ARETHA（アレサ）

ARETHA is a GAMEBOY RPG that came out in late 1990, and the English spelling of the title can't help but make me think of Urethra. And if a tube full of piss isn't the best way to describe this game, I don't know what is.

Yes, that's the official title

Putting aside the questionable decision to romanize "Aresa" as ARETHA, one might certainly be tempted to buy this game based on the cover. I suppose it did well enough to spawn a whole series?

This game did come out only one year after the GAMEBOY's launch but I've played enough RPGs on the GAMEBOY to make a fair comparison. Heck, the first SaGa game came out almost a year before and was way better than this headache. It had amazing innovative features like being able to talk to NPCs in the same screen! 

If only I could see the dialogue IN THE GAME...MIND BLOW

I vaguely remember finishing this game on an Anbernic GAMEBOY shaped device in a stupor while shoved in what seems like ever shrinking economy seats on a plane. This year, I went a little crazy with Chinese Android handhelds because I freaked out about tariffs. BTW, speaking of tariffs, every time I post about how shit the world has become, it seems like we figure out a way to make things even worse.

GOOD JOB MERICA! WE DID IT!!!

Anyway, the only thing that motivated me to finish this game was being stuck in a metal box thousands of feet above the ground. The mechanics are so broken, I couldn't even enjoy old school grinding.

If you fight too many enemies, they disappear until you enter a new area. Then it changes to new enemies that more often than not will totally destroy you. And since the previous guys disappeared, there's no way to grind on weaker enemies.

Thank god for save states because there were times I had to keep retrying to get less enemies that I could handle because multiple enemies were a death sentence. They can pound on you for multiple consecutive turns without giving you a chance to do jack.

I can never decide which color scheme to use with GB games...

The game was filled with the usual fetch quests but often with weird and very expensive random items you had to buy in towns.

The main character pops in at random times and reminds you what to do but at some point, I missed giving something to someone and I was almost ready to give up even following a guide.

Thanks for only telling me the obvious shit!

The story could have been kind of interesting but there were so many fetch quests, I literally had no clue what was happening. Not to mention weird and baffling game design decisions for instance, the inn keeper would often be out so you just have to go back in and out a few times. What's the fucking point?!

Where's the fucking manager?? I'm going to change my character's name to Karen

Your grandpa heals you for free at the start but of course that doesn't last long. You can withdraw some money from an ATM (huh?) like 30000 pera to start. But the money scale was so wack, I didn't even feel like counting all the zeros for stuff that costs 26500000 pera or whatever. Huh, where's the commas, you ask? Lol, what you think this is PS5?

Grandpa looks younger than me, fuck I'm old 

The menus and UI are just shit as well. I guess I can't be too harsh. I can only hope that one day, somebody can figure out how to show you which weapon is for who and whether it's better than what you have equipped or what each items do. I can dream, can't I?

No idea how much Healing B is better than A and no I don't give a fuck

At least according to the guide, DEF actually has no effect on your damage. It said don't waste money on armor so I guess that's one less thing to worry about. Innovation!!

The music is pretty mediocre, like I've heard worse but the GAMEBOY already demonstrated how good music can be on the device with games from 1989 and it's not up to par. Yeah, I've heard worse when it comes to game music so it's ok, I suppose? You spend most of the time hearing only a few of these tracks though so it gets old pretty fast.

It has music, so yeah... it's there.

I followed the guide and fast forwarded through until I got to the climax final end, which consisted of fighting like ~15 (or so I lost count) regular enemies you encountered already and was blissly freed from ever having to play this game again. Yes, you read that right, you don't even fight the final boss.

Yeah, I finished this game... Sigh I dunno man, I'm dumb

Score: 1 "I'd rather pay tariffs than play this shit (JK, China's supposed to pay right? Still waiting for the check)" out of 5

I can only hope playing this game was worth it as maybe the rest of the series is amazing (doubt). Not that I remember the story anyway.

I love quirky mechanics as much as the next person when it works but there's a fine line between quirky and broken. Actually no, this game just sucks, slightly better than Avalon Code, but that's not saying much.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Dragon Knight II（ドラゴンナイトII）

You know, these are complicated times and I don't think I'm alone in thinking everything is going down the shitter in more ways than one. But oh well, life goes on, and there's nothing like a classic DRPG to remind you of the simpler days before hawk tuah crypto scams or trying to make rent in this economy. If you're looking to just explore some dungeons while enjoying some old school art, Dragon Knight II will fit the bill perfectly.

The days when you didn't have to buy no crypto for some hawk tuah

In the second iteration, all the girls from the village have turned into monsters. The cool part of this story setup is as you rescue these girls, the weaker enemies no longer show up in random encounters, which really cuts down on the grind from useless encounters. I played through the PCE-CD version, which features voice acting but cleans up all the nudity. So you can either opt for some pixel boobies on the PC or voice acting and auto-mapping.

