this soundtrack suffers from that early-CD era mindset that since you could do anything with CD-quality sound in a videogame, you had to do everything
just total overkill on everything to make it sound as “fresh” and “shiny” as possible, which ironically means it sounds comically dated now
the compositions are mostly real good! but the arrangement and instrumentation, woof
1992 STATS
15 RPGs
27 Shooters
5 Mahjong-likes
2 Pachio-kuns
3 F1 focused titles
1 Bomberman
1 Bomberman '93
10 Western Ports
6 Quiz Games!
6 Adventure
8 Strategy Games
1 Straetgo
Quiz Time Buster!
IQ Panic
Please rise for our national anthem. In this one a strong man has kidnapped all the beautiful women of the world. That doesn’t sound familar does it? So enjoy very good music and horrible flashing at random battles as you enter a castle do very bad JRPG walking around and answering questions. I just moved up and down to select the answer.
Best question: Which mech did Char not pilot in the original Gundam? Zaku, Dom, G-Zoc, Gerugugu
Quiz Tonosama no Yabou
You may know Yabou from Nobunaga no Yabou, or Ambition. This game is steeped in the culture of history. I chose some shogun of the warring states period and then invaded other areas, quiz style. I defeated and enslaved peasants. I burned downed castles. In this your question choices were left, right, I, II. it sucked! most emulators have I and II backwards. what order are I and II on a PC Engine pad? I don’t know.
This one had a lot of Video Game questions, which makes sense since it was by Capcom. But questions like “Who was the developer of Ninja-kun” “Which Dragon Quest first featureed a boat?” “What do you call a secret code that lets you select the level?” “What are the blocks in Columns called?” And a question about denmark I did not understand.
It also featured the greatest question of all time.
In SEGA UFO Catchers what can you get?
A. Goma-Chan
B. Pornography
C. Aliens
D. Stuffed Animals
Quiz no Hoshii
By Sunsoft. The Sunsoft Logo and the menus are fantastic. There are beautifully animated pixel scenes in this. In this one your little sister has been kidnapped by the chinese mafia and the only answer is to Quiz your way to her safety. What is with these Quiz games and the occult. I have also not been making up the plot of these games! Come to think of it the Sunsoft Pachinko games for Super Famicom were similarly beautiful. Whichever pachinko game that was.
Quiz hotshot. how many screw holes are on the back of a PC Engine Pad?
The Quiz Winner is Quiz no Hoshii. It even has a 5 player mode. who knows how that works. I would get stupid questions and then I would get “Who was the publishing house for this novel?” “Who wrote the Manga “Pigmario”?” “Which author was published first?” “What is the catchprhase of this quiz show that has been off the air for 35 years?”
Gotta be backwards like Famicom er oh well I guess if this was like Japanese vertical writing that would go right to left eh well so maybe they can just do whichever.
Quiz no Hoshi looks so badass…
It’s amazing that there are still more quiz games in 1992 that you haven’t mentioned yet. Looks like 90s kids really loved answering questions.
Nah Minty’s right Darkwing Duck must be the worst for the system what a piece of shit. Within seconds of starting I had to fight my urge to turn off the console and quit video games forever.
Forgotten Worlds
Forgotten Worlds rules. It is The Predator Handshake: The Game. The American voice acting is so flat it’s amazing. The first line is “Did you find the guy?” It’s spoken as if it were from a cashier asking another if they were able to track down the shopper who left a grocery bag behind. There are way too many bullets and the game cannot handle it. On stage three, things start slowing down a lot. Every weapon I buy feels worse than the first weapon. It’s awesome.
Toilet Kids
Bits Laboratory, the people responsible for porting Twin Cobra and Raiden Darius and Splash Lake got a chance to make an original shooter, and they made this. This thing is so weird. It plays like Xevious. Enemy patterns are occasionally virtuosically designed, but my crapping kiddo doesn’t ever feel powerful. I suppose it supports the metaphor of constipation and gastrointestinal distress.
Gate of Thunder
Like Rudie, I was going to link to a post that I guess I never made. That just goes to show how this thread helps reinforce the JUST POST ethos. So many times, I have not posted…until now. This game rules. It’s rad as heck. Some Technosoft people teamed up with Red. I don’t know who exactly these Technosoft people are because they went by pseudonyms in the credits. They would eventually create CAProductions. That means there are two more shooters from these people to look forward to.
