Oh yeah, the look of this newer one is way different! I love the UI cherub.
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Princess Minerva
Protagonists: 9 Anime Girls of various fetishes with embarassing outfits (you can hear the makers beating off)
Original: No, a PC game that also got ported to Super Famicom.
Thousands of Years Ago Intro: No. A princess got bored so made her own mercenary group and looked for adventure
Unique Concepts: 9 girls in 3 seperate parties that each battle randomly selects. You level up SaGa style, the more you fight a certain way the more it pushes the character in that direction. Each armor change changes the portrait art for each of the 9 characters. The amount of unique sprites frightens me.
Did the grind make you quit: YES. There is about 10 seconds between random battle activate and first action. I finished the first dungeon and abandoned trying to climb the mysterious tower because walking 3 spaces for a minute long piss easy battle was driving me nuts.
Other thoughts: you are introduced to the girls with their tits out in a bathhouse. At first it was cheeky, then no you do see their female presenting nipples. The graphics are particularly nice.
You know how I kept praising the early PC Engine RPGs and how friendly they were to the player? That’s gone away. I have to rapidly tap A to get through dozens of text boxes and you can easily get trapped having to watch a voiced scene multiple times by a mispress.
Years ago I got the SFC version in a fukubukuro. I loudly announced maybe I’ll play this! on the forums. Someone replied “Why the fuck do you know Princess Minerva?”
You too can get hornt/amused by all the key visuals because it is 2023 and they are just on Youtube.
Hubba Hubba
Verdict 2 
out of 5
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I’m going to stay away from RPGs for awhile and leave Rudie to his self-flagellation. Although, I guess I will have to play the Cosmic Fantasy 4s. That will wait.
Garou Densetsu II & Special
Hudson ported a bunch of SNK games using the Arcade card. They are really impressive to look at. Also, they load. Arcade system games have to load a lot. Oddly enough, it’s possible to play this with a regular TurboPad: select and run function as light punch and kick.
I love Fatal Fury Special, but the computer is incredibly difficult. They even psyche you out by letting you choose a difficulty in the opening menu. There are about 5 options, so you’d think that would make sense for a really casual mode, but it doesn’t. In the 30 minutes I spent fooling around, I did what I usually do. I wasted my concentration on trying to get special inputs to work instead of reading my opponent and using appropriate pokes. I was able to win a match as Andy though! Andy has really good angles. You should try to play as Andy the next time you get the chance.
Pachio-kun 3: Pachislot & Pachinko
He’s back! He never left. After all this time, I still don’t understand pachinko. You’re meant to shoot a bunch of BBs onto a board and get them into slots so you can…get more BBs. I guess they’re like casino tokens. The machine automatically shoots them up and you just have to set the strength. The annoying thing about it is that the wheel that sets the strength loosens over time, so you can just set it and walk away. The first room in the game shows Pachiokun with his wife and child. The wife asks him to earn 10,000 yen pretty please and I guess Pachiokun is happy to do it. It’s what he was born for. I saw one board that mixed pachinko with a slot machine and another that mixed it with mahjong, so I think it’s fair to say that gambling people like many gambling games.
Hu PGA Tour: PowerGolf 2: Golfer
YES! Golf is back baby! This here is a golf game designed to be played with a mouse. But you can still play it with a controller. It was all very legible to me. I knew exactly how I messed up every time and I was even able to get par without rewinding once. Instead of a three-button-press meter, the game gives you a power meter, and positional axes. So you have to press the button when the line hits the level of power you want, again to hit low or high, and once more to draw or fade. All throughout, you’ve got ambient sounds and pleasant green photographs. There are load times, but maybe this is the best golf game on the system. Maybe…
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Hatsukoi Monogatari
This is some kind of digital comic, dating simulation combo. The game starts with a goddess fortune teller asking you all sorts of questions about you: birthday, blood type, what grade were you in when you first fell in love, their relationship with you when you did, etc. Then she picks out a person that you will fall in love with. But that’s all a preamble to the game’s true beginning. You play as a teenage boy who finds a mysterious floppy disk. You put it into your computer, run the program, and a woman comes out of your computer. At this point, I was getting pretty bored of choosing different menu options, and I am completely uninterested in this sort of fantasy, so I stopped playing. I didn’t even get to the sim part.
