Starting a text-only blog in this doggone year of 2025 seems maybe a tad pointless, what with the recent-ish proliferation of short form content overtaking pretty much every other form of communication on the internet. But mark my words, soon people will congregate in droves and begin consuming ideas and opinions through textual interfaces so as to not disturb the other 100 people taking public transportation! Or maybe not.
Either way, here are some choice (and some not so choice) words about today's game, the classic(?) shake-em-up Mischief Makers!

Mischief Makers is a real doozy. Another glittering gem in the opulent crown that is Treasure's combined ludography, it seems to be pretty much glanced over these days when people aren't making Top 10 lists of weird and/or odd games, but it's actually a pretty smart little title. Typical of Treasure, they give you a concise set of tools, lets you play around with them a little bit so you can come to grips with them, then they unleash their brainspice and start recontextualizing and mixing up the known mechanics in incredibly creative ways, and Mischief Makers is no different.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of this game is the pseudo-catchphrase of "shake-shake!!" - a one-two punch of words uttered by the protagonist, Marina, when she, err, shakes things! Shaking is important. You're gonna be shaking things a lot, and so naturally, you will _hear_ "shake-shake!!" a lot, which is probably why it's gotten the esteemed position as "most memorable bit of fluff" in a game a scant few even remember.

There's a story here too. I think? There are definitely cutscenes, but the whole game has this feeling of watching the second season of an obscure shounen anime you've never seen or heard of before. There's definitely some history between the two main characters, and it seems like the audience is supposed to know something about Clancer, the planet this whole thing takes place on, but nothing is ever really elaborated. Or maybe I just have terrible attention span. Either one is possible, really. Another of Treasure's titles, Bangai-O! has a similar issue of weirdly disjointed storytelling taking place over several unconnected levels. This narrative inconsideration towards the players knowledge of the setting just feels compounded by the strange way levels connect to each other. Each level ends with a teleportation crystal sending you back to the level select screen, so it feels odd when you're escorting a character through a perilous desert, only to leave them stranded after exhausting the only escape option that, as far as I can tell, is well and truly gone after use. It's OK though! They'll appear in the next level as if they've been following you all the way there. Or maybe they won't show up again until 10 levels later where no mention of the prior reckless abandonment takes place.

Here's Marina, shaking a small child for the delicious and smoothly animated crystal gems they keep in their pockets, or wherever they're keeping them. Maybe their eyeholes? As you may have noticed by now, there's a lot of depressed, weeping eyes and downturned mouths on display here. In fact, almost everything bears the face of a version of Horace cast in even-deeper throes of despair. It's kind of unsettling, and it comes off a bit dissonant when combined with the general attitude of the people here. They're kind, genuine and want to protect themselves and the people they hold dear from The Evil Forces that permeate these lands. They just happen to look like a melted halloween mask gained sentience, though there's no in-game explanation for why every rock, house, hill, chimney, trashcan, volcano (yes, really) or bomb has a face carved into them. Is everything here alive? They do undulate, it's not just a rictus expression of anguish. Rocks bounce around, floating orbs talk to you. Oh god, does that mean your house is a slave? Imagine trying to enjoy your dinner while your table and walls all cast their looks of despondency at you. Now stop imagining that, I don't want you to be upset.

Some of the first fun you'll have with this game is in the level of Clanball Land. It's got a lot of balls. Grab the balls and shake them. It also has, much like the rest of the game, really great and unique music. The composer, Norio Hanzawa, did a great job of capturing the slightly off-kilter vibe of the game, with some infectiously upbeat melodies using incredibly strange soundfonts, like the sort of off-tune semi-choir-but-not-really that pops up pretty often in the soundtrack. Do check it out on [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiZSTo-M2pY)

Kids are jumping around on these balls, and if you're feeling particularly nasty, you can shake the ball and send them tumbling to the ground, after which they'll prostrate on all fours and begin crying. There's no benefit to doing this, you can't even shake their allowance money out of their pockets, presumably because they spent it all on getting access to this completely unsupervised theme park where any cybernetically-enhanced woman can do whatever she pleases.

The neighboring themepark of Spike Zone is not nearly as popular.

Since all Clancers look identical, their only distinguishing feature is various bits of headgear. You can tell whether or not someone is related, because they wear the same kind of garb and because the children are just scaled-down versions of their parents. Y'know, just like in real life. This is pretty humorous when it comes to one of the central-ish characters, because they just stuck a bit of shonen-boy hair under his fetching yellow baseball cap and called it a day. No one else has hair. Only the most special of boys are allowed hair privileges.

It seems it's not entirely arbitrary however, as he has the blood of the Blockmen coursing through his veins... After a (very) brief transformation sequence, he turns into a ball, which upon being grabbed and shook, will turn into an awful golem of screaming faces, moving around in the manner of a paper doll - a similar animation effect was also employed by Treasure in Gunstar Heroes, when you're fighting against a collection of balls in the shape of a humanoid combatant, but that was obviously an inferior incarnation of the idea, as his body did not bear the visage of melancholy on each individual limb, more's the shame. You move him around by dashing in the four cardinal directions, allowing him to awkwardly shuffle sideways across the stage, bust down in a groovy split or raise his arms ineffectually towards the skies. Neither "combat" move is as useful as just smashing his giant frame against anything that needs smashing, which in this level mostly comprises of a bunch of Evil Clancers chucking sticks of dynamite at you.