… i know you mean blazing lazers but its not what i first thought about
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Oop! All Micro World!
Builderland
Micro World was a subsidiary of Telenet Japan that focused on localizing Western games for a Japanese audience. A big chunk of these were made by Loriciels, who we’ve met several times now. Builderland is one of those. Builderland is pretty neat and would work great if it had more forgiving design. Luckily, I’m playing on an emulator and the rewind function makes this a much more enjoyable experience. Instead of controlling the main character directly, I act as a god moving blocks and stairs to them so they can get over barriers. There are a finite amount of resources so I have to think carefully about what to do, but there’s a timer so I can’t think too long. The game flow boiled down to watching my guy walk forward a bit, realizing I needed to move a block somewhere I hadn’t thought of, rewinding the emulator and “solving” the puzzle. It could be better, but it could also be a whole lot worse.
Baby Jo the Superhero
Who knew that one French studio would support the PC Engine this much? The console didn’t even have an official release in Europe! The French would have loved it though, on account of being perverts. This, like all Western developed platformers on this console, is a horrific nightmare. You play as a big baby. You walk around, drink milk from a bottle, throw a rattle. The leader board is for the Best Babies.
When I press jump, Baby Jo sort of floats up and back down. Baby Jo always jumps to the full height no matter how long I hold onto the jump button. So many platforms are set just an inch higher than Baby Jo, but I have to wait for his moon-gravity leap to land. The worst thing this game presents to me is a staircase. I can’t skip stairs because they are positioned just so; I have to watch this diaper dummy do its thing. Things are not looking good for Micro World.
My favorite thing about the game is that it shows damage with a DooM face that gets progressively more and more distressed as Baby Jo gets hurt.
Todd’s Adventures in Slime World
Not every game Micro World localized came from France. Some of them were ports of Atari Lynx games. This port is wild because it adds an anime intro to what I think is a very American aesthetic and concept. You are a man with a water gun and a jumpsuit trawling through slimey caverns for gems and other stuff. I don’t know if you can use items you pick up. My inventory kept getting larger and larger, but no matter what button I pressed, they remained in that small rectangle at the top of the screen. Todd doesn’t take damage from enemies, he gets progressively slimier. You can see the goo accumulate on his body and his entire sprite starts to turn green. To fix this, Todd needs to walk to a little pool of water and scrub himself down.
Todd jumps exactly like Baby Jo does. I cannot stand it. It is the worst feeling jump in the world.
10 Likes
I’m sick in bed, again, but decided to pull out my Megadrive Mook and look at 1992 Megadrive in comparison. The Megadrive had 99 releases as opposed to the PC Engine’s 120. The share 12 releases (though the year of release is not the same.)
Stand out Megadrive 1992: Battle Mania, Sonic 2, Thunderforce IV, Landstalker, Shining Force 2, Lunar And The Silver Star, Puyo Puyo, Hyperstone Heist
We haven’t mentioned it yet but I mean to play it soon Psychic Detective Aya Vol 3 come to the Mega CD in early 1993.
There is a Cosmic Fantasy for Mega CD, Cosmic Fantasy Stories which is either a Gaiden or a collection.
Burai 1 looks much better from a single screenshot.
While the PC Engine finally got Valis 1, Megadrive got SD Valis or Syd of Valis in the west.
Kaneko just under the wire released Power Athlete, a SF2 knockoff, before any SF2 was on systems outside the SNES.
Reading this I realized we haven’t gotten any Fishing games for the system outside of Kawa wo Tsuri, which is kind of also a JRPG okay.
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It’s really wild to put the console in context with everything else that was going on. I can’t remember if I said it before, but a fun game to play is “Would I trade my PC Engine in this year?” I used to think I would have done it in 1990, but now my brain has become so Turbofied that I’m never letting go.
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The Japanese Megadrive never got Snatcher! That port remains an oddity.
I played through PCE snatcher last year and know I got posts on it.
