PC Engine – Twentieth Century Gamer

God Panic: Shijō Saikyō Gunden (PC Engine)

The 1992 PC Engine Super CD-ROM shooter God Panic: Shijō Saikyō Gunden (“God Panic: Supreme Strongest Army”) is a genuine oddity. One barely documented on the English language Internet, to the extent that I had to rely on a somewhat dodgy machine translation of the Japanese manual to have any idea what it was even supposed to be about. We know it was sold by Teichiku, a nearly century-old record company that had a brief, largely unremarkable fling with video game publishing in the ’90s. The developers behind it seem to have been Sting, an outfit founded in 1989 by some ex-Compile employees. Compile? As in my favorite shootgame studio of all-time? Yup! I’m sad to say, however, that fans of such legendary Compile titles as Blazing Lazers and Musha really shouldn’t get their hopes up for this one.

One look at any given screen of God Panic will place it firmly in the wacky cute-’em-up subgenre, à la the better known TwinBee and Parodius franchises. Each of its stages has a silly, seemingly arbitrary theme like music, baseball, or Japanese mythology. Your “ship” is a little anthropomorphic ninja rodent fellow named Mouse Boy who gets contacted by none other than God himself and asked to fly off and save the day when an attempt to create a new universe goes awry and results in a hoard of kooky monsters appearing to wreak havoc.

Story-wise, that’s all you should need to underpin a quality shooting experience. Pity the gameplay isn’t there to support it. God Panic is such a bare-bones, perfunctory feeling product that there honestly isn’t much in the way of design or mechanics to comment on. Mouse Boy has a single linear weapon upgrade path that first sees his standard straight shot get augmented by a pair of small option satellites. These satellites then upgrade to three increasingly powerful shot types (lasers, lighting, homing) as more power-up icons are collected. A limited stock of up to five bombs allows for clearing away enemy shots in a pinch while also dishing out heavy damage across most of the screen. Other than that, there are collectable speed-up icons as well as ones that will either restore one pip on Mouse Boy’s health bar or expand said bar from its starting capacity of three up to a maximum of six.

Basic as that all is, it’s the level design here that truly let me down. God Panic’s five stages are short, often wrapping up just when I thought they were getting mildly exciting. Worse yet, the designers had the nerve to pull the rather cheap trick of making you play through them all twice via a second loop before you can fight the final boss and see the ending. The only concession to how tedious this obviously is is that second loop versions of levels are recolored and most (though not all) of the enemies are given new sprites. There’s a spooky Halloween angle to the redone art, such as giving the disrobing geisha enemies from stage three purple skin and bat wings. In my opinion, it’s not enough to compensate for the levels themselves being fundamentally unchanged.

On the plus side, God Panic’s soundtrack is interesting. Not spectacular, mind you, only strange and eclectic enough to stand out. You get obvious jokey homages to Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” sprinkled in amongst moody piano dirges and a ragtime end credits. It’s a proper trip and makes listening to God Panic arguably more fun than playing it. It’s also the sole justification I can spot for why the game needed to ship on a CD-ROM as opposed to a simple HuCard.

Between the refillable health bar and stock of three continues that allow you to keep on playing right on the spot you died with no break in the action, God Panic is notably easy by genre standards. I would cite that as a potential point in its favor, since I consider beginner-friendly shooters a very good thing in general. Alas, it just so happens that the PC Engine is already home to multiple great works in this vein, most notably Star Parodier, which presents much the same style of comedic vertical scrolling action with exponentially more depth and polish. Not to mention Air Zonk, Coryoon, Magical Chase, Seirei Senshi Spriggan…I could go on, but you get the idea. If you’re a PC Engine fanatic like me and bound to get around to the deepest of deep cuts like this eventually, you probably won’t hate it. It’s too trifling for that. That said, don’t expect to love it, either, as the minimal effort invested marks it as one of the least essential games of its kind on the platform.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria (PC Engine)

Long time, no see! Fear not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been plowing my way through another lengthy title. This time, it’s Tengai Makyō: Ziria, occasionally known by the bizarre moniker Far East of Eden. Bizarre because I can’t begin to fathom what connection this 1989 fantasy RPG by developer Red Company and publisher Hudson Soft has to do with American novelist John Steinbeck’s 1952 masterpiece, East of Eden. That head-scratcher aside, I’d been waiting what feels like forever to dig into this one. You see, Tengai Makyō: Ziria holds the distinction of being the first RPG produced for the then cutting-edge CD-ROM format. Despite the obvious historical interest this instilled in me, though, the game itself was doomed to remain largely inaccessible to anyone untrained in the Japanese language for nearly 35 years. Enter the fine folks at LIPEMCO! Translations, who released their magnificent English fan translation this past December. Finally, I was able to immerse myself in the world of Tengai Makyō: Ziria and discover…a fairly rote Dragon Quest clone with some superb cut scenes.

