It’s February, Valentine’s Day’s month, the Celebration of Love! Something that, looking around us lately, we seriously need to have! We’re constantly surrounded by horrible news forced on us by the worst side of the world to make us feel powerless. It’s good to remember how much love there’s in this world that’s not only relegated to couples, and to give us all a good reminder I’ve called the best spokespeople for the job, a clubhouse of hamsters!

Hamtaro is born as a manga from the pencil of Ritsuko Kawai, but you most likely know it for the anime series that was airing during the 00’s. The anime was a slice of life about this little group of hamsters in a little japanese town, without any overarching plot. A perfect product for little kids that I enjoyed a lot for the time even if I wasn’t exactly their target audience.

Hamtaro as a series has had a nice presence in the videogame world, especially within handheld consoles. I was drawn to this series only recently, thanks to my friend Lily, who wholeheartedly recommended the games.

Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak was the first to come out on Game Boy Advance, developed by Pax Softnica and published directly by Nintendo in 2003, and as you can probably tell by the title, love will be the main theme of this little Ham-venture!

Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak

Love is in danger!

The story begins with Hamtaro waking up from a nightmare. Spat, a hamster in a devil costume, is wreaking havoc though the world by destroying the happiness of those who inhabit by making love disappear. The dream turns into reality when Harmony, a hamster in an angel costume, shows up at their Club House, asking for help in fixing all of Spat’s wrongdoings. She’ll give them an instrument called Love Meter, which is going to fill up every time we manage to fix a relationship.

And so, Hamtaro and Bijou set forth on this adventure, exploring the various areas of the world map, finding all the people whose love got damaged by Spat and helping them solve their problems. Bijou will be the mouthpiece of this adventure. On the contrary, Hamtaro will be silent and it’s just gonna restrain himself to some over the top reaction, like appearing completely clueless to the totally not subtle show of affection by Bijou.

Because even in a game where love is its central theme, the male main character has to react to it like someone just asked him the weather on Mars!

The story has a very light tone. In spite of his many attempts to spread discord, Spat is a very comedic antagonist, which is gonna make us smile on a couple of occasions. It’s a story meant for children that tries to explain to them the various shapes that love can take, that it goes way beyond couples relationships, and it does it very damn well!

Hamsters to the Rescue!

The game is structured like a puzzle game. As Hamtaro and Bijou, we’ll travel through the various areas of the world, chasing Spat and solving his wrongdoings. To interact with other hamsters we have a long series of commands called Ham-Chats, which are some kind of secret code these hamsters use: for example Ham-Ha means Hello, and we’re going to select it everytime we wanna talk to another hamster.

Ham-Chats are a main component of the gameplay: not only they allow us to interact with other hamsters but they’re also used for environmental interactions, taking objects and solving puzzles. During the course of the game we’re gonna learn a ton of Ham-Chats and they’ll be essential to solve all of our hamsters problems.

This type of mechanic has a vibe that reminded me of old adventure games from PC, like Sierra and Lucasarts in particular, where sometimes in order to proceed you just have to try everything with anything and see what works. Let’s be clear, this game is nowhere near the complexity of those titles, but there are a couple of occasions where the game wants you to think outside the box, and try those options that you wouldn’t think will lead to an ending and surprisingly enough end up being the correct answer.

Do not hesitate about trying the same option multiple times on occasion, some hamsters can have a quite stubborn attitude. In case you end up being stuck, you just need to go to the club house and talk to Snoozer, he’s always ready to help with some clues.

Once we’ve managed to drive away Spat, he’ll move on to a different area, until we manage to send him back to his castle, where the final battle is gonna take place.

A Wonderful World

Being a handheld game most of the areas are very small, but that doesn’t mean they’re lacking, and they’re also very pleasing to explore.

The 32-bit era was a time when videogames tended to stray from 2D, with the industry forcing more and more the shift into 3D, getting to the point of defining games that wouldn’t adapt to the new style as outdated. The Game Boy Advance struggled a lot when it came to reach that standard, and thus it pushed itself into giving us some of the best 2D games of that generation that we could always carry in our pockets.

Hamtaro Ham Ham heartbreak is no exception. The game is very colorful, every character is identical to the anime, and most of all the animations of all the Ham-Chats are always so adorable, rich in expressiveness, and they’re just over the top enough to make you smile.