The Dynastic Hero
It’s Wonder Boy in Monster World! Honestly, the game feels like it belongs on the PC Engine more than the Mega Drive. It’s too stiff and colorful to call SEGA its home. I played through the first little town. I was amazed to see that the game had its own ocarina with songs you have to learn. I had to learn a three part song where each part had 7 notes. My teacher would yell at me for taking too long to play them back to her. Sorry! I had to write them down! I learned at the end of my session that dying just brings you back to the nearest inn so I didn’t need to waste my time going out and back. That might be enough to get me to keep playing for another thirty minutes.
This feels like a major step back after Dragon’s Curse. I really hope someone curses this dude. I’d much rather play as a mouse or falcon or fish man. At least the beginning has some nice throwbacks to Monster Land. I remembered specific spots where I could jump to get extra coins. I wonder how many more easter eggs there will be like that.
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i actually loved wonder boy in monster world a lot when i first played it through it. a fair amount more than dragon’s trap too. a thing i like about all the wonder boy games (excluding mw4 which kinda does away with this) is how slippery they are, along with the kinda stubby reach of your weapons. when you keep playing you learn when you should be attacking to kinda slide into an enemy which feels very different from more typical action games where your concerns are purely the timing and reach. i also remember really digging the last boss fight which is a struggle with these physics and seems largely impossible to do without eating a lot of hits. other memories about it have kinda vanished tho. it was a long time ago.
9 Likes
Oh so I misread the title. But also according to you the mook got it wrong and you don’t start from Elementary School? Guess I gotta play it now because of The Big 1994 Game. As comparison.
1 Like
When playing these RPGs back to back to back, I’ll end the night by starting the next one to watch the 15 minute opening and figuring out how to buy my armor and save. Last night’s nightcap just filled me with dread. It was the same as the game I had played (and am enjoying!) but worse. I went to bed thinking “am I going to play more of this?” I woke up today thinking, “Bonk Me! Am i really going to waste more of my time with that?”
No me! You can relax and be free. Presenting:
Record of the Lodoss War 2
This one literally opens with a map and explaining all the different allegeciances and tribes of Lodoss Island. I knew immediately and intimately that outside of it being fake, would not be important to the game. It eventually opens as all these do, talking to a king to be told to do a thing.
Protagonists: Some guy.
Original: Yes, but part of the long and expansive media empire of Record of the Lodoss War. I haven’t watched the anime. I never will.
Thousands of Years Ago Intro: zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Unique Concepts: just like the first you don’t navigate towns, but select from a menu then do little tiny adventure game stuff. The battle system is almost identical to a game I like but worse. You have an overhead view and use energy to move around and select attack. Emerald Dragon will take this and make it breezy. As is the battles all take about a minute and you have a normal encounter rate of about 10-20 steps.
Did the grind make you quit: No, the thought of playing more did. Also that Emerald Dragon is this but fun! I’ve played ED for two nights now and have held off on writing it because I am having a good time with it.
Other thoughts: I’d play the first game over this.
Verdict: Unrateable because I played for 20 minutes, but it isn’t getting more time out of me. 5 years out of a possible 1000. 5 years is still a long time!
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Cosmic Fantasy 4: Ginga Shōnen Densetsu - Totsunyū-hen and Cosmic Fantasy 4: Ginga Shōnen Densetsu - Gekitō-hen
I got jealous of how much fun Rudie was having with all the JRPGs. I decided to play a few of my own. Like he mentioned, Cosmic Fantasy 4 is actually two games. One follows the protagonists from the first game in the series while the other follows the protagonists from the second game. In a twist to me, both versions start off as a menu-based adventure game.
