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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 finnish up July and
blast through all of August and September.

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We're gonna' see a number of arcade ports today, 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 
(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, 
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, Nintendo Entertainment System California Raisins game.

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The guy who ran Radiance, Christopher Riggs, actually lists himself as being a product developer at Capcom in the early 1990s.

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Prior to Radiance, he apparently 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 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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Anywho, Earth got blown up or something, and 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 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.