-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
Alright folks, it's Dr.Sparkle again
-
Not Synced
Geez, It seems like forever
since the last episode.
-
Not Synced
Well anyways, sorry it's so late
but here we are again.
-
Not Synced
The PC engine schedule
seems to get a bit more hectic
-
Not Synced
as we get closer to the
1989 holiday season.
-
Not Synced
Today, we're gonna finish up July and
blast through all of August and September.
-
Not Synced
We're gonna' see a number
of arcade ports today,
-
Not Synced
as well as some obscure
(and rather shitty) original titles.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
We ended last episode with a
classic shooter, Blazing Lasers,
-
Not Synced
and we begin this episode with a
not-so-classic shooter, Side Arms
-
Not Synced
(or Side Arms: Hyper Dyne,
as it's officially called in Japan)
-
Not Synced
This is the second port of a Capcom
arcade game for the system
-
Not Synced
(the first being SunSun 2)
-
Not Synced
and, once again, this is published
by N.E.C., not Capcom themselves.
-
Not Synced
However, in the U.S., this was one of the very
few TurboGrafx games not published by N.E.C.
-
Not Synced
Rather, it was by a small company
called Radiance Software,
-
Not Synced
which seemed to have
very close ties to Capcom.
-
Not Synced
They were also well known for
their involvement in the canceled, ah,
-
Not Synced
Nintendo Entertainment System
California Raisins game.
-
Not Synced
The guy who ran Radiance,
Christopher Riggs,
-
Not Synced
actually lists himself as being a Product
Developer at Capcom in the early 1990s.
-
Not Synced
Prior to Radiance, he apparently
-
Not Synced
co-founded a company called
Pacific DataWorks, with, uh, Troy Lyndon
-
Not Synced
(who was an interesting guy who much later, uh, was behind the, uh, the infamous Left Behind computer video game.
-
Not Synced
Pacific DataWorks mostly did
DOS and Commodore 64 ports
-
Not Synced
for Capcom (including Side Arms!).
-
Not Synced
Riggs also had a company called Riggs Interactive
which did, uh, computer ports for Capcom.
-
Not Synced
So it's no surprise that the first Radiance
game is, of course, a Capcom port.
-
Not Synced
Anyhoo,
Earth got blown up or something, and
-
Not Synced
your little robot mecha dude is out there,
uh, to kill lots of aliens.
-
Not Synced
Mechanics are moreorless like similar
shooters of the era (such as Gradius).
-
Not Synced
Enemies drop power-ups, speed-ups,
and other types of, uh, special weapons.
-
Not Synced
Nothing too new or exciting, here,
but there are a couple interesting ideas.
-
Not Synced
The main one is: you can turn around
and fire in the opposite direction
-
Not Synced
by hitting the second button
-
Not Synced
(making Side Arms kind of a
predecessor to Forgotten Worlds).
-
Not Synced
Now, Side Arms was originally
an arcade game from 1986.
-
Not Synced
Aside from the ability to fire, uh, front and back,
a big feature of Side Arms was that two players
-
Not Synced
could occasionally combine into
a single more powerful form
-
Not Synced
(with one player controlling the mech and
the other controlling his special attack weapons).
-
Not Synced
The home version dropped this 2-Player mode,
-
Not Synced
(meaning that your combined form is
basically just a temporary upgrade).
-
Not Synced
It lasts until you get hit.
-
Not Synced
The other cool feature is the ability to select your...
which weapon you wanna lose from the Start menu
-
Not Synced
(as opposed to losing your current weapon when you
pick up a new one, like in most other shooters).
-
Not Synced
You can actually carry a whole
bunch of weapons at once.
-
Not Synced
Now, this is actually very helpful, since certain types of
weapons are more useful than others in some spots.
-
Not Synced
In fact, certain weapons are pretty much vital for some areas.
-
Not Synced
And this leads me to one issue that so many Shoot-em-Ups have.
If you die once, you are pretty much screwed.
-
Not Synced
Side Arms is even much worse than many other similar games.
-
Not Synced
When the action gets hectic
and you screw up and get killed,
-
Not Synced
you'll be brought back to life with, like,
a single random underpowered weapon,
-
Not Synced
generally with enemies, like,
closing in on you from all sides.
