someone at hudson saw bugsy malone and we all benefit from that
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Oop! All sports!
Davis Cup Tennis
HuCard and CD releases for this. The CD is the way to go because the title screen music is incredible, and you get renditions of national anthems before matches. The drawings are realistic and it’s always presented in split-screen, so I never have to worry about adjusting to a new perspective when sides change. I wasn’t really feeling this game as much as the Human developed tennis games. Even though this looks more realistic, play is less expressive and I just felt like I was playing Pong with a makeover, sliding left and right along the back court.
Nekketsu K ō k ō Dodgeball Bu: PC Soccer Hen
Rudie already talked about this, I think but it came up again for me since there was a HuCard and a CD-ROM release. I played through a game and a half and had a pretty great time. It’s funny how there’s no such thing in fouling because we’re all a couple of delinquents. The first match was easy because it was like fighting a rival gang of lesser caliber. The second match was much tougher. We were up against some school for monks and they kicked harder and thought smarter than the we did. This is the most I’ve played a Nekketsu outside of River City Ransom and I think I love them on their spirit alone.
Power League 5
Another year means another Power League! I’m pretty sure the game got a major overhaul with this release. Everything looks different and this is the first time I’ve noticed real teams from NPB. I’m playing as the Yakult Swallows because I personally enjoy the drink quite a bit. At this point, you can trust the Power League games to work perfectly, shining exemplars for the genre. I’m not sure if I’m getting better or if they’ve tuned it with more forgiveness, but I’m able to judge and hit pitches at a much higher rate of accuracy than ever before. It doesn’t always add up to runs, but it makes the game much more dramatic and interesting.
Hon ō no D ō ky ū ji: Dodge Danpei
This game has so much razzle dazzle. It really is nothing like the Nekketsu Dodge Ball games. It’s actually more akin to Monster Pro Wrestling or Necros no Yousai. It blends flashy cutscenes with snappy turn-based action to make something that looks incredibly but feels too clunky in practice. This game has the added benefit of including an RPG town to walk around in, full of cute and expressive NPC portraits saying all sorts of stuff. After walking around, I went into a match and the opponent really took advantage of my lack of knowledge. Any time someone pegs the ball at a player, there’s a little cutscene where you can try to nudge yourself away from the ball or in line to catch it. Catching it causes damage, and I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do that would make a difference. I wish this were slightly more fun. I just need to have like 1 more unit of fun to feel like playing for a full hour.
The Pro Yaky ū Super
I don’t like this nearly as much as I like Power League. For one, it’s much uglier. For two, the computer beats me too easily! All my line drives went straight into the opponents hands. I mean, how did their first baseman always know to run into the diamond to catch a high speed smackerooni? It makes no god damn sense. One point for it is the little portrait of whoever is batting. They even have a Dream Mode where you can play as historical figures from INTEC’s strategy games. That’s neat! Another thing I like is that it’s covered in Kirin ads. Kirin coffee, Kirin beer, I just love seeing ads in sports games okay.
6 Likes
i got the kunio/double dragon collection on ps4 a while back, and i had a great hour or two playing the hockey game on there.
4 Likes
i had a real copy of this, but couldn’t figure out how to play it. it does look good, though! there’s a mega drive game based on the same anime that’s just a regular dodgeball game, too.
3 Likes
That last screenshot might as well be real baseball on a 9 inch TV in 1992.
1 Like
First off how are there this many dodgeball games on the platform? Maybe one day I’ll find the Japanese touchstone for Dodgeball. I didn’t play dodgeball tonight. I played
Super Schwarzschild II
I made sure to get the spelling correct. The Japanese wikipedia for the series is extensive. There are fans of this and it is an extensive series with 5 main entries and at least as many spinoffs and gaidens. I wasn’t aware. They even explain the Space Politics. I mean I could to, absolutely, after the 20 minute intro. A full episode of anime right on my PC Engine Duo. The PCE can do some truly impressive pixel animation that absolutely blows away what the SNES/GEN were capable of. It was pretty much an anime.
