Playstation
1999
Square
Tactical RPG’s have never been a huge mainstay in the west. They’re perceived as being big, cumbersome and impossibly difficult to get into, thanks to their far more complex battle system than those seen in the majority of Japanese RPG’s. To be honest, I would tend to side with the genre’s detractors. I like my games to either have a plot or no plot at all, and I don’t like the plot to be bogged down with tedious turned based battles instead of exploration and shorter encounters. Front Mission 3 is a strategy RPG by numbers in this respect. It hasn’t really passed beyond the formula in its earlier Super Famicom prequels and a multitude of games like it, like Fire Emblem or Buhamut Lagoon. You watch a bit of story, upgrade your robots, have a bit of a scrap, and repeat over and over until you see the ending credits. There’s a nice little option where you can choose which person to side with early on in the plot, which completely changes your alignment and who you fight with, but even though the scenarios are fairly different, it’s still the same old same old. I doubt you would play it through twice.
So Front Mission 3 is a mech game, plain and simple. If you like big robots, you’ll salivate over the customisation options present here. And as turn based strategy games go, it is pretty engrossing. You’ll spend hours piecing together your perfect Wanzer (the unfortunate contraction of ‘walking panzer’), before lovingly deploying it in battle. You learn from your mistakes, and you begin to learn how to use terrain in your favour, using crates for cover and shooting from the top of slopes for added accuracy. It’s a bit like a table top strategy game in this respect, but slightly less nerdy. Only slightly mind.
The thing that will put many people off is the graphics, which re a mixed bag at best. The engine used for displaying your Wanzers special moves is detailed but grainy, but the overhead sections are sub SNES standard. Obviously it’s all about the gameplay, but let’s be frank: a bit of eye candy would have smoothed things over nicely. Bland and grimy visions of the future are all well and good, but it isn’t too hot to look at. It’s only the super lush FMV that occasionally pops in to remind us how Square can still drop our jaws that stops it from scoring lower.
Front Mission 3 does have a strong pint however: its story. Now, the central characters are frankly awful, clichéd cardboard cut outs. Then you have the sexy blonde Russian spy, the cool dude etc. It’s all very videogame characters 101. However, there is a huge cast of supporting characters, including enemies, which you get to know very well throughout the game. Some of the characters are humorous, some are tragic, and some are just plain evil, but you find and pick out your favourites. Perhaps it was intentional that the central protagonist is so bland; his own lack of personality allows you to project your own on his, allowing you to sit back and enjoy the ride. However, the very best thing about Front Mission 3 is its intricate mythology, that can be accessed through an in game ‘internet’ system. Here there are about a hundred websites for you to browse, many of them pretty big, and packed with masses of information about Earth in the 2112. Unlike a lot of sci-fi, Front Mission is surprisingly pessimistic about life over a century in the future: aside from the bipedal robots, technology is fairly similar to that which we use today, but there have been major political developments, including the emergence of new nations. Such is the level of detail that has gone into the back story, it is easy to become completely engrossed in the world, especially when it’s themes of nuclear disarmament are so contemporary.
So if you like strategy RPG’s, I can’t recommend it highly enough, but if you’re still a bit unsure, I suggest you come for the big, convoluted story, and stay for the big, fighting robots. It’s the Japanese way.
Graphics: 5
Gameplay: 6
Music: 4
Experience: 7
Total: 22/40
Tuesday 6 February 2007
SM Choukyoushi Hitomi
Super Famicom
Unknown
Unknown
Not all games released for the Super Famicom, or any other system for that matter, were officially recognised by the manufacturers. Some games, in fact were made, sold and played completely without Captain N’s knowledge. So here we have an anonymous game that might have been coded and released any time since the birth of the Super Famicom to when I first discovered it about a year ago. SM is a game of almost no redeeming features at all, and yet it deserves to be examined simply as a curio, a matter of interest, a strange artefact with no clue as to its origins. As such, SM is absolutely fascinating, nauseating, and very weird indeed. The game is a pornographic text based adventure. After flashing a pixelated photo of an actual woman onto the screen, a story is told in blocky Japanese writing, with badly drawn anime style images appearing above the dialogue. The rest of the screen is black. There is no music. Every so often, you get to choose from two or three different options, that sees the doe eyed school girl generally being tortured by your hand. While it never descends into full on unmasked penetration, it does get very close at times. After a bit of trial and error you end up with your ‘reward’, some pictures of an actual semi naked woman. Then some credits, and the game loops back to the start.