I know, I know, That may come across as rather glib and dismissive of me. Rest assured, however, that I hardly consider a strong resemblance to one of my favorite series to be a net negative. Similar to EarthBound, which I covered last month, tried-and-true mechanics that will be second nature to anyone who’s booted up an ’80s console RPG in the past are used by the designers as a canvas upon which to paint their own vision. In this case, it’s a vision of a whimsical Edo period Japan as imagined by misinformed outsiders. The instruction manual comes with an elaborate behind-the-scenes backstory explaining how the game’s plot is based on a spectacularly misinformed treatise on the nation of “Jipang” by nineteenth century American scholar Paul Hieronymus Chada. There never was such a man, of course, so what Red Company’s done here is to employ essentially the same comedic framing device William Goldman did in The Princess Bride, with its fictitious original author, S. Morgenstern. Cute.

The adventure centers on the titular Ziria of the Toad Clan, a hot-blooded young warrior very loosely-based on the Japanese folkloric hero Jiraiya. We follow him as he undertakes an epic journey to unite with the two other champions destined to defend Jipang against the machinations of the Daimon Cult, a sinister cabal of foreigners seeking to awaken the evil slumbering deity Masakado and lay waste to the country.

The general flow of the quest is episodic, not unlike any given season of a shōnen anime. Ziria and company arrive at a new province, hear tell of a Daimon Cult lieutenant with formidable powers oppressing the populace, and go on a short fetch quest or two before overthrowing that area’s freaky Big Bad and moving on to the next. After a dozen of these little episodes have played out, the group has become seasoned fighters ready to take down the Biggest Bad and save the day…until next season, er, game that is. I have to assume this structure is intentional, since the art style and tone of the cut scenes wouldn’t be out of place in any number of contemporary television productions.

Those cut scenes really are where Tengai Makyō: Ziria shines its brightest. They’re well drawn, professionally voiced, frequently amusing, and would have been jaw-dropping for the average gamer in 1989. I find them endearing enough today, and don’t intend highlighting them as the game’s best feature to be any sort of backhanded compliment.

Beyond that, I found the overall experience quite average. You know the drill: Explore from an overhead view, zoom in for a first-person view on the basic menu-based “fight, magic, item, run” combat, manage your HP and MP, level up, interrogate townsfolk for clues, buy new equipment periodically, and so forth. There’s only one major exception to the standard formula, and it’s unfortunately a doozy. In most RPGs cast from this mold, one of your party members running out of health would necessitate a trip back to town to have him or her revived by a friendly NPC. Or perhaps you’d cast a spell or use an expendable item to accomplish the same result. Not so here. If any one of your three main player characters falls, it’s an instant game over and you’re docked half your money and sent back to the last place you saved. You’re provided no opportunity to continue on without them or revive them yourself. It’s pretty brutal and resulted in significantly more failed dungeon runs and boss battle defeats than I’m used to seeing. At least money is relatively easy to come by and you can safeguard your stash by depositing it at the bank before you set off. Still, it’s a real frustration trigger when one late healing spell seals your whole group’s fate.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria is a solid old school RPG with a charming presentation and 30+ hours of gameplay to grind your way through. It’s also fascinating from a gaming history perspective as the genre’s first flirtation with visual media. That said, I wouldn’t call it one of the best works of its kind, whether today or back in 1989. In addition to the overly punitive character death issue I just described, the cyclical nature of the story beats grows repetitive. The majority of the music is oddly weak, too. While the three orchestrated tracks by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto are predictably excellent, the remainder of the soundtrack consists of short, tinny chiptunes that loop incessantly. Regardless, it sold well and spawned numerous sequels. I can’t wait to see where the saga goes next after this promising start. Not that I have a choice. If I’m lucky, maybe Tengai Makyō II will get translated before I hit retirement age.

FX-Unit Yuki: The Henshin Engine (PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16)

Video games about video gaming have a long, poorly documented history. The archetypal meta-game framing device (perhaps inspired by Disney’s Tron) is everyday gamers somehow getting physically drawn into the digital world and having to fight for their lives there. See Kid Chameleon or, uh, Cheetahmen, I guess. The 1983 horror anthology film Nightmares put a rather bizarre spin on the formula in its memorable “Bishop of Battle” segment (starring a young Emilio Estevez!), and the concept made its way to television later in the decade via the title character of NBC’s Captain N: The Game Master cartoon.

A much later example is FX-Unit Yuki: The Henshi Engine, an indie action-platformer/shooter hybrid developed by SaruPro. Originally crowdfunded and released in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Super CD-ROM format in 2018, it’s since been ported to the Genesis, Dreamcast, and Switch. I played the PC Engine version because, well, that’s what the game’s all about! Our lead, “average gamer gal” Yuki Shirakawa, has just landed her dream job as a game tester for JEC, makers of the FX Engine console. It soon becomes clear, however, that nefarious agents of JEC’s rival, the SG Corporation, are attempting to sabotage the code of its upcoming titles. The obvious solution is for Yuki’s bosses to plug her into an experimental virtual reality device in order that she might become, in true scantily-clad magical girl style, the mighty FX-Unit Yuki and defend her favorite games from the inside.

