Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash!'s Space 39 miku Pack is one level from Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash! with an insert of Hatsune Miku. This seems like a reductive description but it is in fact a rational observation. The Space 39 miku Pack is for superfans of Space Channel 5 and Hatsune Miku and proudly, absolutely nobody else.
When it released last March, just before the planet fell apart, Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash! was an impeccably timed throwback to the medium’s finest and most fleeting bliss point. Years and decades pass without the opportunity to appreciate a signature Dreamcast game in a modern skin, and Space Channel 5 VR was allowed to capture that precise moment in time. For a hefty price, players could really party like it was 1999 in 2020, all before 2020 became 2020.
$40 was a lot to ask. It made sense—a niche product sold to a niche audience on a niche platform—but Space Channel 5 VR failed to scale to expectations. It was Space Channel 5 in virtual reality, and it was over in an hour if players one-and-done’d the four-level campaign and didn’t opt into score attack or costume collecting diversions. Grounding seemed to acknowledge this incongruity and, along with the new $5 Space 39 miku Pack, Space Channel 5 VR’s base price has been adjusted to $25. The moment may have passed, but it’s more accessible if for anyone willing to go looking for it again.
I could reminisce about Space Channel 5 forever but ultimately we’re here to discuss Space Channel 5 VR’s downloadable content, the Space 39 miku Pack. Objectively, it adds Miku’s Far-Out Report Show as a level to the arcade mode. Ten new outfits are also available in the dressing room. The audio is only in Japanese. There is nothing else.
Hatsune Miku’s level takes place in the same spaceport lobby as Space Channel 5 VR’s opening level, only it’s night now. The player character and Ulala fall in step while Hatsune Miku leads the trio. It’s composed of two alien-battling sequences and concludes with one humongous boss fight. With the player copying the motions of the enemy aliens, gesticulating the Move controllers in different directions, these sequences play identically to those found in Space Channel 5 VR. The boss fight recolors the same boss from the end of the proper game’s first stage. The aliens terrorizing the populace are also recolored and reused. All of this feels extremely cheap.
Vocaloids are impressive technology, Hatsune Miku is a global phenomenon, and her games have done OK. Letterman’s response to her appearance on his show is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I don’t know that any of that helps sell the case for $5 downloadable content that I was done playing in five minutes. It’s cool that it exists. It’s a shame it isn’t something more. As with the rest of Space Channel 5 VR, players are expected to be content with the fact that it exists and not wonder why it isn’t any better than it is. I can’t imagine a response to the Space 39 miku Pack that doesn’t, somewhere, have its player wondering, that’s it?
Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash!’s Space 39 miku Pack is one level from Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash! with an insert of Hatsune Miku. This seems like a reductive description but it is in fact a rational observation. The Space 39 miku Pack is for superfans of Space Channel 5 and Hatsune Miku and proudly, absolutely nobody else.
