PC Engine: WELCOME TO THE IDEAL WORLD!

[MintyJuffowup]

I tried and failed to enjoy 4 PC-FX games. I could not stand to play any one of these for more than five minutes. To be fair, I would like to see more of Return to Zork but only in English. Hear of my struggles below.

Konpeki no Kantai
Here is a military strategy game with hours of cutscenes and voiced dialogue. You are in control of the Imperial Japanese Military. The first mission asks you to attack Hawaii. No, I’m not going to do that and there are countless reasons why.

Mahjong Goku Tenjiku
It’s a non-sexy mahjong game! I played this more than any of the other four. The computer seems to have really good luck at making hands. They don’t even go for Riichi, they just grab tiles left and, well left I guess. I couldn’t win a single hand but maybe I’m just rusty.

Return to Zork
This is the most interesting of the bunch for me. It is a Mystified Zork. The opening cutscene has you moving through a CG animated version of the first lines of text from the original game. I love Zork. Infocom should get far more play outside of their niche circle. By the time Return to Zork was made, Infocom was long gone. This is so different from a text-based adventure, different even from other adventure games of the time. I admire its strangeness, its weirdo soundtrack and talking heads. My playthrough stopped when I encountered a talking head who talked and talked for well over 5 minutes. Of course, it’s dubbed in Japanese so I didn’t get anything out of it.

Zen-Nihon Joshi: Pro Wrestling Queen of Queens
For some reason, there are a lot of female wrestling games this year. This one, also designed by Hune-X, features a fighting system similar to Battle Heat. We see both wrestlers face-on. A meter on the bottom shows how close you are to each other. You can slap and kick. If you’re close, you can grapple. I could never figure out how to turn those grapples into throws. I couldn’t even figure out how to stand up after falling on the ground, so I stopped right there and then.

[loki]

kishin douji zenji fx vajura fight is a good pc-fx game, that shows the untapped potential the console had for great-looking 2d action games

[MintyJuffowup]

I will say that Team Innocent is very interesting and ambitious, considering it came out before Resident Evil. I’m looking forward to Vajra Fight and Zeroigar!

[loki]

i hope someday the rumoured translation patch for team innocent gets released

[VastleCania]

Want some Rye? Of course ya do…

would love to know what this sounds like in japanese

[MintyJuffowup]

Unfortunately he’s not nearly as enthusiastic.

Return to Zork in Japanese

[Rudie]

Kusou Kagaku Sekai Gulliver Boy

Hoot Hoot Hoot Hudson is back baby. This also has people that worked on Tengai Makyou. This time making an anime tie-in that’s got FMV (airhorn.) it has a lot of FMV. It makes you think you are playing a Sega CD game. It was small and grainy and made me go “can I just watch 4 episodes of the show?” That show got 50 Episodes and has a 7.0 on animelist, which I think SB Anime Club says was the sweet spot.

The game actually turtorializes everything in a way that made me uneasy. The first boss is the King of Yugoslavia. You’re about to graduate from a magic school and become a wizard, Gulliver. It plays standard and looks about as good as a PCEngine game had ever looked.

The Hudson chiptunes are fantastic and made me want to play Hudson Famicom games.

I had spent an hour failing to grind in Linda Cubed, where I got a new armor in a cave that said it had better stats but actually made me take more damage. I think I gotta restart the game with this knowledge.

Huh? Gulliver Boy? I don’t know it seems okay. Playing it made me sad in a way I can’t articulate.

[Rudie]

PCエンジン リンダキューブ プロモーションビデオ

Linda Cubed Promotional Video

[Rudie]

So tried to grind in Linda Cubed and succeeded and failed.

The actual strategy from the beginning is to run through the open world and the dungeons and grab the items in chests. The animals are all on the map and avoidable. This makes grinding easier but also you can get stuck in a battle with Stouts that start with NINE and then keep spawning one every turn and you do not have a group attack. Or randomly a animal does 50 of your 120 health in in one turn for a nebulous reason. The battle text is all very fast and hard to pay attention to, especially when you’ve been killed and reset 4 times in 15 minutes.

