rhdndescriptions
1991
Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper
So you’re a girl named Yui, and you’re a golfer. You fight enemies in … a golf course?! The game is kinda fun, the golfing part is pretty good if you’ve played some of the Super Nintendo EA golf games… it also seems to have RPG areas, but I never got that far. At least you can play the golf parts right away.
So you’re a girl named Yui, and you’re a golfer. You fight enemies in … a golf course?! The game is kinda fun, the golfing part is pretty good if you’ve played some of the Super Nintendo EA golf games… it also seems to have RPG areas, but I never got that far. At least you can play the golf parts right away.
Game Review - originally written by Kitsune Sniper
According to various sources, the game is nothing more than a collection of FMV, arranged for a sort of virtual backstage tour. Something interesting for the fans of the band.
According to various sources, the game is nothing more than a collection of FMV, arranged for a sort of virtual backstage tour. Something interesting for the fans of the band.
Game Review - by Spinner 8
The second NES game released by Enix, the first being the forgettable Door Door. I don’t know much about this game, but it’s by Yuji Horii, so you know it rocks. At first it looks like a standard text adventure, but I hear later on it becomes a weird Wizardry-style dungeon crawler thing.
DvD Translations adds:
This is the first adventure game released on the Famicom. Yuji Horii ported this, his successful NEC PC-8801 game, to the Famicom to determine whether the Famicom action game crowd would take to an adventure game. The game did quite well. Because of this, Horii was able to release the game he really wanted to make for the Famicom, the first Japanese console RPG: Dragon Quest.
(editor's note: and take to it they did, becoming perhaps the single most foundational title in the Japanese adventure game canon)
2002
Game Review - originally written by Sardius
God bless Taiwanese pirates. I mean, seriously. Without them, where would we be? Would you even WANT to live in a world where King of Casino and Jurassic Boy 2 didn’t exist? No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.
Anyway, this “pirate original” Gameboy game follows in the grand Sachen tradition by offering ripped-off, shaky gameplay accompanied by horrible, horrible music. In this case, the game being ripped off is SNK/Nazca’s Metal Slug…which is actually kinda neat, because there hasn’t been an official Metal Slug game released for the Gameboy as of yet. This particular bastardized incarnation of the series even goes as far as to rip graphics directly from the Neo Geo Pocket versions of Metal Slug, for that extra desperate stab at legitimacy! Unfortunately, ripping off the series’ uniquely awesome gameplay apparently wasn’t as easy for whoever made this, since the game pretty much plays like crap. Oh well. It’s still a neat enough little oddity, I guess.
(editor's note: check out my review on this same Backloggd page I'm pretty proud of that one)
God bless Taiwanese pirates. I mean, seriously. Without them, where would we be? Would you even WANT to live in a world where King of Casino and Jurassic Boy 2 didn’t exist? No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.
Anyway, this “pirate original” Gameboy game follows in the grand Sachen tradition by offering ripped-off, shaky gameplay accompanied by horrible, horrible music. In this case, the game being ripped off is SNK/Nazca’s Metal Slug…which is actually kinda neat, because there hasn’t been an official Metal Slug game released for the Gameboy as of yet. This particular bastardized incarnation of the series even goes as far as to rip graphics directly from the Neo Geo Pocket versions of Metal Slug, for that extra desperate stab at legitimacy! Unfortunately, ripping off the series’ uniquely awesome gameplay apparently wasn’t as easy for whoever made this, since the game pretty much plays like crap. Oh well. It’s still a neat enough little oddity, I guess.
(editor's note: check out my review on this same Backloggd page I'm pretty proud of that one)
1995
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
This is a very Final Fantasy V type of game. The artistic style is almost exactly the same, and it even has its own crappy version of an Active Time Battle system. That being said, it’s based on an anime or something, and it involves a girl who pretends to be a guy, I’m not sure why though. Okay.
(editor's note: it's so she can be a gladiator and not get sold into slavery)
This is a very Final Fantasy V type of game. The artistic style is almost exactly the same, and it even has its own crappy version of an Active Time Battle system. That being said, it’s based on an anime or something, and it involves a girl who pretends to be a guy, I’m not sure why though. Okay.
