Bandai is known for the (often) average games the company published for various game system. They are mainly based on their own intellectual properties and other popular franchises such as Mobile Suit Gundam, Kinnikuman, Dragon Ball or GeGeGe no Kitarō. Throughout the 1980s, they also produced their own toyline of transformable robots called the Machine Robo (known as the Go-Bots toys in the west). So what happens when you cross a transformable robot toy with a Famicom game ? I'm glad you asked the question! You get a neat looking Kasetto Sentai ! Click on pictures to enlarge Bandai produced these tiny toys when the Famicom system was at its peak it seems. They came in little cardboard boxes ressembling the ones available for real Famicom games. Kasetto Sentai can be translated as Cartridge Corps and the two Sentai featured here are Mario from Super Mario Bros and Kitarō from GeGeGe no Kitarō. The cartridge mode is quite attractive and surprisingly close to the models they imitate. The only difference is obviously their small size and they only reach about a shy inch in length. The pictures on the right also show the real cartridges for scale. But they make up for the lack of size by aesthetic quality - they indeed totally look like the real thing. We could only wish a mini-transformable Famicom Console also existed, what a wonderful treat it would have been. As you can see on the pictures, they really look like the original games - a lot tinnier though with the Kasetto Sentai logo in the top corner. Click on pictures to enlarge The robot mode is, I must say, a bit less slick. Thruthfully, the toy ends up looking like a character in a cartridge suit. Anyway, the transformation leaves you at one point wondering what you did wrong - the trickiest part is to get the feet out of the cartridge. They tend to get stuck and make a disturbing clunking noise when they finally come out. At times you feel as if you might break them. But, to be honest, this toy was obviously designed for kids and my big and fat adult fingers don't do well with the tiny moving parts. The sad reality is that these toys would probably break soon after the third transformation. Each figurine comes with a bonus item. Don't expect anything groundbreaking though. A single colored piece of curved plastic reminding somehow a precious item from the game - Mario comes with a red mushroom (and this is arguable as it could be anything, really...) and Kitarō comes with his magical ocarina (same here, it could be a jelly fish or a smoking pipe). Click on pictures to enlarge Interestingly, the toy's documentation mentions a fighting game you and a friend could play with these tranformable robots. A close inspection reveals small pieces of metal embedded in their feet. This gets them to stick to a sort of magnetised wrestling mat. I'm not sure how far the game goes though and what decides of the winning player... to me it looks like a cheap way to get the toy broken before the fatal third transformation. Well, I kept the best for the end. Mario and Kitarō are actually two Kasetto Sentai from a list of many! As you can see on the picture on the right, a total of eight Kasetto Sentai exist. I don't know what I would give to find Twin Bee and the Vic Viper from Gradius. There's also Koopa (aka Bowser) from Super Mario Bros, Konaki Jijii from GeGeGe No Kitarō, Knight (aka Arthur) from Makaimura (aka Ghost'n Goblins) and Dig Dug from Dig Dug II. I simply couldn't resist when I bumped into Mario and Kitarō on the corner of a popular auction site. As you probably have guessed by now, I am a huge fan of Japanese transformable robots and Famicom games. I had to have them. Like countless other useless purchases, this one ranked high enough to be shared here. Unsurprisingly, and like many of my other purchases, there was no more than meet the eyes here. Sources : Laurent Kermel's personal collection, All logos and trademarks are © their respective owners. All pages content is © Video Game Den / Laurent KERMEL