Don't expect anything more risqué in the PCE-CD version

For completeness, I took on the burden of also trying out the NSFW PC-98 version. It's pretty much the same except the major difference of what happens when the girls you rescued come visit you at the inn to "thank you". The PC Engine version features more comedic episodes without any actual hanky-panky going on. 

Just a friendly village neighbor stopping by for a chat!

The 18+ version, well let's just say that you're probably safe because this village supposedly doesn't have any young men and well, it's a fantasy world anyway right? So no reason to worry about STDs!

I'm always impressed at how good these early PC games look given that it came out in 1990. In fact, I would argue it looks better than a lot of art these days, notwithstanding all the AI shit recently. Putting aside the seggs, this is a fun and simple DRPG you can finish very quickly especially if you follow a guide. You do also get some party members and one can even use magic, which I've mostly just used to escape the dungeon.

 

Don't remember if the PCE version had panchira but definitely not acceptable "modern standards"

Score:  3 "Does hair color count as DEI?" out of 5

Overall, I just had so much fun, I was tempted to give an above-average 3.5 score but objectively, it's a fun and simple dungeon crawler. It's certainly a good reminder of how people weren't so anal about stupid shit back in the day. I liked it so much, I might even finish the PC-98 version to see the rest of the "action".

Oh, I forgot to mention that there's not a single strong female character in the entire game. Sofia is not nearly obnoxious enough to match up to "modern standards". In fact, the whole premise of the game is literally damsel in distress. Awful game, 0 out of 10! (Courtesy of IGNorant)

If you want to see more boobies, play it yourself

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

In search of GOTY for 1989

While us Americans in 1989 were enjoying the last good Indiana Jones movie (you know, before the aliens anal probed the series), in Japan, the next generation of gaming was heating up with PC Engine picking up momentum and the MEGA DRIVE's first full year on the market. Nintendo however continues to dominate with the Famicom in the middle of its lifecycle while the Disk System started to wind down with only 20 releases. No worries, Nintendo had a new entry up their sleeve: portable gaming.

GAME BOY

If you're old like me, you might have at one point played one of those shitty Tiger Electronics sad excuse of pretending to be a game. Ignoring unplayable shit like that, it's safe to say the GAME BOY was the first portable gaming handheld that had a rich and actually fun library.

Yay, you can still buy this shit (why though?)

Despite never owning a NES nor a Genesis as a kid (no matter how much I begged and cajoled), I did have access to the GAME BOY thanks to my older sibling's arubaito money. She got it for herself but I um... "borrowed it" and played it for way longer than she probably ever did. Ah, the nostalgia of playing Tetris with my buddy head-to-head almost literally with that short ass link cable. I watched the space launch and the other ending so many times, seeing it again immediately brings back those nostalgia tears. I never did figure out what the fuck launching into space had to do with lining up blocks but kids don't sweat the details.

Plot twist: we were distributed compute units for Russia's space program

I think many of us older folks have fond memories of staring at that green screen for hours on end with no backlight and by some amazing coincidence, we're all also probably near-sighted. Super Mario Land was a solid and fun launch title, which I got good enough to beat in an afternoon whenever I was bored. And there were even a couple RPGs in the first year, one of which was Selection: Erabareshi Mono which has the word "select" in two languages for some reason? I did play the English version The Sword of Hope as a kid and vaguely remember wasting hours trying to figure out how to get to the next area. It was a weird RPG/Adventure game hybrid that brings back nostalgia tears that are a bit too salty to consider for GOTY.

Random encounters and puzzles were perhaps not the best combination

I have to say looking back at things in context, the GAME BOY was an amazing piece of technology for its time. Yeah sure, everything is various tones of green but putting the lack of color aside, the sound chip is amazing. Check out some of these rocking tunes!

Makai Toushi Sa·Ga（魔界塔士Sa・Ga）

Release Date: December 12

I played the WonderSwan Color version of the first Saga game. As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same except of course, with you know, color. Localizers fucked up as they often do by calling it The Final Fantasy Legend. No, it has absolutely nothing to do with Final Fantasy. 

It's a pretty simplistic RPG but what can you expect given that it's the first RPG on a portable console (that I know of). It's a cool game and pretty fun especially considering that it came out in the first year of the GAME BOY. The setting is definitely not your normal fantasy RPG, as you can clearly tell from the rocket launcher and chainsaw on the cover. We definitely need more RPGs with modern weapons other than Metal Max.