Yeah, the references here aren’t subtle. Neither is the dialog, which can be downright groan-inducing at times with its emoticons and exclamations of “wut,” “so ridic,” and similar glaring indicators of a middle-aged man trying to write a teenage girl. That said, the still shots that comprise the between-stage cut scenes look good (arguably better than the average in-game pixel art) and the scenes themselves aren’t voiced, so you’re at least spared hearing amateur actors stumble over these feeble lines.

The meat of FX-Unit Yuki is its eight levels, the majority of which are obviously crafted to resemble the PC Engine’s most iconic hits. In essence, the game is one massive extended homage to the platform itself. This is both its primary draw and its downfall. As a presumed fan of the material, you’re meant to welcome all these nods to the greats with nostalgic warmth and a chuckle or two. This recognition phase passes quickly, though, and you’re then stuck playing through decidedly inferior renditions of some of the best games of all-time. Excited by the prospect of some janky Wonder Boy? Maybe a little sad, ugly Castlevania? Level design in these platforming areas is the most insultingly rudimentary it could possibly be. You walk, whack one or two generic baddies, jump over a hole, and repeat until you start to regret that humanity evolved thumbs. Dull as that is, the two auto-scrolling shooter sequences manage to be drastically worse, with basic enemy patterns that never, and I mean never, get around to varying. The Cotton parody has the saving grace of being relatively short, while the travesty that is the Lords of Thunder one promises to be twelve of the longest minutes of your life. You’ve been warned.

Enter composer Simon Johansson, who thankfully stepped up to furnish FX-Unit Yuki’s one untarnished high point. His songs are universally magnificent and rise so far above the rest of the material they support as to be almost jarring. Any professionally-made game from the PC Engine’s heyday would have been proud to boast tunes like these. Their catchy, driving melodies lend the flat action a much-needed shot of intensity and I can’t imagine being willing to invest the hour plus a full playthrough demands without them.

That was…harsh, I know. I regret this, as it’s certainly not my intention to come down too hard on poor FX-Unit Yuki. Whatever its shortcomings as a standalone work, one has to acknowledge it as a labor of love produced on the cheap by a very small team of well-meaning hobbyists for a niche system I happen to adore. The world needs more of this sort of thing, not less. It’s tough to really hate on a love letter, even the awkward, sloppy kind you might find scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin.

Hana Taaka Daka!? (PC Engine)

It’s nothing less than wonderous that I’m over five years into exploring PC Engine shooting games and still discovering gems like Taito’s Hana Taaka Daka!? This 1991 horizontal scrolling “cute-’em-up” is thoroughly, unapologetically Japanese in its presentation, even more so than Konami’s TwinBee and Parodius franchises. I’m compelled to assume that this is why it was never adapted for release on the PC Engine’s American counterpart, the Turbografx-16, because it certainly wasn’t down to any lack of quality. Taito did their usual first-rate job here, resulting in a perfect companion piece to the likes of the better known Air Zonk and Magical Chase.

Hana Taaka Daka!? opens with a cut scene showing two adorable foxes unwisely removing the magic seal that’s been keeping a gang of mischievous shapeshifting tanuki trapped in a cave. The tanuki promptly spill out and tear the seal into twelve pieces before departing to cause more trouble with one of the poor foxes in tow as their prisoner. The remaining fox turns to the local tengu for help, and this fierce supernatural warrior immediately takes to the skies to set things right. A tengu, by the way, is a spirit of the forests and mountains that’s usually depicted in traditional art as either a mixture of human and bird or, as in this case, with bright red skin and a nose that would give Pinocchio’s a run for its money. This explains the game’s title, which literally translates as “long-nosed goblin,” doubling as a reference to the protagonist’s actual nose and a popular expression that makes having a long nose a euphemism for carrying one’s self proudly. Hey, I told you things would get super Japanese, didn’t I? Between this and Abarenbou Tengu (aka Zombie Nation) the year previous, I suppose the time had simply come for wacky tengu shooters.

Fortunately, you don’t need much in the way of cultural context to relish the superb gameplay of Hana Taaka Daka!? You may not get all the jokes, sure, but you’ll be too engrossed with shooting and dodging to care. The action plays out over six stages, all of which share the unusual feature of being more than one screen tall. Whether you take the high or low route through a given portion will determine the enemies and power-ups you encounter. This limited exploration angle is no mere novelty. Every level includes a hidden tanuki disguised as a background object. Shooting it transports you to a bonus area where you must survive long enough to find the same tanuki again, whereupon it’ll finally relinquish one of the missing seal pieces and you’ll exit back into the main stage. Only by doing this six times in a single playthrough can you acquire all the missing seal pieces and earn the best ending. Although it’s in no way necessary to enjoy the game, this is a fun extra challenge in what’s otherwise a notably forgiving shooter due to unlimited continues and password saves.