-
Not Synced
So, get killed and odds are good that you'll
get killed again within a second or two.
-
Not Synced
And there are so many damn enemies
(like missiles, et cetera) that home in on you
-
Not Synced
and follow you around, as you try to avoid them.
-
Not Synced
And when you have, like, a very basic weapon that only shoots in one direction, it's pretty difficult to pick these guys off.
-
Not Synced
Also, like Gradius, picking up too many speed power-ups will make you move, uh, too fast and be hard to control precisely.
-
Not Synced
Overall, it's actually a pretty hard game
(harder than Gradius or R-Type, in my opinion)
-
Not Synced
but it actually, uh, looks great and I liked it
better than the Genesis port of Forgotten Worlds.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
We exit July with a real stinker.
From AICOM, it' s Takeda Shingen.
-
Not Synced
"Aha!", you say,
"We've already seen this game on Chrontendo.
-
Not Synced
It was, like, a strategy game,
published by HOT-B."
-
Not Synced
Well, no. This is actually a completely
different and unrelated game called Takeda Shingen.
-
Not Synced
Now, Takeda Shingen (the real person)
was a 16th century warlord, known for
-
Not Synced
(among other things)
having a badass set of armor
-
Not Synced
(which is, uh, sort of
semi-accurately depicted here).
-
Not Synced
Rather than being a Strategy game,
this is a rather dull Beat-'em-Up
-
Not Synced
And it's a painfully slow affair.
-
Not Synced
You have exactly two moves
(at least at first).
-
Not Synced
There's Attack with a sword slash
and Jump.
-
Not Synced
You'll be, uh, taking enemies head-on,
uh, just sort of hacking at them until they die.
-
Not Synced
They block a lot, so normally
you'll just, sort of, walk up to them
-
Not Synced
and start repeatedly slashing at them.
-
Not Synced
They'll block a few times and then you'll get a hit in.
-
Not Synced
This was a port of a Jaleco arcade game
(which looks a lot nicer).
-
Not Synced
The game isn't exactly hot shit,
-
Not Synced
but your character moves much faster
and there's a bit of action.
-
Not Synced
This is hardly top tier stuff, as of 1988,
but it seems reasonably bearable.
-
Not Synced
There's even, like, bonus rounds
where you can get on a horse and do some target practice.
-
Not Synced
The horse stuff got completely stripped
out from the PC Engine version
-
Not Synced
and the result is just
so damn monotonous.
-
Not Synced
You know, I got a good way through this game
and there were a pretty limited number of enemy types.
-
Not Synced
There's basically dudes with swords
(who are just like you),
-
Not Synced
dudes with a long flail on a chain
(and these guys are annoying),
-
Not Synced
and dudes with a long spear.
-
Not Synced
Boss battles are at the end of each level,
though each level looks about the same,
-
Not Synced
so there's really not much to
distinguish one level from the other.
-
Not Synced
Bosses are really nothing exciting.
This guy is just a big version of the swordsman.
-
Not Synced
Post-boss fight, you visit a shop
where you can refill your health
-
Not Synced
and buy some critical of...
offense and defenseive upgrades,
-
Not Synced
such as the war fan.
-
Not Synced
Now, in real life, uh, Takeda's
often depicted with his war fan.
-
Not Synced
There's a famous story about how he
deflected an enemy blade with his fan, once.
-
Not Synced
So this game, naturally, has him,
you know, carrying it around.
-
Not Synced
Takeda Shingen isn't really a fun game to play,
especially in comparison to contemporary
-
Not Synced
Beat-'em-Ups like Golden Axe or Final Fight.
-
Not Synced
Later, you get some better attacks, but the
lack of variety really kills any excitement.
-
Not Synced
It just feels like you're fighting the
same fight over and over and over again.
-
Not Synced
Your health bar is pretty long
and health refills are pretty frequent
-
Not Synced
so there's not much challenge at all
for the entire first half of the game
-
Not Synced
(until you get to this boss, who's, like,
ten times harder than the last one).