Obviously an illegal pirate, the ROM image for this strange little game can be found floating around on the internet. To be honest, I can’t shed much light on its origin or meanings, other than it has two sequels. Have a scout around for information, you might get lucky. While from reading its description you might think that it wasn’t worth playing, I can only urge you to track down the ROM right now. I can guarantee you won’t enjoy it, but it has to be experienced. Its unpolished state gives the game a very scary edge. Taken out of Nintendo’s comfortable jurisdiction, you feel anything could happen next. I felt myself wondering at several times what I might find on the ROM if I kept on playing and guessing the ‘right’ decisions. Imagine picking up this game at a car boot sale. It has no label to speak of, other than a white sticker with the words ‘SM CHOUKYUSHI HITOMI’ written on it in faded biro. You take it home and stick it into your import converter and are greeted with the title screen.
Now that’s scary.
Graphics: 3
Gameplay: 0
Music: 0
Experience: 6
Total: 9/40
Unknown
Unknown
Not all games released for the Super Famicom, or any other system for that matter, were officially recognised by the manufacturers. Some games, in fact were made, sold and played completely without Captain N’s knowledge. So here we have an anonymous game that might have been coded and released any time since the birth of the Super Famicom to when I first discovered it about a year ago. SM is a game of almost no redeeming features at all, and yet it deserves to be examined simply as a curio, a matter of interest, a strange artefact with no clue as to its origins. As such, SM is absolutely fascinating, nauseating, and very weird indeed. The game is a pornographic text based adventure. After flashing a pixelated photo of an actual woman onto the screen, a story is told in blocky Japanese writing, with badly drawn anime style images appearing above the dialogue. The rest of the screen is black. There is no music. Every so often, you get to choose from two or three different options, that sees the doe eyed school girl generally being tortured by your hand. While it never descends into full on unmasked penetration, it does get very close at times. After a bit of trial and error you end up with your ‘reward’, some pictures of an actual semi naked woman. Then some credits, and the game loops back to the start.
Obviously an illegal pirate, the ROM image for this strange little game can be found floating around on the internet. To be honest, I can’t shed much light on its origin or meanings, other than it has two sequels. Have a scout around for information, you might get lucky. While from reading its description you might think that it wasn’t worth playing, I can only urge you to track down the ROM right now. I can guarantee you won’t enjoy it, but it has to be experienced. Its unpolished state gives the game a very scary edge. Taken out of Nintendo’s comfortable jurisdiction, you feel anything could happen next. I felt myself wondering at several times what I might find on the ROM if I kept on playing and guessing the ‘right’ decisions. Imagine picking up this game at a car boot sale. It has no label to speak of, other than a white sticker with the words ‘SM CHOUKYUSHI HITOMI’ written on it in faded biro. You take it home and stick it into your import converter and are greeted with the title screen.
Now that’s scary.
Graphics: 3
Gameplay: 0
Music: 0
Experience: 6
Total: 9/40
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Summer Carnival '92: Recca
Famicom
1992
Naxat Soft
Let’s get one thing straight before we start: the chances of you ever holding a physical copy of this game in your hands are slim. Very slim. If you ever do find a copy on eBay, expect to pay around £200. Recca was originally given away as a prize at a carnival in 1992 in Japan, and as such, it’s super rare. Which is a shame, because if you’re the right kind of gamer, Recca will be everything you’ve ever wished for. Best find the ROM image sharpish and curse yourself for being in the wrong place 15 years ago.
Next point, even when you do source this, in whatever format, you’re not going to get far. Oh no. I doubt you’ll even get past the miniboss on the first stage for a few days at least. Recca is a horizontally scrolling shooting game, like Xevious. Unlike Xevious, everything is cranked up to 11. Within seconds, you’ll be swamped with wave after wave of suicidal enemies, lasers blasting from every angle, fighter ships flying out from below you, all on one screen. You won’t have any time to consider the games impeccable craftsmanship, and the simple fact that a game this intense shouldn’t be running on a humble Famicom. In a hail of bullets and strobe lights, you gaze dumbfounded at the game over screen.
Recca isn’t a game for casual gamers. It’s a game for the exceptionally talented, with only one goal: getting a high score. There’s no fancy combo work like the systems present in Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga. If you can survive without loosing lives or using too many bombs, you’ll do well. If you flounder, you’ll be annihilated. In the boss battles especially, you’ll constantly be attempting to dodge into the tiny gaps in the next bullet storm, over and over again. As such, Recca is utterly thrilling throughout. No matter how good you are at shooters, even if you’re a bullet hell champion, you’ll be constantly tested. As you progress, you begin to find yourself automatically limiting the number of times you blink. Having your eyes closed for a fraction of a second results in instant death.