After a good 90 minutes I entered a cave and my game hard froze. See supposedly this game has two print runs because the first had a recall because it was so buggy. Well I think I know which version is in the redump romset. lol.

[Rudie]

@kurisu

Wait until you get to Nekketsu Legend Baseballer before you say that.

Nekketsu Legend Baseballer

I’ll admit I played this after grinding and hardlocking in Linda Cubed. I was not in the best mood. On the other hand everything said this game was a turd. The game starts with homebrew level key images. A man throws a baseball so hard at your dad he dies. Now you swear baseball revenge. His Family Shrine is the only identifable part of ypur shack home. If I get any of that wrong, know I got a doorbell ring while the intro was happening.

I partner with my girlfriend/sister/childhood friend who cannot play baseball. I’m supposed to meet Wild Hill somewhere. The walk speed is dreadfully slow, but can be sped up in options. This is pretty common in PC Engine RPGs, why you would choose the slow walk speed is beyond me. Maybe you like stuff not happening for as long as possible.

Kurisu warned me but stepping out of town, and to be fair taking about 20-25 steps for the first time, the random battles are RPG Baseball. You choose how to pitch (only had fastball) then watch it play out. I think I am suppose to recruit my 9 players but have robots in place.

The main problem is it is super slow. There is a good 15 seconds between activate random battle and input commands. The music is restarting constantly. There’s a delay between anything happening, including movement. I got into battles against 4 batters, and I had to defeat them all, but if I defeated their HP I still had to strike them out, except now they are a robot?

It’s not the worst game I’ve played for the system. It has plenty of ideas and a certain amateur charm. But after 5 random battles I was done. I think 5 random battles took 15 minutes of my life.

It did get me thinking. Here is an RPG revolving around baseball. It’s most direct predecessor would be the RPGs where everything is Mahjong or Pachinko. And the whole world in these games is obsessed with whatever the game is about. The only thing people will talk about.

What a surprising predecessor to next year’s POCKET MONSTERS for Game Boy.

[loki]

@Rudie

What a surprising predecessor to next year’s POCKET MONSTERS for Game Boy.

the general look and feel of anime and videogames aimed at japanese kids 95-97 would be an interesting subject imo
the pc engine and pokemon seem like they’re from entirely different worlds, even though there’s only 2 years between the pc engine and the game boy

[Rudie]

Kabuki Ittou Ryoudan

Until I hit start on Asuka 120% this is the best Fightman for PCEngine. It plays well, hits connect, looks and sounds well enough. I was afraid it was going to have a story or some shit. We were spared that I think. Just characters not from Tengai Makyou, but from Tengai Makyou 2 Gaiden duke it out. It draws heavily from Samurai Showdown and surprisingly Darkstalkers. It plays like a SF2 knockoff. Perfectly pleasant until I got to the last boss. Like SMBHacks said the AI is very dumb. You could have several good afternoons as a kid playing this with the neighbors.

The TV Show

This is by Right Stuff, so you know we are in a bad place. What did they make? I don’t remember. Let me go open a tab with moby games and copy and paste. There we go. These guys of Emerald Dragon and Flash Fiends or whatever.

This is a very confusing bomberman clone that gets you kicked back to title screen if you lose by say falling into a pit the bombs you pick up drop. It looks good, but that is only because I played like two more hours of baseballer today and that game sucks so bad.

No the very racist depiction of a black man made me turn the game off. Also that it felt horrible and no one should play it. But mostly because I don’t my kid seeing something like that. F- stinker.

Nekketsu Legend Baseballer

So I streamed this for friends today. We managed to make progress and defeat the first boss and see what a game over looks like. They say “Baseballer” about a hundred times. You can BALL DAMAGE if you get a Ball. There is some mechanic when you are at bat and probably pitching too that I did not understand. But after 50 or so random battles we finally saw what happens when someone gets a hit. I got a home run. I guess. No I am joking this is an 8bit baseball game, the ball got caught and I was out immediately.

