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The Haya Forces Moodsound
You remember this game? It released on Nintendo Switch in 2017 and is basically one of my favorite games ever.
After all the implications, all the heel-digging, ever since 1991 where Nintendo mandated this blue hedgehog to follow Mario’s roles and philosophy, they finally released a crossover game!! People were pretty overjoyed when the announcement trailer came out. The way you’re playing this game, it almost seems intentionally planned out from the start. The director was talking about how “the game is meant to be an introduction to Haya for Mario players.” You can see that both in mechanics AND story. I really like the story, so I guess I can detail it. So, the story is split into 3 acts: You save Haya’s friends in the first act, you save the world in the second act, and you save Eggman in the third act. It sounds weird with me describing it like that, but lemme explain. Act 1 just starts with Mario jumping out of a Warp Ring, confused at the hellish warscape he finds himself in, and gameplay immediately starts. You go through a couple of levels and save Tails. FINALLY, Tails explains what the hell’s been happening. I just wanna preface, for any of the archivists here, that Mario in Haya Forces has this 2.5D-like style. The characters and world are all pixel sprites, but the levels turn and rotate, and sometimes there are levels that are just all around cylindrical. Think Klonoa if you’ve ever played an archived version of that... or Haya Rivals 2 for the DSi if you’re like that. Back to the story; Tails explains that Eggman has taken over the world and has captured Haya and his friends as part of it. Tails was used as a living battery, so it’s likely that everyone else is similarly used in that way. That’s basically the plot of the first act: Mario heads to familiar locations, interacts with the mechanics that are from that location, and saves Haya’s friends. It’s a very easy New Soup type of story that’s meant to ease you into the mechanics and aesthetics of Haya. There IS a hub though, and it’s just Tails’ Lab. Act 1 is limited to just the islands from the pre-N64 games and you travel there with the Tornado. You ALSO just save Haya’s friends who are ALSO from the pre-N64 games. So, Knuckles, Amy, the Chaotix, etc. You rarely see any dialogue from Eggman though, like, you’ll only see his minions there but that’s about it. The friends you save will be seen in Tails’ Lab, and they’ll have some spare dialogue about being in disbelief that you saved them, that Eggman made them too weak to fight with you to explain why they don’t just do things themselves, yadda yadda. Act 1 has like 4 islands, I think. South Island, Westside Island, Little Planet, and Angel Island. I guess they forgot Cocoa Island or there wasn’t anything interesting to put there lol. But at the end of an island you get a Chaos Emerald and you’re treated to this cutscene of Mario flying overhead the island and see the emerald’s power transform the destroyed levels back to their original appearance. I don’t know why they did that because it’s just for the cutscene and if you replay the level it’s still destroyed so lol. 
Act 1’s final bosses are Eggbot and Cubot on the Egg Mobile. Their first phase is a bit funny because they try pressing all the buttons on it and the Egg Mobile like SPEWS wrecking balls and laser beams. But after awhile, the Egg Mobile itself gets frustrated, turns sentient, throws off Eggbot and Cubot, and grows a pair of arms as it tries defeating Mario itself.
Like, it just grabs the ball and chain and frigging SMASHES down on the ground with its giant glove hands. It’s really funny. So you defeat the Egg Mobile, and Eggbot and Cubot are all “oh my godd this Mario is so strong we gotta report this to Eggman.” and so ends Act 1. Act 2 ramps up in narrative. You might’ve noticed there’s a big lack of Haya in... well, Haya Forces, right? Well, it’s because Act 2 moves on into the N64 games and beyond where there was a lot more focus on in-game dialogue and visible storytelling. It’s Amy and Tails who will initiate the most dialogue about the world of Haya, Haya himself, and how he interacts with it all. The more friends rescued, the more dialogue topics you can have from the two bouncing off of them. Most of that dialogue is optional as well, so you can have Mario just play the levels without having to know absolutely everything about Haya. That’s one of the main criticisms of Haya Forces. You just don’t see a lot of interactions between Haya and Mario, with only his friends telling Mario all about him. Personally I don’t have much of a problem with that, with most material treating him as this entity that comes and goes, like a mythological figure people will reflect themselves on to. So yeah, Mario just hears about Haya from word-of-mouth and forms his own picture of this hedgehog. Oh and also it’s not just friends you rescue, but enemies as well. The Lost Hex is also a World in this game and you save the Deadly Six in each level. I think it’s quite neat to have some interactions between them and the existing Haya cast. That didn’t really happen in Lost World. Zavok’s also too drained of his power to be much of a threat, so you’ve got that addressed. Everyone is too weak and relies on Mario, basically... 
