Opinions on poorly documented imports

[celerystalker]

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Hi, I'm new as a member to this forum, but I've been gawking at StealthLurkers awesome stuff for years as well as having enjoyed Steven's RVGfanatic site for quite some time as well. That said, I'd like to wholesale rip Steven off and post some opinions on some import games I have that don't have a lot of documentation online. I own several hundred imports and a couple of thousand games, and I got to a point where I tend to buy games more because they seem different than because they're rarities or collector's items, as I like to play what I buy and try new stuff.

So, first off, Blade of the Darkness, or Kuro no Ken, for PS1. It's a traditional JRPG with a somewhat cliche anime style, but some unique twists to the combat system that made it fun.

The game seems like standard turn-based fare in line with the likes of earlier Final Fantasies, but the way special techniques and Magic are used is the biggest twist. Your party regenerates Magic and Technique points every single round of combat, and hit points/MP with every step in the overworld/in dungeons. These techniques aren't particularly overpowered, but this system does a lot to actively encourage the player to use your full range of combat options in every encounter. This makes the random encounters considerably more fulfilling than in other games such as Paladin's Quest, in which you feel like every battle is costing you resources more than testing your thinking ability. As such, battles revolve more around deciding when and how to use your abilities instead of grinding for resources to sit on healing items and restoratives.

The pacing is fairly quick, and the game is modestly linear, which in the case of an untranslated import to an English speaker is somewhat of a blessing; it limits the trial and error and keeps the story progressing.

The menus aren't overly cumbersome, and I was able to figure all the basics of the combat and status menus without much effort. The enjoyable combat, dark fantasy theme, and pacing kept me enjoying it quite a bit. I'd really recommend it to anyone who is wanting to test the waters on untranslated RPGs and see if they can take them on. It's a great starting point for that purpose and an enjoyable game with nice 2D sprites, average music, and good cutscenes, and it costs next to nothing. I don't have a capture card, but I'll try to post some pictures of the case/etc. if anyone wants to see them.

[celerystalker]

7961Next is Solo Crisis for Sega Saturn. The game is by Quintet, best known for their Soul Blazer/Blader Heaven and Earth trilogy with Illusion of Gaia and Tenchi Souzo/Terranigma, as well as the ActRaiser games.

The game is definitively a strategy game, but it is a strange amalgamation of Tactics Ogre and Populous. You move characters around a grid-based map, upgrade classes, grow your army, and combat enemy soldiers. At the same time, those characters are also used to build buildings and other structures that are used to fortify your areas and yield bonuses and resources. The Populous part comes in where you can terraform the map as well in a god-like fashion, causing rises in elevation, formation of canyons, brush fires, etc. Where this really gets crazy is that the map has a top-side and a bottom-side, forming sort of a light/dark, yin-yang setting, with portals and the end of the map to allow transportation between the two sides. However, not only can you move between the two, the acitons on one side affect the other. For instance: raising the elevation on the top side of the map will cause a recess to form on the bottom side in the corresponding location.

The game is broken into several levels/maps, in which you much achieve goals/cleanse each world. I am still figuring out much of the game's systems, but it's definitely intriguing. You have god-like powers very reminiscent of the Master in ActRaiser, such as lighning strikes and falling meteors, yet individual characters to move around, level up, and strategize. The options menus are in English, but the in-game menus are mostly icon-based with descrptions in Japanese. It is not immediately accessible at all, but sweet lord is it interesting to try to play. On the whole, I wouldn't recommend it to most players, as it's just a whole lot to figure out if you can't read the language, like me. However, if you can read Japanese or are willing to put a lot of time into understanding the game, it doesn't cost much of anything and is a pretty unique amalgamation of styles. I kinda dig it.

[celerystalker]

7962So, that title's probaly butchered. I'm on vacation this week and my wife's on a work trip for a couple of days, so sorry if I go overboard. I have a few years worth of nonsense most people in my real life aren't overly interested, but I really like to talk about. So, yeah, this one's not as obscure, but it's one of the lesser-known Kunio-kun titles, and one of the best that gets overlooked. So, Downtown Nekketsu Koushin Kyoku: Soreyuke Daiundokai for the PC Engine CD.

I think to the US audience, most people who love the Kunio franchise have probably already played Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge and know it as a Downtown Nekketsu take on the established Track and Field button mashing formula that can be fun with other players, but is horrific agains a computer opponent. That game is a sequel to this one, which was never properly localized. This game, however, is no Track and Field clone!

The huge difference between this game and Crash 'n the Boys is the way the game controls. This game is NOT played by alternately pressing buttons rapidly or jamming on one button to fill a gauge and then pressing the other. No, no... This plays with the exact same control you'd experience in River City Ransom or Kunio-kun Jidaigeki-it plays like a beat 'em up. You double tap a direction to run, you pick up items and use them... but in an athletic multi-sport interschool contest!

There are four events: Cross-Country, Obstacle Course, Ball Breaking, and Fighting. Cross-Country and Obstacle course play the same-run from screen to screen, beat 'em up style. You can run, jump, climb, punch, and kick, as well as grab weapons to beat on rivals or throw at them, as well as energy drinks to refill your health. You can KO your opponents or race to the end, but you are awarded bonus points for attacking and using items, as well as by your finishing place on each screen and the race. The racer with the most points wins the event. Health matters, as only a small amount regenerates between events, so using characters in their best events is important, especially if you set each event to multiple rounds. The Obstacle Course mixes things up by throwing in environmental hazards, but functions identically.

The Ball Breaking event partners two schools against the other two. The goal is like a wrestling ladder match, but instead of grabbing the belt, you punch a ball at the top of a pole repeatedly. The team that breaks the ball wins, and point are also awarded for violence. The last even, Fighting, is exactly what you think-a free for all four-way brawl. Points for attacks and knockouts.

The game changes significantly if multiple rounds are selected, as conserving health and using characters strategically is a big deal, as some characters are SIGNIFICANTLY weaker than others. Sacrificing a round to save a big hitter becomes as important as beating your opponent over the head with a stray tire.

This game offers 4 player simultaneous play, and makes for a phenomenal party game. Beating a good friend's ass with a pipe during a foot race is hilarious, and the comfortable beat 'em up controls make the game a blast to play, as opposed to the exhausting button mashing similarly themed games present. The PC Engine version offers voiced cutscenes and interludes with intros for each school and joke cheerleader competitions like tug of war add to the festive atmosphere. The game is also on the Famicom and Game Boy, though from what I gather the events are different on the GB version. If you like the Kunio games, competitive party games, or want to try a track event game that is way over the top and doesn't wear your wrists out, I can't recommend it enough. This is not Crash 'n the Boys. It's a lot more fun.

[celerystalker]

7963For years, no console featured a take on the playground classic, Kickball. In Japan, though, the PC Engine got a mascot-themed Kickball game called, innovatively enough, Kickball!

Mascots you say? Oh, yes, but not mascots that most people have any familiarity with at all. Most notably featuring Shockman/Schbibinman characters, in this game you choose team comprised of copies of one character and pit them against similarly goofy teams. Some of the teams are: Shockman, whatever the girl from Shockman is, a weird bodybuilder/wrestler, dolphins, sumo wrestlers, and so on. There are multiple terrain types, ranging from grass to ice, and different teams perform better on their preferred turf.

For the most part, this is a bare-bones kickball game that plays very similarly to most early baseball games such as RBI Baseball. However, each team has 10 power pitches to use in any contest, which differ by team. Sumos and Wrestlers throw super fast, Shockman and Shockgirl's disappear, the dolphins zig-zag. The batter/kicker can use an unlimited supply of power kicks as well, but the timing to pull them off is extraordinarily challenging. Four strikes or fouls and you're out... but if you kick the ball in play, that's where the game gets fun.

There are no home runs. The ball will always bounce back in play, and once you've fielded it, you have two options. One button throws to the base with a corresponding press of the D-pad. The other button throws at the runner running to that base. The throws at the runner are MUCH faster, but the runner has two dodge options-duck or jump. If they dodge successfully and the throw is not online with a base, it will go wild, and they will get extra bases. However, if you play the angles right, throwing at a runner that will be cut off by a fielder standing on a base can help you get force outs.

The game is basic, but it can be a lot of fun for two players or a tournament. Given that the game is by Masaya, I'd have loved to see some Adon and Samson from Choaniki to go against Shockman, or maybe a Langrisser team, but it's still a decent game. In retrospect, this game, while fun but unimpressive today, might have had a chance at resonating in the US on Turbografx had it been given a chance. Sports games were big then with just about all players, and Kickball was a mainstay with the target demographic here... Eh, who knows. Today, though, it can be had for dirt cheap, especially for a loose HuCard, and if you have someone to play it with, can give you a fun afternoon.

[celerystalker]

7964I've spent a lot of time in recent years taking chances on PC Engine and PC Engine CD games with little foreknowledge on what I was getting into. Awesome sites like the Brothers Duomazov offer some comprehensive information on the console, but it's still been a wide open frontier to me when running across games to try. Bakuiden: The Unbalanced Zones is a direct result of taking a blind chance on something without a lot of good info available.

The game prominently features the J-Rock band Bakufu Slump, known for... something, I suppose. That's a cultural gap I haven't crossed. However, cartoon representations of the band crash into the game's main character's room while he is playing video games and send him on a quest. What quest? Good question. I'll let you know if I ever figure it out.

What I CAN say about the game definitively is that it is meant as a comedy experience, and not as a challenge of your reflexes or thought processes. No, this is a direct take on the model set forth in games like Sega's Panic! for the Sega CD (which somehow got remade for PS2, but with more poop...). You find yourself on a screen with an absurd situation. You click on things and cause various comical situations to unfold. Choose incorrectly, and somethine really weird and usually humiliating will happen. Choose correctly, and... well, something humiliating will usually happen, but you'll get to move on. The goal appears to be to complete these "challenges" presented to you to please the toga-clad band members so that they will bless you with their rock and roll awesomeness. To be clear, this is not so much a game as it is a comedy experience, much like Panic!, and is meant for the fans of Japanese-style potty humor, such as Crayon Shin-Chan. You play it to see something stupifying and laugh about it. If that doesn't sound like fun, and I assure you that to most people it is not, then I'd stay away. Far away. If you loved Panic!, though, and have been wondering when someone would pick up its mantle and run with it, well... I'm sorry, and enjoy!

[celerystalker]

7965Treasure Strike for Dreamcast is a real sleeper from KID. The game is a 3D platformer designed with 4 player competitive multiplayer in mind, and it's a wild one.

For starters, you create your character, and it's a handful. Gender, height, weight, eyes, mouth, nose, skin and hair colors, hair style, and so on... and you start with the most basic equipment. You then begin your character's campaign. In this mode, you meet the monarch and get sent on treasure quests against rival treasure hunters, and that's where the basic gameplay model presents itself.

Each hunter starts at their own starting location, and goes into the ostensible arena with the primary goal of discovering the target treasure, which is hidden in a chest in the environment. It is a 3D platformer like Super Mario 64, but there are three colored keys scattered throughout the level. The keys open chests of the corresponding color, and multi-colored chests require keys of each color to open. Brown chests require no keys. As you begin opening chests and collecting treasures, you will encounter your rivals, and try to take their keys and treasures by hitting them with melee and projectile weapons. Your initial weapons suck, but you can upgrade in between missions. If you manage to KO a rival, they return to their spawn point and drop all of their items. Once a character finds the target treasure, an alarm goes off, and everyone swarms to them to try and steal it before they can return to their spawn point. Successfully returning the item to the monarch results in a monetary reward that can be used to purchase new clothes and weapons at the shop... and even better, you can use the other treasures you found at a workshop to create bizarre new weapons!

The single player campaign is essentially a window to character development and customization so that you can then bring it on your VMU to play against other humans, which is where the real fun kicks in. It is an absolute riot to blindside another player with an entirely unknown weapon you built that can't be purchased and see their reaction. The treasures gained in multiplayer tend to be better, and you don't have to give the valuable ones to the monarch. Creating and unweildly blue-skinned bunnyman with a chansaw hand and homing rainbow gun is absolutely priceless when warring against a friend's bald, cross-eyed warrior with a bomb launcher and machine gun. If you can convince other people into playing the game with you and taking the time to make their own characters, it is tremendous fun. Finding four people willing to muddle through the Japanese menus to make this happen is the biggest challenge. If you have friends up to the task or who will at least play with characters you make them, it sure is a blast. The multiplayer is where the money is at, though, so I wouldn't expect to be thrilled playing alone. I love this one, and my brother and I sure shot the crap out of each other a few times. For the record, he was the asshole with the rainbow gun, and I'm still jealous.

[celerystalker]

7966On the Super Famicom, the Itadaki Street games really came into their own. I enjoyed them a ton, and they were a gateway drug into Culdcept for me. The series inspired ripoffs as successful games do, and this one, Super Okumon Chouja Game: The Game of Billionaire came from Takara. This is only notable because Takara in Japan had the license to make games based on the game of life, the Jinsei Game series, and this game tends to get confused in that series, whereas it is actually very much an Itadaki Street/Fortune Street/Boom Street ripoff.

As a matter of fact, it doesn't even try to change much of the established Itadaki Street formula. You still traverse a game board, purchase properties that can be upgraded by investing cash or owning multiples in the same district, and buy stock in those districts to multiply your earnings from investment. Players pay rent when landing on opponent-owned properties Monopoly-style, and collect paydays when they reach the bank.

Where this game differs is that there are no suit squares like in Itadaki that require players to explore the entire board before getting paid. Therefore, optional routes are much less useful, and the investment system can get a little broken if one player manages to get back to the bank quickly. There are a few differing transportation and event squares as well, but even in Japanese the game is very easily understood if you have any familiarity with Itadaki Street.

Honestly, I bought this just to basically play Itadaki Street on new boards, and that's more or less what I got. However, the game is not as well-rounded due to the lack of requirin players to traverse the whole board, and the game does not have any personality compared to its source material. I would only put it as a recommendation for people who just adore Fortune Street and need more however they can get it. I would exhaust the real deal first. There are several good games in that franchise to play before dipping your toes into the deep end of the pool.

[celerystalker]

7968Another PC Engine game that I had trouble finding much on when I purchased it, Nemerenu Yori no Chisana Ohanashi is essentially an interactive children's storybook about a cat and its adventures in town. Almost like a Japanese Richard Scarry game, it uses what I can only assume was a popular children's series as a framework for an interactive experience for very young children.

The game functions like a point and click adventure, only with no real puzzles of which to speak. You simply explore a quaint little town as the cat character, interact with other characters in nice ways, and experience the world of this book series. There is not much "game" to be played here... I get the feeling that it is meant more as a companion piece to the book series for its young fans. As such, I would recommend staying away from this one. It's not funny, it's not a game... It's children's interactive software in Japanese. For what it is, it is quite cute and atmospheric, but the only American adults I can envision purchasing this on purpose with full disclosure of what it is would be collectors looking to complete a library. If you play your games, it's useless.

[celerystalker]

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Dokioki for PS1 is an adventure game very much in the vein of MYST. The screen scrolls one still at a time, but there is considerably more animation in the backgrounds than in MYST. You point and click with a cursor, exploring a truly alien environment, filled with strangely fungal organisms and strange robots. It seems almost as if your character crash landed in some sort of pod and has to figure out what is happening in the world and leave, but I could be wrong about the objective. The game is full of Japanese text when interacting with objects instead of speech, so for a Japanese illiterate like me it's all but insurmountable. I've been able to fumble my way through a large area of the game and explore some sort of underground laboratory, but truthfully I have no idea what I'm doing. I enjoyed MYST a lot, and am a huge fan of interactive FMV adventures like D, Mansion of Hidden Souls, Lunacy, etc. However, the amount of text inovlved in this game makes it more difficult than many others of its ilk in a foreign language, being open-ended as it is. Still, the environments are bizarrely imaginitive, and the world is fascinating enough to explore for a time. I fear that finishing this one will probably be outside of my patience, but if you can read the language or fancy yourself clever enough to complete a game like this in the absence of its clues, by all means, it's nothing if not creative. Otherwise, it's one to pass on.

[celerystalker]

7969Based on the Time Bokan anime/manga franchise, Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo is a vertically scrolling shooter on PS1. This one is not , all that obscure, but there seems to be confusion as to which one is the shooter, and this is it.

The premise of Time Bokan centers around the Doronbo Gang, a comical villain in the Tatsunoko mangaverse typically thwarted by Yatterman or the Gatchaman team. In this game, you control the various members of the Doronbo Gang, choosing a different one of their trademark vehicles (which are comically large and animal themed). One or two players can play simultaneously, rumbling through the levels in typical vertical shooter fashion toward an inevitable face off with one of their rival heroes.

The graphics are very good, with very little slow down on the PS1, even in 2 player mode. The vehicles are very animated, with rumbling and shaking effects telling the tale of their crappy manufacture. The sprites scale well, and the backgrounds are quite colorful.

The music didn't stand out to me, as it is overwhelmed by the action and sound effects. The game is quite fast-paced, and as the vehicles have a large hit box, dodging isn't easy. However, when you take too much damage, the outer shell of your vehicle explodes, leaving your little villain on a bike, shooting partially neutered until the level ends or death overtakes them.

On an odd note, the back cover of the instruction manual is a closeup of a finger poking the Doronbo Gang leader, Doronjo, in the breast. It has no bearing on anything, but I admit I laughed when I opened the case for the first time. It was kind of like when I first opened Super Magnetic Neo on Dreamcast to be greeted by a teddy bear hanging from a noose. Just caught me off guard.

For shooter fans and Time Bokan fans, Bokan to Ippatsu! is a load of fun.

[celerystalker]

7970For people in the know on PC-FX games, Battle Heat is usually one of the first games you get, alongside Team Innocent, being early releases from Hudson that are of the more common games for the system. However, I meet less people who know what a PC-FX is than those that do, so I figure it's worth a discussion, because it, along with the Tengai Makyou game for the same console, are a unique gaming experience.

Battle Heat is sometimes labled as a fighting game, and others labeled as an FMV game. The truth is, it's both! Imagine if you will, a head to head game of Dragon's Lair, where instead of reacting to pre-scripted cues, you react to your opponent's inputs, triggering a back and forth string of cutscenes until one of you screws up, resulting in being hit. That is exactly what Battle Heat is! With art from the illustrator behind Fist of the North Star, one player chooses from the roster of good guys, and the other from the bad guys, and then the game begins. There are weak attacks, strong attacks, special moves, and dodges, and the game displays the attacker's cue to the defender by way of color and speed of lights at the bottom of the screen as the attack animation plays out. If the defender reacts in time, his counter or defense animation begins, giving an even faster return cue. Players react quickly with rock-paper-scissors like commands to counter, and there are secret special moves a la Street Fighter to boot. The play style takes some getting used to but is fascinating to play with a friend. Trash talking quickly ensues, and the experience is memorable.

While there are some rough edges such as repetitive animation, the experience is such a unique one that I would recommend trying it if you get the chance, and if you're a fan of the laser disc games of yore, it's a welcome twist on the formula. Battle Heat represents a wildly interesting evolutionary dead-end, and if you decide to take the PC-FX plunge, it should be one of your early pickups, due to its both being unique and one of the most accessible, inexpensive titles on the system. I've picked up games since, but it's the reason my PC-FX gets the most action.

[celerystalker]

7971Another PC-FX game, Last Imperial Prince represents one of the only action RPGs for the system. The game is a side-scrolling adventure starring the eponymous prince and his entourage on their journey to drive evil out of the land.

Like most PC-FX games, the game carries a heavy anime influence, featuring a lengthly opening and occasional cutscenes. Parts of the dialogue feature large animated portraits of the characters as they speak, and the background graphics are quite colorful, showcasing very rich greens and browns. It's a different color palette than many anime influenced games, showing a more realistic color scheme for building interiors and plants, and it's refreshingly different.

Combat is a little different from any other game of this type I've played. The closest I can say is that it's like a dumbed-down Princess Crown. When you reach an encounter, and they are not random, you cannot progress until completing it. Your party is on one side of the screen and the enemies on the other, and your front character fights their front character one on one in real time. You can block, dodge, attack high and low, and use magic abilities. Each character uses different weapon and armor types, and you can change them out at any time during the battle. When you kill an enemy, the next in line comes to the front and so on until you've exhausted their ranks. Each hit tends to yield cash rewards to collect, and after each brief exploration area you move on to the next town. There is very little backtracking, and the game utilizes almost no vertical space. The game moves along the same horizontal plane the vast majority of the time, and each town is usually comprised of a brief collection of fetch quests and entrance and exit battles.