-
Not Synced
So, overall, Takeda Shingen
is a bummer of a game.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
So, we enter August with Maison Ikkoku
and a new publisher, Micro Cabin.
-
Not Synced
We've heard their name come up
a few times before in Chrontendo.
-
Not Synced
They were actually a pretty prominent
publisher of, uh, games for Japanese computers,
-
Not Synced
back in the '80s.
-
Not Synced
Like a lot of other sort of dodgy PC Engine games,
this one has some pretty decent music.
-
Not Synced
Right. So, Maison Ikkoku is one of these
inescapable menu-based adventure games.
-
Not Synced
Luckly, for us, we have an English translation
by Dave Shadoff and Matt LaFrance.
-
Not Synced
You play as one Yusaku Godai:
-
Not Synced
a down on his luck student, living in
sort of a rundown boarding house.
-
Not Synced
The manager of the boarding house
turns out to be (of course)
-
Not Synced
a beautiful young woman who was
recently widowed, named Kuyoku.
-
Not Synced
This was based on a popular manga, by the
famous manga artist, Rumiko Takahashi,
-
Not Synced
who you might know from such comics as
Uruse Yatsure and Renma One Half.
-
Not Synced
It basically chronicles, uh, Godai's desire to express his love for Kuyoku, as well as the wacky residents of the boarding house.
-
Not Synced
Eventually, of course, at the end of the series,
the protagonists get married.
-
Not Synced
This first appeared on the M.S.X.,
back in 1987.
-
Not Synced
It looks pretty similar to this port, actually!
-
Not Synced
It also wound up on the F.M. 7 and few other computers.
-
Not Synced
Now, the first console appearance of this game was on the Famicom, which we saw very briefly in Episode 33.
-
Not Synced
At the time, I'd pretty much said,
-
Not Synced
"Well, we'll check this out in more detail
when we reach it in ChronTurbo."
-
Not Synced
and now, my dear friends,
that day has arrived.
-
Not Synced
It turns out to be a reasonably normal adventure game.
-
Not Synced
Uh, this character, here, is some kind of weird pervert dude who builds tunnels and peepholes in the walls between the rooms.
-
Not Synced
Uh... You find a porno mag,
which contains "pretty radical stuff".
-
Not Synced
Later, you can actually, uh, give it back to him...
sort of, uh, win his favor.
-
Not Synced
Much of the game takes place inside the titular Maison Ikkoku.
-
Not Synced
Uh... Maison is simply the French word for "house",
which (I think) is being used ironically
-
Not Synced
(in the sense that calling this place "Maison" you know,
sort of, tried to, like, give it a touch of class.
-
Not Synced
Um... Ikkoku, I believe, means
hotheaded or tempermental
-
Not Synced
(perhaps referring to the
various nutty residents here.
-
Not Synced
In this game, you actually save
by going to the bathroom.
-
Not Synced
There's naturally all sorts of goofy sexual
innuendo going on between the characters.
-
Not Synced
And this, so far, seems to be the first
PC Engine game that actually shows
-
Not Synced
nipples in one of its human characters
in an obviously sexualized way
-
Not Synced
(as opposed to nipples on a
statue or a monster or something).
-
Not Synced
Um... For the most part, you go around
talking to people, collecting items,
-
Not Synced
and using them in sort of unintuitive ways.
-
Not Synced
Here's your love interest, though you actually call
her by the rather formal name, um, Kanrinin-san,
-
Not Synced
rather than her real name.
-
Not Synced
You can't interact with her too much yet.
Um... You actually have to get on her good side first.
-
Not Synced
A lot of the game involves, uh, talking to people and
getting on their good side by giving them things.
-
Not Synced
Among the other things, uh, you find, uh, her bra is
up on the roof and you have a daydream about her,
-
Not Synced
um, once, uh, you found the ladder
that allows you to climb up on the roof.
-
Not Synced
Aside from the house, you can travel to a
couple locations nearby, such as this store.
-
Not Synced
The cashier is meant to look like Lum from Urusei Yatsura.
Ya' buy things here to bribe the residents with.
-
Not Synced
Um... A great deal of time is spent, you know,
sorta' dealing with these annoying housemates.