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I’m not going to say “Oops” anymore. It’s not a mistake. It’s never been a mistake. The “oops” is a lie. Cap’n Crunch is definitely lying, too. I feel so ashamed. Here are four games published by Naxat.
Alzadick
Someone went out there and did it. They made a game that was all Caravan mode, all of the time. This is not the first of Naxat’s Summer Carnival series. That honor goes to Seirei Senshi Spriggan. It’s not even the only Summer Carnival game for 1992; Recca on the Famicom was also given the title. While enjoy the Caravan modes in full-length shooters, I don’t think they’re fun enough to support an entire game. Oh well, at least we got an incredible game title out of it and some pretty nice tunes as well.
Star Mobile
This game is a really unique take on the falling junk genre. It’s made by Mindware/MNM Software, who might be one of my favorite developers if I didn’t completely sleep on their work. They’re still at it! They’re making all those cool reimaginings of ancient Japanese computer games like Space Mouse and Heiankyo Alien.
I lost immediately in the first 10 or 15 times I tried to play this game. Then, I had internalized something about the weight of each star and how much the scales could take before giving away. I was able to play for ten blissful minutes before having to leave for work. The tension of the game becomes sublime once you stop merely thinking of adding stars and start to calculate what would happen if you subtracted stars. I love the simplicity of this title.
Downtown Nekketsu Kōshinkyoku
Another Nekketsu game! I’m really bad at this one and it doesn’t make much sense to play against a computer anyways. It’s a medley of different challenges between four people, most of them involving a race across a city. These races have really cool routes with competitors running across rooftops, stumbling through houses, and swimming through sewers. One problem is that the collision is way off and it sucks to get stuck on a piece of the environment when it feels like I should be clear. It’s super rubberbanded so the only screen that really matters is the final stretch where anything can happen. I had one race where the final sprint was through a muddy pit in a construction site and everyone was slipping over each other, kicking teeth in, and throwing hammers just to reach the finish line first. This is a great companion piece to Travel Epule as a chaotic multiplayer smashfest.
Wizardry V
This is a very dry conversion of Wizardry for the PC Engine. Aside from a CD soundtrack and reserved cosmetic changes, it really isn’t significantly different than the very first Wizardry for the apple ][. I guess you start off with more spells than you would’ve in the original. It wants you to create characters from scratch. It wants you to map dungeons yourself. Almost every chest is trapped. Kicking a door is still one of the most satisfying button presses. Ultimately, I’m not in the mood to get into a Japanese language version of something I can easily experience in English elsewhere.
However, I’m holding out hope that the Western released Might & Magic III will give me all the PC Engine dungeon crawling I crave.
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most famous of course, for warren (wtf do we not have a warren emoji?)
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@bib was the Warren emoji.
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it’s still in there
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Looking at NES and PC Engine AND Megadrive JRPGs I really appreciate even more when Square made Final Fantasy IV with “watch this.” Then there is some B-tier stuff for the SNES that is better than the best for the other guys.
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Lemmings
Look, it’s Lemmings on the PC Engine. This is one of the earliest video games I remember playing back in 1997 on a Compaq. It’s compatible with the PC Engine mouse, which is apparently very responsive, so this version is just as good as any other. Lemmings is good y’all. As we can see from this, Manhole, and Shanghai, Sunsoft has very good taste in bringing Western games to Japan.
Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon
Here’s an odd one: a PC-Engine exclusive in the mold of D&D Gold Box RPGs created by, dramatic pause, Westwood Studios. Is this the best Western-developed exclusive for the console? Maybe! I don’t have the time right now to really dig into it, but I was really intrigued by what I played.
Navigating is done in the first person. I start out with a party of preset characters that I have handpicked. I get orders to go to a Keep somewhere and get rid of vampires. What surprised me most was the density of this starting building/town. I walked into various rooms and talked to people about what to do. Sometimes I would walk into a room and overhear an assassination plot or find murderous rats under a table.
