The first time I heard about this game was on a message board. Someone had posted a thread about a new game everyone should play called Electroplankton. My first thought was: "Could this be a Spongebob Squarepants game? And why is everyone excited about it?"

I soon learned that this game had nothing to do with any established franchise –- and thank goodness for that! The game was also being released by Nintendo -- and according to everyone who had played it -- couldn’t fit into any established genre. Suddenly, I too was excited, and every little morsel of information that was released made me become almost rabid in my anticipation of its release in Japan.

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One of the most exciting tidbits of information about Electroplankton was that it was designed, and programmed by just one person, Toshio Iwai. This is unheard of in this industry, one person creating a commercial game by themselves is almost impossible. Most handheld games have at least 25 people on staff. Easily triple that amount for any PC, or console game. The reason behind this is that as games become more complex there are fewer people who have the expertise to handle all the many aspects of its creation.

Toshio is a certified genius by any account. His programming expertise along with his immense artistic abilities easily allowed him to make Electroplankton a reality. He is no stranger to working on games with Nintendo in the past, or creating interactive computer art for museums around the world. Toshio is a true renaissance man for the computer age.

Creating Electroplankton by himself no doubt allowed him the freedom to make such an avant-garde product -- not to say that Electroplankton doesn’t have some semblance of standard game play, because it does -- but the experience is more routed in music generating, than what would be considered normal game progression.

When you boot up Electroplankton, you hear the sound of an orchestra warming up. The title screen displays Electroplankton and on the bottom screen you have two choices; performance or audience. I was immediately captivated by the presentation.

These modes offer two drastic differences. Audience is basically a demo, where the game itself creates an audio/video show for the player. Performance as you may have guessed, is indicative of its name. This mode selects the main game, and once you begin you are asked to choose which Plankton you would like to play with:

01 Tracy: This is an arrow shaped plankton that depending on where you place on the screen will emit a different note. The player can also drag Tracy to produce a continuous stream of notes.

02 Hamenbow: These plankton bounce off of aquatic plant life. You can set their trajectory, and move the leaves independently to form the best sequence of notes.

03 Luminaria: These plankton are located in a top down grid of sorts. You simply touch the Luminaria to activate it, and open the different paths for each Plankton to take. Each path has an equivalent note, or pitch.

04 Sun-animalcule: These plankton are activated by simply touching the screen. Different taps will result in different sounds, and control the length and pitch of each note. These particular plankton sounds are almost otherworldly.

05 Rec-Rec: These plankton can record a few seconds of sound for an instant playback. Up to four different samples can be used.

06 Nanocarp: The Nanocarp move almost independently, and by touching the screen you send out what looks like a harmonic that reacts with these creatures. The sound that is produced is often noisy, but sometimes very melodic.

07 Lumiloop: These strange donut-shaped plankton emit what sounds like concentrated musical cords when you spin them. Yes, I did say spin.

08 Marine-Snow: These particular creatures sound much like a keyboard when touched. They remain stationary, until they emit a note, then they quickly shuffle to a adjacent area.

09 Beatnes: Perhaps my favorite, the Beatnes are composed of long individual blocks. Each block can create a sound, or note in the same key as many classic Nintendo games. You can create your own songs, or try and play the Super Mario Bros theme.

10 Volvoice: Similar to Rec-Rec, Volvoice lets you record different sounds, and alter them. This plankton is more along the lines of a voice modulator.

Being that Electroplankton is an import title from Japan, I was actually surprised to see how little actual Japanese is in this title -- and what is there usually has a translation into English. However, the manual is all in Japanese, but thankfully some information can be derived from the illustrations.

After spending several days playing Electroplankton I have found that the real appeal to me is experimenting with the game. Not knowing what does and what, and figuring out little secrets kept me coming back to play this title again, and again. My favorite example of this is my experience with the Hamenbow plankton. While playing I noticed the leaves didn’t just make different sounds, but they were slowly turning red. On closer inspection I noticed that the leaves that had the most traffic of Hamenbow were the ones turning red. So I then tried to turn all the leaves red, and to my surprise a flower sprouted out of the top of this aquatic plant!

As stated earlier, the presentation for Electroplankton is as close to perfection as games can hope to achieve. The perpetual sound of water in the background and foreground in the audio really helps reinforce the overall feeling of an aquatic setting. While the rippling waves, and blue hues also sets the visuals right on cue. Simply put this is Electroplankton's best feature.

Oh, and it's not just the touch screen that comes into play. Believe it or not but the plus pad is used on almost every type of plankton. Sometimes it is used to call on a wave to change the location of your plankton, or it may be used to slow, or speed up the sequence of notes. Even the select button is used during the game to shuffle between different modes.

Some may question why Nintendo didn’t include this product in, or around a more traditional video game, but after spending hours and hours with Electroplankton I don’t feel this is a valid complaint. Had they tried to combine it with a similar product, several aspects of the design would've been compromised. My only real complaint -- and it is a very big one -- is the complete lack of any way to record your compositions on the game itself. Sure, you can get a dubbing cable from any store, and record your work to a computer, or a tape deck, but since the DS is a portable system this can become a problem.

So is it a game? Well, certainly not a traditional one. It has a basic interactive setting, but doesn't have the defined structure that most games possess. The design is also very dependent of the player enjoying the ability to create, and play music in a interactive setting. If music based games are not of any interest to you, then I can’t recommend importing this game. I believe this title will only appeal to those you love music, or enjoy different types of gaming experiences.