What is your most RECENT import? Post often!

[Spartacus]

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizzvm.jpg



Syvalion is a 1988 Taito arcade game ported to the Super Famicom in Japan and also to some PAL regions. The coin-op intro begins "After generations of being under the stifling rule of the Evilonian Empire, a successful raid on the Empire's armory has put the world's most powerful weapon in the hands of the Earthlings. The SYVALION Attack Fighter!..."
The world's most powerful weapon turns out to be a flame spewing metallic dragon! YEEESH!
Syvalion is a rather unusual game because it's free roaming in a sense, yet requires navigating your way through a labyrinth of alleyways to meet up with an endboss within a set time limit. An arrow conveniently points you in the proper direction at all times. The entire maze is filled with enemies and obstacles to overcome, yet stopping for any length of time to fight is strangely discouraged by the sudden appearance of giant metallic skulls that persistently swarm you, causing serious damage, until you run away! The only weapon is your dragon's halitosis, which not only destroys enemies and vaporizes incoming shots, but can also be used to move or deflect some objects impeding your path. A meter on the screen show's how much flame you have left and by simply by keeping the SYVALION moving you can quickly refill the weapon. The SYVALION Attack Fighter is a strange craft with a long supple body that bends around corners in a snake like fashion and behaves much in the same way a slinky toy does. Move forward rapidly and the ship becomes quite elongated. Come to an abrupt stop and about all that can be seen is the SYVALION'S bulbous head! It is extremely well armored and can sustain quite a few hits before turning it's gold color to red, signifying it's impending destruction. You can use the R and L buttons to spin the head and become a flaming pinwheel of death!

What I Liked: There were some interesting looking enemy characters, though I wish they were a bit more animated. There are three different modes of play in the Super Famicom port. The normal game that you would have played in the Coin Op, a second option use's different mazes and randomizes the order of the endbosses, and finaly there's also a time attack option that I don't think has an endboss, but lets you roam as long as you can for a high score.

What I Disliked: Though the SYVALION handles suprisingly well considering it's size, the alleyways can be quite narrow and bouncing off walls is an all to common occurrence and can be quite frustrating because any contact with ANYTHING is damaging. There are only five levels/endbosses to the game!

GAMEPLAY: 6
GRAPHICS: 6
SOUND: 6
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 0 (All Japanese)
OVERALL: 6
Syvalion is supposed to be an unlockable game in PS2's Taito Memories Vol. 1 compilation and the music was composed by the same fellow who did Metal Black and Border Down more recently.

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizxc9.jpg

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizxpe.jpg


Acrobat Mission is a 1991 UPL coin-op ported to the Super Famicom. The game's intro is loaded with bad Engrish, but manages to define "Acrobat Mission" as a mission exceeding the pilot's technical limit. LOL Played from a topdown perspective, you fly a fairly large sized space fighter that enjoys a reasonably good amount of detail. All of the enemies encountered are at least as large, if not larger, resulting in close quartered gameplay. Backgrounds include a planetary desert/forest mix with a few ground targets thrown in, an installation level with fixed turrets and outer space levels littered with asteroids and space debris. Two weapons upgrades are available: a spread shot and a circular shot, both of which can be powered up for a mega blast that take a significant amount of time to fully engage and deliver less than spectacular damage. I found the upgrades to be only mildly useful and spent much of my game trying to avoid picking most up! Bomb's are also available as pickups and suffer similar drawbacks. They seem to hesitate a second before detonating and only produce a modest blast radius that requires you to point blank your target and even THEN, doesn't assure its destruction! It's saving grace is that while inside the blast radius your ship is protected from enemy fire.

What I Liked: There are some unusual things about this shooter that made it interesting. Firstly, you don't take damage running into anything, which is rather odd in a shmup. When you pick up a bomb, it actually places a large bomb under the wing of your ship that you can easily see. That limits you to two bombs at anyone time, unfortunately. If you are hit on a wing that's slinging a bomb, the bomb explodes but you don't take damage, so unused bombs act like shields of a sort. Also, when your ship is destroyed, it goes into a death spin lasting a few seconds instead of blowing up immediately. You can still steer your ship, with a degree of difficulty, and have an opportunity to suicide dive into an enemy!

What I Disliked: There are only five missions to the game and the endboss's are forgettable. You don't keep your spare bombs at the end of a level, instead they are exchanged for points.

GAMEPLAY: 7 (A pretty average shooter, but on the short side)
GRAPHICS: 7.5 (Simple, but reasonably colorful)
SOUND: 9 (Uptempo music and good sounding explosions)
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 10 (All in English)
OVERALL: 8 (I liked the gameplay twists!)

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizuwp.gif

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizwgh.png


Archer MacLean's Dropzone has been out for quite a few consoles and was updated for it's PAL only Super Nintendo release with additional graphics, aliens and bosses. A new storyline now spreads it across four of Jupiter's moons, ending up with a battle to the death in a weightless Jupiter atmosphere.
A good clone of Defender, you fight enemies above a two-way scrolling landscape with a jetpack equipped spaceman armed with lasers, smart bombs and some kind of Romulan cloaking device. Underneath the main screen, a scanner display's the whole planet, which you can use to see trouble spots and where the action is. You rescue men who roll along the moon's surface in spherical survivor pods by flying into them, then carry them one at a time to a cross shaped platform ('Dropzone'), where they are dropped off and roll into a silo. The level ends when all the aliens are destroyed and all the remaining men have been taken safely back to the Dropzone. There are ten levels of action per moon followed by a final planet guardian. Failure to save at least one of the ten men per moon causes the moons volcanoes to erupt, seriously jeopardizing your survivability.

What I liked: The graphics are pretty good with reasonably realistic looking moon surfaces covered with rugged terrain, volcanic craters and lava pools. When you die your spacesuit explodes into thousands of little pieces of white chafe that's cool to see and could only be surpassed by including a mist of blood. The PAL game played just fine on my TV.

What I Disliked: Nothing really. Controlling the spaceman in a low gravity enertia environment takes some getting used to though.

GAMEPLAY: 8
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 10
OVERALL: 8

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizwpd.gif

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizx1l.jpg


Tekkaman Blade is a Super Famicom game based on the Uchuu no Kishi: Tekkaman Blade (Space Knight: Tekkaman Blade) Japanese anime series. A Tekkaman (or, in the English-dubbed version, a Teknoman) is a human who has been biologically altered by alien technology that allows him to use a Tekno-crystal to transform into a powerful armored form capable of self-propelled flight. Teknomen were created by the Venomoid Warlord Darkon to help enslave planet Earth. The only Teknoman free from Darkon's mind control is Tekkaman Blade, who fights to save Earth.
The gameplay consists of seven stages of horizontal flight in which you use Tekkaman Blade's spear-like weapon called a Tekno-Lance to throw at enemies or simply bash them melee style. Throughout the stages are various Tekno-crystal power-ups that can restore health, give temporary invincibility, or the ability to use a special Voltekker attack! LOL
At the end of each stage Tekkaman Blade meets up with one of the Teknomen controlled by Darkon who challenges him to a fight and the game turns into a one-on-one fighting game. In the last stage you fight Darkon himself.

What I Liked: Tekkaman Blade has a life bar so making a mistake here and there doesn't result in instant death. Once you get past the silliness of throwing a spear, which travels end over end and returns boomerang fashion, you'll find a pretty decent horizontal shooter with some interesting looking enemies. Expect to see flying insects of all sorts that attack in swarms, bio-mechanical enemies, as well as mechanical ones. Some are one hit wonders, some take several hits to take down, and some require a hell of a bashing to destroy. Backgrounds are reasonably good and vary a good deal from snow, space, installation, and hive like settings.

What I disliked: Throwing a boomeranging weapon leaves you defenseless until it returns. During the fighting portion of the game Tekkaman Blade no longer throws his spear, instead he simply jabs and slashes with it, yet the Teknomen he goes up against have no compunctions of using ranged attacks!

GAMEPLAY: 7 (I suck at fighting games!)
GRAPHICS: 8.5
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 5 (English menu's, conversation's in Japanese)
OVERALL: 8


http://i1.tinypic.com/oizy2d.jpg

http://i1.tinypic.com/oizzm8.jpg

[drwily008]

Damn Spartacus! When I start my fanzine you have to come write for it! It's still is the pre-preliminary stages, but when I get the logistics of the cost wrapped up I am definitely going to hit you up.

[importaku]

Hey,
I recently bought a mint copy of Pocket Monsters
stadium Gold & Silver for the N64. It's really
good, but when I put in my english transfer pack
and game, it is not showing that it is inserted.
Does it only work with the Japanese versions of
the transfer pack and game?

The japanese pokemon stadium games will only work with the japanese pocket monster gb games.

The gb transfer pak is universal & can be used on any regions console but the game is only programmed to recognise the id's of japanese gameboy carts.

