Game Review - originally written by ???

This game is based upon Anpanman’s travels around the world helping people. But what is Anpanman? He’s a superhero whose head is made out of sweet rolls filled with bean jam.

No joke.

This game has you playing as Anpanman (or his friends Currypanman and Shokupanman) as you try to beat Baikinman to the end of the board you’re playing. There are eight boards in all, and three players can go at it. It’s no Mario Party, and there are only -three- minigames, but it’s fun at least, and not too complicated.

Too bad that witch Dokinchan cheats at Jan-Ken-Pon. Hussy. Just ‘cause she’s a girl…

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Marble Cooking is an incredibly easy puzzle game in which you create a portal with your magic wand staff thing. Then you walk to another spot, leaving a trail of carrots as you walk. Then you summon your little bunny rabbit friend to appear from the portal and eat all the carrots, crushing all enemies in his path. That's it.

I mean sure, the enemies can eat you, and they can eat the portal itself. But the carrots are inedible to enemies. They're special Magic Bunny Carrots. Anyways after every three levels you see a hentai picture of a different girl, with her genitalia blocked out, doing something awful. There's typically this brown liquid gushing out of there, and I really don't want to even guess at its purpose.

Game Review - originally written by ???

Glory of Heracles IV is an interesting blend of Greek mythology, Pandora’s Box, and the quest for eternal life. Although Heracles is in the title and the game, he is not the principle character. The game is actually the story about some other characters, with Heracles as a secondary intertwined quest. The game resembles Dragon Quest on the surface, but goes much deeper in gameplay and story. There is also a seed planting system, blacksmith system, diary, myth guide, and bestiary.

The most notable gameplay feature is the body system. You can acquire and inhabit 100 different bodies throughout the game. This allows the player to choose an avatar for an otherwise mute hero. Each body has its own backstory, set of levels, strengths and weaknesses, and unique skills for battle. In some instances you may even act out new scenes by becoming a resident of town and experiencing their circumstances from their perspective. Think of the bodies as playable NPCs.

The main plot follows the player, his friend Plato, and Epipha from the mythical city of Atlantis. Their fine professor has been researching possibilities of ever lasting life. Soon after the game begins, an event happens that transcends life as they know it. You will encounter life, death, Pandora’s Box, Heracles, and even the gods themselves! You must unravel the mystery of what happened. You must help Heracles in his quest too. You will travel by boat, saba, submarine, and even on the legendary Pegasus! You will journey to the underworld, under the sea, and even to the heavens above! It is a good tale to be had for the 16-bit era! The Glory of Heracles awaits you!

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

If, while playing this game (Final Fire Pro Wrestling), it all looks familiar to you, it’s because it was released stateside as Fire ProWrestling 2. Except, whoever released it over here took out the story mode. Why? So now you’ve got exactly the same game as the first one, with a few new moves and even fewer new players. Wowee.

So yeah, this game has a story mode, where you have control over your own wrestling federation. Sounds pretty awesome.

Game Review - originally written by Shih Tzu

It's…a Breakout clone! Yaaaaaaay. It seems like a fairly good one, though. There's the expected Arkanoid business where powerups fall from special blocks and certain blocks take several hits, and you get a lot of other innovations like blocks that fade in and out of existence, blocks that regenerate after a few seconds, exploding blocks, blocks that shoot back at you, boss fights, and so on. Multiball is insane. The music is pretty wretched and repetitious, but what can you do.

