Private eye dol

~ PRIVATE EYE DOL ~

NEC Home Electronics

Super CD-ROM / Arcade CD-ROM

1995

This is a very cool, very interesting game, a colorful combination of RPG and digital comic elements. It plays from an RPG-esque overhead perspective, with voice acting and well-drawn anime-style cut-ins accompanying your every action (and you can turn all of that stuff off if you'd prefer a faster-paced experience).

You're an idol who gets caught up in a series of bizarre happenings and decides to play detective and figure out what's what. Your cases take place in locales as disparate as a "haunted" mansion and a cruise ship, and you meet lots of interesting oddball characters, including a scythe-wielding lunatic and a seven-year-old munchkin.

Based on that premise as well as the game's art and screenshots, you'd surely expect eye dol to be a funny, goofy, lighthearted affair, and it does offer plenty of humor and silliness. But it has quite a few shocking (sometimes bloody) moments as well. eye dol isn't afraid to show gory murders or send a chill up your spine. One moment you're laughing and the next you're in total shock.

There are some brief mini-games to take part in, including an enjoyable puzzle-game-like sequence where you use little rafts and lily pads to cross underground streams.

For the most part, you can make progress simply by walking around, talking to people, and examining things, so the language barrier doesn't present much of a problem. Late in the game, you might experience some hard times if you don't know any Japanese. Creativity will be required in order to trigger certain events and solve some conundrums. Plant yourself on the end stool and keep quiet for a moment or the gruff fellow behind the counter won't even think about serving you. Flip the jigsaw-puzzle tiles and put them together to get a cryptic clue as to how to solve the next riddle. There are a couple of "enter the "code/codeword" roadblocks; the solutions actually aren't too difficult to figure out if you pay really close attention to the hints the game offers you, but if you happen to get stuck, here you go:

You'll most likely have a great time as you solve eye dol's unusual mind stumpers, but you might also end up feeling you deserve more for your achievements than what the post-chapter cinematics deliver. The cinemas are not terrible at all, but it's a shame that such well-designed characters aren't always drawn very well and that such appealing animation takes place within the confines of relatively small windows (a necessary tradeoff, perhaps). And we're talking denouements and prologues devoid of much action, the uneventful likes of discourse amongst cute girls in bathing suits. (Note that I have no grievances regarding the "cute girls in bathing suits" element.) Still, considering how much quality art and how many thrills are delivered during play, I have no problem forgiving eye dol for taking it a little too easy during intermissions.

I absolutely must mention that if you examine a particular bookcase late in the game, you can find a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. Private eye dol is great anyway, but the fact that it found a way to incorporate Dostoevsky's masterpiece (and this very site's namesake) into its proceedings makes it worthy of all the admiration in the world.

Military Madness

~ MILITARY MADNESS ~

Hudson Soft / NEC

HuCard

1989

I make no bones about it: I don't like strategy games. Of all the prominent old-school game genres, strategy is probably the one I like the least. But I actually think Military Madness is pretty darn cool.

It won points right off the bat with its approach: the sci-fi angle appeals to me, and for military maneuvers, I prefer armies consisting of tanks and jets to the pods of fantasy-themed bums and beasts in something like Langrisser. Sure, you need to perform the usual old-school-strategy actions of occupying advantageous terrain and seeking out favorable match-ups for your units, but there are lots and lots of potential conflict combinations here. And even with all the different types of troops and machines at your command, the game never becomes overwhelming. You get right into a groove, easily picking up on the strengths and weaknesses of each of your unit types, and roll from there. Plus, you typically don't have to spend much time fiddling around at the beginning of each stage "setting things up"; rarely must you wait long before sinking your teeth into some combat.

Most of the tunes are also appealing. They're nothing special technically; they simply sound cool.

In spite of all this, for years, my innate hatred for strategy games would eventually show itself when I'd sit down with MM. Maps that are large and time consuming caused my interest to wane. I'd feel like I was doing the same thing as before, only it was taking longer. While those who were more into the game's nuances would determinedly present arguments against such claims, I just figured I wasn't wired for these sorts of things.

Over time, I gained a greater appreciation for MM's vast lunar theaters. It's during the game's epic engagements that the most memorable military exploits take place. There were times when I thought my battered army was done for, but a ragtag tank crew would seize the day and carry me to victory. And then there were instances when I thought my victory was assured only for the computer to pull off a brilliant move and send my stunned soldiers reeling. Some battles of attrition conclude after dozens of strikes and counterblows, with but a few weary units left scouring a desolate battlefield...

...while other campaigns come down to winner-takes-all corner-of-the-map showdowns.

Regardless of the fashion in which matters are decided, PAPPASIZATION is inevitable.

Here I must mention that Lee Pappas, legendary game journalist and Turbo mega-warrior, cites MM as his favorite TG-16 title of all time. So famous are the stratagems Lee devised during his numerous runs through the game that whenever annihilation of one side occurs, the loser is said to have been PAPPASIZED.

A graphical representation of PAPPASIZATION.

As for me, I look upon my experiences with the chip quite positively, which might say a lot considering my feelings about the genre it's a member of.

Marchen Maze

~ MARCHEN MAZE ~

Namco

HuCard

1990

Marchen Maze likes to take people for suckers. It's a cute sort of thing, pitting Wonderland Alice against goofy little enemies atop bright game boards. Colorful backgrounds and sweet tunes help make it quite the charmer. Its play system is pretty interesting: Alice needn't worry about life meters and the like, as her foes attempt to knock her off by literally knocking her off the platforms. She utilizes her special charge-up baubles to blast them from the brink in turn.