Recca pushes the Famicom to its limit graphically, and consequently, there are often glitches in the sprites in order to keep up the manic pace, but it doesn’t matter. The flickering actually works in the games favour, creating a dizzying, menacing and altogether exhilarating game world. The bleepy music is pretty funky too, and while it’s nothing memorable, it adds to the atmosphere perfectly. Its simplicity and old fashioned difficulty is perhaps best matched by the superlative Windows based shooter Famibe no Yosshin, but even that hardcore twitch fest doesn’t even come close to Recca in terms of ridiculous challenge. It may only be known of by a handful of people, and conquered by even fewer, but for shmup fans of all persuasions or simply gamers who appreciate the artistry and technical skill in milking this amazing console for all its worth, Recca is a firm choice. One to stick it on PocketNES.
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 7
Music: 6
Experience: 8
Total: 28/40
1992
Naxat Soft
Let’s get one thing straight before we start: the chances of you ever holding a physical copy of this game in your hands are slim. Very slim. If you ever do find a copy on eBay, expect to pay around £200. Recca was originally given away as a prize at a carnival in 1992 in Japan, and as such, it’s super rare. Which is a shame, because if you’re the right kind of gamer, Recca will be everything you’ve ever wished for. Best find the ROM image sharpish and curse yourself for being in the wrong place 15 years ago.
Next point, even when you do source this, in whatever format, you’re not going to get far. Oh no. I doubt you’ll even get past the miniboss on the first stage for a few days at least. Recca is a horizontally scrolling shooting game, like Xevious. Unlike Xevious, everything is cranked up to 11. Within seconds, you’ll be swamped with wave after wave of suicidal enemies, lasers blasting from every angle, fighter ships flying out from below you, all on one screen. You won’t have any time to consider the games impeccable craftsmanship, and the simple fact that a game this intense shouldn’t be running on a humble Famicom. In a hail of bullets and strobe lights, you gaze dumbfounded at the game over screen.
Recca isn’t a game for casual gamers. It’s a game for the exceptionally talented, with only one goal: getting a high score. There’s no fancy combo work like the systems present in Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga. If you can survive without loosing lives or using too many bombs, you’ll do well. If you flounder, you’ll be annihilated. In the boss battles especially, you’ll constantly be attempting to dodge into the tiny gaps in the next bullet storm, over and over again. As such, Recca is utterly thrilling throughout. No matter how good you are at shooters, even if you’re a bullet hell champion, you’ll be constantly tested. As you progress, you begin to find yourself automatically limiting the number of times you blink. Having your eyes closed for a fraction of a second results in instant death.
Recca pushes the Famicom to its limit graphically, and consequently, there are often glitches in the sprites in order to keep up the manic pace, but it doesn’t matter. The flickering actually works in the games favour, creating a dizzying, menacing and altogether exhilarating game world. The bleepy music is pretty funky too, and while it’s nothing memorable, it adds to the atmosphere perfectly. Its simplicity and old fashioned difficulty is perhaps best matched by the superlative Windows based shooter Famibe no Yosshin, but even that hardcore twitch fest doesn’t even come close to Recca in terms of ridiculous challenge. It may only be known of by a handful of people, and conquered by even fewer, but for shmup fans of all persuasions or simply gamers who appreciate the artistry and technical skill in milking this amazing console for all its worth, Recca is a firm choice. One to stick it on PocketNES.
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 7
Music: 6
Experience: 8
Total: 28/40
Tuesday 30 January 2007
Umihara Kawase
Super Famicom
1994
TNN
There are some games that you can dip into any time you like. Games with simple control schemes that betray their underlying complexities. Then there are games that are hideously complex, and that you can spend years attempting to comprehend and master their individual naunces. Umihara Kawase is neither of these things, and yet both at the same time. Confused? Good. Let's continue.
Umihara Kawase is a platform game. You start at one point, you try and get to the exit. There are enemies that march from left to right. In this sense it's a bit like Mario. This is where Umihara Kawase ceases to have any similarity with any game you have ever played.
