Xbox Live Arcade title Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax updates a PlayStation Portable classic.
Image courtesy Joystiq

Japanese RPGs are notorious for recycling cliché plot elements and structure. Seeking out the “Ultimate Evil” as the “Chosen Hero” can only hold most people’s interest for so long.

Thankfully, Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax, a high-definition re-creation of a PlayStation Portable classic, has arrived on the Xbox Live Arcade — it dissects stereotypical role-playing mechanics and flips them on their heads.

Here’s an experiment: Choose a piece of software you use a lot. Go to the discussion forums for that software and suggest a completely pointless, work-making change.

Something along these lines: “I like Firefox, but you should have to always enter ‘http://’ before any web addresses you type in.”

Or: “The problem with Photoshop is that it doesn’t ask if you want to resize your image every time you open one.”

Or maybe: “Twitter should require e-mail confirmation every time you post.”

You will be excoriated, as is right and just. Nobody wants to press an extra button, select an extra parameter or...