Yeah I think the most I ran into–although I don’t think I played all the way through–was like
I could easily have missed something.
5 Likes
i know you mean magazine book but my brain forces me into believing that you’re getting pc engine info from some schmuck you dont respect at all. ‘oh the mook told me today…’ etc etc etc
7 Likes
Is that why I use it… 
5 Likes
I imagine the Mook being like the Finn from Neuromancer, just some ratty little guy who runs a dingy electronics store that’s really just a front for illicit PC Engine info
“Listen Mook, I just need some info on Boukendanshaku don the lost sunheart”
“I hear ya Rudie, but times is tough these days, I ain’t got nuthin for ya… unless y’know”
money gestures
6 Likes
Also, green haired Alita running a weapon shop?
4 Likes
Mook always makes me think of the teak Wing Chun training dummy…
2 Likes
We’re Back Baby and it’s 1993!
Fiend Hunter
It was like I watched 15 minutes of an anime. It starts with a naked woman who jumps into a lake and swims to an underwater pyramid. Then we see a probably naked man being held by a naked woman. This is our hero Fiede who hunts Fiends. I uh…huh.
One of the voice actors I think is literally voice mails from her sound quality. The game, if I could call it that was walking around until the next cutscene triggered. I then went to a shop, bought an item, then could not get out of the buy menu. I tried for several minutes then accidentally pushed the magic button that honestly I thought I’ve disabled 3 times. See if you hit start+select it will reset any PC-Engine game.
The calculations of rewatching 15-20 minutes to get back to where I was seemed bad. But I will a different day! I gotta hunt at least one Fiend before I give up.
Moonlight Lady
Both of these games I tagged as adult. In the mook this one had a girl very prominently showing off her panties. I didn’t see that tonight. This is Bootleg-Sailor Moon. You have a red bird instead of a cat. Greek Gods instead of Planets. The transformation sequence has almost identical music. The main pink hair girl is a ditz. I met The Smart One. But let’s talk about the game.
Good pixel anime stuff blah blah blah. The game is too-ambitious RPG-Maker stuff. The bird said their was a monster near by. I left my house (the dad owns a toy store and it is loveingly rendered) and wondered around for about 10 minutes trying to figure out what was going to trigger the next bit. I needed to go two screens over (even though I was told it was “close”) and then I warped from the world map to a battle map. The combat is worse than Sega Saturn’s Magic Knight Rayearth. That’s saying something. No hit detection or friction. My main attack was a spinning circle around my character that I just grazed the boss with. This did not work against the second boss. Now I was also party-training my second character. So they got hit and took off life every time I moved to dodge. I tried 4 times before I felt I’d had enough and could watch Sailor Moon.
Summer Carnival '93 NEXZR
Y’all were waiting for this. Time for NEXZR to shine. Really change my mind. Within 15 seconds of starting score attack I remembered I don’t like this game. It likes to have enemies at angles the weapon set can’t handle unless you are fully stacked. And it is far too stingy on the powerups. Less so in this mode.
It didn’t matter because 1:30 into the 2 minute run I FELL ASLEEP.
9 Likes
In 1993, the horny has been dialed up to an unsettling level. We need to balance this out somehow. I think I have just the thing…
SimEarth
We get to hear the planet talk and introduce the Earth to us. Let’s get one thing out of the way: the Earth does NOT take off its clothes in this game. This is one of 12 games from 1993 that was officially released in the US. I can jump into a random planet or start a scenario such as “Terraform Mars” or “Move life onto Land.” I tried a bit of a scenario where I’m meant to help civilization develop past the stone age. The Earth hints that I could even get a separate intelligent life form to do the same thing; it didn’t have to be human. Playing the game involves placing tiles down like plants, animals, or technology, elevating the land, or causing natural disasters.
I gotta tell ya, this is really boring. I’m getting almost nothing out of this. I played for over 30 minutes trying to effect the world, but even on the highest speed, everything moved at a snails pace.
A-Densha de Ikō III
I do not know how to play A-Train at all, but it is beautiful and it is Artdink. I promise to learn how to play it some day, but it’s not going to be on this version. I’ll have to find some friendly English edition and work my way to this.
