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[ Techno music ]

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Alright folks, it's Dr.Sparkle again

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Geez, It seems like forever [br]since the last episode.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Well anyways, sorry it's so late [br]but here we are again.

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The PC engine schedule [br]seems to get a bit more hectic

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as we get closer to the [br]1989 holiday season.

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Today, we're gonna finish up July and[br]blast through all of August and September.

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We're gonna' see a number [br]of arcade ports today,

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as well as some obscure [br](and rather shitty) original titles.

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We ended last episode with a [br]classic shooter, Blazing Lasers,

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and we begin this episode with a [br]not-so-classic shooter, Side Arms

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(or Side Arms: Hyper Dyne, [br]as it's officially called in Japan)

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This is the second port of a Capcom [br]arcade game for the system

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(the first being SunSun 2)

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and, once again, this is published [br]by N.E.C., not Capcom themselves.

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However, in the U.S., this was one of the very [br]few TurboGrafx games not published by N.E.C.

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Rather, it was by a small company [br]called Radiance Software,

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which seemed to have [br]very close ties to Capcom.

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They were also well known for [br]their involvement in the canceled, ah,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Nintendo Entertainment System [br]California Raisins game.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The guy who ran Radiance, [br]Christopher Riggs,

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actually lists himself as being a Product [br]Developer at Capcom in the early 1990s.

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Prior to Radiance, he apparently [br]

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co-founded a company called [br]Pacific DataWorks, with, uh, Troy Lyndon

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(who was an interesting guy who much later, uh, was behind the, uh, the infamous Left Behind computer video game.

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Pacific DataWorks mostly did [br]DOS and Commodore 64 ports

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for Capcom (including Side Arms!).

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Riggs also had a company called Riggs Interactive [br]which did, uh, computer ports for Capcom.

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So it's no surprise that the first Radiance [br]game is, of course, a Capcom port.

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Anyhoo, [br]Earth got blown up or something, and

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your little robot mecha dude is out there, [br]uh, to kill lots of aliens.

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Mechanics are moreorless like similar [br]shooters of the era (such as Gradius).

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Enemies drop power-ups, speed-ups, [br]and other types of, uh, special weapons.

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Nothing too new or exciting, here, [br]but there are a couple interesting ideas.

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The main one is: you can turn around [br]and fire in the opposite direction

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by hitting the second button

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(making Side Arms kind of a [br]predecessor to Forgotten Worlds).

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Now, Side Arms was originally [br]an arcade game from 1986.

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Aside from the ability to fire, uh, front and back, [br]a big feature of Side Arms was that two players

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could occasionally combine into [br]a single more powerful form

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(with one player controlling the mech and [br]the other controlling his special attack weapons).

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The home version dropped this 2-Player mode, [br]

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(meaning that your combined form is [br]basically just a temporary upgrade).

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It lasts until you get hit.

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The other cool feature is the ability to select your... [br]which weapon you wanna lose from the Start menu

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(as opposed to losing your current weapon when you [br]pick up a new one, like in most other shooters).

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You can actually carry a whole [br]bunch of weapons at once.

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Now, this is actually very helpful, since certain types of [br]weapons are more useful than others in some spots.

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In fact, certain weapons are pretty much vital for some areas.

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And this leads me to one issue that so many Shoot-em-Ups have. [br]If you die once, you are pretty much screwed.

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Side Arms is even much worse than many other similar games.

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When the action gets hectic [br]and you screw up and get killed,

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you'll be brought back to life with, like, [br]a single random underpowered weapon,

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generally with enemies, like, [br]closing in on you from all sides.

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So, get killed and odds are good that you'll [br]get killed again within a second or two.

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And there are so many damn enemies [br](like missiles, et cetera) that home in on you

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and follow you around, as you try to avoid them.

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And when you have, like, a very basic weapon that only shoots in one direction, it's pretty difficult to pick these guys off.

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Also, like Gradius, picking up too many speed power-ups will make you move, uh, too fast and be hard to control precisely.

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Overall, it's actually a pretty hard game [br](harder than Gradius or R-Type, in my opinion)

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but it actually, uh, looks great and I liked it [br]better than the Genesis port of Forgotten Worlds.

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We exit July with a real stinker. [br]From AICOM, it' s Takeda Shingen.

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"Aha!", you say, [br]"We've already seen this game on Chrontendo.

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It was, like, a strategy game, [br]published by HOT-B."

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Well, no. This is actually a completely [br]different and unrelated game called Takeda Shingen.

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Now, Takeda Shingen (the real person) [br]was a 16th century warlord, known for

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(among other things) [br]having a badass set of armor

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(which is, uh, sort of [br]semi-accurately depicted here).

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Rather than being a Strategy game, [br]this is a rather dull Beat-'em-Up

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And it's a painfully slow affair.

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You have exactly two moves [br](at least at first).

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There's Attack with a sword slash [br]and Jump.

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You'll be, uh, taking enemies head-on, [br]uh, just sort of hacking at them until they die.

