We got Yabous over here! I yell. I yelled it today about the games from the previous post. Must have been Burai, statistically. Nobunaga and his ambition really left a Yabou impression.
Gradius Syndrome is when after dying in a shooter you cannot successfully recover from Zero Powerups. It got coined because of this game.
Not to say the game isn’t good. It’s Great. Wow it’s good. Just, death is quick, recovery is painful, and resetting on a CD game takes 90 seconds. It has floating fire orbs, and fire dragons, and a pissed off phoenix, and giger-stuff.
It sent me back to play Parodius-da, Salamander, Gradius. To relook at Gradius and go, ah yeah 1986. And Gradius is a 1986 game where Gofer is a 1989 game. There’s a difference. Also for how much I love the sound of the other Konami games was kind of shocked how shallow Parodius-da sounded. Not like composition, the actual sound.
Since I am talking about sound I forgot to mention Burai 2 and GodPanic both have horrible sounds that only made me want to stop playing.
Just checking in to say big kudos to @MintyJuffowup and everyone for keeping this going. Truly a collosal effort and much appreciated. Love these threads!
Wow apparently the only post I wrote about Snatcher was about how you could choose to be a pervert. I think I felt so shut down at the time because if you brought up Kojima people just yelled pervert pervert pervert. That sucked. He was making games for Japanese computers, they were all gross perverts. And at least here it was like optional. Gillian Seed does hit on every girl he meets.
While Metal Gear 1 and 2 set the ground work this is the debut of Game Director Hideo Kojima. A big giant complicated world with politics and technology and oh boy he loves movies. We recently complained on Hinge Problems about games inserting “You Like Movie?” into them. To Hideo Kojima’s credit he think about how to pull that into the fabric of the story he’s telling. Yes this is Blade Runner and Terminator, it is a different take than just doing Blade Runner though.
It’s a video game and you’re going to blast so many big skeleton robits. Why did he make it so hard! This unfailable adventure game has extremely hard simple shooting galleries in it. You have to work to see the end of the story.
And it is a story with an in-game encyclopedia and a world. The game takes place in Neo-Kobe City. Not Neo Shanghai. It leaves an unspoken truth, something really bad happened to Tokyo and Osaka-at the least.
Unlike the game I played last night it has strong compelling adult characters and you meet them constantly. It plays tricks on you. It is confidently a video game.
The Sega CD version is probably a little better (and in English). This version is great and definitely better than the Japanese computer original. And if you put it next to every other Japanese Adventure game it is running circles around them. I had a fantastic time playing it I guess two years ago now.
Konami arrived on the PC Engine in 1992 and it arrived HARD.
This has so many variations of Shanghai. I got sucked into the Dragon’s Eye mode where you take turns against a computer. You get a hand of tiles and try to clear out space on the board. Meanwhile, your opponent tries to lay tiles down to make it harder for you to find matches. I played this five times and lost every time. I’m just going to assume the computer is cheating. There’s also a five player Shanghai Free-for-all that is so sick and twisted that I think we have to play it at an SBcon.
The last PC Engine game from UPL…this sucks I start off looking at a map of an entire continent. I choose a kingdom and stand before the castle. Walking in, the king challenges me to a game of riichi mahjong. BTW, I have gotten better. I’ve learned that the main yaku you want to go for is riichi, which I guess is how the variant got it’s name. You can declare riichi if you are one tile away from completing all of your sets (tenpai) and your hand is closed. Once you do, you just discard every new tile until you get the right one. I did this against the king and won. He promised his daughter to me. She…uh promised to do her best and asked me to do the same. She then posed for a bit, I guess as encouragement. Every mahjong match I got into afterward ended with my opponent declaring riichi before me and completing their hand. This has to be by design.
