Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Just Breed is unlike any strategy RPG I’ve played, which, considering the amount of strategy RPGs I’ve played, is not really saying that much! You know in most strategy RPGs you’re dumped into a predetermined setting, and there’s a bunch of monsters around, and you’re given a goal of some kind (like DEFEAT THE MONSTERS! or PROTECT THE PRINCESS!), and when you win you’re all yay, and you go on to the next predetermined setting.

See, though, in Just Breed you can run around towns and talk to people and stuff. It’s JUST LIKE A REGULAR RPG! Amazing! But! When you go outside and into the overworld, it goes into a strategy RPG setting, where you move a set number of squares, and attack enemies in a straight line from you, and such. Once the enemies are all defeated, you can run around on the world map to your little heart’s content. Very nifty.

Your group is divided up by generals, and each general has people that follow him or her. One of the things I really like about Just Breed is that experience is distributed evenly throughout each group, and not individually like usual. Yay, no more of that constant character-juggling so no one ends up weaker than the rest! This is a huge deal to me.

So, as far as the very short list of strategy RPGs that Spinner 8 enjoys, Just Breed can be easily added to the above list, omigosh what a weird sentence.

Game Review - originally written by (wraith)

Alright. First things first. This is not a Seiken Densetsu (”Secret of Mana”) game. Yes, it says Seiken in the title, but that does not make it Seiken Densetsu. Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way…

Seiken Psycho Calibur is a Zelda clone for the Famicom Disk System (Hence, you need Famtasia or fwNes to emulate this game). It's your classic over-head view hack and slash adventure. It's pretty decent, but it lacks the character of Zelda. And it tries so hard to be like Zelda, too. The play mechanics are like Zelda, the enemies seem like something out of Zelda, even the screen scrolls EXACTLY like it does in Zelda. But the plot isn't that very interesting … there's no hook. Sure, there's this Demon-thing trying to take over the country. But the situation doesn't seem all that desperate, and the side quests just don't have much to draw you into the game. Where's my MOTIVATION, dammit!?!?

But, my opinion is being swayed by the likes of Final Fantasy IX and Shen Mue, so it may be a bit loaded right now. No. It IS a bit loaded. There's definitely no maybe involved.

(editor's note: the mentions of early NES emulators Famtasia and fwNES, as well as mentioning Final Fantasy IX and "Shen Mue" as current games, dates this review to before 9/11 happened! wow!)

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Have you ever been lying awake at night, thinking “wow, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a board game RPG?” Well, the Ask Corporation has answered our prayers, dear boy! And as simple as a “board game RPG” might sound, 100 World Story truly defies explanation. Well, sort of. You roll dice and traverse the land, entering towns, passing through forests and killing small woodland animals, finding treasure, spending treasure, losing treasure, and enduring fetch quest after fetch quest to become strong enough to accomplish the scenario’s main goal. There are two ways to win: Accomplish the main goal (there’s three scenarios: slay the dragon, find the legendary treasure, and rescue the princess), or have the most points (gold, equipment, etc) after all the rounds are over. Random people will give you experience, you always tend to find items lying around on the road.. It’s always completely random and fun. Battles are pretty typical RPG stuff, you pick the option to fight, magic, etc. and the combat only lasts a turn before it’s the next person’s turn to play. It’s great fun, so play the damn game.

Game Review - probably originally written by (wraith)

If you’ve been reading my reviews of other Gameboy fighters, you know I have a disdain for them, and for handhelds in general. I figure instead of telling you once again about how this game is not terribly diverse, that fighting games cannot be done with only two buttons, and that fighters look ridiculous with Super-Deformed sprites–instead I’ll tell you about my disdain for handhelds, since no one is ever going to read this.

It started with a bus ride to D.C. in the fifth grade. From Massachusetts to D.C., to be precise. If you’re not good at roads, driving, and geography–that’s about an eleven hour drive. It was for school, with assigned seating on the bus. I was stuck next to the boring, snotty hall monitor type kid (think Martin from the Simpsons). Bored out of my head, I looked for something to do. Lo! I had brought along several Tiger handheld games which were more or less cheap knock-offs of NES games. As anyone who’s played a Tiger handheld for five seconds can tell you, they’re God-awful. Actually, they’re worse than that. I’ll have to invent a new word for their awfulness. But later.

