Whenever you hear about a new game from an earlier generation making it over to the States for the first time, there’s at least a little excitement at the potential. Granted, there are quite a number of reasons titles never got ported, but on occasion you’ll walk away thinking the people responsible had made a mistake, depriving other markets from something original and fun. You could argue that’s the case with Milano's Odd Job Collection, as it’s absolutely not quite like games I remember from earlier days, but it also isn’t likely to be for everyone.

Playing the part of Milano, with your mother suddenly in the hospital, you’re sent to live with your uncle. The only problem is that he isn’t home either, so you’ll need to take it upon yourself to make the most of things. That will mean going out and tackling a variety of odd jobs to make a little money, so then you can relax at night and hopefully fix the place up in the process. But you’d better hurry and get whatever you want to accomplish done, since your Mom will be out in 40 days, so you’d better get cracking!

What this ultimately boils down to is a collection of mini games that play out in a variety of ways working as your jobs, and then some light sim elements every evening when you get home. By day you’ll be trying to milk flying cows, make cakes, and a number of other tasks, with the reward for good work being some hard-earned money. In the evening you’ll have to tackle household chores (which will slowly build up your stats to allow you to unlock more things to do, and tougher challenges), and perhaps go shopping to make your uncle’s place a bit less ordinary. It’s really up to you.

Aside from the inherent repetition of it all since there aren’t that many jobs to tackle, and making them harder doesn’t necessarily make them better, the game’s major problem is inconsistency. Not all of the instructions on how to successfully complete the different jobs are terribly helpful, and while some are pretty easy to pick up and have success with, others feel like a slow burn. One problem is that since your time is ultimately limited, that may make repeatedly doing the subset of mini games you’re best at in order to maximize your returns, but that gets old quickly. There are some modern conveniences like rewind, so you can choose to work on improving your skills in every game, but for the most part they’re all quite simple, making it hard for them to feel rewarding. The game has charm, and there’s nothing quite like it out there, but it feels like the decision not to bring it over before now was probably a sound one.