Everyone was just as baffled as I was that this game existed and played like this. Neither Baseball nor RPG but a secret 3rd thing. It has qualities (like the music restarting all the fucking time) it’s just sludge to actually play. Finding out the overworld has dead ends, just to fuck with you made me laugh. That the towns are all full of identical empty buildings and the NPCs are all extremely unhelpful as to where to go. My progress got stopped because I couldn’t take anymore but also because a rock was in my way.

It is one of the more remarkable RPGs I have played. It is not good and not deserving of your time. it is half-complete. It feels like a 32X game. I only have two left if you don’t count all the Hu-card ones I didn’t play before I took on this stupid job. Shin Megami Tensei and Anearth.

I will say the games we played afterwards were so much more enjoyable and delightful after we threw off the weight of Baseball. I started laughing maniacly and didn’t stop.

[MintyJuffowup]

Tengai Makyō: Dennō Karakuri Kakutōden

Another Battle Heat-like fighting game! They really thought they had something here! This one has characters from both Tengai Makyous. It feels slightly more comprehensible than Battle Heat. It seems like I can do a short-range attack, a long-range attack, and evade. There’s also a meter that fills up and I assume that let’s me pull of a high-damage super. The computer certainly did that to me a couple of times. I still can’t win though! The animations are excellent and it’s great to see Tengai Makyou at this resolution.

They did make an OAV and it looks pretty good!

ちょい見せ「天外魔境　自来也おぼろ変」| First Look "THE LOST TREASURE OF THE ANCIENT QUEEN"(1990)

Anime Freak FX: Vol.1

I was really hoping for the surrealist amateur work that you could find in Ultra Box, but instead we get a very professional packaging of trailers, previews, karaoke, and interviews. There’s also rock paper scissors. Where are the games where I play a salary man who imagines he’s Kamen Rider? Where are the fan art galleries? Where is the dating sim where I tell an American about how much I love Art Blakey? And what is up with all of these iterations of rock paper scissors? There’s no way people really enjoy doing this against a computer.

Pachio-kun FX: Maboroshi no Shima Daikessen

Guess who’s back, motherfuckers? It’s your ball-bodied boy. This time, you aren’t playing as him, he’s just her to support you. You pick one of 8 girls: there’s a computer nerd, astronaut, witch, etc., etc. Instead of playing to just earn more BBs, you face off against an opponent and see if you can earn a certain amount on their board. It’s very silly and takes almost no thought to win. You can almost set it and forget it, but the spinner gradually loses force so you’ll have to pump it up every now and then. Like pinball boards, every board has a gimmick for hitting certain targets. It’s almost interesting, but I don’t think there’s any challenge here.

[Rudie]

PC-FX games are very impressive visually! Wow.

[MintyJuffowup]

High resolution FMV is like its one good trick. You’ve never seen Pachio-kun look this good, man.

[Rudie]

Ai Chou Aniki

Ah that’s right this is the shooter with fighting game inputs for attacks. Brilliant idea there, because all games use it to this day.

Shin Onryou Senki

The FMV 3D rendered spinning company logo let me know everything I was in for. The game opens with a dialog about Ghosts and Human Experience and Fear and Ghosts and Darkness and Scariness and Humanity. It goes on for a hilariously long time.

Then the game opens with the player character seeing the moon get real big and he’s like “woah freaky” then you start walking home and a cloaked man attacks you. You wake up in a hospital days later. Someone decides to believe your supernatural bullshit so you start Japanese Adventure game choosing all options to lurch the plot forward.

The voice acting is pretty good, but the script is trash. I visited a fraud psychic who is definitely the villian of the game (he’s on the cover.) the art is cheap and yet unique. Wish it was in a better game. I could tell it was going to take a long time for another “scary” thing to happen. Maybe I’ll stream it in October for total spookems.

I’ve started Anearth…it might be good.

[kurisu]

I played two PC-FX games – Der Langrisser FX which was good, and Sparkling Feather which was horrible. It was a pretty poorly designed system that never had much of a chance of succeeding.