I learned this the hard way. :D

[Tron 2.0]

PCE
GodPanic
ImageFight2 i'll say this it's one tough shooter :evil:

Famicom
Contra

[DTJAAAAMJSLM]

Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box.

[Lord Contaminous]

Haven't got it yet, but Son Son II (PC Engine) is on deck.

[importaku]

Finally a few more jpn ps1 games turned up today, added them to the wonderful parappa & um jammer lammy i already got last week (^_^)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jasonmuir/ps1%20stuff.JPG
Ore no ryouri & pop'n music yaaay.

Now to track down the other 2 cooking games for ps1

[le geek]

If you can call it an import... well it IS Japanese heh...

http://www.mayhem64.co.uk/misc/vic1001.jpg

Japanese Vic20, launched there 6 months before it came out in the West.

Wow! That's awesome Mayhem! The Vic-20 was also my first computer...


I picked up Radilgy. Not sure what I think of it as I am still a noob when it comes to modern shmups...

Cheers,
Ben

[DDCecil]

Radirgy for Dreamcast came today. I hear they only made 4000 copies... so it seems like a good investment. Haven't had a chance to try it out, but I will this week.

I also bought RCTS: Real Eyes View for PS2 awhile back. Everyone needs a Japanese Model simulator :D

[Spartacus]

I just recieved a bundle of joy from play-asia:
Ibara (PS2) .....and Ibara kicks my butt hard. *rub rub*



Radirgy for Dreamcast came today. I hear they only made 4000 copies... so it seems like a good investment. Haven't had a chance to try it out, but I will this week.

I pre-order Radilgy and Ibara from Like Sang and haven't gotten either yet. They're KILLING ME!
Never knew about the 4000 print run for Radilgy, but I wonder if that game might end up getting a PS2 release down the road someday.


Got both of these Famicom games of,off Ebay.
Crisis Force
http://i19.ebayimg.com/02/i/05/f9/a8/8e_1_b.JPG

I have got to buckle down and find me a copy of that game, dammit! Congrats Tron!


Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box.
That game is such a heck of a buy with both Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier. What a terrific combination! Does that have both the European and Japanese versions of Alien Soldier like I heard it would?



Damn Spartacus! When I start my fanzine you have to come write for it! It's still is the pre-preliminary stages, but when I get the logistics of the cost wrapped up I am definitely going to hit you up.

Well, thank you drwily008! My "reviews" are more of a synthesis of everything I could find out about a game on the web (plagerism) and my thoughts about it after playing the game. I'm not a writer or game reviewer by any means! I'm just an average guy hoping to give someone enough information to decide if a game is something they might enjoy owning and playing based on what I've experienced and what I've read!

[staxx]

Most Recent: Initial D for PSP and Rajirugi for the Dreamcast

[klausien]

Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box.

Ditto. I am so glad Treasure was involved in the emulation. It is about as perfect as it gets.

[Lord Contaminous]

I didn't recently get this but I still felt like showing this off:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/Lord-C-s-Room-of-Doom/escaflowne.sized.jpg

Lord Contaminous, what kind of a game is Vision of Escaflowne? I am a big fan of the series and the movie and have considered getting that set.

Thanks-Ken (DrWily008)

Oh snap! I didn't know you quoted off my picture among that gaggle of posts sorry bout that, guess that's my fault, I need to keep up on this thread more.

Escaflowne is another one of those isometric view RPG's just like Landstalker, Super Mario RPG, and Breath of Fire 3 and 4. The same intro from the series is even in the game as well.

I've tried Google Searching for screenshots of the game, but all I get is anime cut scenes. So it looks like I'll have to snap screens of the game in action with a digital camera, so when I get a chance I'll do it later.

EDIT: Just got Son Son II (PC Engine) in the mail today. Very solid action platformer, though killing enemies to build up on zenny gets a little repetitive. Stage 2 is kicking my ass right now. So far I'm diggin' the music though.

[Lord Contaminous]

WARNING: 56K USERS YOUR COMPUTER COULD SELF-DESTRUCT.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0141.jpg
Title screen
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0142.jpg
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0145.jpg
Van Fanel kills a monster.
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0146.jpg
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0148.jpg
Escaflowne and Alsiedes face off.
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0149.jpg
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13/Oldschoolage/000_0151.jpg

[Julio III]

Dreamcast:

Psyvariar 2 (i don't think i've mentioned this already, got it a while back)
Fire Pro Wrestling D
Netto Golf
World Neverland Plus
July (well, instead of the July disc there was a King of Fighters 99 Evolution disc inside, which doesn't support VGA box, argh)

Samurai Spirits II - NGCD

[StealthLurker]

Gotta say that 2006 has been a great year so far for my game collecting. Between the end of January and February got several large boxes of the goodies. Today was the last pair of good sized boxes. Got another load of stuff coming but after that I think I'm going to chill a bit on the collecting. Kinda running out of space. :D But here's the big '06 early year update.

Some hardcore jpn megadrive goodness:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md1.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md2.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md3.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md4.jpg

Here's all the new games together. Basically doubled my collection with this load in one shot:

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md5_all.jpg

The awesome 16-bit megadrive encylopedia (lists all md carts) and the all mega-cd soft catalogue:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/md6.jpg

Some jpn mega-cd games. My fav here is sengoku:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/mdcd.sized.jpg

A little bit o' DC:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/dc.sized.jpg

Some GG stuff:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/gamegear.sized.jpg

Some of the more interesting saturn stuff from the new pile:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sat1.sized.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sat3.sized.jpg

The rest of the new jpn saturn game pile. Actually got a bunch of stuff I don't already have. So it's a good haul:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sat2.jpg

Some neo stuff. Got a great deal on the Fighter's History, otherwise I would have passed:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/neogeo.sized.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/neogeo2.sized.jpg

Some PS1 games:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/psx1.jpg

IMHO a kickass set of jpn ps2 games:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/ps2.jpg

Rockman & Forte and Ghouls n Ghosts wonderswan.. mmmmmm:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/wonderswan.jpg

Some Super Famicom lovin:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sfc1.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sfc2.sized.jpg

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sfc3.sized.jpg

All the jpn sfc games together:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/sfc4_all.sized.jpg

Some boxed FC games and an N64 title.
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/nintendo1.jpg

Some boxed gameboy games:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/nintendo3.sized.jpg

Some choice GBA games:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/nintendo2.jpg

Some PCE and SuperGrafx titles:
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/pce.jpg

And finally, an awesome, large scale, detailed Rei figure from Hokuto no Ken. Very nice detail up close. A great addition to my large scale Kenshiro figure from the same figure series. Also, volumes 1-29 of the Berserk manga!
http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/album35/misc.jpg

All in all a great haul this year so far. Many more games and systems currently in transit. In addition got a ton of RGB cables to use on multiple systems for my new Sony PVM-2530. Maybe not a big deal for you euros, but here in America... the land of the mostly RGB deprived, the image quality is amazing!

________________________________________
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/jviloria/Arcade/AC2s2.jpg
[ The Game Collection Pics (http://videogamecollectors.com/gallery/album26) ]

[Lord Contaminous]

O_O Stealth, you're my muthafuckin idol. 8-)

2 more PC Engine cards on Deck to be in sometime next week:
Gradius
Genpei Toumaden 2/Samurai Ghost

[Xiados]

Starting back up my occasional import collecting with two goodies I've wanted for a while:

Atelier Elie Deluxe box set - GBC
Eldorado Gate Vol 2 - DC

[Spartacus]

:D But here's the big '06 early year update.


Seeing that SFC Phalanx box artwork made me realize there's a better solution than just hiding the banjo picking version I have behind the family photo!
Great haul ya got there StealthLurker!

[luffy744]

StealthLurker:

"a great haul this year so far."

This year so far?! I'd say that's a pretty god damn good haul for this LIFETIME. Kudos man. Just... damn. Looks like you took a trip to Japan and loaded up a bunch of suitcases or something. Or you raided Yahoo Japan and found a shit load of crazy mad deals. Just thinking how much all that must have cost, even if you got a good deal on ALL of it.... yowza. @_@

[Spartacus]

http://i2.tinypic.com/r86o2s.jpg

I've come across over a dozen different romanisations and English
translations for the titles of these games and all seem equally valid. I've
simply chosen these names without prejudice and thought I'd share my
impressions of them.