(editor's note: it's so she can be a gladiator and not get sold into slavery)
Game Review - originally written by ???
First off, let me say that I am not at all a fan of Crayon Shin-Chan. At all. It’s this manga that seems tailor-made for giggling twelve-year-olds, and it ends up being completely juvenile and insipid to anyone else who reads it, unlike cool children’s books, like The Monster at the End of This Book. God damn, that was an awesome book. How could you not love that? Anyways yeah, maybe I shouldn’t be reviewing this. Or playing it.
So this game is a weird versus puzzle-type game where you push blocks of two into a playing field, with the goal of getting them all on your opponent’s side, or something like that. It all seems pretty silly and random to me.
First off, let me say that I am not at all a fan of Crayon Shin-Chan. At all. It’s this manga that seems tailor-made for giggling twelve-year-olds, and it ends up being completely juvenile and insipid to anyone else who reads it, unlike cool children’s books, like The Monster at the End of This Book. God damn, that was an awesome book. How could you not love that? Anyways yeah, maybe I shouldn’t be reviewing this. Or playing it.
So this game is a weird versus puzzle-type game where you push blocks of two into a playing field, with the goal of getting them all on your opponent’s side, or something like that. It all seems pretty silly and random to me.
1994
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
Cyborg 009 is some kind of anime, I guess. There’s these, uhh, nine, uh, cyborgs. Yeah, and they all have special abilities, and they fight crime… and I guess there’s some kind of big bad guy that they fight, or something. So to recap, yeah, I’ve never heard of it.
This game, though, is an amazingly standard run-and-shoot-things action game. Think Megaman, I guess, except you can jump thirty feet into the air, but only for a distance of five or six feet. So yeah, platforming aspects really suck. It’s also unlike Megaman in that you don’t fight giant robots created by the nefarious Dr. Wily, and you don’t get to absorb their attacks and use them on others. Also, your weapon has a very short range, unlike Megaman’s famous Mega Buster. Okay, so I just meant “think Megaman” in the sense that you’re running around and shooting things. I couldn’t think of another example.
Of course, all run-and-shoot-things action games require some gimmick to distinguish it, and in this one you can choose a party of three to fight with, and you can select them with the L button, and also possibly, the R button. They can all do different things, like the bald freak who can change shape into a birdie or an enemy. Stuff like that. It would be a really cool thing to have in a game, but unfortunately this game isn’t very good anyways, so there you go.
Cyborg 009 is some kind of anime, I guess. There’s these, uhh, nine, uh, cyborgs. Yeah, and they all have special abilities, and they fight crime… and I guess there’s some kind of big bad guy that they fight, or something. So to recap, yeah, I’ve never heard of it.
This game, though, is an amazingly standard run-and-shoot-things action game. Think Megaman, I guess, except you can jump thirty feet into the air, but only for a distance of five or six feet. So yeah, platforming aspects really suck. It’s also unlike Megaman in that you don’t fight giant robots created by the nefarious Dr. Wily, and you don’t get to absorb their attacks and use them on others. Also, your weapon has a very short range, unlike Megaman’s famous Mega Buster. Okay, so I just meant “think Megaman” in the sense that you’re running around and shooting things. I couldn’t think of another example.
Of course, all run-and-shoot-things action games require some gimmick to distinguish it, and in this one you can choose a party of three to fight with, and you can select them with the L button, and also possibly, the R button. They can all do different things, like the bald freak who can change shape into a birdie or an enemy. Stuff like that. It would be a really cool thing to have in a game, but unfortunately this game isn’t very good anyways, so there you go.
1994
Game Review - by Gideon Zhi (founder of AGTP)
Nekketsu Oyako by TechnoSoft (or alternately Tecno Soft) – not to be confused with the other Nekketsu games, starring Kunio, by Technos – is a rather average Final Fight clone beatemup. You’ve got your three characters, the big buff slowpoke, the fast but weak girl, and the all around average guy, and they walk through a bunch of levels beating the puss out of stuff for some reason or another.
