Oddities: Mister Mosquito

Welcome to Oddities, a weekly feature in which we plunge head-first into the bargain bin of gaming history to extract a single game that you’ve either never heard of, or probably wished you hadn’t. This series follows some of the strangest, most obscure and most incredibly awful games that have ever appeared since the invention of Spacewar!. They won’t all be bad games, but we’ll make it our mission to find the really, really weird stuff. This week we’re focusing on arguably the most famous game yet in the series, Mister Mosquito:

“You must suck and swallow away as much human blood as possible”

There aren’t many games that can lay claim to an objective quite like that. Actually, there’s just one really, and it’s called Mister Mosquito. Before on Oddities we’ve focused on games that were both weird and off the radar, but this week our game of choice is just straight up weird. So much so that you’ve probably actually heard of it. It’s unlikely you’ve played it mind you, the game didn’t sell particularly well and was a bit of a critical flop despite its highly unusual theme.

Let’s backtrack for a second for the benefit of those who have yet to have their minds blown (or is it sucked?) by this bizarre game. Mister Mosquito is a Japanese game developed by the largely Japanese market-only ZOOM inc. You probably could’ve guessed it was made in Japan, but I bet it’s a surprise to hear that it was published in the US and PAL by British, and generally rather serious, publishers Eidos. It was part of their relatively new ‘Fresh Games’ label that imported unusual games from the Japanese market. Mister Mosquito was by far the most successful title under the label, but that’s not saying a whole lot.

The game sees players take control of the eponymous Mister Mosquito, who holds dominion over the family house of the Yamadas. It’s the player’s job to fly around the various room of the house and suck a required amount of blood from each family member. The gameplay is a mix of finding good places to suck the blood from, trying to avoid the human’s attention and just generally avoiding being squished. That’s literally the entire game. There are obstacles, including poison and other buggy traps, but the majority of the time players have to tackle a blood-sucking mini-game.

As you might expect, it doesn’t make for the most enthralling of experiences. As you might also expect, the Tomodachi style (and, dare I say, Japanese developer) means Mister Mosquito features some rather odd sexual themes. The weird groaning of the female characters as you suck their blood is one example that we could do without, so too is the level in which the you must extract blood from a teen female while she takes a bubblebath. What’s more, you have to take the blood directly from her breast. This is why games get a bad reputation.

The title also features an amusing ‘battle mode’ which activates when the player is discovered by the human. As if people spot a mosquito and instantly decide to engage in a Tekken style duel - actually, we do know some people who are like that, nevermind. Still, it’s an odd idea made even more odd by the way the player wins these duels. They have to use the mosquito to hit ‘pressure points’ on the humans that apparently make them more calm, at which point they ignore you and go about their business. Maybe that’s what real mosquitoes do? Yeah, probably not.

Speaking of real mosquitos, we’ve got a little bone to pick with ZOOM Inc: surely the game should be titled Mrs Mosquito? Only female mosquitoes suck blood people! Everything is a lie!

Maybe next time? Wait, no, there’s already been a Mister Mosquito 2... oh dear.