Half-Minute Hero – 30-Second Parody.

With as ripe as the medium is for mockery, it’s surprising that actual parody is as rare as it is in the realm of video games. Even then, the few games that attempt to play thin storylines and derivative mechanics for laughs often fall into the same traps that they make fun of. They themselves employ these mechanics and stories, which misses the point of a work whose purpose is to “call out” other works for their failings.

Half-Minute Hero is a parody in the ways it reduces the RPG genre, often seen as the most tedious and archaic of game genres, (as well as other genres) into quick, bite-sized chunks. It seems to do this as a way of saying, “See? These games aren’t really much more than this.” and though it clearly aims for the 8-bit era in terms of graphical style, it clearly targets even current games in the genre.

This reductive style of play works just fine for the majority of the game. “Hero 30” is a series of abridged games in a fictional RPG series, with each game in the series having a time limit of 30 seconds. This limit can be reset at villages and the like, but even the longest missions will only take about one to two minutes. Combat is literally a matter of running into enemies repeatedly, overblown sprites bashing into each other until one flies away. Beating the Evil Lord (the objective of the game) will often require you to overcome some other obstacle (such as repairing a bridge to cross a moat) as well as level up fighting monsters (with a message indicating “You > Evil” when your numbers are high enough), so the game tends to play as much as a timed puzzle game as it does an RPG.

The other modes simplify their respective genres as well. “Evil Lord 30” has you play a basic rock-paper-scissors RTS game as one of the Evil Lords defeated in “Hero 30”, and “Princess 30” imitates the dual-joystick shooter, both with the same flexible 30-second time limit. “Knight 30” is unlocked after beat the previous three modes, and plays differently in that the time limit works in your favor (A Sage is casting a spell that will kill all the monsters on the field). None of these modes seem as developed as “Hero”, but are fun diversions that extend the length of the game.

All of these modes, especially “Hero”, do well at mocking their respective styles of play while also being enjoyable to play. The paper-thin stories are laden with self-aware humor, with several characters acknowledging the conceits that RPG’s must have in order to be games. However, you do get the sense that the developer does have a certain appreciation for these genres, failings and all.

Though it does blink towards the end, with later story missions attempting to become a more serious affair, Half-Minute Hero is one of the more successful attempts to parody video games. It points out the flaws in games it mocks without becoming suspect to those flaws itself (for the most part), while also being fun in its own right. It certainly does a good job of condensing the RPG experience from a 50-hour epic into a 6-hour tour, which is something I’d like to see more often.