Maison Ikkoku

~ MAISON IKKOKU ~

Micro Cabin

HuCard

1989

You'd expect a HuCard digital comic to seem a bit lacking presentation-wise when compared with its CD-ROM peers, and indeed, Maison Ikkoku is as primitive a member of the genre as you'll find on the PCE, at least where audio and visuals are concerned. There's nothing rudimentary about what it requires players to do, though; this is no "click away 'til the end" sort of affair. While the item-finding and puzzle-solving requisites shouldn't prove too taxing for most, interaction with other characters is where matters get dicey and demand delicacy, and prudent management of the protagonist's limited finances is essential.

Ironically, while Maison certainly gives you enough things to worry about at any given moment, and its seemingly wide-open "take a look around and see what you can make of things" realm presents little in the way of guidance, there really isn't all that much that you can do in it. You spend most of your time loitering in the hallways of a simply structured house, where ill-tempered, odd-looking hooligans hound you like Furies until you shoo them away via ramen- or liquor-based bribery. The peace you attain is always only momentary, and though you can periodically escape from the madhouse and set off on brief excursions, shopping at the mini-mart or tutoring a dimwit doesn't make for exciting times.

Consequences for poor decisions can be severe; there are plenty of ways for your efforts to go disastrously awry and land you in unenviable predicaments.

There's no way you'll avoid an unfortunate fate if you can't read Japanese; there's just too much to the menu and gameplay systems to cheese your way to achieving the end goal (which is merely to glimpse at a hidden photo that, believe me, you can do without seeing anyway). An English patch for the game is available, but regardless of how much you'll be able to understand of what's going on, it's unlikely that you'll find Maison Ikkoku particularly interesting or entertaining. If, for some reason, you don't have access to the CD library but yearn to try a digital comic, I recommend the very-cool Chikudenya Toubee over this.

Cyber Cross

~ CYBER CROSS ~

Face

HuCard

1989

Cyber Cross has no business being a PC Engine game. In fact, no halfway-decent NES title would ever want to be associated with it. It's primitive, goofy, repetitive, and uninteresting.

The mission it has you undertake comes off as a pointless endeavor right from the start. You play a doofus who meanders along and drops the same few boring enemies over and over to the beat of a single not-very-appealing melody. You can utilize an energy blade, a gun, or a boomerang and perform "special" charge attacks to bring down your foes. That may seem like a lot of options to have on offense, but there isn't really any strategy involved--the sword and the gun work well in just about every situation you can find yourself in. The controls are quite stiff, but this isn't much of an issue, as health restorers and power-ups are plentiful, and the nitwitted villains are clumsy combatants. Even the bosses are simpletons.

The stages aren't particularly nice looking, and as you stutter-step your way through them (enduring irritating sound effects all the while), you'll discover that they're straightforward, dull, and far too large for the little that they offer. Things get "interesting" later on when leaps/falls into pits either put you in prime position to reach your destination or land you right back at the beginning of the board.

Despite its inadequacy in so many areas, Cyber Cross actually is playable. But if I were to force myself to endure something repetitive, straightforward, and boring, I'd go with Vigilante instead. Yes, I prefer Vigilante. Chew on that for a while.

Pop'n Magic

~ POP'N MAGIC ~

Riot / Telenet

Super CD-ROM

1992

While I don't have any particular bone to pick with Bubble Bobble or its many descendants, I don't have the same fondness for the line as a lot of other players do either. "Even" Parasol Stars is only fairly fun in my view. So I was quite surprised at just how much I ended up enjoying Pop'n Magic, which I'd pegged as "just another" BB aper.

Truthfully, PnM's gameplay isn't a mega-leap beyond what most of its peers offer up. You dash and hop around within the confines of box-shaped stages and use your magic wand to transform beasts into bubbles, which can be heaved about to obliterate other bubbles and create a fruit-strewn-everywhere brand of chaos. This is all fairly routine stuff in concept, but PnM is extremely impressive presentation-wise. Its colorful backgrounds contain so much more detail than the flat, simple canvases utilized by the likes of Parasol Stars and Rainbow Islands, and there's usually a heck of a lot going on in those backgrounds. These aren't still seas or static forests. From falling leaves to moving gears, there's always some sort of activity occurring in the distance as you take care of business in the foreground.

