You have to hand it to Nintendo: they are not afraid to try something a little different with the gameplay of the titles they publish and the hardware controls for those games. Sometimes it works, like many of the games for the Nintendo DS’ touch screen or Donkey Kong Jungle Beat’s innovative use of the Konga controller. On the other hand there are games like Odama. A new melding of a pinball game with strategy elements (Yeah, honest!), Odama ultimately fails to satisfy on just about any level.

Pinball video games are a venerable genre. Bally released a video pinball game for its Bally Professional Arcade system (a.k.a. Astrocade) all the way back in 1977. The genre reached its peak with the TurboGrafx-16 games Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush. By then the video pinball games were taking full advantage of their video game home and creating pinball tables that could never exist as solid atoms on a traditional pinball machine. Since then we’ve seen video pinball games go both in the direction of the Crush series with wild tables and to the ultra-realistic modeling of real pinball machines, as in Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection , but never quite having the popularity they once had.

Odama is solidly in the no-way-to-make-it-an-actual-pinball-machine category. It even has a back story to explain why you play. But before the story makes what limited sense it does, it helps to know a little about the play field. Instead of the normal bumpers and drop targets of the average pinball table, Odama’s levels are laid out as feudal-era Japanese battlefields. On them there are stationary targets and, more importantly, your soldiers and opposing forces.

The Odama is a giant ball that your ancestors kept a closely guarded secret. But after your father was betrayed by one of his vassels, as the oldest son, you set out on a path of war against the disloyal dog – Karasuma Genshin. Now you will unleash the power of the Odama. The way to victory is to get the Ninten Bell (If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’. I could not possibly make this stuff up.) into the Karasuma Keep by using the Odama to crush your foes and clear a path for your own forces to move forward.

Odama was designed by Yoot Saito, the twisted and brilliant mind that gave us Seaman for the Sega Dreamcast six years ago. Yoot Saito seems to have a thing for using voice recognition in his games. Anyone who played Seaman knows how much that game relied on the microphone to communicate with your Seaman as he verbally abused you before finally going out into the world. (I still worry about that Seaman out in the world … I’m not worried for the Seaman but for the world and what that perverted little amphibian might do in it. I can just imagine him getting unsuspecting princesses to do all sorts of unnatural acts.)

In Odama the speech recognition, input with a provided microphone that plugs in through the “B” memory card port, is used to order your troops around the battlefield. Orders include: Advance, Fall Back, March Right, March Left, Press Forward and Rally. The first four are pretty self-explanatory. “Press Forward” pushes your troops into enemy troops that may be blocking your way toward the objective. “Rally” commands your troops to gather at a designated location for defense and moving obstacles on the field.

Your troops include foot soldiers, cavalry and a crew to carry the Ninten Bell. The goal is to get the bell and as many troops as possible through the far end of the field. You use your commands and the power of the Odama ball to make this happen.

It sounds easy, but it is actually brutally hard. Certain targets must be hit with the Odama to clear the way for your bell carriers and their escorting troops. The Odama makes short work of enemy troops. Unfortunately it can also make short work of your own troops. (It helps to think of the Odama like a war elephant: it is great as long as it is pointed at the enemy, but if it ever decides to run home, it’s coming right through your own guys.) While keeping the Odama in play (like pinball, if it gets between the flippers you have lost that ball), you have to order your troops about with the microphone in such a way as to get through the opposing forces, not get killed by your own Odama, and reach their goal. You also have reserves that can be strategically deployed to strengthen your forces during the battle. At the same time you must keep enemy troops from attacking your flippers and putting them out of action for a time. You’ll also earn rice balls that can be launched directly at targets. And did I mention the whole thing has to be done under a time limit? It took me several tries to put all this together and win even the first battle.

From a presentation point of view the game is mixed. I really liked the sound effects and the Japanese narration with English subtitles. The graphics are not nearly as good. If this game had come out early in the GameCube lifecycle it would have been more understandable, but this late in the console’s life there is no reason the quality should be this low.

Control is what really kills this game. The buttons and flippers work well enough, but the voice recognition hobbles this title and makes it as much an exercise in frustration as entertainment. I found myself shouting furiously into the microphone many times with no results.