So I’ve been back in the ONE mood. If you don’t know who ONE is they’re the creator behind One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, two personal favorite anime/manga of mine. And I’ve been on the mood for their work since I’ve been rewatching Mob Psycho with a friend and I’ve been playing the One Punch Man arena fighting game. So of course since I’m thinking of one while playing the other, I’ve been considering how interesting it’d be if we could get a game for the other ONE series.
So hypothetical Mob Psycho 100 game since we don’t have one. (if any of y’all bring up the fucking mobile game I’m gonna delete the internet forever) I personally have two ideas, one that’s the “easy” route and one that’s a much more “interesting” route. So I just kinda wanna dive right in so we’ll start with the “easy” route.
So let’s say they take the route of just taking the One Punch Man game and recycling it for a Mob Psycho 100 game, so they grab Spike Chunsoft and basically do the whole “you are your own custom character based on other characters/archetypes and you follow the main story of the original series but now you’re in the background of every single scene with the ACTUAL main characters” again (but hopefully improved since it’d be the second time they did it). So long story short you’d get to make your own psychic esper character and you’d have a small open world where you can run around, meet characters from the show, learn from them (mainly just getting copies of their abilities used in the show), befriend them, do side quests, fight enemies, so on and so forth. Basically imagine a mini rpg but instead of turn based battles you have 3D fighting game mechanics in small arenas (if you’ve never played an arena fighter, it’s just that. 3D combat in a small “arena”.). And the main story would be you just doing unimportant garbage until you get to pitch in to help out during the main actual important story that’s just directly lifted from the show. This is the easiest potential route but also it’s SOOOO BORING. Yeah it could be cute to run through what’s already a good ass story and making your own character but it doesn’t feel very interesting or unique. A generic leveling system that feels like it doesn’t have any real bearing on gameplay, a moveset that’s just you stealing from others so it doesn’t feel like your own, and since you’re just following someone else’s story it doesn’t feel that interesting since I’d rather just watch the show.
So that’s the “easy”, let’s go with the “fun”.
What I would love to see is them taking the One Punch Man game idea but expanding on it greatly! A large open world that encompasses the entirety of Seasoning City (or at least a decent chunk instead of the tiny neighborhood you get in the One Punch Man game), mechanics to help the player character seem their own (maybe instead of stealing moves from just the important characters from the anime, the devs could create tons of moves on their own that fit in lore and just give them out based on levels as well as progress in the story and what side content you’ve completed), and a completely original story (please get the original writers though). It’d have so much potential and would give way more player freedom to craft their own experiences instead of kind of having everything feel like a Disneyland guided tour through a thing you could just watch instead of play.
Either way, I would just want a Mob Psycho 100 game (and the fucking mobile game doesn’t count) and I personally enjoy the One Punch Man game so I wouldn’t be too mad about it basically being One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows 2.0 but there’s so much potential to an actual Mob Psycho 100 game with love and care put into it!