While I haven't played many GAME BOY games, it's generally because they are too simplistic for my tastes. Being one of 2 RPGs released in the first year, this is definitely my GOTY for the system as it was actually pretty fun even today.

Verdict: GOTY for portable gaming

PC Engine

The PC Engine really started hitting its stride this year, offering what in my mind is undoubtedly the most technically advanced titles. Even super expensive PCs didn't offer CD quality music yet. There are a ton of titles I still need to play through so I'm sure I will be updating this section over the years.

Valis II（ヴァリスII）

Release Date: June 23

Overall, I liked Valis II though parts of it definitely got really frustrating near the end. While I wouldn't say that it's one of the best action games, once again the PCE CD technology shines here so I would say this takes GOTY for Soundtrack until I find something better.

Verdict: GOTY for Soundtrack

Ys I & II（イースI・II）

Release Date: December 21

The first two Ys game on PC were so choppy, I wouldn't really consider them playable. For me, the PCE port is the first platform where it was genuinely fun to play. While I had a blast with the PSP version, it would have been amazing to play this version all the way back in 1989. It's all about the bump for reals. Once you go bump, you never want to go back!

Verdict: GOTY for Action

PC

While I haven't yet had the time to really dive into the Japanese PC88/98 games, Sierra was still pumping out great titles such as Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon and who can forget Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero.

The latter was especially highly regarded for mixing RPG elements into Sierra's classic ADV games and not in a shitty way like The Sword of Hope. I played the heck out of the later VGA remake as a kid and really enjoyed how your character class directly affected how you played the game. However, enough talk about Sierra, there's a new game in town.

SimCity 

SimCity from Maxis was definitely a highlight for yet more childhood nostalgia. To be clear, I was not part of a rich family with a Mac or Amiga so all of my time playing SimCity was the SNES version that came out a couple years later. And to be fair, SimCity 2000 is so much more superior and the Maxis game I spent the most time on.

Wow, this city looks like shit. Greg Abbott, are you playing games again?!

However, SimCity deserves GOTY due to pretty much bringing about an entirely new genre of games. Sure, you can dig up earlier sim games that probably have some aspect of city building but not one that included zoning, connecting power lines, managing traffic, etc., etc. As for me, playing this on the SNES was the gateway to hours of fun from SimAnt and of course, the freaking amazing SimCity 2000. Reticulate some splines, y'all!!!

Verdict: GOTY Overall

Other Games I tried

MOTHER

Release Date: June 23

MOTHER is finally available in English so the Jhipster smugness factor is gone but honestly, I did not enjoy this game at all. It feels limited on the Famicom especially compared to newer systems that were available at this time. GOTY for the category: "Thank god for save states!" Meh.

Verdict: GOTY for being overrated

Dragon Knight（ドラゴンナイト）

Release Date: November 1

Dragon Knight is definitely not a great game, much less GOTY. It's a very simplistic DRPG with a single party member and hardly any depth to the gameplay at all.

Butt (sic) if you think about the graphics, you'd be hard pressed to find anything that would tickle your fancy like this on say the Famicom. I'm a sucker for the retro style and comparing it to other games that came out in 1989, I'm afraid it really is one of the best looking games this year.

Verdict: GOTY for visuals "assets"

Games I plan to try later

FC

がんばれゴエモン2

西村京太郎ミステリー ブルートレイン殺人事件

里見八犬伝

山村美紗サスペンス 京都花の密室殺人事件

マルサの女

スクウェアのトム・ソーヤ

暗黒神話 ヤマトタケル伝説

ヘラクレスの栄光II タイタンの滅亡

ハイドライドIII

スイートホーム

Megadrive

ファンタシースターII 還らざる時の終わりに

ヴァーミリオン

PCE

コブラ 黒竜王の伝説

魔界八犬伝 SHADA

エナジー

凄ノ王伝説

神武伝承

天外魔境 ZIRIA

ニンジャウォーリアーズ

ガンヘッド

めぞん一刻

ワンダーボーイIII モンスター・レアー

鏡の国のレジェンド

ダブルダンジョン

ニュートピア

弁慶外伝

PC88

Emerald Dragon

魔晶伝紀ラ・ヴァルー

Shin Megami Tensei II（真・女神転生II）

I can't believe I wrote about the first Shin Megami Tensei game in 2018. In fact, I can't believe I started this blog in 2015! Jesus, I'm old! Well, it's now 2022 and I finally finished the sequel Shin Megami Tensei II. I've said this before but at this point, I just have to live with the fact that I'll die of old age before I finish every game in my closet. I no longer try to force myself to finish awful games (fuck you Avalon Code) so the fact that I was able to complete this one already means it was enjoyable enough to reach the end.

I'll enjoy SMTV in like 10 years, in the meantime...

