Memories of PC Engine Past

18 02 2012

As I’ve said before, I got into video games with the TurboGrafx, known as the PC Engine in Japan.  Because the system wasn’t popular in America it died quickly, leaving gamers high and dry.  Luckily, the PC Engine continued to thrive in Japan and even more luckily American machines could play Japanese games.  I used to go to a little independent game store that carried new and used imported games.  That’s where I got my PC Engine fix; but unless you knew to ask them if they could get a specific title, you selection was regulated to the fancy of the guy who did the ordering.   It was really difficult to get information on what was available for the machine, the internet like we have now didn’t exist back then.  So we had to rely on what little information trickled through magazines, such as GameFan, or we had to import video game magazines from Japan, which is what I did.  There were two different magazines I would read, PC Engine Fan and Dengeki PC Engine.  I didn’t make a distinction between the two, they both gave me the information I craved, and they both cost the same: $16.

Somewhere along the way between then and now, I got rid of all my PC Engine magazines.  That’s something I really regret now because I really do like learning about the history of the system and it’s games; plus, old individual copies of those two $16 magazines now cost $25 each, when you can find them.  Ouch.  That’s why I was so pleased to have won this on Yahoo! Auctions for only ¥500 ($6.30).

 

 

What’s really cool for me is that back in May of 1996, I had this issue.  Bought it brand new for $16.  Fast forward to now to when this magazine arrived in the mail last week, it was like I had just looked at it yesterday.  The gap of 16 years was closed in an instant.  So let’s take a look inside Dengeki PC Engine from May, 1996, and I’ll share some memories with you.  As always, you can click on the individual images to enlarge them.

 

List of most wanted games. Classmates 2 is in the #1 spot, followed by Megami Paradise II, Blue Breaker, Tengai Makyo III Namida, Dragon Knight 4, etc. It's interesting to note that the number 7 game was never released.

Ad for the adult-oriented overhead shooter Steam Heart's for the PC Engine.

Classmates 2 for the PC-FX is the featured game of the month.

Super Real Mahjong Part 5 FX was also heavily featured. I didn't remember the magazine having so much nudity in it, but it's all over this issue. Must be why I liked it.

There's also a feature on Puyo Puyo Tsu CD, one of the last games released for the PC Engine. It's quite expensive now.

There's a lovely 4 page spread for Steam Heart's, a game I bought new when it was released. Fond memories of that one, and although it's considered an adult title, the only really adult thing about it is what's said in-between levels.

I tried to import Virgin Dream when it came out, but no one could get it for me. I had to wait 15 years until I found a copy in Japan. Let me tell you, it was totally worth it- Virgin Dream is one of the best SLG on the PC Engine. I think this was the write up that made me want the game.

This is talking about a recently announced game, Tyoushin Heiki Zeroigar. It was the only shooter released for the PCFX. Note that for all the FX coverage, the pictures show are from the cut scenes, not screenshots of the actual gameplay. That's usually a bad sign.

Here are the first pictures of Minimum Nanonic, a game that ended up being mostly voice and pictures.

Here's the tips and tricks section. I like the fact that they paid readers for new game tricks. There's a heavy emphasis on Tokimeki Card Paradise here, an adult poker game for the PC-FX.

Finally, here's what you could send in to win. The top prize is an electronic dictionary... whee!

 

This issue of Dengeki PC Engine gives a nice window into the end of the PC Engine era and the beginning of the PC-FX era, which was essentially stillborn.  There was so little content being released at this time that half of the magazine focuses on what’s coming out in arcades, as well as what’s hot on the Sega Saturn.  It’s pretty sad when you get to that point that a magazine that focuses on a specific system starts nudging people over to a competing machine.  The reason, of course, was that this issue is the last issue of Dengeki PC Engine.


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IMPRESSIONS: New Love Plus

16 02 2012

On Valentine’s Day, the 800 pound gorilla of dating games dropped on the Nintendo 3DS.

