If one of my many, many readers were to ask me which I liked more, Gundam or Macross, I would definitely have to go with Macross. As my long-time readers are aware, I like music so that's a no-brainer for Macross. I also think the battles with Valkyries are cooler, the way they transform to take advantage of each form etc. Though I'm not quite sure the point of the half plane/robot form.
So far, I've only watched the first Macross TV series (all 36 episodes!), Macross Frontier, and the first movie from which this game is based on. The movie is pretty good though the plot is obviously super rushed to fit 36 TV episodes in under two hours. The soundtrack is awesome and the old school hand drawn battle scenes are simply amazing with intricate details we'll likely never see again with all this fancy computer shit these days (old man grumblings).
God, I love this 80s shit!
As for the game, I played the PS1 version and it is a pretty good looking side-scrolling shooter. It also summarizes the movie in between levels with a mix of short animated clips and some audio narration. You may want to watch the movie first before playing the game unless you really want to save yourself time from watching the movie.
Intro cutscene in the game actually takes place before the movie
So yeah, the presentation is pretty good and it plays ok as a game. However, there's only like 11 levels and you can literally beat the whole thing in a day. As a busy, pro reviewer, I love that I can finish the whole game in no time and put it up for sale on ebay. Being a shmup (EXTREMELY RARE!!! BID NOW!!!), I'm hoping to make a little profit by selling this back. Sooo glad I didn't waste that money on an S&P 500 ETF fund, making market average returns like a real adult.
The graphics are pretty good for a PS1/Saturn game
Now, I'm not like a super expert shooter gamer. Sure, I played the shit out of Astro Warrior as a kid and almost beat U.N. Squadron (rented, never owned unfortunately) and as a typical gaming hoarder, I have a stack of games to play one of these days. But even as a novice to the genre, I really wouldn't say this was a good shooting game. It's more about experiencing the movie via a video game like one cool part where you play it sideways. (Is playing a side-scrolling shooter on the side actually like playing it straight? Here at Jhipster Gamer, we tackle life's most important questions!)
1st level again, I assure you I beat the game, just not on an emulator for screenshots #FakeGamer
I mean, yeah, it's technically a game. For instance, you can change forms and I guess it kinda matters because only the robot form can shoot backwards and when the boss is in background but really, it doesn't matter for the most part. Mostly, you'll just be constantly holding down and releasing the square button to fire like a million missiles. There's also not a lot of room for you to maneuver because you take up so much of the screen. This becomes particularly apparent when the Meltrandi show up.
Score: 2.5 prepare to be humming those damn catchy 80s tunes for a while out of 5 (optional 0.5 bonus Jhipster smugness points for never having to know what the fuck Robotech is)
Captain, we have Harmony Gold USA on target, permission to fire?
Overall, despite not being a very good game, it's a pretty nice package as long as you didn't pay full retail price for a few hours of gameplay. I played through it twice on normal and hard and I was like, "Meh, I guess it was fun." At the very least, it gave me a good reason to finally finish watching the movie. I felt bad for Minmay, I would definitely marry her or even Iijima Mari if she wasn't like 60 now. Sigh...
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
I know almost nothing about the Leaf brand of games because it's smut which I abhor but from what I can gather, they started out with a Mahjong trash smut game on the PC-88 and followed it up with a trash garbage smut RPG after which, they released three heathen trash garbage barf filth visual novels called the Leaf Visual Novel Series.
RPG with memorable cast such as DURK BOLT, who also moonlights as pool cleaner and pizza delivery boy
Of course, I have no idea what most of these games are about and I wasn't able to find any screenshots probably because they were ignored by the wholesome internet community due to the filthy contents. As we all know, the internet HATES porn.
Girls from the Shizuku remake; I have no idea how this image got here.
All three games in the series were later remade with better graphics, full voice, and some with new characters, more endings etc. but unfortunately the first two games Shizuku and Kizuato are PC fap machine only. I avoided looking up anything about them in the fear that I might get inadvertently contaminated. Fortunately, ToHeart, the third entry was cleaned up for the holy rays "Oh Lord, please save us from sins of the flesh" Purestation.