Probably my favorite part of the first game was the beginning, talking to your mom and going to the mall. The events in normal Tokyo leading to the apocalypse was fun and pretty much all I remember from the first game.

Remember when everything didn't suck? Oh man, the good ol' days

In this sequel, it's not clear what happened to the first game's characters but apparently they did end up building Tokyo Millenium, which was maybe the Law ending? In any case, you start out as a gladiator with memory loss, which doesn't seem to be the most original start to a story. But no worries, without any spoilers, the story did not disappoint. 

Is it amnesia or... something else? No spoilers on this blog!

Even though 95% of the game consists of filling maps, grinding, and going here and there, you'll read some brief dialogue that drop some bombshell revelations. It is a good reminder that you don't need hours and hours of dialogue to tell a good story though I won't complain if it's voiced by Kana or Ayachi.

Fully voiced remake when? Ahh, it'll probably suck cause it won't be the same (huh?)

As for the gameplay, it's a pretty mixed bag, nothing surprising if you've played the previous games. First of all, the Mag consumption really discourages walking around with demons in your party. I almost always played with just two characters. The only time I felt the need to recruit and fuse demons was when you had to go rescue Hiroko all by your lonesome and to beat Abbadon. You really, really need to fuse a demon with Tarukaja because trust me, I tried to beat him whittling away at his HP on auto mode and gave up after a couple HOURS.

Near the end, you run into enemies where neither swords nor guns work but I just ran away from them. Maybe because I pumped all my points into speed, I had no trouble running away from any enemies that were annoying to kill.

Apparently this is Cero A... fine with me?

All in all, it was pretty much auto battle all the way. The enemies in this game are so generous in dropping full health items, I hardly used any magic. Now, you could conceivably go to town, recruiting and fusing, and devising all kinds of clever strategies but I just slashed and shot everything and ran away if that didn't work. Near the end, Hiroko learns a spell that allows you to summon your demon as undead and that seemed almost a cheat because they're pretty much invincible. I just spammed Tarukaja and whittled away at the final boss to reach the neutral route ending where you basically kill everybody... again. 

A quick couple things to note if you are interested in playing this game. There are two points in the game where you have to raise both your INT and MAGIC to 10, really annoying for a character that doesn't use magic. Though I suppose INT is supposed to help you recruit demons. Also, the direction your avatar spins no longer shows your alignment. You can check with law/chaos exclusive gear or by trying to heal at either.

It's a classic, you gotta use your imagination, damn kids these days...

Fortunately, I was able to switch my alignment back to neutral even after the game asks you a bunch of questions near the end that swings it pretty hard one way or the other. The final point to decide is when Zain asks you to join him, about 10 hours from the end of the game so you may want to keep a couple saves at that point. For me, I doubt I'll ever come back to replay the other routes.

Score:  "Oh, you like Nocturne? Kids these days..." 3 dismissive snorts out of 5 (45 hours to beat)

All in all, this game is tied for my favorite Megaten game so far with Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei 2. I liked that your character has an actual backstory to reveal instead of just some generic kid from the first game. I also really like Beth's character and would totally play a remake with her voiced by some cute voice actress.

Hot springs event / bikini DLC, c'mon Atlus it's free money!!!

The difficulty balance was weird and quirky but at least it wasn't super frustrating and frankly fairly easy to play through even on so called EXPERT mode. Yeah Abbadon was a pain but at least his body wasn't too annoying to navigate again if you didn't have the proper skills to beat him. All in all, not a bad way to spend my ever dwindling life span...  I guess?

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

In search of GOTY for 1988

Here we go, 1988. While us proud American kids were deeply engrossed in mutant turtles and the 1988 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship was in full swing, the Japanese console market was heating up with the PC master race Engine in its first full year on the market and the Mega Drive that launched on October 29 for the holidays.

Somehow I missed this on my TV Guide 

However, despite the newer, shiny consoles, the Famicom had just begun its peak of dominance with a whopping 142 titles and even 55 titles on the FDS. This is compared to just 21 games on the PC Engine and 28 Sega Mark III games along with 4 launch titles on the Mega Drive. While I'm not a big fan of the FC, I would never write something so cliché as "quality over quantity". It's hard to argue for other consoles when the numbers are so dominating for Nintendo.

PC Engine

Let's quickly go over the PC Engine's lineup which mostly consisted of a mix of action, sports, shooting, and other genres I'm not really into. There was only one RPG Necromancer, released in January. I did put in a few hours but man, it's pretty tedious. Will update when (or if) I ever do finish it.

Among the handful of shooters, the most notable ones are R-Type I and II. I rented Super R-Type on the SNES a bunch as a kid and got good enough to almost beat it. So I guess if I was a rich, Japanese kid I could have been playing at home a few years earlier. However, it's kind of lame that it's split into two parts. Overall, it's a good game but not a GOTY contender.