On another system, compared to a stronger selection of action RPGs like Popful Mail or Legacy of the Wizard, Last Imperial Prince would feel linear and underwhelming, but on the PC-FX it is a rare game with some action and adventure to it, and that's no small find. The production values are quite good, and it gives some legs to a console that could use it. There are way better action RPGs out there, but not on the PC-FX.

[celerystalker]

7972Wolf Fang SS for the Sega Saturn isn't completely obscure, but it tends to get generically described as a Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken clone. Truthfully, this game is similar in concept, but plays quite a bit differently.

Originally an arcade game from Data East, this port was done by Xing and is much more of a horizontally scrolling shooter than an Assault Suits game. The screen auto scrolls, and though you typically cannot fly in most levels, there tend to be background slopes on which your giant robot can slide up and down on, giving more of a flight shooter feel to the game insteal of run and gun. You select your weapon at the beginning of each level, but it's not particularly of consequence, as powerups will drop throughout each level to change weapons at will. Your robot can run, jump, and take momentary bursts into a double jump, as well as collecting comrade soldiers, who will cling to your robot and fire to cover your rear. As you get hit, they fly off, but can be re-collected. You have typical vulcan and laser weapons at your disposal, as well as a swirling shot.

Wolf Fang also differs not just systematically, but also features almost no platforming at all. The game will occasionally change scrolling directions, but is largely flat, scrolling left to right. The emphasis is on shooting and dodging, and dodging is difficult. When you get hit too many times, your robot blows up, and your pilot hops out in a jet pack with a reduced-power version of whatever weapon you had, which gives you one last chance to fight your way through the level without losing a life, which is fun. You can only take one hit in this form, but your reduced hit-box and increased speed make it actually feasible. The order in which stages play out varies as well, as between most levels you have a choice as to which stage to take between a hard and an easy course. Easy courses are of course less challenging, but to get the more satisfying endings, the hard courses must be challenged.

Wolf fang is short, but the varying routes give it a measure of replay. Although the 2D sprites and backgrounds aren't much of anything that the SNES or Turbo CD couldn't handle (actually, given how great games like Gate of Thunder play, the Turbo would probablly hum through this one), but they are colorful, and the action is fast enough that you probably won't be paying much attention. The music is so-so, but the anime presentation with nice portraits of your commanding officers accompanying dialogue are pleasing, though they cannont be skipped. The opening cinema, however, features a more realistic war scenario in mediocre CG, and it feels tacked on and unrelated.

If you're into Saturn shooters, this one's nice inasmuch as that it's a little different from the glut of vertical and space horizontal shooters out there. It's not quite a platformer, it's not quite a shooter... it's somewhere in between, which keeps it feeling fresh and arcade-like. It's very, very short, though, and can be completed in about 20 minutes with unlimited credits, so if you're not going to take the time to complete the alternate routes or try for a limited-credit clear, you won't get much legs out of it. The fact that there is 2-player simultaneous play is a bonus, but just don't expect a ton of actual play time for the buck. I like it, the arcade speed and look are great, and it's not terribly expensive, but it just isn't going to blow an experience shooter fan away.

[celerystalker]

7973Now, I know that both of these games were released in the US on the Sega CD, but this Saturn release has started to command a remarkably high price on the secondary market, especially for being ports of fairly easy to get US versions of laser disc games. This Saturn compilations contains both Time Gal and Ninja Hayate, released here as Revenge of the Ninja.

The biggest difference between this collection and the prior releases would be the video quality. This Saturn version features much clearer picture that uses the whole screen without frames, and the animated outlines are less grainy. The sound quality is also much better, which is of course a huge plus in a game in which audio and visual fidelity comprise 90% of the experience. The input response feels slightly better to me on the Saturn, which is a plus as well.

The games each come on their own disc in a double case. There isn't a ton in the way of extra content or anything... just upgraded ports of some of the better laser discs games to originate in Japan. I'm not sure what has driven the demand and price so high on these... I'm pretty sure I paid $20 for this a couple of years ago for a pristine copy with a free copy of Revenge of the Ninja with a dinged up case. I can't imagine anyone getting so excited as to pay the more than $100 this seems to go for now, but if you can find it cheap and enjoy the laser disc games of the past, these cleaned up versions of two Sega CD "classics" are a lot of fun.

[Edmond Dantes]

Yeah, I noticed the rising prices on Time Gal/Hayate and just had to scratch my head. Sad too as I kinda want that set. Wasn't there a similar one for Road Blaster and Cobra Command?

[celerystalker]

7974Delta Warp for Neo Geo Pocket Color is an interesting little puzzle game released only in Japan. In the game, you play as a small, flipping, triangular tile on a board full of identically shaped tiles. One side is black, and the other is white, and using the thumbstick to move, you flip your tile in the direction pressed. The goal is to land on the black tiles with your black side and the white tiles with your white side, clearing them as you land. Clearing each clear the stage. Pressing the a and b buttons causes your tile to slide clockwise or counter clockwise, allowing you to move without flipping.

As you progress through each stage, new types of tiles are introduced, bringing with them new hazards, such as cracked tiles that break, tiles that switch which color is on which side of your piece, and launching tiles to let you reach upper levels. Yes, some stages go beyond the simple single screen formula, with up to three vertical levels to bounce between to clear all tiles.

Delta Warp uses its hazards well, and stays engaging for short sessions. It can get a little old after awhile, but it changes things up often enough to not lose my attention entirely. It also features a nice edit mode a la Lode Runner, letting you make custom levels to trade or challeng friends with, and a battle mode in which each player takes a color and seems to attempt to string together chains or groups of their color. I'm not entirely sure how this works, as I don't have anyone else with the game with which to try this mode out, so I can't really comment on if it really adds much. If anyone is familiar with this one, I'd love to hear if that mode is fun, as I do have friends with an NGPC I may be able to talk into getting their own copy with a little prodding. As for the single player campaign, though, it's a different type of puzzle game that doesn't involve falling tiles or shooting bubbles, and in that light it's a welcome addition to the small but excellent NGPC library.

[celerystalker]

Yeah, I noticed the rising prices on Time Gal/Hayate and just had to scratch my head. Sad too as I kinda want that set. Wasn't there a similar one for Road Blaster and Cobra Command?

Yeah, I think there is, but I haven't ran across that one. I like the Saturn port, because it really does clean it up quite a bit, and you can mess with the dip switch options as well. The only shame is that all the bonus content like interviews, art, etc. are all in the instruction manual, and are in very small print.

Edit: Double checked, and there definitely is a Cobra Command/Road Blasters set, but it uses the Japanese title for Cobra Command, which is Thunder Storm.

[celerystalker]

7975Langrisser Milennium on the Dreamcast is not so much unknown as it is, in my opinion, unfairly reviled. For anyone who doesn't know, the Langrisser series is a fairly long, proud grid-based strategy series that has spanned nearly a dozen systems and is known for its unique leader/troop movement and attack system, artwork by a renowned hentai artist (I forget the name), and challenging missions. Langrisser Milennium (on Dreamcast, as the Wonderswan version is completely different and more akin to the rest of the series), on the other hand, has been almost universally panned for being, well, a completely different game. I can understand people saying that this game shouldn't be a Langrisser game, but it doesn't deserve the reputation of being an awful game. It's really quite good.

This was one of the first few games I bought for my Japanese Dreamcast in the summer of 1999. I had played Warsong and Langrisser IV, so I was familiar with the name, but what really drew me to purchase it was looking at the back of the case and seeing something that looked a hell of a lot like Dragon Force.When I put the game in my Dreamcast, I had a few quick impressions at the time. One, the blocky 3D characters look like a late-gen N64 game to me. Two, and more importantly, hell yeah, this is a lot like Dragon Force!

After choosing a general (just like, um, Dragon Force) and sitting through that character's opening cutscenes, you are taken to a map screen that is flagrantly reminiscent of said game. A series of fortresses, castles, and cities are spread across a continent with colored flags representing their monarchy, and the routes between them are shown in eerily familiar fashion. You separate your forces into different parties with a leader and up to three subordinates, and move each over the map to challenge the enemy and attempt to take their holdings. When you come into contact with the enemy on a road or in a holding, combat begins, and here's where things get unique.

You are dropped onto a small map of whatever area in which you are fighting, and the attacking army is positioned at the bottom of the map in formation. You have a set of options at the beginning of the skirmish, such as the typical retreal, select formation, etc... and perhaps most interstingly, and option by which you can attempt to recruit an opposing character to join you. This is not a token option, as I was highly successful at recruiting enemy soldiers in this way, which also leaves them short handed on the battlefield. When it is time to choose your formation, attack patterns are shown, looking almost like football plays, showing where each of your characters will go and what route they will take. After launching your attack, you then have full, real time control of your leader character, having the ability to move, strike, and use special abilities to take on your foes. It's fun, quick, and novel, and it never really got old.

That first time I sat down to play the game with my brother in law hanging around, I ended up finishing it in a massive all-day run, as at the time I was 19 and had nothing more important to do. It was a real blast, and while, yes, it was nothing at all like prior Langrisser games, it was fun, fast-paced, and required very little micromanagement. It's a great strategy game for people who like to play, but don't like to spend hours in menus tinkering with stats. It's the closest thing that the Dreamcast ever saw to Dragon Force, and that's how I prefer to think of it, instead of as the black sheep of a once-proud franchise. Also, a complete copy will come with a collectible Langrisser card. Neato!
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[celerystalker]

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A lot has been written about the Super Robot Wars series. Even some of the weirder spinoffs have had some decent mention... even the sumo wrestling famicom game got mention on Hardcore Gaming 101. However, I've not seen a lot mentioned about Super Robot Shooting on the PS1. I got a call that I got a promotion I'd interviewed for last week yesterday, so to celebrate, I decided to take the shrink wrap off of the copy that's been sitting on my shelf for years and see how it is!

Super Robot Shooting is a rail shooter for the PS1, and plays much like Panzer Dragoon or Space Harrier. In fact, it kinda feels more like Space Harrier, as the levels tend to go in a straight line withough too many twists or turns at all. That's not to say they're bland; some levels have some neat hazards such as falling plants, bursting volcanoes, and asteroids whirling in. However, in this type of game in full 3D not using the camera angles to make some twisting and turning for flying super robots feels like a missed opportunity.

The cast of 7 robots is small, but most people can probably find one they like (I bought it to blow stuff up as Shin Getter Robo), such as original Gundam, Mazinger Z, and of course the all mighty Shin Getter Robo. Each of the 7 stages is themed after the universe of each lumbering giant, but can be played with any of them. After clearing each of the seven stages, there is a final boss fight, and then an ending cinema before the credits (I did the whole damn thing in my Getter, because that's what makes me happy).

The game took me about an hour and a half to clear with having to continue a couple of times on my first play. It's relatively easy, but the pacing is fast, and you're rarel lacking things to shoot. Each robot has 3 attacks: a standard shot, a gauge charge attack, and 3 super attacks that function like bombs, so you can fight in a decent variety of ways. The bosses call back to each respective anime, which is fun, and the music reeks of campy '70s robo music. The graphics are crisp and nice, and the stages at least offer a nice variety of settings (snow, space, caves, overrun jungle, etc.), and there's no slowdown anywhere to be seen. It's a fun ride, but there are definitely some missed opportunities...

I already mentioned the flat levels, but there are also not a broad selection of enemies. Each stage seems to have about 3-4 types, a miniboss, and a boss, which isn't awful, but it feels like more would've been nice. A huge missed opportunity is a lack of any discernable scoring system, making actually destroying your enemies feel less important, and if I'm in a giant machine of destruction, I wanna feel like a wrecking ball, not a fighter jet. Finally, there are seemingly no unlockables, no extra modes no options to change... It's just a really bare bones game for what it is.

Despite lacking any robust feature set, the game that is there is a good, solid rail shooter that at least justifies its existence for what it is: a fan service game that actually plays well. Given what Banpresto's track record looks like, that's not such a bad thing. I'd recommend it to fans of super robots or rail shooters alike, but I don't see it winning anyone over if they don't alreay have a predisposition toward at least one of those. I'll come back to it again and play as some of the other robots sometime when I want some shallow fun.

[celerystalker]

7977Now here's one that I've never been able to find much about online, and it's pretty interesting if a little slow. 10101 Will the Starship for PS1 is a starship simulation/RPG that came out in 1997, and probably has the least useful instruction manual of all time, clocking in at a whole 6 pages that say almost nothing useful. If you don't speak Japanese, you'd be hard pressed to glean ANYTHING useful from it, including even how to save or MOVE. However, damned if it's not proud of its voice acting talent.

So, you start on the bridge of your starship, the eponymous "Will," in the midst of a firefight. Fighting takes place in real time. You select your action from choices that include evasive maneuvering, escape, different weapons, and diverting power to shields (healing). Once you select a weapon, you control the on-screen cursor, and you only have a few seconds to shoot. Your cursor blinks when the opposing ship crosses into it, and then you press fire and your shot will home in on it. You are then greeted with a nice opening introduction to your ship and its crew (with more reminders of who their voice actors are), who salute you and leave you in charge.

Once in charge on the bridge, you can talk to your crew members at their station and give them orders. You have various positions like First Mate, Communications, Engineer, etc., who can use various systems, divert power, identify salvage, and replace ship parts. By pressing X, you go to an overhead view of your ship in space, and that is the next part people get stuck on, because your power goes down as you move, and clicking around with your cursor seems to do nothing, and your ship inevitably gets stuck in an asteroid belt, so you push X to go back to your bridge and try to figure out how to turn or save or something until you finally give up. So, if anyone actually wants to try this one, the trick is to HOLD DOWN THE O BUTTON while your cursor is on the direction you'd like to be headed, and your ship will slowly turn! If you don't know that, you might just get frustrated and quit. So, anyway, if you head to the nearby satellite, you can do a few things.

For one, you can spend your currency (VP) you get from battles to refuel your ship. Secondly, you can I believe sell salvaged parts, third, you can SAVE YOUR GAME, and lastly, you can return to the ship.

Once back aboard, you can steer toward various points of interest such as blinking dots to try and capture salvage and explore, occasionally hitting random encounters. To get started, you need to grind for cash around the space station to better your equipment so you can take on better enemies and explore farther out, and that is how you get started in this game. If you just sit on the bridge, you don't use fuel, and will get random encounters on occasion. There may be ways to attract enemies. It seems as though when I have the communications officer use various options, my encounter rate increases, but I am just not sure.

Everything is voiced, and the 2D sprites are a somewhat unique style, with cool art for the anime portraits. There's a pleasant atmosphere, and the soundtrack is okay. I doubt many people have attempted to take this one on, as it's not very accessible from the get go, but there's a nifty little game there for the persistent. Just don't expect any help from a tutorial or the instructions, but someone did post a speedrun video on YouTube from what I've seen. It is super cheap, very obscure in the west, and I'd imagine there's a very limited audience for it, but if it sounds neat to you, hopefully the tips on how to get started can, you know, help you get started. I'll be spending more time with this in the future, because I didn't spend my time figuring out how to play to not try and finish it.

[celerystalker]

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When I was a kid, I really got into SimCity. I always liked building things and seeing the minute details in the graphics moving around on screen. As I got older, I didn't get into the increasingly complex sequels, but I still break out SimCity from time to time. When I was a teenager and got into anime, I started to enjoy giant robots as well. So, when I found Azito for Playstation, a couple of heart strings were tugged, and I had to give it a try!

Azito is very reminiscent of Sim Tower at a glance, with its cross-section view of a mountainside, upon which you can build cities, businesses, etc. However, underneath that mountain, you get to build your giant underground lab, complete with research facilities to start new shell corporations, power stations, and HANGERS TO HOUSE YOUR DAMN GIANT ROBOTS YOU GET TO BUILD TO SAVE THE PLANET!

Yeah, forget the disasters like plane crashes, earthquakes, and nuclear meltdowns of other sims... we're talking giant monsters and aliens attacking, and your base is the first line of defense! Different robots arise from your research. I wish I could get into what parameters lead to what result, but there is a language barrier that makes all of that a little random to me.

Most of the menus are icon based, so it's not too difficult to get started building your base, but for a non-Japanese speaker, a lot of the final options are kanji, and that's where I have to guess and try to memorize results. This can make getting started tough, because running out of money does result in a game over, what with the imminent threats to earth and all. You make your money through your surface companies, so balancing between your underground operations and your surface work is vital to success. You can also sell robots you develop for cash, or trade them with other players on their memory cards.

This was actually the first game of 3 on the Playstation, and the series was recently resurrected on the 3DS in Japan, apparently. This original version features nice anime art, a fun, dramatic opening with robots and kaiju monsters, and nifty detailed 2D sprites representing your creations, with little scientists running amok. I should mention, you do assign scientists to research positions, and in a very basic way have to allow rest periods and manage the occasional interpersonal conflict. Breaks are easy enough, but the only way I found to really solve the conflicts was to reassign scientists to different work areas.

I really, really like this game, but it's still a bit of a crap shoot for me to do really well due to the language barrier. I'd really recommend this to anyone who is a big enthusiast for simulation games if you're willing to suffer through some growing pains in the learning curve and language barrier. It's a neat anime twist on an also-ran genre, and I dig it.

[celerystalker]

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Okay, here's one that just doesn't have a lot of love out there online save for an odd forum post here or there, and that's The Adventures of Robin Lloyd for PS1. The game is a 3D action/adventure from Gust, starring slightly more than effiminate detective Robin Lloyd in 1920s England in the anime syle that British detectives are known for... yep. Anyway, about the game.

This game is mostly an investigative adventure, where you roam about locations such as a museum and a ship (actually, only a museum and a ship in my experience), push O in front of an object you'd like to take a closer look at, and if it has potential, the game will give you a close up of the item isolated against a generic background. On this screen, you can zoom in and rotate the object, scanning it for secret panels, hidden pockets, etc., clicking on anything suspicious until you find an item, switch, or clue. You do this along with speaking to the people around in order to progress through the game until you encounter an Action Scene (capitalized because the game does it as such).

Action scenes are usually boss battles or small arena fights against a group of minions, but there are instances such as falling rocks rolling at you down a hallway Indiana Jones-style, in which you must get... past the rocks. Your nemesis is a man called Colonel Doil, who seems to be motivated by greed to steal artifacts and repeatedly kidnap your even more effiminate buddy Ryile Rockwood. Anyway, one neat option is that at any point, you can adjust the difficulty of the action scenes in order to keep the game moving at your own pace. Anyhow, these scenes are simple, pattern-based affairs that do add a nice change of pace from the investigating that dominates the majority of your play time.

The 3D graphics are decent enough for a late Playstation game, and the music is pretty fitting for the game. There are only the two missions through the museum and the ship it seems unless I'm missing something, as the game ends with a cliffhanger about Ryile going missing yet again. The language barrier is pretty passable by trial and error, though the ship was pretty maddening for me at the very end, trying to figure out what the hell the ghost captain wanted from me, but that's another story. If you knew what you were doing from the beginning, it wouldn't take you but a couple of hours to finish, tops. However, as an import that is fun, accessible, and still not too pricey, it's pretty neat. I don't regret the purchase, though I did cuss for a bit while wandering around the ghost ship at the very end of the game trying to figure out the last couple of things to do. If you're thinking about picking it up, go ahead and do it, Robin Lloyd's a good time. Plus, he has a dog butler named Butler. You can't buy that kind of genius. Or, well, you can. Yeah. Probably on ebay.

[celerystalker]

7980Ninja Hattori-kun for the Famicom is a platformer for Hudson for which I definitely overpaid. I bought it blind at a used game store not having any idea what it was, but seeing its oddly colored tan cart and the Hudson logo, I figured, how bad could it be? Surely it'd be worth the $9.99 I threw at it...

I should stress at the start that this is a very old, early generation Famicom title, and that shows in the rudimentary graphics, simple, looping music, and plain, flat colors. However, that usually isn't a deterrant for me, as I do get some nostalgia for that time period. What I couldn't brace myself for, though, was the sloppy inertia in the control.

