I haven’t played this yet but I think @Grandpa pointed out ResetERA has it for these two games because of the unnecessary Acid Jazz soundtrack.
4 Likes
error, error, word sequence does not compute
9 Likes
6 Likes
Ah! I forgot about this amazing soundtrack!!!
5 Likes
Yeah I can get behind this.
6 Likes
:clicks play:
jesus this owns way harder than it has any right to
7 Likes
Oh no, that was the guest guy on the podcast I mentioned who is a hardcore PC Engine dude. Bought himself the albums and everything.
3 Likes
Eikan wa Kimi ni
I thought I was nearly done with baseball games. I was wrong. This is not a baseball game where you control things directly, no. This is a management simulator, by Artdink. All of these game genres are starting to get blended. Artdink took the weekly scheduling system of dating and raising games and aimed it at baseball. They even threw in a personality quiz asking for your sign, blood type, and answers to survey questions.
This has got to be one of the first examples of a sim game that asks you to guide the development of young men, rather than women. I get to pick my team with granular detail. I choose the region of Japan, the city, and even the school or team I want to work with. I have a portfolio of players to choose from. I can tell them how much to train and who knows what else.
When they play a game, I don’t get to control who’s at bat. I can give some guidance, some signals, pull players out, and whatnot. But I am woefully unfit for the role of team manager.
Ghost Sweeper Mikami
Genres keep blending and blending into stranger forms. This is a digital comic, wait, it’s a card battle game. It’s both! I couldn’t figure out how to strategize during the card battles. You draw a hand of five or so cards. There’s a set of rock paper scissor-esque cards, shuffle, heal, and desperate attacks. I get all these options but I can’t predict what my opponent is going to do. It just winds up feeling like an overly complicated game of rock-paper-scissors. Sure, with an emulator I could rewind every time to get the best result, but that wouldn’t really be playing the game now would it? Still, it does feel like we are entering into a Saturn-age of design here where developers feel as though cutscenes themselves aren’t enough and decide to start experimenting.
10 Likes
So after the two duds yesterday, I got to play two remarkably strong games.
Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force
This game is so hot. Fill-in-Cafe is really showing off here. It’s a single-plane beat-em-up. SFII has happened, so now we have special moves and a really strong sense of neutral spacing/strategy. The throws are so satisfying. My mech just grabs these robots faces and slams them to the ground. I can choose from three different mechs, all with their own moves.
I was having a phenomenal time with this game up until I faced a mirror-match boss. They were way too powerful! I mean, they were also very predictable but they would always make optimal choices for whatever spacing we were at. Before that, I was mostly dealing with grunts who didn’t know anything but shoot from afar or get close and die. There’s an easy mode but instead of trying it, I used my time to see how the other mechs felt. Answer is, very different! The blue one can shoot fire balls, the yellow one has a sword, and the red one can do Blanka’s spinning tackles. I think this one is definitely worth trying to complete one day.
Neo Nectaris
YES! Finally! Nectaris is so good. You don’t even know. Now we have CD audio and it sounds like they put in Holst’s “Mars.” I kind of miss the PSG audio though. Very little from the original game’s formula has changed. In fact, the original game is included. I’d have to play more to see if they’ve added new units, but so far this is more like an expansion than a sequel. That’s fine by me. The opening cutscene has really great designs. I mean, look at those purple exosuits. Man, Nectaris is so cool. The PC Engine is good.
12 Likes
I didn’t forget you PC Engine Thread. Let’s get something I played like two weeks ago out:
Quiz Avenue III
This is the worst of the Quiz Avenue games despite featuring 7000 questions. Replacing the cute girls and the cuter monsters is a more complicated screen with little tiny spaces for the enemies. You just navigate an overworld and get in random battles. Of course the music was also a crime. The Last Quiz Game of PC Engine???
“Who are the main characters in Dirty Pair?”
Then we switched to Party Mode, and what’s this? Laura D? The World’s Most Famous Movie Star and upcoming Academy Award Winner for DDD:The Natural Playboys? Also Stan Hansen and Arnold.
That’s right we answered so hard she got knocked out!
The wildest thing is, I finished this Quiz game. We didn’t even cheat for the last quarter! I just beat a Quiz Game, In Japanese! with the help of my friends. Maybe the questions were too easy. Yeah man where do Moai Heads come from? I’m sorry I answered questions so hard I made beautiful women unconcious.
12 Likes
KO SEIKI BEAST SANJUSHI
Why this is the jrpg PC Engine Co UK wrote about I do not know.
Original: Kinda. Part of a media blitz for a thing I’ve never heard of. Seems boring.
Protagonists: A Half Tiger Boy, A Half Bird Boy that talks in Katakana English, and a Mermaid.
Thousands of years ago intro: Yes, check the link. It went on for 25 minutes
Unique Concepts: The Premise is something I guess, but takes so much preamble it is impossible to care. That you pinball from point to point in the first hour is almost FF esque until it finally lets you on the overworld after your first sewer level and you realize the overworld is a maze just to get to the next area that is also a maze to cause more random battles.
Did The Grind Make You Quit: No, the thought of playing it more did.
Verdict: Vay Quality may it sink to obscurity forever.