This is just a gorgeous, beautifully designed game. When I first played it, I thought it was impossibly hard, but I just tried it again and it was so easy to get into. I guess that goes to show how much I’ve grown.
quiz no hoshi is a new entry on my “fan translation holy grail” list, and probably the least likely to ever happen. but wow, look at it!
i just looked this up, and it was shinji wada, creator of sukeban deka
Yeah, mine is growing pretty long through this project. I really should make a ranked list of my most wanted translations at the end of this.
Was packaged with Avenue Pad 3, a three-button controller;
https://necretro.org/Avenue_Pad_3
with that, you got a second full-sized button that duplicates Select or more pertinently Run, for rotating fire the other direction; not having that, and with the game not supporting six-button pads, the best you can get is setting “Normal Pad Auto-Fire” and then having to use a tiny Run button as the counter-rotation button. I didn’t have an Avenue Pad 3 and never did figure out a way to manage that layout comfortably with other controllers. I tried for a while back when I got the game 'cause it looks real nice and runs fast.
(Oh yeah this was one of their published PCE games that Capcom did make themselves
)
Huh from the looks of it the Avenue Pad 3s aren’t too expensive, ~$50
https://www.pricecharting.com/game/jp-pc-engine/avenue-pad-3
Of course these days there’s an emulated port in Capcom Arcade Stadium, probably just uses dual analog for moving and shooting or something–haven’t tried it. (From the looks of it on YouTube, when you get hit in it your score and health readout strobes red, whereas in the PC Engine version the only hit flash is on a health bar at the bottom of the screen.)
This wasn’t even the first time I’ve seen a question about pigmario in a quiz game.
Pygmalio is a very good manga! You should all read it! Berserk was directly inspired by it!
While the new music doesn’t really suit the game, I’m very glad it exists and I like to listen to it on its own.
You know what a lot of the games Minty have talked about already I was also interested and just gonna echo some stuff they already said. The night skyline in stage 1 of this is some of the best in video games and it is geographicly accurate to Tokyo! That’s incredible. Also stage 3 where you see a sunrise over the Chinese Countryside, wow. Not sure how often I’ve seen an in level sunrise.
That also said I was shocked how much I loved Detana Twinbee. One of the best for the platform there, if you can get past the bell system. Wow I hate that. Great game though. Konami really makes the console sing. Just on a Hucard and it’s like I am playing a cartoon.
You know another cartoon? Ranma 1/2, the first from from like 1990. It sucks compared to the adventure game. I should go back to that. I kind of love how shit this is. Just things flying in at all angles as your health drains and you try to survive. That’s A PC Engine Action Game. Not Bonk. Bonk is nothing. It has to hurt to be PC Engine.
Similarly Browning which really raises my feelings on Geno…you know what let’s not finish that sentence. The G Letter Mech Game. I do apperciate how barebones Browning is. Here’s a cool mech cutscene for 3 seconds, okay game. Another two seconds, More Game. Nice stuff.
I went back to Oboochama-kun and the great thing about PC Engine Platformers is even if they are bad and stupid they make you want to see every stage because there is probably something neat in every stage. They made unique enemies for every stage that is nuts. It is a down-right weird game.
Something cool is that it’s the first game that Koji Igarashi has credits for.
There is one RPG that I am excited to write about but I have to play more so instead y’all get this.
Eiyuu Densetsu: Dragon Slayer 2
First off did you know that Trails in The Sky is about incest? I didn’t! It’s about a brother and sister who fall in love but it turns out they aren’t blood related. How did we all hear about that game for 13 years and not know it was about incest? Fucked up right? Just that it was super long and you had to talk to every NPC all the time.
Now this game and all the trails of games are vaguely related in some strange fashion I am not going to begin to comprehend. This game starts with you as a prince sleeping in and then skipping out on studying only to be caught by your tutor 3 times then dragged infront of the king to deliver some letters to the other kingdoms. I think the king and queen might be player characters from the first game?
Anyways I am given extremely powerful equipment and sent on my way. I murder the blue and red slimes I encounter. I pass through one town. Then another town. Then the second town wants me to find someone from the castle so I go back. I kill more slimes with no effort. I can’t heal at the inns but I eventually level up which heals me, Ys Style. I get on a boat, and travel to another continent. I briefly meet what had to be previous game party members and they have Anime Personalities. I travel to a 4th, 5th town and keep wondering am I missing something? They were talking about a Dragon’s Egg in the first town but I couldn’t do anything about it I don’t think.
