The Miku Hatsune PSP game is out

Swiped from YCS

I’m sorry, GameSpot forum user “KojiSakujin”!

[I ♥ The PC Engine] Makyou Densetsu

Makyō Densetsu
(魔境伝説)
(Legendary Axe)

Maker: Victor Musical Industries
Release Date: 9/23/88
Price: 5200 yen
Media: HuCard (2 Mbit)
Genre: Action
PC Engine FAN Score: 22.28 / 30.00
Kōgien: “The first PC Engine game released by Victor Musical Industries. Among the early games in the PCE lineup, this one is overall very well made and also boasts decent controls. The animation and tricks you face in each stage are innovative.”

Another early classic, and (as I griped about earlier) one that NEC-HE USA should have put in the forefront of the TG16′s launch campaign over something like Keith Courage in Alpha Zones.

It’s also the first PCE title published by Victor for the PCE; they were at their most prolific from 1986 to 1996 before hitting it big with the Harvest Moon series. Victor’s game-publishing arm was spun off in 2003 and reworked into what is today Marvelous Entertainment.

Some Japanese sources claim that Atlus developed this game for Victor, but those duties were actually handled by Aicom, a freelance contractor that was bought by Sammy in 1990. The designer, Tokuhiro Takemori, is also credited in The Astyanax, a Jaleco arcade/NES game that came out a year after this. Takemori really liked side-scrolling games starring muscular cavemen with magical, rechargeable tomahawks.

Makyō Densetsu, like a lot of other action games from around this era, is all about memorization and execution. You need to learn the pattern for dealing with every type of enemy you run into, and you need the reflexes (and mental stamina) to execute that pattern perfectly every time. A man’s game, in other words, befitting the PCE’s core image. This is true from Zone 1 right on through to the end. To beat bears, hit one, jump and hit again, jump and hit again, etc. To beat title-screen guy, wait until his fireballs boomerang back and hit him with three full-powered swipes. To beat the screen-sized end boss, put the turbo switch as high as it can go and bash away at those lean, mean ankles. And so on. Learn all that and take care not to get knocked off platforms to your death, and you’re gold.

The game is not original gameplay-wise…or, for that matter, particularly great design-wise. It’s solid, but you can tell Aicom was pinched by the two-megabit boundaries. It comes out in the way boss characters routinely become minion-level bad guys in subsequent stages, as well as the horrifying Zone 5, a labyrinth of 23 identical-looking sublevels that loop repeatedly if you take a wrong turn. There’s also a boss which is a giant, apparently sentient rolling boulder. Don’t ask too many questions. We live in legendary times.

Maybe this is nothing you couldn’t get on the Famicom at the time, but Makyō excels in all the extra details. Despite the two-mega limits, the graphics are extraordinary — you can tell where they didn’t have enough variety in graphic tiles to make very good-looking trees and water, but all the same everything’s extremely colorful and varied. In its own way, the visuals here are even more impressive than R-Type’s because of how much more of the PCE’s palette gets exercised at once.

Even more impressive is the soundtrack. It’s by Jun Takema Chikuma, a lady who did some work for Hudson around this time — mainly under the pseudonym Atsushi, an alternate reading of the character that makes her first name. She wasn’t super-prolific in games (her day job is composing and playing Arabian music on the ney flute), but her contributions — Adventure Island, Faxanadu, all the Bombermen until the 32-bit era, Nectaris, even Jaseiken Necromancer — are all amazing pieces of chiptune work, and she deserves a great deal more respect in the West for this short, but extrenely high-quality, side career she had.

<a href=”http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm301087″ mce_href=”http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm301087″>【ニコニコ動画】PCエンジン 魔境伝説 (1988)</a>

There are a lot of short clips of Makyō on YouTube, but instead I want to link to the above Nico-video, a 35-minute tour of the game, because it demonstrates how patterns and the ability to execute them make this notoriously difficult contest seem like Baby’s First Axe Platformer. Have fun watching.

