail game is in fact NOT a game but a dreamcast web browser!''

''Cool! Can I play Quake 3 through it?''

''No''

..so what can you do with Hello Kitty no Onnaru Mail? Well placing this disc into your Dreamcast and booting it up will immediately whisk you into the house of a small white cat called Hello Kitty. You know what Hello Kitty is right? No? Well for those who don't know, Hello Kitty is merchandising phenomenon in Japan. Created by company called Sanrio, Hello Kitty is cute white cat and has many cute friends, like Badtz Maru the penguin, Pom Pom Purin the dog with Muffin the hamster and many, many more.

You can purchase thousands of items of Hello Kitty merchandise, from pencils and bags to snowboards and toaster ovens. There is a theme park in Japan called Hello Kitty World, where musicals are staged starring Hello Kitty and friends and you can even get married there with Hello Kitty presiding over the ceremony. The target market of Hello Kitty and friends falls into two main camps, girls under the age of ten and uh, grown-up, kitsch loving japan-o-philes with more money than sense.

Being someone who falls into the latter camp it was therefore only a matter of time before I ended up with some Hello Kitty titles for my beloved Dreamcast. Hello Kitty no Onnaru Mail is Sanrio's attempt to introduce younger Japanese consumers into the joys of email and the Internet. Now seeing has Japan has always had a far lower use of PC's and the internet recreationally than western countries it actually makes sense to introduce suspicious youngsters to the online world via a popular and trusted character, and in Japan you don't get much more popular than Hello Kitty!

To begin with you'll find yourself in Hello Kitty's bedroom, which acts as your ''home page''. If you click on items of furniture you can instruct Hello Kitty to carry out various tasks. For example, clicking on the desk will result in Hello Kitty opening her notebook and will open up a blank email for you to write in. You can then attach Hello Kitty pictures, Hello Kitty music files and stamp it with pretty Hello Kitty stamps.

Once you have composed your email, you can have Hello Kitty walk out of the front door to the post box, this will cause your Dreamcast to dial up and connect to the internet. Once connected, Hello Kitty will deliver the email! Unfortunately if the recipient is not running the Hello Kitty email programme much of the attached stuff will be lost and of course they wo't see Hello Kitty showing up with email in hand, they'll just get a normal text email, boo. While browsing the web you can record favourites in hello Kitty's notebook and download Dreamcast friendly files (vmu files etc) via Hello Kitty's toy box. When you want to stop, click on Hello Kitty's bed.

The graphics are all in jolly 3D, with Hello Kitty being rendered in plump pastel shaded polygons and her bedroom in every shade of pink under the sun. The user interface is large, bold and uses easy to understand symbols. So although the default language is Japanese it is still easy to work out what does what and the software keyboard can be switched to English for typing emails out.

And that's all there is to it. This is one of those titles that is so ludicrously obscure to western gamers that you are only ever likely to acquire it the same way I did - as part of a batch of import games. Rating it is doubly difficult as without a network of other users, most of its best features are nullified. However, for what it is it works very well. Its extremely user friendly for my point of view, which must mean that it's target audience of children in Japan must find it easy to use as well.

Overall it's a cute idea and nice touches like Hello Kitty going to the post box to ''deliver'' the email work surprisingly well. It's certainly more fun to look at than my dull old AOL or Hotmail email inboxes. Sega and Sanrio should be commended for this simple and innocent ''my first email'' programme.

Sega had big ideas for getting the world online via the Dreamcast. It remains a great pity that releases like this remained confined to Japan. It would have been lovely to think that young (and not so young!) Hello Kitty fans could have used the Dreamcast as their first experience of going online, making emailing a fun and colourful experience, rather than the vile chore it turns into as you grow older and grumpier. Hello Kitty then, looking at the world wide web through bright pink, fluffy spectacles. Sometimes it's the only way to be.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/02, Updated 08/25/02