I'm sure God will approve (or your diety of choice)
I'm afraid to say I had actually owned 3 copies of this game at one time until I purged my PS1 copy. Now, I only have the PS2 mega box and PSP limited edition exclusive UMD disc. Whew! Glad for the extra space!
No I don't have Trump tiny hands, this is actually the size of two PS2 games
While I know nothing about the first two games, Sizuku was kinda stupid with the whole denpa sex waves thing and at the same time extremely violent. Kizuato was also very dark and violent but it had a story line that seemed simple at first but actually had many hidden layers. In this game, I guess they were trying to go with something more cheerful and light-hearted or whatever but really it's just about the most vanilla, generic galge you can imagine. Like if DDLC was actually the game it pretends to be in the beginning but add a bunch more girls and you essentially have ToHeart. I could give it some slack if it was the first of its kind for innovation or whatever but no, it came out in 1997.
As dumb as Shizuku was, the music was not bad at all
I don't know if they were trying to ride the simulation Tokimeki/Sotsugyou bandwagon but going through each day of the calendar made the first run slightly more boring than watching grass grow. I'm actually impressed at how many ways they were able to describe getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, getting ready to go to school, etc. The all-ages remake is a lot better than the original 18+ version as it has auto mode but it's still mostly the same game except for a bunch of mini games inside the game. The shooting mini game is actually pretty good but I just wish you could skip it when you replay for all the numerous girls' endings.
Not bad for a game in a game
Once you reach one ending, you can skip all the daily routines (Thank the Lord!) and just go through picking the same girl at one of the 4 locations. The funniest route is definitely Remi due to her crazy American dad that carries a gun inside the house with live ammunition. The characters in this game definitely have a funny image of America probably based on the writer's impressions. After all, there normally aren't any car chases except that one time a car flipped over running away from the cops next to my house. And it's not like Americans all walk around carrying guns and firing them all over the place like fucking idiots... Ok... yeah... I guess it's pretty accurate after all. #ColdDeadHands
No real father would walk around with a dangerous rifle near children (looks up gun death statistics...) Oh.
Overall, I'm glad to be finally done with this yawn borefest. You would think in a setting with fully autonomous maid robots and psychic powers, things would be a little more interesting but nope. The only highlight is the voice acting and 90s anime nostalgia theme songs. My favorite girl was Rio just because she sounded cute. The various radio segments were cool too and bonus Jhipster points as it's not scripted and require near native listening comprehension (yours truly).
Needs more holy rays for the naked shoulders IMO
Score: 2 maybe the original sex scenes would have spiced it up but I guess we'll never know out of 5
While I'll never play the 18+ PC version, I can't help but wonder if Multi and other maid robots have you know... all the parts... for umm... various "functions".
All I could find of the PC version, you have idea how hard it is to find porn on the internet!
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
So in my foolish quest to start yet another series that I will probably never finish, I decided it was fine time to check out Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg, the first of the Atelier series which lately seems to be pumping out new games like clockwork.
First of all, the official title is indeed "Atelier Marie" as shown by the title art. Based on the fact that the Katakana pronunciation is "Mari", the only logical conclusion is that the title is in French, NOT English. Ooh la la, fancy! Though her full name is Marlone, so I have no freakin' clue.
Atelier Marie, très bon!
I did own a physical copy of the "Plus" version when I had the silly idea of owning physical copies of the entire Atelier series. I even went and bought the Atelier Marie & Elie bundle for the Dreamcast. This bundle is especially notable for the fact that it contains nice bonuses such as a phone strap, screen-savers to install on your Win 95/98 PC and even a virus as an extra surprise bonus!
No, I'm not shitting you, the W32/Kriz virus somehow ended up on the CD-ROM for the game published by KOOL KIZZ, putting a stop to further sales. I don't know the details as this version doesn't seem particularly rare (I paid $20) so maybe they fixed it. I don't know if my copy has the bonus feature but I'd rather not find out. I need my Win95 VM to play old games.
KOOL KIZZ, a mix of the words "kids" and "jizz"? Clever!