Your tengu’s arsenal is reasonably varied. He begins with a weak rapid-fire straight shot that can charged up for a significant damage boost. Charging is absolutely vital for dispatching any but the puniest of foes and I found myself relying on it almost exclusively. Other power-ups include mini-tengu that function as Gradius style option satellites and giant clacker balls that act as a temporary shield. The most important and interesting of all, however, are the scrolls that increase the tengu’s size. This is effectively the health system. He starts each new life medium-sized. Taking a hit shrinks him down and taking another hit while small results in a lost life. Picking up a scroll when small will bump him back up to medium, and picking up one when medium will make him large. At large size, he benefits from peak durability and can utilize the four special power-ups that replace his default charge shot with something better, such a spread of three ricocheting tops. Of course, the downside of being large and in charge is that he’s a bigger, slower target, so holding on to those awesome screen clearing attacks can be a struggle.

In a genre with a well-earned reputation for samey design, the combination of Hana Taaka Daka!?’s offbeat subject matter, scavenger hunt element, and size changing mechanic are collectively more than enough to set it apart from the average “spaceship versus aliens” affair. Factor in the top-notch graphics, catchy tunes (courtesy of Castlevania alum Kinuyo Yamashita), and flawless control you’d expect from a Taito production and you have a real winner on your hands. The only people I could see coming away from it dissatisfied are those who fancy themselves too hardcore for its easygoing approach. As for me, I just wish there was more of it. Oh, well. I’ll take what I can get. Especially since there’s plenty more shoot-’em-up madness to go on this particular platform. Lucky me.

Dragon Egg! (PC Engine)

Dragon Egg! (gotta respect that exclamation point moxie) is an interesting little stab a fantasy-themed action-platformer by NCS/Masaya. Released exclusively for the Japanese PC Engine in 1991, it contains all the ingredients necessary for a memorable side-scrolling romp. It underdelivers on them all, however, resulting in a game that looks significantly more fun in screenshots than it actually is to play.

The Kingdom of Konigst was once protected by Dragon Masters, mighty warriors mounted on their namesake mythic beasts. Then Chaos came and vanquished the Masters and their dragons, plunging the land into despair. Konigst’s last hope is the young girl Eran, a decendant of the Dragon Masters and bearer of the last dragon egg. Only she has the potential to hatch the egg, befriend the dragon inside it, and conquer Chaos.

So far, that gives us a workable stock fantasy premise, a likeable underdog protagonist, and a unique upgradeable weapon in the form of the egg and its scaly occupant. Not too shabby, right? Well, my primary issue with Dragon Egg! is its incredibly short length. Six levels, all of which can be cleared in around fifteen minutes once you’ve come to grips with the basic mechanics. Heck, the fourth stage is an auto-scroller that lasts for all of 43 seconds. Yes, I timed it. The full experience is almost insultingly brief for a 1991 console title. This has the nasty side-effect of leaving promising tertiary ideas like the upgrade shops that appear in most areas with little opportunity to shine.

A second major gripe is with the implementation of the dragon. At base power, Eran’s offense is limited to swatting at nearby foes with the egg itself. That’s one way to encourage it to hatch, I guess. Collecting enough of the orbs defeated enemies drop will power her up one step. First, the egg opens and the dragon pokes its head out to emit a small gout of flame, extending Eran’s reach. Next, the dragon emerges fully and Eran climbs onto its back. At this point, it gains a full-screen fire shot. Finally, the dragon’s wings enlarge, allowing it to briefly fly and, more importantly, to unleash a devastating triple fireball attack. Dying removes all accumulated power-ups, reverting the dragon to its original egg form. If this should happen in the later levels, building it back up to full strength can be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The cumulative effect of all this is a ludicrously short game that’s frustrating while you’re learning it (since you’ll be forced to use the feeble egg bash as your sole attack much of the time) and trivial once you’ve committed enough of it to memory that you can remain in super dragon form indefinitely, which won’t take long at all. It’s either a pain or a pushover, no in-between. In addition to more stages overall, Dragon Egg! would have benefited greatly from better difficulty balancing. If it was just a tad easier to get by with no upgrades and a tad harder when maxed-out, they really could have had something special with this one.

At the very least, you do get unlimited continues to practice with, some decently cute pixel art, and a couple of catchy chiptunes (along with several more mediocre ones). Dragon Egg! isn’t a mess, but it is a notably weak entry in the Masaya catalog. It seems all those restaurant menu disclaimers weren’t lying. Consuming undercooked eggs can be a dicey proposition.

Down Load 2 (PC Engine)

Long time no jack in.

Down Load, Alfa System’s 1990 cyberpunk anime-inspired horizontal shooter for the PC Engine, was a joyous discovery for me back in 2019. Boasting fast, smooth gameplay across a wide variety of memorably strange environments and one of the slickest presentations of any HuCard format game, it’s the very definition of unjustly obscure outside of its native Japan. It should come as no surprise, then, that the developers chose to strike while the iron was hot by following it up with a CD-ROM sequel less than a year later in 1991. Although Down Load 2 isn’t quite the complete upgrade its creators likely intended, it does at least manage to live up to its predecessor.