Simple 2000 Series:
Vol. 61: The Oneechanbara-The Older Sister Sword Battle
Vol. 80 The Oneechanpuru-The Older Sister: Special Compilation
Vol. 90 The Oneechanbara 2-The Older Sister Sword Battle 2


The story as I understand it....
The name of the "Older Sister" is Aya. She has a stepsister named Saki. Aya
was trained to use the katana by her father who had left Saki and her
mother to become a master swordsman. When Saki's mother becomes ill and
dies, she blames her father's neglect for her mother's death. Saki swears
revenge and takes up the way of the sword, challenges her father to a fight
and kill's the old boy! Unable to accept the loss of her mother, she begins
delving in the black arts hoping to bring her mother back to life conjuring
ancient spells. As we all know, the necronomicon incantation Klaatu,
Verata, Nikto MUST BE REPEATED EXACTLY! and regrettably Saki muffs it! She
has unleashed an army of the undead! Saki believes it's still possible to
resurrect her mother by cutting out Aya's heart and using it to complete
the ritual. This story has got it all going on. Patricide, fratricide,
necrocide...necrocide? Yes, NECROCIDE! Aya sets out to put an end to Saki's
plans and to any zombies who come between them.

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7umg2.jpg

Speaking of zombies, there are all kinds of different undeadites wandering
around. There are police zombies with handgun's and shotguns who shoot
first and moan questions later. There are nurse zombies who throw scalpels
and politically incorrect native zombies who chuck spears. There's pacifist
zombies who've self immolated themselves protesting something or other and
some zombies somehow broke into a hardware store somewhere and have managed
to arm themselves with axes, hammers, scythes and anything else they could
get they're cold dead hands on!

Armed or unarmed, these Hell spawned zombies can only be stopped by
complete dismemberment. Hack off the head, the arms, the entire upper torso
and they just become stubby kicking zombies! Every cut on their corpse's
sprays blood that corrupts anyything it comes into contact with. As Aya
uses her katana to cut down zombies, blood splatter begins sticking to the
blade. A katana shaped meter fills up as it becomes more and more blood
drenched. When the meter is full, the katana becomes cursed and will
attempt to remain imbedded in the bodies of the undead as if it belongs to
them. It's very difficult for Aya to yank the bloody thing back out and
every zombie in the vicinity will do it's worst while she struggles with
it. To prevent that from happening Aya has a motion that cleans the katana
by swinging it downward forcefully, flinging the blood from it with a
satisfying splat.

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7ukc2.jpg

The katana isn't the only thing being sprayed with zombie blood. Aya
herself becomes covered in blood and the evil within it will turn on her as
well. Just as there was for the katana, there is also a meter for Aya that
shows how much zombie blood is clinging to her. Should it become full, her
life will ebb away with each heartbeat as she begins transforming into a
zombie. The death process both enrages her and enables a massive increase
in her strength and speed until she succumbs and dies! Aya can purify
herself by finding statuary of angels that washes the evil from her.

Since zombies occasionally keep interesting trinkets in their pockets, Aya
has no qualms about robbing the dead. There are pocket sized angelic
statuary good for a quick clean up, charms for invincibility, potions to
restore health, increase speed and power. She can use these immediately or
save them for later. Decimated zombie's leave behind gold orb's that
increase Aya's experience level. Unlike the temporary effect of trinkets,
experience will permanently increase Aya's attributes.

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7ukup.jpg

Fighting with a katana comes easily for Aya. She can carve zombies slowly
with straight forward thrusts, horizontal slashes and a "You're not gonna
be having any damn zombie babies!" upward slash or deliver a devastating
combo attack that can be "upgraded" with experience. Aya can also perform a
power attack that puts the game into slow motion and directs all of her chi
into a single thrust. It costs Aya a bit of her life to do this, but the
effect is similar to a blast wave that can be directed at a group of
zombies. She can also mix in some high roundhouse or low leg sweep kicks.
Kicking zombies to death is almost as fun as hacking them and is completely
bloodless!

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7umv8.jpg

The main menu is in English, as is a suprisingly large amount of this game.
There you are given choices of playing...

A Story mode comprised of six stages. Each stage requires finding keys to
open up new areas where eventually Aya will meet up with an endboss. These
can be quite long and there are no save points. In the sixth and finale
stage the endoss waiting for Aya will become a playable character should
Aya defeat her.

A Survival mode that consists of fighting waves of zombies. It's a great
place to earn experience orbs for leveling up Aya that she keeps when she
die's. This is very different from the story mode where Aya can only keep
her experience IF she completes the stage!

A Quest mode where Aya can see a list quests that can be performed in any
of the stages of the Story mode to unlock rewards in the game.



Taking into account that these are budget games, I felt less inclined to
take a harsh attitude towards maps being recycled and zombies being
respawned. That being said, I've decided to score all three games
identically and direct my likes and dislikes towards each game accordingly.
GAMEPLAY: 8
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 8
OVERALL: 8

Vol. 61: The Oneechanbara
What I Liked: The original had its flaws to be sure, but I ended up playing
it the most and liking it the best. There are no extraneous or inexplicable
characters and it IS Oneechanbara in its purest form.

What I Disliked: There were some issues with the doors in this version
because the game would send you through a doorway if you simply got near
it. When you put that together with spawning, it could get frustrating.
Imagine clearing a hallway of zombies to get to a door you needed to enter
a room. The room requires you to clear three waves of zombies to get a key
for another area. You dispatch 2 waves and then get close to the door while
fighting. Suddenly you are whisked back out into the hallway that has
respawned full of zombies. When you go back through the door and re-enter
the room, you'll still have three waves of zombies to fight for the key
again!


Vol. 80 The Oneechanpuru
What I Liked: This is an "upgraded" version of Oneechanbara. To reward
those who already owned Oneechanbara and bought this too, D3 had the game
check your memory card for an Oneechanbara game save. If one is there,
everything obtainable from Oneechanbara's quests is unlocked automatically!
Very nice of them! The door issue was fixed by having the game ask you if
you wish to go through or not.

What I Disliked: The game in this version is EXACTLY like it was in
Oneechanbara, with only the location of the Survival mode changed from a
church graveyard to a walled church courtyard. D3 decided to slap Riho
Futaba's mug on the game cover and added her and her younger sister Makoto
to the game as unlockable characters. Why? Because they are very popular in
Japan, both are featured in several of D3's other Simple 2000 games and D3
figured they'd sell a few more copies I guess. Since they have nothing to
do with the story, I thought they were useless clutter and a cheap ploy.


Vol. 90 The Oneechanbara 2
What I Liked: A fresh story with some new zombie types, end bosses, better
level designs, a new playable character called Rieko and some minor overall
improvements throughout. The zombies can now quickly close short distances
by rushing you. An entire level map was added for each stage. A new
practice area was added that places one single respawning zombie in a room
with you. It does not attack and let's you practice whatever you like
(kicks, slashes, combos, whatever) to help you determine what is effective
and what isn't. Not a bad idea I guess. They added a new swivel head camera
control with the right analog stick.

What I Disliked: I haven't seen a translation of Onechbara 2 yet, so I
don't know what part the new character Reiko plays in the story. She wears
a motorcycle helmet and looks pretty silly really. Reiko packs a shotgun as
well as a sword and Aya has also been "upgraded" to throwing shurikens. I
feel the gameplay has suffered as a result of these "improvements". (They
also required significant changes to the button layout). The element of
danger the original game invoked by pitting a single player in close combat
against overwhelming numbers is completely lost by the introduction of
stand off weapons with unlimited ammunition. Bad call. BAD CALL! At least
Saki doesn't shoot. Instead she has a new move where she can charge up to a
zombie, choose an arm and tear the damn thing right off! Well, that parts
cool anyway! And the blood! My God, the gorgeous red blood has been changed
to neon pink! Why? You ASSHOLES!

These games warn about containing extreme violence and gore but I should
also warn you that the undead include men, women, children, and even
babies! If hacking any of these apart with a katana could upset you, find
something else to play. But in all fairness you should know that no one was
actually harmed while playing these games and that they are, in fact,
FREAKING ZOMBIES!

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7uob8.jpg

I ended up admiring D3 for producing Oneechanbara. Getting a company like
Tamsoft to develop them, with it's strong background in fighting games, was
probably a big part of why they played well. Making an over the top blood
and gore zombie hack fest mixed with Aya's overt sexuality and bouncing
breasts was probably enough to draw in male gamers. (Enough for me,
anyway!) But by making all the major characters female and using a
storyline about the rivalry between older and younger sisters, they also
made a game that could interest female gamers too.

http://images6.theimagehosting.com/mammery.gif (http://www.theimagehosting.com)

My vote for the best animation in the games wouldn't go to Aya's mammery's
but to her way of walking when the lock-on button is being held. Officially
it's probably a stalk, but I've been in enough strip joints to know a great
strut when I see one! It injected her with personality and looked cool as
Hell! I don't know which programmer over there came up with her "stalk",
but I'd like to buy that man a beer!

