City Hunter

~ CITY HUNTER ~

Sunsoft

HuCard

1990

City Hunter is an enjoyable action/exploration game, but it certainly isn't perfect. It's way too short at a mere four levels, and it charges you with what are essentially the same tasks in every mission (find a key and an ID card). It ends very abruptly (sans even a true final boss) and does little to challenge you as you endeavor to reach the disappointing "climax." The enemy cast lacks variety, the environments are simple and dull in appearance, and the animation is quite poor.

But it's still fun to explore the many chambers and corridors within each stage, as you sometimes end up in interesting situations...

...which occasionally involve SEXY GALs (as they're dubbed by the end credits).

The music is good, as one would expect from a Sunsoft PCE title. You don't get many weapons to play with, but the guns that are present serve just fine for the short adventure, and you do have to do a fair amount of strategic switching up. And while they are somewhat small and don't look all that great here, minotaurs and saber-toothed tigers and the like make for cool creatures to fight.

Some sellers try to make good money off City Hunter, but it's really not hard to acquire for just a few bucks. At a low cost, it's worth picking up. And while there are some mid-stage conversations to click through, you certainly don't need to know Japanese in order to complete and enjoy the game.

La Valeur

~ LA VALEUR ~

Kogado

CD-ROM

1991

La Valeur is quite primitive. It's one of those wrinkly old-school RPGs that make you use a menu command just to talk to people, and its visuals are, to be generous, antiquated.

But after a tedious first couple of hours (your character starts off very weak), it actually becomes a fairly fast-paced and enjoyable game. There are no load times for battles, and you'll be able to take out entire parties of monsters with single swipes if you make sure to level up and buy new equipment regularly.

The title takes after Ys, which one can tell from certain scenes in the opening and closing sequences, the in-game look of the main character, and the poor man's Dalles who transforms the hero into a monster.

Kogado tried to do some innovative things with LV's magic and combat systems (item scavenger hunts must be completed to earn spells, and three different brands of weapons must be acquired and made use of regularly). As a result, it can be tough to figure out how the systems work. Also, some of the puzzles will be really hard to solve if you're not proficient in Japanese; I was very lucky to get by the most troublesome spots. Of course, the walkthrough I wrote will ensure that you won't need to rely on luck if you play the game.

La Valeur is not great, but it's not Astralius either. There are lots of other cheap PCE RPGs you should play before this one, but if you experience stuff like Neo Metal Fantasy and the Tengai Makyou games and you still want more, this is a decent, inexpensive option.

Bakuretsu Hunter Duo Comic

~ BAKURETSU HUNTER ~

Media Works / Hudson Soft / Dengeki

Super CD-ROM

1994

Bakuretsu Hunter essentially places a comic book on your television screen and takes you through its story in slideshow fashion. Unlike most PCE games considered "comics," BH doesn't have the "player" actually participate in the goings-on. There are plenty of sound effects and lots of voice, and the images slide and swirl around; but there's nothing to do except adjust the coloration of the panels and sit back and look at one pencil sketch after another.

Well, it sure is different for a PCE title; and for all I know, it might be a pretty damn sweet show for fans of the BH manga who really know their Japanese. In fact, sitting through the story doesn't have to be a throwaway experience for the Hunter-ignorant, as doing a bit of research beforehand will put players in position to understand (to some extent) what happens in the game. Still, I can't help but wish that the "interesting" approach were eschewed in favor of a traditional digital-comic setup. The story seems to achieve moderate success with both its action and its comedy, and the character designs aren't terrible. It's just hard to get much enjoyment out of the product with the format that's in place.

Of course, most folks who acquire the disc will do so because it was originally part of a novel "CD plus book" package and won't give a damn about the BH plot or cast anyway. But whether you're a Bakuretsu aficionado or not, you really should make sure the book is part of the deal if you go ahead and buy the disc, as it contains comic strips, character profiles, removable goodies, and other such things, making it pretty neat to flip through once or twice. Of course, as is the case with the "game" itself, the book won't be of much practical use to those who aren't already into BH and can't read Japanese. It's a cool (and fairly hard-to-find) collectible, plain and simple; and unlike some similar items, it isn't very expensive.

Monster Maker

~ MONSTER MAKER ~

NEC Avenue / U-Plan / Show Kikaku

Super CD-ROM

1994

I initially liked this traditional-style RPG thanks to its fine soundtrack and visuals. It's not among the system's elite or anything in those respects, but it offers a lot of quality red book material, and its battles feature nice backgrounds and enemy animations.

Plus, its interesting character art makes the game stand out from its peers. The funny-looking folk it features are quite appealing.

Unfortunately, MM is a real slogger, and my patience with it eventually wore thin. By the time I played it, I'd already been spoiled by the elaborate dungeon designs and fast gameplay in titles like Neo Metal Fantasy and Tenshi no Uta. Monster Maker's battles unfold very slowly, and its dungeon designs are uninspired. Pits and "trick walls" are neat ideas for a labyrinth or two, but they get old. The numerous castle mazes are the worst, as they're very similar to one another in appearance and even in layout.

The game is pretty standard RPG stuff aside from a disappointing monster charming/combining side element. The Charm spell seems to fail quite often, and I've never actually needed to summon monsters into battle anyway.

And there are other little things that bug me. Battles sometimes experience hiccups when loading or freeze up altogether mid-fight. The townspeople have an annoying tendency to block the heroine's way and stand as immobile obstructions for what seems like forever. And speeding through dull "talking scenes" with the I button is always a risk, as it often causes the game to freeze.

And that's just the beginning of MM's issues. It also has a severe glitch that people really need to be aware of before they get started with the game. Many valiant warriors have played far into it only to get stuck in a tower room with two stairways, both of which essentially lead to dead ends (they both lead to the same next room, but the walls of the room "magically" reconfigure themselves so that you can't proceed regardless of which stairway you take).

This is the "trick" of the matter: when you enter the tower in question for the first time, you must not leave it until you reach that spot. This can be hard and annoying, as the tower is quite large and you have to find a "hidden" stairway in order to make it to the tricky spot in question. When you reach the room with the two stairways, take the left one up. You'll be at a dead end, but this time, your characters will have a conversation. Take a few steps forward and walk behind a wall. More text will come up, and then the stairway that leads to the next part of the tower will be revealed.

If you enter and then leave the tower without making it to that room first, your characters will never have that conversation, and you will be stuck at that spot FOREVER. Yep, all those hours it took to get that far will have been wasted. If you manage to evade the adventure-ending glitch, you'll reach a conclusion that isn't very satisfying, as it's a cliffhanger that was never resolved because the sequel (which was in the works) never saw the light of day. Just as I was thinking, "Hey, this cinema isn't so bad," the proceedings were interrupted by this:

This cliffhanger crap might've been acceptable if the game weren't such a pain in the ass to get through due to the glitches and if, you know, the sequel had actually come out. There isn't even what I would consider a proper final boss, as the last beast is a total wimp. Actually, pretty much all of the bosses are wimpy. If you're at a high enough level, you can use the Freeze spell over and over again to render them helpless.

Extremely nice combat graphics don't make up for the slowness of the battle system and the general bugginess of the product. Monster Maker isn't bad, but whether or not playing through it is worth the risks and trouble is debatable.