Artdink…Artdink…I should use that as my focus word when meditating. This is one of the most beautiful games on the PC Engine. I love looking at this miniature world. If I knew how to play it, I could make it look even more like something from my dreams. I could put in an amusement park, create ski slopes, maybe recreate Chongqing from memory. There is a day-night cycle and every palate it flips through is gorgeous.
12 Likes
A-Train owns, especially this era of A-Train
6 Likes
Updates:
Fiend Hunter
Turns out it is shitty Flashback. I had to spend all my money before I could leave the store and I should have spent it in healing items. You do terrible platforming that, Splelunker style, can kill you it you fall too far. Then you get in locked screen combat with one enemy. I saw 3 or 4 all quite varied. The movement is very ridgid while the monster is bouncing and weaving to all corners of the screen. It sucked. Your little electric fuzzball following you around was beautifully animated though. As good as any anime.
Moonlight Lady
I forgot to mention this has all the frils of a TV Show with interstials and title cards. They were quite nice.
Kisou Louga
First I want to thank almost 500 PC Engine titles for teaching me enough that I could read that title without help. Secondly let’s see what the VideoGameDen said about this game:
That’s nicer than I’ll be to the game! It’s shitty Shining Force except you have bases. In the first battle there are 3 enemies and only two player characters. If a character is defeated they return to the base where they can take a turn to heal and be redeployed. The enemy base is luckily only two turns away. The goal is to break down the enemy’s door and take over their base.
If I took down two enemies, my characters would be at half health. If we focused on the final enemy, the next turn they just spawned back at their base. My characters never seemed to get stronger as they defeated and were defeated five times each. “This would be interesting if it was not interminable.” A game focused purely on attrition might be good.
Reading again that quote does not properly explain the battle system. It is full normal JRPG once you declare attack. My first turn I accidentally got one party member against all 3 enemies. That went about as well as expected once i saw what was happening.
This game opens with the mysterious green haired girl naked on an altar. Then she opens her eyes. Later in the same opening movie you see her with clothes looking non-plussed. I should just start running a tally for this year if a game shows boobs or not. It would be tasteless and yet honest.
7 Likes
We are saved from having to write about Wizardry 1 and 2 as Kimimi commited herself to the task of this thread without knowing it:
5 Likes
Horror Story
This is an auto-scrolling platformer by Toaplan! It’s pretty bad, like worse than Bonze Adventure bad. Turbo power goes a long way in this game. Not only does it help to rapid fire bombs and missiles, it also makes double jumping easier. This is one of those games where double jumps only work when you press during upward trajectory. I’ve never seen this before in a run 'n gun, but I can bop on enemies heads like Mario. It’s the most satisfying thing to just pogo for as long as the scroll allows.
Jim Power
Loriciel baby. They’re back with what is probably their most beautiful game. Now, it’s not good…at all. The jump physics, collision and platform detection, and everything else about it is all wrong. But these colors! Look at these colors! I almost gave up before beating the first level which would have been a huge shame because I was greeted with something so Amiga, I saw checkerboard bouncing balls in my head.
Camp California
Oh my God, they made a sequel to Yo, Bro! Because this is on CD, we get actual Beach Boys recordings. I really need to see an oral history on this Camp California stuff. Our bear and other animal friends are really miffed about a nuclear power plant that is going to be built. They decide to drive around the West in their Deuce Coupe to put a stop to it. When you’re jumping around the stages, you can collect cans to recycle. Recycling them gets you gasoline to fill your car?? Which let’s you drive to Las Vegas??? And then you can fall through a hole in some New Wave apartment that leads to a dungeon with skeletons and cages??? I think I’m going to have to stream this at some point.
8 Likes
STARTLING ODYSSEY
This is a JRPG that also got a Playstation remake. The Moby Games description of the game is wrong but i don’t have the heart to correct it. The first thing you see when you turn on the game is RAYFORCE presents in a very cracked game screen.
The opening cinematic is amateur but also some of that key art is cool as hell. The tentacle monster over the destroyed city? Wow.