Graphically, the game is… well, sub-par for the Playstation, but considering that it was one of the first titles to grace the system (and considering that it was up against the likes of Funky Horror Band for Sega CD as a contender for “worst near-launch title graphics”) I’d say it did quite well. The sound is, as well, nothing to write home about. Neither is the gameplay. In fact, the whole thing just screams of average, and it would remain so if it took itself seriously. As it is, the amount of bizarre doesn’t quite reach the level of Gourmet Sentai Barayarou for the SNES, with its nose-rocket-propelled moai heads and dance button, but it comes sort of close, with half of the second level being inside a whale (which eats you at the end of the first.) Inside the whale you’ll find boxing octopi and blobs of water with “H2O” written on ‘em. Weird.
It deserves some playtime though, even if the lack of Kunio is a bit of a disappointment. Given the… closeness of the game title and company name, I think TechnoSoft was specifically aiming to confuse people into thinking that this was a Kunio game, but it’s not. Shame on you, TechnoSoft! That’s bad business that is!
(editor's note: as said by me in the one other review on Backloggd, this was a PS1 launch title, and I probably only played it because Gideon Zhi's review and it being one of the only translated PS1 games at the time sold me on playing it)
Nekketsu Oyako by TechnoSoft (or alternately Tecno Soft) – not to be confused with the other Nekketsu games, starring Kunio, by Technos – is a rather average Final Fight clone beatemup. You’ve got your three characters, the big buff slowpoke, the fast but weak girl, and the all around average guy, and they walk through a bunch of levels beating the puss out of stuff for some reason or another.
Graphically, the game is… well, sub-par for the Playstation, but considering that it was one of the first titles to grace the system (and considering that it was up against the likes of Funky Horror Band for Sega CD as a contender for “worst near-launch title graphics”) I’d say it did quite well. The sound is, as well, nothing to write home about. Neither is the gameplay. In fact, the whole thing just screams of average, and it would remain so if it took itself seriously. As it is, the amount of bizarre doesn’t quite reach the level of Gourmet Sentai Barayarou for the SNES, with its nose-rocket-propelled moai heads and dance button, but it comes sort of close, with half of the second level being inside a whale (which eats you at the end of the first.) Inside the whale you’ll find boxing octopi and blobs of water with “H2O” written on ‘em. Weird.
It deserves some playtime though, even if the lack of Kunio is a bit of a disappointment. Given the… closeness of the game title and company name, I think TechnoSoft was specifically aiming to confuse people into thinking that this was a Kunio game, but it’s not. Shame on you, TechnoSoft! That’s bad business that is!
(editor's note: as said by me in the one other review on Backloggd, this was a PS1 launch title, and I probably only played it because Gideon Zhi's review and it being one of the only translated PS1 games at the time sold me on playing it)
Game Review - by Gideon Zhi (founder of AGTP)
This game is… er, well. You play as the great mighty hero, Carl, who thankfully doesn’t go around with a hairy gut poking out from underneath a wifebeater. You go from dungeon to dungeon (which have to be entered with the SELECT button, for some screwy reason), killing monsters with your limited supply of bouncy arrows and wandering from room to room. When you haven’t visited a room, you won’t be able to see it, cuz it’ll be dark and stuff, but when you enter the room, it’ll become light! Wowie! That way you can tell where you’ve been and where you haven’t!
The problem is that there’s no real map feature, and since all the rooms look the same it’s very, very easy to get lost, especially when all the rooms have been lit and you’re just looking for the door that goes with that key you got from killing the brontosaurus, or when you’re looking for the room with the big nasty dragon in it so it can kill you all over again. And then, once you beat the big nasty dragon, you get a NEW map with a whole slew of NEW dungeons to go through! Yay Carl! It’s no wonder there haven’t really been any more of these games since 1989.