 

As opposed to other dating games available in Japan, the Love Plus series has you interact with the objects of your affection directly; that is to say, in the game you play as yourself and the girls play themselves.  There are three prospective love interested that you’ll eventually whittle out to the one you want to date.  How is that different than other games?  Well, take a typical popular dating game series like Tokimeki Memorial (in Japan, they’re actually called love simulations).  In Tokimeki you play a high schooler that you can name as yourself, or you could call him Señor Mustachio- it doesn’t matter.  As you play through the school year, you meet various girls and attempt to woo them by taking them on dates, buying them presents, and saying the right things to them through a series of selectable questions and answers.  It’s all very inside the box.

 

Tokimeki Memorial 4, the latest in the series, was released for the PSP. The guy in the middle is Señor Mustachio.

 

Love Plus, on the other hand, is about having a real life relationship with a girl living inside your 3DS.  It stays within the box (Japanese games have been very close-minded as of late) but enables you to directly interact with the girls through the use of camera, motion sensor, and microphone.  New Love Plus is the third in the series, the other two games having been released for the old, vanilla, Nintendo DS.   Past games went over so big that vacations spots offered package trips for you and your handheld love.  Cafes in Tokyo offered tables for two… that is, for you and your Nintendo.  It was big.

 

These are actual places you can take your not-actal virtual girlfriend on a date.

 

So how big exactly was yesterday’s release of New Love Plus?  I read reports on the internet of people waiting in line to get the game.  People sent me pictures of fans standing outside of various 7-11 convenience stores to get Valentine’s Day chocolates that were supposedly from their digital love.  But I’m in Japan, and I didn’t see any of that.  It was business as usual at the 7-11 stores I went to.  When I went to pick up my copy of the game, they weren’t even on the shelf, they were tucked away in back.  There was no mad rush.  Japanese people are not forsaking real life relationships in favor of escaping into the perfect silicon girl.  Those pictures you see, those reports that you read… those things happen in Akihabara, and weird people hang out in Akihabara.  That area is a small, maybe five or 6 blocks of Tokyo, and there are literally thousands of different places you can get a game when it’s released in Tokyo.  The only time I’ve ever seen any sort of excitement in the general public for a game in the last 4 years was when Nintendo released Pokemon White and Black.  That day there was an unusual amount of people at the electronics store.  Yesterday, there was not.  That’s not to say that New Love Plus isn’t going to be a hit… I’m sure it’ll debut in the #1 spot when the game rankings are released.  But it’s important for you to remember that what you see on the internet isn’t necessarily real or indicative of how the general populous behaves as a whole.

This video starts from zero… me popping in the game.  I had no idea that it would kick off with a 20-minute install.  But don’t fear!  In the interest of journalism I filmed the whole thing.  From there it asks you to do the typical “enter your name, enter your blood type, etc.”  but then deviates into the game asking how to pronounce your name and asking you where you live in the real world.  This is a cool feature because the girls will actually say whatever you told the game your name was.  It also opens a whole can of worms… I’ll let you think about what that might be.   Another interesting thing is that it asks you to hold the system up to your face so it can do some facial recognition thingy.  No idea how that comes into play.  From there, New Love Plus seems similar to other dating sims at first.  Once again it’s your first day of high school, you walk about town and meet people including your first prospective love interest.  As the first few days of school progress you meet the other girls, and that’s where the game takes off.

 

 

One of the things I liked about New Love Plus was that the system for organizing your day is very self explanatory.  In this kind of game, you have to choose what you’re going to do every day.  This effects your in game stats that make you more attractive to the girls, or less desirable to the girls in the game.  If you choose to study all day, every day, then your intelligence stat will be very high, but your health and physical shape stats will be very low.  If you exercise all the time your physical stat will skyrocket, but you’ll end up dumb as a rock.  If you just goof off and attend to your hobbies, you’ll become an otaku and end up with no girl what-so-ever.  New Love Plus tells you how every choice you make in your scheduling will effect your other stats, thus making it a whole lot easier to make decisions.  Kudos to that- there’s been many a dating sim where I randomly chose to do things guessing at what it would do.  That problem does not exist here.