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They block a lot, so normally [br]you'll just, sort of, walk up to them

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and start repeatedly slashing at them.

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They'll block a few times and then you'll get a hit in.

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This was a port of a Jaleco arcade game [br](which looks a lot nicer).

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The game isn't exactly hot shit,

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but your character moves much faster [br]and there's a bit of action.

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This is hardly top tier stuff, as of 1988, [br]but it seems reasonably bearable.

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There's even, like, bonus rounds [br]where you can get on a horse and do some target practice.

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The horse stuff got completely stripped [br]out from the PC Engine version

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and the result is just [br]so damn monotonous.

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You know, I got a good way through this game [br]and there were a pretty limited number of enemy types.

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There's basically dudes with swords [br](who are just like you), [br]

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dudes with a long flail on a chain [br](and these guys are annoying),

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and dudes with a long spear.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Boss battles are at the end of each level, [br]though each level looks about the same,

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so there's really not much to [br]distinguish one level from the other.

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Bosses are really nothing exciting. [br]This guy is just a big version of the swordsman.

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Post-boss fight, you visit a shop [br]where you can refill your health

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and buy some critical of...[br]offense and defenseive upgrades,

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such as the war fan.

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Now, in real life, uh, Takeda's [br]often depicted with his war fan.

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There's a famous story about how he [br]deflected an enemy blade with his fan, once.

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So this game, naturally, has him, [br]you know, carrying it around.

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Takeda Shingen isn't really a fun game to play, [br]especially in comparison to contemporary

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Beat-'em-Ups like Golden Axe or Final Fight.

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Later, you get some better attacks, but the [br]lack of variety really kills any excitement.

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It just feels like you're fighting the [br]same fight over and over and over again.

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Your health bar is pretty long [br]and health refills are pretty frequent

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so there's not much challenge at all [br]for the entire first half of the game

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(until you get to this boss, who's, like, [br]ten times harder than the last one).

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So, overall, Takeda Shingen [br]is a bummer of a game.

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So, we enter August with Maison Ikkoku [br]and a new publisher, Micro Cabin.

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We've heard their name come up [br]a few times before in Chrontendo.

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They were actually a pretty prominent [br]publisher of, uh, games for Japanese computers,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
back in the '80s.

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Like a lot of other sort of dodgy PC Engine games, [br]this one has some pretty decent music.

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Right. So, Maison Ikkoku is one of these [br]inescapable menu-based adventure games.

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Luckly, for us, we have an English translation [br]by Dave Shadoff and Matt LaFrance.

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You play as one Yusaku Godai:

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a down on his luck student, living in [br]sort of a rundown boarding house.

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The manager of the boarding house [br]turns out to be (of course)

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a beautiful young woman who was [br]recently widowed, named Kuyoku.

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This was based on a popular manga, by the [br]famous manga artist, Rumiko Takahashi,

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who you might know from such comics as [br]Uruse Yatsure and Renma One Half.

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It basically chronicles, uh, Godai's desire to express his love for Kuyoku, as well as the wacky residents of the boarding house.

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Eventually, of course, at the end of the series, [br]the protagonists get married.

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This first appeared on the M.S.X., [br]back in 1987.

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It looks pretty similar to this port, actually!

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It also wound up on the F.M. 7 and few other computers.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, the first console appearance of this game was on the Famicom, which we saw very briefly in Episode 33.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At the time, I'd pretty much said, [br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Well, we'll check this out in more detail [br]when we reach it in ChronTurbo."

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and now, my dear friends, [br]that day has arrived.

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It turns out to be a reasonably normal adventure game.

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Uh, this character, here, is some kind of weird pervert dude who builds tunnels and peepholes in the walls between the rooms.

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Uh... You find a porno mag, [br]which contains "pretty radical stuff".

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Later, you can actually, uh, give it back to him... [br]sort of, uh, win his favor.

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Much of the game takes place inside the titular Maison Ikkoku.

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Uh... Maison is simply the French word for "house", [br]which (I think) is being used ironically

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(in the sense that calling this place "Maison" you know, [br]sort of, tried to, like, give it a touch of class.

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Um... Ikkoku, I believe, means [br]hotheaded or tempermental

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(perhaps referring to the [br]various nutty residents here.

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In this game, you actually save [br]by going to the bathroom.

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There's naturally all sorts of goofy sexual [br]innuendo going on between the characters.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this, so far, seems to be the first [br]PC Engine game that actually shows

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
nipples in one of its human characters [br]in an obviously sexualized way

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(as opposed to nipples on a [br]statue or a monster or something).

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Um... For the most part, you go around [br]talking to people, collecting items,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and using them in sort of unintuitive ways.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Here's your love interest, though you actually call [br]her by the rather formal name, um, Kanrinin-san,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
rather than her real name.

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You can't interact with her too much yet. [br]Um... You actually have to get on her good side first.

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A lot of the game involves, uh, talking to people and [br]getting on their good side by giving them things.

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Among the other things, uh, you find, uh, her bra is [br]up on the roof and you have a daydream about her,

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um, once, uh, you found the ladder [br]that allows you to climb up on the roof.