When I got into battle, I found that it was similar to tactics RPGs. The tricky bit was magic. I didn’t realize this until the end, but I can’t cast spells unless I choose to memorize them before battle. Anyone with experience in D&D could’ve told me that, but I was playing alone. The composer for the game said that this was the low point of his career and blamed the console. Excuse me, listen to Jinmu Densho’s soundtrack and say that again. I dare you.
Ghost Manor
This game is sick in ways that no other PC Engine platformer has been up to this point. As with Kid Chameleon, movement has been thoroughly Hedgehogged so now our man with a tiny body and huge head slides around and accelerates at ridiculous speeds. I have a limited supply of attack power. I am wearing a sweater with the letter “A” because my first name starts with A.
Straight from the getgo, the game does something ambitious with its level design. I get some orb magic from a mysterious hand and start walking right. I go over a bridge, step on some soft ground and it caves in. I fall twenty stories below into a pool of water and I have to climb back up using slopes and small platforms. These slopes are the game developer’s favorite tool. I’m meant to jump up a bit, slide down, and jump just a little bit further than last time. I finally get a key, open a door and make my way to the next screen. Imagine my face when I see a townscape filled with sloped roofs and waterfalls. I was hooting and hollering at this point, pushed to the brink of losing my mind. I can’t go any further. It hurts too much.
14 Likes
I haven’t been making wheels anymore but I sill want to encourage other people to play a little. I made this Google Sheet so you can see what’s been mentioned and, more importantly, what hasn’t. But please, if something has been mentioned already, don’t hesitate to add your own thoughts!
4 Likes
Scouring my old notes for
PC Denjin: Punkic Cyborgs
explosive sprite overload to the max and sure there’s a bit of slowdown here and there
bristles with good vibes
much more enjoyable than the later “CD Denjin”
pick from a wide variety of cyborg sidekicks to shoot alongside you and, if you get the sidekick summon powerup again while the sidekick is present, the two of you merge in to one big old super-cyborg that pretty much stomps everything in its path, even the screen-filling cartoon bosses
4 Likes
And for
God Panic: The Strongest Corps in History
one of the weirdest shooters I have played
pretty darn good
very easy to get hit
soundtrack extends the craziness of the settings with a variety of appropriate tunes: smooth jazz, synthesized classical Japanese,
even rocking along to “Danger Zone” or whatever that Top Gun theme was while flying over the giant sunbathing girl (and an F-16 flies by, just in case you’d missed the connection)
The sprite variety is quite astounding, there are sequences where you fight giant boss-type thing after giant boss-type thing, no two of them alike. You aren’t supposed to do that in shooters but apparently nobody told developer Teichiku
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YEAH IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
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What a stacked year for shooters that I still haven’t touched Air Zonk.
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Right? In 1992 alone, it feels like the PC Engine had a STG library to rival most other console’s entire lifespans.
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Burai 2 Still Buraiin’
Burai means scoundrel/rascal/untrustworthy. Don’t think it has anything to do with this title. This is a continuation of the first. I am so inoculated to the Thousands Of Years Ago Before The Coming Of The Dragonites that I just zone out this time. What I don’t get sick of, having friends yell in my ear and watching it as it happens. This one had 3 different Stuff That Happened before we got to the player characters. Which are a pretty boy god and his fox wife. And I mean it his wife is a fox. She’s also significantly weaker than him and the constant target of monsters. The Hot Sexy Bad Girl shows up and kidnaps one of our cubs so we set off to a palace under the sea.
No towns, no prep. Just immediately in a dungeon and random battles. Just like Burai you level up through story events not through these battles so they are purely attrition. The first battle just two eels. Doable. The second two clams and a shark. The clams took 4 turns to kill each. “Oh it’s like this.”
I found the underwater castle which was locked. I needed to touch ancient stone faces that talked to give me stones for the door. The faces are about 15 in number around the dungeon. I start trying to make my way to faces. My wife/girlfriend keeps dying but is revived at the end of combat. It gets in a bad way, “what happens if you die?” “We are about to find out.” It brought up a screen asking me to load my most recent save.