I really tried with the game this time. As the resistance I think I was supposed to go to the bottom right of the map with my two small flotillas. I could warp somehow. I could also do research and send out probs. Meanwhile friendly and enemy AI were moving very quickly in a way I didn’t understand. I slowly moved my ships and got lots of dialog that I’ll be honest I didn’t understand. Heck the intro focused primarily on the nazis dropping nukes on major cities. I kept thinking “I can’t possibly play the nazis right? Right?” Then the resistance showed up. I eventually paniced and quit because I don’t even play 4x games in English. When I was 12 or so I played Civilization 2 on my grandparenrs computer for like six hours straight and went “wow I should never play this again.” Whatever mindset made me live up to that promise. The game seems cool if I could wrap my head around it.
Terraforming
Echoing minty. Neat game. Not exactly good, but somehow very pleasant to play.
If anyone of you play this does the screen become sillouettes during the volcano stage or am I finding my 3rd Mister Core Issue?
NEXZR
Super confused by This take. I found this surprisingly numbing. Can enemy bullets feel like nothing? They come out with no sound effect and at such unexpected angles that I kept going “okay.” When I died. There are two powerups that let you take to the hoards and picking up the wrong after the fact is a disaster.
One weird feature is you can choose “arcade resolution” which as far as I could tell just squish the image to a 9x10 aspect but still on a 10x9 screen. Weird.
Also it’s by Kaneko! Makers of the much better Aero Busters and eventually Gals Panic (Does not appear on this console.)
The Shapeshifter
In the bad Western platformers that might also be Amiga ports this gets the top marks of C-. You can actually play this one for the most part. The star of the show is the beautiful LARP voice acting. They are all really going for it and you feel like you are at the Ren Faire. Any second now some fucking Trekkie is gonna go “interesting.” One of the songs sounds just like Final Countdown.
Really recommend the voice acting you can smell the turkey legs and acne medicine. The game? What are you kidding me it sucks. Play Legendary Axe. Or Dahma on the Megadrive.
8 Likes
This is going back a ways and I didn’t play a ton of most of them but my recollection is that Nexzr Special was one of the PCE shmups I liked the most. Fast, really sweet ship designs, not as grid-like as some of the “Soldier”-types.
^ A later, diagonal level.
Oh well Special is '93 but as far as I know it’s just Nexzr + extra modes of play. Maybe they changed the basic gameplay fundamentally somehow though, I dunno–haven’t played the non-Special one (more $$ ^ _^).
(Sounds like – Nexzr - The Cutting Room Floor , Nexzr – Hardcore Gaming 101 – the gameplay wasn’t messed with. Cutscenes were removed.)
I wasn’t big on the checkpoints, which seemed pretty far apart to me at the time.
4 Likes
Quiz Marugoto The World 2 Time Machine ni Onegai
In this game I go back in time and cause dinosaurs to ride trains, Juilius and Brutus to crank off, Moses to part the seas breaking Noah’s ark, It becomes a SHOOTER and it’s by atlus. All the questions were spoken so it was miserable.
14 Likes
Okay I’m on my phone so can type more clearly. In this one you jump into s time machine and then have to answer questions to right history. Fail and dinosaurs take over the earth, succeed and the dinosaurs freeze to death and die. That’s stage 1. Imagine our collective gasp at Stage 2 being Moses about to part the red sea!
At failure he does part the sea but then Noah’s Ark goes by and cracks and game over.
It has a copyright for 1978 on the cover. That anime girl voices every question. The final boss is that giant baby. We got to see the whole game by brute forcing with save states. Compared to the other Quiz game I played today the questions were pretty good when I could hear them. She asks the second the answer buzzer ends. It sucks! You have no time to process. The most buckwild answers I had because I didn’t hear the question was.
A. The Lucy Show
B. Dragon Ball
C. Sesame Street
D. Dr. Slump
Of course Robert Deniro had a question as is custom.
8 Likes
But that’s not the only quiz: Adventure Quiz Capcom World Hatena no Daibouken
This is two quiz games in one. A Capcom arcade game published by Hudson? I think they share the question pool. And the questions were the hardest they’ve ever been in these games. So many kanji and names. “Who is this other famous person’s brother?” “What vehicle did Toshino Mifune drive in Speilberg’s 1942?” Some question about a frog that sounds like it is having an orgasm. @lonelyfrontier made a A+ joke at that one you should have been there.
We also collectively again looked at Nexzr and couldn’t figure it out. The powerups are too rare and the starting pea-shooter sucks tactically. When you are being asked to dodge bullets is the most fun, but trying to do crowd control is awful. The music is nice but if we judge PC Engine Games by the music the whole library gets a pass. We all listed other PC Engine games we liked better. I’m interested to see the caravan/carnival version next month. It’s possible the 2/5 minute version of the game is really good.