Other people I'd like to thank...

simalcrum for his excellent Oneechanbara walkthrough with maps for each
stage and a translation of the quests. And IGN for hosting it
Here (http://faqs.ign.com/articles/635/635210p1.html)

Kevin Lee R. (kiwikevin) for his excellent Oneechanpuru walkthrough and for
detailing what was unlockable in the quests. And GameFAQ's for hosting it
Here (http://dw.com.com/redir?asid=927186&astid=8&siteid=19&edid=107&destCat=38054&destURL=http%3A%2F%2Fdb.gamefaqs.com%2Fconsole%2Fp s2%2Ffile%2Foanechan_blue.txt)

YesAsia.com for getting these Japanese games to my house all the way from
Hong Kong for about $20 apiece!

http://i2.tinypic.com/r7uko1.jpg

[Julio III]

Stealthlurker: wow! That is all i can say. Wow!

As for me, got myself one nice new game today:

Radirgy for the Dreamcast

Been playing it a lot. Its a really fun game. Shame there's only one more Dreamcast game left to be released...

[dj898]

finally got my Sega Wondermega from mate who suppose to return it last year!

[Animerforever05]

my first 3 import ds games came in! they rock!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v257/Animeforever04/100_0464.jpg

[importaku]

A couple more ps1 games.

First 2 are pocketstation games. Paqa & poke tan.

& finally, tondemo crisi (aka incredible crisis)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jasonmuir/DSCF1303.JPG

[Mahoutskai]

Alcahest (complete)
Bahamut Lagoon (complete)
Tales of Phantasia (complete)
Chrono Trigger (complete with cards)
Sufami Turbo (complete, original release)

[importaku]

More Jpn Psone games for me. I happened to come across a complete set of the rockman games.

Best of all they are the 1st print versions, not the skanky psone books ver yaaaay.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jasonmuir/DSCF1304.JPG

Some hardcore platforming due tonight (^_^)

[vanadium]

About 25 NeoGeo CD games, and 3 Korean MD games incoming. If I posted pics, I'd kill even broadband connections. ;)

Got 8 Marty games recently, my FM Towns Marty system, and another 10 NGCD games.

[Lord Contaminous]

More Jpn Psone games for me. I happened to come across a complete set of the rockman games.

Best of all they are the 1st print versions, not the skanky psone books ver yaaaay.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jasonmuir/DSCF1304.JPG

Some hardcore platforming due tonight (^_^)

good shit! I'm a huge Rockman fan myself.

[Julio III]

For the Dreamcast:
Plus Plumb
Princess Maker Collection

sometimes i feel i need a digital camera to bother posting in these threads, but i like to so...

[mrmeatball]

I bought Jump SuperStars and Bleach DS a couple days ago.

[importaku]

This turned up a few days ago. Yaay, the excellent cooking mama.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jasonmuir/cook.JPG

:D

[Ridley30]

I just got Snatcher and Policenauts for my Saturn. I'm currently running through Policenauts for the first time. Oh, and I'm also having an orgasm at how freaking awesome it is.

[dj898]

wait till you try 3DO version... :p

[KJN]

Should have posted this one ages ago.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y16/neopokekun/various/jpim02.jpg

Electroplankton (the pack with headphones)
Touch Game Party
Once I get a DS I will actually be able to play them along with all the other DS games I've picked up, that will be fun.

Psyvariar 2: Ultimate Final
Great shmup. The PS2 version has an extra challenge mode (get X buzz, kill X enemies, etc), a roll button, stage sellects and an art gallery. It also commes with a DVD containing super play movies, music remixes and another gallery.

Otostaz
Otostaz is yet another great Sony game that was sadly never released in the west. It's a puzzle game with a town building theme. The menus are in english and there is a japanese / english language option for the rest of the text as well so you can play the game in full english. The game has a pop-up book look and a nice jazz soundtrack.

Electronic Game Collectors 1970 - 80's Choise
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y16/neopokekun/various/electronicgamecollectors.jpg
A book with pictures and a bit of information on various systems released in Japan during the 70s - early 80s. From computers, like the Commodore Max Machine, to consols, like the Kousokusen (Vectrex), and tons of LCD games.

[Julio III]

In the past few days these have arrived making me very happy. Wish I had a digital camera to take some pics

Real Sound: Winds Of Regret - Dreamcast
Haven't played it but I doubt that I'll get anything out of doing that though. Comes in a brilliant package, nice cloudy slipcase, 2 GD-roms, D2-Shock GD-rom, braille sheet, some cards with clouds on, no seeds for me though

Under Defeat - Dreamcast
Got the SegaDirect limited edition. So the game is in a DVD case with a different cover to the standard edition and comes with a soundtrack CD which I've yet to listen to, a small sticker and a really lovely poster. Its a great game, so far got to stage 1-4 boss, hopefully get further these next few days.

Tetris DS
Its an import for us Europeans, and its a really great game of Tetris. The other modes will have to work on me though. A ridiculous amount of booklets in the pack. I liked the one saying "if you liked Tetris DS, you'll love Nintendogs, Brain Age and Big Brain Academy". I'm definitely purchasing the brain games anyway, but not Nintendogs, unless one day i can pick it up for dirt cheap

[Von-Zipper]

I haven't been importing for ages he he

http://regalos.free.fr/img/gba.jpg
http://regalos.free.fr/img/t_oowaki-img600x450-1108397327img_0032.jpg
http://regalos.free.fr/img/t_oowaki-img600x450-1121737923img_0040_3.jpg
http://regalos.free.fr/img/t_oowaki-img600x450-1122212392img_0035.jpg
http://regalos.free.fr/img/t_oowaki-img600x450-1127739964img_0026.jpg

[Von-Zipper]

http://regalos.free.fr/img/gbmicro.jpg

[Beefy Hits]

Bleach for DS. It lags like crazy online.

[davidbrit2]

Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for PSP, which brings me to like a grand total of 3 European games. PS1 Beatmania was the first, followed by Dance: Europe for PS2.

[noriaki_kakyouin]

Just won the Famicom "Mother" on ebay for $11. It comes with the box (in surprisingly good condition).

[Lord Contaminous]

My first Super Famicom game in 3 months.
http://www012.upp.so-net.ne.jp/gameordie/shien1.rom.jpg

[cbroddy]

Here is a collection of Sega Megadrive games I just won on Ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=8271923571&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT

[MrSmiley381]

Just won the Famicom "Mother" on ebay for $11. It comes with the box (in surprisingly good condition).

The best part about that game is that it'll actually work with a converter, unlike Megami Tensei II.

Also, it appears we've another joJo's Bizarre Adventure fan. Huzzah!

[Spartacus]

Chikyuu Boueigun is a 3rd person shooting game about an Earth Defense Force
(EDF) soldier single-handedly fighting off an alien invasion force attacking
Earth. The alien invaders are drawn from some of my favorite sci-fi films
like Them, War of the Worlds, Tarantula, Earth vs the Flying Saucers,
Godzilla, and Independence Day!
http://i2.tinypic.com/tari9h.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tarivq.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tarl1d.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tarlsn.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tarmgw.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/taro7s.jpg

They attack in huge swarms very reminiscent of Starship Troopers.
http://i2.tinypic.com/tarouu.jpg

Most of the scenerios involve facing several types of attackers and the
numbers of the attackers can be simply astonishing! Sometimes these are
dropped from large hovering carrier ships that will endlessly deposit alien
forces until the carriers themselves are destroyed. Other times you'll
discover that swarms and swarms of attackers are coming out of mounds and
hives that are hidden about and also must be found and destroyed. These
create the classic "It's hard to drain the swamp when you're up to your ass
in alligators" scenarios.
The insect aliens swarm over everything and can walk up the sides of
tallest buidings and sheerest cliffs with ease and it's pretty cool to see!
What suprised me is how deceiving the attacks were. It looks like mindless
head on "alien wave" assaults, but in reality the aliens are always
attempting to send several of it's "soldiers" to the left and right of you
in encircling flanking manoeuvers. If you allow yourself to be lulled into
concentrating fire into the center of the mass of the attack and chew up
the easy kills (thinking of waiting for the just the right moment to turn
and run) you'll often discover that the flankers have gotten behind you
and trapped you in a classic anvil and hammer situation!

Fortunately for the EDF soldier the destroyed aliens often deposit health
packs, armor upgrades or new weapons on the field. The health packs can be
put to use immediately, but the armor upgrades and the new weapons will
only become applied/available in the next mission. When the last alien has
been destroyed the mission ends and any items not already picked up are
lost.

Starting out with a submachine gun and a bazooka, the EDF soldier is
limited to carrying two weapons through the entire game, but it's possible
to acquire over 100 different firearms. The weapons include many types of
rifles, machine guns, shotguns, bazooka's, rocket launchers, grenades, and
flame throwers.

http://i2.tinypic.com/tarpl5.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tasahh.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tasbqs.jpg
Tanks, helicopters and hoverbikes can often be found and these can be
commandeered by the EDF soldier. The hoverbike is armed with machine guns
and is extemely fast, but damages incredibly easily. The helicopter is also
armed with machine guns and takes quite a long time to even get it off the
ground! It handles poorly and is rather difficult to control and use
effectively. The tank was my favorite vehicle. It fires a single main
cannon from a turret that can be swiveled independent of the direction of
the tank. The barrel can be raised and lowered and the shell fires with a
trajectory that was reasonably realistic and made firing at long range
moving targets a dicey proposition. It's speed allowed it to outrun
anything that wasn't airborn and it's armor could survive attacks from
several ants for about 3 to 4 seconds if they were allowed to chew on it.
It's main draw back was it's view being locked in with the sight of the
barrel, making it difficult to drive it while firing in any direction
other than forward.

