If you appreciate laughing, you owe it to yourself to play DSiWare fighting game Photo Dojo. It's scrappy, it's a bit cheap looking, and as a fighter it's naught but knockabout nonsense, but you need it in your life for one simple reason. In addition to all of the above-listed properties, it let's you use your DSi camera and mic to create your own custom fighter based entirely around yourself, and then kick your friends' faces off while battling across your kitchen table. And it's absolutely hilarious.
Above: The official trailer. But you'll never make anything this tame yourself
It's incredibly simple to use, possibly because of the game's natural home in the hands of drunk men. Ten minutes clicking photos of yourself in various embarrassing fight poses and an extra two minutes yelling creative obscentities into the mic and you're good to go. By the end you'll have a full sprite set, taunt poses, and vocal samples for winning, losing, using your specials and powering up your super move. You can even customise your backgrounds and reskin your fireballs with anything you want, from your cat's face to your own actual balls. Think of it like Mugen if it was collapsed in the corner of a party scoffing biscuits and giggling to itself in a suspicious-smelling haze.
Above: It's this simple to create a slavering combat behemoth based on you
Yes, the fighter templates never really fit the poses you're trying to make. Yes, you'll always end up with a big scrappy paper-cut-out effect around your fighter on screen. Yes, it's cheap, unbalanced, messy and a bit naff, and the animations are stiff and awkward, but all of those reasons are exactly why it's amazing. It's kind of like the fighting game that a slightly mad toddler would make if he suddenly found himself in charge of Capcom. And to be honest, as shonky as the core gameplay is, anyone who was around in 1992 and honest with it will tell you that it's not that much worse than the first Mortal Kombat.
Above: Yes, the side-scrolling mode uses your created characters as enemies. Including squeaky midget versions. YES!
It's a measly 200 Nintendo Points, and trust us, the giggles you'll get out of it with a single evening with your friends make it worth more than double that. Put it this way; we discovered it at a recent Super Street Fighter IV session at a friend's house. We played Photo Dojo just as much as Capcom's new one that night. Get it, and you will too.