Come back in a couple of hours after I torture myself with another bad JRPG ignoring the really good one for another day.
6 Likes
Daisenryaku II: Campaign Version
This game blows chunks. What even are these scenario choices? The Falklands War? Why?? This would be slightly more bearable if you could skip the computer players’ turns. Not only do you have to sit through them, the computers actually take time to think so it can be two or three minutes before you’re in control again. And just like all the other SystemSoft games, the maps available only come in three sizes: large, extra large, and waste your life large. I am at the stage where I actively hate this series. Two more years until Neo Nectaris…
NHK Taiga Drama Taiheki
I figured this would be another overly complicated grand nation strategy game, but it turned out to be something much more graceful. It jumps me right into a match where I can count all the units on my two hands and the map fits on one screen, beautiful. The game is balanced like rock-paper-scissors so skirmishes are very one-sided. Luckily, I was playing in an emulator so I could always take back a move whenever I chose the wrong type of matchup. After winning the first battle, the game pulled out into a map of Japan and I realized there is some grand strategy to this game, but it’s very simple. I can do one of several things on each of my turns. I can raise an army at any of my cities. I can move an army to another city. I can attack an opposing army when we are in the same city. As far as I can tell, that’s it. The game is drawn in a colorful, expressive way reminiscent of historical scroll paintings. This has been the most satisfying strategy game outside of Nectaris, mostly because of how snappy it all is.
Lords of the Rising Sun
A Japanese historical strategy game was actually localized! Well, sort of. The original game was made by Americans, Cinemaware to be exact, but this port was handled by a group of Japanese developers. This is the most Total War-esque strategy game I’ve seen. Given this point in game design history, that does more bad than good because troop maneuvers are really finicky.
Here’s how the game works. The story is set during the Genpei War. You can choose one of three figures. The choice you make determines your starting resources, towns, and generals. If you send an army against another town, you can try to take it over. The game then switches to some Legend of Zelda action where you wander around a map and look for the entrance to the castle. Archers and swordsmen try to kill you and you have to find it before sundown. Any damage you take during this section whittles away members in your army. When two rival armies come into contact, they can fight. This is where it turns into Total War, as you can tell units to move left, right, forward, backwards, defend the general, or retreat. I was not able to win a single one of these battles, probably because I had been took weakened by trying to take over fortresses.
All in all, this is an ambitious game that kind of sucks!
Shin Sangokushi: Tenka wa Waga ni
I jumped into the scenario section of this game. As you may guess from the title, this is a game based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the scenario mode, there are two layers of strategy. One is maneuvering your platoons around a map; the other is engaging in tactical skirmishes. These skirmishes are kind of cool because instead of giving orders to every unit, you can sort of program them to make movements on their own. That really cuts down on the time it takes to play these sorts of games; however, I couldn’t really suss out how to program the units just right so that archers could hang back just out of reach while cavalry and infantry held the front lines. Does the main game have an even bigger layer of strategy? I don’t know. I’m a little tired of trying these strategy games. Maybe it was wrong to go for all strategy games, I’m sorry.
Look at this beautiful lo-res picture of Yangshuo. I’m pretty sure nothing happened there during the Romance of the Three Kindoms, but I could be wrong. Still, I can’t blame them for slipping this in there.
12 Likes
Thank You for your strategy game service.
Record of the Lodoss War
1992 everyone caught up to the Urusai Yatsura game with their pixel animation. Some real beautiful almost animation in this. As I was playing I kept thinking didn’t someone already write about this? I started with two members already equipped! I left town and started my grind. This proved a problem almost immediately. If a party member died it cost me 100 gold to revive. I didn’t have 100 gold. Maybe revive was available elsewhere but I didn’t see it.
Grinding was difficult. Battles have a lot of options. You are placed on a single screen top down field and have a variety of attack options but I just chose auto battle. After reaching level 2 I decided to head to my first goal a goblin cave. I met up in the forest with Deedlit, of the popular Metroidvania. She was sassy and capable. A real manic pixie elf. The next battle i got into was with a will of wisp who one shotted one of my party members.