An exciting preview

Coming soon: A video game so tough that VideoGames & Computer Entertainment couldn’t even figure out a strategy for defeating the next-to-last boss.

[I ♥ The PC Engine] Gaia no Monshou

Gaia no Monshō
(ガイアの紋章)

Maker: NCS (Masaya)
Release Date: 9/23/88
Price: 5500 yen
Media: HuCard (2 Mbit)
Genre: RPG
PC Engine FAN Score: 19.90 / 30.00
Kōgien: “A fantasy simulation with a heavy story element that was ported from PCs. Players choose between the dark or light sides as they invade enemy territory. A total of 30 scenarios comprise the game.”

Gaia no Monshō is notable for a couple reasons — it’s the first console title from Nippon Computer Systems (better known under the brand name Masaya), and it’s also the direct predecessor to the Langrisser series, which had as extensive a hand in defining the console SRPG genre as Nectaris and Fire Emblem.

NCS is a small computer firm that dealt with (and still deals in) networks and proprietary financial software. They started making games for the NEC PC-8801 in 1986, with the Masaya brand debuting in 1989 with Guyflame. Langrisser, Kaizō Chōjin Shubibinman and Chō Aniki were their greatest contributions to Japan game-dom, and while they didn’t produce nearly as much PCE quantity as Naxat Soft, those three series cemented the PCE as the firm’s preferred platform in gamers’ eyes. NCS was never particularly bigtime, with their heaviest output during the 16-bit years, and by the time the PS/SS were released they were mostly relying on Langrisser and Chō Aniki sequels, which (even at the time) was not the way to get really big in the Japan game biz. Their final releases were Wonder Swan Langrisser and Chō Aniki in 2000; after that NCS returned to being a regular ol’ business software firm.

Gaia no Monshō, a port of a 1987 PC-8801 release (you can tell this from the ostentatious title music, done by NCS resident composer Kouji Hayama), has a pretty simple plot. Böser and his army of darkness are invading the Land of Light, and you have to beat him off. I mean, drive him back to his lair. You know what I meant. This PCE port is a simplified version of the PC-8801 original, with battles taking place on a single-screen map instead of a scrolling landscape.

Even in the Land of Light, soldiers will not fight for you for great justice alone, so before battle you have to assign your paltry collection of points (cash) out to employ units for your side. If you want more points, you have to destroy enemy units before they can escape from you; naturally, the stronger the enemy, the more points you’ll get. In a downright cruel move on the part of NCS, the game also docks points if you lose an allied unit. Thus comes the tactical dilemma in this game. Just like with Fire Emblem, your goal is to win every battle while losing as few units as possible. Pyrrhic victories are as good as being routed here, because without a good-sized army, you’ll lack the points to reinforce your ranks for the next skirmish, a game-ending Catch-22. (Winning tough battles with crappy infantry is part of the fun of J-SRPGS, I suppose, but we’re still in the 1980s here, so the challenge level is set ridiculously high.)

Another controller-throwing feature is the way Gaia no Monshō determines turn order. Instead of alternating between sides, the game automatically rolls a die to figure out who goes next. You can take several turns in a row if you’re lucky, but that applies to the enemy as well. Need to gather up your units after a brutal attack? Well, tough shite, because it’s the enemy’s turn again! If you don’t like it, reset!

That’s how the campaign mode unfolds in this title, over 30 patience-testing chapters. Construction mode is a fair bit more interesting, though, allowing two players to wage holy war against each other. Secret codes allow you to unlock all kinds of silly units for this bit, including samurai warriors, members of NCS’s staff, and modern armored weaponry (Japan Self-Defense Force units on the player’s side, the Red Army on the enemy side). Feel like recreating Reign of Fire in the form of an early J-SRPG for some unfathomable reason? Dragons versus the JSDF, there you go!

