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~ IMAGE FIGHT II ~
Irem
Super CD-ROM
1992
The first Image Fight is no pushover, but I don't think it's nearly as demanding and punishing as many tout it to be. Its sequel, on the other hand, is nightmarishly hard and really seems to revel in the dismembering of players. If you're okay with risking dismemberment, go ahead and take up its challenge--and prepare yourself for a ten-level-long journey that'll demand constant attentiveness and be nothing if not hellish for long stretches at a time. You'll frequently find yourself navigating uncomfortably tight spaces as powerful enemies soar onto the field from the front, side, and rear (and even emerge from the backdrop at particular points). These steel-ship berserkers typically dart about erratically and launch hard-to-evade projectile attacks.
But they do play fair when it comes right down to it. IF2 is tough, but it's seldom cheap, and it actually grants players what amounts to a fairly stacked hand. Back to tag along with you are the series's trademark option pods (blues shoot straight ahead while reds fire in the direction opposite the one you're moving in). You can adjust your craft's speed at any time and acquire a wide variety of highly destructive weapons as you blast apart the enemy legion. And if you experiment with those weapons a bit and give matters some thought, you just might figure out ways to take out the large, formidable bosses with ease.
But even if you're a skilled pilot and a master strategist, you'll have to take a few knocks and endure some frustration as you attempt to make headway in this realm where shooter fans die. You'll also have to remember that you can't afford to let up once you do get on a roll. Like its predecessor, IF2 sends players who fail to destroy a significant portion of the enemy's frontline forces to an extremely difficult "penalty area." But while achieving the kill percentage required to avoid penalization is practically a given in the first game, it takes quite a bit of hard work and smooth flying here.
You won't get much incentive cinematically to continue getting pummeled. IF2's interludes primarily consist of terribly drawn characters chatting within the confines of tiny windows.
The in-game graphics get the job done, however. The rings of Saturn and wavy gas storms make for extremely appealing backdrops. The soundtrack is also of fairly high quality, boasting plenty of tense numbers that lend to the game's sinister air. Image Fight 2 knows that it's brutal, which is why players feel so good once they've put it in its place.
But most people won't get to experience that feeling. Frankly, I don't think there's much fun to be had here for "casual" players, as the game will pound on them mercilessly. And this is no cheapie, so those who whimsically decide to "give it a shot" will have to part with a pretty significant sum of cash to take their thumps. But if you're good--and I mean if you're sure you're good--and you're willing to put in plenty of practice and weather some frustrating times, then go ahead and try to make your way through IF2. The process won't always be enjoyable, but it can prove very rewarding.
~ ALSHARK ~
Right Stuff / Victor Entertainment
Super CD-ROM
1994
Alshark is quite reminiscent of Fang of Alnam, another traditional-style RPG released by Right Stuff. Both games feature excellent battle systems, but they share the misfortune of being plagued by abysmal visuals, and neither lives up to its vast potential.
As appallingly primitive as Alshark's field graphics are, they're hardly a major concern, as the strikingly speedy characters need little time to scurry from one location to the next. Interruptions occur in the forms of overhead-view combat scenes that play out in entertaining fashion. Your party consists of heroes and heroines who wield lightsabers and mow down their foes with missiles and machine-gun fire.
Not nearly as engaging are the spacecraft duels that take place as your fellowship travels amongst the stars. You can allow the game to carry out each visually unimpressive orbital scrum in a predetermined manner, or you can take matters into your own hands and partake in the rudimentary VCS-shooter-like action.
Complete an important mission on a given planet and chances are you'll get to view a lengthy cinema, but these occasions are seldom worth getting excited about, as the quite-cool main characters usually aren't displayed in the most flattering of fashions.
Almost every aspect of this fairly ambitious effort ends up dragged down to some degree by the poor visual work. Even the battle scenes, which remain entertaining for the duration of the quest, could've benefited from superior sprite design. The few bosses that appear are tiny and nondescript.
The soundtrack, which travels a back-and-forth line between goofy and generic, is of little help, but superficial elements are hardly the most significant concern here. A far more serious issue is the immense slowdown that frequently occurs as your characters are strolling about towns (of all places). With some villages being quite expansive and requiring plenty of mundane, here-and-there fetching and conversing, the sludgy hiking constitutes an absolutely unforgivable flaw.
The game does get its act together to some extent during its latter half, as it turns its focus to dungeon-depths combat and away from in-town antics. The labyrinths themselves are never particularly innovative in design, but there are some dramatic plot points to be experienced within them.
It all culminates with a surprisingly fantastic ending, but in typical Right Stuff fashion, the dreadful accompanies the awesome--the dreadful in this case being an atrocious end-credits tune.
~ DE JA ~
NEC Interchannel / Elf
Super CD-ROM
1996
Positive initial impressions led me to believe that De Ja had the makings of an elite digital comic. The opening cinema and first few moments of play acquainted me with an Indiana Jones-like protagonist and seemed to promise high adventure of the treasure-hunting, monster-battling sort, with Elf's typically charming anime femmes tossed in for good measure.
But after spending a great deal of time on a single dull scene with no apparent method of tale advancement in sight, I realized what De Ja is truly all about. Ridiculously lengthy back-and-forth discussions and wordy internal monologues temper high hopes for fast-paced plot progression. Even "climactic" encounters with evildoers are drained of tension as the garrulous characters prattle on and on and on. A solid soundtrack ends up wasted on a comic that clocks in as an epic for all the wrong reasons. Being a somewhat-rare late release, the debacle commands a relatively hefty sum on auction sites, and thus should be dismissed out of hand even by fans of the genre.