Let me tell you, eleven hours of that coupled with boring conversation with the class snitch buried me in a black hell of handheld-hatred so deep I think that it’s quite possible I’ll never be able to fully enjoy them. To this day, the only handheld games I’ve ever liked are Final Fantasy Legend 3, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and Golden Sun. And that, as they say, is that. If you missed the era of Tiger handhelds, count yourself as being lucky.

In conclusion, King of Fighters ‘96 is a game.

Game Review - originally written by (wraith)

You know, I think the reason I disliked Gameboy so much was because there weren't very many domestic RPGs released for it. At least, there weren't when I owned a gameboy. We had the Final Fantasy Legend series, all of which were pretty crappy except Final Fantasy Legend III, because FFL is really SaGa in disguise. I mean, I can understand running out of arrows… but running out of a sword?

But I digress. Oni IV is actually quite neat. If more RPGs like this had come out in the States during the Gameboy's formative years, I'd probably like the Gameboy a whole lot more…

Anyway, this is a nifty RPG. You are an Oni, a twin Oni, actually–except for the fact that your twin sister mysteriously disappeared one stormy night. So, I assume the goal of the game is to find and rescue her eventually, but right now there's not enough text translated to tell for sure. And there's this forest where everything beats your ass to a bloody pulp with a shovel. And the overwolrd is as much as a maze as the dungeons are. Yes, yes. I know that's crazy. And to be even more crazy–this game has a difficulty setting! I know that the idea RPG's having a difficulty setting is an outrageous concept, but do try to remain calm and check this game out. It's pretty cool.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Yes, the bastard child of the Splatterhouse series. This is another one of those games that really doesn’t take itself too seriously. Of course, that much is obvious from looking at the cute super-deformed protagonist. Even with an axe and a hockey mask, he still manages to be cute. And the whole game is just as silly. Well, not incredibly silly, but it’s silly at various points. Anyway, you’re a dead guy who’s rescuing his girlfriend, and in doing so walks perpetually to the right, and cuts up all kinds of possessed objects and demons on the way to the pathetically easy showdown with the big pumpkin thing and the really cool ending. There’s even a “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” screen in the credits. How damned cool is that?

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

The first in the painful series of Dragon Ball Z RPGs. I dunno, people seem to like them, and it seems to follow the DBZ storyline faithfully, but, like many anime games, it doesn’t really dwell on who the hell anyone is. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be thinking “who the hell is this Kami guy, and where did he come from?” constantly. But I’m sure if you love DBZ like most people seem to like DBZ, then you obviously won’t have a problem with this.

I’ve said elsewhere that DBZ RPGs like this one are incredibly random and bad and not fun and the stupid cards are just stupid. But since I was forced to play this game for more than five minutes, I checked up on some places so I could figure out what the hell those cards were all about (the RPGClassics shrine was amazingly helpful in this regard). And then I set to work playing. And you know what?

This game isn’t that bad.

The number at the top-left indicates the card’s Attack power. On the map screen it’s also how many spaces you can move (no more, no less). The symbol in the middle usually doesn’t mean much, but if it matches the character who’s using it, their attack is stronger. If it’s one of those funky X-looking symbols, they can use a special attack. And the symbol in the lower-right is the card’s Defense rating (in RedComet’s translation it’s a Roman numeral). Battles are essentially random, but if you have another character adjacent to yours, both will participate in the battle. Which is good, because you’ll get your ass kicked at first if Goku and Piccolo don’t stick together. Seriously, I thought these guys were supposed to be badasses. And one little Kankousen and Goku’s dead. Pfff.

Game Review - originally written by (wraith)

This seems like a kinda spiffy side-scrolling adventure romp in the vein of Zelda 2, Faxanadu, or Battle of Olympus. Most of the game revolves around jumping and stabbing and exploring. Of course, you run into people along the way who try to pawn their advice and goods off on you. And I think you’re looking for some treasure or something. It’d be great if this game had a backstory!
(editor's note: this game came so close to being released in America that it had finalized Vidpro boxart)

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

You know, if I actually liked strategy RPGs, I think I would really like Bahamut Lagoon. This is one of those rare occasions where the Square whores are right, and this really is an “underrated gem,” etc etc., unlike all the other Square RPGs that were never released here. Now don’t get me wrong, Square is all right, I don’t loathe them deep down inside or anything… I just hate all the Square fans that automatically proclaim anything Squaresoft as a gaming masterpiece, and any other RPGs can suck it. I mean, have these people even played Parasite Eve II? And don’t get me started on Kingdom Hearts. Seriously.