In Cosmic Fantasy 4: Cosmic Fantasy 2-2, you wake from a nightmare. You’re still thinking about your childhood girlfriend who died. Or was it your sister? Cousin? No, I’m pretty sure it was your girlfriend. After shaking thoughts from your mind, you decide to take a shower. When you open the door, you walk in on your female crewmate, the camera tilts from legs up, and you see her bare chest. Time to horny: 8 minutes. There are some comedic antics, then you find a drifting ship. You pull it in, recognize your friend as the pilot and then go on an adventure.
When you land on the planet, it switches to the traditional RPG overhead view. There was a pretty funny gag where the game won’t let you use the elevator to leave the first room. Each time you try, something else happens: a man walks up trying to order food, a kid makes fun of you for not knowing how to use elevators, etc. When I finally got out, I was surprised by how big the towns were. Telenet saw Tengai Makyou 2 and felt up to the challenge of matching it. They definitely seemed to make something that’s more technically impressive than any other game in the series.
After so much talking, I decided to try out Cosmic Fantasy 1-2. It opens with the hero in a battle, but it turns out to be a computer simulation. The game turns off, the door opens, and your female crewmate dressed in sportswear hands you a towel. The camera tilts from her legs up. Time to horny: 2 minutes. You talk for a bit and decide to go to the space station’s water park. Here, you meet one of your female instructors in a swimsuit. Again, the camera tilts from legs up. If you use the look command, you get extreme close-ups of certain areas that I don’t think I need to describe in detail. At this point, the game reminds me more of something from NewGrounds than anything else (Oh my god, Newgrounds still exists?!). I shut it off and try to shut it from my mind.
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Bakuchō Yoshimoto Shinkigeki
It seems right I also play this. I got to stage 4 where there was suddenly a challenge and it was late and I decided to go to bed. The amount of unique sprites and mechanics is cool. This is really what the PC Engine is about. A mediocre platformer you play just to see what’s next.
I tapped an exhausted Lady Rude to look at the screen. She said she had heard of this show then went back to being an exhausted mom. It’s like she’s not a night person or something!
The comedy in this game and I am sure the show is bad. Oh an ugly woman exists, oh a fat guy exists, oh this man is a coded homosexual. Oh this guy says “sorry” like “sawwy” the pinnacle of humor here. You could tell there were jokes because you hear laughter in the background. Could have fooled me.
There definitely seemed to be a lot of celebrity cameos and I started thinking about Osaka in the Yakuza games and not Osaka, the place I’ve actually been twice. That’s mai bwain doh (laughter)
Emerald Dragon
Original: No. PC Computer port from 1989, again. What is with 1994 and 1989 PC Ports??? This port is done by Alfa System, they ported Ys and others to PCEngine, they made Download, and will go on to do Linda Cubed, Gunparade March, and a lot of Tales Of grunt work. They are real secret PC Engine super-stars.
Protagonists: A giant dragon that can turn into a man and the woman that wants to fuck him (PG style so far). A parade of other members like FF4.
Thousands of years ago intro: Yes, but wait. See a thousand years ago the world cursed dragons so they all fled to some island and have been without contact for thousands of years. Then a young girl washes ashore of their island. They raise her and a young dragon falls in love as they grow up together. The chemistry is hot! For some reason when she becomes an adult she decides to return to the human world. There are like 4 time jumps in the opening. Now 3 years later the boy dragon senses she is in danger. The elder give him a magic scale that makes him human so he can leave the island to rescue her. So far there is zero fish out of water stuff.
Unique Concepts: like Record of the Lodoss war the battles are fought single screen grid. You use action points to BUMP enemies. It feels exactly like Ys. You are only controlling the dragon man. The other party members are smart and handle themselves. The mages seem to have infinite magic and will heal whoever needs it. You sometimes have to kite enemies away from the mages. It’s fun and really fast.
It also looks like a SNES game. The key visuals are professional and stunningly colored. It is fun how low-key horny the girl and dragon are for each other. I’ve liked the other NPCs I’ve met. I gotta imagine the SFC version is not as fast or as pretty.
The music is great! Some of it sounds exactly like Grandia. Compare track 3 in the link with this.
Did The Grind Make You Quit: No! i am still playing it. I am 3 hours in. That’s a miracle for this genre.
