I just finished Metal Gear Solid 4 in preparation for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. I had heard all sorts of opinions on the game, from it being the finest Metal Gear game ever created to it being the most ridiculous and over the top. I think that the truth lies somewhere in between those two, but I was definitely moved and impressed either way. In fact I re-played/played for the first time Metal Gear Solid: Integral, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker all within the last few years. That leaves the main story points (though not all of the fine details) fairly fresh in my mind. As it turns out, that was extremely beneficial when playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
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- Released: 09/27/1996 (Japan)
- Developer: Sega
- Publisher: Sega
It’s often the case that popular anime or manga franchises become games, but not as often do you see a game franchise turn into popular anime and manga. Sakura Taisen is one of the best examples of this phenomenon, and given the pedigree of its creators it was probably destined to become a media franchise from the beginning. The creator of the series was Hiroi Ouji, a manga creator who is probably best known for the creation of Sakura Taisen. The scenario writer was Akahori Satoru, a scriptwriter, manga author and novelist best known for such 90s staples as Saber Marionette and Bakuretsu Hunter (Sorcerer Hunters). The character design was done by Fujishima Kousuke (he is certainly best known as being the creator of Ah! My Goddess!, as well as his involvement as a character designer in the Tales series of games) and Matsubara Hidenori (he did the character design for Fujishima’s original designs in the various Ah! My Goddess! anime adaptations, and has also been involved as a key animator in many other big animated features). Last but not least, the music was composed by Tanaka Kouhei (a composer of more game, anime and tokusatsu theme songs than I can count).
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| The map used to navigate Oogami between areas in the theater during the data sim part of the game |
A look at a map during the strategy part of the game |
With this star-studded team, it’s no surprise that Sakura Taisen would go on to become one of the best selling original Saturn games of all time. Its success had less to do with the talents of each individual involved though, and more to do with the the strong core concepts of the game and how everything came together into one fantastic package. From the introductory sequence the game is presented to the player in such a way that it feels like watching an anime. The opening sequence itself is an anime cut-scene, complete with an opening theme song. This serves as a fantastic introduction to the characters, setting (an alternate version of Tokyo during the 1920s, focused highly on advanced steam powered technology), and the high quality that is to come.
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| Sumire’s Special Move! |
Good old Yoneda! |
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| ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大魔境 | Gegege no Kitarou: Ghost Haunts |
| US: Ninja Kid |
- Released: 04/17/1986 (Japan), 10/29/1986 (US)
- Developer: Tose
- Publisher: Bandai
- Copies Sold (Approximate): 1,250,000
It’s interesting to see the results of a piece of distinctly Japanese source material being made into a game franchise. Gegege no Kitarou is a manga series by Mizuki Shigeru, created way back in 1959. Though Mizuki’s series was originally named “Hakaba Kitarou” (“Kitarou of the Graveyard”), “Gegege no Kitarou” was the name of the animated series that was created by Toei in 1968, based on the manga series. It has since been adapted into numerous other animated and live action series and features. While the light hearted and humorous horror vibe that Gegege no Kitarou gives off is not a completely Japanese idea, the ghosts and various monsters (or “youkai”) that appear in the series are brought to life straight out of Japanese fairy tales and folk lore. The aesthetic is one not often experienced, so one might wonder how something so unique would translate into a video game back in 1986. The answer, thankfully, is not badly.
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| The over world map |
A look at what a level might look like. With this one in particular, it’s easy to see why this game was localized as a ninja game! |
Like many other games from this time, Gegege no Kitarou is a side-scrolling action game in an arcade style. Arcade style in the sense that the game itself has no ending, and the game loops back to the beginning after 16 stages. The point is really to get a high score rather than see an ending or experience any sort of story. And though the game tells no story on its own, fans of Gegege no Kitarou will find plenty to appreciate in the details. Kitarou attacks with a variety of weapons: Remote-control geta, a finger gun, his rather distinct jacket, and good old fire bombs. While a lot of the art in these anime licensed games was very poor and lazily done, Gegege no Kitarou’s art is actually quite good. Kitarou’s sprite is immediately identifiable, and many other classic characters from the series make mid-level appearances as well. A good 8-bit version of the Gegege no Kitarou theme song plays at various points throughout the game, and the levels themselves all seem like areas used as a backdrop in an episode or volume of Kitarou. This makes the atmosphere of the game feel surprisingly true to its source material. And though the jumping can take a little bit of getting used to, the controls handle well.