Anyways, in my futile attempt to make room in my closet of shame™, I sold my PS1 copy and bought a digital copy like all the kool kizz to play on my Vita. Or more accurately, I decided to put it up for sale after playing it on Vita for a while and finding out just how boring this game is.
It starts off with a nice intro, and then you're on your own with a small bit of change and no idea what to do, and yes, I read the fucking manual. Not only do you have very little money, you have no idea how to make anything and as soon as you step foot outside the town, you get destroyed because you are very, VERY weak at combat.
No in-game guided tutorial for baby gamer?? Score: 1 Awful -IGN
The game does start off very slow as the key to getting any kind of money is scrounging up some Nyuzu in the forest nearby and making some Kurafuto to sell to the Academy. Don't even bother trying to fight anybody for a while. Finally, when you get some money to buy the recipe books at the academy, you can start fulfilling requests from the barkeeper.
There are a few important gameplay elements that are not explained at all. First, you can recruit Shia, your friend, for FREE as long as you want. (After all, what are friends for if not free labor?) Second, you have to pay the barkeeper repeatedly to hear rumors in order to unlock additional areas to explore. Third, once you're able to go to the fairy forest, you can hire fairies to do some tasks for you automatically. Being able to send them off to faraway places saves you LOTS of time in gathering ingredients. If you go yourself, you'll waste a bunch of days to get back and you'll likely get killed anyway.
What the game boils down to is not unlike working as a temp in some corporate office. Gather ingredients, make shit, make some money, buy some equipment, beat up a copier with a bat, and bitch about your job to your buddies at Chotchkie's. Some events pop up throughout the years, some of which I missed I'm sure but it's not like there's much story to speak of even if it is all fully voiced. There are a few mini-games thrown in but they're very, very simple. I thought the characters looked pretty good, certainly a very different style from the recent games but it has its own classic appeal. The music was nothing to write home about.
One of those boring, every day events...
Score: 2 mostly for series legacy and originality for its time (I think) out of 5.
I get that it might have been an original concept for its time and it IS a 20 year-old game. Apparently a lot of people enjoyed it because there's so many ports. But I've played games just as old that was much more fun. I would score this one a 2 as a game barely NOT being a waste of your time.
The moepocalypse creepy hands mobile version
While the actual gameplay was pretty repetitive and boring, you do get a sense of satisfaction when you're finally able to make a rare item for the first time. I was able to make the Philosopher's Stone on my first playthrough to get the best(?) ending mostly by working my fairies all day, every day. I mean that because there is an option to let them play that I NEVER selected. I'm not paying you guys to lounge around, you good-for-nothings!
I also beat a couple bosses by making some Mega Furamu, which by the way takes a ridiculously long time to make. In the end, I feel like I got the full experience and there's no way I'm going to replay this game to get the other 6 endings. You can just watch them on YouTube like all the kool kizz in a few minutes as they're all very short.
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
Well it's been a while, so I was in the mood to dive back into the side-scrolling, horror adv genre. I know it's a very popular genre and even though I had hundreds (nay thousands!!) of games to choose from, I went back to good ol' Human Entertainment and loaded up Clock Tower: The First Fear on the even gooder ol' PSP.
I have to say, for a game that originally came out only 6 months before Twilight Syndrome, the first Clock Tower was pretty darn bare bones. If I wasn't super gamer expert (ie can use google+wikipedia), I would have thought this was a fairly early SFC game, not something that was released after the launch of the PS1 and ported almost 2 years later.
OMG!! Only took 2 years to add this next gen PS1 graphics!
If I had bought the PS1 version day one in my fantasy Japanese childhood, I would have been pretty darn disappointed after Twilight Syndrome. They didn't add any voice acting to the PS1 version, just the typical dated Human CG intro and the ability to save your game. Yes, in the enhanced version, you can actually save your progress.
I mean, if I didn't know any better, I might have thought this game was not bad but the lack of almost any story to speak of, no voice acting, and zero character development makes this game feel way older than it really is.
This is the blonde girl. That's all you need to know about her.
I still have no idea why the girls were brought to the mansion and the game doesn't explain anything about the Barrows family. I didn't look up any further information from fear of spoiling the sequels but taken by itself, this game doesn't explain a single thing.