There are two buttons in Umihara Kawase. A shoots a fishing line out from your hand, which can grip to almost any surface in each of the small but decidedly compact levels. B makes you jump. Thats it. After switching on the game, you come to a pool of water and try to jump over it, but Umi, the titular heroine can't jump that far. You plummet to your death into the sea below. Back to square one. This time you push A, and your fishing line fires out and catches onto the other side of the bank, allowing you to swing across. Great. After climbing up a ladder and repeating this process, you encounter an enemy, a large goldfish that walks back and forth like any self respecting platform baddie. Instinctively you try and jump on the fishes head. Umi crumples to a pile on the floor. Back to the start. You realise that you have to use your line to catch the fish. Umi's no Mario, she can't just jump over it. Or at least you don't think you can. 10 minutes later, you've lost all ten of your lives on level 3. In Umihara Kawase you start off with 10 lives. There are no continues, no power ups, only a few sparse extra lives. It seems like an impossible challenge.
This is until you start to notice things. The game has a physics engine that, while fairly unrealistic, is very consistant. As you get adept at swinging around the levels, you begin to learn how to use it in your favour. By utilising your fishing lines elasticity, for example, you can stretch it in one direction, before jumping. You find yourself pinged backwards at great force. And if, with expert timing you jump again at the moment of landing, you jump further, fueled by the momentum of the lines expended power. And the feeling you get when you finally are able to fly from one end of a level to another in a few precicely timed bounds is worth every one of the ten hours that you spent perfecting this technique.
Umihara Kawase isn't a game that you can be intrinsicly good at. Sure, if you've been gaming for years then you might have a bit of an advantage when it comes to the oh so precise timings involved, but at the same time, reared on traditional platform games and adhearing to the schmeas that this denotes, you probaly won't stand a chance. To be frank, if I were to compare playing Umihara Kawase to anything, it wouldn't be to any other videogames, it would be to learning a musical instrument. Initially, you are put off by the fact that you are so awful. You might have seen the game being played amazingly on youtube, and assumed that the grace and skill that can potentially be aquired in this game would come naturaly, that you could bash some buttons and achieve the deired result, a la Super Smash Brothers. Instead you are forced to practice key skills like the wall climb or the aforementioned rocket jump over and over until perfection in the face of unrelenting difficulty. You die time and time again. But then something magical happens. You get good. You start to take pleasure to perfecting your skills. You start to relish the challenge that the game presents, seeing it as being essential to becoming perfect as oposed to simply the game being unfair. The once brick-like Umi now is steered with unending grace at your deft manipulation of just two buttons. You reach places and exits that you previously thought impossible not through the aquisition of some cool new item, like in Zelda, but through your own hard graft and determination.
In keeping with Umihara Kawase's studied minimalism, there are no extraneous features. Run out of lives, you die. There's no save game, password or level select, but once you start to get good, earlier levels that once might have taken you several minutes can take you as little as five seconds, allowing you to quickly bypass them and get to the real meat of the challenge that awaits. There a many routes through the game, the shortest of which can be completed in under five minutes, should you ever get that good. Of course, to reach the exits to skip to these levels requires literally months of skill. Many gamers will never ever see the end screen, and not for lack of trying.
The levels look simple, but effective. Brightly coloured scenery with a grainy monochrome backround. The enemies are generally surreal and outlandish, but not to the extent that it detracts from the games minimalist, almost zen like presentation. The music is sutably dreamy, and often outstanding in places. Again, however, it isn't distracting. You're always thinking about the task in hand, whether this is the first or 100th time you've played this level.
Umihara Kawase has its faults. Sometimes the difficulty can seem a little too unfair. When you're slaughtered by a previously unseen enemy that just happens to respawn on the ledge you are propelling yourslf towards, you'll throw down the pad cursing. Additionaly, the boss stages seem to detract from the overall rythym of the game, due to the length of these encounters, as well as their extreme difficulty. They can be bypassed, however. Ultimately, Umihara Kawase's greatest strength is its difficulty, or rather its joyous playability because of its difficulty. You have to train long and hard to earn anything in this game, but in the end, every skill, naunce and trick that you learn to conquer a level that much more quickly and pain free makes the eventual mastering of this game such an amazing and rewarding experience.
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 10
Music: 8
Experience: 10
Score: 35/40
1994
TNN
There are some games that you can dip into any time you like. Games with simple control schemes that betray their underlying complexities. Then there are games that are hideously complex, and that you can spend years attempting to comprehend and master their individual naunces. Umihara Kawase is neither of these things, and yet both at the same time. Confused? Good. Let's continue.
Umihara Kawase is a platform game. You start at one point, you try and get to the exit. There are enemies that march from left to right. In this sense it's a bit like Mario. This is where Umihara Kawase ceases to have any similarity with any game you have ever played.