Ace cyber-diver Syd and his partner/love interest Deva are back to stop a mysterious new menace to both cyberspace and the real world. I won’t spoil exactly who our villain is this time, but let’s just say that Down Load 2 gave me the opportunity to indulge in one of my all-time favorite gaming activities and leave it at that. You’d be forgiven if you didn’t recognize either of our recurring leads, since the art style used for the cutscenes here is drastically different from Down Load’s. Syd appears far less punkish, while the formerly blonde Deva is now a redhead. Having Japanese as the only dialog option does little to clear up any confusion for us Westerners. Rest assured, however, that they are supposed to be the same people.

Broadly speaking, Down Load 2 handles similarly to the first. Fly from left to right blowing up baddies, collecting power-ups, and taking in a succession of rocking tunes and mind-bending background designs. Syd’s mission is divided into nine stages. If that seems like a downgrade from the previous thirteen, bear in mind that they aren’t divided into sub-areas this time, so the total length remains roughly the same. The conceit of roughly half the levels taking place in a virtual world once again opens the door to some wildly creative visuals, my favorite being an ancient Roman mosaic or tapestry upon which the figures animate and lob various shots at you as you pass. Tadashi Kitamura and Kimitaka Matsumae are credited with the CD soundtrack, a heavy metal guitar orgy guaranteed to delight all you Lords of Thunder fans. It’s more than a match for the last game’s excellent chiptunes.

The play mechanics proper have seen a number of significant tweaks, though they oddly don’t impact the overall feel of the action all that much in the end. Instead of a single life and a damage meter, for example, you have one-hit deaths coupled with in-place respawns. The end result is much the same, in that you can count on taking around five or so hits before needing to spend one of your unlimited continues to restart a stage. You no longer have the opportunity to select a secondary item such as a shield or missiles to start with, but functionally interchangeable items now appear as pickups at regular intervals. The biggest change (and the best, in my opinion) is that you’re not limited to using one of two main shot types at a time. Syd’s craft can now cycle between four weapons on the fly: The returning orange spread bullets and blue straight lasers plus the new homing shot and point-blank electric cutter.

Despite not really clearing the bar of being a bigger, noticeably better spin on the formula, Down Load 2 remains more Down Load, and that’s a wonderful thing. I prefer the first game’s cutscene art and the second’s expanded weapon system. Beyond that, it’s pretty much a wash in my book. Well, I suppose the sequel is missing those drop-dead hilarious foulmouthed continue screen rants, so perhaps I can grant a slight edge based on that alone. Regardless, both entries in the duology look and sound fantastic, play like the proverbial dream, and are among the top entry-level shooting games available for the platform.

Fausseté Amour (PC Engine)

Fausseté Amour translates to “False Love,” and what that has to do with anything going down in this sleazy little low-effort action-platformer from developer AIM and publisher Naxat Soft is anyone’s guess. Between its 1993 release date and focus on a half-naked girl slashing her way through a generic fantasy realm to face off against a hulking masked baddie, I have to assume that it represents a “me, too” reaction to Telenet Japan’s popular Valis series. Also like Valis, it uses the enhanced storage capacity of the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM format to deliver a bevy of colorful, cheesecake-laden cut scenes. Its sole claim to fame, in fact, is the way it leverages these scenes to push the boundaries of good taste just that one extra bit further than its inspiration. Whereas the first Valis was content with giving heroine Yuko a suit of rather skimpy armor, Fausseté Amour ups the ante by shoving cartoon girl butts and crotches right up in the viewer’s face. It’s not subtle, although it does maintain the bare minimum of PG-13 grade coverage needed to avoid being branded a proper hentai game.

Our protagonist is the oddly-named Corque Lans, a spirited young woman whose sister, Meriya, has been kidnapped by a gang of Satanic cultists led by a figure called, get this, Goat Bone. Goat. Bone. If I eventually forget everything about Fausseté Amour, which seems likely, that name will be last to go. Anyway, Corque’s journey is comprised of seven side-scrolling action stages, all featuring an end boss encounter and most a mid-boss as well. All seven are relatively small by genre standards. This is balanced by a lack of checkpoints and Corque’s languid, Belmontesque walk speed.

Speaking of Castlevania, Corque’s weapon of choice is a sort of extendable chain spear that can lash out in any of five directions. In addition, it can be spun around in a 360-degree arc, albeit only when the wielder is jumping. This spinning jump slash can also be used to generate one of three magical projectile attacks, depending on what magic icon, if any, was collected most recently. Finally, the spear functions as a grapple for latching onto the undersides of platforms. Once attached in this way, Corque can execute a follow-up super jump that launches her high into the air and deals heavy contact damage in the manner of Samus Aran’s iconic Screw Attack.

If a mix of mechanics from Castlevania, Bionic Commando, and Metroid sounds promising to you, you’re not alone. It was that setup, and not ’90s anime thong lust, that initially drew me to this one. Unfortunately, stealing from the best is still no guarantee of success. Lackluster level and enemy design are what ultimately consigns Fausseté Amour to the Hell of Forgotten Games. These environments simply aren’t interesting to navigate, and the token resistance put up by their handful of listless inhabitants makes what would otherwise be a punishing Ghosts ‘n Goblins style two-hit death system feel positively generous. Worse, the spear grappling gimmick is badly underutilized. It’s not necessary at all until the final stretch, where some very basic vertical movement is abruptly demanded. What could have formed the cornerstone of a superior experience really amounts to nothing more than a trifle.