-
Not Synced
Just like in the comic, Godai tends to fantasize
about putting the mack on his landlord,
-
Not Synced
but he's too scared to do anything.
-
Not Synced
The main goal of the game revolves actually
around trying to look at that picture you see
-
Not Synced
on the left hand side of the screen,
believe it or not.
-
Not Synced
And, you know, like a lot of these sorts
of things, your goal is kind of vague
-
Not Synced
and you make progress
in seemingly random ways
-
Not Synced
but the art is good, the music is decent,
so it's still a lot better than some of the awful,
-
Not Synced
uh, the other awful Adventure games we've seen.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
Hudson was, of course, the
co-creator of the PC Engine
-
Not Synced
and they published all the console's
games in Japan for about the first year.
-
Not Synced
But by this point, they are outnumbered
by third party publishers (at least in Japan).
-
Not Synced
This is the first of three Hudson-published
games today, Power League II
-
Not Synced
a baseball game, of course, and the
sequel to the first Power League game,
-
Not Synced
which was released about
14 months before this one.
-
Not Synced
There are a plethora of modes here
- typical stuff:
-
Not Synced
Single Game mode, a Penant Mode, All Star
(nothing we haven't seen before).
-
Not Synced
Now, the first Power League game
got a U.S. release, under the name
-
Not Synced
"World Class Baseball".
-
Not Synced
Power League II was never
released outside of Japan, though.
-
Not Synced
In fact, there are six
Power League games on the PC Engine
-
Not Synced
and the first one was the only one
to get a non-Japanese release.
-
Not Synced
Naturally, this looks and feels a lot
like the first Power League game.
-
Not Synced
If we look at the two back to back,
we see the sprites have been changed a bit,
-
Not Synced
but both games look very similar
(with one exception).
-
Not Synced
In the first game, after the batter got a hit,
it showed the outfield straight down,
-
Not Synced
with the uh, camera's line of sight
being perpendicular to the ground,
-
Not Synced
much like the, uh, Sega Genesis', uh,
sports games, like Tommy Lasorda Baseball.
-
Not Synced
Power League II uses a much
more traditional 45 degree angle
-
Not Synced
(looking sort of down and out over the field).
-
Not Synced
As always, playing against the CPU is tricky.
-
Not Synced
There's certainly a way to strike
out the CPU, but I didn't find it.
-
Not Synced
Generally the CPU would get a good powerful
hit against anything I would throw at it.
-
Not Synced
When I was at the bat, I'd get lots of fly balls
-
Not Synced
(and, uh, the computer would actually
catch these with absolute 100% accuracy)
-
Not Synced
as well as tons of foul balls
-
Not Synced
(like, about 4 out of 5 hits would
be a foul ...or just really weak hits).
-
Not Synced
Of course you have to play these things for a
little while to sorta' get, you know, the feel to them
-
Not Synced
and I didn't play it long enough to actually,
you know, get very good at this thing.
-
Not Synced
So, Power League II is
(just like its predecessor)
-
Not Synced
a sharp-looking baseball game that
doesn't really stand out in any way,
-
Not Synced
other than its, you know,
nice looking graphics.
-
Not Synced
And we will get to see four more of
these during the life of the console.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
Our third PC Engine game,
from Naxat (a.k.a. Taxan)
-
Not Synced
who had previously released the, uh,
great pinball game, "Alien Crush"
-
Not Synced
as well as a golf game.
Now, we have a pool game from them.
-
Not Synced
Break In, featuring
Simulation, Action, Technique
-
Not Synced
Geez! is this an instructional sex game?
-
Not Synced
Simulation is sort of a tournament mode,
Action is just like one-off, uh, playing a game,
-
Not Synced
and Technique is like a
tutorial practice mode deal.
-
Not Synced
Break In is pretty generous with
the types of games you can play.
-
Not Synced
For example, you have, uh, Yotsudama
-
Not Synced
(a four ball game that's played
on a table with no pockets
-
Not Synced
and doesn't really resemble
normal pool that much)
-
Not Synced
and "Bowliards", which appears to be
a, uh, (actually is misspelled here)
-
Not Synced
is sort of a hybrid between
bowling and billiards.