I like to stick it to the back. What? It's a valid strategy.

Also of note are the first two CD-ROM games released in December No・Ri・Ko and Fighting Street and needless to say, these first two games are not a good showcase for the new technology. I always did wonder as a kid growing up when everybody was playing Street Fighter II, what happened to the first one? It sucked ass, was what happened.

Yes, I did play this... and no I don't want to talk about it

Among all the games, Makyou Densetsu looks to be the most impressive technically, especially that sweet music. It basically looks like a Super Famicon platformer except of course 2 years before that console even hits the market. Still, while visually impressive, doesn't seem likely to be GOTY.

Sega Mark III

1988 effectively marks the end of the Sega Mark III besides the last game Bomber Raid released in February of 1989. The Sega Mark III has a paltry total 85 games for the system, which is surprising given that the Sega Master System lived on with far more games overseas over the years.

So far, I've only played through one game: Hoshi wo Sagashite. It was a family-friendly and decent ADV game I suppose. Nothing special in my opinion.

Another notable game is Maou Golvellius, an action RPG ported from the MSX version released the year prior. I remember the snakes from this game playing it at some kid's house back in the day. The controls are kind of stiff but given the paltry library on the system, it does bear mentioning. At least the MSX2 updated version has a nice intro but $128??? Jesus.

Some poor sap payed that based on the cover art

I loved the Master System as a kid but objectively, it falls far short of the FC. But don't worry, Sega fans, here's another console you have to buy!

MEGA DRIVE

As Sega has historically always done, they launched another console before owners of the old console could get much value for their investment. Not much to really comment on given the paltry 4 titles released in the first year. Space Harrier II is cool and all but not a GOTY for me.

I have to say though as a kid, I wanted a Genesis and Altered Beast SOOOOO bad when it released state site, I would dream about it for weeks. To this day, I never did own a Genesis.

Oh nice, a screenshot of broken promises and depressing childhood

I supposed I do now finally own the arcade version of the game now on my Astro City Mini. It only took like over 30 years. Thanks mom and dad, I didn't need you guys after all! But then we knew that all along didn't we?

It's as good as I remember playing at the store's demo kiosk as a kid but not GOTY level for me. Ok, let's move on (per my therapist's suggestion).  #NotBitter

PC-88/98

The early PC gaming era is really nostalgic for me because it still has that distinctive old-school yet mature feeling that caters to a completely different market (that also incidentally happens to have jobs and money). And by "mature", I mean more advanced writing and scenarios intended for adults not porn, you sickos.

It's all about the music, right guys?!

Not to mention, the still graphics were way ahead of consoles. Check out the intro for Digan no Maseki for instance, this game is definitely on my radar to check out. Will update here at a later date.

Sorry, I haven't played it... yet

At this point in time, I still have quite a ways to go in terms of covering the PC games of 1988... who knows when I'll have the time.

Famicon and Disk System

At last, we come to the big pile of shovelware... err I mean timeless classics loved by all the privileged kids whose parents bought them an NES and $120 games (adjusted for inflation). Bitter, me? Nah! Yeah, I haven't played even a tiny fraction of the almost 200 games. So far, I've only played Ripple Island. I'm just really not into the FC except for what I have to admit is GOTY.

Super Mario Bros. 3

This is undoubtedly going to be the first and last Mario game I would even nominate as GOTY because I don't even like them. But damn, as much as I hate to admit it, 3 is fucking amazing. Not only does it blow every other FC game out of the water, I still sometimes confuse myself into thinking it's a SFC game.

It's leagues above the first game and the lame remix sequel (aka Lost Levels to non-jhipsters). The Tanuki suit, P-Wing, flying battleships... there was no other platform game that could even touch it. Ah yes, the fond memories of holding the down button on the white hill for 3 seconds. Yes, I even watched the infomercial... err I mean movie The Wizard as a kid at some point. As much as I hate to admit it, I find it hard to believe I will find another game in 1988 that was better than Super Mario Bros. 3.

Verdict: GOTY Overall

Other games I tried

Dragon Quest III

Release Date: February 10

To be clear, I did not play the original version that was released on the Famicom. The SFC remake was so well done and looks so much better that I don't really feel any need to replay the original version. However, putting aside the graphics and music, given the great story that completes the first trilogy, I would be surprised if I run into a better RPG. Sorry, Final Fantasy II, you lose this round.

Verdict: GOTY for RPGs

Snatcher

Release Date: November 26

There's a lot to like about Snatcher. I mean sure, it "borrows" ideas (to put it mildly) from movies that are pretty obvious. But it has amazing music and graphics for the time even on the original PC-88 hardware. 