Like I kept waiting for the obvious other shoe to drop where all my equipment is stolen along with my 9000 gold. It played well enough for an obvious J-PC port but also offering nothing to keep me interested. I got to my 5?6? Town and saved and quit.
Mamono Hunter Yuko ?eikiyobi koe?
Whoops I played the second one of these. A Digital Novel by Masaya. It’s maybe the worst one yet. At least until I play the first one. Yuuko in particular for being a hero is constantly whining and incapable until she needs to be hyper capable. I did not like being in her company and they did a terrible job of catching me up to speed on what the story is. I kept thinking how Urusei Yatsura/Ranma was infinitely more compelling and in those games you are just wondering around a school not on an airship trying to climb the roots of the Isekai. Guess I’ll try the first tomorrow.
Super Real Mahjong Special Miki etc
My curiosity and natural fondness for 90s horny games got the better of me. As one of the girls in the intro announced “I’m almost 18” I began sucking air through my teeth and quit.
Top wo Nerae Part 1
I had to learn that for some reason the west calls this Gunbuster and it’s sequel Diebuster. I also could go watch Diebuster in a theater tomorrow! I probably should. It will look awesome. This is one of the few uses of actual FMV coding we’ve seen on the PC Engine and it looks as shit as you’d expect but the sound quality is really in the garbage. Sounds like it is coming from a tin-can you downloaded from Kazaa. Broken record, but I had to bail as the sound quality drove me nuts. Now I am going to be sad all day because rarbg is dead I don’t even know where I could steal Gunbuster and Diebuster for myself these days. My understanding is they are animes by Gainax (makers of Evangetlion) and feature A. Mechs B. Girls.
Keep in mind I am in a very bad mood today.
Mamono Hunter Yuuko Makai Kara Tenkousei
Took me so long to understand the cultural importance of “Exchange Student.” In this game you aren’t even playing Yuuko. You’re the exchange student from another world. Then you get sucked back along with Yuuko and her friend to your world that is in peril. I played up until I got to a lake and the girls said it was pretty and were taking the whole isekai’d’ thing pretty well.
Soldier Blade
I was looking forward to returning this with so many other PC Engine games understood. I still don’t particularly like it. You power down as you get hit and once you revive with just the pea shooter it’s all downhill on a boss. Maybe I am selling it short but did not like my tactical options on the boss. I ran through caravan 2 and 5 just once. On first pass neither seems as complex or demanding as Super Star Soldier, which I really really like the caravan in that one.
Because posts with screen shots always get more blood have two very boring caravan result screens.
Falcon
This is pretty ambitious since it attempts some rudimentary 3D design. Of course, the frame rate is incredibly low as a result. I played two missions. In the first, I have to chase and fire down two jets. This was really hard the first time I tried, but trivial once I learned the controls. The next mission was to bomb two depots. Again, it’s trivial because the only threat was a single rival jet and my own arrogance flying me into the ground. It is pretty neat to play something like this on a console years before Ace Combat comes out.
Xak I & II
Telenet tries to pull a Hudson Soft and publishes a lavishly produced remake of two computer games. There are so many similarities to Ys, right down to the end-of-the-alphabet name. But! This game is quite different in that it tries to weave more story into the game. Townspeople have lots of things to say, including the shopkeepers. Okay, maybe a lot of what they say is “Monsters are acting weird lately,” but please humor me. There are events that happen out in the world and one memorable moment early on had me carrying a sick person on my back across the map.
One other difference is that this game feels much more tuned towards killing the player in the blink of an eye. Luckily, it’s possible to save at any time and reloading is painless. That creates an experience where every new thing I encountered made me save the game. See a new enemy? Save because they might kill you in one touch. See a hole in the ground? Save because you might fall in it and immediately die. See a tree move? For the love of god, save.
Yamamura Misa Suspense: Kizenka Kyō Ezara Satsujin Jiken
Yeah! More murder mysteries, hell yes! This one has a great opening. I’m an editor for a food & travel magazine. I’ve been invited to a hotel and Japanese garden to cover a banquet where industry titans will be sharing a meal and talking business. I talk to a couple of people and get to try a bit of my kaiseki bento, a delightfully irreverent take on high dining. Well, just as I’m taking a bite of sea bream, someone gets killed and the next thing I know I’m being interrogated by police officers.
Navigation in this game is weird. Instead of following a strict, menu-based system, I’m given a point-and-click/menu hybrid. I can speed up my characters walking, but it still feels kind of slow when the idea is to talk to every person possible about everything possible.
I’m really interested in poking around a bit more in this one.