Then you get to the actual game and
And I had to check four times this was a 1993 release. Necros for HuCard from 1990 looks more advanced than this. This is the most standard looking and playing JRPG since the last one I made this claim to. I would say it possesses VAY QUALITY but actually it is worse than that.
You start with one party member trying to rescue your mom. Was there a JRPG about rescuing your mom? Probably not. Obviously I know the score, I grind for two levels before moving on. Except. As soon as I am level two, I’m not fighting one red snake, I’m fighting two. And then lvl3 and 3 snakes. And lvl4 and 4 snakes, which regardless of my armor, means I am getting hit for 4 damage every turn at the least. I eventually find my second party member back at the opening town despite the whole game lying to me where they were (the first dungeon did keep saying You Can’t Go In Alone (It’s Not Safe)).
The local king gives us a key to go into an ancient tower and get ancient explosives to blow a hole so that we can clear out an undersea tunnel to the next land.
Remember how the enemies were matching my level? Imagine what happens when I suddenly have a Mage at level 1. Each level up filled me with dread knowing that my characters were only going to get hit harder as a reward. Luckily the first boss, who I released with said explosives hit me for 20 of my 60 HP (30 for my mage) and ended our rescue mission and the end of my 45 minutes with the game.
I certainly hope the other JRPGs are better than this. I imagine the shock of playing a mainline 16bit Final Fantasy at the end of this might instantly liquify me. But at least I’m not trying to play every mediocre SNES RPG. That’s next month when we get a port of Lady Minerva. Not wait there is a SNES port this month never mind.
10 Likes
i like horror story
and bonze adventure
5 Likes
From the little I played, I did enjoy Bonze Adventure despite its roughness. Horror Story is just rougher.
1 Like
Dungeon crawling in the year of the rooster
Shin Megami Tensei
This port came out about a year after the Super Famicom release. There is an excellent cutscene/demo montage and voiced lines in the intro sequence, but I didn’t come across any other CD-ROM enhancements after the game truly began. The mood and aesthetic of Shin Megami Tensei is immaculate. Wandering around a shotengai in first person, seeing all these characters with so much attitude, it all feels so satisfying.
This has been a good reminder that I should really sit down and play it some day.
Laplace no Ma
Human crafts a loving remake of a 1987 computer game. This is another dungeon crawler, but much more Wizardrian in design. Like Wizardry, I create characters, assemble a party at an inn, and prepare for a dungeon crawl by visiting various places in a town. Unlike Wizardry, this game is set in a Lovecraftian Massachusetts town in the 1920s. Instead of a dungeon, there’s a haunted mansion.
Before going to the mansion, I stop at the bar. A lady tells me that two children disappeared, presumed dead. She asks me to look in the mansion for her and I agree. While at the bar, I drink a round and play blackjack. I talk to a man who offers to join me. I take him up on it. We enter the mansion and are greeted by a musty smell. There’s a painting on the wall that talks to us. It tells us to leave. Various creatures attack me: rats, a ghost, slime…I keep wandering through the mansion and into the courtyard. A maneating plant appears and wipes my party out.
I know there’s a fan translation of a Super Famicom remake, but that version doesn’t have POV dungeon crawling. I would really love to sink a couple of hours into this because it is something else.
Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra
This game is so cool. It has a ridiculous sound track, chunky monster graphix, and a fully first person world. I played for just 15 minutes so I’m betting it gets old after awhile, but I really enjoyed stepping into this surreal space, turning over rocks, and watching the bugs squirm. This really feels like the English dungeon crawler to play on the system.
13 Likes
Only tonight as I tried to look up a guide for MagiCoal did I think "I should maybe put some of these “reviews” on Hinge Problems. Will I? Who knows
MagiCoal
You can see pictures of the whole game here. This is powerful we have Squaresoft at home. Maybe the most SNES looking PC Engine game. It stars two wizard apprentices who get warped to a different world and caught up in trying to save it. Almost everyone you meet dies a gruesome pixel death. In between are those beautiful full screen animes we have grown to love for the console. The game is theoretically two player, while for my purposes the computer controls the other wizard and would get me trapped as they tried to kill an infinitely spawning enemy on the other side of a wall. Both wizards have different spells and you quickly gain more.