-
Not Synced
Hmm! Yes, I would like some nice shiny oranges and a glass of... orange soda? ...or maybe a big glass of [???]?
-
Not Synced
Man, we're gonna' get f---ed up
on that [???] there.
-
Not Synced
Lots of options, here.
Choose singles versus doubles,
-
Not Synced
who is controlled by computer
and who is controlled by... "Man"
-
Not Synced
(Sorry, ladies! This is a man's game.)
Pick a character,
-
Not Synced
(choose from either seven
men characters or "Woman")
-
Not Synced
"Dragon"!? Come on!
This guy's hobby is golf?
-
Not Synced
I'm surprised it's not...
you know... Billiards.
-
Not Synced
Actually, I'm kidding.
There are seven female characters as well.
-
Not Synced
Hmm! I like Emmy's dumb '80s fashion and,
uh, Sophia's, sort of, adorable geek chic
-
Not Synced
but really, uh, Sigrid, the boozy
actress seems like the coolest to me.
-
Not Synced
So picking a card determines who breaks.
-
Not Synced
Now, when you actually get ready to
shoot a va... shoot the ball, here,
-
Not Synced
you have a great deal of control, much
like the typical golf games of this era.
-
Not Synced
You have this image ball concept
-
Not Synced
(not something I've seen
in pool games prior to this)
-
Not Synced
CPU players are generally
decent but not 100% perfect,
-
Not Synced
which is a nice switch from the
various baseball games we've seen.
-
Not Synced
Franky's pretty cool, but I
think that mustache is fake.
-
Not Synced
Like a lot of other PC Engine games,
Break In has some pretty chill music.
-
Not Synced
Now, this is the Technique part.
(I'm trying to learn trick shots.)
-
Not Synced
Good luck.
-
Not Synced
We've only seen a few pool games
throughout the Chron series.
-
Not Synced
I still kinda like Compile's nutty "Lunar Pool"
game the best (which was on the N.E.S.)
-
Not Synced
but among sort of like regular serious pool
games, "Break In" is definitely one of the slickest.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
Whoa-hoa! Did I load up a Famicom
game by mistake? What is this?
-
Not Synced
Well, it's yet another Capcom arcade port
(and we're not really getting top tier Capcom
-
Not Synced
stuff here).
-
Not Synced
The MegaDrive gets "Ghouls and Ghosts"
and the PC Engine gets "F-1 Dream".
-
Not Synced
There's a bit of a story here.
-
Not Synced
F-1 Dream is one of those
career type racing games.
-
Not Synced
Alright, so let's fire up
some F-1 racing action.
-
Not Synced
Wait. What's going on, here?
These are not F-1 cars.
-
Not Synced
This is apparently kind of a prologue
to the main F-1 racing game.
-
Not Synced
Your car is super lame
(and I'm sure there's no way to win).
-
Not Synced
Anyway, the original F-1 Dream was a 1988
arcade game, which used the likenesses of
-
Not Synced
real Formula 1 drivers in the intro.
-
Not Synced
It's a pretty basic top-down racer.
-
Not Synced
I guess there was still, like, some sort of
demand for this kinda thing in the late '80s
-
Not Synced
(I don't know why.)
-
Not Synced
One funny touch was, if you smack into the
guardrails near spectators, they all go running
-
Not Synced
hysterically.
-
Not Synced
Right, so I'll fill you in on the basics of F-1 Dream.
-
Not Synced
This is one of those racing games where
you collect money for racing and then
-
Not Synced
use it to buy upgrades for your car
(which starts out super shitty).
-
Not Synced
First, you actually need to
hire guys to work on your car.
-
Not Synced
Here, I'm, uh, hiring a tire guy
and an engine guy.
-
Not Synced
After paying these dudes, I have enough
money left to put some better tires on
-
Not Synced
my car and then it's off to the F-1 race!
-
Not Synced
(Well, this is technically the tr... time trial
but the actual race is up next.)
-
Not Synced
So, you just sorta cruise around the track
and, uh, (in order to qualify for the race)
-
Not Synced
however there's a couple things about this
type of game that drives me crazy
-
Not Synced
(namely the controls).