The opening moments are pretty misleading.
Forget about acquiring wealth and dueling with villains; your character spends most of his time contemplating matters or engaging in terribly dull discussions.
Once he's done with any given chain of seemingly interminable chats, he's able to undertake heroic endeavors like panty pirating.
There's no shortage of fruitcakes to come across while you're out and about.
After you've put in a significant amount of time wandering around town and harassing the local women, you'll finally get to do some adventuring--which will mainly consist of hopping aboard trains and planes to reach destinations where not much of anything is going on.
A typical late-game maze sequence is dressed up as a walk through the woods.
As for good parts, there's a fairly amusing (and all-too-brief) fight scene that sees the main lout finally get what's coming to him.
And, well, there's this, too.
Persist beyond those unforgettable episodes and you'll encounter some "puzzles" that may prove troublesome. Here's the correct solution to one of them, though it won't get you anywhere until the protagonist himself realizes what needs to be done.
For the doorknob puzzle, enter 6 and 9 (of course).
The game's "final challenge" calls for you to spread eight "visits" amongst eight different girls. If you go about things correctly, you will have encountered one of the ladies more than once, leaving another unseen.
The ending is actually pretty nice but stands as insufficient reason to endure the monotony that precedes it.
~ SUSA-NO-OH DENSETSU ~
Hudson Soft / Kadokawa shoten / Dynamic
HuCard
1989
Susa-no-Oh Densetsu doesn't do things in typical HuCard-RPG fashion, a fact it makes clear by kicking off with a very violent, very bizarre succession of images.
However, the promise of the opening sequence might be forgotten as soon as one begins play and lays eyes on the overworld, where everything seems to assume a microscopic stature. But take a few steps and watch as monster sprites begin peeking out from the seas and forests. Battles here aren't random; instead, they commence when one of those sprites manages to collide with your avatar. Pull off a few nifty maneuvers to avoid immediate contact and you may end up making a mad dash across the field with a gaggle of pursuers hot on your trail.
You'll be caught eventually, but don't let it get you down, as the fights are the best part of the affair. Each rumble sees a variety of creatures--some very large, some very odd--surround your warrior, who brandishes weapons as disparate as axes and rocket launchers. Indeed, you'll need to make good strategic use of both your long- and short-range weaponry, not to mention your mystical powers, to survive the game's monster-laden mazes.
Those mazes don't even bother to switch out of the up-close perspective utilized for scrums, so mid-labyrinth combat ensues the very instant you happen upon an adversary.
Backing the fighting and reconnoitering is a fantastic score that composer Takahito Abe himself cites as his best work.
But while the music is unquestionably wonderful, and the affair on the whole is compelling, Susa-no-Oh struggles for a good long while to make its mark. It treads along in "solid if unmemorable" territory as its plot, while not quite a cookie-cutter tale, lacks the sort of captivating moments that would help elevate the production to the tier where the greatest RPGs reside. Indeed, the game just seems to embarrass itself when it strives to create drama by presenting bosses and dungeon entrances in "cinematic" fashion.
Only when Susa-no-Oh forsakes its attempts at fanciness and focuses on doing what it does best--presenting fun, rewarding combat scenes--does it finally manage to assert itself as a title worth remembering. The all-out brawls that take place towards the end of the adventure are sure to leave lasting impressions on those who survive them.
Unfortunately, it's not a given that everyone who plays the game will get to experience those late-game showdowns. Susa-no-Oh is not a good first choice for people who would like to delve into the PCE-RPG library but are unable to read Japanese. Lots of helpful information can be garnered here, but some essential, well-concealed items will remain undiscovered unless the player has luck on his side.
Regardless, being that the card can be had for under five bucks, purchasing it is hardly a massive gamble. The excellent music and enjoyable battles make it quite likely that most players who make headway in it will ultimately consider it a winner.
~ 21 EMON ~
NEC Home Electronics
HuCard
1994
Roll the dice, move around the board, and make some good cash--those are the tasks you're charged with in NEC's 21 Emon, which is something of a light, cartoonish rendition of Monopoly. Constructing (and subsequently upgrading) hotels is the main method by which you can amass your fortune.
Emon mandates that there be four participants in the goings-on, but all four can be of the actual-human sort if you have pals who for some reason are interested in playing such a game. They'll likely be repelled immediately by the assortment of "merry" tunes on offer, but perhaps you'll be able to lure them back with the prospect of selecting from three different playfields, one of which is stationed in the depths of outer space.
Clearly, the basic premise, unabideable audio, and limited options will "win" the chip nothing but detractors. Also of little allure are the simplistic mini-games that players must occasionally partake in, among which are whack-a-mole and a tile-flipping memory test.
Tossing additional wrenches into the mix are the here-and-there "pick-a-card" spots, which enable contestants to earn a fast buck or put a quick sledgehammer to their opponents' work.
As players are asked to do very little in it, the game is quite accessible even to those who can't read a bit of Japanese (though it's doubtful that anyone would actually want access to this rubbish). Some menu scouring will unearth "deeper" functions such as property auctioning, but taking advantage of such "features" is hardly essential to succeeding.
Ultimately, its general simplicity makes the game a repetitive bore, and while its graphics are quite nice and colorful, there is nothing particularly cute or crazy to happen upon, which is a bit surprising for a product with an unquestionably cartoony base. In fact, the Super Momotarou Dentetsu games, perennially the butts of jokes along the lines of "I got this chip for free but I was the one who got ripped off," are much deeper and far more endearing than this title. And considering that Emon often goes for over eighty dollars in complete form, I suffer no qualms in suggesting that people avoid it entirely.