The other big issue I had was the gameplay. Maybe I should have read the manual, but the game freaked me out because Jennifer's stat goes to red every time she runs. I spent painful hours just watching her meander slowly through the mansion like she was taking a nice stroll in the park.
Also, she never sat down to rest until I realized much later on that you have to press triangle after she starts moving. I had assumed when she walked into another room, she would just sit down after a while so I had no idea how to restore her health. But to make this whole gameplay element even worse, I finally figured out I can beat the entire game while completely in the red. You're supposed to spam the X button when your avatar is flashing and having more health is supposed to help you survive. But I was able to beat down that little scissor guy, the crazy puppet, and every other "tense" moment totally in the red.
As for the puzzles, I just got tired of going from room to room while stuck for hours. The parrot freaked me out early on so I never did find the perfume bottle. I did manage to unlock one ending completely blind. You find a car and the car key conveniently in a box next to the car. Jennifer was like, "But the other girls..." and I was like, fuck that. DRIVE. Needless to say, it did not end well.
Similar to my blind playthrough but way less getting lost and slow walking
Eventually, I followed a guide and unlocked all endings in a matter of a few hours. If you don't get stuck, the game is actually incredibly short and requires repeating the same things but with minor differences in terms of things you may miss or which events you encounter. There's not much difference in the endings either so I can say after unlocking them all, I don't think it was really worth the hassle. There's actually a random event that you have to avoid in order to get the best ending. I don't know how you could have known to reload if you happen to be unlucky without a guide. I thought that was kinda lame.
The music had a bit of that Human charm but there was very little variety and it was ok at best.
This was my favorite track and it was just ok
Score: 2 this is like a poor man's Twilight Syndrome out of 5 (like Lehman Brothers SUPER POOR)
As Jhipster, I think this game got way more attention because the later games were localized and the lack of almost any story made it WAY easier to fan translate than Twilight Syndrome. I'm hoping the later games in the series will step it up a notch... or 10.
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
I have never played an 18+ game before (no, FOR REAL, I'm NOT EVEN LYING), but I wanted play this game before Toushin Toshi for the 3DS. And what a horrible name for the 3DS game because it's actually a remake of Toushin Toshi TWO and it totally screwed up my google searches for the original title. Anyways, being the obsessive compulsive as usual, I decided it was better, nay A DUTY, to play the first entry before digging into a remake of the sequel. You know, in case I would miss something important like uh... plot points?
Yeah sorry, couldn't help myself.
I debated whether to even post any 18+ games but whatever, you guys can handle it right? I promise what I post here will not get any raunchier than Cero D levels.
Originally released in 1990, this multiplat game was available on all your favorite, popular platforms such as the PC-9801, X68000, MSX2 and FM TOWNS. Ummm, yeah, we all totally had one of those growing up right?
OMG, I totally saw this ad in an issue of EGM. NOT!
This is probably the most retro I've gone so far but I'm playing the Windows version, part of the Aliceの館456 compilation released in 1997. I have no idea if it's any different from the original but for a game that came out 18 years ago, it worked impressively with no issues on my Win7 PC without any silly compatibility settings to fudge around with.
Can you handle this much retro? Can you? PUNK?
I guess Alicesoft or MS or whomever deserves some kudos here. But I'm just gonna go ahead and give all the Kudos to Alicesoft (cause you know M$) because they were kind enough to release a bunch of their older games as freeware. So you can go ahead and download yourself a FREE copy absolutely guilt-free! You're gonna have to go through the age check and find it yourself and if you're not Jhipster enough to do so, well, there's probably easier ways to find porn. I hear there's this thing called the Internet that supposedly has a small sample.
For the rest of us, there's actually a pretty decent RPG underneath the 18+ label. The nice thing about this game is that battles are REALLY fast. Not like ATB or anything fancy like that but you can just spam attack and end a battle in like 5 seconds. Maybe it's because my PC is like 1000000x faster than the original platforms but this game almost feels like an action game. In fact, my only major gripe was that pressing the keys so fast made my hand cramp up (don't even think about making a joke about my other hand). A controller would have been really nice but I guess there was ONE compatibility issue as my PS3 DS3 did NOT work with this PC-9801/X68000/MSX2/FM TOWNS game from 1990. (Geesh, these developers are SOOOOOOO LAZY)
There's even a really nice feature (bug?) where once you've fought enough enemies on a single floor, the random encounters just stop altogether giving you free rein to explore the entire floor.