As "cute" and "interesting" as this all seems, there just isn't anything exciting about a bunch of waddle-waddle sprites shoving each other around via marble shots. Well-timed leaps are often the best means of averting death anyway, as chaotic shootouts typically conclude with Alice taking a fall. The boards aren't very complex in design, and most of the power-ups you can find while exploring aren't all that cool anyway. Lazily thought-up level themes don't help matters: you've got the slippery ice stage, the conveyor-belt stage, the stage that calls for a little more platform jumping than the others, the stage with "danger spots" to be avoided at all costs, and a couple of stages where you don't do much of anything except stumble around.

Jumping from raft to raft in Level 6 could've been fun, but the sequence comes to an end so quickly and abruptly that it amounts to nothing more than a glimpse of wasted promise.

Things do improve but not until you reach the last two boards. Powerful doppelgangers pursue Alice through a legitimately large Level 8 that features a harrowing platform ride to the finish, and then comes the brilliant lava land of Level 9 with its incredible music. If only early-level foes were as aggressive as the beasts are here!

Bosses basically follow the best-is-at-the-end flow established by the stages themselves. Most of them are decent design-wise but succumb to just a few full-power shots and lack the aggressiveness to make death falls occur frequently. The very last fight is pretty exciting, however.

I really do like those last two levels. But I expected more from Marchen Maze, a game with a pretty good reputation that, while not expensive, isn't exactly a typical toss-in. Then again, maybe I'm the fool, blind to the appeal of two-thirds of the game's allegedly wonderful stages.

Cobra

~ COBRA ~

Hudson Soft

CD-ROM

1989

Even if you play its incredibly wacky sequel first (as I did), Cobra can still be counted on to provide a digital-comic ride you'll find both wild and entertaining. Space pirate Cobra, he of the PSYCHO GUN left arm, gets himself into all sorts of ridiculous situations, many of which involve strange alien beasts or fearsome female nutjobs.

The game's cast is made up of a vast variety of misfits and wackos, among whom are funny little robots and insane fire femmes.

As you might imagine, this is all very amusing in a ludicrous sort of way, but there's always a dark side to Cobra tales, and this opening episode is bleaker and grittier than its followup. Its graphics don't quite measure up to C2's, and I suppose that some of the alluded-to "grit" can be attributed to visual inferiority, but there's more to it than that. Cobra II has plenty of shocking, horrifying scenes, but moments of triumph and tragedy are arrived at quickly, with plenty of hilarious bits spread throughout the drama. Dread tends to linger in this chapter, particularly towards the end, when Cobra is forced to endure a brutal assault on his psyche.

I'm sure most stout Duomazov readers are up to the task of traversing the gloom, but I fear that the threat of a language barrier will repel some otherwise-willing warriors. Well, this isn't a very difficult comic to get through, save for one spot where you have to enter a code... but hey, I'll provide you with said code right here!

There's no reason to worry now, so don't feel you need to avoid this very good game if you can't read Japanese. On the other hand, if you're generally averse to digital comics, you might want to stay away; as cool as Cobra is, it isn't a must-have--which its sequel most certainly is. Again, Cobra II is superior visually, but it also feels more advanced and, perhaps most importantly, contains so many more memorable moments. Plain and simple, a lot more happens in the faster-paced C2. But if you're up for a good comic, or if you play through the second part and yearn for additional Cobra hijinks, don't hesitate to pick this disc up.

Cobra II

~ COBRA II ~

Hudson Soft

CD-ROM

1991

I hadn't yet played the first Cobra when I decided to give its sequel a try, but my inexperience with the series to that point really didn't matter, as C2's cheesy, entertaining, overly dramatic introductory text (presented in English) brought me right up to speed. Cobra is a goofy (but BADASS) space pirate who can detach his left arm to reveal a mighty secret weapon, the PSYCHO GUN.

Around the universe he travels, meeting up with bizarre alien beings and scantily clad women.

You never know what's coming next in this wacky digital comic, character- or plot-wise, and that's probably the most appealing thing about it. You'll be exploring a desolate world that seems to be all in ruin when you'll suddenly encounter a rock band jamming out with an armored knight on electric guitar.

You'll do battle with "round wolves"; "death balls"; android executioners; and a big, bald wrestling dude.

The proceedings feature a fair amount of violence and some shockingly bloody moments (characters taking laser blasts to the face and the like)...

...but there isn't much sexual stuff. In fact, the one bit of romance is rather innocent and plays out quite nicely!

You'll have a slightly easier time getting through the game if you can read at least a little Japanese, as many of the clues telling you where to go or whom to talk to next are presented in katakana. You'll have to spend some time treading back and forth between locations and playing with menu commands (the typical digital comic routines), but there are enough cool surprises to keep you moving through the dull stuff. One puzzle that'll require you to press six lenses of various colors in a certain order might prove extremely problematic. You can spend a lot of time buttoning through all the permutations...

...or, if that idea doesn't appeal to you for some reason, you can just immediately enter the correct order of red, green, blue, yellow, white, purple.

While Cobra II generally doesn't offer much more interactivity than your typical comic, it does feature some distinct sequences that serve to get players more involved in the action. For instance, when one particularly tough baddie is chasing after you, you'll have to blast open the door to a morgue, dash upstairs, hide in an empty coffin, and then judge the sound of the villain's footsteps (they get louder and softer as he plods about the room) to know exactly when it'll be all right for you to pop out, take him by surprise, and annihilate him.

It's possible to screw up and die in some places, but you can save your game whenever you want to, and if you get killed, you'll be sent back just a short way (ensuring that you won't end up saving yourself into a bad position).

Upbeat tunes really get me into certain action-packed scenes, but there are a few annoying sound effects that represent alarms and radar blips. The graphics are pretty good on the whole; the characters look extremely goofy at times, but that just adds to the awesome overall cheesiness.

Cobra II is a heck of a lot of fun--so much fun, in fact, that it ranks as my favorite digital comic.