April 2025’s Monthly Game Club game is Kaze no Notam.
Kaze no Notam was developed by Artdink and released for the Sony PlayStation in 1997. Artdink has been around for decades and was primarily known their train simulator games, but in recent years has developing RPGs like Soul Hackers 2, DQIII HD-2D, Triangle Strategy, and licensed anime games.
Nominated by @Mnemogenic, here’s what they have to say about it:
Let’s all fly hot air balloons
There’s an English patch too:
Related reading:
Oh heck yeah! April is a good month to fly hot air balloons. I’ve only played this for about an hour and let me tell you: getting a hot air balloon to go anywhere you want it to is very difficult.
Love the box art for this game, seriously so chill! And a nice style.
Good excuse to try the new fan translation. I don’t know much about the development of Kaze no NOTAM, but I highly suspect it never would’ve been conceived if not for Aquanaut’s Holiday before it. I’ve always seen it as the studio trying their hands on a Kazutoshi Iida game without his involvement. In this sense, Kaze no NOTAM feels more like a proper Aquanaut’s Holiday sequel than even Aquanaut’s Holiday 2 or Hidden Memories!
Is that by Hiroshi Nagai
Artdink rules, dude.
Been meaning to give this a spin
It most certainly is!
Box art illustrator is the great Hiroshi Nagai, check out his other work. Most famous for his 1980s record sleeves and magazine covers.
I love an Artdink game. They are truly unsung heroes, so of course I gotta check out their take on a Pilotwings style aerial adventure.
I decided to jump into Drafty Valley…gonna work my way up to Breezy Earth.
This game is tough!! Dark Souls is nothing compared to flying a hot air balloon. They really don’t indicate how to properly steer and it seems like different elevations can really send you flying in the opposite direction if you aren’t deliberate about your vertical movement.
I found this guide on GameFAQs that translates the manual:
Hot air balloon flight
Rising/lowering
The hot air balloon will rise when you press the △ button, and descend when you press the × button. However, due to their nature, hot air balloons cannot rise or fall immediately.Movement
To move your hot air balloon in the direction you want to go, align your hot air balloon with the altitude where the wind is blowing in the same direction.Markers
Press the R1 button to go to the marker firing screen. Aim with the sight in the center of the screen and press circle to fire the marker. To return to the original screen, press the R1 button again.
The overall atmosphere* is great though, I’m loving the music and the “past” setting in Draft Valley. Excited to see how Artdink modeled the present day in “Windy City” and what they predicted the future would look like in “Breezy Earth”.
*- pun intended
For any other Artdink fans, I heartily recommend SCROLL issue 09.
I picked up the whole set of SCROLL many years ago in a humble bundle/story bundle. Check if you already own it!
i tried my hardest to find an eboot file of this to play on vita. i was able to find a “normal” dump of the bin/cue files, but the only program i could find to convert that to eboot was windows only.
this is to say i will sadly sit this month out, but it looks really fun!
I love a bit of Artdink, so count me in. I played this one a fair bit last year but I’ll take any excuse to give it a spin again.
If someone was curious to find out whether this game is a Sokoban - would they want you to have the JP eboot or the EN fanlation eboot?
in this hypothetical world, i would take the EN
I tried yesterday to make an eboot with that software but when I went to transfer it to my Vita Windows blue-screened lmao. So I will not be sharing the file here because it is Cursed
Has anybody successfully eboot the translation? I’m thinking it might not be possible because of changes in the patch.
There’s mention of it being difficult to eboot this game on gbatemp: https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-to-converting-ps1-games-for-psp.206195/page-22
I’m struggling to find a dump that matches the SHA1 that the patch is expecting
Edit: I’m dumb, the hash was post-patch. Ok, back to it. We have TOP MEN working on it.