The 3D in the game is very nice and immersive, as are the way the characters are presented.  Nothing looks like it’s made of polygons, and the girls move very naturally.  It’s obvious that Konami spent a lot of time to get this right.  Another thing that surprised me is that the girls mouths move accurately when they speak.  This is a change from the typical Japanese way of doing things.  If you’ve ever seen any anime, you’ll know that people’s mouths just open and close when they speak, words are not formed by lips.  That’s typical in games as well.  To continue with the anime analogy, New Love Plus goes the Akira route in that the girls lips actually form the words they’re saying, adding a since of reality to the game.  It’s those little touches that set this game out from the crowd.

I’ll have more on New Love Plus as I get further into the game and uncover it’s nuances.  In the meantime, here’s a little look inside the instruction book.

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HardOffing Episode 2

15 02 2012

Well, I meant to have a big New Love Plus article in this spot; but the video is taking much longer than I anticipated to upload.  1080p HD always takes a long time.  In the meantime, please enjoy my next episode of HardOffing.


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Happy New Love Plus Day!

14 02 2012

That’s right… February 14th is New Love Plus Day in Japan.  Ok, it’s also Valentine’s Day; but for gaming geeks across the country, it’s the day where they either get a new virtual girlfriend, or transfer their old virtual heartthrob into the 3D world.

It’s morning now, so I’ll have more as the day unfolds…


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Sony Bringing the Sexy Back

12 02 2012

In Japan, there’s a divide between console gamers and computer gamers; but it’s different than the rapidly closing gap that exists in America.  In the States, games made for home gaming consoles and games made for the personal computer are becoming close to identical; in Japan, nothing could be further from it.  See, Japanese computer games are 95% adult oriented, or eroge [eh-row-geh].  Although some eroge have been released on consoles past, their existence on a modern mainstream home console by one of the big boys has been virtually non-existent, at least in their original form.  Games such as Dokyusei, To Heart 1 & 2, and most recently Time Leap have all appeared on a home gaming box, but in a severely neutered fashion.  Sex scenes are cut, hemlines are lowered, and usually most of the suggestive stuff has been kept to dialog, save for a few harmless panty shots.  That is, until now.

 

 

Leave it to Sony to fire the first shot in the coming console ecchi taisen (pervert wars) with たっち、しよっ！ ～Love Application～ (Let’s Touch!  Love Application).  It’s not an adult game, per se, as in it doesn’t have out-and-out sex, and it doesn’t have graphic nudity (from what I can tell); but for a company that started out their console policy for the original Playstation with a ban on anything remotely looking even close to adult in nature, this is a total 180.

Here’s the cool thing:  I think behind all the innuendo and eye candy, the game actually looks good.

 

 

OK, who am I fooling; I’m interested in Let’s Touch! wholly based on the innuendo and eye candy.  That’s not so say that the game isn’t going to be great.  It’s coming from Compile Heart, the studio behind the Hyperdimension Neptunia series of games, and those have been a fun little distraction.

The one thing that troubles me about Let’s Touch! is that there are 14 different preorder bonuses that come with the game.  So the hardest of Let’s Touch! Isn’t going to be if I pick up the limited or standard edition of the game; but rather where I buy the game from-  that’s a first for me.

 

Which ever will I choose?

 

Interestingly enough, this kind of thing has been a long time coming.  Much like violence in games, sex in games has been slowly inching its way into the mainstream in Japan.  Even Nintendo has seen it fit to give the go ahead to such sexually charged games as Senran Kagura and If I Was Locked in a Room with a Girl, I’d ◯◯◯.  I, for one, have a much harder time accepting extreme violence in games over sex.  If given the choice to either pretend to kill someone over and over or look at boobs, I’ll take latter.


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I’m Writing for GameFan Magazine

12 02 2012

As if my plate wasn’t full enough getting Another Take on Catherine out the door and ramping up production on Game Girls Go!, I’ve taken on another responsibility:  I am now the Japanese correspondent for GameFan Magazine.

Yes, it’s true… the death of magazines have been greatly overblown.  Walk into your local convenience store, grocer, or bookseller and you can see that.  The day those racks are empty is the day that magazines are dead.

 

I see dead periodicals.

 

The number one thing people say when I tell them about the gig is “They’re still around?” or something similar.

 

See what I mean?

