Puella Mamam...... Pulla Maga... Plama Maka... PMMM Portable is a Licensed Game for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It was released on the PSP March 15th, 2012, and was published by Namco Bandai. It has heavy involvement from the anime cast; Gen Urobuchi is supervising the scenario, while Studio SHAFT and Gekidan InuCurry are providing visual designs.
The game is part first-person Roguelike dungeon crawler and part Visual Novel. The player controls the magical girls while they navigate witches' labyrinths and fight off familiars. In between dungeons, the choices made by the player can affect the characters' fighting abilities and alter the anime's story. For example, it is possible to change the events of Episode 3. The player can select commands for both Kyubey and Homura and play from the viewpoint of both characters.
The game is notable for including a number of elements absent from the anime, such as a Transformation Sequence for Madoka and witches that were only mentioned on the anime's website.
A Fan Translation project has been previously initiated by TRADUKO Soft
, but the team has disbanded. A second Fan Translation has been started by GBATemp user Carlitos and is available on that site; he has currently translated Madoka and Mami's routes and the first nine days of Sayaka's route.
In December 2013 an Actionized Sequel of sorts was released for the PS Vita. Entitled Puella Magi Madoka Magica - The Battle Pentagram, it re-uses many of the same elements as Portable but trades the Roguelike gameplay for Hack and Slash.
Late-Arrival Spoiler Warning: This page will contain unmarked spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Avoiding this page is highly recommended for those who haven't seen the show.
Tropes in Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable include:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: You can reach level 99 with the girls, but the only benefit of it is making the Bonus Dungeons easier.
- Adaptation Expansion: And quite a bit of it. For example, remember the inflatable Madoka from the anime's opening? The game reveals where it came from. It's one of Madoka's special moves.
- All There in the Manual: The game itself looks like it will become a manual for the anime.
- Alternate Timeline: Actually a gameplay mechanic, see New Game Plus below. This also means it's possible to play as Homura with glasses.
- Anachronic Order: One of Homura's most powerful attacks, The Black Wings of Corrosion, is lifted from the anime's epilogue, yet she's able to use it alongside her temporal powers and can attain it before fighting Walpurgisnacht.
- Another Side, Another Story: Each route focuses on a different girl, provided you don't turn them into witches (in which you automatically get Homura's route)
- Balloonacy: Remember Madoka blowing herself up like a pufferfish in the Anime OP? In the game, she weaponizes it by flying into the enemy like a balloon with an open end (the skill is called 'Pannier Rocket').
- Book Ends: Gertrud and Candeloro share the same battle theme. This might not seem significant, until you realize that the former is the first witch we ever see Mami fight, and the latter is Mami herself.
- But Thou Must!: In Homura's bonus route, you can either choose to tell Mami to get a dog or become an idol (a sort of pop star). Either way, Mami's going to end up with the latter.
- Call-Back: Homulilly's wings look the same as the ones Homura sprouted in the anime's epilogue.
- Developer's Foresight: The game has allowances for every single possible variation in the timeline, including additional witches.
- They even allowed for people who want, desperately, to avert the bad fates of half the Puella Magi Holy Quintet, and even have a special ending cutscene for saving everyone, that acknowledges how you, and Homura, got what they wanted all along.
- Driven to Suicide:
- In Sayaka's route, Kyubey suggests that Kyousuke could be one of "those types of artists" that may decide to kill themselves. Sayaka rejects the possibility. She's wrong.
- If informed of the Awful Truth by Homura, Mami may opt for this.
- In the past, following her Pater Familicide, Kyoko gets into an argument concerning this, claiming that anyone who wants to kill themselves will do so regardless of whether or not they're being influenced by a witch.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: From Kyubey's point of view, pushing the girls further into despair is a good thing.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Apparently, there are only TWO of them:
- Just like the anime, Madoka sacrifices herself and retcons the entire universe. OR
- Madoka doesn't make a contract, the party (Mami, Sayaka, Kyoko and Homura) become best buds and defeat Walpurgisnacht, and the five of them make plans for shopping trips in Mami's room.