This is a very, very straight-forward platformer in which you travel from left to right, attacking or, more often, jumping over enemies as they move toward you rapidly. While you can turn around, the screen does not scroll back to the left, so if you want to get your powerup or attack an enemy, you really had better do so before they get past you, or you're probably out of luck. Your running starts out incredibly slow, and though it picks up with a little forward motion and powerups, it's still awkward in the very least. Yes, you can get used to it and play the game with reasonable skill, but with the quality of games that existed for the system even when this game was new, it's stiff and below average. The way powerups and score bonuses appear on screen out of nowhere, not just from attacking enemies, takes some getting used to, and is somewhat reminiscent of very early japanese arcade platformers. You can take several hits before losing a life, but with the speed at which enemies move, one hit is not usually isolated, as others are very likely to come before you've recoverd from your silly damage animation.

At the end of most levels is a shrine at which you can catch a bunch of score bonuses before starting the next, which for the first couple of levels I thought for sure were just the same level looping. However, if you stick with it, you do get new enemies, new traps and bonuses, and some new backgrounds, so at least that isn't is bad as my first impression was.

I spent an afternoon playing this with my brother once after we had been going back and forth trying to get high scores on Ninja Jajamaru-Kun on the Famicom, and while we did have a few laughs and play fairly deep into the game, it definitely won't be one we end up going back to again. It's just too sloppy and unrewarding to have legs against the vast library of platformers available on the NES, and even though I love Hudson games, this is not one of their high marks. Unless you collect Famicom carts just for kicks or because they're colorful, this one's not terribly fun, and I wish I'dve paid less or nothing for it, as I don't think I got my money's worth out of it, and I don't think I'd have even cared for it as a kid. If you want an old, cheap Famicom game to play for score, I had a lot more fun that day with Ninja Jajamaru-kun, and it was purple... maybe I should've been writing about it all along. :)

[celerystalker]

7981Time for another dip into the shallow end of the PC-FX pool for a game called Team Innocent. This is another of the PC-FX games that tends to be somewhat popular with people when they first pick up a PC-FX, as it is inexpensive, widely available, and from Hudson. However, given that the system itself is an oddity to the west, just about any game not called Zerogair, Zenki, or Chip Chan Kick hasn't seen a ton of writing. So, what in the world is Team Innocent?

Thankfully, this is not a digital comic or an FMV game, but is instead most aptly compared to early Resident Evil/Alone in the Dark games with an anime twist. Because just about everything PC-FX has an anime twist. Everything from pre-rendered still backgrounds, limited resources, and even the now-goofy tank controls are all there in their full glory, only in space and with nifty scaling 2D sprites instead of polygonal characters. You control a team of three young ladies (of somewhat alien origin) who go on trouble shooting missions to various installations and clean out the mutant/alien menace in each, solving mysteries along the way. There are 3 missions to complete of ascending length, and a reasonable time limit attached to each. Overview aside, how is it?

The first thing you'll notice with this game is the startlingly high-quality anime cutscenes, which play clearer and smoother than just about anything you'll ever see on a Playstation or Saturn. This is no fluke, as one of the brightest hallmarks of the PC-FX is its excellent disc access speed, which allows FMV to play particularly well in just about every game. You have a nice vocal song and then a story opening leading into the first mission. The pre-rendered backgrounds have a fun, '70s space sci-fi atmostphere in style and color, and your characters scale fairly well given the amount of angles and animations required to convey 3D movement in what is essentially a 2D game. The controls, while distinctly of the tank model used in most early survival horror games, serve the game well enough, and the action moves at a modest pace. There are a good amount of enemies scattered throughout each mission, and the puzzles, while largely varying takes on the key/door model tend to be understandable enough to prevent the language barrier from derailing the experience of playing. If you've played either the first Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark, nothing about how to play this game will confuse you.

If I have any real criticisms for the game, it would be that it's not really scary in even a remote way, and that most of the enemies are disappointingly small, which makes fighting them less than satisfying to kill. So, while it is lacking in intensity, it does supply a pleasant sci-fi anime atmosphere, which is only amplified by the excellent cutscenes.

The main reason I'm mentioning this game, though, is for anyone who is thinking about buying a PC-FX or looking for something to play on it. It's cheap by PC-FX standards, the language barrier isn't too tough, and the 2D anime flavor really makes it feel like something different from what it is, which is an early survival horror game with all the tropes you've seen before. If you're on the fence about it, I'd take the plunge. There's not a huge amount of games that aren't digital comics or anime fan-service on the system, and this one is pretty fun to play with a unique look, and I don't believe it was every ported elsewhere. Also, it's one of the big box games for the system, for which I really like the packaging. it's just a little different to look at than most game cases out there, and the manuals for them are big and colorful if you're the type of person who enjoys flipping through them whether you can read them or not.

[celerystalker]

7982Sometimes, you search and search until you finally find a game you've been wanting to play for a long time, and you get to fulfill your ambition. Other times, you throw out a 99 cent bid on ebay on something you've never even thought about, but you were bored and your smart phone was in your hand. That was the case when I won an auction for Hello Kitty's Magical Block for the Dreamcast, not to be confused with Hello Kitty's Cube Frenzy. I wasn't sure what I'd be getting into, but now I know, and I'll share. Not because anyone really wants to know, but because I bought it, I played it, and I feel like something needs to be said about it so it'll mean something. What, I have no idea, but maybe something.

So, there are several Hello Kitty-themed games for the Dreamcast, even to the point where there was a custom pink edition of the console itself with the kitty on it released in limited quantities. I'd played Hello Kitty Cube Frenzy on Playstation, and it was actually a somewhat amusing puzzle game. So, how could I go wrong for a buck? It arrived in the mail, and when I got home from work, I slapped it in, and... basically spent about an hour playing around with little more than a flash game.

The basic premise is that of a single screen maze game in which you can push and kick most of the blocks that comprise the maze, which is patrolled by little grey ghosts on a black background, like something out of an old NES game. The goal is to destroy all of the ghosts within increasingly tight time restraints by squashing them with blocks. To complicate things... well, nothing really complicates things. It's an incredibly bare-bones game that feels more like a free cell phone game than a Dreamcast release. The cutscenes show Hello Kitty and friends frolicking in colorful environments before blue block mazes on black backgrounds with grey ghosts take over for the actual play. It's bland on every conceivable level.

It's hard not to get a dollar's worth of entertainment from a video game, but this game truly tests that hypothesis. I don't know if I'll play it again, and I think I'm okay with that, but it felt a little like a wake-up call from a time where I used to buy just about any game that was cheap just because I didn't have it instead of being truly interested in trying it, and that's no way to be for me, at least. Unless you're a Hello Kitty enthusiast, there is really no place for this game in your library. It sucks truck nuts.

[celerystalker]

7983The Dreamcast was a fun time for me, filled with Sega's last age of bizarre experimentation in game design. We were privelaged to the good and the bad in the west, with Seaman, Space Channel 5, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio showing off a creativity no other designer was putting out there. We didn't get to witness all of the wonderful crazy, though, and Roommania #203 definitely beat up crazy and stole its lunch money.

What Roommania #203 is, actually, is some sort of god simulator in which the player controls an invisible entity charged with helping some sad-sack Japanese student get his crap together and become whatever he's supposed to be. How do you accomplish this? By using your subtle influence (also known as throwing invisible ping pong balls at stuff you want him to interact with quickly and rhythmically enough to catch his interest), you coerce the young man into performing various tasks such as taking a nap, drinking water, watching TV, or taking a piss. Yes, urinating. Other times, when he is not present, you can inspect the room in first-person view, read his diary, move the furniture around, or even lock him out of the room, which freaks him the hell out.

The game progresses on a calendar, and you have a range of usually 2-3 days to accomplish a task, which you are given clues for before starting each day. Each day can be selected at either morning or evening, and must be completed at a specific time. You get 3 tries to complete a task, after which you fail and move on to the next challenge. At the end of the calendar, you get an ending based on how well you influenced your unwitting protege by sending him to chatrooms, making him smoke, and making him think his place his haunted, and you get to see if you set him straight or made him into an even bigger loser who wastes all of his time watching professional mahjong matches on TV. Did I mention he loves to watch professional mahjong? 'Cause he does, and the game includes lengthly excerpts of real mahjong broadcasts... it's... breathtaking? Boring? Who knows, but it's there, damnit.

Roommania #203 is nothing if not bizarre, but like Seaman, its charms are counterbalanced by a slow pace and some seriously dull challenges. Its strangely voyeuristic presentation and quirky premise make for a fun diversion, although its slow pace and repetitive play can detract from the novelty over time. Still, if you have a fondness for the time when Sega was throwing every idea they had out there to try to get back in the game, it's a fun little ride that is totally worth a look. Nobody does weird like Sega circa 2000.

[celerystalker]

7984The Lode Runner franchise is not exactly obscure, but this long way down the road sequel hasn't had a ton of conversation surrounding it. Cubic Lode Runner was released on the PS2 and Gamecube in the mid-2000s as part of Hudson's series of remakes and reimaginings of classic franchises, which included Bonk's Adventure, Adventure Island, Tengai Makyou II, and Star Soldier. I picked up the PS2 version many years ago, and it sat sealed on the shelf until one winter's evening after playing board games well into the evening with my brother's family.

My brother had driven separately from his wife after work, so when she left, he and one of his daughters stayed late to play some video games with me, and on those rare occasions that we get to play games late at night, it's time to pop a sealed game and try it out. We chose Cubic Lode Runner, as we had as children spent a fun evening playing the NES version of the original. Expecting more of the same, we popped it in, and were we in for a surprise!

Far more than a simple update with 3D graphics or new levels, Cubic Lode Runner takes the gold collecting, enemy avoiding gameplay of the original classic and moved it into truly three dimensional levels. Using the face buttons to dig in different directions, navigating the levels is as easy and pleasurable to control as its 2D forefathers, and has maddening new twists, requiring rotation of the camera to identify gold buried deep within 3D formations that require some thought to dig through to both collect the gold and escape. The designs are clever and devious, with good enemy placement and well thought out traps. The game even has a fully featured edit mode just like the classic games, and the levels can be saved and traded on memory cards.

This game had us passing the controller back and forth in my basement gameroom well into the night, as my young niece watched on, smiling and occasionally offering her suggestions to puzzles as she played MineCraft on her tablet. We conquered many, many levels before switching games, and it will be one I go back to time and again. In my opinion, it is the crown jewel of the Hudson remakes, as the others just take old games and put the 2D gameplay into 3D graphic models instead of sprites, whereas this truly evolves the Lode Runner franchise. If you have a fondness for the series or would like to try an action puzzle game with its own flavor, I highly recommend Cubic. It's pretty much all in English to boot, so you just can't go wrong on the PS2. I absolutely love this one, both because it's great and because it gave me some fun memories with my family.

[celerystalker]

7985Based on the manga series of the same name, Rokudenashi Blues for the Super Famicom is a fighting game with a little adventure mixed in to twist things up. The game is about a hot-blooded bancho, which is slang for some sort of school bully with a heart of gold; sort of the chief bad-ass who may reign with an iron fist, but also protects his turf and his classmates when outsiders threaten. Your character wants to not only be the best fighter in the school, but the best fighter in the city, and with some help from his friends he might just do it!

There are two main modes in Rokudenashi Blues. One is a simple one-on-one fighting mode that can be played single player or versus, selecting various characters from the manga whose names remain untranslated to me. Your characters are much smaller than those in other fighting games for the system, but they... well, actually, there's not a real counterpoint to outweigh that. The characters are small and somewhat lacking in detail, though each character does have his own distinct look. You have the ability to jump and block, and you have buttons to punch or kick. The real fun, though, comes when you learn how to do special moves, which are not initiated by direction sequences and those attack buttons, but rather only buy certain directional inputs accompanied by a press of the X button. Most are typical quarter-circle moves, and add a lot more depth to your fist fighting. There are no projectiles or crazy supers; the moves in this game are meant to look like high school students with some martial arts or boxing training, and they do very well. The pace is slow but not terribly so, and the buttons responsive enough to be serviceable. However, this mode is frankly dull and unimpressive.

The second, more important mode is the story mode, which plays out some of the storyline of the manga. Your main character works to impress his main squeeze, take on the champion of the boxing club, and fight off local gangs in his quest to become the best fighter around, and he does so in a nice adventure format. You walk around horizontally scrolling areas such as the school building, construction yards, and city streets, going into buildings and talking to people to advance the story, pick up the odd item (most of which only serve to reduce your stamina), and of course get into some rumbles with the local ruffians. While the wandering around and talking serves as little more than a segue between fights, it still gives a relaxing, anime-like feel to the proceedings, and helps you feel more invested in fights that would otherwise feel lackluster. Watching your friends get their asses kicked or your girl get threatened play out on screen adds some weight to the situation that wouldn't come across nearly as well in little between-fight blurbs, and also make the character's motives relatable regardless of the language barrier. It is this mode that makes a lackluster fighting game feel like more of an experience, even if it is ostensibly just window dressing.

I liked Rokudenashi Blues a lot. It's not particularly long, and the 2 player is basically pointless unless you are both fans of the manga. However, the adventure mode adds a lot of personality and atmosphere that can make the single player campaign feel like something worthwhile. It's not really expensive, it's not hard to play in Japanese. What it is, though, is a nice afternoon for an anime enthusiast.

[celerystalker]

7986Before you go thinking about mythical giants, super robots, or megalithic spaceships, let me put any of those lines of thought to bed. Despite the name, Titan for the PC Engine has somewhere in the neighborhood of none of those things. What Titan is, though, is an action puzzle game that plays like some sort of hybrid of Breakout and Gauntlet. Not necessarily the best parts of those games, mind you, but significant pieces.

The game is a scrolling maze game with levels designed similarly to the early Gauntlet games, but instead of a small warrior traversing a dungeon, you control a glowing square that can move in all direction whose purpose is to bounce a ball or balls against all of the breakable blocks in those mazes before a time limit expires. The time may seem limited at first, but leftover time carries over from each level of a given stage to the next, and "T" powerups grant you generous amounts of extra time, so it rarely becomes an issue.

There are other powerups and enemies as well. In fact, there are 2 whole types of enemies, with... not even a pallet swap for either. There are little green caterpillars that move in straight lines from the block they were inside and then walk back and forth along the first wall they touch. But beware, if they touch you, they, they... freeze you for a second, and then you keep doing exactly what you were doing before. You can kill them by bouncing the ball into them. The second enemy is a special kind of blue block with a skull in it. If you touch these with your square, it freezes you for a second again. However, if your ball touches them, it explodes, and THAT is the only other way than running out of time to lose a life. Other special types of blocks can release multiple balls that will careen through the stage until destroyed, one that causes your ball to start spiraling for a limited time instead of moving in straight lines, blocks that give you a one-up when struck, and perhaps most importantly, speed blocks. The speed blocks rotated between green and yellow, and which color is showing determines whether your ball will increase in speed or decrease upon impact.

Your ball will increase in speed gracually with each impact, so at times, the speed decreases are vital. There are 2 powerups you pick up with your square as well. First, as mentioned, the "T" powerups give you extra time. Secondly, there are pentagrams with "B"s in the middle that seem to increase the speed at which your square moves through the levels. Powerups must be grabbed before the last block in the level is destroyed, so grabbing time powerups right away is probably the most important thing you can do to ensure success. You can also go fast enough while holding one of the buttons to stop the ball dead, and it will stay that way until you bump it again.

There isn't much more to say about Titan. There are passwords for cleared stages and some sort of odd sci-fi backdrop that the game posits without ever expounding upon, but really there's you bouncing a ball around a ton of configurations of the same old obstacles. Your ball can only bounce in 8 directions, so the game tends to be overly easy to play and more of a test of your patience instead of your ability to manipulate the game's physics. It doesn't cost much and is a little fun for a few levels, but the lack of any dynamic change throughout the game makes it a lot more dull than it could have been. If you can't get enough of block-breakers, by all means, it's not a train wreck. It's just not amazing at all.

[celerystalker]

7987Terra Phantastica for the Sega Saturn isn't the most obscure game in the world, but sometimes I get the feeling that some of what I've read about it was written by people who looked at a few screenshots instead of actually sitting down and playing it at all. The game is a turn-based strategy game that on the surface looks like it's going to be yet another Tactics Ogre/Shining Force clone, what with moving characters around on a grid, choosing the way they face, using skills and action points, etc. However, this game being worked on by the same folks who put together Dragon Force means that it can't be just another strategy game, and it's not.

As a matter of fact, you can see the same sort of concept thinking when you actually initiate an attack on an enemy soldier, as the battles are far from typical. What happens is that the screen shifts to a diagonally-oriented battlefield with each commander facing each other and surrounded by their lackeys of various troop types. These play out almost like a miniaturized take on Dragon Force, as you select your attack/defense formation, choose to use magic attacks by your leader, and choose what type of attack to execute, where your soldiers will rush in formaction through the enemy formation and results will calculate.

You click through story sequences in between battle missions and sometimes conversations take place on the grid map as well between opposing officers, and these are how the plot progresses. However, what this game is really about is using different types of soliders against those that they are strong against, using your magic attacks wisely, and choosing formations wisely in order to win the fast-paced skirmishes moreso than the class-changing micromanagement of the Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics model. If you'd like to play a polished, unique strategy game that uses more realistic instead of chibi character porportions, innovative battles, and that Sega flare, Terra Phantastica is a lot of fun, and it tends to cost pretty much nothing. I paid $5 for a mint, complete copy, and that's not uncommon.

[celerystalker]

7988D3 Publisher's Simple Series on the Playstation 2 was loaded with a remarkable array of oddities, some of which spun into whole franchises. Others, though, were less original, and rather aped existing franchises in an attempt to cash in on a perceived gap in the market. The latter is where World Champion Dodgeballer checks in.

World Champion Dodgeballer is a truly shameless clone of Super Dodgeball, especially the arcade versions. Kunio's Downtown Nekketsu franchise had been mostly dormant for several years at this point, and D3 had tried the same thing on the PS1 with poor results. So, aiming more toward the Neo Geo game for style and adding some fairly high resolution sprites, this dodgeball game came out considerably better.

When I mention the style of the arcade games, I am not just referring to play, but especially the graphical style. One large character with three smaller cohorts take each side of the court, and three outer court players surround the opponent's side. You can still pass, throw, jump, catch, and execute super throws in the exact same way the Super Dodgeball games allowed. However, this game is made as a world sports contest, so the teams represent and are themed as stereotypes from their countries.

The music is forgettable, the graphics are pleasingly high res, though some differences in each of the small character sprites as opposed to simple clones would have added some personality. The control is pretty well tuned, though it felt to me like catching the ball was a little on the easy side after getting the timing down. Four players can play using a multi-tap, which adds to the fun, and there are three unlockable teams to get from the single player mode.

Whether or not this game is relevant to you hinges on a few factors. If you're fond of games like Super Dodgeball and want some variety with new characters, arenas, and super throws, World Champion Dodgeballer is for you. Likewise, if you collect the Simple 2000 series, it's a no brainer. If you're on the fence, I'll say this: it's quite fun and just as shallow. It works best as a party game. Personally I enjoy it, but in the years since I've had it, it's been relegated to a certain group of friends, and otherwise collects dust.

[celerystalker]

7989The WonderSwan is a handheld I've only spent a modest amount of time on, as I've only stumbled across a handful of games for it in the wild. Still, what I have played has been interesting, and my starting point with the system was Buffers Evolution, which is definitely not run-of-the-mill.

At first glance, Buffers Evolution looks (and kinda feels) like a Sonic the Hedgehog clone. However, digging a little deeper, things start to change. For one, there's a timer that is there to rate your speed runs for each course, which is a primary objective. The levels are less platforming stages, regardless of jump mechanics, and more race/obstacle courses, almost like a mix between Sonic and Uniracers. In each level, about ten parts are hidden that you need to collect to clear the level properly, kind of like Chaos Emeralds that heal you. There are 9 stages to clear, and it seems like collecting all parts within time restraints is how to truly beat the game.

While the Sonic parallels are obvious, the game feels to me closer to Dashin' Desperadoes or Uniracers. I'm not sure if it's hard or easy to come by, as mine came with my WonderSwan when I bought it. What I can say, though, is that it is one of the most playable games I've played on the system as of yet, and I enjoy playing it as a diversion as I'm working through the WonderSwan Macross strategy game, which I hope to give a take on as I get further into it.