The game also, for once in the genre, attaches a goofy little plot, just in case you needed a justification to smash stuff with haphazardly flying projectiles. You are Jon Takahashi, a bounty hunter who “travels all over the universe collecting prize money with his machine, the Reflector.” One day a floating robot head named Kuwar enlists him to find the rest of his robot body, which was snatched by evil-doers who get off on dismantling robots, I guess. Which really isn't that appalling, but maybe they're into genocide too, I dunno. Anyway, Jon's getting “10,000,000 paohs” out of it, so he's probably not too concerned.
Emulator note: NO$GMB and Visual Boy Advance both have certain graphical issues with this game. KiGB seems to work perfectly.
(editor's note: that emulator note is outdated, nowadays everybody uses mGBA for everything)

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Some consider Rez to be the pinnacle of Tetsuya Mizuguchi's United Game Artists, which may be true, but I still consider Space Channel 5 Part 2 to be the better game. Man, I loved the hell out of the original SC5, but the sequel improves upon every single aspect. The sometimes laggy prerendered video graphics have been replaced by your usual 3D graphics (which look JUST FINE thank you very much), and there's a hell of a lot more stuff to do. I mean, multiple outfits for Ulala! Holy crap, man.

The music's a whole lot better (that is, not just a bunch of variations on Mexican Flyer), and there's the introduction of the HEY button, which kinda mixes things up, cause it's kinda boring just going CHU CHU CHU all the time. And damn, Space Michael. Come on.

Anyways, Space Channel 5 Part 2 is the greatest game ever made, and all of you need to go out and buy it now. Hell, Agetec re-released it on the PS2 in the States. NO EXCUSE.

Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper

This is the sequel to the Wagyan Land games on the NES. In those games, you controled a weird, cubist-inspired dinosaur thing which attacked its enemies by yelling at them. This is more of the same, although the graphics are really damn good and the music did stand out for me even if I can’t remember it now. I have no clue what’s the point of the game. But you can now control a pink bow-ribboned dinosaur!

Am I the only one that thought of the Chicky Romh when I saw her? I hope not. (editor's note: hyperlinks to broken images on donut.parodius.net, the original domain of RHDN when it was called The Whirlpool)

(editor's note: "Chicky Romh"? Jesse what the fuck are you talking about, I imagine the way I feel right now googling that to no avail is the way researchers in 2043 will feel trying to parse what a "Skibidi Toilet" is supposed to be
and now this Backloggd page will be the top result for "Chicky Romh" when searched in the future, great, just great)

Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper

According to EludeVisibility.org, the game is an RPG similar to Zelda, in which the hero looks a lot like Link. I’d try to elaborate but the game crashed. ZSNES doesn’t run it properly, but SNES9X seems to run it well.
(editor's note: this was written 20 years ago and therefore is no longer a problem, but some emulators and flashcarts out there, mostly ports to weak systems and cheaper flashcarts, still don't support the SA-1 chip this game shares with Kirby Super Star and Super Mario RPG, so confirm support before playing)

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

I guess if somebody gave Boxxle a swift kick in the ass, you’d get Power Soukoban. I hate using metaphors that involve violence being done to things to produce new, amazing things, but the game’s called Power Soukoban for Christ’s sake.

Anyways, you’re this freaky little guy, who walks from room to room in this castle and pushes boxes into holes. When all the boxes in a room have been pushed into holes, you get this teardrop thing that I assume has some use. There’s also enemies walking out of these holes, just to mix things up a little. You can shoot fireballs at them with the A button, or you can hold the A button and release a super fireball, that you can use to tear down certain walls and stuff.

So, in closing, you would do well to check it out, and etc.

Rent/Buy/Burn? You should totally rent this game first, just to see if you like it. If you like it, I’d definitely recommend buying it, like at your local pawn shop or something.

Game Review - originally written by Sardius

Crest of Gaia has to be THE most generic strategy RPG I’ve ever played. Seriously. I guess if you’re into the whole SRPG thing, you might derive some enjoyment from this game, but I sure as hell can’t. Unlike more contemporary games in the genre like say, Shining Force and Dark Wizard, Crest of Gaia doesn’t bother to do anything to spice up the experience in terms of presentation, making the whole thing agonizingly boring. While the previously mentioned games have nice things like animated cutscenes, character development, not-unacceptably-horrible graphics, and…you know, fun, Crest of Gaia does away with these frivolities and delivers an experience that can be best described as being both bare-bones and dull. Dull as all get out, for reals. About the only reason I can see anyone playing this is because it apparently has some tie-in with the Langrisser series. Otherwise, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this game that would warrant you spending your time on.