The environments aren’t a slouch either: from sunflower filled hills, to waterfalls reflecting rainbows in the sky, a theme park full of rides and a Super Sentai show, an abandoned ghost house, every single area of this game is both evocative and memorable.

Going around in this world is just good for your soul! Whenever you need to shut down, instead of doomscrolling socials, the best solution is making a trip around the world with Hamtaro, and after a few minutes you’re definitely gonna feel a lot better.

Love in all its shapes

As I said before, the main theme of this game is exploring the concept of love in all its possible interpretations. Usually with love stories the focus is always on one single aspect: two people falling in love. Even in more mature stories, where we take a deeper look into their life as a couple and all their ordeals, we still remain encased in the same aspect. Two halves ending together in the tumult of life.

There certainly is no shortage of scenarios like that in this game: we have incomprehension between lovers, blooming of a first love, long lasting relationships being celebrated. This part is definitely well represented, but it’s not limited just to that.

Love can also be found in family bonds, like seeing a parent doing his best to give their child the day of their dreams, an older brother giving it all to tend to his little sibling, or two adversarial brothers putting their grudges aside to work together.

But family isn’t just bound by blood: sometimes family are the people you choose to surround yourself with, a bond of friendship that becomes everlasting. A friendship that can be birthed by a shared passion, and you’ll do anything in order to protect it.

Love doesn’t even need to be something that binds you necessarily to a person, it could be a bond to something that you created! This is true especially for artists who pour all of themselves, and once they’re finally completed it’s like a piece of you has taken life in another form, and inevitably that bond remains within you.

Hamtaro in its simplicity tries to explain all of these facets while talking to a very young audience, and it teaches you how little gestures of kindness, courage, never take anything for granted and remember all the small things, that created that bond. Not just the love of your significant other, but the love of everything that surrounds you and that most of all comes from within yourself.

I also like how it seems that many of these dilemmas aren’t even to blame on Spat, it’s just stuff that happens naturally around the world, and we need to be the ones that do all they can to step in and help. Thus with the full power of our love meter, we can march towards Spat’s castle and make him taste the power of that same love he wanted to destroy.

Many activities all together!

So, we filled the love meter, we defeated Spat in his own castle, and love has been fully restored in the world of Hamtaro: what to do now?

The game gives us a nice dose of side activities to perform. Firstly, completing the Ham-Chat dictionary. During the game it’s possible that some of those escaped you, so pay attention and look around to find which ones you haven’t found yet.

As for recreational activities we have two in particular.

By collecting sunflower seeds, it will be possible to go to various fashion shops and buy costumes that you can have fun with creating pictures in photo mode. The funniest thing about this is that all those photos will then be used as a substitution for the title screen of the game, which is a very cute touch.

Lastly, the biggest time investment is completing the accessory list. During the game we can collect various rocks that, if brought to the Club House, can be polished into different types of precious stones of different rarity. These stones can then be used to create accessories and jewels. With the exception of just one of them, which has a use during the story, most of them are just there for the sake of completing a list.

Might not seem like much, but this offers something to look forward to for those who just wanna spend some time running around the world, without having to restart the story from scratch. Sometimes you just need that game that you turn on just to enjoy the vibe, spend some time undisturbed in your fantasy world that just makes you feel fine.

Love is saved!

Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak is a game with non-existent difficulty, extremely simple, sometimes guilty of backtracking a lot and very repetitive… And I couldn’t care less about any of these things.

This is a game made for children. It’s all about explaining them a concept like love in the simplest of terms, while having fun and immersing in a very colorful world, entirely populated by hamsters. And I feel it does the job excellently.

It’s a game that’s just good for your heart. It's playful, funny and visually adorable. You just have to let yourself be carried by its charm, and I can assure you that you will have a lot of fun with it. I unironically see this as one of the best games for the Game Boy Advance and one of the best licensed games I’ve ever played.

If you wanna read more about how this game explores its themes about love, I recommend this wonderful Blog or Video by RedAngel, in which she explores the connection between this game and the concepts of love explored in greek philosophy.

So, what do you think about Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak? Did you play it? What were the moments you enjoyed the most? Do you feel some moment could’ve delivered their message better? Do you have memories of Hamtaro related to your childhood? Let me know in the comments below.

Search This Blog

Markus Tavern