Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica 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.

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 used in Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable include:
  • 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.
  • Alternate Timeline: Actually a gameplay mechanic, see New Game+ below. This also means it's possible to play as Homura with glasses.
  • 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.
  • Fandom Nod: In many flavors, from the amount of Ship Tease to the plots of some of the girls' routes taking nods from popular portrayal of characters.
  • 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.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Licensed Game
  • Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition: Including such goodies as a figma of Madoka in her school uniform, a Kyubey-shaped coin purse, a special Blu-ray disc, and more! Some online retailers even included extra extras on top of that, such as t-shirts.
  • Multiple Endings: To each of the routes, which is kind of to be expected.
  • New Game+: Replaying the game will make the magical girls more powerful.
  • 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 fails to prevent Madoka's contract in Episode 8 and she has no choice but to repeat the timeloop.
  • 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 either she becomes an idol or she becomes a dog, all while in the same monotonous drone of hers. A bit Harsher in Hindsight when you remember that one of the Witches, Uhrmann, has chosen a form of a dog so she can be loved, and Homura most likely knows about it.
  • Playable Epilogue: Homura fights the 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 uses her arrow skill. She fights a literally endless hordes 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
  • 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.
  • Something We Forgot: There's no other way to describe the bonus route. Madoka doesn't 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 the group may have a chance to win.
  • Super Dickery: 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.
  • Whole-Episode Flashback: Kyoko's route will contain one; it appears to be an adaptation of the third Drama CD.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Since you control both Kyubey and Homura, you can set things up so that other characters are saved...
  • Visual Novel
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