Then again, maybe I’m just bitter because of the game’s intentionally misleading intro, which shows a knight in full armor riding on a dolphin’s back. Imagine how crushingly disappointed I was to find out that there is, in fact, no dolphin riding to be found in this game. Don’t be fooled!

Update: Apparently, according to the big D himself, you CAN ride dolphins in this game! This completely nullifies any negative opinions I may have expressed above - Crest of Gaia is awesome.

Also the game’s more like a strategy/board game sort of thing than a strategy RPG but whatever. Dolphin riding knights, man. Who ride dolphins. Seriously!

Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper (aka Foxhack)

Azu Cola is the new, refreshing drink - oh, wait, wrong Cola. This is a Japanese Columns clone featuring the Azumanga Daioh characters, which go fighting against each other, one on one, to see who wins. Typical, right?

Well, no. Depending on what you do, you can send attacks at your enemy, like making the piece they had in their hands vanish, make three or four rows of useless blocks show up from the bottom, and more. This is one of the cruelest games I’ve ever seen. And the computer takes advantage of everything to make sure it wins. VERY unfair, even moreso than most arcade puzzle games.

There’s a demo that lets you play as Osaka, against Osaka, available at http://egs.cug.net/circle/azucola.html.

If there’s one thing I liked is how Osaka looks when she loses. Something you’ll see a lot during the time you try this demo…
(editor's note: devs later made Recettear)

Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper

Azu Tama is a game that features the Azumanga Daioh girls in a snowball fight. You, as Chiyo or Osaka (in the demo version at least) have to protect your own side of the screen from the rest of the characters, by hitting them with snowballs. If they (or you) manage to destroy your fort, the game is over. The game is quite fun, but a bit slow. The demo I played only allowed you to go up to level 1-3, in which you encounter a boss, presumably one of the teachers who is riding around on a van and throwing snowballs at you.

Again, why do these fan-made games get sold commercially? We’d never get that far down in the states… the programmers would get sued in five minutes. Lucky Japan…

You can get a demo of the game at http://egs.cug.net/circle/azutama.html.
(editor's note: devs later made Recettear)

Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper (aka Foxhack)

This is a doujinshi (or fan-made) volleyball game that features the girls from Azumanga Daioh in swimsuits. Naturally, that perv professor is in the background. Aheh. Unlike other volleyball games, you get graded by four characters depending on how well you did in the game. The first one to reach 100 points wins the match. The demo I played only allowed you to play as Chiyo-chan and Osaka. The game is fun, but only having two buttons (one to do actions, one to change characters) can get confusing. Especially when it’s time to defend and -both characters- slide to get the ball. Fun game, just needs more work.

You can get the demo at http://egs.cug.net/circle/azubeach.html . Download the file named “trytry3.lzh”.
(editor's note: developers later made Recettear)

Game Review - by Kitsune Sniper (aka Foxhack)

Dash De Leilei is one of those doujinshi, or fan-made, games that are so popular in Japan. This time, the main character is Lei Lei (or Hsien-Ko as she is known outside of Japan) from the Darkstalkers (or Vampire) series. She runs forever to the right of the screen, evading characters, including other characters from Darkstalkers, like Felicia, Anakaris or Huitzil (Phobos in Japan). You can use various weapons, and also have a time limit - once it runs out, the game ends. Fortunately you can also hit some enemies to freeze the time momentarily.

You can find the game’s home page and a two-level demo at http://egs.cug.net/circle/leilei.html .
(editor's note: never heard of this before, looks pretty cool, this was made by the devs who later made Recettear according to https://kimimithegameeatingshemonster.com/2023/03/12/dashstalkers/, also that page is probably down now)