What is your most RECENT import? Post often!

[DTJAAAAMJSLM]

Breath Of Fire 3 for the PSP.

[davidbrit2]

Initial D Street Stage. Now here's the part where absolutely none of you acts surprised.

This is a pretty good game. Special Stage is a lot easier to control with the Logitech wheel, obviously, but this is playable enough. It should hold me until Outrun. Heh.

[luffy744]

I just recieved a bundle of joy from play-asia:

Ibara (PS2)
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (DS)

and Ibara kicks my butt hard. *rub rub*

But after about 20 minutes of Ibara I tried out Ouendan, and have been glued to it for most of the day. Good GOD this game is awesome beyond words. I love every single song in it (it's a music rhythim game for those who don't know), it's challenging yet not frustrating (so far at least), and the theme about a bunch of guys/punks going around cheering for people when they're down (a student studying for college entrance exams, a ramen chef whose restarant isn't doing well, etc).... I am just in love. Offcially my favorite DS game.

[drwily008]

I didn't recently get this but I still felt like showing this off:

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)

[Kyle15]

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?

[Spartacus]

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.






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. 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!)






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






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!
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

[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.

[Tron 2.0]

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

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 (^_^)


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

[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

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:

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.


Title screen


Van Fanel kills a monster.


Escaflowne and Alsiedes face off.

[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