Would love if other posters gave Kickball a shot, see how long it takes them to figure out how to actually kick the fuggin ball
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love how hopping around is so much faster than walking in this game, Valkyrie’s wings flop like rabbit ears, I started playing Easter Sunday…(also whenever I played Soul Calibur 2 and had the chance, I’d pick Cassandra’s Valkyrie costume which I now realise was an homage to this game the whole time (also the manual is very cute check it out)) it probably feels better with an 8-way joystick and there are a few glaring issues with this port like the lack of Mode7ness below moving platforms when you’re high above the world that makes it tricky to tell what’s safe ground and what’s a mile below, I’ll play that version, it’s fun enough that I want to fool around with different power-ups and also see how far I can make it without leaning on save states in the later stages >_>
and I gave the wheel a spin! landed on the bottommost game on my ROMs list:
by developer Pack-In-Video
basically action-puzzler Solomon’s Key for PC Engine with a movie theme slapped on it so now you have a block creating/destroying sword that can reroute enemies (which can be killed if you destroy a block when they’re on top of it) instead of a block creating/destroying wand, it’s fun!
I’d play the hell out of it on a handheld on the bus, maybe a between-games palate cleanser. The movie sounds interesting:
“Jigoku Gokurakumaru comes across a magical sword that can transport its owner to Zipangu, an extra-dimentional and mystical world with a city of gold at its center.”
added to watchlist
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Yeah! See everyone! The wheel provides!!!
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I can’t participate but this thread has been really great. Thanks
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The grousing in here about bad PCE action games kinda reminds me of how people talk about Amiga platformers.
Does this comparison feel accurate, or did I just insult the honor of the PCE?
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That’s an interesting comparison. While I can’t call the PC Engine the most Amiga-like of consoles, that honor goes to the Mega Drive, it’s still in this weird place where developers want to make bigger and more impressive games but have no clue on how to do it.
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the pc engine does have more amiga ports than you’d expect from a console with no real europe release
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Check out this Amiga platformer:
Conversion by Factor 5 with sound support from Chris Huelsbeck.
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Wasn’t there a huge cult import scene in the UK though? Didn’t it even get its own monthly magazine despite not being officially available?
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it didn’t have its own magazine, but it was covered in multiformat magazines, and also in anime magazines. also, there was this fanzine.
and the pc engine did pretty much single-handedly kickstart import gaming in the uk. i was only a tiny baby, but i’ve been told by people a few years older than me that seeing screenshots of pc engine arcade ports and comparing them to the same games on microcomputers was mindblowing.
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Hooking a Japanese console up to a PAL TV on 50hz electricity sounds like such a wild hassle.
It totally makes sense if this was coupled with the burgeoning anime fandom because I don’t feel like you got that flavor from any NES game or most of the Mega Drive’s library.
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most tvs from the 90s onwards could display pal and ntsc signals. older ones would show ntsc stuff in black and white. this was a problem i encountered in the ps1 era, and i played through the whole of parasite eve in black and white! (i got a newer tv handed down to me not long later, though).
i didn’t get a pc engine until 2016, by which time, the pal/ntsc tv business was a thing of the distant past (and i specifically bought the tv in my room because it had composite and scart inputs along with hdmi), and i just use a uk mega drive power supply and have had no problems there.
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Legendary Axe 2 is fun as others have said. It and Dahna for the Megadrive really capture the vibe of those 80s Fantasy films. They are also both filled with these very video game sounds and explosions. I think I like Dahna more but excited to work my way through Axe 2 on the ambernic.
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20 years ago in my college dorm room on a hacked version of MagicEngine because fuck paying for an emulator: UPL makes some fucking weird games.
2023, on the Ginza Line in Tokyo Japan: UPL makes some fucking weird games. Hot off my warming up to Atomic Robo Kid is GOMORA SPEED a puzzle-snake-action game? Collect all the segments of yourself. set bombs from your tail to freeze enemies. Circle around dazed enemies and food pellets to unlock the stage’s exit. A description a child would make of a video game. We salute you Gomora Speed, I like you a lot more than most of the actual puzzle games of this year.
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55 seconds!
time it takes to figure out how to first base before being caught out/beamed in the skull by these fuckin walruses: to be determined
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Two SuperGrafx games! It’s a bad omen that this is where the Japanese and US branding collide.
Dai Makaimura
It’s Ghouls’n Ghosts! I’d say this improves upon the already great Mega Drive port #freeYujiNaka. I love this series. I love the way it taunts me because it feels just possible enough. Unlike in most PC Engine action platformers, I can dodge almost everything if I focus hard enough. Is this the best SuperGrafx game? There were only 5 made so probably!
Madou King Granzort
Oh my god they made a sequel to Keith Courage! That’s not true, but the robots I’m playing as feel very familiar. I can switch between three different ones, but I don’t understand why I would pick anything other than the green one. The green one can fly and shoot arrows! The first boss is neat because parts of his body chip away as he is damaged. His attack pattern requires that I fly out of the way, so it really does seem like green is the only good choice here. I had a very mediocre time with this one.
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never had a pal tv that couldn’t do 60hz
was briefly using some ancient wood panel thing of my gran’s that i can vividly remember playing jp marvel 2 dreamcast on
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i think in my case at least some of it is probably informed by wanting to try many games in a short time, which is great setup for getting overly frustrated about how a game manages difficulty, or putting more scrutiny on something i might have loved in a more relaxed situation.
like, i played bonk, a game i’ve beaten and had a great time with long ago and just got annoyed instead. can’t play games like that if i’m feeling rushed
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Makai Prince Doraboochan speaking of PC Engine platformers particular flavor of badness, here’s another one. We don’t need to talk about it. Of course the jump is floaty. Of course you collect fruit. All these games do is continue to elevate Bonk 1 and Kato and Ken Chan up the list. Those games at least have a lot of personality and while they also do not feel great moment to moment go far with their PC Engine-ness.
They aren’t going to beat the top 10 platformers for Genesis or the top 20 platformers for SNES but they also are pretty unique.
I like how we are getting a pretty exhaustive look at the system. This is why I voted for PC Engine. Saturn/PS1 would have gotten bogged down because those games are long and folks would have gravitated towards the knowns or always meant to. Better for a more direct Book Club style.
Look I know we’re all avoiding talking about Ninja Spirits because we are too busy playing Ninja Spirits because Ninja Spirits fucking owns.
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There are a lot of great PC Engine action games and many of them are made by Hudson, we’ve just somehow avoided focusing too much on them. The first few years are filled with lots of weird janky shit too.
I was playing newer PCE games the other night and was consistently impressed by how good they were.
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New Granzort model kits have been in abundant supply here, I don’t know why that is, was that shit even popular back then??
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Homo law Speed is 100% the PCE game everyone needs to devote some time to, it fucking rocks, would say it’s a legit “hidden gem”
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