Its 11:30pm as I write down on this very page. I've just come in from work with a glass of cold tropical fruit juice and I've got to come up with a review for a Japanese release only game for the Nintendo DS. It's no simple job, especially when you've to explain just how mad the said game is. What am I going to do? Ha I've got it! I'll do it! I'm going to shout it as loud as I can, OUENDAN!

Now there's supposed to be a group of male cheerleaders coming to cheer me on while I get cracking on writing the review…

Damn… Guess they aren't coming. I'm on my own then… reality hurts.

Now before you sit and think, "What the?" You've got to know that Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a music rhythm game and not just any old rhythm game at that. Ouendan is all about helping people with problems. If you are one of these people, all you have to do is cry out "OUENDAN" and this will summon the Cheer Squad (Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan roughly translates to Go! Fight! Cheer Squad.) These usually consist of three male cheerleaders who come and motivate you on. As the player, you will be taking control of the cheerleaders; a fantasy that most men dream about.

Ouendan presents the story to the player through stills and semi animated manga style drawings. Since the game is only available in Japanese, you probably won't understand what the heck is going on unless you understand the language. The crazy thing is that not knowing what's happening is actually what helps Ouendan come across as insane. A lot of people will come up with their own tale for what's taking place. Things like purple afro zombies, giant fighting mice and a cat having a wee in a noodle restaurant, this game has it all.

Rhythm games are a rare thing on handhelds. I don't know why that is, maybe it's to do with the quality of sound, memory space for the songs or just that publishers don't see a market there. Ouendan is the first rhythm game to hit the Nintendo DS system and I surely hope it isn't the last. It doesn't matter if Japanese isn't your native language, you'll have no problems enjoying the game. The menu is really easy to navigate your way through; it will soon become second nature to you. Same goes for game play; it's really easy to understand from the tutorial what you are supposed to do.

As you've probably worked out, a music video game means that you are required to follow some sort of beat while pressing buttons. You wouldn't be far off with that description. Ouendan requires the player to tap numbered circles in order, follow lines or spin discs to the beat of the music. Simply just tapping the circle as soon as you see it won't help you; doing so will devastate the poor chap you're supposed to be helping. When a circle appears, it's closely followed by a ring that closes in on the inner circle. The best point to hit is when the ring is about to collide with the circle. Doing so will reward you with 300 points, if you just miss the ideal time you'll get 100 and doing so feebly will get you 50. This is the basic scoring system of Ouendan. Mess up and you'll lose some of your life bar, I'm sure you can figure out what happens if you manage to diminish it. All the action is done on the touch screen, while the story is shown on the stop screen throughout the gameplay.

After accomplishing the stage you'll be presented with your summary and ranking. These range from D, the lowest, to S, the highest. The game gives you detailed information on how many points you hit out of the 300, 100 and 50 you can acquire per beat. A line graph is displayed showing how well you performed throughout the stage. It's a nice little informative touch and certainly gives those people into getting high scores a nice treat.

There are four difficulty settings to choose from, but from the start you only get to choose between easy and normal, beating normal unlocks hard, beat the hard mode will unlock insane mode. The latter you will need luck with as more beats are added and notes appear on screen more or less before they need to be tapped and you'll take a bulky amount of damage if you fail to press a note. It's no easy game, everything is so fast paced. It's no doubt that this game will last you a long time, through difficulty or addiction.

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To make the game that much better, Inis has included fifteen J-Pop/Rock songs. They are supposedly popular tunes by well know artists. Some of these artists include Asian Kung-fu Generation, B'z, L'Arc~en~Ciel and my favourite nobodyknows+. Like most other music games all the tunes are covers rather than the original recordings, but since I'm not Japanese I've hardly heard of these songs so they seem fresh to me and I can honestly say they are essentially very good. Quality wise the music is fine. It's certainly not up to standard bit rate of MP3s but there isn't that great deal of a difference. I do recommend playing the game through with some headphones though, you can hear so much more of the minor detail in sounds, which do help to keep concentration on the beat.

Visually the game is a treat to glare at. It contains a fantastic art style that is reminiscent of manga drawings. They are extremely bright and certainly call out for your attention. There is a slight problem though; because you are so focused on following the notes on the bottom screen, you'll miss half of action happening on the top screen while playing the song. If you want to see it all, it's best to let a friend have a go and watch while they play. Everything is hand drawn and in 2D apart from the three cheerleaders, these are presented in 3D on the bottom screen.

If you've kept up with the DS news at E3 2006, you will know that a game called Elite Beat Agents is coming to the U.S later this year. If you were thinking of buying Ouendan and then heard about EBA and decided to put off importing it, DON'T! Elite Beat Agents isn't the same game. It uses the same game play mechanics but it's more of a sequel rather than a translation. It features different characters, stories and songs. As I previously stated, not knowing what is going on in Ouendan is half of the fun. I'm sure Inis will make EBA crazy, but I don't know if they will be able to really hit it like its Japanese counter part.

When it comes to the genre, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan does everything right and certainly is at the apex of the hill. It supplies catchy Japanese music matched by over the top presentation in both graphics and story. Fifteen music tracks might not sound a lot and you will easily fly through them on easy, but the whole point is to slowly learn how the game plays and build your way up through the difficulties till it gets to a point where hitting insane mode will certainly drain your DS battery over double digits.

If you have a slight interest in the genre or loved Inis' past music masterpiece Gitaroo-Man, then you shouldn't hesitated to import. Ouendan will supply you with vast amounts of fun and laughter. You'll always be finding little details in the story's artwork that you missed the first time round, plus, if you love it, it will be a perfect match to accompany your Elite Beat Agents come winter.

Now it's time to go and cheer on those two donut eating policemen who need help to protect the city from evil robots. So remember kids, if you ever need help, just give those cheerleaders a call, say the magic word "OUENDAN" and they might just come… one day.