#95

Gals Panic Series By Kaneko
Mokoko X By NAISU

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[Summary]

A series of eroge games about uncover the silhouettes of beautiful girls.
An old-school franchise meets its modern 2022 model.

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Reviews:

Boy oh boy, Gals Panic. THE Gals Panic!
Nostalgia couldn't hit any harder when we're talking about those pixel rendered photos with the retro graphics and classic controls of the original area capture titles Qix / Xonix if you're old enough to remember those.

I wasn't going to review GP until I came across its modernized version "Mokoko X" that came out this week. It was a very pleasant surprise, as the memories started flowing and I knew that I just had to start writing.

So lets start from the basics before we go deeper:
Gals Panic / Momoko X are games based off the original Qix game - where you control a small marker (or a "ship"). You hold the action button to draw a line outside of the zone's edges to capture a part of the field up to the goal % threshold.
Each stage is guarded by a large enemy that usually doesn't follow a specific pattern that will also home at you without warning.

All of the titles above share the same concept up to this point.
What makes GP special is what else - the sexy gameplay twist.
While Qix stays true to its base formula, Gals Panic "enhanced" it by putting a cute gal behind a silhouette as part of the field, so in order to win you must capture 80% of "her" and not just any part of the field. 

Each gal (stage) has 3 levels: Fully Clothed / Underwear / Nude.
There is some censorship based on the version you're playing however.
The most fun part in each stage in my eyes is the combination between unique bosses with the different silhouettes that requires a different strategy for each stage.

There are additional factors, such as block barriers, playing on a timer, lives system and difficulty modifiers. These also vary between each game and based on your performance. However, a repeating main challenge of GP is punishing the player for taking their sweet time, which is more forgiving in Mokoko X that I'll touch soon.

Gals Panic franchise was so popular, that it continued its development from 1990 right up to 2002. For such an obscure series, it's nothing short of a success.

You can divide GP series into 2. The first batch of Gals Panic 1~3 all use real models.
But the most appealing one in my eyes was the the first release, for using cute classic Japanese models in a pixelated format, compared to the next 2 releases that used straight up pin-up images. To me at least that kinda lost from its charm.

* From Gals Panic 4 onwards all models were drawn in anime style instead of using photos - a blessed change.

The 2nd batch of GP is a reboot to the series, using the same titles as before, but with an "S" at the end.
Gals Panic S up to Gals Panic S3 all use anime girls without nudity, and with additional new gameplay features. The core mechanics however remain the same.

Kaneko decided they wanted to aim towards a larger audience, and even though the games showcased females in suggestive poses, they were still labeled as  "all-ages".
Nowadays everything is handled with silk gloves, with everyone pretending that young audience isn't exposed to adult themes from very early stage in life, that these would easily be labeled as 16+ minimum.

Gals Panic Franchise is no longer available for purchase via regular means, and I honestly doubt that most of you even have the means to play the cartridges. (myself included)
Your best option would be to emulate it, but due to Patreon ToS I can't provide links.
A quick google search should yield good results.

This sums up Gals Panic Franchise, and fast forward to 2022 NAISU's Mokoko X:

The gameplay consists of the same fundamentals as GP, with a twist of using a shield that acts as your "timer" - Play it safe for too long and you'll eventually be exposed to contact damage even when staying on the edges. The shield can be renewed by capturing more areas, based on their size.

Unlike the OG Gals Panic, Mokoko doesn't show any adult themes during the actual gameplay, and all gals silhouettes are of short looped animations. In addition, it doesn't matter which part of the field you capture towards the clear %.

There is H content however that can be accessed with a free DLC. It will unlock a new image of each girl after clearing each stage using almost the same GP formula: Fully clothed / Underwear / Topless / Nude.

Both bosses and girls have voice acting, and the game even has a trippin' completely unrelated back-story about the title of the game. (Each scene is unlocked after fully clearing a gal)

The game is definitely more suited to today's audience short attention span, with faster controls than the OG, more lenient clear requirements, and even though it has difficulty modes and other mid-game modifiers, the challenge isn't as great, but still captures the same feeling of GP with an entertaining short-and-sweet experience.

Mokoko X is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1785000/Mokoko_X/

On a final note - there are other offshoot titles that derived from Gal's Panic that I might end up covering in a future post. But the OG had to be reviewed before I could even touch the rest of them.

❤️ For relevant H content of these titles you may contact me in DM for referrals.