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Aside from the house, you can travel to a [br]couple locations nearby, such as this store.

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The cashier is meant to look like Lum from Urusei Yatsura. [br]Ya' buy things here to bribe the residents with.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Um... A great deal of time is spent, you know, [br]sorta' dealing with these annoying housemates.

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Just like in the comic, Godai tends to fantasize [br]about putting the mack on his landlord,

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but he's too scared to do anything.

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The main goal of the game revolves actually [br]around trying to look at that picture you see

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
on the left hand side of the screen, [br]believe it or not.

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And, you know, like a lot of these sorts [br]of things, your goal is kind of vague

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and you make progress [br]in seemingly random ways

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but the art is good, the music is decent, [br]so it's still a lot better than some of the awful,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
uh, the other awful Adventure games we've seen.

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Hudson was, of course, the [br]co-creator of the PC Engine

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they published all the console's [br]games in Japan for about the first year.

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But by this point, they are outnumbered [br]by third party publishers (at least in Japan).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is the first of three Hudson-published [br]games today, Power League II

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a baseball game, of course, and the [br]sequel to the first Power League game,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which was released about [br]14 months before this one.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There are a plethora of modes here [br]- typical stuff:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Single Game mode, a Penant Mode, All Star [br](nothing we haven't seen before).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, the first Power League game [br]got a U.S. release, under the name

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"World Class Baseball".

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Power League II was never [br]released outside of Japan, though.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, there are six [br]Power League games on the PC Engine

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the first one was the only one [br]to get a non-Japanese release.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Naturally, this looks and feels a lot [br]like the first Power League game.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If we look at the two back to back, [br]we see the sprites have been changed a bit,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but both games look very similar [br](with one exception).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the first game, after the batter got a hit, [br]it showed the outfield straight down,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with the uh, camera's line of sight [br]being perpendicular to the ground,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
much like the, uh, Sega Genesis', uh, [br]sports games, like Tommy Lasorda Baseball.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Power League II uses a much [br]more traditional 45 degree angle

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(looking sort of down and out over the field).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As always, playing against the CPU is tricky.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There's certainly a way to strike [br]out the CPU, but I didn't find it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Generally the CPU would get a good powerful [br]hit against anything I would throw at it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I was at the bat, I'd get lots of fly balls

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(and, uh, the computer would actually [br]catch these with absolute 100% accuracy)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as well as tons of foul balls

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(like, about 4 out of 5 hits would [br]be a foul ...or just really weak hits).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Of course you have to play these things for a [br]little while to sorta' get, you know, the feel to them

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I didn't play it long enough to actually, [br]you know, get very good at this thing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, Power League II is [br](just like its predecessor)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a sharp-looking baseball game that [br]doesn't really stand out in any way,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
other than its, you know, [br]nice looking graphics. [br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we will get to see four more of [br]these during the life of the console.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our third PC Engine game, [br]from Naxat (a.k.a. Taxan)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who had previously released the, uh, [br]great pinball game, "Alien Crush"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as well as a golf game. [br]Now, we have a pool game from them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Break In, featuring [br]Simulation, Action, Technique

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Geez! is this an instructional sex game?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Simulation is sort of a tournament mode, [br]Action is just like one-off, uh, playing a game,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and Technique is like a [br]tutorial practice mode deal.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Break In is pretty generous with [br]the types of games you can play.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For example, you have, uh, Yotsudama [br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(a four ball game that's played [br]on a table with no pockets

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and doesn't really resemble [br]normal pool that much)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and "Bowliards", which appears to be [br]a, uh, (actually is misspelled here)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is sort of a hybrid between [br]bowling and billiards.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Hmm! Yes, I would like some nice shiny oranges and a glass of... orange soda? ...or maybe a big glass of [???]?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Man, we're gonna' get f---ed up on that [???] there.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Lots of options, here. [br]Choose singles versus doubles,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who is controlled by computer [br]and who is controlled by... "Man"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Sorry, ladies! This is a man's game.)[br]Pick a character,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(choose from either seven [br]men characters or "Woman")

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Dragon"!? Come on! [br]This guy's hobby is golf?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I'm surprised it's not... [br]you know... Billiards.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Actually, I'm kidding. [br]There are seven female characters as well.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Hmm! I like Emmy's dumb '80s fashion and, [br]uh, Sophia's, sort of, adorable geek chic

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but really, uh, Sigrid, the boozy [br]actress seems like the coolest to me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So picking a card determines who breaks.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, when you actually get ready to [br]shoot a va... shoot the ball, here,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you have a great deal of control, much [br]like the typical golf games of this era.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You have this image ball concept [br]

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(not something I've seen [br]in pool games prior to this)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
CPU players are generally [br]decent but not 100% perfect,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is a nice switch from the [br]various baseball games we've seen.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Franky's pretty cool, but I [br]think that mustache is fake.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Like a lot of other PC Engine games, [br]Break In has some pretty chill music.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, this is the Technique part.