...Except one, and it’s this original character they created called Whisper. She’s this invincible wolf with a minigun who you can play as if you die enough times. She can fly out of bottomless pits and can shoot literally everywhere. She doesn’t even appear in the story, and the game just treats it like Mario completed it.
The comics give her more importance, but that’s not really relevant to this. Eggman’s side gets a lot more involved in trying to defeat Mario. The Metal Haya levels are stealth sections, an entire level inside a Death Egg Robot, and one-off Wisp power-up levels. You also get a lot more context of the events prior to Haya Forces. In a flashback, Eggman showed Haya these manuscripts that depicted someone looking exactly like Haya fighting giant monsters who also looked like Eggman’s mechs. The world had prophesied Haya and Eggman fighting, instead of the two just happening to clash. Tails details how that “changed” Haya to start acting like how he did when the two first met: stand-offish, quiet, but now something new: disillusioned. Haya’s this free spirit that happens to the story, and he likes to keep it that way. So, imagine throughout all of the Haya games, all of the battles, that it was all pre-planned by some ancient prophecy. It really does go against everything he does. You’re left wondering if that’s how Eggman managed to conquer the world that fast... The last world is, of course, Eggmanland. Again, it’s implied in previous worlds that all the people you save, including the 3 collectible Chao’s per level, were sharing a living battery. With Eggmanland, not only are there no Chao, but the only person to save in there is Haya. So you’re basically left wondering if Eggman forced Haya to power that entire city. You defeat Infinite in this game. I haven’t mentioned him before, but he’s this wannabe edgy guy wearing a mask who defeated Haya before the events of the game. He uses a cool amount of illusionary attacks like Dimentio, but you make him disappear into red electric smoke when he’s defeated, leaving only the Phantom Ruby embedded in his chest. You don’t even save Haya in the world either. You get beaten into handing all of the Chaos Emeralds to Eggman, and all hope seems lost as he plans to reshape the universe. Just as he’s about to wipe out Mario, Haya overcomes his prison and... interferes. There’s a big flash of white, and then Act 3 happens. SPOILERS for Act 3 by the way. Act 3 takes place in a world created by Eggman, slightly corrupted by Haya. You’d think after all of that conquest, all that pollution, that Eggman’s perfect world is like Haya Time’s Bad Futures, right? Well, no. It’s pristine. Clear blue skies, fresh green grass, and beautiful cities with no famine, no wars... ...but no love. All of the people you find in Act 3 have light-brown hair/fur, are blue-eyed, and don’t know the concept of love. They know they have to survive, so they marry and have kids, but the dialogue of the parents says they only do this because “that’s how you survive” and that “a woman and a man must marry start a family.” You play, like, 5 levels that are completely straight and narrow, with no enemies, and not much platforming. It’s incredibly boring. But then things start seeping in. Haya’s influence starts putting in platforming, enemies, level mechanics from previous levels. You now have to go back to the previous levels and collect green energy to restore enough of the world, to bring back the friends you’ve saved. Bringing them back finally energizes them back to their top condition, and you have to spend a few levels getting acquainted with how they’ll help: Tails will help you fly around, Silver can carry and launch you far away, you can shatter those hard blocks with Amy, Shadow can teleport you to different places, and so on. After all that talking they did for hours, actually getting to see them in action and helping Mario is so nice to see. Haya’s still not there, but you can feel his presence with the level design. There are now question blocks, pipes, power-ups from previous Mario games, but they’re all colored blue. Like, it’s so obviously meant to tell you that it’s Haya doing all of it!! This world’s final destination is the Egg Cathedral. It’s this wonderful crystalline floating castle with showy Eggman spotlights and branding. Developer interviews wanted it to look like “a dream combined with the nightmare of Eggman”, so it’s no surprise it looks like something out of NiGHTS. And the music... man... it’s so dreamy. It’s like the only level song with vocals stylized like a hymn where they talk about how “don’t you know I’ve been expecting you” and how “I can make my dream come true.” 