It's ok to show nudity if we don't know what gender they identify as

The only reason why it's not GOTY for me is because Act 3 was never released on this version. By the time the game was finally finished with SD Snatcher and PC Engine CD, it wasn't as impressive. Still, the music holds up even today, listen for yourself.

Verdict: GOTY for Soundtrack

Games I plan to try later

妖怪道中記

リップスティックアドベンチャー

ファンタジーゾーン

オールドヴィレッジストーリー

リサの妖精伝説

Dragon Quest IV（ドラゴンクエストIV 導かれし者たち）

Ahh Dragon Quest IV, the fourth entry in one of the most mainstream RPG series you can think of. Does the internet really need yet another review of this game? I only played the DS version, which I would imagine is very different from the original 1990 Famicom release. But yeah, it's good and if you like traditional RPGs, you should play it. What more is there to say that hasn't already been said? Let's find out, shall we? Heh, heh, heh.

I created an all female party in Dragon Quest III thereby missing some pafu pafu dialog with an NPC. On the flip side, I was able to equip them all with extremely strong bikinis and garter belts. There's no visible difference in the game but I'm sure the fictional game characters felt objectified nonetheless. This time, as a more "mature" gamer, I went with the male protagonist. This had absolutely nothing to do with any concern that a female protagonist would not be pafu pafu eligible. In the end, as far as I could tell, your gender made zero difference to the story.

Not sure if original author but source is here

There is no "official" explanation of what pafu pafu actually IS so thanks to random internet artist for very clearly illustrating an event that takes place in the first chapter where an NPC regains his memory with help from Fureya's umm assets. Speaking of the chapter structure, I really enjoyed playing through each of the character's backstory in each chapter and then recruiting them into your party in what was originally the last chapter (more on that later). I'm frankly shocked that Squeenix didn't make the game into separate episodic purchase$$$ for their mobile ports (barf).

DS version looks mostly the same so fuck this app shit

Overall, I liked the diverse cast such as the twins and Arina, the strong tomboy female character. She doesn't use any magic or any of that weak nonsense, just physical attacks with knives, whip, claws, etc. Oh wait, I forgot that strong female characters didn't exist before Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. 

Hey, Aloy doesn't wear a weird hat!

I also liked the fact that you can talk to your party members every time you talk to an NPC. I'm not sure if this was part of the original Famicom release but I found that for the most part, your party members say something unique for every NPC conversation, which adds a ton of additional dialogue to the game. It gave a bit more personality and flavor to the adventure since they weren't silent for the majority of the game. You do miss the comments of people you don't really use so who knows what the old guy or Toruneko had to say about shit. While I prefer something like the skits in the Tales series, it's better than nothing for sure.

As usual, since I can't take screenshots from my game file on the actual hardware, here's a quick screenshot I took of the game status screen.

Definitely better than the male version with the weird fish hat

The final boss animations really stood out for me and were pretty cool. While writing this, I actually found out there was an additional chapter not in the original version even though the game clearly said "Fin". The post credit chapter was pretty grindy and features what looks like the same final boss but with different color palette and a tiny change to the original ending. Meh.

Score: 3 missed opportunity to translate final boss name as "DEATH PISS ARROW" out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

Overall, this was a solid fun and traditional RPG, which of course is what the DQ series is known for. I would definitely recommend setting battle speed to the fastest setting. In additional, having the dual screen real estate made it really easy to look around the map by rotating your view where that was allowed. The dungeon maps are pretty small and easy to navigate as well. As long as you have the hang of basic buffs and debuffs (Sukuruto and Rukana), it's a pretty simple and frictionless playthrough.

Scale
0 - Awful

1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Tsugu no hi -Tozasareta Mirai-（つぐのひ ー閉ざされた未来ー）

Update

Oddly enough, this is the most viewed post on this blog and the old link to the game was dead so I updated it. The whole series of games are also now on this one convenient page as well: https://www.gamemaga.jp/tsugunohi/.

I will definitely try the latest Showa kara no Yobigoe so stay tuned!

Original Post

I was trying to play Blood Drive for Halloween but it's obvious I'm not gonna finish it any time soon (probably wasted too much time playing Majin Tensei), so here's a quick look at a dead (ha!) simple game that only takes 15 minutes or so to finish: Tsugu no hi -Tozasareta Mirai-, the latest in a series of freeware games so popular(?), it even spawned a movie.

JK and shoes, what more do you want?

The "gameplay" if you can call it that, consists of moving left until you get to the river. Apparently, things are not going as you'd hoped (you're a JK, isn't that good enough?!) and you decide to redo the day somehow.