[celerystalker]

7990A long time favorite of mine on PS2, Combat Queen is a delightful mess of FMV game for the new millennium. I enjoyed it so much when I first got it over a decade ago that I even opened a short-lived user name on GameFAQs just so I could write a review of it, although I'm pretty sure it's one page that's never been viewed. Anyway, yeah, the game.

Combat Queen is a genre-blending FMV game that puts the player in control of the Combat Queen androids and their sweet pink jeep. There are two main types of play in the game that I've experienced, which are cursor shooting over FMV backdrops and early Resident Evil style horror/adventure stages. Your Combat Queens have an energy bar that has health on one side and gun battery on the other, and energy must be transferred between the two sides to work your way through the levels. The difficulty of these segments is surprisingly appropriate, and managing your energy flow is the key to success. The insectoid creatures you shoot at are superimposed CG over real-life footage of a cityscape. While this sort of concept on the Sega CD or 3DO might've felt... I don't know if passable would be an appropriate word... maybe at least in-step with the technology available, in high resolution with DVD clarity, it's perhaps even funnier in motion. There are boss stages that use what looks like rubber suit monsters that are played much the same way, and it has a very kaiju/super sentai feel to the way everything moves and the footage is shot.

The other adventure levels feature the same old, same old Resident Evil tropes, but are simply levels to complete instead of an over-arching story segment. You have fixed camera angles with what appear to be pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models of the characters that look decent in the way that a good D3 Simple Series game can look good. I found them to be a little slow and dragging after playing the cursor shooting segments, but they aren't unbearable.

I'm not sure who Taito was making this game for, but I can only imagine it was me, as I just like to play oddball stuff when I get the chance. The game does offer a few extras, which are mostly behind-the-scenes footage or just bonus footage of the actresses doing mundane things such as bowling very poorly. Still, even in Japanese the game is very playable, and it allows saving between levels, so it's not such a chore to play through. It's probably an incredibly niche audience that would be interested in Combat Queen, requiring interest in both import games and FMV games, but if that's you, it's probably exactly what you want it to be. It was for me.

[celerystalker]

7991Dragon Drive is a collectible card game from Japan in the vein of the Yu-Gi-Oh or the Pokemon card game in which players collect dragon cards and supplemental support cards in order to play out dragon battles competitively. Like these sorts of franchises, Dragon Drive also had accompanying manga, anime, toys, and video games. Most of the video games are card collecting RPGs of sorts, but this one happens to be an action game by Treasure of all people.

Dragon Drive D-Master's Shot on the Gamecube is a 3D shooter that is mostly arena-based, but does feature some scrolling rail shooter levels. If I was going to compare it to another game, it's actually a lot like Bulk Slash or Virtual On with a dash of Panzer Dragoon. You usually fly around 3D arena levels, destroying all targets and collecting power ups until a boss shows up to try and put you in your place. Most of the usual control elements from these types of game are included-dashing in all directions, automatic melee when in close proximity to an enemy, lock-on, etc. The shoulder buttons are used to go forward and backward, A shoots, B raises a shield, X locks on, and Y dashes. The Z button is used to change dragon forms as you collect the appropriate cards, and the D pad has power up cards assigned to each direction. In the rail shooter levels, the lock on is disabled, but everything else remains the same.

The cards are the biggest difference between this game and other 3D shooters. You can only carry 4 at a time, and they seem to be of three main types-recovery, attack strength, and whatever the yellow type does. Each card has its own artwork and can be viewed in a gallery, as well as in the multiplayer mode, which I still haven't dug very deep into.

There are well done anime cutscenes spread throughout the game, and not just in between levels, as they will sometimes cut in at appropriate moments to add some drama to the proceedings such as boss approaches or story events. The game also comes with a bonus disc that has an introductory episode of the anime to give you some back story. While these are all in Japanese, they add a nice atmosphere to a game that benefits heavily from it.

Your dragon is awarded experience points based on your performance in each stage, which will then allow level ups that increase its strength and stamina. There does appear to be a New Game + option that allows you to maintain your abilities as you play through again, but I'm not sure if there is extra content therein.

There are a couple of other modes such as a Dragon Genome Code thing I haven't figured out and a 2 player split screen versus mode that play like a flight-based Virtual On. There is also a card gallery that allows you to view cards you have encountered in the story mode, which is kinda neat. The graphics are solid if unimpressive, and the music feels like pretty basic J-pop/anime fare. The control is responsive, but the pace is a little slower than some other games of this type.

I like Dragon Drive D, if for no other reason than because it is a fun import exclusive for the Gamecube. Treasure fans will find a pleasant game, but if you're looking for Panzer Dragoon, this isn't it. However, if you've already played the crap out of Virtual On or Bulk Slash and want to try something different, it's a neat little game with heavy anime flair. I enjoy it, anyway.

[celerystalker]

7992I've seen this romanized several ways, so I'm kinda guessing on the spelling here. Anyhow, Hyokkori Hyoutan Jima for the Mega Drive is a truly tough game to get info on. I bought it based on its neat puppet box art and the screenshots on the back with sprites reminiscent of the clay models from Earthbound. So, on to what in the world this is.

Hyokkori Hyoutan Jima is a long running children's show in Japan that largely centers around an island and the pirates around it from what I can tell, and this Mega Drive game is a board game played in that universe. Getting started for up to 4 players, human or CPU controlled, is easy enough, but what to do and what spaces do is the problem. So, I finally sat down to figure it out so I can share it with anyone who wants to know.

Much like Momotaro Dentetsu, the main point of the game is to reach selected destinations first to make money. After all of the chosen destinations have been reached, the player with the most money wins. Simple enough, right? Well, you also have a meter at the top of the screen that holds 10 balls, which can be red or blue, and you get the number of balls times 100 or more every time someone hits a destination, at which time it resets. So, how do you fill it and what do the spaces do?

Red Skull and Crossbones spaces cause a bad thing to happen, typically as a slot machine where you lose the amount of money shown when it stops or a bingo ball where you lose the amount shown times the number of red balls on your meter. Hitting these additionally adds a red ball to your meter.

Island spaces do the opposite, usually gaining you money in the same way, but multiplying bingo ball money by your blue meter balls and adding an additional blue.

Blank green spaces are gambling spaces where you play a simple high/low dice game where you bet 10% of your cash and must roll higher than your opponent to win. These can also cause a red or blue ball on your meter.

White spaces with a P over them are properties you can buy for 10% of your cash, and you collect a toll of around 1/3 of that if it gets landed on, and buying/landing on your own nets you a blue ball.

There are ? spaces that allow you to draw cards that give you items or cause events, and a shop where you can get items like roadblocks or extra dice, and the lighthouse that I'm not sure what it does.

Each turn you can roll or use an item. Once you roll, you can move in any direction, but you must move on a continuous path. You must land exactly on the destination for it to count, and the player that hits it gets a huge reward that increases each time. At the end, extra cash is awarded for certain conditions, and the highest total wins.

So, that is how you play Hyokkori Hyoutan Jima. It's fun and accessible enough to play, but it is random and requires little skill. The language barrier makes using items tough, but not impossible. I don't know that I'd recommend it as a one player game, but if you have friends that are brave or dumb enough to try, there is some fun to be had, and it's cheap.

[celerystalker]

7993Another oddball game I've not seen much mentioned regarding is Deep Sea Adventure for the Playstation. If you look at the back of the case, a few things will stick out to you as they did me, which is what led to my purchase. For one, the back of the case is entirely in English! Second, and even stranger, is the mixture of screenshots to go with that English, which display both 3D submarine exploration and 2D, 16 bit style RPG screens. When I held that in my hand at my favorite game store that no longer exists (cries for a second), I figured that it would be 10 bucks I wouldn't regret. Was I right?

Deep Sea Adventure is the story of a boy named Chris and his trusty submarine, the Seamax. His father has gone missing doing underwater research, and so Chris has decided to start scouring the globe in search of his daddy and adventure. You start in your home town of Poseidenia (not even vaguely clever, but hey), from which you can select various regions of the island to traverse in 2D RPG style. You'll visit shops, buy supplies, and talk to citizens for clues before stepping out into a great big sandbox or exploration. First, though, you'd do well to go underwater from your home dock where you can go through an easily understood tutorial, even if it is all in Japanese that will acquaint you with your sub operations.

Operating the sub is simple enough, but the part that makes this game difficult to dive into is its open nature. You can talk to different people to learn about or be ferried to various locations you can explore, so it's tough to know where to begin. Shopping for weapons and supplies is easy enough, and loading your sub from your dock at home is easy, but when you're in the wide open ocean searching for treasure or clues, it's easy to get a little confused as to what's next. Still, your instruments are easy to read in English, so you'll know what you need to use and when, and you can surface or return to dock at any time in your select button menu, where you can also view a mini map, reload, and check out items. The trick is finding some action.

When you do find action pinging on your sonar, you'll run into giant crabs, industrial mining subs, and according to the back of the case even a ghost ship, so there definitely is some adventure to be had, but you'll probably end up running out of supplies and restarting a few times before you start to get on a roll. You can save easily enough by going home and going to bed, though, so once you find your way, you'll at least be able to keep it going forward.

Deep Sea Adventure is easy to figure out how to play, but it's a trip trying to figure out where to go. Still, if you're in the mood for something with a calmer, relaxed pace with the ability to get you riled up when the time is right, it's a game with some legs, and with its two discs, it has some real length as well. I'd only recommend it to the patient, though. Or, you know, if you're an old submarine pirate looking to relive your glory days.

[celerystalker]

7994Osomatsu-kun is a manga property known for its off-the-wall satire. It had TV, comics, toys, and way too many video games... or... not enough...? Maybe? The Bakuiden the Unbalanced Zones game I mentioned earlier in this thread is a part of the franchise, and this Famicom game, Osomatsu-kun, seems like it might be the first console game based on the property. So, a comedy satire comic adapted to a game. How's that gonna work?

Osomatsu-kun decides to take the whole satirical schtick into games by becoming a parody of a popular genre of the time: the ever popular bane of the importer, the Famicom detective games. In these games, you typically wander around a map, enter buildings whose interiors are represented by a static screen with a character and objects with which you can intetact to advance the story, and click on everything. These games are typically very inaccessible due to being almost exclusively text-based. However, in this case it's slightly more doable due to the property's nonsensical approach to pretty much everything.

First, the interaction menus are easy to understand visual icons that clearly communicate what action you are performing, so even though the story remains a jumble, it's easy to advance. Secondly, the over the top situations and extremely Japanese sense of humor guarantee the game would be a mess of trial and error in any language. Finally, San Dimas High School Football rules.

The first quest is the search for a missing pair of dentures. There are robots, mini-clones, scientists, and buck-toothed stereotypes. You know, the usual folks you deal with when looking for missing synthetic chompers. If that doesn't tell you what you're walking into, this isn't for you. Really, it probably isn't for most, but wandering around town talking to random people, finding $10,000 on a shelf, then gambling it on a rice ball guessing game definitely both recalls the good old days and sends the old detective series up with a bang. I can't say it's for everyone, but I chuckled a bit, for whatever that's worth.

[celerystalker]

7995If that title looks an awful lot like something familiar to you, like, say... JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, then you're right. Le Bizarre Avventure di GioGio for Playstation 2 is a fighter/beat 'em up based on (I think the fifth story arc from) the popular manga featuring the Joestar clan and their struggle against evils such as the vampire Dio and evil psychics looking to use ancient artifacts to rule the world. The characters in the JoJo universe generally speaking have a sort of symbiotic psychic projection known as a "stand" that provides them with immense powers, and these psychic warriors tend to find themselves at odds with one another.

As player, you take on the role of GioGio, whose connection to the Joestar lineage is explained at the beginning of the instructions which are in Japanese, so unfortunately I can't elaborate on the finer details of the story. Anyhow, you start on a train in Italy and find yourself embroiled in a conspiracy involving a group of asexual fighters trying to, to... stop something from happening involving some sort of gold artifact. So, useless attempt at describing the story and setting aside, how does one play in this world?

The game plays out as a series of one on one 3D fights against rival warriors that have somewhat of a beat 'em up feel, despite the lack of generic thugs. You have a moderately limited collection of attacks you can use to conquer your foe, and an alternate set utilizing your stand's abilities. Your goal is typically to defeat your opponent within a certain timeframe, but there are missions with other victory requirements such as simple escaping a chase or holding off an opponent's assault until a time limit passes. For the most part, though, you're really playing an arena-based one on one fighter.

Your primary mode of play is Super Story Mode, in which you control a fighter for a few stages until switching to another character's perspective, at which time your control switches to that persona. Most of the game (if not all, I haven't finished it yet) takes place in Italy, and the stages offer a good deal of variety, ranging from trains to city streets to an opposite side of the mirror dimension where your control gets reversed. Many of the missions require a puzzle solving approach to how to fight or damage your enemy, which provides much of the game's challenge, but you do get to save in between levels.

After completing each mission, you are ranked on a scale of 0-200 based on a combination of how much health you have left and points gained from fighting style and discovering secrets to be seen from exploring the levels or performing certain moves at the right time. Your high scores pile up, unlocking various articles for your gallery mode and eventually "another story" mode after completing the game. The gallery mode allows you to explore the levels in detail on foot without enemies or time limits, view concept art, and view extra action manga sequences that play out like partially animated comic book panels exploding onto a page. You can replay completed levels at any time, which gives the game some replay value in trying to maximize your scores and unlock extra content.

Graphically, Le Bizarre Avventure di GioGio employs cel-shaded graphics that suit the illustration style from the JoJo series well. The backgrounds are crisp and the animation is solid, but the game plays fairly slowly, especially for a Capcom game. I wasn't expecting Power Stone, as that would be too fast for this game, but a little faster pace might've been nice. However, given the puzzle style approach to the fights, sometimes the slower speed is a blessing. The difficulty is generally fair, but I have one big complaint. I don't know if it was because I was playing too late at night or because it's just so unintuitive, but in the mirror dimension, when the control is reversed, only left and right are reversed, while up and down remain the same. This is very counterintuitive and frustrating to say the least, as the character you fight against is very fast and is one of the few that utilizes projectiles, as well as having a throw attack that has animation that takes seemingly forever to finish if you don't dodge it. It was just needlessly frustrating to me, though I did clear it after a couple of tries, but believe me when I say that this fight was more irritating than it needed to be.

Still, most of the game is fun and atmospheric, and you have the option to skip story cinemas with a press of the start button if you aren't in the mood. The feel of the JoJo universe is very intact, and the music is appropriate if forgettable. The variety in the fights keeps the game feeling fresh, and the challenge to reach high score in fights touches the arcade dork in me. I personally really have enjoyed Le Bizarre Avventure di GioGio, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys the property in some fashion. It can also be fun to a non-fan who simply wants what boils down to a competent 3d beat-em-up boss rush, so if you've been thinking about it or that just sounds like a good time, give it a shot. It's pretty neat.

[celerystalker]

7996I bought Puffy no PS I Love You on the original Playstation when I saw it in a store and found out it was a light gun compatible game. This, I think, understandably piqued my interest, as how or why anyone would make a gun game based around J-pop group Puffy (or Puffy Amy Yumi if you will) was completely beyond me. It probably should have beyond Sony/Epic, too, but since it exists and it was cheap, I had to see what the hell happened here.

When you power up the game, you'll find yourself at a menu that is a circle with rainbow rings emanating from the center with four mushrooms bouncing in a circle to the beat of a tympani. You can choose any of the four mushrooms to begin a mini game. Now, I use the term mini game in a very loose sense here, but it's as close as I could come up with.

The first mushroom on the left, you can choose to... watch a Puffy music video!!! By shooting different frames on screen, you change which camera is the primary point of view between the choices of Amy, Yumi, or a center-stage view. You can also just choose to watch the whole thing from a fixed perspective. There are two songs you can watch here, and they... well, they're songs all right!

The second mushroom at the bottom starts a gallery shooting game in which you shoot at soda cans superimposed flying over the background of yet another music video. Shooting red cans is good, and shooting blue cans is bad. Throughout the course of the video, randomly chosen formations of cans will come in waves, such as just shooting a ton of cans, two cannons shooting one of each and you have to hit the red one, or shooting cans in ascending size order. Clearing all of the waves by the end of the music video will win you a brief congratulatory message from Amy and Yumi. Be proud of yourself! The challenge here is non-existent, and the cans look like crummy flash animation, but there is definitely some Puffy playing in the background.

The third mushroom, the one on the right, allows you to-get this-watch two more Puffy music videos in full screen mode! Plus, you can fast forward, rewind, and slow motion the crap out of them! Yeah!

The final and top mushroom is the "Photo Get" shooting game, in which you repeatedly shoot at a static file cabinet to find rolls of film, which in turn unlock still gallery images you can view from a view screen. By unlocking all of these pictures, you... will definitely have a bunch of photos to look at. Yep. Lots of photos.

Puffy no PS I Love You can be played without a light gun as a cursor shooter. Honestly, it's dumb. This is pure fan-service, and its total contents can be viewed inside of half an hour with zero challenge. There is just nothing about it that will appeal to anyone trying to play this as a legitimate gaming experience. You'd probably need to be a Puffy superfan to want this, or an idiot like me who sees something weird and has to try it. I don't love this, but to get my money's worth, I do make friends play it from time to time. I have a lot more forcing others to play to do before I'll be satisfied, though.

[celerystalker]

7997Char De Pudding the 13th found a fortune during the California gold rush. In 1852, he died of a stroke, and for 150 years his treasures have been lying dormant in his mansion. The spirit of Char De Pudding longs to meet another adventurer as brave and perverse as himself, and so he filled his mansion and its grounds with monsters, inviting the bold to seek out his treasure and conquer the Monster Paradise.

Monster Paradise for the Playstation is a board game with RPG elements, not entirely unlike the Dokapon Kingdom games. Up to 8 players can play together, roaming the mansion grounds in attempt to reach the inner sanctum and claim the treasure to win. In the process, they must fight off monsters and each other to win by rolling the dice, finding items, and playing cards to be the one to claim it all.

The intro is in English, so understanding the point isn't difficult, and playing isn't as cumbersome as many other board game style games from this era. There are only 4 main types of spaces-Blue spaces where you gain health, red spaces where you lose health and/or get trapped, green spaces on which you can gain items and cards to use, and portal spaces that advance you to the next area of the map. You must manage your hit points while advancing, creatively use items to advance, and once you get to the star in the inner sanctum, Char will roll a die. If it is a one, you get a shot at a final boss monster to win!

When you roll the dice to move, you can go in any direction to use up the number of steps shown to land where you want. Upon landing, regardless of type of space (portals aside), you will either gain HP on blue, lose HP/get trapped on red, or get an item on green. However, you may randomly be attacked by a monster first, in which case you must battle!

Battles are simple affairs. You can attack, run, use an item, or use a card. Items/cards highlighted in red are for the map only. Cards will do things such as allow you to roll extra dice or escape easily, and I have yet to discover the effects of items, as so far they seem to do little. If you chose attack, you simply roll dice and do as much damage as what is shown. If you roll doubles, you do double damage. Drain your opponent's HP before yours to win. Lose, and you will return to the beginning of the area of the map in which you are exploring and recover a small amount of HP.

Playing cards on the map will take your turn, unless they are movement cards to move a specific amount of spaces. Some cards restore health, control movement, turn rivals to stone, or cause monsters to attack an opponent of your choice. Managing movement versus holding back rivals while managing your HP by landing on blue spaces are the keys to victory.

The game has a cute anime/Halloween vibe, much like games such as Cotton or Harmful Park. Ghosts float about the map, trees have eyes and mouths, and eerie/goofy music plays in the background.

Up to 8 humans can play, which I would imagine could be a great time if you could get enough people interested. As it is, a one player game is not so satisfying, as the computer will flagrantly cheat, as it is wont to do in these electronic board games. I found the game to be a blast, and am dying to get enough people together to really tee off on this one. It is simple and entertaining, and a very obscure game. If you like video board games and want something shallow but fun, Monster Paradise is pretty nifty.

[celerystalker]

7998Cowboy Bebop is basically an anime institution, and this game for the original Playstation was a greatest hits title in Japan. However, I've heard surprisingly little conversation regarding this one given the notoriety of its source material and the immense popularity of the system it was on.