Maybe the game would be better if I took 30 minutes and absolute caution to grind out to level 4 or so, but didn’t feel a particular need to.
Sorcerian
I think you can find an 6-7 year old post of me trying the Dreamcast version of Sorcerian. I was relieved to see I could auto-create my party. Oh thank lord. You are just dumped into a menu with character creation and party assembly and different quests you could take. It was and is a lot.
This port is by Victor, the speaker people. between the beautiful cutscenes and Falcom Sound Team music you see why this got ported to everything despite being a to be fair really fucking weird RPG. See it is actually an action platformer you have attack buttons and you’ll need them against the constant barrage of bats and beasts. I could not believe the shooter number of bats constantly attacking my 3 party members.
The starter dungeon was a bunch of identical rooms with faceless doors. Classic Falcom Stuff. I eventually found an urn and the next door dropped me back in town but that was apparently not whar the village elder wanted me to do. I was almost falling asleep at this point so saved and switched genres for the worse.
Ya Wa Ra 1
Turns out you are not the Judo Girl. You are a sleezy tabloid reporter trying to find the next big sports star. You grab a photo of her in her high school uniform stopping a thief. They say panty shot about 10 times. Later there is a more upsetting aggressive assault done by some gangsters on an unnamed high schooler there only for plot.
He eventually runs her down and is thrown out of a bus for being a pervert. Good Riddance. My skin was crawling being in his shoes. Rumiko Takahashi’s stuff has aged better because she had everyone being a psycho. This really frames it as our reporter is a hero, and he’s really good hearted in the end, even for a guy perving on a teen he is also trying to bully into doing judo as a sport. Maybe he gets his, but if so, why is the whole story structured around a sports writer trying to find the next big super-athlete? I won’t find out he can stay in the garbage forever.
The intro was absolutely delightful with the judo girl in a bunch of different outfits. Bet that is taken from the real anime intro and is big fun.
Zero Wing
It’s the one with th-no not this version. Just a slow, kind of easy very middle of the road Hori Shooter. Some of the boss designs were cool. I like it better than Nexzr! I’m going to keep doing that. I promise I’m not targetting you SMBHacks! Seeing a wide spread It’s Good opinion and being unable to parse it next to all the shooters I think are good is a thing I’ll get in my craw every time.
Zero Wing! It’s got a capture mechanic which seems to just give you a shield. Also which enemies you can capture is clearly part of greater survival strategy. When you have a big heavy guy it pulls you down. I liked that. You could also just play Gaiares one of the best for the Generation on Genesis. Gaiares OWNS.
almost running out of unknowns and bad games. Will have to suffer and start playing good games soon, like Shanghai 3!
7 Likes
Well you should be since I’m the one who presented an absurdly weak counter-argument. ^ _^ I’m not seeing/remembering the “starting pea shooter” thing https://youtu.be/nVWJ5O-5qCQ?t=349 but I’m too wimpy actually to play vs the game’s sometimes slightly flashy FX now so I have no leg to stand on here and can only admire your collective’s dedication to plugging away at these games–and am embarrassed to have caused you to subject yourself to it again!
- (time linked) https://youtu.be/KLFYFBr2yxE?t=5075
3 Likes
“Lovely and cute fantastic judoboy” is a phenomenal title.
8 Likes
Oops! All Telenet Japan!
Pop’n Magic
Not to be confused with Magical Pop’n, this is a Bubble Bobble-like. I cast a spell on monsters and they transform into an orb with one of three colors. When orbs of different colors hit, one of them shatters based on some triangular cycle. When orbs of the same color hit, the spell is broken and the monsters come back stronger than ever. The trick to the game is to throw an orb so that it breaks as many orbs as possible in a row so you can get higher bonuses. I think I’m missing one more mechanic because there is a meter next to my life counter that goes up. Who knows, maybe I can summon a colorful mouse to run around the screen or something. Because this is Telenet, we get animated cutscenes with full voice-acting involving two magician children and their rodent friends fighting evil. It’s no Parasol Stars, but I prefer it to Don Doko Don.
Exile: Wicked Phenomenon
Working Designs strikes again! This time, it’s much clearer that all the temporary items are drugs. I mixed two once when I was low on health and it killed me. Then someone complained that they couldn’t watch Mystery Science Theater now that their town was cursed. The action in the game is almost tolerable except for one fatal flaw: the screen doesn’t scroll forward until you walk to the farthest tenth of it. I’m walking around stubbing my toe on every other giant grub, poisonous plant, and murderous mouse I come across. When we started playing all these PC Engine games, I thought I would play through this series and now…I don’t know. I don’t know anymore guys. I don’t know.