Anyways, the first thing you will likely say once you start up the game will be “God damn, those are some pretty graphics.” And they are. While most games are content to take Final Fantasy VI’s graphics and run with them… well, Bahamut Lagoon does this too, but the graphics are updated and refined, and look really good. A lot of people nowadays will throw about the phrase “almost Playstation quality”, but I don’t know if I’d go that far. Definitely though, this is one of the best-looking games on the SNES. SFC, whatever. The soundtrack, by Noriko Matsueda, is pretty unimpressive. With the exception of a few nice songs, everything just kind of sounds the same. Throwing a few new instrument samples into the mix would’ve helped.

Naturally, for most fanboys the graphics would be more than enough to hail Bahamut Lagoon as an instant classic. Fortunately for the rest of us, the actual gameplay holds up well. Like I said, it’s a strategy RPG. I only played up to the second battle and stopped cause, well, I’m not too big on the genre. You have your groups of fighters, represented by the lead character on the map, and when you attack, the game shifts into your typical RPG mode, where you can give Attack, Magic, Defend commands and such. Each group also has its own dragon, which it can control with three basic commands. The dragons will pretty much do their own thing, until you tell them to fall back, or stay close, or whatever. Sometimes when your group’s in battle, the dragon will attack first, giving you a nice little advantage over the enemy. Did that make sense?

Also, the game uses terrain in a very unique way in combat. Terrain isn’t just for attack modifiers or obstacles anymore: worried about the enemy crossing the bridge and taking your castle? Just use your magic and destroy the bridge. Then you just have to watch out for any ice magic they may use to freeze the river and make it crossable. Of course, you can always use your fire magic and melt the ice. See a cluster of enemies in the forest? Burn the forest down with your magic! Sure, it’s not environmentally sound, but this isn’t fucking Rudra, you can do whatever you want.

In between battles is your typical RPG-style walking around. Talk to your gigantic cast of characters, check out the shops, sit through the story, stuff like that. The story doesn’t seem that amazing at first (join the rebellion, save the princess, and take down the evil empire… Monomyth at its finest!), but maybe later on it’ll get more interesting. Like I said, I didn’t play too much of it. It’s not that I dislike strategy RPGs, it’s that they dislike me. I suck at those things. I’m shocked if I can get to the fifth battle in any strategy RPG. So maybe I’m not really qualified to do this here review, but there really isn’t any other choice. It’s not like anyone comes to The Whirlpool for reviews anyways. Right?

(editor's note: lol at that last line considering the premise behind this Backloggd account, anyway, I want to tell you the greatest emulator dev who ever lived named themself after a character from this game and was inspired to get into the profession because of it, as written about by Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxezw/a-23-year-perfectionist-journey-to-localize-the-obscure-bahamut-lagoon)

Game Review - originally written by Sliver X

BS Zelda is one of those games that would've never been played outside of Japan if not for emulation.

The game was released for the Bandai-Satellaview (editor's note: don't believe his lies, the B in BS stands for Broadcast, not Bandai, Bandai was not involved), a now defunct japanese add on for the Super Famicom that could download games from a satellite via a modem. BS Zelda was released in a way that certain sections of the game could be downloaded once a week, with a time limit on how long you could play each episode.

A few years ago, a ROM of the game was released on the internet, and a number of people translated it and did various hacks to it, such as removing the time limit, etc. The game itself plays very similarly to the original Legend of Zelda, but anyone who's played the first Zelda will notice a number of differences. The dungeons are altered, the overworld is different, and instead of Link, you play as a little kid in a baseball cap, which I understand was the Satellaview mascot.

If you like the Zelda series in general, you should find this game fun to play.

Game Review - originally written by (wraith)

This is a rather simplistic game as far as puzzle games go. But that probably won't deter any of the millions of people with a Sanrio fetish. Anyway, the premise is very simple. You have to guide Hello Kitty to the goal through a maze of corridors and moving gates. She walks straight forward unless she hits a dead end, a corner or a gate that happens to be barring her path. Yeah, it's not very hard. Except for the levels with rolling spheres that try to kill you, I don't even think it's possible to die. So you probably won't be challenged by it. Maybe if you have a young child in the house, it could provide a few hours of entertainment for them, or something.