This game is… er, well. You play as the great mighty hero, Carl, who thankfully doesn’t go around with a hairy gut poking out from underneath a wifebeater. You go from dungeon to dungeon (which have to be entered with the SELECT button, for some screwy reason), killing monsters with your limited supply of bouncy arrows and wandering from room to room. When you haven’t visited a room, you won’t be able to see it, cuz it’ll be dark and stuff, but when you enter the room, it’ll become light! Wowie! That way you can tell where you’ve been and where you haven’t!
The problem is that there’s no real map feature, and since all the rooms look the same it’s very, very easy to get lost, especially when all the rooms have been lit and you’re just looking for the door that goes with that key you got from killing the brontosaurus, or when you’re looking for the room with the big nasty dragon in it so it can kill you all over again. And then, once you beat the big nasty dragon, you get a NEW map with a whole slew of NEW dungeons to go through! Yay Carl! It’s no wonder there haven’t really been any more of these games since 1989.
1988
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
If there’s anything the MSX is known for, it’s badass Konami games. They pretty much single-handedly kept the MSX afloat, or at least it would seem from all the awesome Konami games on there. It’s like Activision with the Atari 2600, yo. Okay, enough making stuff up.
Who doesn’t love Parodius? Conceived of as a parody of Gradius (get it), Parodius probably has just as many sequels as Gradius does, including a really weird one on SNES. If you’ve played the NES or SNES versions, which I assume most people who are reading this are more familiar with, you pretty much know what to do here.
If there’s anything the MSX is known for, it’s badass Konami games. They pretty much single-handedly kept the MSX afloat, or at least it would seem from all the awesome Konami games on there. It’s like Activision with the Atari 2600, yo. Okay, enough making stuff up.
Who doesn’t love Parodius? Conceived of as a parody of Gradius (get it), Parodius probably has just as many sequels as Gradius does, including a really weird one on SNES. If you’ve played the NES or SNES versions, which I assume most people who are reading this are more familiar with, you pretty much know what to do here.
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
When you work at a translation news site, and you have to play all these games that were never released here and all really kind of play the same, the word “generic” takes on an entirely new meaning. Super Bikkuriman, while not at all a bad game, is amazingly generic. You walk to the right and bitchslap enemies as they come towards you. The sprites are way too big for the Gameboy’s itty bitty screen, so they’re basically on top of you before you have a change to react. The hook in this game is the black bar on your life bar that charges when you attack enemies. Once it fills, you hit Start and change costumes, and get a (somewhat) projectile weapon and stuff. What’s kind of clever is, the lower your life, the longer the black bar has to be before you can use it. If that makes sense. After you use it the first time, if you use it again there’s this Whoosh kind of animation thing, and that’s it. Maybe it kills all the enemies on the screen or something.
Oh, and there’s this funky Beyblade kind of game where these discs spin around and you can’t control them and then someone wins. Pretty weird, if you ask me.
When you work at a translation news site, and you have to play all these games that were never released here and all really kind of play the same, the word “generic” takes on an entirely new meaning. Super Bikkuriman, while not at all a bad game, is amazingly generic. You walk to the right and bitchslap enemies as they come towards you. The sprites are way too big for the Gameboy’s itty bitty screen, so they’re basically on top of you before you have a change to react. The hook in this game is the black bar on your life bar that charges when you attack enemies. Once it fills, you hit Start and change costumes, and get a (somewhat) projectile weapon and stuff. What’s kind of clever is, the lower your life, the longer the black bar has to be before you can use it. If that makes sense. After you use it the first time, if you use it again there’s this Whoosh kind of animation thing, and that’s it. Maybe it kills all the enemies on the screen or something.
Oh, and there’s this funky Beyblade kind of game where these discs spin around and you can’t control them and then someone wins. Pretty weird, if you ask me.
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
This guy Gen is a carpenter. And he runs around hitting things with his carpenter's hammer. You may know of him as Hammerin’ Harry! This doesn't really play like it though. You've got three hammers: one that turns enemies into blocks, one that (temporarily) destroys them, and one that pisses them off so that they follow you around. You have to use these hammers and manipulate your enemies so you can go through the level. So it's got a definite puzzle game kind of feel. And I really suck at it. I mean, I got stumped like three rooms into it. Rooms! So very sad.
