What a time we live in. I don’t know what convinces a company that it’s a good idea to localize an obscure PS1 game from over 25 years ago today, but I’m happy that it happens occasionally. Still surprised. Like how I was that Milano no Arbeit Collection somehow made it over here as Milano’s Odd Job Collection late last year. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s radical.

Milano no Arbeit Collection released back in 1999 from Westone Co (previously Escape and later Westone Bit), who are best known for the Wonder Boy games. If you haven’t heard of the game, I’m not surprised, since I think it only really circulates in discussions about obscure PS1 Japanese games and, even then, not that much. Like, this isn’t Clock Tower or Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, where people at least talk about it in the context of a wider genre.

Which is a shame, because there’s a lot to like about it.

CALL SOCIAL SERVICES

The story is absolutely hilarious. Milano’s mother is going to the hospital for 40 days. She insists it’s not serious, but 40 days is a long-ass time to be in the hospital. Her father, on the other hand, just says that it would suck to be at home with him, because he’s always working, which is a real bad-dad self-own. So, they send her to live with her uncle, but when she gets to his house, he left her a note saying that he’s gone on a trip and won’t be back.

Essentially, her entire family has dodged the responsibility of looking after her for the summer.

And it gets better. Her response to being left for over a month without adult supervision is to get a job. And her rationale isn’t that she’s going to need to feed herself. Instead, she just wants to prove to her parents how responsible she is. I’m pretty sure the responsible thing to do would be to tell your dad that your uncle fucked off and that he’ll now need to actually fulfill his parental duty, but okay.

Listen, as hard as it is to believe, I was a child once. And if I was left alone for an entire summer, my response would be to play video games all day and eat cereal directly out of the box. When the cereal ran out, I’d then go find an adult who could help. Getting a job would be the furthest thing from my mind.

There’s a concept art gallery in the re-release, and it looks like the original story is that Milano begged her parents to let her live by herself in town for an entire year. And, rightfully, her parents thought this was a terrible idea, but acquiesced anyway. She then got some odd jobs to fulfill her materialistic desires.

And that raises some questions too, but it doesn’t leave me imagining this conversation:

“Hey, Uncle Ravioli, do you mind babysitting Milano for the summer?”

“Of course! Anything for my niece,” the uncle says before hanging up the phone and saying to himself, “Shit, I gotta skip town before she gets here.”

MILANO’S SUMMER ABANDONMENT

Milano’s Odd Job Collection is more than it says on the box. While there is, indeed, a collection of odd jobs to take part in, there’s also a framework holding them together.

As implied in the opening, the game advances through 40 days. You pick a job and try not to blow it. Milano then returns to her Uncle’s house at the end of the day, is able to do two actions, and then one different action before she goes to sleep. So, you can vacuum the house and do laundry, then before bed, you can have Milano read a book or buy new furniture from the catalogue.

The actions effect her three stats: mood, energy, and skill. Mood determines how much time she has to complete jobs. Unexpectedly, mood is a fixed stat and doesn’t go up and down, it just goes up as you increase it. It makes sense. My mood is also a fixed stat, it stays fixed at depression. Energy (also a fixed stat), dictates what jobs are available to you. Skill, on the other hand, unlocks added difficulty settings for jobs, and higher difficulty means higher pay.

However, it doesn’t tell you what chore upgrades what stat, and the “skill” skill is tricky to figure out at first, because her uncle’s house doesn’t have anything to build skill. Some items you buy that you’d expect to build skill actually don’t, and… Just buy the fairy desk. That’s what I’m getting to. Reading the right book at night can upgrade your skill, but that’s trial-and-error. The fairy desk upgrades skill. Buy that first.

CHILD LABOUR

There are eight odd jobs in total. Dishwashing, cake-making, fast food serving, fruit collecting, flying cow milking, nursing, and pizza delivery. That’s seven, but if you fulfill secret conditions you can become an idol. By which I mean pop star.

In terms of gameplay, they run the gamut. Cake-making is a falling block puzzle game. Pizza delivery is kind of like the turbo tunnel in Battletoads. Fast food serving is about as literal as you can get for the job, as is dishwashing.

Milking flying cows was my favourite. You run around a ring and have to jump up to grab the cows by the udders, then drag them down so you can squeeze them dry. There are pigs chasing chicken around the ring, and you have to jump whenever they come near. It’s great. I’m not a fan of dishwashing, but who is?

The available jobs change by the day. It’s based on the day of the week and weather, but since you have little control over either, I didn’t pay much attention. As mentioned earlier, the total jobs that are available depend on your energy. But what this means is that, if, like me, you don’t like dishwashing, then you don’t have to do that. Even one of the loading screen hints tells you to just ignore the ones you don’t like.

However, I felt a little guilty just milking cows whenever possible, so I tried to further mix it up.

FLYING COWS, FLYING BUTTER

Most of the jobs are pretty fun, and they hold up well to repeated play. However, it was smart to frame it in a light life-simulator. Really, you just watch Milano run through a selected animation, but the animations are at least detailed and full of personality. Plus, you can fast-forward them.

But that’s not really the point. What makes the life-simulator part successful is that it works as a grounding aspect to tie everything together. There isn’t much of a narrative to speak of, but by joining Milano when she goes home after work, it still feels like a story plays out. Okay, so she still has the energy to do laundry and vacuum when she gets home, which is hard to relate to, but at least it feels believable.

It’s a rather surprising game. There are a lot of mini-game collections out there – the Wii’s library is full of them – but most of them feel really cheap. With Milano’s Odd Job Collection’s detailed animation and energetic-but-comfortable art style, paired with the addition of its simple life sim framework, it doesn’t feel like one of those games. I have to force my brain to accept the similarities. It’s just that well put-together.

MORE LIKE THIS

To touch on the modern port job and localization, I really can’t believe someone went to this much effort. Not only was the text translated to English, the voice-overs were re-done. More surprisingly, the recording and acting quality maintains the illusion that this is a PS1 game from 1999 perfectly. Like, we’ve no word if Konami is going to release a localization of their upcoming Ganbare Goemon collection (Ganbare Goemon Daishugo), but Hilltop, XSEED, and Implicit Conversions saw fit to go the full length with this oddball.

And, honestly, a lot of my enthusiasm for Milano’s Odd Job Collection comes from the effort behind this re-release. It’s certifiably boffo. I think you should buy it for that reason alone. But if I isolate my opinion on Milano’s Odd Job Collection as a game, it’s still very positive. It’s a terrific twist on your common mini-game compilation. Something colourful and fun for a grey evening indoors (I should probably note that I finished it in just shy of five hours). I didn’t immediately return to it for another playthrough, but that’s mostly because I wanted to give it time to breathe. I’ll likely return to it some other time. Any game that lets you serve someone a meal of five breakfast sandwiches is pretty great in my books.

8/10

This review was conducted using a digital Steam version of the game. It was paid for by the author.