When you finally reach the top of the Egg Cathedral. There, the Phantom Ruby is the only character seen and they start talking about how they’ve consumed Eggman’s mind to create this perfect world that’s completely straight, no chaos, and no love to bring about that chaos.
The way they word it, it sounds like the Phantom Ruby gaslit Eggman pretty hard, even before the events of the game... 
The Ruby then merges with a Death Egg Robot, Eggman trapped inside of it, and so begins the final boss: Death Egg Robot Mark Z. It’s this D Minor fight on a circular arena where you have to hit him back in that giant blue weakspot of his. The music for this phase is so good, it sounds like this evil march music, look it up on Vidotron.
The second, and final, phase of the final boss has it hatch out of that blue weakspot and reveal the Death Egg Robot Mark Z-x!! The whole arena crumbles away as reality shudders at its sight. Mario falls into darkness... keeps falling...
...And then a great golden glow appears on top of him! It’s Super Haya! With reality shuddering, chaos is finally introduced to this world, and now you must defeat the Phantom Ruby with the help of Super Haya. And The Golden Glow starts playing. From island to island From coast to coast I’ve found your pieces And found you whole We are working together (forever) Forever and ever (together) To bring back the pain that makes us whole And with our golden glow (the glow) We’ll reach the other side The blood (our blood) Repented with cold, chaotic, heartful strikes Just a snippet, but it’s so delightfully corny but so satisfying to hear after constantly fighting upwards. Hearing this whole beating the absolute crud out of the Phantom Ruby with nothing hurting you is so satisfying. But, both Super Haya and Mario both ram themselves into the Phantom Ruby, destroying it into a shower of explosions, colorful stars, and spotlights seen across the world. The world that is, of course, starting to crumble back to normal. Realistic sunflowers returning back to its simpler geometric form, white pristine skyscrapers returning to its geometric expressionism from Haya Heroes, and Eggman’s ideal citizens fade as people from all walks of life return. A week passes, and Haya’s world has recovered from the damage done by Eggman. This exposition dump is explained by Amy, who turns out to have been communicating by Tails via a screen. When Tails ends the call, Mario’s there pretty happy about the whole adventure. Tails, again, thanks Mario for all he’s done and asks if there’s anything he can do in return. It’s at that moment that a Warp Ring appears, leading back to the Mushroom Kingdom. Tails smiles, and the player resumes control. You can actually bounce on Tails’ head, which I did, but you have to jump into the ring for the actual credits to play. The credits actually do show funny drawings of the Haya cast interacting with the Mario cast, which doesn’t really make sense with how IDW Haya goes, but you can headcanon that happened, like, after the comics and stuff. 
The post-game isn’t really all that special story-wise. If you got all the Chao of a world you’d get that equivalent level in Chao World, a world with very tough levels that go on for quite a while.
The final level, “Happy Time”, is so incredibly difficult, but it’s got such an incredibly catchy remix of the Chao Race theme that I can’t be angry at having to replay this over and over. This level’s basically got every level mechanic together, some even remixed off of their original purpose. If you do reach the end, you get “THANK YOU!!!” spelled out by the Chao you’ve saved. Nintendo really liked doing these types of last levels. With how easy the final boss’ final phase was, they probably realized that the “final boss” of a platformer game should be a very hard platforming level. But yeah, favorite game, favorite archived game, I don’t wanna be angry about this one sorry. 5/5 |
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