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- Released: 08/26/1988 (Japan)
- Developer: Advance Communication Company
- Publisher: Victor Entertainment
Nihon Falcom’s Ys series is known as a sprawling epic of games, spanning across many different consoles and computer systems. Back in the summer of 1988 though, the first game in the series had only been released on various Japanese home computers (though it originated on the NEC PC-8801) roughly throughout the last year. The second game in the series had even already hit the PC-8801 just a couple of months prior. Nihon Falcom began life as a computer game developer, and wasn’t very interested in porting their games to home consoles themselves. When one of their titles did make it outside of the home computer world, it was nearly always ported and published by other companies and with little involvement from Falcom themselves. It took Victor Entertainment, music company gone game publisher, and ghost-developer Advance Communication Company to bring us the very first home console port of Ys 1. And it is a very interesting foot note in the history of the Ys franchise for many reasons.
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| This is the correct positioning to attack an enemy from, learn it well! |
A lot of houses throughout both of the game’s towns will just tell you “Looks like no one’s home”. Why is the house even there? |
Before we begin the discussion of the particulars though, it’s worth briefly mentioning some things about the first Ys game in general, a lot of which apply to the entire franchise. Each game in the series features Adol, our hero, visiting new lands throughout his continuing adventures. This first game begins with Adol in Esteria, where through resolving the problems of the locals he learns about the ancient land of Ys itself (which will serve as the setting for the second game). Ys features a unique combat system even for an action RPG: You attack enemies by running into them. Yes, Adol does carry a sword. No, you cannot hit a button to attack an enemy with it. Combat is performed exclusively using the directional pad to move Adol into an enemy. While this may sound a bit ridiculous, it probably also sounds very easy. Be warned: it is not quite as easy as it sounds! If you run head on into an enemy, you will find yourself dead very quickly! The real trick is to attack an enemy in one of three ways to avoid taking damage: From the side, from the back, or slightly offset from the front (see the screenshot above for an example). Once you get the hang of how to attack properly, the game’s challenge level goes down drastically from what it first seems.
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| 超時空要塞マクロス | Super Dimensional Fortress Macross |
- Released: 12/10/1985 (Japan)
- Developer: Namco
- Publisher: Bandai
Horizontal and vertically scrolling shooters were incredibly popular in the arcades in the 80s, so naturally that popularity extended to home consoles as well. In fact, by the end of 1985 the Famicom had already seen home ports of a lot of the popular arcade shooters of the time: Xevious, Galaxian, Galaga, Space Invaders, and Star Force. It only made sense that the hit anime franchise Macross, known for its mech/fighter plane hybrids, would be transformed into a horizontally scrolling shooter on the Famicom. Actually Macross had already had its first console shooting game on Bandai’s own short lived home console, the Arcadia, just about 2 years prior. Though it came after the aforementioned genre establishing shooters, it beat some others (such as Gradius) to the home market by several months.
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2013 has been a bit of a strange year for me. It’s the second year in a row that a particular set of personal issues have come to light, but it’s also been a year of fairly great and interesting discoveries in the gaming world. I haven’t played enough games that actually came out this year to make this into your typical “personal game of the year” post. As anyone who has read even a little bit of this site can probably guess, I’m constantly struggling to balance my gaming time between retro and modern games. That makes keeping up with the hot games of the year not always an easy thing to do. However I do want to briefly touch on the few games I did play that qualify.
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I have been playing Monster Hunter 4 since the Japanese release date. If this were a past iteration of Monster Hunter (let’s say, for example, Portable 3rd) my game clock would easily be over the 100 hour mark by now. My game clock in Monster Hunter 4 is just over 50 hours. As I’d mentioned in a previous article about my history with the Monster Hunter series, I’d gone through a bout of decreased interest with the series as of 3G/3 Ultimate on the 3DS/Wii U. However, I was really hoping that the changes brought about in 4 would spark my long held interest again. Well have they? I guess I can’t answer “yes” completely given what I just said, so the answer is more like “Sort of”. But I’ve begun to realize that it’s because of an aspect of Monster Hunter that I somehow managed to forget about over time and a changing life situation.