7 Likes
because the first half of the anime got a high profile release in the uk, complete with a dub full of regional accents, and the guy who runs that site also ran an anime magazine that only lasted for 2 issues in the 90s
5 Likes
i thought he was a normal furry from the thumbnail but…
7 Likes
Strider
Another NEC Ave port of a 5 year old game? Sure, why not. This definitely feels worse than the Mega Drive version, less solid, wonky. They’ve added cutscenes, voice overs, and even extra levels. These levels are not good. I think they even acknowledge this by giving you an option to turn them off. I played one that was set in a desert. It was not nearly as evocative as the other sets.
One thing I enjoy about playing these ports is that I can see what these games feel like with a turbo button. Strider feels very good when I can rapidly send out one hundred slices. It’s too bad the enemy placement and everything else feels off.
Tanjou: Debut
The people behind Sotsugyou made a spinoff where you try to guide three teens as they train to enter the world of pop stardom. It has the same interface as Sotsugyou where you can set their classes for the week and choose one special action at the end of the week. Special actions like having a one-on-one conversation with a student, giving them extra lessons, or some other event. Naturally, I can’t understand much about the game. After a few weeks of giving students automatic schedules and picking what are apparently the wrong choices at the end of the week, they were all either sick or disgruntled.
Side note, I was able to download the localized version of Sotsugyou II. I can’t find a video showing off the dub, but it is insane. I really ought to record my own clip of how they talk when introducing themselves. Valley Girl, Brooklynite, Elmer Fudd…all American dialects are represented.
12 Likes
CARDANGELS
Okay horny anime poker I can handle (Narrator’s note: he could not.) I started the Story mode which gave me a roulette of anime girls and randomly assigned card games to play against them.
The first game was speed which I selected my next card from start I and II. Awkward but I won.
The second game was Babanuki, which if I ever knew the English name I have long forgotten. There are 7 pairs of cards distributed between the two players, with a 8th card, joker, with one player. You select an opponents card hoping to immediately make a match and not recieve the joker. Last person holding the joker losers the round.
Now the speed game I got points for the value of my winnings, which make the lady take off more of her clothes. Here I only get a mere 100 points for each round. If the joker was passed serveral times that doubles the score but the one time that happened the anime girl got a 1600 point lead. After 17 rounds and the game still not ending I gave up.
Which another day I came back and tried the freemode. I tried Poker and Blackjack and proceed to be destroyed by a 5000 point Full House and Blackjack after Blackjack for the anime girls. This game has a message and that is These Animes Keep The Clothes On AND take your money.
Denno Tenshi Digital Angeue
Do I file a bug report to Mister devs because the voice and text in this got wildly out of sync? The text disappearing one after another while the Anime Mech Pilot is still giving an introduction? Also I could barely hear what they were saying? I guess The Guardian Angels of Earth thought it was too fucked up that a mech pilot never got to be called “Mama” so they turned back time hundreds of years to 1994.
Cut to me, bumping into a girl in Shinjuku. I have a mouse interface that is awful with a controller. A Floppy Disc lies at my feet. No matter how many times I choose it I can’t pick it up. I consider my surroundings. I think about what to do next. I look at the floppy disc again. Nothing happens. I turn the game off forever.
7 Likes
KAZE NO DENSETSU XANADU
I’ve been waiting for this. Awooo. Falcom’s first internally developed original console/PCEngine game after so many out-of-house ports. The ?? In the long running Eiyuu Densetsu series. Don’t think too hard about that series.
The intro is jaw-dropping. I can’t believe it’s PC Engine. Don’t worry the game never looks this good, until it does.
I looked into Japanese reviews and most of their complaints were playing this game. See this, pointing at the game, is where Falcom went full sicko and wanted you to talk to every NPC in the world constantly. Also there is a day-night cycle for some reason. So there can be timed meetings I guess.
Here’s just a sample of the English GameFAQ walkthrough:
The dialog never gives proper guidance on what the next flag is. I got most of the way through the first dungeon before finding out despite there being a crisis, I needed to go to the other side of the island and talk to a rich guy to Flag the dungeon as ready.
The game is 13 chapters, with each one ending with a side scrolling action stage that is janky and terrible and beautiful. This was after 2 hours of fetch talking. Thank Ys for that walkthrough. The game even stopped me dead in my tracks to let me know I had played for an hour and needed to take a break.
The menus feel like a DVD menu with a lot of Easter Eggs. The music was there, but I’ve never fell for Falcom music outside of a few instances. Also the status bar on the action screens flips side to side as you play to not obstruct your view but just made me feel cramped.
This is clearly what Falcom wanted to make and did. I sure do not like it though.
15 Likes
This sounds glorious, awash in excess. The Wii-esque health notification is just icing on the cake.
2 Likes
Yeah Xanadu has a ridiculous amount of backtracking and talking to random NPCs to advance the story.
Then there’s the final dungeon which is longer than some entire ARPGs from the era.
(I did not like the side-scrolling parts very much either…I used save states near the end, but one tip is that the final boss is much easier than the second-to-last boss so you can afford to use your good items on that one)
Xanadu II is much more streamlined, but in some ways not as good.
10 Likes
how i found out this exists. have hunted it down. will figure out how to play later
thank you
4 Likes
So my brain parsed that as Soukyugurentai (my brain starts to fog over after foreign words get too long) and I was so very confused for a moment there.
5 Likes