WEBVTT

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[ Techno music ]

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Alright folks, it's Dr.Sparkle again

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Geez, It seems like forever 
since the last episode.

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Well anyways, sorry it's so late 
but here we are again.

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The PC engine schedule 
seems to get a bit more hectic

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as we get closer to the 
1989 holiday season.

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

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

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

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We ended last episode with a 
classic shooter, Blazing Lasers,

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

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

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

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(the first being SunSun 2)

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

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

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Rather, it was by a small company 
called Radiance Software,

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which seemed to have 
very close ties to Capcom.

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

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Nintendo Entertainment System 
California Raisins game.

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The guy who ran Radiance, 
Christopher Riggs,

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

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Prior to Radiance, he apparently 


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

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(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 
DOS and Commodore 64 ports

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for Capcom (including Side Arms!).

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

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

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Anyhoo, 
Earth got blown up or something, and

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

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

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

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

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The main one is: you can turn around 
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 
predecessor to Forgotten Worlds).

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

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

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could occasionally combine into 
a single more powerful form

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

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The home version dropped this 2-Player mode, 


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(meaning that your combined form is 
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... 
which weapon you wanna lose from the Start menu

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

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

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Now, this is actually very helpful, since certain types of 
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. 
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 
and you screw up and get killed,

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

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

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

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And there are so many damn enemies 
(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 
(harder than Gradius or R-Type, in my opinion)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(among other things) 
having a badass set of armor

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

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Rather than being a Strategy game, 
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 
(at least at first).

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There's Attack with a sword slash 
and Jump.

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

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They block a lot, so normally 
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 
(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 
and there's a bit of action.

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

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

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

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and the result is just 
so damn monotonous.

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

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


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

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and dudes with a long spear.

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Boss battles are at the end of each level, 
though each level looks about the same,

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

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

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

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and buy some critical of...
offense and defenseive upgrades,

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such as the war fan.

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

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

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

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Takeda Shingen isn't really a fun game to play, 
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 
lack of variety really kills any excitement.

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

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Your health bar is pretty long 
and health refills are pretty frequent

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

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

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So, overall, Takeda Shingen 
is a bummer of a game.

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

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

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

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back in the '80s.

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

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

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Luckly, for us, we have an English translation 
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 
sort of a rundown boarding house.

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

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

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

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who you might know from such comics as 
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, 
the protagonists get married.

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This first appeared on the M.S.X., 
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.

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

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At the time, I'd pretty much said, 


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"Well, we'll check this out in more detail 
when we reach it in ChronTurbo."

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and now, my dear friends, 
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, 
which contains "pretty radical stuff".

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Later, you can actually, uh, give it back to him... 
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", 
which (I think) is being used ironically

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

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Um... Ikkoku, I believe, means 
hotheaded or tempermental

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(perhaps referring to the 
various nutty residents here.

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

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

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And this, so far, seems to be the first 
PC Engine game that actually shows

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nipples in one of its human characters 
in an obviously sexualized way

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

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

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and using them in sort of unintuitive ways.

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Here's your love interest, though you actually call 
her by the rather formal name, um, Kanrinin-san,

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rather than her real name.

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You can't interact with her too much yet. 
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 
getting on their good side by giving them things.

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

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

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

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

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Um... A great deal of time is spent, you know, 
sorta' dealing with these annoying housemates.

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Just like in the comic, Godai tends to fantasize 
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 
around trying to look at that picture you see

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on the left hand side of the screen, 
believe it or not.

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

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and you make progress 
in seemingly random ways

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but the art is good, the music is decent, 
so it's still a lot better than some of the awful,

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uh, the other awful Adventure games we've seen.

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Hudson was, of course, the 
co-creator of the PC Engine

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and they published all the console's 
games in Japan for about the first year.

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

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This is the first of three Hudson-published 
games today, Power League II

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a baseball game, of course, and the 
sequel to the first Power League game,

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which was released about 
14 months before this one.

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There are a plethora of modes here 
- typical stuff:

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Single Game mode, a Penant Mode, All Star 
(nothing we haven't seen before).

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Now, the first Power League game 
got a U.S. release, under the name

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"World Class Baseball".

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Power League II was never 
released outside of Japan, though.

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In fact, there are six 
Power League games on the PC Engine

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and the first one was the only one 
to get a non-Japanese release.

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Naturally, this looks and feels a lot 
like the first Power League game.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If we look at the two back to back, 
we see the sprites have been changed a bit,

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but both games look very similar 
(with one exception).

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In the first game, after the batter got a hit, 
it showed the outfield straight down,

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with the uh, camera's line of sight 
being perpendicular to the ground,

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much like the, uh, Sega Genesis', uh, 
sports games, like Tommy Lasorda Baseball.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Power League II uses a much 
more traditional 45 degree angle

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(looking sort of down and out over the field).

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As always, playing against the CPU is tricky.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
There's certainly a way to strike 
out the CPU, but I didn't find it.

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Generally the CPU would get a good powerful 
hit against anything I would throw at it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
When I was at the bat, I'd get lots of fly balls

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(and, uh, the computer would actually 
catch these with absolute 100% accuracy)

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as well as tons of foul balls

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(like, about 4 out of 5 hits would 
be a foul ...or just really weak hits).

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Of course you have to play these things for a 
little while to sorta' get, you know, the feel to them

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I didn't play it long enough to actually, 
you know, get very good at this thing.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So, Power League II is 
(just like its predecessor)

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a sharp-looking baseball game that 
doesn't really stand out in any way,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
other than its, you know, 
nice looking graphics. 


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And we will get to see four more of 
these during the life of the console.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Our third PC Engine game, 
from Naxat (a.k.a. Taxan)

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who had previously released the, uh, 
great pinball game, "Alien Crush"

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as well as a golf game. 
Now, we have a pool game from them.

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Break In, featuring 
Simulation, Action, Technique

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Geez! is this an instructional sex game?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Simulation is sort of a tournament mode, 
Action is just like one-off, uh, playing a game,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and Technique is like a 
tutorial practice mode deal.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Break In is pretty generous with 
the types of games you can play.

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For example, you have, uh, Yotsudama 


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(a four ball game that's played 
on a table with no pockets

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and doesn't really resemble 
normal pool that much)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and "Bowliards", which appears to be 
a, uh, (actually is misspelled here)

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is sort of a hybrid between 
bowling and billiards.

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

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

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Lots of options, here. 
Choose singles versus doubles,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who is controlled by computer 
and who is controlled by... "Man"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Sorry, ladies! This is a man's game.)
Pick a character,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(choose from either seven 
men characters or "Woman")

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"Dragon"!? Come on! 
This guy's hobby is golf?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'm surprised it's not... 
you know... Billiards.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Actually, I'm kidding. 
There are seven female characters as well.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Hmm! I like Emmy's dumb '80s fashion and, 
uh, Sophia's, sort of, adorable geek chic

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but really, uh, Sigrid, the boozy 
actress seems like the coolest to me.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So picking a card determines who breaks.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now, when you actually get ready to 
shoot a va... shoot the ball, here,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you have a great deal of control, much 
like the typical golf games of this era.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You have this image ball concept 


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

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CPU players are generally 
decent but not 100% perfect,

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which is a nice switch from the 
various baseball games we've seen.

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Franky's pretty cool, but I 
think that mustache is fake.

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Like a lot of other PC Engine games, 
Break In has some pretty chill music.

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Now, this is the Technique part.