- Notably, this is considered to be the only time, including Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, where Madoka AND Homura aren't sacrificed to save everyone else, and Everybody Lives.
- Everybody Lives: The best ending is purely this, as well as the typical tea party of the group.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Homura's route can end in a happy note if you choose your actions wisely, but all other routes end in disaster and Homura having to rewind time no matter what you do.
- Freak Out: In Sayaka's route, Kyousuke discovering Sayaka's Puella Magi powers (by finding her with half her face missing) will result in him panicking and calling her a monster and an impostor. This is not a good thing for Sayaka either.
- Gradual Regeneration: Characters can regenerate their health and magic by walking it off, but there are items available to restore set amounts of health.
- Hit Me, Dammit!: In the Bonus Route, Homura can convince Hitomi to duel Sayaka for Kyousuke's love. When the other girl hesitates, Hitomi goads her, then slaps her first to drive her into action.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Battle against Gisela in Mami's Route.
- I Surrender, Suckers: When playing as Homura, Kyoko may pull this during the confrontation on the bridge, pretending to surrender in order to launch a sneak attack.
- Inhuman Human: Sayaka in her bad ending. After it takes the girls a long time to reunite her body with her Soul Gem, she's still mentally herself. As for her body, well... Kyosuke finds out firsthand.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Dying to Walpurgisnacht in Homura's route results in Homura being unable to turn back time, which THEN results in her becoming a witch. The Game Over screen shows Homura's witch form, Homulilly.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The game's website doesn't even bother trying to hide the various shocking revelations of the anime, such as witches being magical girls.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer reveals that it is possible to have Mami become a witch. Further trailers and promotional material reveal Kyoko is also getting a witch form.
- Magic Idol Singer: Mami becomes one (thanks to Homura's pushing) in one of the special routes.
- Mook Maker: In her first phase, Charlotte spawns constant waves of familiars, but does not attack.
- Multiple Endings: To each of the routes, which is kind of to be expected.
- My Greatest Failure: Mami feels this way about not saving her parents, as well as failing to save a young boy from a witch.
- New Game Plus: Replaying the game will make the magical girls more powerful, in reference to Homura's time-travel abilities.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Kyoko's Route, to prevent her from making her Taking You with Me Heroic Sacrifice against Sayaka's witch, Homura kills Octavia before Kyoko and Madoka can try to talk her back to humanity. If Kyoko's Soul Gem is at a high level of corruption, then this results in Kyoko falling into despair at losing her last hope and turning into a witch.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Because of Kyubey's inability to understand human empathy, some of his dialogue options can accidentally encourage the girls instead of breaking their spirits.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Several! In fact, in the Extra Route, there were plenty of witches taken down by any of the magical girls there off screen.
- Off the Rails: Saving Mami from dying? Check. Saving Sayaka from becoming a witch? Check. Turning Mami or Kyoko into a witch? Check. But the off-railing already starts since the tutorial route. In Madoka's route that follows closely to anime, it ends with Homura failing to prevent Madoka's contract in Episode 8 and she has no choice but to repeat the timeloop.
- You can also go for saving Mami from dying, stopping Sayaka from becoming a witch, stopping Madoka from contracting at all, and having a situation where all but Madoka are fighting Walpurgistnacht. If you manage all that, you get an ending where they outright WON.
- One-Winged Angel: Wanna see what Mami, Kyoko, and Homura look like as Witches? Go right ahead.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Mami's witch form isn't that strong compared to
Kyoko's. And you don't get to fight Homura's one at all.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Mami's witch form isn't that strong compared to
- Optional Boss: The witches Quitterie, Albertine and Itzli are only seen in the bonus dungeons.
- Out-of-Character Moment: A picture from the website shows Kyubey's dialogue options while the other characters are watching Charlotte's Grief Seed. One of the options is "Wanna go eat hamburgers?"
- This is the usual MO of the bonus route. When Homura urges Mami to become an idol so she won't be so lonely anymore, she literally asks Mami if she wants to become an idol or she wants to get a dog.