The fights take place in cities and in the countrysides. The cities are
quite large with tall downtown skyscrapers, major highways, overpasses,
rivers and bridges mixed in with a myriad of small streets, alleys and
residential areas. Every building, bridge, overpass, in fact EVERYTHING!
is destructable, including the many trees that line the streets and fill
the parks. The countrysides include beach estuaries dotted with sand bars
leading up to sand dunes and cliffs. There's also a valley area surrounded
by mountains and rolling hills and intersected with a deep gorge spanned
by brides and train trestles that has a few foot paths leading up and down
it's sides. Many places contain areas of very tall grass that both conceals
the type of aliens attacking you and makes finding a much needed dropped
health pack difficult.

The game music is a foreboding 'giant monsters roaming about the
countryside' kind of stuff you would hear in classic horror/sci-fi films
and is very appropriate, even though it just loops endlessly. The sound
effects were adequate. The EDF soldier never speaks, but panicked civilians
running away stumble, fall down, get back up and start running again and
scream appropriately. You'll hear radio chatter of (police officers?) who
shout excitedly, fire bursts of weapons and then scream as they are being
torn apart. It adds to the effect decently enough.

http://i2.tinypic.com/tar0g6.jpg
Destroyed buildings produce shattered glass and clouds of dust that
temporarily obscures your view and can produce moments of anxiety and if
you happen to be standing on one when it goes down you can see girders and
such falling to the ground all around you. The destroyed building's leave
pile's of debris that provide little cover but are difficult to navigate
thru. A few missions are in the city after it has been destroyed by the
aliens firing thier primary weapons from large motherships. The city
looks eerily like old photo's of post atomic Hiroshima, with a few tall
buildings left standing and everything else reduced to rubble. The EDF
soldier now has to pick his way carefully among the debris completely in
the open while the aliens enormous size allows them to stride easily over
it.

http://i2.tinypic.com/tarcci.jpg
Explosions can be pretty spectacular and bringing down saucers and major
sized spacecraft are a sight to see. They erupt in multiple fires and
billow smoke as they slowly crash into the ground. Large LP storage tanks
in the city can be ignited and produce a hell of a show!

http://i2.tinypic.com/tasduh.jpg
The entire game and all it's menu's are in Japanese, but I found I could
get around pretty well with a reasonably short learning curve. The first
thing you'll probably want to do is to change the controls over to
"technical mode", which allows you to aim the crosshairs with the right
analog stick. The missions must be completed in order and you may prefer
to check out the mission menu first to take a peek at what you are going up
against before backing backing back out to make your weapons selections.
The missions menu will give you a small pic of at least something you'll
have to go up against. It also shows you what difficultly level you managed
to beat the mission on in the form of medals and any mission you've
completed can be replayed at any time on any setting.

http://i2.tinypic.com/taseh3.jpg
The weapons menu can also seem confusing until you realize that there are
only a 7 classes of weapons and they are grouped according to type. If you
recognize one weapon as being a shotgun, then all the weapons in that
category will be shotguns, ect. Selecting any weapon will show you all of
the important stats to consider before choosing it. This pic shows you have
selected a rifle with a 2 round capacity and a firing rate of 1 round per
second, delivering 170 points of damage per round. It takes this rifle 1.5
seconds to reload and it has a 10m range with good (B+) accuray.


There's currently two Chikyuu Boueigun games available on the PS2 from D3's
Simple 2000 Series of games and both can be played with two players via
split screen. My opinions of them follows....

Simple 2000 Series Vol. 31: The Earth Defense Force (Chikyuu Boueigun)
In Chikyuu Boueigun there are 25 missions that are played using only a male
EDF soldier.
GAMEPLAY: 9
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 0
OVERALL: 9

What I Liked: I had a ball playing the game because I love killing monsters,
especially when I'm given a lot of weapons to choose from. Best of all was
that you are never given any type of super weapon that blows away
everything. Each has it's tradeoff's and makes your selections a major
factor in your chances of surviving each different mission.
There's really nothing quite like fighting off hordes of gigantic ants! If
they get you surrounded, you can barely see out between the hundreds of
towering ant legs as they shove you about and jostle you between them, then
suddenly you'll see some huge ant head diving towards your face with it's
pincers opened wide as it tries to grab you and toss you about like a rag
doll! Pretty cool and more than a little bit unnerving! Then they mix in
flying ants that spit acid on you and these things spiral, turn and twist
constantly, making them very tough to get a bead on! The ONLY thing you can
outrun on foot are the towering War of the World's machines that are slow,
but have long range weapons that can hit you from any point on the map!
http://i2.tinypic.com/tasgig.jpg
Finally, I'd have to say the spiders are what I loathed the most. They
shoot thick sticky spider webs at you that suck your health out while they
are attached to you. They can even destroy the vehicles you're driving! If
you are hit or run into even just one or two strands of it, you'll move
as if you were attached to a giant bungie cord. 4 or 5 strands will
practicaly immobilize you and can even stop the tank in it's tracks and
bring down the helicopter! And they don't just crawl after you, these
things leap across terraine like fleas! God, I hated those bastards! LOL

What I Disliked: There's no human blood in the game. In fact, you can't
even kill the civilians! What a shame! Sandlot, the developer of these games,
decided that they were willing to tradeoff slowdown for huge numbers of
aliens. The slowdown could get pretty choppy at times, but always managed
to stabilize itself eventually and you could always help out a little by
blowing away a few things. And as much as I admired the explosions, I didn't
care for the way the game would lock in your view sometimes when large alien
spacecraft blew up! Because while you were being forced to watch it crashing
into the earth, all of the other aliens were still attacking you and you
couldn't see to shoot back at them!


Simple 2000 Series Vol. 81: The Earth Defense Force 2
In Chikyuu Boueigun 2 there are 71 missions that are played using either
a male or female EDF soldier. The new female soldier wears a recharging
jetpack that prevents her from using any of the vehicles. She has an
entirely different selection of weapons that lean towards the sci-fi ray
gun variety. Any weapons and armor acquired while playing as the female EDF
soldier cannot be used by the male EDF soldier and visa versa. But you can
freely switch back and forth between them for any mission and can play any
mission twice using each of them.
http://i2.tinypic.com/tard3s.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/tareoi.jpg
GAMEPLAY: 9
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 0
OVERALL: 9

What I Liked: This game takes place in London, introduces several new types
of aliens and even throws in a few night missions. It also has some of my
favorite missions that were deep underground in gigantic ant hive's riddled
with criss crossing tunnels that often broke into underground subway's.
They featured several large cavernous areas that were spanned with ant made
bridges and could be several stories high. Very eerie down there and quite
well made, I thought.

What I disliked: This version seemed to do a little better handling the
slow down generated by hordes of insects, but Sandlot just kept pushing the
limits with new ENORMOUS force field protected spacecraft that covered the
entire city and launched waves of saucers. It got even choppier than the
first game! Again, no human blood!

If you think you might be interested in the Chikyuu Boueigun games you can
check out D3's webpage http://www.d3p.co.jp/top/special/s20_special.html
There's a lot of pics and some short movie clips of the gameplay.


http://i2.tinypic.com/tasnph.jpg

[StealthLurker]

Great reviews there Spartacus. Definitely looks entertaining! That shot w/ the godzilla looking beast got my attention. :D

.

[JWKobayashi]

This showed up yesterday:

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeard/childrenofmana.jpg

I picked it up from play-asia while they were having it on sale for $20. Cool game, especially if you're a fan of the Seiken Densetsu series (which I am).

[drwily008]

That Seiken Densetsu looks excellent. Does anyone have an idea about the U.S. release?

I looked around and couldn't find anything.

[JWKobayashi]

That Seiken Densetsu looks excellent. Does anyone have an idea about the U.S. release?

I looked around and couldn't find anything.

Squeenix hasn't announced anything yet, which is why I couldn't pass on the import (especially for $20!)

It's a cool game, and while it would be helpful to be able to read the text, it isn't really necessary. There is already a partial translation up on Gamefaqs.

Just don't go buying it expecting it to be Secret of Mana. It's got that feel to it, but it's much more a dungeon crawler than anything else. Still fun though. :)

[KJN]

Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono anyone?
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y16/neopokekun/various/zokusono1to12.jpg
Got a pretty good deal on the first 12 games in the series (Scramble, Crazy Climber, Karate Michi, Moon Cresta, Time Pilot, Sonic Wings, Burger Time, Super Volleyball, Terra Cresta, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Quarth and Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun).