This reminds me of the first mahjong game for the PC Engine, Sengoku Mahjong. I can choose to play against three other historical figures, some Japanese, some Chinese, some Western. I chose to face off against Nostradamus, Caesar, and Napoleon. The RNG is tuned more to your favor. In my very first turn, I was able to call Kan (picking up a discard to create 4 of a kind) on a Green Dragon. That’s highly unlikely. Oddly enough, this game feels uglier Sengoku Mahjong. I don’t need to play several rounds of this.
the actual pilot disk for pce has a bunch of interviews with the voice cast, a sound test with a few tracks from the game and a trailer that gives far too much away - a lot of teases for the third act that was new for this release
This is great. I never realized how brazen you could be. Every time I played this before now, I always walked in gingerly and tried to avoid being detected at all. That’s not really necessary. It’s totally valid to just run in guns blazing and jump over every cop in your way. It reminds me a bit of Harold Lloyd films where he just runs circles around police officers. I’m really enamored by the different set pieces I saw. I once ran into a kitchen and the chef throw a pie at me. That house also had a zipline for some reason. Is this the best SEGA conversion for the PC Engine? Well…
Yeah, this is probably it. I’m happy that NEC Ave chose these two multiplayer SEGA games. Gain Ground is very sick. It gives you these small action scenarios where the challenge is trying to kill every enemy. There’s low ground and high ground, so you have to consider which weapon is best at any given time. The real hook of the game is that you have a selection of characters instead of lives. Each character has their own primary and secondary fire, walking speed, and range. Some characters can’t even shoot the higher ground at all while others are really bad at maneuvering around swarms of low ground enemies. The real beauty of it is that you collect these characters by picking up little totem versions that are in the stage. Take it to the exit and you’ll have the character available to you in the next stage. It’s so good. There’s a robot who shoots missiles, a woman with a boomerang, and a sharpshooter who does this quick left-right shot.
Apparently, this game is easier than the arcade or Genesis ports. I can believe it too because I was able to get much farther in just ten minutes than I was able to when I actually owned the cartridge.
Image Fight 2: Operation Deepstriker
It’s not as good as the first. I went back to check. The original has that great balance between your big enemy sprite, how dangerous the enemies are, and the memorization needed to survive. So not a surprise this moves slightly in all 3 and falls short.
The first boss killed me instantly, and it took 20 tries to finally bring it down. Thanks to the still good checkpointing I could build up my arsenal to not full but strong enough to take him down. The problem is surviving to take it down still felt like cheating. Pushed my way through stage 2 (which was the shooter with the really good colony stage?) got to the second boss, which destroyed me instantly. This checkpoint broke my patience with the game
You travel from inside the colony, through an airlock tunnel, and into space. I died once because the airlock door was real but barely visible. On either side of the airlock were powerups effectively behind my ship. Upon a restart I had no way to shoot these powerups to get them. I found out touching them as is will also kill me. So there is no way to power up before Boss 2.
Psychic Storm
I 1CCed this. One of my easiest 1CCs ever, on my first try. Strange how the game about pilots biomechanically fused into their ships that transform into what would be enemy bosses in any other game is this unremarkable. It was pleasant to play through. I wouldn’t even think of it as a power fantasy. Lots of Robotech references but shooters with enemy ships that look like cucumbers is like half the PC Engine library.
Inoue Mami: Kono Hoshi ni Tatta Hitori no Kimi
So the girl that was the “star” of Mitsubachi Gakuen gets her own game which for what I played was a Gravure Idol event without the baby oil. It begins like all these things do, exactly like Myst. You’re falling through a starry expanse and hear a girl’s voice. You wake up it’s your first day of High School (eehhh)! Your childhood friend just moved back to the city and through dialog you get to decide her father’s job. Don’t you enjoy staring at this (hopefully an adult playing a 15 year old.) all the pictures are overblown and badly scanned let’s be honest. She says exactly what you wish she would say. She says you’re cool. She thinks all your ideas are great. She agrees to go on a date with you. You watch her try and clothes. You go to the museum. It is all fan drawings of her. You feel her held hostage for this video game as she has to give positive impressions of all them, burned to disc and digitized, forever. This woman doesn’t seem to have any internet presence outside of this game on auction sites. It will last forever more than other pornographic-like media because gamers are compulsive, ahem, and must have every game for the system even if it is pornography. This isn’t pornography and that’s kind of worse. It’s a fantasy that you can go back in time l, it’s high school, and you can do it right. It’s gross!