Anyways, after repeating the walk a few times, there is a little bit of scary to enjoy especially with headphones. On the phone, it was a bit annoying that I couldn't hide the browser bar but I somehow managed to cope.

The ✋ woman! Worry about the ✋!

Score: 2 JK first world problems, cry me a river out of 5

Not much to say about this one except it's not the worst way to spend 15 or so minutes.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Avalon Code（アヴァロンコード）

Cute girl smiling sadly while boy disappear into dust, so deep

Yes, this blog has kind of been in a slump these days as my posts seemed to get kind of stale. However, I should remember one of the original reasons why I even started the blog, which was to catalog what I've played.

I'll still continue to make little swipes at the absurdity of the so called "gaming community", for example how people think games are the way to go to disseminate social agendas instead of, oh I dunno, politics? Oh golly gee, why are Republicans trying to pass a record number of anti-trans bills when we "fixed" Deadly Premonition 2?? It's almost like boomer politicians don't play games?? Naw, that can't be it!

To be clear, I really don't care how Nintendo labels gender in Animal Crossing either way. Putting aside the fact that Animal Crossing is a chore game I don't care about, it's all the "articles" and griping on social media by privileged westerners or Chinese that would be so comical if it wasn't so ridiculous.

Where's the petition to remove these toxic words from the English vocabulary?

All of which has nothing to do with Avalon Code, ha. So yeah, I hated this game and every minute of it was so painful. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I chose the girl and failed to woo that bad boy from the desert. IGNorant has a 8.3 GREAT score because of course they loved it.

The "deep and engrossing story" is about you putting shit in a book before the end of the world. And the "innovative game play mechanics" is hunting through page after page for the right size pieces to make shit. It's not so bad at first if you haven't played through the end, but I'm sure the professional IGN reviewer MUST have played to the bitter end. Later on, you really do want to tear your hair out trying to find 3 pieces of fire, 4 pieces of spiders, or whatever through pages and pages of characters, monsters, weapon, etc. again and again and fucking again.

Shuffling shit around might seem dandy now but wait till you're flipping through all the characters, enemies, weapons, and items in the game

I even resorted to looking up a guide because surely, this couldn't be how you're supposed to actually play the game but nope, there was no secret menu of categories or sorting or anything at all really. I threw all the deaths into a piece of bread to keep it handy to weaken bosses. Hmm, maybe I should've organized the shit on random characters so I don't have to dig through page after page. No, fuck that shit! Why do I have to WORK to make up for what the game purposely made a chore? Even Atelier Marie, made over a decade earlier, had fucking menus and blue/green/etc. categories. To add insult to injury, to make the better weapons, you have to solve fucking sliding puzzles. The difficulty near the end was just fucking ridiculous having to match just the goddamn background patterns. And no, just looking up the recipe online doesn't work. You HAVE to solve the puzzle for the item to appear, which logically makes no sense.

I have a life so I'm proud to say I didn't touch this shit

Fortunately, the last boss wasn't too hard to beat with a weak weapon that didn't require torturing oneself with this shit. Putting aside the "innovative game play mechanics", all the dungeons are boring stupid time trials, which I quickly stopped giving a shit about and the story so unremarkable, I don't even feel like writing about it. Oh yeah, except of course for that part where you lose all your spirits so you have to collect them AGAIN but in reverse order.

To sum up, the best part of this game was when I was finally able to trade it in to get some store credit. It felt so good to get rid of this piece of shit that honestly, I would have been happy to get Gamestop level pennies as long as I wouldn't have to see it sitting on my shelf of DS games.

Score: 0.5 well at least I can retire on my GME stock out of 5 (just kidding, I tried to cash in at the peak and eventually had to sell my cousin's truck to pay off my payday loan)

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Cosmic Fantasy: Bouken Shounen Yuu（コズミック・ファンタジー 冒険少年ユウ）

Well, it's fucking 2021 and shocker, things are still shitty as ever but hey, at least we still got video games. Oh, I don't mean the shit they're churning out these days according to "global standards" (aka whatever China will allow). I'm pretty much resigned to sticking with games made up to 2020 at this point except for maybe the occasional Falcom game here and there. Fortunately, there's plenty of games on my backlog so let's play some classics from the good ol' PC Engine: Cosmic Fantasy.

Stop peeping over the Great Firewall, China!

