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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,
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
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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.
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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.
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Power League II uses a much
more traditional 45 degree angle
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(looking sort of down and out over the field).
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As always, playing against the CPU is tricky.
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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.
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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).
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Of course you have to play these things for a
little while to sorta' get, you know, the feel to them
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and I didn't play it long enough to actually,
you know, get very good at this thing.
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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,
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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.
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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?
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Simulation is sort of a tournament mode,
Action is just like one-off, uh, playing a game,
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and Technique is like a
tutorial practice mode deal.
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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)
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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.
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Lots of options, here.
Choose singles versus doubles,
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who is controlled by computer
and who is controlled by... "Man"
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(Sorry, ladies! This is a man's game.)
Pick a character,
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(choose from either seven
men characters or "Woman")
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"Dragon"!? Come on!
This guy's hobby is golf?
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I'm surprised it's not...
you know... Billiards.
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Actually, I'm kidding.
There are seven female characters as well.
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Hmm! I like Emmy's dumb '80s fashion and,
uh, Sophia's, sort of, adorable geek chic
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but really, uh, Sigrid, the boozy
actress seems like the coolest to me.
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So picking a card determines who breaks.
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Now, when you actually get ready to
shoot a va... shoot the ball, here,
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you have a great deal of control, much
like the typical golf games of this era.
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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.