Cowboy Bebop is a rail shooter in the vein of Panzer Dragoon in which you take flight as Spike Spiegel in control of his fighter, the Swordfish II in search of bounties. You have two weapons by default, which are a machine gun and ruby laser, but the weapons can be upgraded with points earned in between levels and switched out with upgraded lasers and missiles. By chaining together explosions and taking out entire formations you increase your score with which to upgrade, and... that's about it so far. I haven't finished it yet.

The controls have some idiosyncracies compared to others in the genre, such as an inverted y-axis, which is adjustable in the options menu, and the method in which you use your secondary weapon. You first press the square button to narrow your cross hair, and then press square and x to fire. Simply pressing x will continue to fire your standard machine gun. Your secondary weapon has a charge gauge that refills within about 3 seconds. Also, using the L1 and R1 buttons, you can initiate rotation and rolls to dodge and fit through narrow canyons, however I have found the maneuver to be largely for show to the point of the game I've reached.

The enemies are blocky and somewhat nondescript, but the familiar character portraits chiming in with concern or adulation during the mission add some flavor from the show. Some of the made up characters for the game, though, feel oddly out of keeping with the tone of the show and closer to the goofier nature of some of the manga upon which it is based. The biggest missed opportunity, though, is the music, which lacks all of the jazz/bluesy flavor of the show in favor of oddly upbeat synth and guitars. It's a waste and takes away from the show's tone entirely. It's a shame, really, as a few tweaks could have really enhanced the feel of this game to make it feel like an extension of the property's universe instead of a rail shooter with a tacked-on license.

Cowboy Bebop is an okay rail shooter that really fails to cash in on an excellent license. It plays okay, but it may as well have just been called Space Fighter and been a Simple Series generic. Even as a rail shooter, there are games with much more action such as Super Robot Shooting, Gamera, or Vanark to satisfy you before settling for this game. As a fan of the anime, I really feel like they missed the boat with this one, but it's not an abject failure. I'm not mad at Bandai, I'm just disappointed.

[celerystalker]

7999When I picked up Namco's Super Family Tennis for the Super Famicom, I wasn't aware that I already had familiarity with the franchise, but it turns out I did. Although the game is a sequel to Family Tennis on the Famicom, it's also cousin to World Court Tennis on the Turbografx.

What that meant to me was a hope that the quest mode of many of Namco's early sports games would be included. I had a blast taking down the Evil Tennis King of Chicago in World Court's Dragon Quest-style mode, and enjoyed a similar experience with Final Lap Twin's racing RPG. Sadly, Quest mode turned up absent from Super Family Tennis. However, a little research turned up Story mode, in which tennis matches are interspersed between grapic novel-like cutscenes to tell the story of a young tennis heroine's journey to the top, accessible by a code. While not as deep as the RPG modes, this does work well, move quickly, add passwords, and give some heart to an otherwise bare-bones tennis game.

The control and strategies used in the game are simple, direct, anf effective, but make playing the computer simple. Hit deep to the back corner, rush the net, and put down a harshly-angled shot that they can't possibly catch up to and you'll make quick work of the game. Multiplayer works more evenly, but there is not a huge variety of strokes to use, limiting the gameplay in comparison to something like Super Tennis.

Graphics and sound are okay. I like the variety of courts and cute background details like time of day, active ballboys, or mountain climbers scaling a cliff. The music, though, is average and repetitive. I didn't feel a ton different using different characters, either, but I did feel like the game was pretty fair from both sides of the court.

I had some fun with Super Family Tennis, but I can't recommend it over other tennis games on the system. Super Tennis is lighter on modes, but the variety of play styles makes it much more fun to actually play.

[celerystalker]

8000I'm sure a couple of people have heard of this one, but on the whole you don't see a whole lot mentioned about Tokyo Dungeon for the Playstation. It's a first person perspective RPG set in a cyberpunk world in which you play some sort of detective attempting to solve a conspiracy by jacking into a Matrix-like virtual reality themed on various cultures to get information, defeat bosses, and progress the story. So...

The game starts with a very high quality anime opening to introduce the setting and characters that is very reminiscent of anime such as Ghost in the Shell or Armitage III. It really sets a great tone, and coupled with the robust and detailed manual, getting you pumped and primed to play.

Naturally, the blocky 3D of the early PSX just can't live up to the exciting intro. You find yourself in a bizarre hub world witha police station, subway station, and the entrances to the various themed worlds. The envirnments have nice futuristic color schemes, but the ploygons are very blocky with splotchy textures. The character models are bizarre and blocky as well, and I'm not sure what the giant bears/furries are about. The tone here is at least vaguely in line with the opening, but soon after that atmosphere dissipates into something... different.

When you find yourself in ancient Egypt or the old west through the virtual reality, the mood really shifts. The plot revolves around people dying while in the VR space, so by diving in you begin to gain clues. There are puzzels to solve all over (incliding a weird English alphabet puzzle that ate up a lot of time), hidden doors to find Wolfenstein-style by clicking along the walls, and hidden level-up teddy bears(?!) that let you access higher experience levels.

Random battle encounters occur in each area with a background reminiscent of the Genesis games Shadowrun or Phantasy Star II. Enemies are themed on the level and fights are one on one. The enemies a large, scaling sprites, but there are only a few different types per area. Battles are fast paced and contain the usual fight/item/escape stuff you're used to, but there are basically only healing items to use here. Attacking is unique and timing-based, in which you use a meter not unlike a golf game to start and stop. The farther along the meter, the more damage. However, going past the sweet spot, which varies in size based on your level, will almost always result in a miss, whereas the sweet spot will incur maximum damage. If you have good timing, it's a cake walk. If not, you are in for a long game.

Your level resets each time you start a new stage, and you have a level cap. Finding the hidden Teddy Bear in each stage will let you level up just a bit more, but that little bit makes a big difference. You must clear each area in order to access the next, so the game is pretty linear. After each clear, you generally get another sweet anime scene to develop the VR murder story until finally taking down the mad man behind it all.

Despite not quite living up to the production values of its packaging and opening, I really, really liked Tokyo Dungeon. It's been a few years since I beat it, but I think back on it fondly. As RPGs go, it's very accessible even in Japanese, and even if it shifts a lot, it offers a lot of atmosphere. Old West, Egypt, Feudal Japan... There's a lot of variety in a relatively short game. If you have any stomach for playing RPGs in a foreign language, I highly recommend it. Even the story is somewhat understandable, and the quick battles keep the game moving. Especially if you like cyberpunk anime, check it out.

[celerystalker]

8001The Cho Aniki series has a bit of notoriety due to its... let's call it slightly homoerotic overtones. Realistically, though, the games are just plain weird. They are the poster child for the cultural divide in video games between east and west, as the mix of bizarre imagery, suggestive posing, carnival music, and arcade gameplay just isn't the sort of thing we put together and then debate its artistic merit. No, Cho Aniki is the most Japanese thing a person can play, and this Super Famicom entry, Bakaretsu Rantouden takes that foreign design and pastes it into one of the most unique fighting games on the system.

In a time when most fighters were putting their own take on Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat to market, Cho Aniki chose to take an adventurous design route and get off the ground and into the air, and before Dragonball Z: Legends or Psychic Force. Familiar characters from the horizontally scrolling shooters such as the well-known body builders Adon and Samson, Elvis-looking ship Sabu, and series mascot Uminin take to the skies once again, using free 8-direction flight to dash about and take each other down, man to oily chested man.

The game controls quite well, if a bit sluggish at first. However, a double tap of the D-pad initiates a dash, and that is where your strategy begins. Dashing about to gain optimal positioning, players will use directional strikes and kicks, Street Fighter-style special moves, and the all-powerful Man's Beam to best their opponents. The shoulder buttons block, B kicks, Y punches, A seems to be involved with grabs. X is used for special things. Oh, and just a tip, if you don't move, the game will automatically center you vertically.

Special moves are regulated by a meter, which starts half full. By pressing any direction and then the opposite+X, the player will pose, which charges the meter. Dashes also consume a portion, as well as blocks. A nearly full meter can be spent to fire the Man's Beam by rotating the D pad and pressing X. If it hits, it's devastating. However, allowing your meter to fully deplete will trigger a dizzy, leaving you prone for about 2 seconds. Balancing your maneuvering, posing, and attacks makes for ab intense, well-rounded experience.

Really, though, if you're playing Cho Aniki, you're probably in it for the weird, and it brings it. The backgrounds are colorful and littered with bizarre details, the character designs are off the page, and the music is dopey and fun. This game, though, is actually a high-quality fighter that actually offers something unique on the system. It's worth a go if you're into fighters or oddities for sure.

[celerystalker]

8002A part of the then-new Sega Ages series, Sega Memorial Selection Vol.2 for the Saturn collects six vintage arcade games onto one disc. These are mostly forgotten games, but a few gained a little notoriety back in the day. So, to judge an old, smaller compilation, I'll get to the games!

First is Samurai, a very, very primitive arena fighter in which rival samurai approach from all sides like the world's slowest Robotron. The focus us on high and low stances from which to defend and strike, almost like a precursor to Great Swordsman or Bushido Blade, and it executes this mechanic well enough. The real problem is just that it's plain slow and boring after just a few minutes. minor variances like shuriken to deflect pop up, but it's just not engaging, even compared to other games of the time.

Next is Monaco GP, which is the best-known game here and pretty much the only home version out there of the original. It feels immediately like Spy Hunter, but has checkpoints and a timer instead of enemies, and you score based on distance traveled. It's very simple, but it is fast and fun, and is even steering wheel compatible. You can really see the roots of later classics like Outrun and Sega Rally in an overhead perspective. I enjoyed it a lot more than expected.

The third game is Star Jacker, a vertical shooter that will bring to mind early games like Star Force or Star Soldier. Your weapon is weak and enemies take a lot of hits, but the hook is your multiple ships flying in formation behind you. In a time before games like Gradius gave us options, this was a unique way to regulate health and firepower. The graphics are small but quaint, and the control is responsive, but it's just reall outclassed by what came later from Hudson and Konami. It's decent, but I wouldn't buy this just to play it.

Up next is Sindbad Mystery, a colorful maze game that reminds me a lot of Crush Roller. You wander the maze collecting pieces of a map that will reveal the treasure. Once you've done so, collecting the treasure will allow you to proceed to the next board. There are of course enemies chasing you, and you can crush them by pushing boulders onto them and dig holes to temporarily block their pursuit. If you like maze games, it's good and rather easy on the eyes.

The penultimate game in this collection is Penguin Land, and you must work your way down vertical levels, safely rolling your egg to the bottom. Honestly, it's okay, but there is a better US Master System version widely available, as well as a PS2 port in Japan on another collection that offers this arcade version as well as a nifty, prettied-up re-make, so this inclusion isn't all that special.

The last game is my favorite of the bunch, and that's Ninja Princess. Much like Kiki KaiKai or Pocky and Rocky, this cute overhead shooter takes you through scrolling levels with your trusty shuriken and invisibility technique, during which you can't attack. The power ups are mainly points, but you can improve your weapon as well by making it larger, faster, and stronger. The levels are well designed, and give you reason to use your invisibility in a balanced fashion. The bosses are small and repetitive, but the game is so lively and has such great personality that it can be overlooked. There was a US Master System version called The Ninja, but it removed the main character for a generic ninja and lost a lot of personality. This is the only compilation with the arcade version, and it's a blast.

Overall, I really played a lot of Ninja Princess and Monaco GP. Star Jacker and Sindbad are fun, while Samurai is dull, and there are better ways to play Penguin Land. If you're a Sega nut it's great. If you like vintage arcade games, give it a go for its exclusives. Otherwise, be aware that these are more primitive Sega games, so don't expect to discover your new favorite if you're not already into these kinds of games. For me, Ninja Princess alone was enough.

[celerystalker]

8003Fantastep is another obscue Saturn game from Jaleco. It's most often mislabeled as an RPG, but I assure you that it's a point and click adventure. You play as a young boy who, upon writing his name on the last page of a storybook, finds himself whisked away to the world within. You then must solve the problems of the characters in order to progress through the adventure of a lifetime.

The game uses fully 3D models for the characters and most objects with 2D scaling sprites in a sort of crayon-drawn style to flesh out the backgrounds. There aren't real textures to speak of, buf the models are solid for the time. The music is appropriately atmospheric, but not in a way that'll make you want a soundtrack.

You traverse a map by pointing and clicking on locations, and when inside, you assume full control of your character. The game is compatible with the Saturn 3D controller, which makes it a little more playable. By pressing B you can run, and A or C brings up your cursor, which will flash when in contact with a manipulable object. Pressing the button again will bring up a menu of pictures showing the ways you can interact. Pressing a shoulder button opens your backpack to select items you've found. It's all very intuitive, and makes the game quite playable even in Japanese.

The game unfolds in chapters in your book, and completing each will take you to a new map, but you can go back. The pictoral menus, flashing cursor, and so far in my experience lack of death make the game easy to play. In fact, it feels a bit like it was designed for children. Still, its sense of whimsy is enjoyable, so don't let that be what puts you off. If you enjoy point and click games, this one's not terrible. I would first spend time with other games for the system like Blazing Dragons, but for a storybook stroll, Fantastep is rather pleasant.

[celerystalker]

8004The Super Robot Wars franchise isn't exactly an obscure one. However, Super Robot Wars: Scramble Commander is such a departure for the series that I think it deserves a little more discussion. If you were to simply look at screenshots or even the back of the case of this Playstation 2 game, you'd think this is just more of the same old grid/hex turn-based strategy. The menus are set up in largely the same style and order of those games even, so it does really give the appearance of the same old Super Robot Wars, just in 3D. It isn't.

Scramble commander is actually a real-time strategy game surrounded by Super Robot Wars trappings. You still control a group of famous anime bots (you start with Mazinger-Z and Mazinger-G), move them around a map, and wipe out enemy forces. However, you give each of your mechanical monstrosities its marching orders in real time, so none of that down time in between moves. You give each a general trajectory toward a location, set default attack weapon in case of enemy encounter, and then move on to thr next, no grids here. As fast as you can command, you can get things going.

When a robot encounters an enemy, it will automatically begin the skirmish. You can intervene with instructions, though, such as changing weapons, using restoratives, or retreating. Multiple machines can gang up on one foe to make short work of them, so positioning is key. Given the individual unit control, it never quite feels like Command and Conquer, but rather more like General Chaos on the Genesis with a bigger map.

Control is limited in a game like this, but the right stick can help you move the camera with ease, and the left will let you swap robots in the direction tapped for a quick switch. It's a pretty intuitive system that makes commanding on the fly a breeze. You can also zoom out to a map, letting you effectively pause to make some rational command decisions.

Super Robot Wars: Scramble Commander is a fun, faster-paced take on a familiar theme that works. I like the quicker battles and easy controls, and who doesn't want to see Getter Robo teach a Gundam or Eva unit how it's done? If you like the concept but hated the lengthly missions of the old series, give this one a spin.

[celerystalker]

8005Sega's Dreamcast was loaded with the idiosyncratic. However, Lack of Love climbs up to at least near the top of the pile, like a tumor on a Seaman's head. A few sites have put out some history on it due to the cult popularity of developer Love-de-Lic, but less has been said about the actual gameplay.

Much like the video game equivalent of a silent film, after a wordless opening cinema depicting a world being terraformed by a robot in a spaceship, Lack of Love puts you in control of an insect-sized organism. No tutorials, no training mode, and no dialogue. You need to eat, sleep, and urinate, and you need to find a reason to exist. So, it's off to explore your little world and find out where you fit into the ecosystem.

By watching how creatures interact and stumbling onto brief interludes that display functionality of the local flora and fauna, you can find out ways to help other creatures or kill your prey. You can at first subsist on plants, but soon it becomes kill or be killed. By performing tasks that define your role such as killing prey or developing synergy within the ecosystem by helping other organisms or producing their food, you will be surrounded by a glowing orb. Gaining three and taking them to some special crystals, you are able to evolve into a more potent life form, and then a new cycle begins.

As you progress and grow, the scale of your universe will change, and you will begin to explore a larger world, but the method of development remains consistent. No one comes in to tell you what to do, and the only cutscenes tend to simply display your new sense of scale. There is no language barrier. There is only the challenge to survive and find a reason to live. On one hand, it can be repetitive and frustrating, and on the other... it's a pretty damned interesting microcosm of life and existence, as well as a thoughtful metaphor to ponder how much of our actions are motivated by survival instinct.

The game is not perfect, and in many ways it's like learning to play Myst: there's a wide open world to figure out without the aid of usual narrative. However, it is nothing if not interesting, and it is quite playable regardless of language. It can get a little pricey, so just know what you're getting, and that's an intellectual adventure or a boring slog of trial and error depending on your point of view.

[celerystalker]

I'm surprised there hasn't been much said about Mario & Wario for the Super Famicom. Mario games are as popular as anything in existence, yet this one was not only left alone in Japan to never be heard from again, but aside from a recent write up on HG101, seems to be ignored by much of the gaiming-enthusiast internet. Even good friends and store owners I've spoken to haven't really heard of this game, which I had figured would be a little more common knowledge.
8006
Anyway, Mario & Wario was made as another selling point for the then-fledgeling mouse controller, even being sold as a big box pack-in like Mario Paint before it. As a premise, Wario, pissed off after losing to Mario in his Game Boy debut, tracks down Mario and pals and starts dropping buckets and objects on their heads, causing them to blindly stumble about and into peril. As the wand-wielding fairy, Wanda (clever), you whip about the screen, placing/removing obstacles tosteer Mario, the Princess, and Yoshi to Luigi at the end of each stage, who is apparently the only person smart enough to pull the buckets off of their heads.

It starts off as single screen danger, but quickly the levels grow into lengthly, labyrinthine traps. You can view each stage in advance of starting to help plan, but once you begin, the screen scrolls around the bucket-headed moron and not Wanda. This forces the player to think about what theycan do as the character moves instead of running ahead, and that's where the challenge starts to pick up. Oh, and you have a time limit to boot.

There are bonus points for finishing quickly, and you can get more time by collecting mushrooms. Coin boxes can be struck to gain coins, which award lives at 100, and collecting all of the stars in each level also awards a life.

The levels are arranged in groups of ten stages, and the order can be selected. As you progress, more enemies and traps arise, and the game does begin to challenge you. At the end of each set of stages, a boss fight occurs, and you get to bop Wario for your troubles.

It's a fun little action/puzzler, and gives you a more compelling reason to own a mouse than drawing weiners on Mario Paint. The game is loaded with English... I don't think there is any Japanese pretty much at all. It's bizarre that it was never ported, as it wasn't a late release, and no localization was needed... just slap the ROM in a US shell, make some cover art, and make mouse owners feel less neglected... but who knows why they decided not to bring it to the English-speaking world. This game isn't rare or expensive, but no one seems to talk about it. If you import SNES and somehow missed this one, pick it up and make your mouse useful for something other than King Arthur's World.

[celerystalker]

8007So, Arkanoid DS came out in the US, and played reasonably well I suppose with its touch screen controls. However, any fan of the Breakout-style games has had years of muscle memory built into paddle controls, and that is what led me to import the controller bundle from Japan when the game originally launched. Years later, people barely seem to remember Square's attempt at relaunching the Taito brand on handhelds, so I wanted to go over this controller for anyone who was curious about it.

The paddle plugs into the GBA cart slot of an original DS, and as far as I can tell, is only compatible with the original-style models, so beware if you're running a more recent system. The paddle sits comfortably away from any obstacles that might impede its use, but being in the bottom center of the unit, it plays more comfortably if set on a table or other surface where you can reach down from above. The paddle is highly durable and spins nicely on bearings as opposed to an old potentiometer with 1 to 1 location and movement. It also has a bit of weight to it, and it feels good to my hand. The outer edge of the paddle has a subtle texture to allow for good grip and feel for precise movement.

When in game use, control is spot on. I can barely express just how improved the feel of Arkanoid is with a paddle over touch control, as the movement is remarkably precise and comfortable. Additionally, the Space Invaders Extreme gamessupport this controller, which while very different from traditional Space Invaders, does add a unique feel to an akready unique experience.

If you love any of these games, the paddle is a must, and for me makes it worth keeping my old original DS very much worthwhile. It gives a considerably greater arcade feel to a portable, and made what would have been a diversion one of my favorite DS games. If you like Arkanoid and don't have this, you are truly missing out, and it will work with the US version.