[Rudie]

Kishin Douji Zenki FX Vajra Fighter

This is it! The one good game for the PC-FX. It’s fantastic. Beautiful sprite work, great visual effects. It has Wakamoto on the voice actors list. It has the Chalala guy doing the vocal theme. It’s a giant big budget game by Hudson making a single-plane Brawler. You can even choose the level you died at if you run out of continues. You just play straight through and see all the things. It is also almost deep enough to sit and Become Great at it.

Showing it off to true Gamefreaks that post on Select Button Dot Net got a constant stream of exclamations. That it never escaped the PC-FX is even more baffling. That said, the Saturn/PS1 cannot do FMV this clean. They used it to full effect. All the background scrolling is just a little too clean for…well anything you are familar with. I am glad I lived up to it’s reputation.

Tenchi Muyouu Ryouuki FX

I’m just gonna call the PC-Engine game with the same name as this PC-FX the same game and save us time. I don’t even know if that is true. I sure as hell am not going to play a Tenchi Muyou game alone (anymore). I think also own this game on Saturn where it is rated for Adults.

Tenchi Muyou really left an impression on a certain generation of 90s nerd. I could not believe how many people joined the voice call when they saw Tenchi Muyou Adventure game. Not that any of it mattered, we mostly just interrogated An Unnamed Poster To Protect Their Lack Of Innocence about Tenchi Muyo. Turns out all of Tenchi Muyo is some kind of incest.

Zenki really spoiled us because Tenchi Muyo looks signifcantly worse FMV/Animation wise and what you would expect for a failed-followup to the PC Engine. Weirder still it will keep switching between FMV and pixel animation.

Tenchi Muyou is a comedy-sci-fi adventure harem anime that is simultaneously a Miasma of Horny and yet of no sexuality what so ever. I think you as the viewer just supposed to be yelling at Tenchi to kiss the girls already and he never does. The youngest of the girls, which is a child, is by far the horniest of all of them. Let’s say it again, Japanese Otaku were by and large pedophiles and that stigma was earned by looking at any of the media they consumed. At least I was 13 and watching Toonami.

“What the hell are you playing?” yelled Lady Rude, who is home sick. “A horny anime adventure game with anime girls. Look I’m not playing it alone, my friends are watching.”

We played till Tenchi had to hold his breath underwater because he caught the Space Princess in the Onsen but she was like “yes let’s please have sex” and he was like “gulp!” but then the Space Pirate Ryouko (whose kanji is fucking wild!) came in looking for Tenshi and it would be bad manners or something if Tenchi got caught in the bath or fucking something, anyways. Tenchi held his breathe and I declared he died from drowning and turned the game off because I need to take care of my family sometimes.

The game is entirely about being in the company of these characters you love, which I don’t. The Rumiko Takahashi games made me love those characters. Is this the difference between 1980s and 1990s anime? I have to say to that, I absolutely do not care.

[MintyJuffowup]

Anime Freak FX Vol.2
When I played the previous volume, I thought “huh, that’s less horny than I expected from a 90’s CD-ROM titled ‘Anime FREAK.’” Well, in this volume they put in work to ensure that “HORNY” stays in the black. It’s very focused on Blue Seed, which is ironic considering that the Saturn already got a SEGA-developed Blue Seed game earlier in 1995. Anyways, the Blue Seed featurette is all about documenting what panties a female character wears. I look up the series on Google and see that this character is in middle school. Kill me, please. Like the previous volume, there are also trailers for anime and upcoming games, karaoke, and a dumb random chance game against an FMV actress. There’s also a database of over 100 anime girls. I am proudly exclaiming right here, right now that I am not an Anime Freak.

Cutie Honey FX
Data West, the developers of the Psychic Detective stories, have made a smooth transition to the PC-FX. They’ve gotten rid of menu-based navigation and replaced it with a contextual point-and-click system. It’s pretty elegant though I’m getting the impression that the world is rather linear as a result.