Your reading 090707 edition

Top 10 Bad Things the Internet Brought to Gaming Journalism

I love that ex-EGM-boss Shoe’s number-one choice is “people.” I can’t stand ‘em either!

The Final Fantasy Legend (Square, 1989)

Note 7/7/09: Some people have linked to this page, which I appreciate a great deal, but some link sources suggest that the run is the product of hacking up emulator save states or save files. This isn’t true; those files don’t get touched, although they’re certainly observed intently.

This tool-assisted speedrun takes advantage of a bug in the original game to get its results. In terms of execution, you could do everything in this video on a real Game Boy, although not this quickly.

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It has been said that the tower in the center of the World is connected to Paradise. Dreaming of a life in Paradise, many have challenged the secret of the tower, but no one knows what became of them. Now, there is another who will brave the adventure. He is kind of in a hurry.

What is happening in this video? Let’s work it out in timeline fashion, as revealed in the author’s very long and technically dense explanation.

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“The Phantom of Akihabara,” Chapter 4: “The Blindfolded”

The publishers, meanwhile, throw millions into each project, the price of staying ahead in the industry. There is simply too much at stake for both creator and consumer to do anything creative. No. Games aren’t creative works of art. Deep down, both sides of the bargain know that games are products of precise engineering, like a car or your washing machine.

Here is chapter four (“The Blindfolded”) of The Phantom of Akihabara: GAME OVER, a serial novel written by Yoshitaka Ohsawa between 2002 and 2004. You’ll want to start at chapter one if you’re new to the tale.

With an economy in shambles and a nation in chaos, the Japanese government has forced peace and goodwill upon its people — a movement that dovetailed all too well with media’s tendency to censor itself, starting in the 1990s. With all the “poison” sucked out of their popular entertainment, how can Japan’s game nerds continue to exist…if they can at all?

Happy readin’.

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On vacation

Did you know that Flicky was originally going to be called Flippy until US distributor Bally/Midway found that someone else had already trademarked that name? It’s true! Here’s the original art for the instruction card, as drawn by designer Yoshiki Kawasaki — who, for some reason, moved to Sega’s sales/PR department in the late ’80s and still works there as of 2007.

Anyway, I’m roadtripping this weekend so I’ll be back next week, when some of the following things will happen:

• I will talk about Gaia no Monshō and Makyō Densetsu (aka The Legendary Axe)
• The long-awaited Chapter 4 of The Phantom of Akihabara will be uploaded
• I will write a thorough analysis including video examples of how to play Puyo Puyo competently and make your friends wish you were a rotting dead person
• I finally start discussing the ZX Spectrum and put more people to sleep

Stay tuned!

The 4 Warriors of Light…?

Japanese gamers’ response to the announcement of Square’s new DS title was a bit reserved, chiefly because most expected the game to be SaGa 4 or Romancing SaGa 4.

38 ： ロベリア(長屋)：2009/07/01(水) 22:22:54.17 ID:v84Rl7Qt
The greatest disappointment of the year

41 ： デージー(コネチカット州)：2009/07/01(水) 22:22:58.47 ID:rNWQPbOU
This company is connected to the DS by the hip

57 ： ナズナ(dion軍)：2009/07/01(水) 22:23:31.62 ID:AGKRh+oE
Just stop making 3D DS games already!

93 ： ニリンソウ(九州・沖縄)：2009/07/01(水) 22:25:14.66 ID:Zl+dk6+/
Whew…I’m just glad the Romancing SaGa series is safe…

112 ： シバザクラ・フロッグストラモンティ(東京都)：2009/07/01(水) 22:25:58.92 ID:1riYtmX4
You people are ridiculously rough on Square.
Every day you’re all “Square makes nothing but remakes and sequels, fuck ‘em,” and when they put out a new game you treat it like shit

174 ： ナズナ(関西地方)：2009/07/01(水) 22:29:29.35 ID:OONQBAUt
>>112
It’s shit because they slapped the FF name on it
If it was actually a new title it’d be forgivable

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