Of course five more (Nekketsu Koukou Dodge Ball Bu, Rabio Lepus, Pooyan, Castlevania and Contra) was reasently released.

[blue lander]

http://img185.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/users/8/2/1/6/maebashi301-img600x450-1143817765dsc00407.jpg
http://img173.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/users/8/2/1/6/maebashi301-img600x450-1143817528dsc00422.jpg
http://img213.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/users/8/2/1/6/maebashi301-img600x450-1143817591dsc00421.jpg

I just managed to get all these MSX carts for about 30 bucks, so I'm pretty happy about that. There's around 47 of them, but I assume not all of them are games.

[JWKobayashi]

[Pictures of a bunch of MSX carts edited out for room]

I just managed to get all these MSX carts for about 30 bucks, so I'm pretty happy about that. There's around 47 of them, but I assume not all of them are games.

Holy crap, that's like $0.67 a game. Nice deal. Who cares if they're not all games? :)

[Damaramu]

A couple of days ago, I received:

Oops, see below!

[MrSmiley381]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h253/MrSmiley381/Picture39.jpg

Guilty Gear X2 Slash

Interesting import. It's Guilty Gear X2 tweaked yet again, with A.B.A. from Guilty Gear Isuka and an a version of Sol from when he was a holy knight with Ky. Story mode has been removed. Mission mode has been revamped. Each character has three sets of objective based matches. There are times when you can't jump, or use specials, have no health, etc. The game is overall English friendly except for the goddamn mission mode intros. It drives me crazy sometimes.

Note: Survival Mode unlocks EX characters and at level 400 and 420 Kliff and Justice show up. Beating arcade mode unlocks the #Reload version of the character. So does Mission Mode 2 for each character. Mission mode 1 is just some art. These are just a few of the unlockables.

[Dire 51]

Just got ahold of Akumajo Dracula XX (cart only, but hey). Compared to what I would have paid for a cart only Castlevania Dracula X, I got XX for a mere pittance.

[Julio III]

Just recieved these in the post:

Dreamcast:
US Shenmue - sealed
L.O.L. Lack Of Love

Saturn:
Capcom Generation 5
Street Fighter Collection

These 2 Saturn games contain:
Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II' Champion Edition
Street Fighter II Turbo
Super Street Fighter II
Super Street Fighter II X (Turbo)
Street Fighter Zero 2'

So have all the Street Fighter IIs now, lots of variations. If only my Saturn was here to give them a go. Excited about my Dreamcast games also, US Shenmue looks lovely but since its sealed and I don't need to play it as have the PAL releaese don't know whether to open it. L.O.L. should be interesting, will only have time to give it a go in a couple of weeks though

[Fighter17]

Came in the mail yesterday:

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4190/10000373lc.jpg

$45 with shipping.

[Julio III]

Arrived in the post today, sadly still no pictures from me yet:

Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol.1
A nice big hardbook book plus a Dreamcast disc that has the 4 games from Shenmue + Power Drift

Then these 3 DS games:
Unou no Tatsujin: Soukai! Machigai Museum
Shanghai
Devilish

[Kyle15]

Here's a rare,but used gem I got on monday from eStarland.


Front Cover
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i168/kyle152006/ShamanKingSoulFightFrontCover.jpg


Back Cover
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i168/kyle152006/ShamanKingSoulFightBackCover.jpg


It was $34.95. Was it a good deal? I sure think so! LOL
This game is too good! :D It was sad that it never came here, but if it did, it would have been competely ruined with bad voice acting, translation, e.t.c.

[Kyle15]

Here's a rare,but used gem I got on monday from eStarland.


Front Cover
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i168/kyle152006/ShamanKingSoulFightFrontCover.jpg


Back Cover
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i168/kyle152006/ShamanKingSoulFightBackCover.jpg


It was $34.95. Was it a good deal? I sure think so! LOL
This game is too good! :D It was sad that it never came here, but if it did, it would have been competely ruined with bad voice acting, translation, e.t.c.

[Funk Buddy]

Some are not imports and I haven't played any of them to give impressions, but here's my latest package.

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010143.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010145.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010148.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010153.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG

Nothing to spectacular, that's for sure.

[Funk Buddy]

Some are not imports and I haven't played any of them to give impressions, but here's my latest package.

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010143.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010145.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010148.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010153.JPG
http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG

Nothing to spectacular, that's for sure.

[Julio III]

Nothing to spectacular, that's for sure.

But a nice big selection of games there. Loving the art for the Bushido Blades, and what are those 2 dolphin games?

[Julio III]

Nothing to spectacular, that's for sure.

But a nice big selection of games there. Loving the art for the Bushido Blades, and what are those 2 dolphin games?

[Funk Buddy]

The Aquanaut's Holiday & The Aquanaut's Holiday: Memories Of Summer 1996.

[Funk Buddy]

The Aquanaut's Holiday & The Aquanaut's Holiday: Memories Of Summer 1996.

[Spartacus]

SIMPLE 2000 Series Vol. 95:
THE Zombie VS Kyuukyuusha

The story going around is that a foreign power dropped a bomb on Sunlight
City that wiped out most of the population. After several days the dead arose
and began terrorizing the few surviving inhabitants. A young paramedic for
the Sunlight Hospital finds himself trapped in the hospital garage with three
of its female staff. Statues of females might be a better description because
the poor things never move and are completely inanimate. But they do serve
useful functions if you stand in front of them and push the action button.
One nice lady, let's call her the hospital administrator, will manage your game
saves. Another lady, let's call her the medical transcriptionist, will explain
the game objectives and give you some tips. And lastly you have a pretty nurse
with extraordinary bosoms (of course) who records feats of heroism (stats) and
cheers enthusiastly during the game.

Most guys in this situation, myself included, would have simply locked the
doors to the hospital and immediately commenced with our civic responsibility
to re-populate the planet, but this guys either stupid or extremely horny or
both and decides to go outside to rescue other survivors using the hospitals
ambulance. Unfortunately for the survivors, he seems to have the Medusa's
touch and most people brought back to the hospital garage immediately become
inanimate objects themselves. Some fates are worse than death!

The object of the game is to keep the hospital healthy and safe during the
epidemic. This is done by rescuing survivors and killing zombies. Either of
these acts will maintain the lifebar of the hospital that is coincidentally
represented in the game by a pic of a hospital in the upper left corner. When
it is relatively secure it will appear completely lit with a warm yellow glow,
but with zombies running amuck in the city it is constantly under siege and
it's lifebar steadily drains away! Successfully rescuing survivor's raises its
lifebar and rescuing police officers has the greatest positive effect. I have
also noticed that rescuing soldiers appears to keep the zombies from milling
around directly outside of the hospital and have a theory that they somehow
slow the rate of drain on the hospitals lifebar. The lifebar can also be
replenished by simply crushing zombies with the ambulance, thereby reducing the
threat. The difficulty of this method is that the hospital responds best when
multiple zombie deaths (combos) are involved and in the beginning of the game
the ambulance is not very effective at killing zombies. If the lights on the
hospital go dark, the game ends and you are simply asked if you wish to
continue. Say yes and the game starts right back up with the hospital lifebar
at the halfway point. No real big deal other than the embarrassment of having
screwed up.

Of course there's a lifebar for the ambulance as well. A damaged ambulance
loses much of it's speed which is needed in order to kill zombies on impact
and vital for getting rescued survivors back to the hospital quickly enough.
Hitting zombies doesn't hurt the ambulance, but hitting solid objects does
and in this game every tree, bush and chain link fence is a solid object!
Not that zombies can't hurt the ambulance because they can do significant
damage if they are given the opportunity to get their hands on it. If you
pull up to rescue a survivor who is surrounded by a group of zombies they
will happily slap the shit out of the ambulance and are capable of surrounding
the ambulance to prevent it from escaping as well! Worse yet is when you hit
a zombie and his upper torso flips up and lands on top of the ambulance. The
pissed off zombie will immediately commence to slap the crap out of the
ambulance until you shake him off by frantically waggling the analog stick
back and forth.

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p59pi.jpg

Oddly enough, every survivor you rescue is ALREADY infected with the zombie
virus and you only have a short length of time, represented by yet another
lifebar for each survivor, to get them back to the hospital to be saved. If
you're too slow, they'll turn zombie right inside the ambulance and rip the
thing to pieces in VERY short order! This activates the ambulance's emergency
response system by displaying EMERGENCY in very big letters!

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p5bmw.jpg

The sound of an electric saw is immediately heard as the ambulance's automatic
self defense mechanism begins dismembering the zombie. It works perfectly every
time too! Unfortunately the lowest bidder who installed the automatic zombie
ejector system hadn't gotten all the bugs worked out of it and your only
recourse is to hit a solid object at a very fast speed and eject the crazed
victim zombie parts out the back of your ambulance. I kid you not!