As if the game couldn’t steal everything from Secret of Mana the menu system is obtuse. Switching to the other character never feels right, and the amount of strange icons on the screen doesn’t help.
It is extremely linear, with a save prompt after every story event which makes it very easy for me to return to if I find myself wanting more of it’s Jank.
Sylphia
Can I say something that HG101 doesn’t? Here’s one thing, the soundtrack has haunted me. While taking care of my offspring I have a single earbud in recently listening to PC Engine Music on youtube. The stage one theme is present on every compilation. Ah this is the game it is from.
Tonkinhouse made me sit up in my seat. That it is also secretly by Compile is a second surprise. If @Father.Torque or @shrug played it they could point out all the Greek Myths they are referencing. Some of them look nice.
It’s not Compile’s best work. If you put your mind to it you can cheese all the bosses when they aren’t just trying to cover you with their entire body. I certainly won’t be booting up while Spriggan or Ai Chou Aniki is an option otherwise.
CD PC Denjin/ Air Zonk CD
Whatever the actual name of it is. Thanks Shmup Junkie for letting me know this is not by Red. While the new devs captured the visual charm of Air Zonk and filled it with Rockabilly the game is frequently boring. There will be stretches where you aren’t doing anything. The 3rd stage boss is trying to do a R-Type Stage 3, but you can eliminate the parts so quickly that you then just sit there waiting for the camera to finally move around. It did remind me just how good Air Zonk is. The Rockabilly tracks are, fine. Did I say I saw the Rockabilly guys dancing in Yamashita Park? It was beautiful. I considered joining them but got self-conscious and depressed. Even Rudie gets sad sometimes! Stick to Air Zonk on Hu-Card.
The ending credits reference Street Fighter 2’s Ryu ending which shows just how big of a cultural impact that game had.
Crest of Wolf
Extremely powerful, “We Have Final Fight At Home.” It’s a bad Belt Scroller. It is based of a Weston (of Wonder Boy Fame (Buy Clockwork Aquario on modern consoles now)) arcade game, Riot City. I’m sure I’ve played it, and I’m sure it has to be better than this. Just dull hallways against the same enemies repeated. It has a heavy rock/metal soundtrack that introduces 4 songs in stage 1 and that was a mistake because stage 2 has one. Stage 4 has songs I had heard before.
Another cry where I wish someone versed in metal and 80s rock could listen to this soundtrack and point out everything it is obviously referencing. It’s a well made effort, just not very good.
1993 is turning out to be something of a bum year, after 1992. Well time to ignore the two great games and keep digging in.
8 Likes
Oh yeah Crest of Wolf stars Tony and Hawk and Tony’s walk cycle is some absolute Adventure Game Shit.
9 Likes
MetamorJupiter
This shooter is very boring. First of all, the ship is slow. I’m the kind of guy that upgrades speed first in Gradius, so there’s no way I will tolerate the sluggish dragging pace that this spacecraft drifts at. It can flip directions and switch between three firing modes, there’s options, and blah blah blah. Really, it’s just a boring version of Gate of Thunder. Want to know something crazy though? The music was done by Parappa and Vib Ribbon auteur, Masaya Matsuura. Don’t bother looking the soundtrack up. It’s a pretty generic Terminator-esque film score.
Lords of Thunder
Now this is video games. We’ve got anime cutscenes. We’ve got heavy metal music. We’ve got magic and swords and ships that represent different elements. We’ve got a little item shop where we can buy extra lives and bombs. We can choose between stages and they all have Latinate names. This is a big, juicy burger of a shooter and I am so happy that something like this exists to prop up the rest of this year. It’s funny that it shares the Thunder title with Gates of Thunder. I guess they really wanted people to know that they were (some of) the Thunder Force people.
Super Darius II
Darius is also very cool though not quite as impressive. The soundtrack is amazing, as we’d expect from Zuntata. The ships are much bigger than the first, but the hit box is still small. There’s something really satisfying about having a power-up system that just keeps going up. I’ve never really gotten into the Darius games before now, but these past few months have me eyeing the half-dozen Darius releases on the Switch.
8 Likes