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Back in July of this year I started playing El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. I’d heard nothing but fantastic things about it from plenty of sources that I trusted, and figured that I’d forgotten about it long enough. I’m happy to say that every bit of praise that had been heaped upon it was true: The game was fantastic. My understanding of it coming in was that it was sort of an arty 3D beat-em-up, which was completely fine with me. What I wasn’t expecting was all of the other elements from other game genres that were thrown in, and for the most part, very well executed. The 3D platform could be a bit frustrating at times (perhaps that’s due to me not being so great at 3D platforming sometimes), but I was thrilled with the 2D platforming and motorcycle stages. I would not hesitate to recommend this game to anyone.
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| 機動戦士Ζガンダム・ホットスクランブル | Mobile Suit Z Gundam - Hot Scramble |
- Released: 08/28/1986 (Japan)
- Developer: Game Studio
- Publisher: Bandai
- Copies Sold (Approximate): 400,000
In February of 1986 the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam TV anime had just finished its fifty episode run of nearly one year in length. It received critical acclaim all around, garnered the highest ratings of any televised Gundam anime thus far and is widely regarded as one of Tomino Yoshiyuki’s (the creator of the Gundam franchise) best works. With Gundam fever spreading across Japan, it only made sense that the franchise should have a game on the Famicom.
It should be mentioned that before this there had already been other Gundam games released. The very first was on a system that Bandai themselves brought to Japan in 1983 called the Arcadia (a variant of the Emerson Arcadia). A couple of others were also released on home computers such as the MSX and FM-7.
The game’s plot is summed up with an opening story reel (which is strangely all in English) and follows the plot of the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam series. You are piloting the Z Gundam (perhaps as Zeta Gundam main character Kamille Bidan, though that isn’t specifically mentioned) and taking on the Titans. The story reel isn’t shown until after the “EBI Warning” though, informing the player that they should most definitely not engage in acts of piracy. But even though the false warning is amazing in its own way, what may even be more amazing is the ridiculously detailed Mobile Suit bios that are shown afterward. They contain just about any piece of Mobile Suit data that an aficionado could want, including the weight of the Mobile Suit’s head. These things combined with a chip tune version of the Zeta Gundam anime’s first theme song (“Zeta – toki wo koete”) playing gives this game more of an anime-style intro than any other game up to this point.
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With a copy of Monster Hunter 4 arriving at my doorstep soon, I suspect I’ll be writing quite a bit about it in the coming months. In preparation for this, I thought it might be a good idea to briefly discuss my personal history with the Monster Hunter series as a whole. I’d like to do this completely independently of the individual series entry reviews that I’ve been working on, focusing more just on my personal experiences with them instead of analyses. I will also discuss why I’m so excited for a new Monster Hunter game when the series itself is so well known for not differentiating itself with each iteration.
Back when Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (Monster Hunter Freedom Unite) was selling gang busters on the PSP in Japan, it was hard for an import savvy gamer to not notice the Monster Hunter phenomenon. After much prompting from my wife I decided to not pick up the latest and greatest entry in the series, but rather step back to the series roots (as I often do) and get Monster Hunter Portable (Monster Hunter Freedom) on the PSP. My story was not so different from that of a lot of other first time players: I kind of hated it. The controls were extremely odd and difficult to adapt to (though at the time I would constantly use the left trigger to center my camera, not having known about “the claw”) and many aspects of the game were archaic. On top of that, the level of challenge when I got to the first major monster (In this case Yian Kut-Ku) was just ridiculous. It was like everything that I had learned up until that point went right out the window when Kut-Ku did his tail whip and took away about half of my health. I did eventually struggle through beating Kut-Ku several times, and ultimately put down the game for good when I fought Rathalos. I was destroyed by him several times while barely managing to land a hit or two.
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