 

So, yes, GameFan is still around; or more accurately, they’re back.  See, GameFan was a major video game magazine player back in 1990’s America… then they went away.  Now they exist again.  It’s that simple.

 

 

How did this come to pass?  Well, Happy Chicken ran an ad in issue 7 of GameFan, and that lead to conversations with Dave “Mr. GameFan” Halverson, James “Why Didn’t You Include Me in Your Blog Post” Bacon, and the rest of the crew that ended with me being invited on board.  It actually wasn’t a hard decision for me as I grew up in the 90’s reading GameFan, and have always credited them with sparking my interest in Japanese games.  So in a way, it’s like returning a favor.  My hope is that my reporting on gaming life in Japan will spark some other folk’s interest in import gaming.

So start reading me in GameFan starting in issue 8.   And while you’re waiting for that, why not like them on Facebook?  Hopefully this will be an rewarding adventure for us all!


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Podcasting

9 02 2012

The lovely Mr. Retro Nick from jolly ‘ol England invited me to be a guest on his podcast, Tune In Game In.  I discuss what gaming’s like in Japan and various retro this and that.  Because of the time difference between Japan and the UK, it required me to be ready to go at 4am; but I forgot to set my alarm and so I woke up to the phone ringing.  A lovely way to start the day.  So if you’ve got a spare hour or two, and want to know what I sound like when I first wake up, you might want to give it a listen.  You can catch it for free on iTunes (just search Tune In Game In under Podcasts) or you can click here to listen through your browser.


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Photo Kano Finally Released

8 02 2012

After many delays and countless magazine ads, フォトカノ, or Photo Kano in English, for the PlayStation Portable has finally seen the light of day.  It actually got to the point where I thought that it wasn’t going to be released… sounds like a certain Catherine movie… hummmm.

Variations of this ad have been running FOREVER ><

 

Photo Kano is a dating sim with a twist.  In this day and age you gotta have a gimmick to move the game, Kano’s being that the game revolves around photography, and that’s what drew my interest.  I mean, why not kick back after a day of filming girls in bikinis and various costumes by playing a game where you take pictures of girls in bikinis and various costumes, right?  First edition copies of the game come with a nendoroid figure and a poster.

 

 

I think it’s interesting that the game store closest to where I live received an unequal amount of posters and figures.  For the seven copies of Photo Kano that they had, there were six posters and only four figures.  Three people are going home disappointed, and one guy is going home out of luck.

 

Someone at the factory is bad with math.

 

The marketing for Photo Kano has been fairly strong.  It’s on the cover of Famitsu, as well as having a separate mook available that have a bonus DVD and a bunch of posters and phone strap for Y3990 ($52).  I passed on that.  The Famitsu review staff gave Photo Kano 9’s across the board, for a total score of 36/40, which is quite unusual for a game of this genre.   That also piqued my interest.

 

Famitsu Cover = Sales

 

While I wouldn’t call myself a dating sim fan, I have played a few in the past.  Back in the day I messed around with games such as Tokimeki Memorial, Dokyusei, Kakyusei, and Sentimental Graffiti before I found one that actually appealed to me in Tokimeki Memorial 2.  I actually hold Tokimemo 2 as one of my favorite games of all time, and like I said, I’m not a big fan of dating sims.

From the couple of hours I’ve spent messing around with Photo Kano, I get the feeling why it garnered such high scores.  The game feels fun and light with a heavy sprinkling of humor.  The types of girls you woo range from typical dating sim fare (i.e. the brainy one, the sporty one, the popular one, the one who’s fixated on marmalade, etc.) to more modern anime inspired girls such as Hikari Sanehara who is obviously heavily drawn from Yuki Nagato from the series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  I also get the creepy vibe that the protagonist’s younger sister is on the table as a love interest.  In any case, the developers have set her up as comic relief, and to some extent an object of lust.  My only beef with the game comes right at the beginning.  It takes a full hour of gameplay before you get to the first save point.  Additionally, the game reminds you to be using a memory stick that’s 4GB or larger, because not only does the game install to your memory card, it also saves all the pictures you take throughout the game as well.  Sounds Vita-esque.