[celerystalker]

8008Legendary Peach Boy Momotaro has been in many a video game. Mostly RPGs and board games, but a few platformers and such snuck in there. Here I'm talking about Momotaro Dentetsu 12 on the Gamecube, the 12th entry in Hudson's train-based board game from the property. This series is extremely prolific, having originated on the PC Engine in the late '80s. For such a long series, though, there is very little out there to clue us westerners in on how the hell to play it. So, I'm going to put the best explanation I can out there in case you're the board gaming type.

So, for starters, you'll choose the length of the game in years (each turn is a month), select your map, the number of players (along with human or com), and name the players. A tip, when naming characters, selecting alphabets with the shoulder buttons will give you English letters. Done? Now we can start.

Each player controls a train, and a destination is randomly chosen. The goal in the end is to be the man with the most money, and the best way to start is to be the first to reach said destination, so start making your way there. In the meantime, here is what the spaces do. Blue spaces grant you a random amount of cash, and red do the opposite. Yellow spaces grant you a random item or effect, almost exclusively for the better. Stars are shops, where you can buy or sell items. There are property spaces on which you can invest money on shops and housing, which has a year end dividend. Rainbow spaces are teleporters that will zoom you across the map to other teleporters for the low cost of all your on-hand cash, and question marks seem to allow gambling. Then there are the stations, which are your destinations and also work like properties, and some sort of robot factory where you can spend money on a robot, but I haven't completely figured that out yet.

Got it? Okay, so really make sure to be first to hit the destination both for the payoff and for what happens next. You must land exactly on the destination for it to count. Once you do, you'll get a payout, and then... sweet lord. The giant-ass baby known as the god of poverty shows up. He'll attach to one of the other players, usually the one with the least money, or more likely the one farthest from the destination, and every round steal a crapload of money from them. Have him attached too long, and he'll transform. He has three other forms, and you don't want to see them.

There's another baby form, which is gentle and steals less. The other two, though, steal way more, and also cause natural disasters that can cost you more, send you to the hospital, or worse, to hell, where every space costs a ton. So, you don't want this bastard anywhere near you. You can pass him off by touching another player, so playing hot potato there can get nasty and derail you from reaching your next destination, and you want to get there, if for no other reason than to get the jerk to latch on to someone else.

Other random events happen, such as Santa showing up at Christmas to give someone money (I saw him visit someone in hell once... awesome), and minigames of chance that will award someone a ton of cash, so being at the right place at the right time can be a big deal.

That's really it as to how to play. Get money, don't lose it, and use your items judiciously, and you just might win. It's very chance heavy, but it's a blast with friends once the god of poverty makes a mess of things. If you dig board games, give it a go. It's fun and colorful, and since these games have been indecipherable to the west, they don't cost much of anything. I like it a lot.

[celerystalker]

8009I likes me a good light gun game, and my favorite console gun by a landslide is the Sega Stunner for Saturn. Alliterate much? So, having played and loved the Virtua Cops, enjoyed the flawed House of the Dead, and having a quiet fetish for Scud: The Disposable Assassin (I love that friggin' comic. Hippy Haiku, Brother Trucker), I started to meander into the odd end of the Saturn gun pool. Leapfrogging the kusoge classic Death Crimson, I ordered a copy of a game called Mighty Hits. With a name like Mighty Hits, what could go wrong?

I've heard the game compared to Namco's Point Blank, and the comparison is not entirely off base. Mighty Hits is similarly a collection of gun-based mini-games that test a variety of skills such as accuracy, timing, speed, and reflexes. Some of the challenges include popping balloons to steer a hanging toy-man to a raft, shooting fast-flipping portraits rapidly while skipping good guys, a sort of seek & find where you shoot a jug, a "shoot the piece of this creature that doesn't belong" challenge, and many more. Each challenge lasts about a minute and tests a different skill. None of them are particularly clever or amazing, but they are all at least serviceable.

Aesthetically, the game is based around toy characters that are somewhere between Lego people and Playmobil characters. This makes the blocky characters seem not out of place, but at the same time does little to make the game immersive. The music is forgettable but not grating, and the sound effects are acceptable.

When playing, I found the gun accuracy to be spot on, even without calibrating first. There are multiplayer and tournament modes, and the options menus are all in English. While not particularly engaging, it is a quality shooting gallery game if that's your sort of thing, and since Namco didn't love the Saturn, it's as close to Point Blank as you can really ask. I'd waffle a bit on recommending it if the game weren't so cheap. As it can be had for less than $5 and is loaded with English, Mighty Hits can be a reason to bust out the Stunners if they've been collecting dust. Just don't expect anything too, um... mighty.

[celerystalker]

8010Another PC Engine HuCard strategy game from Masaya, X-Serd is a fast-paced, grid-based giant robot strategy RPG. You take control of a squad of machines initially comprised of the titular X-Serd, G-Serd, and B-Serd, which sounds absurd. Your goal is generally to wipe out the opposition forces on maps somewhat reminiscent of Nectaris (Military Madness).

You begin with your ship, and you can select which units to launch. Movement takes place in the same order each round, abd each unit is significantly different in movement and attack options. X-serd is well-rounded, G-Serd is designed with range in mind, and B-Serd is a melee monster.

Like Nectaris, terrain plays a huge role in your success, as you are typically outnumbered, so positioning yourself to have good defensive bonuses while maximizing the effectiveness of your weapon range will make or break you. No running head-long into the fray here, or the computer will shred you. When you attack, your opponent does not get to return fire, so drawing away and singling out your opposition will also serve you well in preserving hit points.

Each attack is accompanied by an anime-style cutscene depicting damage, as well as dialogue exchanges on the map. These look great for their time and play out reasonably quickly, but both can be turned off at any time on your map menu options. The map sprites look pretty good for the time as well, with each robot having its own unique look and color scheme, but the map tile sets are a bit dull in design. The music is pretty basic anime robot stuff, and is forgettable, and the sound effects are serviceable.

X-Serd is a decent strategy game that is faster-paced than the Super Robot wars games, feeling more like Nectaris. However, strategy games on the PC Engine of this ilk are a dime a dozen, whether it's Crest of Gaia, GaiFlame, Nectaris, or Vasteel, there are a lot of options, and this is fairly primitive. If you're an old-style strategy buff who still paints Battletech miniatures, this might speak to you, or if you just go crazy for giant robots. Truthfully, I doubt I'll finish it, as it just doesn't offer much of anything unique or special, but you could do worse for five bucks.

[celerystalker]

8011Want to wrestle? Build up! Cho Aniki: Seinaru no Densetsu for Playstation 2 features one of the catchiest, most surreal, and most homoerotic opening sequences of all time with its insane imagery and snappy rock and roll. Psikyo got ahold of the Cho Aniki license on the PS2, and they took all the practice they got in weirdness from Gunbird 2, ratcheted it up, and took their best shot at perpetuating a series known for its eccentricities more than its gameplay. So, how'd they do?

In this installment, your actual player character is a glob of "holy protein," and your shields and options are the mighty wrestling buddies and weight lifting pals who totally aren't all kinds of gay for each other, the all-powerful Adon and Samson. The game is a horizontally-scrolling shooter, and you start off by selecting what formation in which you would like your muscular man-meat shields to flank you, and then it's off to... whatever the hell it is that allows pissing enemies, spandex clad dancers, and flailing muscle trannies to flourish so well. Oh, and angry squids and fruit, because, you know. That's stuff and things for you.

The game is a passable if low-rent shooter, with generic yellow bullets, bland textures, and jagged edges. The game is not polished. What is polished, though, are two things. First, as mentioned, the opening. The theme song is funny, catchy, and absurd. It'll get in your head. What will scar you is the accompanying imagery of Adon and Samson wrestling in suggestive poses, dancing like Cossacks, and striking mad muscle poses while the camera zooms around their crotch areas. It's like a fever dream of a closeted pro wrestler who always wanted to grow plants out of his head, and it is amazing. My wife sat there speechless with a stunned look on her face during this, trying to figure out why her brain doesn't work anymore.

The second polished aspect of this masterwork is the implementation of the all-powerful men's beam. Adon and Samson have been known to channel their ultimate manliness into a mighty beam that annihilates all in its path. In this installment, Psikyo decided to use technology to create a whole new way to power and use the beam. You must rotate the right analog stick, which will cause you to stop shooting and start swiveling your hips like Rick Rude at pride fest. The faster you work the stick, the faster you flex and fill your meter. When you have enough energy, press R3, and... and... um... I cannot adequately describe the perverse, obscene, amazing spectacle that is the men's beam, but I'll use what words I can. Out of the gaping holes on top of their heads, what in prior games was a beam of energy now spews forth in a hot stream of white liquid. Yes, it's a powerful beam... at first... and then it starts to trickle off... and drip... and finally glob off at the end. Mind you, this is the result of the fiddling you did with the analog stick, and that's why I have this game: to watch the horrified smiles on the faces of friends when they realize that the essentially just pleasured a controller. It is disgusting. And a little magnificent. But definitely scarring.

Cho Aniki: Seinaru no Densetsu is a sloppy game with quirks so thoroughly Japanese that it is a wonderful tool to set a Japanophile straight. Although everything is technically implied and metaphorical, you know damn well what is going on, and it's disturbing. And funny. Don't buy it if you want a good shooter. Buy it if you have a friend who needs to be baffled and made to feel stupid for a minute. It's not a great game. It's not even a good game. It's pretty awesome, though.

[celerystalker]

8012The Rumble Fish by Dimps and Sega for the PS2 is a 2D fighter that just never really caught on. It came out a little late after the Dreamcast/late Neo Geo fighter boom, where classic franchises like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and even Power Instinct were releasing high quality console ports of refined arcade masterworks, and Guilty Gear had just taken a firm hold as the next big thing with its pretty graphics, fast play, and speed metal soundtrack accompanied by a big anime resurgence. So, in attempt to keep up with the Joneses, or, at least, doujin stuff like Melty Blood, Sega dropped this one out there with help from Dimps, who would later work on Street Fighter IV...

The Rumble Fish also features high-res sprites like Guilty Gear, but it is a slower, more methodical beast like an early KOF release. After a cheaply produced anime opening that apes the whole Kyo-Iori rivalry really flagrantly in a manner that reminds me way too much of the Dreamcast KOF '99, the game puts you into a neon-colored world of J-Pop punk kids ready to pop each other one. It all feels pretty generic from a presentation standpoint. Where it gets a little different is in the way it's animated.

You may remember the game Earnest Evans on Genesis, where the game's namesake has each limb as a separate sprite, allowing for very fluid if awkward animation. The Rumble Fish uses a similar technique, and as such provides incredibly fluid animation that makes fights feel different. Also, like Art of Fighting 2, your character will continue to get his or her clothes torn to shreds during a fight, showing tears, cuts, and bruises to enhance the feel of the fight. Honestly, it looks pretty good, but as a player who played a lot of fighting games leading into it, it felt a little wrong. No character had a feel similar to the types of characters I usually play. You could call that a credit to the game's uniqueness, or you could just find it less accessible, which when paired with the game's generic window dressing, makes it dull.

The Rumble Fish is a quality fighter. However, multiplayer is the salvation of these games, and it's not easy to find people willing to put in the time to get conversant in a Japanese fighter that's pretty bare-bones. It looks sharp overall, and the music is a typical mix of J-rock & techno, but the lack of familiar feel will ward off many players. Sure, the controller inputs are the same, but the hit boxes, range, and priority all feel a little off from convention to me.

[celerystalker]

8013There are many, many games based on the Macross license, and they span several genres, ranging from shooters to strategy to action flight sim. There are many scenarios in which you can find yourself piloting a Veritech fighter, and none in which the Minmay attack seems normal... but I digress. Macross: True Love Song on the WonderSwan is closest to a visual novel in overall presentation.

Living the life of a young, fresh-faced fighter pilot, you find yourself in space, meeting girls and officers and defending humanity from the Zentraedi. After the intro, you find yourself at a menu showing days on a calendar and your stats, such as popularity, fighter, and Battroid ability. Each day, an event plays out, and you are given limited choices (usually only one or two) in which to influence the course of the day. You'll meet girls, go on dates, attend training, and occasionally scramble into battle.

The battles utilize a very stripped-down turn-based system, letting you choose what enemy to attack in one on one combat, and then what attack, transformation, or evasion to use until someone dies. While the anime-style cutscenes play out quickly and nicely, the combat is a little rock-paper-scissor-y to be rewarding, and doesn't serve to flesh the game out in a meaningful way.

No, the reason to play True Love Song is just to absorb Macross atmosphere if you don't have better outlets. The dates play out okay, and the character designs aren't terrible... but they don't have a classic Macross feel to them. Fokker would not be pleased. The music is solid as WonderSwan games go, and the sound effects are a little scratchy.

I like the idea of visual novel Macross. The show always had pronounced social overtones that would lend to the format well. However, it feels so stripped down and compartmentalized that I haven't felt a lot of impact from what was happening. It's a decent diversion I guess if you're stuck on an island with a WonderSwan, but it's just not all that satisfying to me in its simplicity. Still, I do like to just soak in the atmosphere a bit, and the box looks pretty slick... I'll just say it won't make new fans, but it won't drive away existing ones.

[celerystalker]

8015Download for PC Engine isn't crazy obscure, and there is a bit of internet documentation out there. At the same time, there are three reasons I want to talk about it. First, it tends to get overlooked for its CD sequel by default, even though I think this game is way different and better due to its aggressive pace. Secondly, trying to Google "Download PC Engine" gets you a billion pages of ROM and emulation results instead of anything about this game. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, most documentation of this shooter that exists focuses entirely on its wanton abuse of the English language.

So, let me get it out of the way. Yes, Download is filled with Engrish that shames even Zero Wing and SNK's masterful mangling of romantic language. Its game over screens, which are specific to the area in which you die, are filled with poor grammar, inadequate spelling, and rampant vulgarity. Quotes such as "Shit. Is this not a great beginning." run on each screen, and are very funny. I won't quote them all, as they are borderline a reward for sticking with the game to beat it.

That said, Download is a truly outstanding horizontal shooter with a lot of unique touches. Some conventions of the time are present, such as choosing between vulcan and laser, selecting sub-weapons, and a lengthly intro. However, its mechanics are implemented more uniquely. You have a life bar. Your weapons downgrade when you're hit by a level. You don't change weapons from powerups. There are only four kinds of powerups total: weapon upgrade, health refill, sub-weapon recharge, and temporary invincibility. Each sub-weapon has limited uses, such as shields, missiles, and chasers, and refills reload your stock. Many powerups if left on screen will cycle through each type, so managing them to fit your needs is a key part of victory in Download.

Another difference is that the game is filled with cutscenes in between levels, and they are extremely well done, especially for a HuCard. There are CD games with less and lower quality. The game has loads of great parallax scrolling and conveys an excellent sense of speed. Enemies take a balanced amount of shots and are very aggressive, but powerups are just liberal enough to avoid Gradius syndrome. Also, as you are in your space bike of sorts, you don't die by touching walls, which is a nice change of pace, and also different for a game of the time is that the level progression makes sense and is in aid of the story instead of being seemingly random tropes.

The graphics are sharp, the music is energized, and the bosses are big. Download hits on all cylinders, yet tends to be overlooked for its more passive successor. Download is every bit as good as Gradius and Salamander. Maybe better in many ways. It deserves to be played, and is a whole lot more than "that game with all the cussing on the death screens." If you play PC Engine and you haven't tried it, you've missed out.

[celerystalker]

8016There are a bajillion games based on Ranma 1/2, a popular manga/anime from the late '80s, early '90s. They span several systems and genres, ranging from the well-known fighters to digital novels to that strange but fun puzzle game on the SNES based around rock-paper-scissors. There are 3 on the PC Engine alone, and each is of an entirely different style of play. While I do like to dabble in digital comics and play a lot of fighters, I was most intrigued by the one simply called Ranma 1/2 (or nibunnoichi as it's sometimes written out). It's the only PCE entry with no subtitle, and the cover has close ups of Ranma's face as both a boy and a girl on a slightly pink background. I'm mentioning this to help disambiguate this one from the others for any fan of the series looking for which is which.

I'll gloss over the story, as it's mainly existing fans who would be looking into this one. This game tells the story of several early chapters of the manga, starting with Ranma and Genma's unfortunate training mishap, leading into meeting other characters like Shampoo and so on. There are well done cutscenes introducing each chapter preceding side-scrolling action stages, which had piqued my interest, as I like both Ranma and a good platformer.

The action stages are very, very brief, which is maybe the biggest complaint about the game, but they do accurately represent the story arc well. Everything is in the right order, and is book-ended by outstanding story scenes that are quite clean for the time. Really, there's literally less than 20 minutes of actual action to play. However, there's a surprising amount of variety involved. The first level is a platformer with fighting reminiscent of Kung Fu. Next is a one on one fight with Genma for training balanced on bamboo, and then a chase scene through town. You get the chance to break water fountains and transform, and then summon Genma to turn you back. It's fast and furious, and a little on the easy side, but I appreciate how much they tried to make the levels represent the action scenes from the show. It just represents the source material well.

I like this game a lot, but I have no delusions about what this is: fan service... but really well done fan service. It's short but sweet if you're a fan. I should mention to any prospective players that you hold the D-pad up and down to vary attacks, and you have a double jump, too, and it's necessary to beat even the first stage. If you like Ranma 1/2, I recommend it. It wouldn't stand on its own as a game without prior interest, though, as it's just too short to amaze, but it's a refreshing change of pace after you've played the Super Famicom fighters to death.

[celerystalker]

8017Psychic Force might have been one of Taito's oddest franchises. The first game came out in the states, as did Psychic Force 2012 on the Dreamcast. There were 3 other releases in the series on consoles, though: Psychic Force 2 on PS1, which is sort of a port of the arcade game Psychic Force 2012EX, Psychic Force: Battle Taisen, a Psychic Force-themed Puzzle Bobble variant, and this game, Psychic Force Complete for PS2.

Psychic Force Complete is more of a compilation disc, which contains 3 games: the original Psychic Force, Psychic Force 2012, and the arcade 2012EX, which was my reason for purchase. I wanted to try this previously unavailable version and see how it stacked up.

If you aren't familiar with Psychic force, it's a one-on-one fighter with characters who fly about in a giant cubic force field, much like the anime X. Although it all appears to be 3D, it's really 2D in practice, though the arenas are large enough that you can play either at a distance or up close and personal. The characters are loaded with attacks, throws, and special moves, and matches between experienced players can get exciting with all of the dashing, firing, and feinting to gain leverage.

Psychic Force 2012 EX is basically the Super Street Fighter II of the franchise. It brings back in characters from the original such as Wong into to considerably more refined 2012 engine, and... that's about it, functionally. There a few tweaks to some move sets, but my friend and I tended to devolve into our typical Might vs Setsuna match from 2012. Graphical differences are negligable if they even exist, and things appear slightly darker to me than they did on Dreamcast. Still, it's the most complete, fully-featured version of Psychic Force availabe, like a King of Fighters '98 Dream Match.

There are a few extras like an image gallery and movie viewer if you're into concept art and the like, and there were 5 releases for this game: standard edition, three versions with covers designed after one of the popular characters, Wong, Emilio, and Wendy, which came with a limited edition figurine of the corresponding character, and a final version with all three figures together.

8239
They're about 4" tall or so.

Psychic Force Complete is not really a new game. It's just one last refinement; an ultimate collector's version for the hardcore fan. Normally I might not recommend something so trivial, but as the special versions can still be had at under $20 at this moment, I say go for it if you like the series at all, or if you have a friend you play unorthodox fighters with... I had a blast.

[celerystalker]

8018I'm going to take a side-step from games for a second to talk about two import exclusive controllers I've had some fun with. First off, the Hori Gamecube SNES-style controller.

I picked one of these up when they first came out a little more than a decade ago when I bought my GBA player for Gamecube. Between the Castlevanias and especially the two Metroid games, I was starting to get a lot of games that wereof the SNES' flavor, as well as a few ports of actual SNES games like Zelda. The Gamecube standard D-pad is tiny and uncomfortable to my adult hands for extended use, and playing Metroid with an analogue stick is downright offensive to me. The now-closed Game Trader happened to have one of these (don't think he reads forums, but Brian's store was pretty much the best thing that ever happened in the St Louis market. I miss that guy.), so I snapped it up.