- Playable Epilogue: Homura fights Demons in the desert wasteland, just like The Stinger in the end of the anime, but the Demons can't attack and Homura can only use her arrow skill. She fights a literally endless horde of them until the ending theme finishes.
- Production Foreshadowing: In the BD/DVD release of Episode 9 of the anime, a pair of wind chimes with the shapes of a unicorn and a mermaid were added to an existing scene. Given that the latter clearly referred to Sayaka, it was believed that the unicorn referred to Kyoko. Portable reveals that Kyoko's witch form, Ophelia, rides a horned horse.
- Roguelike
- Senseless Sacrifice: If Homura dies alone but kills Walpurginacht; Kyubey comments on how without a guardian Puella Magi for the city, eventually a witch will emerge again and he'll contract Madoka then.
- Ship Tease: There is at least one image of Sayaka and Kyousuke holding hands. There is also an image of Sayaka crying in Kyouko's arms.
- Junko comments on how Homura reminds her of herself when she was young. What would Madoka look for in a husband in the All There in the Manual questionaire? "Someone cool like her mama."
- We can do better than that.
- Between Sayaka and Kyoko in Homura's best ending:
Sayaka: [Mami] goes to school, does her Magical Girl duties, and still has time to take care of her house. She's perfect! I'd sure like to marry someone like Mami-san-Kyoko: I get it. I'm a slob, aren't I? - Junko comments on how Homura reminds her of herself when she was young. What would Madoka look for in a husband in the All There in the Manual questionaire?
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: On one of the paths to Sayaka's bad ending, Kyoko uses up her entire stockpile of grief seeds fighting to get back her soul gem, and lets her own get corrupted.
- Shout-Out: Mami apparently has an attack named "Unlimited Magic Bullet Works"
- Something We Forgot: There's no other way to describe the bonus route. Homura didn't bother to stop Madoka from contract, Mami becomes famous with her idol things, Sayaka's dating Kyousuke, Kyouko goes apeshit on local gangs and hogs all Grief Seeds... All well and dandy, right? Well, damn... here goes Walpurgisnacht. And this time, Homura doesn't prepare herself at all because she spent the month uniting the group through Power of Friendship.
- It's not like Homura forgot the fight against Walpurgisnacht though; she spent time uniting the group for this fight. She just leaps through time again even though the group may have a chance to win.
- The group CAN win without Madoka's help. This results in characters having a tea party together in Mami's room(with Kyoko forced into wearing school uniform by Sayaka).
- Superdickery: A CG of Homura hitting Madoka was released as part of the advertisement campaign, usually involving the question of how things could have gone so wrong between them. This is a scene from the fanservice bonus route, and Homura is interrupting Madoka's Heroic Self-Deprecation in order to give her a somewhat clumsy speech about how it's okay for her to not be perfect.
- Stylistic Suck: Some of the Witches like Gertrude have unusual art styles in the anime, so of course this applies to the game too. Gertrude has a terrible frame rate and looks like she has a low poly count.
- Taking You with Me: Kyoko's Cleansing Flame attack
- The Undead: The game really highlights this aspect of the Magical Girls, as if you fail to retrieve Sayaka's Soul Gem after she throws it off the bridge quickly enough, necrosis will set in and when you do get it back she'll apparently look like something out of a horror movie when she wakes up.
- Ungrateful Bastard: If Kyousuke and Hitomi are clear-headed when found in a witch's barrier, then rather than thanking their rescuer, they lash out at her, with Kyousuke calling her a monster.
- Unwanted Rescue: After fighting Gisela alone in Mami's route, Mami goes back to check on the Witch-kissed suicidal woman she'd encountered before... only to learn that the woman really was suicidal, and is none too happy with Mami for saving her. This contributes directly to Mami's bad ending.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Since you control both Kyubey and Homura, you can set things up so that other characters are saved...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...but it looks like you can also make things even worse.
- Visual Novel
- Whole Episode Flashback: Kyouko's route contains one; it is an adaptation of the third Drama CD.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: In Sayaka's route, Kyousuke may offer her a CD with a song he wrote for her... before seeing how much her body's rotted and freaking out.