F1 Team Simulation Project F
I know you’re thinking, “Oh great, another F1 game.” But listen, this isn’t an F1 racing game. This is an F1 management game. Oh, that’s worse? Yes, it’s much worse. I can do all this stuff before a race like buy parts, hire mechanics, consult managers, whatever. When I go into a race, I just watch the track. Do you know how much of a process exists in F1 before an actual race? There are qualifying trials, free runs, pre-races, just so much that’s not a race. What that means for managers is sitting around watching lights move around a map and telling their drivers when to go to the pit. That’s pretty much it. I can’t believe they put in as much effort as they did.
Kiaidan 00
Rudie, did you play this? Remember when AlfaSystem teamed up with Shin-Nihon LaserSoft for Psychic Storm? Now they teamed up with Riot and the result is a much more polished blend of anime and horizontal robot shooting. They’ve paced it like a beautiful monster-of-the-week giant robo show. It works as a nice companion piece to Spriggan Mk. II. They give you a selection of five weapons at all times and three of them hurt more than help if you don’t know when to use them. It reminds me of Radiant Silvergun in that way.
Wow, how many other media can I reference when talking about one piece? This is the curse of the dabble…everything reminds me of something else…I know too much now…I get so full of information that it starts spilling out of my mouth whenever it is barely relevant…
Anyways, my favorite thing about this game is that you can’t kill a boss with anything but a charged blast. Your friend tells you when it’s time to do so in the chat. It really ups the verisimilitude.
Travel Epule
Two children wearing penguin costumes and one real-life penguin go on an adventure! The game is a series of knock-down, drag-out fights in an arena littered with pipes, spiked clubs, and bombs. These penguins are out for blood. Sometimes the computer acts really stupid and will walk into spike traps or charge at you even when you’ve got a club that will knock them back 100% of the time. I like how you toss bombs instead of setting them and the most powerful bomb makes a huge X pattern. It really works well considering you can bomb yourself. I was able to make it to the next zone after killing a dolphin. However, the second zone is filled with teleporting kappa? and I am not in the right state of mind to face them.
I think this game would be dynamite with a party, a must at kusoge.
11 Likes
I have not played Kaigan yet but almost everything in this post was on deck for me.
Instead I played more Final Soldier which is not the Final Star Soldier game on the console. It has gone up several places in my internal rankings. Don’t ask me about the big list, I am scared of confronting that like 150 games long list now. The remarkable thing about FS, in that it should be remarked upon, is the different weapon layouts and that you can change it at continue. I managed to get to stage six, and found myself at an impass unable to be strong enough to survive. Another day, another year? Star Soldier games can sit there and be there when I feel like it.
Star Parodier
Maybe there is a reason I played last year’s game.
Star Parodier is THE PC Engine game.
It is bright and colorful. It has big screen animations celebrating Hudson and PC Engine. The best ship is a PC Engine. It has call backs to the Star Soldier series and Blazing Lazers by Compile. It has a Caravan Mode I haven’t indulged in yet.
It’s a cute em up on a console with a lot of those. My progress here stalled on the last level. The power up distribution seems to be random or connected to how many enemies you kill. Which if you have the pea shooter on a fresh life and are just trying to survive isn’t many. Also what power ups you get is random. Bomberman getting an option, a smaller bomberman, completely flips from being powerless to powerful.
It is like Blazing Lazers and the Star Soldiers game in despite being good, it doesn’t stick in my brain? There was…a toy level? And…an ice level? And the last level was a BL reference?
It’s a good game! The PC Engine game. Not the best one though.
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It was made by Inter State/Kaneko! The Air Buster and Gal Panic people! I wish they didn’t try to design a competitor to the Neo Geo. I wish they still existed today.
4 Likes
Trying to reconcile reading the wikipedia page and seeing they made Heavy Unit and Super Star Soldier in the same year.
3 Likes
According to my old notes
in later levels, if you die at the boss you have to restart the whole level
My notes do not mention if I finished it which almost certainly means I didn’t. ; D Graphic as heck though
4 Likes