Verdict: 4 
out of 5
Bonus Column: I am really trying to look at this objectively but do wonder if my current standards are so shot I’ll praise anything half decent but do think Emerald Dragon (which abandons almost anything interesting about it’s premise to be a RPG) is good. I really like how easy but you still have to think about stuff. Alfa System made a good playable RPG out of a computer game. They’ve done that a few times now. Next year they’ll take that knowledge and make one of the weirdest RPGs ever commercially released.
I might finish Emerald Dragon, but I also gotta think if just a standard RPG is how I wanna spend my time.
On it does have one knock. The mages will occasionally cast: Epileptic Warning. That hurts my eyes every time.
8 Likes
That’s the problem with society nowadays your problems can’t get solved/started by going into a mysterious shop!
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Rudie, thanks for the link to my blog. The Sword Master video you mentioned is also mine; for a little bit I tried to make some videos but I wasn’t really all that interested in doing it (plus doing an on-the-fly translation/summary is not smooth!) I do have a complete playthrough of the Macross Eternal Love Story game, although the final stage got copyright silented.
At this point I have played all the PC Engine RPGs except for the last one (the 1996 Madou Monogatari I), although I skipped a few games that I had already played other versions of. Favorites so far are Anearth Stories: Seiya Monogatari, Ys IV, Langrisser, and Tenshi no Uta 2.
Nice to see people trying the non-RPG games; it was a good system and it’s a shame so few of the games were released in English.
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Wow! I look forward to reading all of your PCE posts. Thank you for your service! 
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You are welcome! You’ve done more than a service to explaining some things. Really nice to have an English resource to cross reference with! Keep on keeping on.
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has kurisu’s blog been added to the links in the opening post?
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It has now!
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Crap I forgot to mention this has the party talk feature so if you come back from a while/or are half paying attention in a second language, you can remember what your current goal is. Pretty common in PC Engine JRPGs but welcome. I haven’t mentioned recently I am playing these on the mister that doesn’t have save states so am more or less playing them As They Were. With all the time sinks associated. Dying in Emerald Dragon just sends you back to your last save. Thanks Emerald Dragon. I watched your ending last night on youtube! It was alright.
Garou Densetsu 2/Special
I looked at how Minty combined these two and went “that’s weird.” I couldn’t remember GDS was just Championship Edition of GD2. Why Hudson ported both of them is baffling.
I pulled out my 6button bluetooth Saturn controller for these bad boys. Boy is mapping a 6button PC engine pad require an open web browser.
The game is a decent enough approximation of the Neo Geo original (which is also checked in on.) my verdict is you wouldn’t feel too bad if you bought this instead of Street Fighter for SFC. You’d feel a little bad though.
Fray CD: Xak Gaiden
“This story is of a girl who has found her first true love, and the journey that will take her to claim it. Please enjoy this Spectacular Fantasy.”
I get to bring back the ole classic, this is like the combat in Magic Knight Rayearth. It isn’t. But I thought about that. Cardinal direction-only run-and-gun (basically) Action RPG (according to the box.) You control a very minor character from Xak. A bratty girl trying to catch up to the hero. After each stage you get a little town to visit and refill and spend your gold. I got to Stage 3 which had as I could find after 10 minutes an impossible platform challenge. Maybe I was supposed to buy something in the previous town.
It’s not as good as Valkyrie by Namcot. Remember that game? That one is great. Or nearly as good as a 68000 game I have to google to remember the name of, Étoile Princesse. That Game Owns!
This? Well a succubus does rip off her clothes when she loses and it sounds like the VAs recorded their lines at the same time in the same room on opposite ends of one microphone. That was almost funny.
I could keep announcing I am playing Fray CD Xak Gaiden in normal conversation and see people’s eyes squint as they try to process what I just said. That would be more fun. The game is well made but not very good.