While it's possible to pull into the hospital garage with one of the survivors
in a zombie state, they will not be counted as rescued! You can buy your
patients some more time during the trip by finding syringes and IV bags
scattered about which will help delay the on set of full blown zombie-itis.
And while pulling into the garage will repair all damage done to the ambulance
on it's trip, there are also small toolboxes scattered about capable of making
repairs to it in the field.

Sunlight City is actually quite small in size and you can drive around its
perimeter in well under 2 minutes. There are only four roads leading in and
out of the town and these are curiously blocked with large steel gates. Perhaps
the effects of the fallout induced a nuclear winter because the town is
shrouded in perpetual darkness giving it a desolate, if not down right drabby
appearance. You find people to rescue by keeping an eye on a small map in the
right hand corner of your screen where victims appear as small white dots. When
you get in visual range you will see a green ring encircling the rescuee' that
shows up quite well in the darkness and parking the ambulance in the green ring
let's the survivor enter the ambulance. Usually they're found cowering in a
corner somewhere, but occasionally they've been spooked by zombies and are on
the run. They're already quite skittish and if you come barreling in with the
ambulance they may suddenly disappear. Once you have a survivor in the ambulance
a green arrow will point you towards the hospital.

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p6d5w.jpg

The list of people that can be rescued is short, but you will strangely see them
over and over and over and over again no matter how many times you save them!
The single most valuable person to rescue is the auto mechanic and rescuing your
first will be a memorable experience because he had secretly hidden his shop
foreman up his butt! There's simply no other explanation for how that guy
suddenly appears in the hospital garage! The mechanic will build upgrades for
your vehicle for a price and in this post apocalyptic world the coin of the realm
is dead zombies. Want some hubcaps with knives on them? That'll be 40 zombies.
Want a bumper with a blade attachment for zombie pruning, that'll cost you 120
zombies. ect. ect. The good news is that you needn't pay up front. Simply agree
to the purchase price and he will start building it. Now as you mow down zombies
to keep the hospital healthy you are also paying off the mechanic for your
purchase. The more mechanics you rescue, the more upgrade options become available
including entirely new vehicles. The bad news is that he only writes in Japanese
and trying to figure out just what the hell you are ordering is pretty much a
guessing game. Once it's built though, he will hand it over to his shop foreman
who will help you to accessorize your vehicle with your new upgrade. At least the
shop foreman has the sense to show you a picture of what you've purchased and
let's you see on a scale of 1 to 5 how much of an improvement it is over what you
are currently equipped with. Interestingly enough, all the upgrades you purchase
can be applied to all the vehicles you may acquire without any extra charge and
that's a pretty terrific deal!

Last, but not least, there is the city mayor to rescue - repeatedly of course.
He is the only character you will see multiple statues of in the garage. That's
because when you have rescued three mayors, he will go into a LONG winded speech,
then open the gate to a new section of the city for you to find more mayors in
(and other survivors of course), then suddenly disappear! Rinse and repeat for
each of the four new sections of the city brilliantly named North Field, South
Desert, East Building, and West Forest. Just remember that before you can enter
the new territories you'll have to take out the dreaded endboss guarding each.


http://i4.tinypic.com/10p5cug.jpg

The female survivors are given a strange and somewhat precarious role in the
game because unlike most of the male survivors they provide no extra tangible
benefit's and thus are totally dependant on your sense of chivalry. What's even
worse for them is that they zombifie in the ambulance at a much faster rate than
male survivors making them much more risky to attempt to rescue. Perhaps as
compensation they will thank you with a big heart whenever rescued.

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p6dsz.jpg

There are what, maybe seven or eight types of survivors to rescue and I would
guess there's that many different types of zombies. They shuffle about, some with
their arms outstretched ala Frankenstein. Not to bright, they seldom make any
attempt to get away from a crazy ambulance careening towards them and are often
seen running straight for it! Hitting one hard enough throws up some blood splatter
and will now and then produce a grunting noise from impact. Unlocking different
parts of the city is rewarded by seeing something different in form of new zombies,
maybe dog zombies, or giant zombies or zombies with pistols who take a few pot
shots at you. I should mention that the game can be played from the default third
person perspective or from a first person perspective with your view looking out
from the front windshield. The 3rd person makes navigating the ambulance easier,
but the first person view let's you see the zombies with much more detail and of
course, you are treated to the look on their faces on impact!

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p5yts.jpg

The bit's of music looped through the game attempts to convey an eerie atmosphere
with an occasional wolf howl thrown in, but it's pretty lame. The hospital nurse
has a small vocabulary but speaks perfect English and will keep you appraised of
the hospitals lifebar situation with dire comments and will praise your prowess
at killing zombies. Most of the time you'll only have the sound of the ambulance
engine and the thump thump thump of zombies being run over to keep you company.
The ambulance has a siren, supposedly to attract the attention of rescue victims,
and it will wail for a second or two by pressing the shoulder buttons. Pretty
useless really.


What I liked about the game: It ended.

What I disliked about the game: Since you cannot exit the ambulance and zombies
cannot enter the ambulance nor can they pull you out of it, there is no way
for the zombies to induce fear. A zombie game in which the zombies cannot
threaten you is a terrible idea and that is why the game doesn't work. Mowing
down thousands of helpless slow moving zombies while protected by thousands of
pounds of steel becomes monotonous in a hurry!

Compound this fundamental flaw with the fact that the people responsible for the
game have some of the lowest production values I have ever witnessed in my life!
Absolutely no effort was made to create anything interesting, unusual or enjoyable.
The city was a rigid lifeless dreary little thing that, when you included all of
its unlockable sections, would have easily fit into a single GTA airport. Yet you
were forced to sit through four frackin load screens to simply drive from the
hospital to one end of town and back! :angry:

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p6ejr.jpg

Those load screens take SEVEN SECONDS EACH! Nothing in the city could be smashed
or broken! There was no traffic in it and no other vehicles were even parked in
it! Forget about seeing cliffs, bridges or doing jumps. Hell, forget about even
being able to roll the ambulance over!

Unlocking one part of the city meant closing down the rest of the city as far as
finding survivors went and the game only had 8 to 10 possible places where the
survivors would always be per section of town. Once you recognized these spots,
finding survivors was about as difficult as going to pick up your mail. In the city
proper, 8 survivor locations are within two blocks of the hospital! Oh gosh! I hope
I get them back in time!

The animations given to the zombies being struck by the ambulance consisted of a
few arms flying off and some strawberry jam squirting out. But why should they
waste animation on something you will only briefly see as you fly right on past?
It's not like you have a rear view mirror to look back and see anything. But
when you have a half of a zombie riding on the top of the ambulance who is
obviously beating the hell out of it by the sound and it's reaction's, the least
they could have done was to show the zombies arm moving!

The endboss battles were so poorly done (if could you even call repeatedly
smashing the ambulance into the endboss a battle) that I couldn't even understand
why they were ever included. I'm absolutely certain that the bosses were never
able to discern where the ambulance was - either to attack it or to avoid it!
How lame is that? O_O

I see dead people, they're everywhere! Once you purchase your first lethal upgrade
for the ambulance, and I don't care what it is, hubcaps, bumpers, whatever, your
lethality to zombies is so overwhelming that purchasing any other upgrades is only
done for amusement or vanity. Thump, thump, thump! Zombies are everywhere and you
can hardly avoid hitting them. From this point on paying attention to the hospital's
lifebar is pointless as any ambulance trip will produce more than enough kills to
satisfy it whether you mean to or not! Thump, thump, thump! Thump, thump, thump!

This is a budget game and I expected it would cut a few corners, but this was done
by people who have no respect for their customers, their craft, or themselves! I
read that the guy responsible for it boasted he would sell 100,000 copies of the
game. My first reactions to that was to snort in disbelief and then shake my head
with disgust at the thought at how little effort he had put into the game. Then I
slowly realized that - Hey, I had bought it! What is it about zombie anything that
allows us to believe it can't be all that bad because it has zombies in it? You
can crap into a DVD case, seal it and slap a picture of a zombie on the front of
it and someone will buy it. This guy knew that. Hell, I bought one! Hell, you'll
probably buy one too!