On the presentation side, there are a few nifty backgrounds that give the impression of considerable depth. The Japanese voice acting seems broadly competent, too. This is where my praise ends, though. Sprites tend to look alright when they’re not moving, but seeing them in motion reveals notably stiff animation cycles. The music and sound effects are a disappointing lot, especially the former. Songs are short, repetitive, and minimally developed. There are no strong melodies evident and the worst tracks suffer from an overreliance on obnoxious laugh and scream samples. Why, I couldn’t tell you. On top of all that, additional playtesting was clearly required. I fell down a pit while battling the third boss. Instead of dying as expected, this inexplicably triggered the next cut scene and I moved on to stage four as normal. At least I can now say I defeated a video game boss by falling in a hole.

I started out highlighting the obvious parallels between Fausseté Amour and the better-known Valis. In concluding, I sorely wish I could say that its uptick in fanservice wasn’t bundled with a marked downgrade to Valis’ already average gameplay. Frankly, I’d come to expect better than this from the Naxat brand. I suppose it is short and easy enough that serious PC Engine fanatics may find it worth booting up purely as a curiosity. I can’t recommend you goat bone your poor wallet by shelling out a hundred bucks or more for an original CD copy, however.

Horror Story (PC Engine)

Ready to ride the spooky train to Obscure Town? NEC Avenue’s 1993 PC Engine CD-ROM port of Toaplan’s arcade run-and-gun Horror Story is about as unknown as it gets in these parts. It was destined to remain a Japanese exclusive, since the PC Engine’s ill-fated North American equivalent, the TurboGrafx-16, was on its last legs circa 1993. The 1989 coin-op original, on the other hand, was supposedly released here under the name Demon’s World, although I’ve never seen a cabinet and I’ve logged eons of arcade time in my day. To the extent the game is known at all these days, it’s primarily for being the sole entry in the genre by the shooter specialists at Toaplan. That, and definitely not being based on Ghostbusters. Not even a little!

Okay, so men donning jumpsuits and ray gun backpacks to take on a hoard of cartoon specters may seem slightly familiar in a technically not copyright infringing sort of way. For my money, though, Toaplan took its most substantial cues not from the movies, but from their industry rivals. Horror Story blends design elements characteristic of run-and-guns and auto-scrolling shooters in a way that closely resembles Data East’s Atomic Runner Chelnov, which debuted in 1988. In both games, the screen scrolls automatically throughout, forcing your hero (or heroes in Horror Story’s two-player simultaneous mode) to keep moving and confront every stage obstacle and enemy formation in its set time. Even more Chelnov-esque is the ability to bounce off the heads of enemies Mario style to avoid ground hazards and access higher platforms. Alas, this shared DNA isn’t quite enough to make the PC Engine Horror Story an experience on par with Atomic Runner’s definitive Genesis edition.

I’ll start with the positives: The team behind Horror Story clearly had loads of fun with the enemies. The ghoulish menagerie they’ve assembled showcases a wide range of creatures from Eastern and Western lore. You’d normally expect a game that opens with levels based on China and Japan to focus exclusively on jiāngshī (hopping vampires), yōkai, and the like. Yet it’s not long before Lugosi vampires and Karloff monsters join the fray, along with hockey mask slashers, a skeleton cowboy, and so many more. While there is some repetition toward the end, most of the seven long stages feature multiple unique baddies apiece. They’re invested with considerable whimsy, as well. I’m especially fond of the jiāngshī riding bikes and the miniature (kid?) vampires, who are always encountered napping and don’t wake up until you shoot them.

I also appreciate how free the game is with its power-ups. The opportunity to switch between any of the five shot types is almost always available, thanks to capsules that slowly drift across the top of the screen and cycle between the various weapon icons. These are so common as to be virtually omnipresent, so if you don’t fancy your current gun, just wait a second. A lot of the strategy involves equipping the correct weapon to deal with whatever challenge is coming up next. For example, you might want to grab the fast, low damage three-way shot to down a flock of weak flying monsters, then trade it out for the slow, devastating bomb when it’s almost time to demolish a tough boss. You don’t lose your current gun when you die, either, so that’s one less hassle to worry about. Apart from these five weapons, the only other power-up is a shield that changes the color of your not-Ghostbuster outfit and enables you to absorb a single hit without dying. Obtaining this shield requires you to collect three of the P icons that drop randomly from defeated enemies.

One final plus for me is the double jump. This isn’t a common feature in run-and-guns and it gives you a great deal of flexibility in terms of how you negotiate the terrain. The second jump is much higher than the first, allowing you to ascend almost to the very top of the screen when timed properly. Combine it with the aforementioned ability to use enemies as makeshift trampolines and the platforming can get pretty wild.