Apparently you have no issues with tearing this monster apart with your sword. Um, I'm talking about the attack options? Geesh, get your mind out of the gutter.
You play as a guy named Custom, which is ironic because you can't change his name. The premise is you (Custom) enter in a tournament to help a girl you meet traveling. Apparently, her dad won a previous tournament and then cut off all contact with her and her mom. Winners of the tournament get a special title and live in a fancy palace that only winners of the tournament can enter. That's where you come in as she'd very much like to meet her dad and ask why he abandoned her and her (now deceased) mom. Basically, you have a few days before each match to explore dungeons, level up, and complete various quests in order to defeat your next opponent.
There's actually quite a lot to do in this game. You have to talk to people in the bar, find items, learn how to use magic, etc., etc. I actually got stuck a couple times, which made the fact that the 3DS remake has the same name SO annoying when you're trying to look for information online.
There's even like a story and stuff. Off-topic but I also totally read Playboy for the articles.
Overall, the gameplay is fast and convenient for short play sessions. Buy a return item for 10 gold, go straight to the floor you want, do some exploring and whatnot, use the return item, and then go back to the inn to save. While you can heal by sleeping only a few times before it's time for your match, you can also restore your HP with items and by leveling up. The game is actually pretty easy for the most part and only near the end around the 7th floor does it get a bit challenging.
That is until you get to the final boss, when there's a huge difficulty spike. Basically the setup is that you lose all but a handful of items and I had to grind for a few hours just to finally beat the last boss.
Score: 2 are you getting tired of innuendo jokes yet? out of 5.
This was a pretty fun, fast, and dead simple game. Although the hours of grinding at the end was pretty annoying, at least I got a bit of satisfaction after finally beating the last boss with barely any health left. If you don't mind all the sex or the dated graphics, it's not a bad game by any means especially given the VERY nice price tag. Plus, now I don't have to be afraid of missing anything (probably absolutely nothing) when I play Toushin Toshi for the 3DS.
Some more bonus screenshots cause I had them laying around you know for uh, review purposes.
Features a very unique system for learning new magic spells: Girl in a box
Heisei 2 is 1990 in case you forgot this game was old. Alicesoft asks for any feedback but I doubt they care anymore?
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
Moonlight Syndrome to summarize is a wonderful message from the late 90s to kids about the hazards of recreational drugs. I can only deduce that was the intended purpose as this game makes absolutely no sense and can only be the product of copious amounts of LSD or some other hallucinogen (perhaps Peyote?).
The opening clearly explains how the game was made
At the very least, I have to compliment the mind of Suda Goichi for even coming up with such crazy nonsense with or without the help of recreational narcotics. There's a lot of PS1 3D graphics compared to the original two games which used mostly still images. And we all know those early PS1 polygons look pretty terrible even for its time. Whether it was by design or not, at least the horrendously dated and creepy graphics match the psychedelic tone of the game. Nevertheless, any charm and affinity you might have felt for Mika, Yukari, and Chisato is completely destroyed in this game. In other words, they are butt-fugly.
I've googled around some Japanese websites to see if this story had any inkling of sense and to loosely paraphrase a random J-blogger on the topic, "without going through the brain juice of the creator, it's impossible" to figure out this mess. The only positive thing I can say about the story is that there are zero branching paths so absolutely no reason to touch this game again after the first play-through. To me, the game's opening cut scene pretty much sums it up perfectly.
THE ORAL SEX OF A COURT OF JUSTICE
Yup, that just about sums this game up right there.
You think I'm being harsh? Pop in a few pills and see for yourself. This game is cheap at least, probably for a very good reason.
Am I just not smart enough to understand this game?
See for yourself (Jhipsters only).
At least the music was not bad, for what it's worth.
Score: 1.5 acid trips out of 5
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
