Ripple Island（リップルアイランド）

Continuing on my late "OMG, my phone can emulate old consoles!" discovery thread, I also recently finished Ripple Island. This is a perfect contrast to Hoshi wo Sagashite... because it was released in the same year but on the Famicom. Unlike the doable game by Sega, this is yet another FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to beat ADV game from SunSoft just like Dead Zone.

FamiCan, like NintenDon't for positive Jhipsters

There's no way I was going to spend hours getting stuck trying to beat this without the help of a guide. Let's all just agree that I don't have enough time in my life to waste and no I'm not talking about having trouble finding time between life's responsibilities any more. I'm literally talking about how much longer I have to live now that I'm old.

Thanks Jacob for putting it all into perspective. Time to play some 30+ year old games!

Ripple Island, in my opinion, is virtually impossible to beat without a guide though maybe slightly less impossible than Dead Zone thanks to the removal of those really specific menu options like "place", "open", "pull", and "pour self some whiskey and cry about squandered youth". The game is split into 5 areas and the first area is super doable. You just gotta walk around, talk to a few folks in the town, pick up your girl, and drug what looks like a gopher. (Whew, good thing PETA didn't have Jhipsters back then!)

Fuck you stout, weasel, whatever you are

As soon as you get past the gopher asshole blocking your way, the King tells you about some lost treasures blah blah defeat evil emperor etc., etc. Then onto Area 2 where the shit hits the fan. To start, you have to knock on one certain tree to get some acorns even though it looks identical to every other tree. You know, there's an unwritten rule in ADV games that necessary items should be distinguishable even if it's just a few pixels. But nope, no respect for the genre here. Hey, why don't you try just knocking on this random tree, identical to every other tree in the fucking FOREST. What, you didn't try every possible action on every possible background item?

Welp, you're fucked. Hope you got a password handy!

Once you know what to do, the game is pretty short so I guess that means it's ok to get completely stuck? There are several points where if you screw up, there is no way to progress, for example, trying to hit on the female fox (you sicko). Another example is not dyeing that fucking white flower red, which by the way is completely hidden in some random bush. I loved (sarcasm) how they bait you with the red flower you can never reach on the cliff. Can you imagine, buying this game at full price on release, and getting forever stuck in Area 2, after playing for like a couple hours? Well, I guess if you were rich enough to be buying Famicon ADV games on release, you could probably afford the strategy guide.


Score: 2 Where is the "fuck" option? What, this isn't a PC88 hentai game? out of 5

Excuse me?? What about my panties?

Anyway, with the help of a guide, it's a cute game with nice visuals and several endings (thank god for save states). The story is simplistic but that applies to every console ADV game I played so far on this generation (PC88 Master Race for the win!). You travel with a cute girl, talk to animals, and ride a giant flying squirrel. What more could you want?

Not even deserving of a squirrel seat? See, this is why we have Incels today.

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

Dead Zone（デッドゾーン）

Yeah, don't think so.

I'm going to make this post a quick one because I really don't have much to say about Dead Zone, a Family Computer Disk System ADV game from Sunsoft. Typical of console games from this period, the cover art is kind of deceptive as the actual graphics are pretty crude. I know this isn't PC88 Master race but still, it's 1986. Compared to Wingman from 2 years prior, this just goes to show how inferior consoles were back in the day.

Thankfully, at least cause FDS, you don't have to type anything. Even so, there's so many commands and possibilities, I would say this is another game that's almost impossible without a guide. It doesn't help that you can barely tell what you're looking at cause of the lame graphics.

LOL, that's quite a fancy plug there. Is this DirectX 12???

The puzzles are pretty intense and if you like that kind of thing, might be something that's even enjoyable. You start out in a garbage dump Star Wars style and have to make your escape by causing the walls to come closing in. You can then use the walls to climb up to the ceiling vent before it crushes you.

The game is filled with those kind of challenging puzzles if you're a masochist I guess. As for me, of course, I have no patience for that kind of thing so cheat time it is (AGAIN). Similar to Suisho no Dragon, the other FDS adventure game I've played so far, the story is pretty minimal and all is revealed in like 5 lines of dialogue at the end. I guess I was supposed to buy the game with manual if I wanted to get the whole backstory... SORRY.

Oh, well that explains why the game has no back story...

However, I have to give credit to this game for its interesting puzzles at least. The gnarliest is the final password, which Carry, your robot companion claims is 1215225. The real password is 1311825 and the reason I found was on a random Japanese blog.

数字はアルファベットの並び順。キャリーが言っているのは「12＝L、15＝O、22＝V、5＝E」で「LOVE」となり、正しい方は「13＝M、1＝A、18＝R、25＝Y」で「MARY」である。

Lies, just like the cake. Damn robots.

Also, there's a weird mini-game intermission kinda thing in the middle where you have to catch onigiri being thrown by an old guy. Weird.

Is there some mythos I don't know about that explains this?

Score: 1.5 well at least the title screen and box art looked good out of 5.

There's nothing exactly wrong with this game besides the ho-hum graphics and lackluster story. It could be a good game to try if you like nigh impossible puzzles solved strictly by selecting menu options. Oh well, at least the title and ending looked cool.

Oh man, this game is going to be SO COOL.

Well, at least the ending was cool...

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