Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon was the title of a video game released in Japan in 1994 for the PC-Engine console. The game was an interactive story, including characters and voice actors from the anime as well as some original characters. The songs "Koisuru Otome wa Makenai" and "Onaji Hoshi ni Umareta Futari Dakara" were written specifically for this game. A shortened version of each song appeared in the game, while full versions were available on the single "Sailor Moon: PC Engine Theme Songs".
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Thirty-eighth GOTW finished for 2023. Not much to say. Painfully slow movement, progression, and combos. Not enough options for branching paths. Art style was nice, and it played well considering it's a licensed property, but simply not enough depth here.
(This was played using a Fan Translation done by LIPEMCO! Translations. Thank you to all the talented and wonderful people for making this translation!)
Maybe someday I'll go back to writing detailed Sailor Moon games but I thought I'd write my current thoughts since I finished this game. This one is complicated. It has a good story and it's unique so it'll be good for Sailor Moon fans. Where it falls for me has to be its repetitiveness. So the game let's you choose from one of the five Inner Sailor Senshi but a lot of the story interconnects and while that makes sense, what annoys me is a lot of the dialogue stays identical. There's not even unique endings for each one you choose. While you do need to do all five for the full picture, it can be a bit draining.
What really kills it though has got to be the multiple choice answers to a scenario. About 95% of the time, it leads to the same result or something that'll have a single new sentence or scene that leads back into the other scene. Sometimes they all do the exact thing which is lame. There's only one time I can remember where the choices did lead to different scenarios which was in Usagi's route. I don't play much in this genre so apologies if this is a normal thing but to me it feels like a fake way to make it look like there's more to the game then there is.
There's also some small minigames but they don't amount to much and you don't even have to win at a couple of them if you don't feel like it. I don't even know how you win the Sailor V Arcade game.
The game does have a really nice presentation even if the coloring is a bit inconsistent and there's a lot of fun writing and the voice cast is here to do a lot of lines though I swear a lot of it clips but maybe that's my awful laptop's fault. The music sadly sucks in this game. It has the same problem a lot of PC Engine games with a lot of voice acting have where it can't use redbook audio and for some reason sometimes the audio overpowers the voices and I don't know why. Maybe it's better on real hardware. The game does have an Opening and Ending song made just for the game and they sound amazing, worth a listen on Youtube if you ever have the chance. Also the transformation sequence and music are very nice.
I really wish I could like this game more, I really do. Even with my biases, it's hard to fully appreciate this one. It got me a bit burned out and I would not recommend binging this game. If you can do the cheat that lets you skip voiced dialogue, I'd recommend it. If you're a Sailor Moon fan, give it a try otherwise just stay away, this won't appeal to you. There are better games similar to this on the console.
I should also point out that playing the original game and not the fan translation can crash specific emulators (don't know which ones, the readme for the FT didn't say.) due to a bug presented in the original. There's also a physical release of the fan translation by PCE Works. Do not buy that please, they didn't get permission of the people who worked on it and it's just scummy. Or maybe still get if you just don't care, I don't control your life but I still felt like it needed to be said. Lastly and I'll probably removed this if it gets fixed but the images used for this page are from the wrong game. It's for the 2nd Sailor Moon PC Engine game called Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Collection. That game actually lacks a page on this site (along with the R GB game) so I thought I at least say it incase anyone can fix that in the future.
Maybe someday I'll go back to writing detailed Sailor Moon games but I thought I'd write my current thoughts since I finished this game. This one is complicated. It has a good story and it's unique so it'll be good for Sailor Moon fans. Where it falls for me has to be its repetitiveness. So the game let's you choose from one of the five Inner Sailor Senshi but a lot of the story interconnects and while that makes sense, what annoys me is a lot of the dialogue stays identical. There's not even unique endings for each one you choose. While you do need to do all five for the full picture, it can be a bit draining.
What really kills it though has got to be the multiple choice answers to a scenario. About 95% of the time, it leads to the same result or something that'll have a single new sentence or scene that leads back into the other scene. Sometimes they all do the exact thing which is lame. There's only one time I can remember where the choices did lead to different scenarios which was in Usagi's route. I don't play much in this genre so apologies if this is a normal thing but to me it feels like a fake way to make it look like there's more to the game then there is.
There's also some small minigames but they don't amount to much and you don't even have to win at a couple of them if you don't feel like it. I don't even know how you win the Sailor V Arcade game.
The game does have a really nice presentation even if the coloring is a bit inconsistent and there's a lot of fun writing and the voice cast is here to do a lot of lines though I swear a lot of it clips but maybe that's my awful laptop's fault. The music sadly sucks in this game. It has the same problem a lot of PC Engine games with a lot of voice acting have where it can't use redbook audio and for some reason sometimes the audio overpowers the voices and I don't know why. Maybe it's better on real hardware. The game does have an Opening and Ending song made just for the game and they sound amazing, worth a listen on Youtube if you ever have the chance. Also the transformation sequence and music are very nice.
I really wish I could like this game more, I really do. Even with my biases, it's hard to fully appreciate this one. It got me a bit burned out and I would not recommend binging this game. If you can do the cheat that lets you skip voiced dialogue, I'd recommend it. If you're a Sailor Moon fan, give it a try otherwise just stay away, this won't appeal to you. There are better games similar to this on the console.
I should also point out that playing the original game and not the fan translation can crash specific emulators (don't know which ones, the readme for the FT didn't say.) due to a bug presented in the original. There's also a physical release of the fan translation by PCE Works. Do not buy that please, they didn't get permission of the people who worked on it and it's just scummy. Or maybe still get if you just don't care, I don't control your life but I still felt like it needed to be said. Lastly and I'll probably removed this if it gets fixed but the images used for this page are from the wrong game. It's for the 2nd Sailor Moon PC Engine game called Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Collection. That game actually lacks a page on this site (along with the R GB game) so I thought I at least say it incase anyone can fix that in the future.
As a Sailor Moon fan, the story was fun, though re-treading a little too much. Art and music were nice.
But the fact that the 5 'routes' are set up how they are is kind of annoying. If only all 5 routes were 100% unique, though the first 1/3 of each of them are. Also wish the paths branched out more from the options you choose, seems like they don't actually do much.
But the fact that the 5 'routes' are set up how they are is kind of annoying. If only all 5 routes were 100% unique, though the first 1/3 of each of them are. Also wish the paths branched out more from the options you choose, seems like they don't actually do much.