What ultimately brings Horror Story down several notches for me is the one-two punch of mediocre presentation and overly rigid gameplay. Even back in 1989, this one wasn’t much to look at. The PC Engine update follows suit, as the lone new flourish is a CD audio arrangement of the rather average soundtrack. Backgrounds in particular are drab, with an overreliance on solid colors. It’s a real shame, as all that charming sprite work I praised before deserves to be paired with equally lush surroundings. This was the same year Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (aka Castlevania: Rondo of Blood) came out, after all. Whether you think that precise comparison is fair or not, the fact remains that Horror Story’s visuals pale next to many, perhaps most, other contemporary PCE CD releases.

The bigger issue, however, is the strict routing required to clear the later levels. Since you have no control over the scrolling, you’re essentially navigating a series of choreographed gauntlets. As the difficulty ratchets up, it increasingly comes to resemble a brutal memorization-heavy spaceship shooter in the R-Type mold, as opposed to, say, Contra. You need to be positioning yourself in just the right spots at just the right times to squeak by. The unlimited continues are a godsend in this regard, but they weren’t enough to make the process of slowly grinding my way through the final stretch much fun. I suppose I prefer more room for spontaneity and player expression in my run-and-guns. The last act of Horror Story is one harsh taskmaster and fully expects you to play its way or suffer the consequences.

Horror Story for PC Engine is a fundamentally accurate rendition of a middling, largely forgotten arcade title. Still, you shouldn’t necessarily let that stop you from giving it a try. Toaplan was a talented outfit, even when working outside their wheelhouse. Horror Story controls well, incorporates some clever action set pieces (such as the balloon riding in stage two), and provides ample weapon and enemy variety. Best of all, it has the Halloween spirit in spades. Who ya gonna call? Uh . . . these guys! Yeah, I couldn’t actually find their names anywhere. Sorry.

Mugen Senshi Valis – The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier (PC Engine)

Telenet’s Valis series of action-platformers was an unknown quantity to me growing up. I read about its entries on the Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and Super Nintendo in magazines, so I knew it had something to do with a high school girl in a skimpy outfit battling monsters with a magic sword. Said publications were especially keen to hype the presentation of the TurboGrafx releases, which harnessed then-cutting edge CD-ROM technology to deliver lush soundtracks and loads of fully voiced anime style cut scenes. Until this week, though, I’d never actually sat down and acquainted myself with the swashbuckling escapades of magical girl Yuko.

Naturally, I wanted to begin with the first game, Valis: The Fantasm Soldier. The original 1986 versions were for various Japanese home computers, however, so I sought out one of the later console ports. Of those, the consensus seems to be that the 1992 PC-Engine CD-ROM remake, Mugen Senshi Valis: The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier, is far and away the best. Looking at the contenders side-by-side, it’s easy to tell why. The PCE edition is miles above the rest graphically, and those CD bells and whistles have their intended effect of punching up a stock “everyday kid is whisked away to a fantasy realm and declared the Chosen One” plot. Don’t worry if you don’t understand Japanese, by the way. It’s the sort of narrative one can follow regardless.

The first thing that struck me about Mugen Senshi Valis was that it isn’t nearly as gratuitously sleazy as I was expecting. Yuko’s bod was always front and center in the franchise’s marketing, but the exploitation factor here is limited to her metal bikini “armor” and the odd obligatory panty shot. Beyond that, there are no awkward sexual situations interrupting her seven stage mission to run to the right and cut down the minions of the dark lord Rogles. Pretty tame in a post-Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball world. Fans of full-on hentai had to wait until 2006’s Valis X for their naughty tentacle fix. No, I won’t be covering that one.

As for the gameplay, this is an overall competent side-scrolling hack-and-slasher. Yuko has no shortage of options for dealing with the bloodthirsty beasts plaguing the Dream World of Vecanti. Her standard jump is complimented by a nifty Mega Man-esque ground slide that doubles as an attack. The Valis Sword’s default swing can be supplemented by five different projectile types, each of which can be further upgraded by collecting that same power-up icon multiple times in a row. Dying will remove one level of weapon power, so use caution. Last, and certainly not least, are Yuko’s six spells. These are obtained one at a time by defeating bosses and cost variable amounts of magic points to activate. The most useful for me were Earthquake, which damages all non-flying enemies on-screen, and Tornado, which envelops Yuko in a protective force field that effectively acts as extra health.

Unfortunately, it’s the generally weak level design of Mugen Senshi Valis that holds it back from greatness. The areas Yuko battles through are universally small and simplistic. They look gorgeous and don’t lack for enemy variety, yet I can’t escape the impression that all Yuko’s cool powers feel like overkill when her quest is so short. For example, I barely felt the need to employ spells at all before the finale in Rogles’ castle. These mediocre blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em stages stand out all the more given how much effort clearly went into the pixel art, music, and cut scene production. They’re never sloppy or outright terrible, mind you. They just come across as the bare minimum necessary to ship the product. Factor in unlimited continues and the average player will be able to experience everything the game has to offer within a couple hours.

All that said, don’t mistake the above criticism or the brevity of this review with contempt on my part. Squandered potential aside, I enjoyed Mugen Senshi Valis for the slick, high energy style-over-substance exercise it is. In retrospect, it’s really nothing special and there’s no mystery why the Valis brand fell off the radar once CD-ROM drives started going mainstream. Still, if you’re in the mood to revisit a simpler time when the novelty of high-pitched schoolgirl melodrama on your humble home gaming rig felt like science fiction come to life, I can think of far less agreeable ways to do so.

Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys (PC Engine)

The big question for anyone thinking about playing Ys IV is, oddly enough, “Which one?” This isn’t just another case of the same game being ported to multiple consoles with varying results like Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, either. See, two titles came out under the banner of Ys IV in 1993, and neither of them were the product of Nihon Falcom, the legendary Japanese RPG studio behind the majority of the series. Instead, the rights to the franchise (along with some music and a broad scenario outline) were licensed to a pair of outside parties, Tonkin House and Hudson Soft, who then developed wholly different games for the Super Famicom and PC Engine, respectively. Bizarre! But wait, it gets worse. Falcom then proceeded to invalidate both earlier Ys IVs, at least for story canon purposes, when they produced their own version, Ys: Memories of Celceta, in 2012. We’re verging on Wonder Boy/Adventure Island levels of confusion with this one, folks.

I ultimately went with Hudson’s Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys for the PC Engine CD-ROM. Tonkin House’s work has a pretty poor reputation in classic gaming circles, and I don’t review PlayStation 4 or Vita stuff, which rules out Memories of Celceta. Above all, though, I was eager to highlight Dawn of Ys’ stellar English fan translation, one of the most ambitious projects of its kind ever realized. Burnt Lasagna and company not only did an admirable job with the text, they went so far as to actually re-record the sizable amount of voiced dialog present throughout! I was more entertained by this than I expected. The new performances clearly aren’t professional, mind you, but they have a lot of energy and enthusiasm invested into them. Perhaps too much, as when they err, it tends to be on the side of going bigger or broader than the scene warrants. Still, I’ll take that over the lifeless droning of Ys III’s official English dub. Good show!

As for the story itself, it’s boilerplate Ys. Indomitable swordsman Adol and his sidekick Dogi make a triumphant return to the town where the events of Ys I began two years prior. Things there remain quite peaceful and the grateful citizenry are elated to welcome back their savior. Of course, it isn’t long until Adol gets word of trouble brewing in the distant land of Celceta. As usual, a mighty evil with ties to a mysterious ancient civilization is on the rise and only he can stop it. Dungeons must be delved, demons slain, magic MacGuffins collected, and doe-eyed anime girls wooed before Adol can set sail for his next sequel.

Sure, none of this is new, but I think it’s fair to say that the essential Ys experience lies in the quest itself, not its justification. Fortunately, this quest is the best yet. The world is larger than ever, with a correspondingly greater diversity of locations and characters. Environmental design has seen a welcome increase in complexity and dynamism as well, with shifting sands in the desert, various bodies of water to swim across, deadly dungeon traps, and quirky areas like the topsy-turvy architectural headscratcher that is the Escherspace dimension. With so much extra to see and do, Ys IV was able to resist the temptation to rely on an absurdly massive final dungeon to pad out the run time, one of my biggest pet peeves with some of the earlier outings.

Dawn of Ys marks a shift away from the controversial side-view hack-and-slash action that defined Ys III and back to the overhead “bump combat” model of the first two entries. Once more, however, it manages to improve on its already superb source material. Adol can now move in eight directions as opposed to four, a huge deal considering that the movement effectively doubles as the combat. As before, he’s quick on his feet and plowing through foes has a real visceral satisfaction to it. The magic spells introduced in Ys II are also present, except this time they’re properly balanced to compliment the swordplay rather than supersede it. The ice magic, for example, immobilizes targets and renders them more susceptible to a follow-up physical attack. Boss battles are where these newly-polished mechanics truly shine. I simply can’t praise the bosses in Dawn of Ys enough. Their visual design is excellent across the board, and they all have unique patterns, often with multiple phases. Yet again, Hudson set a high water mark for the saga to date.

On top of all the meaningful gameplay enhancements, Dawn of Ys has a presentation to die for. The sprites, backgrounds, animations, and cut scene art are all a cut above previous installments. If there’s one area where it doesn’t definitively surpass its predecessors, it’s the soundtrack. Don’t get me wrong, it’s spectacular. The team of Atsushi Shirakawa, Naoki Kaneda, Takahiro Tsunashima, and Masaru Nakajima delivered top-tier compositions. Their sole flaw, such as it is, is the necessity of comparing them to the iconic Ys Book I & II score by Yuzo Koshiro and company. That said, I’m willing to award bonus points for the sheer amount of surprise sultry sax going on here. I had no idea how much I wanted a fantasy RPG that wasn’t afraid to evoke a 2:00 AM Shannon Tweed movie on Cinemax.

In short, Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys is the result of a world-class developer taking the key elements that made Book I & II a seminal masterpiece and subjecting them to thoughtful, thorough refinement. Despite its subsequent snubbing by Nihon Falcom, it represented peak Ys at the time of its release and remains a joy to play today. Thanks to the miracle of fan translation, it can now welcome the international audience it so richly deserved back in 1993. Don’t leave it waiting any longer.