The game is based off a Go Nagai manga, so I’d brace myself for some pretty uncomfortable material; however, the beginning is totally innocuous and carefree so far. I think I’m a detective. There are a series of missing people. I’m at an island and I go through the motions of checking out with a flight attendant, picking up my luggage from the conveyer. I go to a house and start talking to people. There’s a map shown, hinting that the game might open up later on. I’m a bit curious, but there are other things I’d rather put my attention on.

Lunatic Dawn FX

Artdink…Artdink…They’ve made an RPG Adventure simulation. The opening is very poetic and it helps me understand the name a bit more. “Dawn beckons the traveler to depart” is one way of interpreting the text. “Lunatic” I think is meant to mean something more like “romantic” but they use evocative imagery of the moon and I think that’s how they slipped onto it. I am not equipped to truly understand this game. It takes elements of Wizardry and meshes them with simulation concepts of the time. When you create your character, you set their age, their birthdate, their profession, and their phobia. Naturally, I chose “fear of women.”

You start in a town. The town has attributes like “well-governed,” and “welcoming temple.” Here you can buy armor, recruit team members, and purchase food for your trip. I neglected to do that last part so everyone complained about not eating for our whole journey. Our first stop was a neighboring town where people were jerks and the temple was evil. I could not buy food here. Then we found a dungeon and the game switched from menus to a jittery isometric mode. Battles were fought from the same perspective, reminding me a bit of Ultima. Luckily, I could choose an auto-battle mode and we won. I then chose an “end your adventure” option and I was greeted with credits. The ending told me that I lived a boring life, as boring as my eternal death. Then it played baroque music and ran the credits.

Simply put, I love Artdink.

[Rudie]

SEIYA MONOGATARI Anearth Fantasy Stories

This was Hudson’s last game for the PC Engine. It is, in a way, the last game for the system. It’s an RPG where battles are all story determined. We all want that right? Well…the first set of battles are all against Japanese Murder Hornets that can poison you. I eventually learned I could leave the forest I was in to replenish the herbs I found the cure poison, but that was after I had used my meager starting supplies to buy healing herbs. And I never generated enough money to stay at an inn.

I stopped the game lost in a sewer, bored. It took me 3 nights to get that far because the opening is long. Supposedly the game has for scenarios to play through. And to be honest the plot lost me pretty quick. You are a chosen one that was abandoned as a baby and raised in a Inn with your Dad and 3 Moms. At age 15 a cult kidnaps all the other kids in town. You wonder in and I had to pull out the dictionary app a couple times to learn words like “prothelitze” and “convert”. You find the kids, the cult suddenly disappears, and your dad gives you a bow and says “you gotta learn your way in the world.” Then you are playing an RPG? I rescued the forest nimphs from the hornets, and was supposed to find a Pirate Trader in that sewer.

Doukyuusei

I only very briefly played this tonight, only to walking around trying to figure out what to do. I don’t think I like it very much. The opening song was fun. There are a lot of girls you could sex in the original Japanese PC Game. I am pretty sure most of them are not of age. The premise of this sexual Tokimeki Memorial-like Gal-Game is it is your last summer break before graduation and you saved up your money from part-time jobs to help you get laid. Now you got 21 days to wonder around an overworld with clumsy controls to try and get laid. And…that’s where I stopped because I was falling asleep. I do not like the player-character’s internal monologue. He’s explicit about his goals.

That’s not how I’ve gone through life. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t, and don’t plan on it digitally.

Asuka 120% Burning Maxima

Fill-In Cafe baby!! This is an all-girl Fightman where High School Students go combat to combat. I don’t particularly like the art-style here as it looks like a porn-game characters rendered in sprites. The Saturn version has a much more cartoon style.

It’s clumsy as ever Asuka 120% though! Had a good time messing with. It’s designed as a 2 Button game, when I set my options to six button the game freaked out. I’ll pick it up a few more times, but think it is just fine. The Kabuki one is still probably more fun, but hard to argue with the positive fun energy of Asuka.