GAMEPLAY: 2
GRAPHICS: 2
SOUND: 2
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 2 (The main menu options were all in English)
OVERALL: 2


I might have gave it a one, but it like... you know.... had frickin zombies in it!

http://i4.tinypic.com/10p82n7.jpg

[Spartacus]

Splatter Action Vol. 64 is the last of the Simple 2000 games that I decided
to try and it turned out being a splendid blast from the past that I'm
sure any retro gamer could appreciate and enjoy. It comes with a story, like
any good side scroller should, about an evil wizard called Jaggod who brings
life to a host of monsters to help him take over the local village. When an
old couple who live on a farm near the village decide to stand up to Jaggod,
they are badly hurt. What Jaggod didn't know was that his magic had also
brought life to a scarecrow on the old couple's farm. The scarecrow thought
of the old couple as his adopted parents and seeks revenge.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6qli.jpg

The scarecrows name is Kakashi and he's actually a pretty likeable character.
He's colorful and well animated and does some goofy kid like stuff when he's
idle. Kakashi can throw a good punch and if you hit the punch button 3 times
in quick succession he will mix in a nice roundhouse kick as well. He can also
jump up to deliver a serious headbutt to enemies that are either taller than
him or flying above. But when things get particularly nasty, Kakashi packs a
pair of chainsaws that he can whip out in a hurry and create some serious
carnage with!

http://i5.tinypic.com/11j6jwl.jpg

Pretty much everything you would expect to see in a classic side scroller is
in the game. You'll find plenty of crates and barrels along the way that can
be smashed open for coins, hearts and fuel for the chainsaw. There are the
usual jumps to be made and pitfalls to be avoided. The moving conveyor belts
and the hot steam pipes to duck. There's sometimes a midlevel boss and always
an endboss for each stage. The game starts out with Kakashi in the countryside
by the old couple's farm and he will follow a road that will eventually take
him to meet up with Jaggod. Along the way he will travel through a ghost town,
a scrap factory, an enchanted forest, a train canyon, past Freeze Lake and
finally on to Jaggod's castle. They will make up the seven themed stages of
the game. You'll have the customary big map to chart your progress.

http://i5.tinypic.com/11j6k5v.jpg

It's obvious throughout that the level of detail in the backgrounds was the
one corner that was cut in order to make this budget game. There's no
parallax scrolling or anything fancy going on. Still, I'll give them credit
for taking efforts to make the backgrounds less of a sore point by having
some interaction going on. Large water towers will teeter and fall on top of
the unsuspecting, cars that appear to be parked will suddenly roll across the
road, and dogs wielding large bones will pop out of garbage cans and smack
pumpkinhead in the noggin if he's not wary.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6khd.jpg

Finishing a stage gives Kakashi a chance to pop into Annie's shop and spend
his coins. This picture is from the PAL version of the game for clarity. In
the Japanese version it's not in English, but it isn't hard to figure out
either. My skills in the game haven't earned me enough coins to purchase the
Death Mask yet, so I can't comment on it. But buying the dummy means that the
very next time Kakashi is killed, it was only his dummy that died and Kakashi
comes back to life completely restored right at the spot his dummy died. As
far as I can tell, the game has unlimited continues and if Kakashi should die,
he is sent back to the beginning of that stage with everything he had when he
started it.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6koj.jpg

There's a good assortment of characters Kakashi will have to deal with along
the way, but Jaggod's mainstay soldiers are short squat almost paper thin
fellows sporting viscous looking grins on their faces. Also very well animated,
they have a way of throwing their shoulders back and forth while walking around
that looks hilariously like a bad John Wayne imitation. It's also funny watching
them when they've spotted Kakashi because they will often circle around him,
dancing on their tip toes, building up their courage to attack! Kakashi always
performs a spin move when he whips out the chainsaws and he will earn more coins
when he takes out groups of enemies, so letting a bunch of the bugger's surround
him can really pay off. There are several variations, some have a coiled spring
instead of legs and hop around, some can fly, and my favorites wear hockey
mask's and carry a mean looking tomahawk hatchet and those guys really want to
get in some licks with it!

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6l2t.jpg

My favorite stage in the game was in train canyon. Kakashi will walk along side
of a train that has pulled into a station and as he passes by the freight cars,
cattle doors will open up and the baddies will hop out for some action. They
do such a good job with their awful John Wayne imitations and just seem to
really fit in well here. Eventually Kakashi will reach a chasm with two small
platforms that he must jump back and forth from while trying to fight off a
couple of flying baddies. Meanwhile a freakshow in the freight car in front of
him will shout and gurgle the strangest noises and eventually start puking out
vomit that explodes on contact! It's one of the weirdest things I've seen in a
long long time!

http://i5.tinypic.com/11j6lbq.jpg

If Kakashi gets out of that mess he makes it to the front of the train and
finds a gruesome looking stageboss slithering out of the front of the locomotive.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6mvt.jpg

Does this thing remind you of anyone? Well, I thought it was a pretty good take
on a scene from Beetlejuice and something I noticed while playing Splatter
Action is that icons from classic horror films were sprinkled about the game.
Hard not to notice the hockey masks from Friday the 13th, the chainsaws from
Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I suspect Kakashi himself may have been lifted from
the Pumpkinhead films. If you manage to complete the game on normal, you'll earn
Kakashi a different wardrobe and I'll be damned if those things on his hands
don't look like Freddy Kruegers gloves from Nightmare on Elm Street!

http://i5.tinypic.com/11j6n9i.jpg

My favorite stageboss of the game was at the Candy Burger restaurant in the
ghost town. On top of restaurant is a Big Boy rip off holding a platter of
hamburgers. He has three types of attacks that he will announce by shouting
goofy sounding commands in Japanese. One attack will be to let 3 or 4 of the
John Wayne baddies come swaggering out of Candy Burger who's front doors swing
open like a western saloons. Another attack is to shoot a laser beam from his
eyes that will erupt into a giant gusher of water when it hits the street. But
his best attack is when he flings the platter of burgers at Kakashi. The
hamburgers bounce around on the ground and then explode. When Kakashi can bat
a bouncing burger bomb back up to him, the explosion will begin to crack open
his plastic head exposing his brains inside! That really pisses off Big Boy and
he will start launching his attacks in faster and faster procession. I loved that
guy! Goofy as hell and tough to play.

http://i5.tinypic.com/11j6nie.jpg

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6o14.jpg

The game definitely won't have an OST made, but the music had a lively electric
guitar riff that I enjoyed! The sound effects were good and other than the intro,
there's no scrolling Japanese text to read. The story is a simple one and is
played out visually.

What I liked about the game: A cleverly done side scrolling beat-em up with
a touch of Tim Burton and a zany Japanese flair. Seeing their takes on bits of
Americana was actually pretty amusing! The detail given to the character's
animations allowed them to convey personality suprisingly well, especially
Kakashi! The game is just goofy fun, but it's not afraid to show a lot of blood
either! The blood can be changed to green for kids, but how old should they be
to play a game that employs chainsaws? Not to mention that in Jaggods castle
there are hooks hanging from the ceiling with hunks of flesh on them! Still, this
would make for a great game to play on Halloween night! Funny and gory all at the
same time! I haven't managed to open the unlockable content yet, but there's
supposed to be different endings and a Survival mode included.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6oau.jpg

What I disliked about the game: The only bad thing I can think of is that it
just writes to one game save and that's it! Having multiple saves for
different players, levels or difficulty settings doesn't appear to be possible.

GAMEPLAY: 10
GRAPHICS: 7.5
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 8
OVERALL: 9

It's a short game but it doesn't cost much either. I wasn't able to find anyone
who had this in stock from my usual sources and ended up getting mine off Ebay.
It's worth tracking down in my humble opinion.

http://i6.tinypic.com/11j6ohk.jpg

[Lord Contaminous]

http://www.retoge.com/pce/pce-pic/barunba.gif

Barunba (PC Engine)
Just won it off ebay just now. Heard this was another excellent PCE shooter. I heard a HES rip of its soundtrack, and it made me want a copy.

[Lord Contaminous]

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG



Yoshitaka Amano got involved with Capcom? I didn't know that...

[Lemmy Kilmister]

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG



Yoshitaka Amano got involved with Capcom? I didn't know that...

Yeah, he did all the artwork for the El Dorado Gate series.

[drwily008]

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG



Yoshitaka Amano got involved with Capcom? I didn't know that...

Yeah, he did all the artwork for the El Dorado Gate series.

How many total came out? I think they originally had 12 planned, I am curious if anyone here has all of them.

That was one I always wanted to be released back in the day for the U.S. Dreamcast.

[Lemmy Kilmister]

http://combobento.com/photos/Bobak/P1010154.JPG



Yoshitaka Amano got involved with Capcom? I didn't know that...

Yeah, he did all the artwork for the El Dorado Gate series.

How many total came out? I think they originally had 12 planned, I am curious if anyone here has all of them.

That was one I always wanted to be released back in the day for the U.S. Dreamcast.

I think there was seven volumes total.

[drwily008]

I think there was seven volumes total.

I wonder if they finished up the story in 7 volumes? Yeah, all I ever saw was 7 as well. I just wondered if anyone else knew of others that are harder to find.

[Tron 2.0]

Won this on ebay a while ago :D

http://i2.ebayimg.com/01/i/07/24/e6/38_1_b.JPG

I also got a, Saturn ps2 pad as well today from ebay works great 8-)