This guy Gen is a carpenter. And he runs around hitting things with his carpenter's hammer. You may know of him as Hammerin’ Harry! This doesn't really play like it though. You've got three hammers: one that turns enemies into blocks, one that (temporarily) destroys them, and one that pisses them off so that they follow you around. You have to use these hammers and manipulate your enemies so you can go through the level. So it's got a definite puzzle game kind of feel. And I really suck at it. I mean, I got stumped like three rooms into it. Rooms! So very sad.
Game Review - originally written by ???
Santa Claus no Takarabako: Possibly the strangest release from Data East EVAR. It’s actually two things in one; a computerized christmas card, and that great staple of every traditional christmas, gambling games.
The card section allows you to choose from three different backgrounds, three songs, and you can type in your own scrolling message, and even redraw the walking Santa to whatever you want. Basically, this offers you 10 to 20 minutes of semi-enjoyable time killing.
Sadly, this is the pinnacle of fun for the game. The gambling, or “Party Games” as they’re called, require basically no skill whatsoever to play. You hit A, and the cards fall as they may. You have a Slot Machine, Roulette Wheel, some strange Bingo game, and a dice game I can’t comprehend.
All of these games are hard as hell, too; I think ol’ Santa’s got his casino rigged. After 10 minutes of getting the worst luck ever, I finally just quit. Santa’s pretty greedy when it’s money on the line, I guess.
Santa Claus no Takarabako: Possibly the strangest release from Data East EVAR. It’s actually two things in one; a computerized christmas card, and that great staple of every traditional christmas, gambling games.
The card section allows you to choose from three different backgrounds, three songs, and you can type in your own scrolling message, and even redraw the walking Santa to whatever you want. Basically, this offers you 10 to 20 minutes of semi-enjoyable time killing.
Sadly, this is the pinnacle of fun for the game. The gambling, or “Party Games” as they’re called, require basically no skill whatsoever to play. You hit A, and the cards fall as they may. You have a Slot Machine, Roulette Wheel, some strange Bingo game, and a dice game I can’t comprehend.
All of these games are hard as hell, too; I think ol’ Santa’s got his casino rigged. After 10 minutes of getting the worst luck ever, I finally just quit. Santa’s pretty greedy when it’s money on the line, I guess.
Game Review - originally written by ???
Patlabor’s an anime. As you can imagine, it involves giant robots fighting things, or something. I don’t know, I only saw one episode, and apparently it had nothing to do with the series because it was pretty funny, but it didn’t make any sense. And that’s my Patlabor story.
This game is pretty standard FDS fare, you walk to the right and hit things with your sword, uhh, I mean your police baton or something. Or if you don’t like your baton, you can always just shoot them. Haha, kinda funny if you think about it! (editor's note: 💀)
Also there’s a whole bunch of powerups that I don’t know what the hell they do.
Patlabor’s an anime. As you can imagine, it involves giant robots fighting things, or something. I don’t know, I only saw one episode, and apparently it had nothing to do with the series because it was pretty funny, but it didn’t make any sense. And that’s my Patlabor story.
This game is pretty standard FDS fare, you walk to the right and hit things with your sword, uhh, I mean your police baton or something. Or if you don’t like your baton, you can always just shoot them. Haha, kinda funny if you think about it! (editor's note: 💀)
Also there’s a whole bunch of powerups that I don’t know what the hell they do.
2002
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
Melty Blood is one of those doujin fighting games that Insert Credit likes to go on and on about. Apparently it’s pretty good. The screenshots seem to depict a definite Guilty Gear kind of look.
Actually, I don’t really know what a “doujin” game is. Is that even the right word? In any case the game’s pretty fun, even if it does run at a sexilicious 17 fps on my system. Ooh, baby.
Melty Blood is one of those doujin fighting games that Insert Credit likes to go on and on about. Apparently it’s pretty good. The screenshots seem to depict a definite Guilty Gear kind of look.
Actually, I don’t really know what a “doujin” game is. Is that even the right word? In any case the game’s pretty fun, even if it does run at a sexilicious 17 fps on my system. Ooh, baby.