What an odd game. Quiz Nanairo Dreams: Nijiiroch? no Kiseki (translated as Quiz Seven color Dreams: Miracle of Rainbow Color Village), developed by Capcom for their CPS2 board, is a combination of a dating sim and a quiz game. Only by answering an onslaught of trivia questions can you impress the ladies and save Japan from total destruction. How exactly did you find yourself in this situation. Well, the intro claims that, one night, you see a meteor fall from the skies, which shatters into eight pieces. With one of the pieces you find a fairy, who warns you of the incoming invasion of the Dark Lord. Each of the remaining seven crystals - all colors of the rainbow - has fallen into the hands of different girls in the area. By making them fall in love with, you can obtain the power of these shards, and overcome the great evil at the end of the game. So, the game takes place across the course of several months, similar to dating sims, although the calender is structued like a board game. Every turn, you play a roulette to see how many spaces/days you jump, with different events occuring on different days. When you run into a girl, she promptly introduces herself and begins conversation. This is somewhat similar to most dating sims, except instead of asking your opinion of their clothes or whatever, they begin rattling off trivia questions. They're all multiple choice, with up to four answers per question, in a variety of genres - anime, games, manga, movies, culture, sports, politics, language, and so forth. They're also (mostly) in Japanese, but you can get by with cursory knowledge, as long as you use the pause key and have a search engine nearby. If you answer enough correctly, you can proceed, but if you get too many wrong, you'll lose and need to insert more credits. It's more or less like Capcom's other quiz game, Quiz and Dragons, which actually was translated into English (and playable on the first PSP Capcom collection.) Some of the questions are a bit odd, of course. Several of them are actually in (very poorly written) English, which require a response in Japanese. You'll occasionally come across questions for Capcom games (example: Which of the following characters are from Star Gladiator? (A) Mega Drive (B) Playstation (C) Saturn (D) Famicom), and some from competitors game (one question asks you the name of the high school from Konami's Tokimeki Memorial, the prototypical console dating sim.) Even if you can read them, there tends to be some pretty obscure stuff, referencing old movies or Japanese history. Some are pretty simple for English speakers though - like "What does the 'W' in "Gundam W" stand for" - the obvious answer is "Wing", because it's always been known as "Gundam Wing" to English speakers. Similarly, one question asks which president was involved in the Watergate scandal - not something every Japanese person would know, but cake for anyone who's passed fourth grade American History. Anyway, it's a unique concept, if only because it plays on the nerd dream that women find knowledge sexy. It also gives one the impression that you can mack it up with Japanese chicks if only you can answer their pressing questions about random trivia. (Speaking as someone who was the leader of their high school's academic bowl team, and who once accidentally wandered into Tokyo, this is more or less not true.) There are seven main girls you'll run across in Nanairo Dreams: Megumi Morinaga / Moritsugu Momoko Fujiya / Fujikura Kumiko Ezaki / Shiozaki Saki Kanebou / Omokane Emi Sakuma / Emi Sakura Mayumi Touhato / Kobato Charlotte - Shalllotte Fairy Lintz Maou Godiva The "sim" elements are pretty weak, because you happen upon the girls mostly by chance. Every time you meet with a fairy, she'll let you know a bit of information about them, and there are special events if you run into certain character on certain blocks. But there's no way to "win" any particular girl, nor is there any way to "lose" with any of them come the end of the game. When you beat the final boss, Saki comes along and takes care of him, and you get to choose which of the girls you want to talk to for their own ending.

Saki is really only about the only interesting thing about this game. Nearly all of the characters are lousy dating sim stereotypes (except for the twelve year old girl, who seems like Capcom reworked her and ended up with Devilot from Cyberbots.) Saki, however, is part of the terrestial defense force and wields a gigantic gun. Apparently Capcom felt that later on too - Saki shows up as a support character in Marvel Vs Capcom, and gets her own card in SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. (Lintz shows up too.) She graduated to playable character status in the 2008 arcade game Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, wielding her gigantic gun, where she plays similarly to a neutered version of Cable from Marvel vs Capcom 2.

OTHER QUIZ GAMES Quiz and Dragons Capcom World Capcom World 2 Hatena Hatena no Daibouken