I peaked at Tengai Makyou 2 and my thoughts from a year or two ago still hold so:
The biggest stumbling block is all the menus and items really going hard on the obtuse naming. The title screen has an explainer for New Game and Continue like if they were Inaugurate and Recapitulate. That definitely establishes a mood. On the one hand you see all the budget they threw at it, and on the other it isn’t that much more impressive than the average Super RomRom.
Far To Earth No Jakotei: Neo Metal Fantasy
Thanks to everyone watch me walk around a dungeon for three hours. This is by Human, and Human really know how to make a video game. Everyone kept praising the character portraits, music, the names. Names like Sadness, Skelt, Mobile Monroe, Niko Tesla, Laddy. I kept praising the writing. When have I said in these 800 posts that the WRITING is good? Never? The characters are sharply written.
The intro shows our party, Pink Hair Girl, Centuar Man, Blue Sphere, and Legendary Hero. You are ready for adventure.
The story is for 300 years the Legendary Hero and The God Of Destruction fought. Eventually the Hero defeats and banishes the God and he falls into a deep sleep. Thousands of years pass. Legends and rumors are forgotten. A small village keeps the truth alive and guards over the Hero’s resting place. A young girl is turning 16 and thus part of the responsibility for the hero’s resting place. She’s told to go visit the tomb.
As a horny teenager growing up in a closed community, your sexual outlets are few. So she kisses the Hero’s statue. And the statue disappears and is replaced with an 11 year old boy. The boy has no memories and no name. She and him hurries back to town. The evil empire’s floating fortress city is parked right near by. The Emperor kidnaps the girl and her parents and ignores the child. He hopes to resurrect the God Of Destruction. Who knows why.
The village elder is a coward and goes “boy you must be the resurrected hero and thus you gotta rescue your oneechan and her parents by yourself. Your ancient sword is in the basement, srybye.” You set out. The ancient sword sitting in your inventory armed with a dagger. The battles are extremely fast. Blink and you miss status effects, damage limits, and rewards. The rewards screen auto-completes and dumps you back on the world map.
Eventually the slime from the intro falls from the sky hits me in the face and knocks me out. Luckily a travelling princess finds me and I join her party. We find a cyber-scope so we can break walls to find an imperial spy in the old city. I can use the conversation feature in the menu to get voicd character building party talk. There are cybernetic centaurs and machine guns and state-funded cable news and also Cyber Wizards and Dragon Men and NETRUNNERS. Reminds me of Shining Force in the “sure whatever.”
As we saw the hero and his party at the beginning and we have them as a child you might be interested to know this is the same year as Dragon Quest V.
I’ve probably played for 4 hours and I am on…story block 3 of 18 according to one guide. I can’t find opinions about this game anywhere. I’m the first, along with my friends, to have an opinion about this game on the internet. It got a 21 in Famitsu, they hated it.
It’s very playable. Unlike all these other RPGs it likes the player character. It can be dangerous but believes in you. I’m genuinely curious where the plot will go. It feels like it has legs and drive where Babel kind of spun in circles. It’s good.
On the other hand I opened up a list of JRPGs on the SNES in 1992-3. Shin Megami Tensei, 7th Saga, Romancing SaGa 2, Secret of Mana, Alchest, Final Fantasy V, Dragon Quest V, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia. Maybe unfair but the PCE and Megadrive can’t begin to touch that, and I would be lying to myself if replaying one of those wouldn’t be more fun than this.
On the other hand if I did replay this I’d be like, the one English speaker who has. And I like the dialog and find it pleasant. Seems like it might be just as long as TM2 if it doesn’t speed up though.
I love Stratego and all the matches I played against my brother. It only really works as a blend of chess and poker, so playing against a computer takes all the thrill out. I forgot some of the rules, like how to get rid of bombs, so my strategy was ruined right from the start. I thought that spies got rid of bombs, but they actually get rid of marshals. Oh well! The game froze on me as I got close to the end of the match, so I’ll just take that as a win for me.