-
Not Synced
I've seen this in other Japanese
top-down racing games on the Famicom
-
Not Synced
but it drives me nuts here as well.
-
Not Synced
The controls are not from the perspective
of the driver, but from the viewpoint of the
-
Not Synced
game's camera (meaning that if you're
pointed up and wanna turn right, you
-
Not Synced
press Right on the directional pad -
which makes sense so far - but if
-
Not Synced
you're facing down (towards the bottom
of the screen) and you wanna turn the
-
Not Synced
vehicle right, you press Left, because the vehicle's
right is towards the left-hand side of the screen.
-
Not Synced
This tends to confuse me, since we usually
think of, you know, driving from the driver's
-
Not Synced
point of view, especially when I'm heading
towards the bottom of the screen and drift
-
Not Synced
towards the side of the road, trying to correct
myself will usually result in me driving off the
-
Not Synced
road, since it feels to me like
the controls are reversed.
-
Not Synced
You start bringing in money pretty quickly
(even for doing poorly) and you will slowly
-
Not Synced
be able to improve your vehicle.
-
Not Synced
Among other things, if the car gets damaged
too much, it'll explode in a rather cool fashion
-
Not Synced
and you'll get a Game Over.
-
Not Synced
Beyond that, there's really not
that much to say about F-1 Dream.
-
Not Synced
We've already seen a lot
of games like this already.
-
Not Synced
We saw a much more creative take on a
career racing game last time, with Namco's
-
Not Synced
Final Lap Twin.
-
Not Synced
Quite frankly, the most distinguishing thing
about F-1 Dream is just how appallingly
-
Not Synced
last-generation the graphics look.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]
-
Not Synced
So, after taking in that weird looking box cover,
you really should pause this and take a moment
-
Not Synced
to read this batshit insane intro, here.
-
Not Synced
It's about, uh, finding mysterious fortunes
and "Busters" (uh, "the name..." for "...people
-
Not Synced
we call... fortune hunters".
-
Not Synced
Their "historic journey" is to get "FISA"
("called legend by the people"). Hmm.
-
Not Synced
The "one person..." who
"...can make it real ...
-
Not Synced
has got to be billionet and radical,
physically and mentally"
-
Not Synced
and "Yes, you are the one!"
-
Not Synced
One of the great things about doing a
series like this is you find shit that
-
Not Synced
doesn't seem like it has any reason to
exist (for example, "Rock On").
-
Not Synced
This is the second game from publisher,
Big Club and developer Manjyudo.
-
Not Synced
They had released a game in June called
"Jinmu Denshō Yaksa" (covered in
-
Not Synced
Chronturbo 4) which took a character
from a PC-88 game and stuffed him into
-
Not Synced
a Space Harrier clone.
-
Not Synced
As far as I can tell, "Rock On"
is a completely original game.
-
Not Synced
It's a Shoot-'em-Up (and
not a great one at that).
-
Not Synced
In fact, uh, VG Den (a review site for the
PC Engine and Super Famicom games
-
Not Synced
calls it the worst
Shoot-'em-Up for the console.
-
Not Synced
I don't know if that's true,
but damn, it sure ain't good.
-
Not Synced
If nothing else, you get a lot of power-ups!
-
Not Synced
So, this looks pretty boring, huh?
-
Not Synced
Well, I guess there's a couple
things we can say about this.
-
Not Synced
First of all, the power-up
system is a little different.
-
Not Synced
You can carry three different special
weapons at once, though none of them
-
Not Synced
display even the slightest
amount of creativity.
-
Not Synced
There's the three way shot, the laser
(you know, the one where you shoot
-
Not Synced
both directions vertically, one where you
shoot both directions horizontally).
-
Not Synced
Use the Start button to move between them
but there's no Pause feature in the game,
-
Not Synced
meaning you have to switch weapons on the
fly (unlike in Side Arms) which is, you know, kind of a pain.
-
Not Synced
Rock On uses kind of like a cute pudgy design
style; your ship looks a little bit like Opa-Opa.
-
Not Synced
One annoying factor here are these warps.
-
Not Synced
They actually send you back to the
beginning of a level if you... if you
-
Not Synced
don't know what they are
and accidentally go into one.