PnM's soundtrack is extremely lively, contributing to the hectically busy feel of the adventure, and it delivers a particularly nice-to-listen-to tune during the final set of stages. You won't get to hear that track unless you put in some practice, as this quest is no breezy jaunt. The bosses can be quite tough, as they frequently make use of hard-to-dodge missile attacks before moving in for physical assaults.

Beat those bums and you'll get to watch some nice cinemas, which are highlighted by cute voice work and amusing hijinks, with somber bits and touching moments occasionally finding their ways into the mix.

Riot was a maddeningly inconsistent development group, but they didn't slack on even a single aspect of this production. PnM is often available at fairly low prices these days; it typically costs less than Parasol Stars, which it's superior to in every way.

Magical Dinosaur Tour

~ MAGICAL DINOSAUR TOUR ~

Victor Musical Industries / Yazawa Science Office / Fun Project / NEC

CD-ROM

1990

Few things are quite as fascinating to four-year-old dudes as prehistoric animals, and it's pretty easy to understand why. We're talking about the inspiration for countless toys and pop-up-book tales: remarkable, gigantic beasts, many of which flaunted awesome natural weaponry and armor. We read of the interesting methods they used to survive, we observed their enormity firsthand via skeletal recreations, and we envisioned the thunderous battles that took place between prodigious rivals-to-the-death (long before Optimus Prime vs. Megatron, there was Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. Triceratops!). Of course, the fact that these great entities actually roamed the Earth at one time made them all the cooler. There's even an element of mystery involved in their history, as no one has ever been able to suss out the true reason for their demise.

Of course, there comes a point when we dudes move on to robots or whatever and then to girls... and yeah, we pretty much stick with girls from there on out. But something about dinosaurs always remains alluring to us. Heck, I still get psyched up whenever I encounter a good dino-boss in a video game.

But then, fighting with dinosaurs is different from sitting around and learning about them. Victor Musical Industries hoped to appeal to the four-year-old dude in all of us with Magical Dinosaur Tour, which isn't so much a game as it is a made-for-television encyclopedia.

And it's a deep one at that. We get much more than a mere handful of entries and images here; this Tour provides lots and lots of information on dozens of types of dinos. And rather than sticking with basic statistical talk, the writers went ahead and included unexpected bits that reveal errors scientists had made concerning certain discoveries or explore mysteries that remain unsolved regarding incomplete fossil structures. Many entries even include an illustration of a human alongside the dino drawing for the sake of size comparison.

And the Tour isn't all about encyclopedic entries. You can read up on dinosaur "record holders" (for size and speed and whatnot) and peruse topical passages loaded with interesting trivia.

There's even a brief cinematic sequence that explores the possible reasons that the creatures died off. You've likely come across these theories before (if you've done any reading on dinosaurs at all), but the animated slide show is an enjoyable little presentation nonetheless.

I'd known about most of these elements and options before I actually loaded up Dino Tour to experience it for myself, and while they all sounded nice, I was hoping for more: I wanted modes where the creatures were displayed in motion. Without some form of animation incorporated into the proceedings, we'd might as well read a book or visit a museum instead of messing around with this "game." Thankfully, animated sketches are indeed provided, often augmented by roars and howls emitted by the in-motion beasts, and some of the situations that are played out are extremely interesting. A few are comedic, focusing on, for instance, the misadventures of a blundering giant attempting in vain to snatch up a little meal, but many are gory affairs depicting the realities of the dinos' death-awaits-around-every-corner lives.

You can even watch a battle between a hefty Apatosaurus and a fierce Allosaurus play out in two ways: one shows how the plant eater could come out on top, while the other results in a bloody victory for the predator (...and his late-on-the-scene ally. Cheaters!).

Sadly, neither the art nor the animation during these sequences is exemplary. The narration that accompanies the skits is strangely lifeless, with the narrators babbling in monotone and frequently pausing for no apparent reason (but to move on to a new script card, perhaps?). Also, the loading times can become annoying, as can the less-than-stellar chip tunes.

Magical Dinosaur Tour is nice for what it is. While it does have a sense of humor, it doesn't dabble in mini-games and is fairly low on interaction in general. Buy it and you'll get a veritable encyclopedia--an informative but not perfectly crafted one.