We’re done here i declared.
God Panic
This shooter barely feels like I am doing anything. A parade of 1992 shitposts attack me. One of the stages is the back of a sunbathing woman. The final boss I enlist the help of God to kill a giant bear-cat thing. The screen fades. Loop 2 begins but now everything is fucked up. I’ll check the rest on youtube. All the fun enemy art was fun. It’s not like a good game though.
Psychic Detective Vol 3
First off this game has a woman on the cover. Secondly one of my first adventure game options was to think about my office. Another detective comes by and offers me a job. I’m just supposed to meet an old man and get paid for it. I am told to be a Psychic Analyst. This never comes up in the game play.
After this meeting, I meet a lady friend and we have The PC Engine’s Most Tasteful Consensual Sex Scene. It’s nice and adult. I can barely hear the dialog but feel like that would only barely help things. We all thought it was a great sex scene that really showed some passion.
Alright time to meet this old man. He is near immobile. He doesn’t respond to our questions. We for some reason open up his shirt and check his pulse. We go home. The misery begins. I go around to the 4 locations with no people to talk to or plot to speak of. I can’t get anything to happen. I consider my office dozen of times. I go to the other guy’s office and consider his office dozens of times. I go to the park and look at the park. I go to Ishtar, which apparently is an apartment complex. I talk to the Super. She eventually stops talking to me. I cannot figure out what the fuck the plot is. Going back to my office I know my girlfriend is missing and the other detective is missing. My friends start questioning why am I playing this, “It seems like you hate it.”
I get fed up and check a walkthrough. I do the byzantine steps to unlock the…story? My girlfriend’s apartment has a pink toilet. I use it dozens of times. Finally I notice the answering machine. Someone was trying to contact my girlfriend but couldn’t. I go back to the other detective’s place. This time I am supposed to look for the dozenth time and then there is a strange guy who doesn’t tell me anything and dissapears.
I’ve been able to go to the train station this whole time where the Station worker won’t tell me anything. Now having talked to a strange guy he will say he’s seen my detective friend and my girlfriend but not what train they got on. I get a few more locations where nothing happens. I find out I am somehow 1/3rd of the way through the game.
The sex scene was great though.
Air Zonk
OH MY GOD THIS MUSIC OWNS. This game owns. Owns. Owns. Tenouttaten. S++
6 Likes
Moto Roader MC
Masaya has made a Moto Roader without the super zoomed in, rubber-banded design of the previous two. They have also taken out the supply shop with its armory and machine parts. Now it’s much closer to something like RC Pro-Am. The cars zip around a visible track and you can shoot a missile or drop a barrel bomb at any moment. I am terrible at this game, bumpercar off the walls, spin around backwards, and drive into trains terrible. Oh! it also has a soccer mode where you drive your cars around trying to hit soccer balls into the opponents goal. Looking at you, Rocket League.
This is another PC Engine game that doesn’t make sense to play alone.
F1 Circus Special and F1 Circus ’92: The Speed of Sound
These are two similar releases: one on CD-ROM, the other on HuCard. I prefer the car sounds from the CD-ROM, but it’s easier to hear the music on the HuCard. The sound does a great thing in that the roar of the engine gets louder when driving through a tunnel to simulate the reverberating noise.
This is the first F1 Circus that I actually wish I could be good at. The game is kind in some ways. Now when you are adjusting the parts on your car, the game has an autotune setting where you can just tell it to tune for speed, balance, or handling. It is still way too fast for me to react well, but I was able to qualify for a race. Unfortunately, races are at least five times harder because now there are 19 other cars to bump into. I can’t do it. I don’t know what super human can.
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Inexplicable PS4/modern consoles release as well
But you say Masaya and suddenly I go “Oh yeah they are doing that.” It is explicable.
1 Like