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The Pro Yakyuu Super 94
Look, baseball games on the PC Engine had plateaued years ago. I could probably just say “here’s another one” and leave it at that. Instead, I decided to play a couple of innings. When I first loaded it up, I had fielding set on manual, meaning I would have to keep a mental map of where my fielders were and start moving them immediately after a ball was hit. I was very bad at this! When I switched them on automatic, they would get in the right place and I could manually choose which base they should throw to. That evened the score. Compared to Power League, this is a slower game which makes things easier but less exciting. When pitching, I had the best luck throwing slow balls straight down the middle. The batter would hit it, but not hard enough for a home run. Instead, the ball would sail high and my outfield would catch it every time. Love it.
When I tried to throw a fast ball, they hit it, got a home run, and appeared to tell me to go fuck myself.
Bakuden: Unbalanced Zone
This is great. It has a lot of Ultrabox energy, but I didn’t see pervert comedy…yet. Instead, I got to see someone who looked like Nobita-chan grew into a jerk teenager. This geek constantly gets tortured and we love to see it. Apparently the artist, Fujio Akatsuka, hated video games. Sounds like a hero to me. There are four guys who arrive and appear to force the teen to become more than a video game playing bum. The game is barely interactive. You click buttons for actions, watch something happen, and move on. It’s even less interactive than your typical Japanese adventure game because the actions are so limited. It’s really more of a CD ROM toy/multimedia movie than an adventure game.
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Tenchi wo Kurau
It’s time to play another brawler! It’s funny to me that the PC Engine gets all these belt scrollers when the genre is starting to fade out. This is known as Dynasty Wars in English. As you may guess from the title, it is set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. All the people I fought were Yellow Turbans. I don’t think you get to fight anyone from Wei or Wu until the sequel.
In this version, everything looks kind of small and cheap. I was able to rampage through hordes of people with ease. One thing I like about it is that you can’t fall down or get grabbed. You just sit on your horse and constantly jab people with your spear. I could hold my attack to do a lunging strike or turbo press the button to send out a volley of stabs. Both attacks were very effective for the three stages I played. When you do one of those attacks, your character screams. You can hear their voice through the CD audio and see what they say in a little dialogue box on the bottom. This happens about 100 times every level. It’s great.
Sazan Eyes: Sanjiyan Henjō
This digital comic can be enhanced through the use of the Arcade system card. That’s wild! The anime cutscenes are some of the most impressive I’ve seen. They’re FMV, but don’t look too small or pixelated. There are a lot of frames in the animation too. I was particularly taken with a shot of people grasping on subway handles. The story is set in Tokyo. Something that looks like a dandelion seed floats into a teenager’s window. He touches it and gets knocked out. The next day, he’s about to go study in the library when a baseball gets hit right towards him (!!!) Instead of killing him, the ball gets obliterated in front of his face. Could it have something to do with the dandelion seed? I don’t know because my game froze and I didn’t save it. But that’s the first 15 minutes of the game!
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game sucks but this ad is nice
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Chiki Chiki Boys
NEC Avenue does Capcom again. That means it’s not a great port. You are tired of hearing me say this. Also, of course Chiki Chiki Boys gets ported to the PC Engine. Look around you, this console is full of chiki chiki boys. As with my experience playing Tenchi wo Kurau, I was struck by how easy the game felt for the first few stages. I guess we are firmly in the mid-90s SNESification of design at this point. After finishing stages, a different deity comes to congratulate you. They use the name you typed in the beginning. I wish I had done something funny with this.
The game feels so basic. It’s just a plain Wonder Boy-esque platformer. I don’t think there are any moves besides jumping and slashing. It’s fine, which is more than many others.
Vasteel 2
I bet you forgot about Vasteel. I mean, I forgot what I wrote about it back in…April? That was one of the first Working Designs localizations and had a funny dub.
This was never localized, but it feels much better. They took out the Archon-like action and replaced it with standard tactics animations. I played the first battle and I was struck by how guard-railed it was. There’s dialogue throughout suggesting what units should do. Sometimes the dialogue is in EXTRA HUGE FONT. It feels like a very competent playable tutorial. I would play a lot more of this.
Oh, in the opening cutscene, it looks like you are talking on a space phone with your mom when the Earth gets completely obliterated. I guess that explains why the main character talks so loud!
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