Honestly, it's a mixed bag. Don't get me wrong, it is a monstrous improvement over the other options. I don't want to give the impression that it is perfect. The high point and most important part is the D-pad which does feel quite spot on to the SNES experience. It's larger than the Gamecube standard, and has almost exact curvature and pressure feedback to a stock Super Nintendo controller. The shoulder buttons feel great as well, so between my left thumb and index fingers, I was thrilled. Where it loses steam is the button layout, which mimics the Gamecube standard aside from Z, which is offset just up and right from the start button (which coupled with select are also a great SNES replica). I mean, they are still A, B, X, and Y... would it have been so hard to use the SNES diamond configuration? Instead, we revert to the less-intuitive GC scheme... Anyone buying this controller is doing so because they prefer SNES controllers. Why leave it in the new style?! Lastly, the back side of the controller angles out on each side slightly, I assume for added comfort. I'm completely indifferent to this, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

None of this was a deal breaker for me; it was just a disappointment. Most importantly, though, the comfortable D-pad makes playing these games feel way better for longer play sessions, and in my opinion it's the best way to play the GBA player.

The Sega Saturn-style PS2 controller, though... that thing is near perfect! It's modeled after the second style of Saturn controller, which got away from the original bowl-shaped D-pad for something more natural and re-shaped the mold to a contour that rests comfortably in your hands. I bought this one with fighting games in mind... I mean, if you're into fighters and are reading an import forum, like me you've probably spent a good amount of time with Capcom fighters on your Saturn, and that's what left this as a no-brainer when I unexpectedly saw it behind the counter.

Just about everything here is dead-on, so I'll focus on what isn't. First, there are both Start and Select buttons in the center now, which is no big deal, as a lot of PS2 compilations use select to pull up menus. Seeing the Playstation logo above them is odd, but that's just because this is an official product. Secondly, the shoulder button are now black (no big deal), and are a tad more stiff than a stock Sega controller, but they still have the same delightful (or annoying depending on your point of view) click when pressed. The face buttons and D-pad are dead ringers in size, shape, and feel, and that's what I'm here for... The Saturn D-pad really felt right to me for all of the fighting game inputs and precise movement in shooters, and this is ostensibly the same tactile experience.

I highly recommend both of these controllers, as they allow an improved, more familiar way to play games of the classic style on their respective consoles. The Saturn controller is near-perfect, but the SNES-GC controller would really have benefitted from a classic button layout. As it is, it feels great on the left and cheap on the right, but that big D-pad was what the doctor ordered for me. I just thought they could use a little writeup, as both are a little pricey these days, so people know what they're getting into before having to blindly drop a steep amount for a controller.

[celerystalker]

8019I love Psychic Force, as I recently mentioned here. What many people into anime probably recognize is that Taito was inspired by Studio Clamp's anime X, which featured flying psychic warriors representing the dragons of heaven and earth fighting for the apocalypse. In the late life of the original Playstation, Bandai decided to make a game based on X, and saw the outstanding template Taito had created. Instead of ripping off a ripoff, why not just pay them to use that engine and create the game for you?

Using the same engine as Psychic Force 2, X takes the high-flying projectile-oriented feel of Psychic Force and outfits it with the license it always wanted. It works. Instead of the likes of Burn and Setsuna, we now have the armies of earth and heaven, with Kamui vs Fuma looming at the forefront. This engine was made for X, and it's another great game in the Psychic Force lineage. Control is responsive, the graphics are an upgrade from the original game, and the cutscenes provided by Clamp keep you involved in the atmosphere.

If you aren't familiar with Psychic Force, it involves psychic warriors flying about a 3D, cubic arena, throwing projectiles and dashing about to get in some melee, grabs, or special attacks. It's all on a 2D plane, but the arenas are large, and the action speeds up with experience. The balance comes from attacks using varying amounts of psychic energy, some more than your initial max. As your life decreases, your max psychic energy increases, so timing is everything. In terms of X, it is straight Psychic Force with the anime characters instead.

I don't want to give away the story, as the anime is good. This game is a bunch of good decisions glued together, and will really resonate with fans of either Psychic Force the game or X the anime. It isn't perfect. It is outstanding, though. If you like either franchise. If you're into either, X marks the... yeah. Not finishing that joke. If it is in your wheelhouse, get it. It's what a licensed game ought to be.

[celerystalker]

8020If you're heavy into PC Engine games, Energy has a reputation. If you're new to the console, this HuCard is something you're going to run across when looking for english-friendly inexpensive imports. The reputation, as you may have guessed, involves being a bit of a pile of ass wrapped in a crap tortilla covered in a light urine sauce. Watching a YouTube video of someone clumsily stumbling forward will only seem to confirm this impression. If you're the right type of player, though, I really disagree, and I'll explain why.

Energy is a sidescroller with an open world, like a Rygar or Legacy of the Wizard (can I say that instead of Metroidvania? I wasn't sure if that was allowed on the internet...). You collect items to increase your firepower and give you abilities that allow progress. It's a formula that at the time in the late '80s was not yet common, and the PC Engine library certainly isn't replete with them.

That said, on to the bad. The game scrolls like ass. It's one screen at a time like the first Zelda, but it can take 3-5 seconds at times to change screens. On a HuCard, that is insane, and a mark of bad programming. Enemies don't always appear right away, yet must all be cleared in order to move onto the next room. You get one life with no continues, and the game is quite brief (it can be completed in under an hour if you know what to do). How could I recommend it to anyone?

Honestly, to your average player, I wouldn't. There's a lot here that doesn't work. However, if you grew up playing a ton of NES games beyond the classics, you probably learned a lot of patience, and came to enjoy a lot of lovable crap. If you enjoyed the likes of Dr Chaos, Goonies II, or Spiritual Warfare, you may just have a new buddy for your fledgeling PC Engine collection. The modern, apocalyptic setting is a nice change of pace for this kind of game. The control, while floaty, can be mastered and become comfortable. The language barrier is minimal, the puzzles generally make sense, and the sprites, while poorly animated, have some 8-bit character, and are quite colorful. The music is... well, let's not talk about that.

Energy isn't for everyone. What it is, though, is inexpensive, playable with no Japanese language skills, and has some charm to those nostalgic for the age of 8-bit action adventure games that are rough around the edges but lovable. I'm in that camp, and if you are, you might have a little fun for the less than five bucks it'll run you most of the time. Just don't misunderstand, this is an unrefined mess of a game. I just like it anyway.

[celerystalker]

8021I really, really like side-scrolling adventure games, especially from the NES. Goonies II, Dr. Chaos, Rygar, Legacy of the Wizard, Battle of Olympus... you name it. So, when I discovered Kemco's Space Hunter on the Famicom, I got excited. For one, I tend to like Kemco's slightly sloppy, yet well-meaning efforts like Kid Klown or Lagoon, so that caught my attention. Secondly, that '80s anime sci-fi art is something I friggin' adore. Neon green and red lasers, metal ships that are slightly blue in color... it's something I get wistful for. So, I put it in and started to explore the galaxy.

As a female cyborg or robot with a jetpack, you soar from planet to planet in a galaxy, each its own maze. Each maze is a simple square overall, and contains a special item or two such as health and weapon upgrades as well as items that give you abilities like being able to function under water. Items and special weapons consume energy, which can be replenished by collecting restoratives dropped by enemies. You can leave a planet at any time and come back later if you're stumped or don't have what you need, but when you defeat a planet's boss, you must escape the system before it explodes a la Metroid or Air Fortress.

Each maze is divided into single-screen rooms reminiscent of the labyrinths at the end of each world of Kid Icarus, and interspersed throughout are doors. This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the game, as instead of dungeons or mazes in these doors, there are simple one screen room with a couple of enemies to kill, an item, or the level boss. There is essentially no challenge in these segments, and they don't serve to extend the game's depth, which makes it feel a bit more shallow. Still, nearly every single screen in the planet has a secret of some kind to discover by shooting around, which is cool, even though most of what you find this way isn't overly important. Still, it makes you feel more like you're exploring, which is neat.

The graphics are early generation, akin to the original Zelda, or maybe more closely to Lode Runner for the NES. No real shading and sprites are all pretty much one square in size, but that only adds to the charm of the time for me. It would have been nice if the various planets had unique or more distinct tile sets, as everything in each world is a bit generic, but it doesn't kill the experience, as the game is rather short. How short? I finished the very first day I got it back then, and in about 3 hours for that first playthrough without any help. It's an easy game.

Space Hunter is good fun, but lacks depth overall in comparison to many other games of its ilk on the NES. It has a nice password save with brief passwords that use English characters, and the password is displayed at all times. I like the theme, which is eerily like Guardian Legend, but less refined, and the aesthetics of the game encapsulate both the feel of early black box NES titles and mid-'80s sci-fi anime, which are both hooks for me. It's typically under $10, so if you like any of the other games I mentioned here and are considering it, it's likely for you. Just don't expect to really sink your teeth in, because it'll be over before you know it.

[celerystalker]

8022Some say that Jimmu Denshou for the PC Engine is from the early days before Wolf Team got really good. Others would say, "Wolf Team got really good?" The game generally has a reputation as a third-rate Space Harrier clone aside from a fairly positive review from The Brothers Duomazov. I generally like quirky games that get mixed reviews, so I decided to give it a whirl. So, is this samurai-themed into-the-screen scaling action game a misunderstood classic, or was it just thereto make Sega's Super Scaler games look even more awesome?

You play as a samurai out for blood, and you rush forward with your sword flailing. I must start by saying that to get any enjoyment out of Jimmu, turn off the automatic running at the title screen, or prepare to be frustrated. There, now that it's playable... well, it's sort of playable. You have a very short range sword attack that you will usually die while swiping away. You need to destroy statues to get powerups that enable projectiles, and then... THEN the game starts to feel like something you can take a bite out of... and then you decide you'd like to dodge, and the game rears its ugly head.

When running into the screen, things seem okay. The simulated scaling isn't the worst thing ever, some of the backgrounds are okay, but when you move left or right, everything disappears and is redrawn. It's so jarring that it completely takes me out of the game. 3D World Runner on the NES can handle this. Space Harrier on the Turbografx can pull it off. Jimmu can't, and it's just sloppy, and really breaks up the flow of the game.

If you can ignore the broken movement, the game is serviceable if sloppy, and extremely challenging, especially since you lose your projectile when you take damage. Jimmu Denshou demands a combination of patience and willingness to ignore glaring scrolling issues to be playable. I love Space Harrier, and there are much better rip-offs than this to play. I like the cover. I like Wolf Team. I don't like Jimmu Denshou.

[celerystalker]

8023Strider for PS3 is not an import exclusive, but what is exclusive about it is that in Japan it had a physical release on a disc. I as a rule don't pay for download-only games, so I was excited to get the opportunity to pick up and play this one. Given that it's widely available on PSN in the US, I won't spend much time on gameplay and just focus on the packaging and extra perks so as to help anyone interested decide if they want to go this route.

As far as the game itself goes, it's fast like Strider as a 2D side-scroller, but borrows heavily from Metroid in its open world, power-up driven advancement, and map design. It's a little linear in that it kind of holds your hand with objectives, but so far I really like it a ton. The areas are big and loaded with unlockables like bonus training missions and concept art to discover. The Japanese disc is still all in English, and I don't see much of anything in the way of in-game extras.

For the packaging, it's a standard PS3 case with nice if a bit dark cover art. The disc itself has a rather plain label that is nothing particularly special. On the back side of the cover slip is some art to view through the transparent case and a PSN code for a free download of Strider 1 and 2 from the Playstation Network, but it has to be used in the Japanese PSN Store, so if you don't have access to that itvs not much of a perk. The instructions aren't so much in a manual as a small fold-out pamphlet, and while it's in full color, it's underwhelming.

So, is it worth it? Well, for me, yes, because I like physical copies of my games. It's loaded with English text and speech, and the game itself is really cool. As far as bonuses go, the PSN codes for Strider 1 and 2 seem a little odd to me, as people paying for a physical copy of a game they could just download cheaper probably would prefer that content to be included on-disc, but that's more of a personal stance. The packaging is nothing special overall, so I would only recommend importing this if you're a Strider collector or, like me, you just really prefer your games to be in your hands. Either way, though, if you like Strider or Metroid, I'd give it a look, whether it's on PSN or you import a disc, as it's just a neat game overall.

[celerystalker]

8024The PS2 is a wonderland of arcade compilations, many of which run brilliantly with few if any notable variances from their arcade originals. Others, like SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1, are lousy with slowdown and glitches not in the originals. ADK Tamashii is a collection of 5 mostly expensive Neo Geo games, some of which haven't appeared elsewhere on console, and all of which run like a champ! The only real difference is the sharpness and color of an RGB monitor, which is to be expected in these compilations. There are no online functions unlike many of the other Japanese Neo Geo ports, and has very little (read: pretty much nothing) in the way of extras. So, why would a small, 5 game compilation be worth it? Mainly because this is by far the cheapest way to play most of these games. So, I'll talk about each game so anyone interested can decide for themselves. As a side note, I own or have played each of these extensively on Neo Geo AES or MVS, and I'm really impressed by how much better these play than most of the other Neo Geo ports on the PS2

First off, Gan Gan, also known as Aggressors of Dark Combat, is a one on one fighter that plays mostly like a belt scroller. The character sprites are huge, and the animation is okay, but the overall gameplay feels a bit slow and clunky to me. I like the inclusion of Fuuma from World Heroes as a neat little crossover as SNK/ADK so often did, but as a fighter the freedom of movement this game offers actually limits technique to me. It reminds me more of an arcade wrestler like Slam Masters or Fire Suplex than a 2D fighter. It's not terrible, but it isn't engaging to me. On the plus side, it's like somebody decided to remake Pit Fighter as a playable game, if you'd prefer a more glass-half-full approach.

Next, Ninja Combat is a belt-scrolling beat-'em-up that sets out to redefine the term "quarter muncher." Your main characters are shuriken-slinging ninjas who can also dive about and charge up to release magic attacks at the cost of a significant portion of your health. It starts out easy, but the difficulty quickly ramps up to ridiculous porportions. There are powerups for your shuriken and weapons you can pick up, but they're slow and mostly useless. The shuriken are way more useful. In the first few levels, you'll beat mid-bosses who become selectable at the next stage. Personally, I found Joe and Hayabusa, the default ninjas, to be superior due to their range and versatility. The unlockable characters can't use the extra weapons, though their default attacks are stronger. The main issue with this game is that it is a bad combination of absurd difficulty and length. It's a long quarter muncher with unlimited continues. It's not deep or fun enough to keep me interested in developing any technique, and it's so repetitive that I lose interest long before the end. I've played through it on both Neo Geo and PS2, and it's only one I can stomach every so often. My nieces and nephews even get bored with it. The first few minutes are fun, and then it falls flat.

Ninja Masters is the missing link between Samurai Shodown and Last Blade. It's a solid 2D fighter that perhaps misses a little in personality. Its tone is darker, like Samurai Shodown III, but it can be played more aggressively than either of those other series, which I actually really appreciate. I get sick of Samurai Shodown's defensive, pick-your-spot counter-based gameplay, but I love its aesthetic. Ninja Masters gives me that with a faster, more aggressive pace. I dig it, but it's nothing incredible. It's good fun, but super pricey on real hardware, especially in Europe on AES.

Ninja Commando is a mighty little overhead run 'n gun starring Joe from Ninja Combat in what is basically Mercs with Ninjas. The reviews on this are a mixed bag, but I love it. You dodge maneuver is accompanied by a reverse-direction attack, which is useful, and the weapon gains power by rapidly pressing fire. This isn't so bad on PS2, but it kills your hands on Neo Geo. The game is of a reasonable length, has loads of varied enemies, and big, bad bosses. Of note, on an English language Neo Geo, you get some hilariously translated blurbs by your status bar reminiscent of River City Ransom, but this version is only in Japanese. I personally rate it up there with Shock Troopers 1 and 2 as phenomenal run & guns on the Neo, and this port does it justice.

Lastly, we have the wonderful Twinkle Star Sprites. This is also on Saturn, Dreamcast, and if I remember correctly it's unlockable on its sequel, The Petite Princess on PS2. If you haven't played this game with friends, you're missing out. It's a competitive vertical shooter where destroying chains of enemies unleashes fireballs on your opponent. These can be shot back even faster, and shooting them a second time when they're returned sends a character-specific special attack at your foe. It'd a split-screen affair not unlike a puzzle game, and the action gets frantic fast. You have bombs, a charge shot, and a meter for said charge shot filled by killing enemies that when filled, send a boss their way. There's a little more to it, but really, 2 player competitive games rarely reach these heights. Twinkle Star Sprites is fantastic. Ask anyone.

This collection of games is small, but would cost a small fortune to get complete on AES. Heck, even the ports on other systems or Neo CD don't come cheap. If you are interested in any of these games, this is as cost-effective as it gets on a physical disc or cart. I highly recommend it to Neo Geo fans who want an alternative to taking out a second mortgage.

[celerystalker]

8025When I first finished Keith Courage in Alpha Zones on the Turbografx-16 years ago, it told me it would see me in the next Keith Courage adventure. I truly enjoyed (and still enjoy) Keith Courage, so I was always disappointed that there was no follow-up. Many years later, I learned that Keith Courage was the localized name of a licensed game in Japan based on the manga/anime Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. This immediately got me thinking... maybe that sequel was in fact out there, but I just didn't know what to call it. Thanks to the internet, I was able to secure not just one, but four other games from the franchise. This, though, was the first, and it also had Hudson's involvement... and Westone. Wonderboy Westone? It was time to track down some games.

These days, I own all of the Wataru games, and Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru Gaiden on the Famicom was the first sequel, having come out only a couple of years after the PC Engine original, albeit on older hardware. This game is a little more action RPG than the first, and if pressed to make a comparison I'd liken it to Zelda 2 or War of the Dead, in that you traverse an overhead map, and random encounters take place on horizontal action screens where you fight in real time. Actually, it's super close to War of the Dead, as you traverse dungeons in an overhead perspective as well as the overworld. You travel from town to town, save at inns, buy weapons and items, then fight your way into new areas. You gain money and experience, allowing level-ups for progression, and killing a boss will usually get you whatever story item you need to keep things moving. The action scenes all take place in your robot, or the Nova Suit as I willingly choose to believe even though I know better now.

The overhead graphics are extremely similar to the NES Final Fantasy games in overall look. Your single-tile character (let's incorrectly call him 'Keith') walks around with his blue hair (huh?), little legs taking way too many steps per tile. It's pleasing enough to look at, and the backgrounds look great with a reasonable amount of detail and nice colors. The music is only okay, and the tracks are so short that they loop too quickly. In battle, you character is quite a bit larger, as are the enemy sprites. Really, many of the enemies would be at home in a Wonderboy or Mega Man game. There's again nice detail, but everything is a bit small.

Control-wise, the overhead scenes are fine if sluggish, but not Dragon Warrior slow. In battle, control speeds up nicely, and hit detection is great. You don't have long range at first, but it is consistent and reasonable enough to be played with skill. Bosses are fairly large and fun to fight, but with a little leveling the game gets easy.

I haven't finished this one yet, but I will. I hear there's a translation patch out there, but I'm playing on the Famicom cart. The weaknesses I've seen are the short, looping music, a rather small inventory to manage, and slow walking speed. Otherwise, it's a neat little action RPG that has a little bit of that Westone/Hudson charm of the era that I just love. There's a lot to like here, and for a Wataru fan, it's a nifty sequel, and way more playable with no Japanese skills than, say, the two Game Boy games I'll go on about later...

[celerystalker]

8026Meta-Ph-List for the original Playstation is a real sleeper that very few people seem to talk about. It's a vertical shooter that gets all but ignored by the shooter crowd and import crowd, and it's tough to say why. Maybe because it came out at the same time as Final Fantasy VII. Maybe it's because it didn't come from some developer like Treasure or Toaplan that gets fans of the genre riled up. It's tough to find anything more than the odd forum post regarding this game, and the general consensus seems to be that it's firmly mediocre. I want to say that I love Meta-Ph-List, one of the few games that really changed my mind about what it is after my initial impression.

Initially, the game feels a bit "eh," as it has some blocky sprites and polygons, generic looking enemies, and decent if plain orchestral music make the game open with a resounding whimper. It doesn't seem like anything special as you select your level from a map of the galaxy. You swoop in, kill some enemies, fight a boss... but if you stick with it, and you get into the systems, there's a shooter that breaks away from genre conventions and becomes, in my opinion, something special.