Look, I’m basically the guy from SoMI. I love Loom. Brian Moriarty is a king. This game was compatible with the PC Engine Mouse, so I figure it’s about as good as playing on DOS. However, the mouse doesn’t work too well on the emulator I’m using, so I’m not going to play more than I need to. I did need to play some because it’s beautiful and strange and I wanted to see it all again. It has a funny idea of an Expert mode where you can’t see the musical staff and have to rely completely on your ear and remember note locations on the physical, wooden staff.
Putting those pieces on the digital game board was hassle enough for one game. I used to love Stratego. It’s a good game.
Color Wars
4 player competitive Othello mets Connect Four but also 3D. You have to be fucking kidding me.
Momotarou Densetsu Gaiden
Despite all my JRPG playing I have instantly bounced from the Momotarou games. I think because I know in my heart they are Only for 8 year olds with the parents watching. I’ve tried playing this for even 15 minutes 3 times this month and I get roughly 45 seconds into it before I turn it off.
Kiaidan 00
This game seems great, but I need to play it with save states because I don’t love playing the whole stage to get one shotted by the boss because I forgot they could do a memo-heavy attack. I could handle just restarting the boss.
Future Boy Conan
I’ll be honest seeing humanity surviving a semi-optimistic apocalypse scenario and the ocean just healled itself so we can fish again is both too optimistic and too selfish for me to handle. And then I died and had to watch a cutscene over again and went, nah. The PC Engine is giving me lots of chances to touch bases with Culturally Important Anime. That’s cool.
Oh so this is the Track & Field-like Olympic sports game. I’m meant to play as a super athlete who competes in all events. There are three events per day and I have to qualify in all of them in order to move on. Because a turbo controller makes tapping buttons too easy, many of the events call on me to alternate tapping between I & II. I tried many methods: the spoon trick, piano trills, shaking the controller at an angle. All of these were exhausting so I guess they simulated intense exercise to some degree. The easiest event I tried was archery because it played more like a golf game with its classic two-tap power meter. Long jump and discuss weren’t too bad either because I only had to alternate taps for a short period of time. Swimming, however, was brutal and I just barely qualified whenever these events came up. This would probably be a good way to torture four other people.
This is pretty great. I’m starting to admit to myself that I like soccer games. I never knew that before starting this thread. Power Eleven is still my favorite on the console, but this is different enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s threatening to replace it. Tecmo were the first people to make an action soccer game really work, way back in 1985 when they still went by Tekhan. It’s comforting to see that lineage continue here. Controlling passes and shots takes awhile to get used to. One button does a push kick, the other does a laces kick. If I’m holding a direction while kicking, the ball will go about a field’s width far, but if I let go for a moment, I give a gentle nudge. When I’m on defense, the buttons switch to slides and jumps. It looks like I can’t get any penalties here, so I can slide like a maniac. It’s a lot of fun! I lost pretty badly against the computer, but I’d love to play against friends.
Despite how often I make bedroom humor, I think toilet humor is for children and in bad taste. We all just want to poop in a clean place and have the matter be removed from us as fast and far as possible. It’s impossible for me to judge this because I am so against it in principle and all the jokes are “poop”. You see a little boy’s penis. I also didn’t like that. You see a lot of penises and butts. But it’s all about pissing and pooping.
RyuuKyuu
I had forgotten which one this was and Minty brought it up so I played it again. Fuck. Puzzle Well but you are placing playing cards to make pokerhands in a 5x5 grid. Playing it once felt like an achievement, then it’s like “you like this? Wanna do it again?” Maybe if my mind is right, but it takes an awful lot of concentration. Let’s say it’s the 100th in the top 100 PC Engine games.
I start off looking at a map of an entire continent. I choose a kingdom and stand before the castle. Walking in, the king challenges me to a game of riichi mahjong. BTW, I have gotten better. I’ve learned that the main yaku you want to go for is riichi, which I guess is how the variant got it’s name. You can declare riichi if you are one tile away from completing all of your sets (tenpai) and your hand is closed. Once you do, you just discard every new tile until you get the right one. I did this against the king and won. He promised his daughter to me. She…uh promised to do her best and asked me to do the same. She then posed for a bit, I guess as encouragement. Every mahjong match I got into afterward ended with my opponent declaring riichi before me and completing their hand. This has to be by design.