Yeah, I know, I know, same ol' gripes. Even I'm getting tired of my own blog. Still, the last thing I want to do is to write about games in-depth like Hardcore Gaming 101 or something. I would think most real gamers would just prefer to play the damn game instead of reading some lame blog about it. Maybe I'll try some pro gaming journalist tactics and find some potentially transphobic dialogue that needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

16 years old but at least no gender is specified here

By all accounts, Cosmic Fantasy is a pretty mediocre RPG. It plays like one of those super barebones, fap PC RPGs such as Dragon Knight except without the breastasees. Speaking of characters that might identify as a girl (not that I would dare to assume), Saya is the only other party member that can fight despite that motorcycle robot and others who supposedly join your party. The Sega CD version seems to have added having more than two characters in your party but I don't know if I'm going to ever bother playing this again.

Why don't you DO something, motorcycle mouse?

However, despite the bare bones mechanics, it's still an extremely impressive technical showcase of the PC Engine CD using animated cutscenes with voiced dialogue. Along with Tengai Makyou Ziria, it must have been exciting to see in early 1990, when the competing consoles were just the Famicom and Mega Drive.

Look at that cutting edge very round technology!

These days, I'm much more appreciative of the freedom developers had to umm "innovate" with games like this even though I woudn't say this one is a great game. Nowadays, it seems we have all this fancy technology only for it to go completely to waste due to racist coporate policies and the latest social media rage fit. Sometimes, you just want a simple lighthearted RPG story with maybe a hot spring scene thrown in for fun. Is that too much to ask nowadays? Yeah, apparently it fucking is.

Yeah, yeah, another DQ clone

What, should I talk about the game? I mean, there was that one part of the story where you probably want to grind before Saya leaves the party temporarily for story reasons. The items get kind of ridiculous near the end with how many elixers you get but really, there isn't much to say.

I stocked up on these Camp Capsules for nuthin

Score: 2.5 (CONTENT WARNING: Full nudity screenshow below!!!) out of 3

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Sike! You perv!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Kyoto Ryuu no Tera Satsujin Jiken（京都龍の寺殺人事件）

Long time readers may remember way back when I realized that I could play old ADV games on my phone (duh). I figured, hey this should be easy! Whip out the phone in a free moment, load my save state, and play a few minutes at a time. And here we are, almost a year later, I'm finally writing about the first Yamamura Misa Suspense title on the Famicom. Needless to say, this was NOT an easy game to get through.

To be fair, the rest of the game does not look this but c'mon

Now, I'd like to think I'm pretty fair in judging games in their proper context and timeframe and according to Google, this game came out at the end of 1987 (December 11 to be exact). Ignoring my disingenuous screenshot above, the graphics are not bad for the Famicom. On the surface, this game looks like it could be one of the better early murder mystery ADV games on the console. Unfortunately, in reality, it sucks so bad, it makes the first Tantei Jinguji game look good, which is quite a feat.

Hi, nice to meet you. Oh, don't mind the frickin' corpse behind you!

There are two major problems with this game, the first being the goddamn awful menu system that requires you to go through multiple steps just to ask a fucking question. Select the ear icon, pick the person to ask, pick the topic, pick the question and start all over for the next question.  Honestly, how hard would it be to remember your menu position?

Well, as long as there's some cleavage, who cares about mechanics?

At this point, I'm a hardened retro gamer so I can stand bad mechanics and some frustration if the story is good but that's where my major problem lies with this game. I dunno if Yamamura Misa's novels are a hundred times better but the whole premise of the game was just... stupid. It starts with the first murder victim holding some petals with letters on them and so the rest of game is filled with character names that just so happen to use those exact same letters. Be prepared to be constantly confused about who is who as you talk to Minako, Namiko, Minao, Naoko, etc. because yeah, it's totally believable that every suspect's first and last name just happen to be perfect anagrams. And also, why are you, a freakin' game designer, responsible for investigating the murder instead of the police?

Why the hell is this my job? Is this because of #DefundThePolice?

The game was so boring, I feel like I don't want to bore my growing audience with an equally boring blog post about it. I'm going to be honest here and admit I totally followed a guide after a few hours of navigating the god awful menu. There is one trick where you have to call *69 to find the last caller on someone's phone, except it's the Japanese version of *69, which I have no clue about. I didn't grow up in Japan. I'm a Jhipster. If I was Japanese, I would just be a "gamer". Well, a Japanese gamer so probably less trolling and death threats.

Oh yeah, you know I'm a real game journalist now that I'm trashing gamers. Don't worry, no matter how shitty some gamers might be, at least they're shitty for free instead of trying to make a living off of it like those game "journalists".

A gamer girl? Nice! Oh wait, Famicom? Pass for lack of taste.

Score: 1 so boring I inadvertently started ranting about gamergate for old times' sakes out of 5

I'm sorry, what were we talking about again? Oh right, this game! So anyway, it's terrible. Don't waste your time with it. Still, I read online that the next Yamamura Misa game is better so I'll probably stick with the series. The one I played on DS seemed pretty good but more on that in 2024.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely