Bamboono - Japan Game Awards 2009 Amateur Division Winner (TGS)

One of the most interesting games I played at the Tokyo Game Show, believe it or not, was made by amateurs. "BAMBOONO" is a two-player game played with Xbox 360 controls (it seems to have been running on a PC), and created by "Takenoko", a team of students from the Tokyo Polytechnic University.


The game cannot be played alone. It must be played together with a second player. The object of the game is to get from one end to the other end of each level while avoiding various obstacles. These obstacles can only be succesfully avoided through teamwork.

Bamboono only has two commands: run and jump. Each character holds one end of a bamboo pole with a jack o'latern hanging in the middle. If you bump into any of the obstacles, you will drop the bamboo pole and lose a life. Reach the goal before you lose all your lives and you get to play in the next level.


Although Bamboono's game concept sounds very simple, playing it is loads of fun. I think that Bamboono was the only game that made my friend and I actually laugh and shout out loud. It was also the only game that we wanted to play over and over again. I remember thinking at the time that, if GameOPS had some kind of Best of Tokyo Game Show award, I would definitely be voting for this game.

Here's a video of how the gameplay looks like:



Not suprisingly, last Saturday, Bamboono won the Grand Award for the Amateur Division of the Japan Game Awards 2009, which was held at TGS. Takenoko was awarded a trophy and 500,000 Yen. That's probably going to open a lot of doors for them in the game industry.

Hopefully, Takenoko will complete this project and release it on PCs or consoles some time in the future.