-
Not Synced
I don't know much about the developer
Manjyodo, except they made a handful
-
Not Synced
of PC Engine games and were mostly involved in importing/distributing arcade games.
-
Not Synced
As of 1998, their website was still up,
but all it had was listings of arcade
-
Not Synced
cabinets for sale, along with
commercial boats (like, big boats).
-
Not Synced
For example, they were selling
an 11 million cargo boat.
-
Not Synced
There's really nothing interesting
or exciting or creative here.
-
Not Synced
In fact, uh, this boss is ripped right
out R-Type. (the nerve!)
-
Not Synced
Instead of points, you get money,
though I never did see a shop or
-
Not Synced
anything to spend the money in.
-
Not Synced
I love the way the interface at the bottom
actually gets covered up by background objects.
-
Not Synced
I haven't seen this happen in other games
on the console, so I assume it's a problem
-
Not Synced
with the game, itself, not the emulation.
-
Not Synced
So we're definitely scraping
the bottom of the barrel, here.
-
Not Synced
It's a real puzzler, this one is, and I still
have no idea why it's called, "Rock On".
-
Not Synced
Oh, hey! One important thing
happened in August 1989.
-
Not Synced
The TurboGraphx 16 was released in
the United States (purportedly debuting
-
Not Synced
on August 29th) though as was often the
case, it was apparently a limited launch
-
Not Synced
(just in New York and California).
-
Not Synced
And, while Hudson was the most prolific
publisher for the system in Japan, almost
-
Not Synced
all the games, here in the U.S. were
released by NEC, themselves.
-
Not Synced
With NEC's U.S. headquarters apparently
being the (I'm sure very lovely) town of
-
Not Synced
Woodale, Illinois.
-
Not Synced
The console itself was redesigned
quite a bit and turned out quite a
-
Not Synced
bit larger than the PC Engine.
-
Not Synced
Uh... It had a pretty decent selection
of launch titles, actually.
-
Not Synced
Aside from, of course,
"Keith Courage in Alpha Zones"
-
Not Synced
which was the pack-in game,
there was "R-Type", "Legendary Axe",
-
Not Synced
uh, "Alien Crush", and "Dungeon Explorer".
-
Not Synced
along with the ubiquitous golf and racing
games, "Power Golf" and "Victory Run"
-
Not Synced
Rounding it out was two Beat-'em-Ups,
"Vigilante" and "China Warrior"
-
Not Synced
(a.k.a. "The Kung Fu", which was the first
game released for the system in Japan.
-
Not Synced
So, eight games, which was actually a pretty
hardy, uh, launch lineup, for back then.
-
Not Synced
Some sources say "Blazing Lasers" was a
launch title, but upon further inspection,
-
Not Synced
this appears to be false.
-
Not Synced
Here's an ad from GamePro in late 1989
(not as cool looking as the Genesis ads).
-
Not Synced
The TurboBooster, by the way, was an
add-on that allowed for a composite video
-
Not Synced
output and stereo sound, instead
of the standard R.F. connection.
-
Not Synced
The TurboCD is featured in the ad,
even though that would actually
-
Not Synced
not come out until later in 1990.
-
Not Synced
As you'll recall, the TurboGraphx came
out, um, in the U.S. about, uh, two
-
Not Synced
weeks after the Genesis, so this was
sort of like the first battle in the
-
Not Synced
16-bit wars, with the still-somewhat
mysterious Super Famicom lurking
-
Not Synced
somewhere in the wings
in... in the... the future.
-
Not Synced
E.G.M. did quite a bit of coverage on the
new PC Engine, along with lots of Sega
-
Not Synced
coverage as well.
-
Not Synced
The Genesis was ten dollars
cheaper than the TurboGraphx
-
Not Synced
(a hundred and ninety
instead of two hundred)
-
Not Synced
and, uh, both were noticeably cheaper than
either the N.E.S. or the Master System
-
Not Synced
with inflation factored in.
-
Not Synced
While Sega obviously overtook NEC eventually
in late 1989 the 16-bit playing field appeared
-
Not Synced
to be, uh, completely up for grabs.
-
Not Synced
[ Techno music ]