For those interested, I’ve taken the time to consolidate some of the best moments of Day 1 in the game.  I particularly enjoy the little song and dance number that comes early on.  Apparently there are many mini-games like that sprinkled throughout:

For those of you who want the full Photo Kano experience, here’s a video of the entire first day in the game, all the way from the opening movie until the first save point.

Photo Kano is currently available in Japan and will be released in America when hell freezes over.


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Hyrule Historia 2nd in Hand

4 02 2012

A second printing of Nintendo’s much vaunted Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia has finally hit the shelves in Japan, thus finding its way into my grubby little hands.

The second printing is dated February 1, 2012.

My local bookseller had a small stack of the book.  I’ll admit I was excited to get it, if only for the promise of early 8 and 16-bit artworks and designs that Nintendo would be willing to share.  In that vein, I was a little disappointed.

 

 

When you open the book, the first thing that greets you is this two page spread celebrating the release of Link’s latest adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii.  That surprised me a bit; I expected that the book would be laid out chronologically, starting with The Legend of Zelda from 1986 for the Famicom and ending with the Nintendo DS and Wii games.  Instead, Nintendo has seen fit to muddle it all around a bit, much like they’ve done with the greatly debated Zelda timeline.  There’s a far greater amount of information and artwork starting with the game Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for the Game Cube up through Skyward Sword and the DS games Phantom Hourglass and Spirt Tracks than there is for the original game and what followed.  The book is very heavily slanted towards Wind Waker and after. But where Nintendo really dropped the ball was the inclusion (or lack of) of the Broadcast Satellite version of the original Legend of Zelda that was available for the Super Famicom.  That version had greatly upgraded graphics and sound, and more importantly, let you play as either a boy or a girl. Here’s the amount of love Nintendo gave that version of Zelda in Hyrule Historia:

 

And this is zoomed in. It takes up an 8th of a page.

 

That’s it.  No screen shots, no pictures of the only canonized time a girl could be the hero of a Zelda game.  Nothing.  Just a brief explanation that the game existed via the Nintendo Satellaview, and a picture of the unit.  Not even a picture of the game.  Boo, Nintendo, boo.

I was able to find some cool stuff, and some just plain wide stuff inside, however.  This is cool:

 

The Translated Hyrulian Alphabet

 

Now you can translate all the signs in Zelda games.  All you have to do is covert the Hyrulian alphabet to Japanese and then translate the Japanese to english.  Easy as pie.  Master this and not only can you be trilingual, you’ll be able to give those guys at the office who speak Klingon a run for their money.

There’s also a section that lists all the games in the series along with data regarding release date and price.  What puzzles me are the pictures they chose to include along with the data:

 

Something(s) seem to be missing...

 

They’ve got a picture the original Nintendo Disk System version of Zelda, along with the the art from the European release of the game.  Missing are the American art and a picture of the Japanese cartridge art where the Game was retitled The Legend of Zelda 1.   The same goes for every release in this section as Nintendo seems to have just randomly chosen what art it would use to represent what.  It’s funny that they mostly refer to European box art as British, they specify which art is from Australian releases, but then they call American box art “overseas”.  Weird.

Here are a few more interesting pictures from the book:

 

Artwork and designs from the original Legend of Zelda.

Original character designs for Link from Zelda II.

Zelda was dangerously close to getting her 80s on. I dig the Triforce earrings, though.

One final thing: I don’t know what they made the cover for this thing out of, but it holds onto fingerprints like you wouldn’t believe.  Every time I touch it, the oil from my fingers sits smooth and sticky on the jacket like I just got done pulling them out of a bag of potato chips.  It does this even after I wash and dry my hands.  I’ll just chalk it up to another mystery in the Legend of Zelda.


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Stuck in My Head

4 02 2012

I was out browsing a local store the other day when this song started playing over their intercom, and now it’s stuck in my head.  No matter what country you’re from, you’re used to hearing music when you shop.  Music permeates our lives.  I remember when I was a kid and clothing stores used to play real mellow 70′s Muzak.  When I hear it today I’m taken back to being about 7, standing in a Pegues department store looking at coats.  Back then If you would have told me that in 2012 department stores would be playing this kind of thing, I would have called you a liar, or poopy head, or whatever 7 year-olds say.


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