The Radical Cyber Fringe - A Look At: Keitai Denjuu Telefang - The Other Other Other Mon Game.

Imagine, if you can, the year 2000. Pokemon, Digimon, and I guess Monster Rancher were teaching us the joys of enslaving befriending and engaging in bloodsports competing with cute critters for fun and profit. In the midst of this mon-madness, tiny software developer Smilesoft threw their own monster-battler-RPG hat into the ring with Keitai Denjuu Telefang (In Power and Speed versions) for the Gameboy Color, their first ever game. The Telefang games were never intended to leave Japan, but Chinese bootleggers, no doubt seeking to capitalize on the recent release of Pokemon Gold and Silver, butchered them with machine translation and repackaged them as Pokemon Diamond (heh) and Pokemon Jade, most of which ended up on eBay. Even though the games weren't a tremendous success in Japan and arrived on western shores a broken shamble, the series gathered a small following, a following that eventually produced a proper English fan translation! Now that the world of Telefang can be seen through a clearer, non-Engrish lens, let me tell you...it's weird, and I love it.

With that bit of history out of the way, let me try to hopelessly explain how the bizarre world of Telefang works.



Keitai Denjuu Telefang literally translates to "Mobile Phone Beast Telefang" or something to that effect, and the Denjuu are the proverbial Mons. As the title implies, cellphones play a central role in the setting, in fact, the player doesn't capture Denjuu, they...exchange phone numbers with them. The Denjuu don't exactly coexist with Humans, they live in a parallel universe that connects to ours via "antenna trees" whose interdimensional gateway can only be crossed by those lucky enough to own a "D-shot", which for all the world looks like a comically outdated flip-cover cellphone. No this will never make any more sense.

As far as actual gameplay is concerned, only one Denjuu is ever a permanent member of the player's party, any others you've made friends with have to be called into battle, and depending on where they're from and what their personality is, they may show up late, or get lost and never even fucking show up at all. When they do manage to get their ass into a fight, they sometimes attack using whatever move they please, or don't attack at all, again depending on their personality.



Despite all that, the battles are still interesting and actually ahead of the curve in a lot of ways, such as allowing 3-on-3 fights. The combat isn't turn based like you might expect, Denjuu with a higher speed stat can strike multiple times before a slower opponent even makes one move. Combine that with the surprisingly complicated evolution chains and not to mention weird as hell designs that the Denjuu have, and it all comes together into a pretty solid little RPG that flew under pretty much every radar imaginable.


I'm sure you clever folks can find a ROM of it someplace if it strikes your monster collectin' fancies, just remember to grab the Translation Patch.

'til the next weird game, enjoy this badass fanart of the coolest Denjuu of all, Easydog