For starters, the game is a hybrid shooter/RPG, where you can select and replay levels in just about any order, more becoming available as you clear bosses. You have three weapons, a vulcan shot, lasers, and missiles, which you can scroll through at the press of a button. As you kill enemies with each type, you gain experience, and at every 10,000 that weapon will level up, becoming more powerful and expanding its array. Lasers penetrate through enemies to hit others, shot is slightly more powerful but stops on impact, and missiles... they lock on like your laser in the RayForce series, hitting enemies on upper or lower planes. Each weapon is situationally useful, and there's no throwaway. You can occassionally nab a powerup for one of them, which for a brief time powers it way up, causing your shots to become enormous, screen-filling waves of doom. Speaking of waves of doom, you also start with 3 bombs, or as they're called in the manual, "Go2Hell" attacks, which lay waste to the enemies on screen beautifully.

All of this may sound a little like a poor man's Radiant Silvergun, so onto another change: you rotate a cursor around your ship with the L1 and R1 buttons, allowing you to focus your fire in any direction, much like Zero Gunner 2. It apparently can also be controlled by mouse, but I didn't test this method. So, between dodging, positioning your ship, and switching weapons situationally, there's always a lot happening to keep you engaged.

The enemies and backgrounds seem to suck at first, seeming like generic shapes and backgrounds that might be comfortable in Xevious. However, upon returning to stages, you'll find wildly varied backgrounds and more enemies that will make you feel like you're assaulting different parts of the planet or fleet... because you are. See, each mission selected is treated like an individual skirmish, which you can win, lose, or draw, depending on the conditions you meet, which brings me to your HUD.

In the top-left corner, you have two important meters. On top is your shields. Lose them by being hit too often and you die, time to start the whole thing again, so don't let that happen. Below that is your shot power, which depletes as you hold down fire. If it runs out, your shot becomes slightly slower and less potent, but letting off for a second or so will allow it to refill. In the top right, you have a Hit Meter, which goes up and down based on the amount of enemies you've shot down or let escape. Based on the mission, you have higher or lower thresholds for success. In the blue, you win, in the orange, you draw, and in the red, you lose the skirmish. Winning skirmishes allows you to open new areas or find data logs, which advance the story with new cutscenes. Below that is a boss damage meter, which should be obvious.

There are 2 discs of war to play through, and the difficulty ramps up at a comfortable pace. Continuing to replay old planets will allow you to build up your levels to allow you to move on at your own pace. The story scenes and opening are subtitled in Japanese, but the entirety of the voice acting is in english along with the menus, making the game more than accessible to Americans like me. I wish you could save between missions, but it seems you only can after clearing the galaxy. There's also an expert mode I have yet to try.

Meta-Ph-List takes a lot of ideas from a lot of places and pieces together something unique and fun. Its production values aren't super strong, but the control, difficulty curve, and scope set it apart. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who just discovered shooters. I'd recommend it to anyone who has played just about everything out there, and is looking for something familiar, but different enough to defy direct comparison. It's inexpensive, english-friendly, and plays well. If you want something off the beaten path, try Meta-Ph-List.

[celerystalker]

8027Like a lot of people out there, I love Makaimura (the Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise) games. Ghouls and Ghosts, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins... love to play them. I'm also a long time fan of The Incredible Machine on 3DO (there are a bunch of other versions, but that's the one I've had since I was a teenager). So, when I discovered that there was a fully licensed Incredible Machine set in the Makaimura universe, I had to try it out!

Nazomakaimura: Incredible Toons is available on the PS1 and Saturn, and I own it on PS1, so that's the version I'm talking about here. If you aren't familiar with the concept behind The Incredible Machine, the objective is to complete Rube Goldberg machines using the materials alotted in order to solve a puzzle. In this case, you are given an objective to complete, but your chain reactions will be set up using characters, enemies, and settings from the GnG universe in order to eventually rescue Prin-Prin from the evil Astaroth.

Graphically, the game looks like someone took Makaimura and scaled it down to about Lemmings-size, and it looks pretty good. Little deformed Red Arremers and the like are cute and are used in roles that suit their attacks from the parent franchise. The puzzles are largely single screen affairs, and everything is well-animated with an appropriate level of detail. Arthur will wait impatiently and stomp his feet or polish his armor when you mess up, and the death animations are very cartoony. It definitely translates the GnG world into The Incredible Machine gracefully, which gives a fun, Halloween-like atmosphere to the game.

The music is an appropriately bizarre set of remixes of familiar Makaimura themes that series fans will love or hate. If you've ever wondered what Ghosts 'n Goblins would sound like as reggae or smooth jazz, you're in for a treat. Personally I was amused, as I find it very relevant to the experience of putting a notoriously difficult platformer into a wildly different puzzle framework. In my mind, it truly fits like a glove, though, I'll never enjoy it as much as the original scores.

Difficulty is hard to generalize in this case. Figuring out what your objectives are, even in Japanese, is rarely difficult, but those unfamiliar with The Incredible Machine games may experience some disadvantages in understanding how things are likely to interact or what the typical goals might be, so if you think it sounds neat but lack prior experience with that series, you may do well to familiarize yourself with one of the entries or knock-offs, such ad Mechanic Master on the Nintendo DS. In my case, I found it fairly intuitive, and had a lot of fun figuring out what new characters would do to make their wrinkle in the puzzle.

If you're really into either franchise, Nazomakaimura is likely to make you a happy player with its combination of fun puzzles and fan service. Because of the nature of the game, it retains more of the GnG feel than say Sakura Taisen Columns or Kirby's Avalanche, and doesn't feel exactly like the other Incredible Machine/Toons games. The goofy objectives, funky music, and silly cutscenes really make this stand out amongst licensed puzzle games. It does lack some of the extra modes like a puzzle editor, but there's still a full-size game to play here, and since you can save after each level, it never gets too frustrating. I like it a lot, and much like Mario & Wario, it's a Japanese exclusive spinoff of a major franchise that gets oddly ignored. Fun game, but don't bite on the $60+ buy it nows out there. It can be had fir $30 or less still on either system with a little patience.

[celerystalker]

8028Super Dimension Fortress Macross for the Sega Saturn is one of the 4 billion Macross games to have come out on every system from the Famicom through the PS3 and everything in between. Buying anime-licensed games can be a mixed bag without doing your diligence with research, as they can vary in genre from digital novels to strategy to shooters, and Macross games run the gamut. This two disc set is a (usually) horizontally-scrolling shooter based on the original TV series, and it's an interesting one.

The game opens with some excellent quality animation straight from the show, and it's a good portent for what's to come. Super Dimension Fortress Macross is filled to the brim with animation from the anime, and it's what really fills up the discs, so don't expect a lengthly campaign just because there's a second disc. What it does is set the tone for a very accurate re-telling of the Macross story and provide in-the-moment context for each stage, which replicates a Valkyrie skirmish from the program beginning with the escape from Macross Island and on into space to battle the Zentraedi. Essentially, you get to relive the story you know by playing the battles in context.

So, how are the actual gameplay segments? Fun, but brief. You control your Valkyrie in battle, swooping, firing, and transforming. You have machine guns, a few bombs, and the trademark Macross missile trails scorching the skies. The missiles work like a simplified Galactic Attack or Panzer Dragoon, where you hold down the button to lock on and release to fire, the difference being that the lock on is automatic with no cursor to run over your foes. So, you'll always be holding down the button until your missile meter fills and unleashing fury. Enemies appear on multiple planes, so your missiles will be your primary damage dealer. The result is the chaos of war unfolding in hectic fashion, yet the overall challenge being quite low.

Your ship is large, but has shields, and it's quite easy to stay alive. You can transform into all three forms in you Valkyrie Fighter, but some stages restrict you to specific forms. Hybrid form allows varying firing angles and more missiles, but gravity will pull at you if you're not in space. Battloid form can only fly in space, but can fire in the most directions and launch the most missiles. There are cool moments like where the fortress transforms, and your screen orientation switches direction to vertical and diagonal scrolling while you try to fend off Zentraedi invaders, or an enemy boss moving into the background while the view sweeps behind your back for a head-on firefight. The action keeps a great pace, but it rarely taxes the player with any real threat.

Super Dimension Fortress Macross is brief but fun, and sort of reminds me of the Ranma 1/2 PC Engine platformer with its staying true to its source material while being heavily imbalanced with more cutscene than gameplay. There is more substance here, but it's still more show than game. What game there is, though, is quite fun if a little pixelated. The production values saturate the game with atmosphere, but I feel like there are a few missed opportunities to mix things up... maybe a platforming segment when stranded with Minmay in the bowels of the fortress or something might have given some interactive flavor to the proceedings. Still, this Saturn edition is a great send up for fans of the show or people who enjoy shooters but find many of them to be too tough. I should also mention that with 2 discs, you'll need a modded or Japanese Saturn to play the second disc instead of just a cartridge. I like it a lot, especially for the inexpensive price tag.

[celerystalker]

8029Ok, time to get weird. Shi Kin Jyo for the Famicom is a puzzle game of sorts from the animation studio Toei. Like most people who get into imports, I occasionally pick up small lots. Typically, there may be one or two games I really want surrounded by a few others I either don't know about or already have (in which case I give the doubles away to friends and family who love games, but don't often have a lot of cash to blow on silly imports), and in this case I was picking up a copy of Konami's renowned Getsu Fuuma-Den, and this odd green cart was just in the mix with a couple of future giveaways for my brother. The whole lot was cheaper than just Getsu Fuuma-Den, so there was no risk involved... but I didn't realize I was in for a real treat!

At its core, Shi Kin Jyo is a Sokobon-style block pusher, but with super duper heavy Japanese overtones. You play as a Kyonshi (a hopping asian vampire who sucks chi) trapped in a temple full of giant mahjong tiles. In each room, you must solve the puzzle and escape to the next room, Lolo-style, but without enemies. Typically, this involves pushing 2 or more matching tiles together to clear them, though clearing all tiles is far from a pre-requisite for completing a level; you simply must clear a path to the exit and walk through it.

Things are rarely simple, though, as there are wrinkles beyond tile matching. Some tiles cannot be moved, and any tile that comes into contact with one turns into one as well, making these your biggest threat for having to restart a level. Also, there are invisible mazes and invisible teleporters on occasios to throw you for a loop, making you rethink your prospective route strategy. These are rarely frustrating, though, as the first option in the pause menu allows a quick restart. These elements all come together in a cohesive picture that presents a reasonable challenge for those up to the task.

Presentation-wise, the music is a little repetitive, but the one tune you hear over and over isn't particularly grating. The graphics are quite simplistic, but effective enough, and the giant mahjong tiles are reasonably ornate. The game does quite well in presenting an extremely folksy-Japanese atmosphere that helps set this game apart.

Overall, I was thrilled to death with Shi Kin Jyo. I sat and played more than 60 levels when I tried it for the first time, as it is quite engaging. The menus are not English friendly, but are navigable enough, and the actual gameplay transcends language, making it a breeze to pick up and play. If you like overhead room-based puzzlers like Lolo or Sokobon, I whole-heartedly recommend this for the all but nothing it costs. What a nice little surprise it turned out to be!

[celerystalker]

8030862886298630
Odo Odo Oddity on the original Playstation is a quirky little game that is probably closest in nature to a rail shooter, though it is definitely not one. In an age where most developers were looking to be dark and edgy or push polygon counts as high as possible, Odo Odo Oddity took a completely different approach: super bright happy colors and tone, scaling sprites instead of polygon models, jaunty music and a laid back pace make this game the antithesis of your typical rail shooter.

As some sort of magician, you float through the stages at a lacksadaisical pace on 3 balloons, holding on with one hand and swinging your magical rod with the other. Your rod has a limited number of magic shots to begin with, and that number is increased by picking up talismans. Those talismans can also be used to temporarily dash into the foreground, allowing you to dodge nearby hazards. Getting hit by enemies or obstacles will remove a balloon, so three hits and you're done. If you run out of magical ammo, you can still swing your rod like a bat. You can also hold down the attack button to charge up some kind of powerful swing with orbs rotating around your character.

Movement and pace are what makes Odo Odo Oddity so different. You tap the d-pad to move not your character, but more like a gust of wind on the balloons as you sway underneath them. It's quite a challenge at first, as planning movement for the horizon is more important than reflexive twitches and a quick trigger finger. This game is slow and methodical, so choosing your position and a good sense of timing trump a quick thumb.

The levels are long and segmented, and there is a boss at the end of each. The boss fights are rather arduous if you don't have the ammo saved up, which means more dodging and less attacking en route. It's very inside out compared to typical design, and it's an interesting change of pace. The challenge level is high at first, but it's so cheerful and comfortable that it's hard to resist coming back again.

This feels more like a weird Sega project than something that would pop up on Playstation. It's colorful and quirky, and it doesn't pop up for sale very often. It's not expensive, though, so if you want to play something whimsical like Nights into Dreams that is full of children's book-like feel instead of darkness and drama, take a look at Odo Odo Oddity. I like it a lot.

[celerystalker]

8031Hebereke, also known as Uforia in PAL regions, is a pretty well-known and popular import platformer from Sunsoft on the NES/Famicom that commands a fairly high price. What isn't discussed as much is that Hebereke kind of became Sunsoft's mascot unofficially in the '90s, and that there are quite a few games starring the characters that jumped onto the scene back in that venerated release. Popoitto Hebereke is one of those many spinoffs (also in PAL regions as Hebereke's Station or Hebereke's Popoitto), and is part of one of the puzzle group of spinoffs that started on the Super Famicom. The version I'll be writing about is for the Sega Saturn.

Popoitto Hebereke is essentially a minor evolution of Dr. Mario in which the little buggers you need to eliminate move around until you land some pieces on them. Your falling pieces may resembles puyos, but they act like the pills in Dr. Mario in that they don't fall apart when hanging off of the side. You have 2 part groups of blobs that drop from the top of the screen in mixed and matched colors (with the occasional flashing blob that acts as a wild card that matches everything), and you must group 4 in a row or more in order to pop them and clear your playfield. Chains results in higher points, and in versus mode make things worse for your opponent. The other twist aside from movement is that when enough pieces accumulate atop one of your creatures to eliminate, it will fall down until hitting the bottom of the screen or something else to support it.

So, in a nutshell what Popoitto Hebereke is is a slightly more chaotic Dr. Mario on the Saturn and Playstation with a nice versus mode and a story mode with cute little cutscenes to give it personality. I'd say more about it, but there's not much else there. Good production values, cute characters, and a minor evolution of a successful franchise... it's a cute, fun little package, even if it's not entirely original. If you're an old Dr. Mario pro, give it a whirl to see some fun wrinkles on an old standby. It's pretty neat, and can be had for less than $5 regularly on ebay, and it's easily worth that. Puzzle fans should dig it.

[celerystalker]

8032Time for more of the Hebereke gang! Mario started off in platformers, and so did Hebereke. Mario went off into the Tetris fever to be Dr. Mario, so the Hebereke gang followed suit with Poppun Hebereke and Popoitto Hebereke. So, when Mario went and did Mario's Picross and Mario's Super Picross, Sunsoft knew what the Hebereke gang needed: O-chan no Oekaki Logic, their very own picross game! Now if only they had a racing and fighting spinoff (spoiler: they do)...

So, yes, O-chan (the kid in the tanooki costume) from Hebereke is the face of O-chan no Oekaki Logic, and it plays just like every other picross puzzle game ever made, so I won't waste time with a "how to play" on this one. If you don't know picross, it's a logic puzzle with some similar elements to Minesweeper, but without the random guessing, and you create apicture on a grid based on the numeric horizontal and vertical clues provided. These puzzles can be simple or taxing, but most people find them to be a pleasant exercise. Like Mario's Super Picross, you can play with a mouse if you so desire.

Presentation-wise, this one is pretty run of the mill. The music is peppy but forgettable, and the nature of picross really limits what can be done graphically. However, they did squeeze in a lot of color where they could, and the puzzles get larger in scale than those found in Mario's games. Where they really tried to change things up was wirh modes of play.

There are 5 main modes of play in this game, which is a big shift from Mario's 2. First you have story mode, where O-chan travels about the island, conversing with other characters and solving puzzles. Next is a rather different 2 player mode, where you and a friend are each alotted about 30 seconds/turn to pick a square to mark. Once you choose or run out of time, it switches over. It's a strange a possibly unnecessary way to play, but with just the right friend I'm sure some fun could be had. Third is puzzle mode, where you can go down the line, taking on puzzles without cutscenes in attempt to set the best time record in each, complete with initials for every puzzle. In a competitive home, this is great, or if you just want to take on some puzzles without the lengthly cutscenes of story mode. Fourth is challenge mode, which is just like the last, but with huge, expert-level puzzles starting at a 20x20 grid. Finally, there is an edit mode. I don't see myself using this ever, really, but it's there if designing picross pictures is your thing. All of these modes give you a lot of content and puzzles to ensure you get your money's worth.

Overall, this is another solid release in the Hebereke franchise, and another that is very accessible regardless of language skills. There is a ton of content, an upbeat, colorful presentation, and it costs very little (mine was about $3). If you like or think you might like picross games, O-chan no Oekaki Logic is a no-brainer. It's simple fun and brings another style of puzzle to the Saturn. These Hebereke games really show Sunsoft making a run at building a quality franchise in the late '90s!

[Dire 51]

I've been quietly following this thread for a while, but I finally felt the need to post a reply.

Ever since getting the majority of the Famicom games that I've wanted, I've been keeping an eye out for lesser-known/virtually-unknown-outside-of-Japan games that aren't too Japanese language-heavy that I wasn't previously aware of. Your post about Shikinjou, which I'd never heard of until you posted about it, intrigued me enough to go do some more research on it. I was sufficiently intrigued enough to buy a copy (and you're right, it's very inexpensive - scored a CIB copy for a little under $15).

After playing it, I have to say that you're 100% correct. It's loads of fun, and well worth the price. Thanks for the heads-up!

Now back to quietly following this thread. :D


Ok, time to get weird. Shi Kin Jyo for the Famicom is a puzzle game of sorts from the animation studio Toei. Like most people who get into imports, I occasionally pick up small lots. Typically, there may be one or two games I really want surrounded by a few others I either don't know about or already have (in which case I give the doubles away to friends and family who love games, but don't often have a lot of cash to blow on silly imports), and in this case I was picking up a copy of Konami's renowned Getsu Fuuma-Den, and this odd green cart was just in the mix with a couple of future giveaways for my brother. The whole lot was cheaper than just Getsu Fuuma-Den, so there was no risk involved... but I didn't realize I was in for a real treat!

At its core, Shi Kin Jyo is a Sokobon-style block pusher, but with super duper heavy Japanese overtones. You play as a Kyonshi (a hopping asian vampire who sucks chi) trapped in a temple full of giant mahjong tiles. In each room, you must solve the puzzle and escape to the next room, Lolo-style, but without enemies. Typically, this involves pushing 2 or more matching tiles together to clear them, though clearing all tiles is far from a pre-requisite for completing a level; you simply must clear a path to the exit and walk through it.

Things are rarely simple, though, as there are wrinkles beyond tile matching. Some tiles cannot be moved, and any tile that comes into contact with one turns into one as well, making these your biggest threat for having to restart a level. Also, there are invisible mazes and invisible teleporters on occasios to throw you for a loop, making you rethink your prospective route strategy. These are rarely frustrating, though, as the first option in the pause menu allows a quick restart. These elements all come together in a cohesive picture that presents a reasonable challenge for those up to the task.

Presentation-wise, the music is a little repetitive, but the one tune you hear over and over isn't particularly grating. The graphics are quite simplistic, but effective enough, and the giant mahjong tiles are reasonably ornate. The game does quite well in presenting an extremely folksy-Japanese atmosphere that helps set this game apart.

Overall, I was thrilled to death with Shi Kin Jyo. I sat and played more than 60 levels when I tried it for the first time, as it is quite engaging. The menus are not English friendly, but are navigable enough, and the actual gameplay transcends language, making it a breeze to pick up and play. If you like overhead room-based puzzlers like Lolo or Sokobon, I whole-heartedly recommend this for the all but nothing it costs. What a nice little surprise it turned out to be!