Jigoku Meguri (Bonze Adventure)

~ JIGOKU MEGURI ~

Taito

HuCard

1990

Being that Jigoku Meguri is an old Taito platformer, the fact that its protagonist uses "bubbles" to demolish his foes should come as no surprise to anyone (though the game's designers would have us view these bubbles as "pearls"). And it's hardly shocking that most of Jigoku's stages present players with multiple paths to take, though choices are typically of the basic "high road or low road" variety. But as JM is a tour of the underworld, it's a lot darker than fellow Taito-produced action titles Mizubaku Daibouken and The New Zealand Story. It can't seem to detach itself from its cartoony kinsfolk entirely, however, delivering amusing character animations along with enemy designs that would've worked in the aforementioned "bright and colorful" games--if said games were to have featured "haunted house" stages. The soundtrack goes the lugubrious route, but some of its somber melodies remind me of Takeda Shingen's charming low-key numbers.

The juxtaposition of cartoony elements and a dark-in-theme premise actually doesn't lead to anything unusual as far as level concepts go. You have to deal with typical action-platformer hazards, such as crumbling bridges and slippery ice. You do get to board a little rowboat and paddle your way through a cavern, but the strip doesn't play out much differently from the run-and-jump-based others.

Jigoku is at its best when it forces players to use their heads in order to solve tricky leaping sequences, figure out how to reach item-stocked niches, and identify the correct routes to take through complex mazelike areas. It isn't always as ambitious as one would like it to be, and even its toughest obstacle-laden strips aren't very challenging; but the action it delivers is satisfactory even during straightforward stretches, and almost every aspect of the affair is executed in acceptable fashion, making the experience a consistently enjoyable one. Perhaps the only real downer is that it features few enemies who could even loosely be considered "bosses," and unlike Mizubaku Daibouken's heavyweights, these borderliners aren't particularly shrewd in battle.

However, the final fight does deviate from the style of combat featured to that point in an interesting way.

Babel

~ BABEL ~

Laser Soft / Telenet

Super CD-ROM

1992

Poor, ill-famed Babel is a traditional-style RPG best known for having stupidly enormous towns. They're certainly larger than those you'll find in most of the game's contemporaries, but there's only one of truly abominable size. It's a ridiculous continent-sized metropolis split up into five sections, each of which consists of about a billion buildings, and said buildings aren't arranged in neat little rows. Heck, even the interiors of many of the structures are labyrinthine. This is a village so massive that the disc comes packaged with a map of it. And you'll have to spend a lot of time wandering its streets early in the game, looking for just the right person to talk to before you can get on with things.

For a while, there seemed to be no end in sight to the roving, but that isn't the only reason I was unhappy with how the adventure was going in its early stages. Some of the music is fairly good, but a lot of it really isn't. Some of the character designs are very cool, but many of them are not. Some of the towns look pretty decent, but the environments are dull for the most part. And while the cinemas aren't terrible, a lot of them are of the pint-sized Valis II variety.

That's mostly superficial stuff, though; the battles are a more serious matter, and a number of problems plague them initially. Enemy designs are overutilized and mostly uninteresting. Your characters' attack animations have to be loaded up during each fight, which causes the music to stop playing. And the encounter rate is way too high. It's relatively easy to flee from foes in most areas of the game, but the parts that make you buckle down and fight can be really annoying, particularly early on.

But "early on" doesn't last forever, and Babel gets better the further you get in it. Once you've done what you have to do in that big, silly town, the quest becomes much more focused. And you never have to dilly-dally around earning experience points or money. In fact, the game shuns XP entirely and strengthens your characters by itself at certain points, and you acquire plenty of items that you can sell off for good cash. After getting off to a rough start, everything proceeds quickly and smoothly. And aside from some early extended periods of seemingly aimless wandering, there were no points at which I found myself stuck. There are no stupid puzzles or secret warp spots to worry about. It's just mission after mission.

Still, Babel isn't a good game for novices, who'll probably never overcome the early big-town trial. RPG heavyweights, on the other hand, should be able to get through it without much grief (as long as they have this excellent guide on hand, that is). If you plan to acquire the disc, I highly recommend that you obtain a copy that comes with the map sheet, which features not only a sketch of the infamous town but also one of the entire overworld.

I like Babel's main characters, and I like how the quest keeps moving along. I also like many of the significant story scenes. There's some good, violent, exciting material here: bad guys take beam shots to the head, giant robots massacre villages, and innocent innkeepers get their brains blown out.

There are some awkward stretches, though. The game is split up into six chapters, and the fourth features a shitload of text with no actual gameplay. I felt like I was experiencing the second disc of Xenogears all over again. Also, the ending is a goofy cop-out.

But in between the slow start and the wretched conclusion, there's some good fun to be had.