Nintendo Switch game made by a comedian sells over 50,000 copies within its first week of release

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-05-07 17:27 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

On May 7, Yoshimoto Kogyo announced that the sales numbers for Super Noda Game PARTY, a game for the Nintendo Switch, had broken 50,000 copies within the first week since its release. Super Noda Game PARTY is a party game currently for sale in Japan. It was created by a comedian, who is not a professional game developer. In addition to this announcement, they also stated that future updates are planned to add two new minigames.

Super Noda Game PARTY is a party game collection of 16 total minigames, nicknamed “Noda Games”, created by Crystal Noda, a Japanese comedian. Some examples of the collected minigames include: “Sugoroku”, a dice racing game where two players frantically roll dice over and over again (with no regard for any kind of turn order), with the objective of being the first to reach the goal, a space marked “1 Trillion”.

“Shogi II”, a new twist on the traditional chess-like Japanese board game which is effectively “shogi” in name only, since it involves over 200 different types of pieces, and players have no way of knowing which piece is their “king” until it gets captured by their opponent. The rest of the minigames in the collection include everything from RPG-style games to quizzes, showcasing all the eccentric ideas you’d expect from a professional comedian.

The game was developed as a collaboration between Crystal Noda and KAYAC Inc., a Japanese company. Hiroyuki Goto, the creator of Kotoba no Puzzle: Mojipittan, a popular Japanese word puzzle game, assisted with the development process as a member of the dev team at KAYAC. The inspiration struck for the game’s joint development when Noda performed in a Japanese comedy competition, the R-1 Grand Prix 2020.

Noda has an unparalleled fondness for video games and has been teaching himself how to make games since he was about 25 years old, and his comedy material about doing a Let’s Play of a game he created himself propelled him to victory in the R-1 Grand Prix 2020. A news article that touched on that information caught the eye of KAYAC producer Ryohei Koda, and KAYAC subsequently reached out to Noda, which is apparently how this project got started.

A crowdfunding campaign was started in July of 2020 to solicit funding for the project. They reached their goal of four million yen within about three days of opening up to backers.  Ultimately, they accumulated total funds of over 13 million yen from about 2,000 supporters.

The rough illustrations and graphics drawn by Noda might give the impression that this game was created as a bad practical joke, just for laughs. However, all of the minigames in the collection are simple and user-friendly enough to be enjoyed by anyone, and they involve unique ideas that you won’t find in other similar games, creating a final product that players can genuinely enjoy. Despite its deceptive appearance, this game has been made with a surprisingly high level of quality and attention to detail, which is probably one of the factors driving its favorable sales.

Going forward, the games that will be added in the upcoming updates are called Manzai Ou and Jinmen Nya. Manzai Ou (“Comedy Skit King”) is apparently a game where the player tries to send two comedians on stage while avoiding obstacles.

Jinmen Nya is an escape game where the protagonist has to find a way to escape a cozy household and its strange resident, a creature called Jinmen Nya, while visiting their childhood home. It’s a whole new breed of adventure game, as players’ escape attempts must overcome both a series of strange paranormal phenomena and Jinmen Nya’s soothing attempts to lull them into complacency.

Super Noda Game PARTY is now available for the Nintendo Switch in Japan. However, overseas fans may be left waiting indefinitely, since it’s unclear whether there are any plans to release the game outside of Japan.