There are two buttons in Umihara Kawase. A shoots a fishing line out from your hand, which can grip to almost any surface in each of the small but decidedly compact levels. B makes you jump. Thats it. After switching on the game, you come to a pool of water and try to jump over it, but Umi, the titular heroine can't jump that far. You plummet to your death into the sea below. Back to square one. This time you push A, and your fishing line fires out and catches onto the other side of the bank, allowing you to swing across. Great. After climbing up a ladder and repeating this process, you encounter an enemy, a large goldfish that walks back and forth like any self respecting platform baddie. Instinctively you try and jump on the fishes head. Umi crumples to a pile on the floor. Back to the start. You realise that you have to use your line to catch the fish. Umi's no Mario, she can't just jump over it. Or at least you don't think you can. 10 minutes later, you've lost all ten of your lives on level 3. In Umihara Kawase you start off with 10 lives. There are no continues, no power ups, only a few sparse extra lives. It seems like an impossible challenge.
This is until you start to notice things. The game has a physics engine that, while fairly unrealistic, is very consistant. As you get adept at swinging around the levels, you begin to learn how to use it in your favour. By utilising your fishing lines elasticity, for example, you can stretch it in one direction, before jumping. You find yourself pinged backwards at great force. And if, with expert timing you jump again at the moment of landing, you jump further, fueled by the momentum of the lines expended power. And the feeling you get when you finally are able to fly from one end of a level to another in a few precicely timed bounds is worth every one of the ten hours that you spent perfecting this technique.
Umihara Kawase isn't a game that you can be intrinsicly good at. Sure, if you've been gaming for years then you might have a bit of an advantage when it comes to the oh so precise timings involved, but at the same time, reared on traditional platform games and adhearing to the schmeas that this denotes, you probaly won't stand a chance. To be frank, if I were to compare playing Umihara Kawase to anything, it wouldn't be to any other videogames, it would be to learning a musical instrument. Initially, you are put off by the fact that you are so awful. You might have seen the game being played amazingly on youtube, and assumed that the grace and skill that can potentially be aquired in this game would come naturaly, that you could bash some buttons and achieve the deired result, a la Super Smash Brothers. Instead you are forced to practice key skills like the wall climb or the aforementioned rocket jump over and over until perfection in the face of unrelenting difficulty. You die time and time again. But then something magical happens. You get good. You start to take pleasure to perfecting your skills. You start to relish the challenge that the game presents, seeing it as being essential to becoming perfect as oposed to simply the game being unfair. The once brick-like Umi now is steered with unending grace at your deft manipulation of just two buttons. You reach places and exits that you previously thought impossible not through the aquisition of some cool new item, like in Zelda, but through your own hard graft and determination.
In keeping with Umihara Kawase's studied minimalism, there are no extraneous features. Run out of lives, you die. There's no save game, password or level select, but once you start to get good, earlier levels that once might have taken you several minutes can take you as little as five seconds, allowing you to quickly bypass them and get to the real meat of the challenge that awaits. There a many routes through the game, the shortest of which can be completed in under five minutes, should you ever get that good. Of course, to reach the exits to skip to these levels requires literally months of skill. Many gamers will never ever see the end screen, and not for lack of trying.
The levels look simple, but effective. Brightly coloured scenery with a grainy monochrome backround. The enemies are generally surreal and outlandish, but not to the extent that it detracts from the games minimalist, almost zen like presentation. The music is sutably dreamy, and often outstanding in places. Again, however, it isn't distracting. You're always thinking about the task in hand, whether this is the first or 100th time you've played this level.
Umihara Kawase has its faults. Sometimes the difficulty can seem a little too unfair. When you're slaughtered by a previously unseen enemy that just happens to respawn on the ledge you are propelling yourslf towards, you'll throw down the pad cursing. Additionaly, the boss stages seem to detract from the overall rythym of the game, due to the length of these encounters, as well as their extreme difficulty. They can be bypassed, however. Ultimately, Umihara Kawase's greatest strength is its difficulty, or rather its joyous playability because of its difficulty. You have to train long and hard to earn anything in this game, but in the end, every skill, naunce and trick that you learn to conquer a level that much more quickly and pain free makes the eventual mastering of this game such an amazing and rewarding experience.
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 10
Music: 8
Experience: 10
Score: 35/40
Hi Score
Another games blog, this time with no underlying unifying theame. I'm starting this blog to address something I really feel that I miss on the internet; a lack of wordy, intelegent articles about computer and videogames. Every format is potentially covered here. Hence the random nature of the reviews. Games old and new, famous and obscure, fantastic and shit. Check back every so often to see where it goes.
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