wow yeah, I hadn‘t heard of this at all - it’s really nice looking! like a mix between tempest and knuckles chaotix‘s special stages. I kind of wanted this to be PC-98 somehow, magically, but of course it couldn’t be………
@exodus#1787 It‘s possible the PC-98 might have some doujin racers like this, but I haven’t found any. Compile did one of their own in 1996, though it's closer to Super Scalar time-trial racers than this.
I've postponed what would have been this week's Pasokon Sunday until Friday, largely due to getting overworked (co-worker's on vacation) and the police crackdown unrest in the U.S. depressing me. But here's today's Disc Station Digest, going for something simple again:
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1268295581786669061
Arandar, curiously, doesn't feature a whole lot of Randar, though the cute mascot likely shows up later on.
a few years back I was wondering why there weren't more single screen games like this. then there was a resurgence of them and I was like ah, this is why.
super crate box was good but most of the rest were not. I think they all got too tied up in the nostalgia rather than advancing the genre in any meaningful way.
I adore the look of Randar.
The genre of single screen action games would be fun to see come back, but it is sorely in need of some innovation if it's going to go anywhere worthwhile. There were enough of them back in the day that a lot of ideas already had a chance to be experimented with.
Well, it's been a weird week in my part of the world, but the J-PC saga continues.
First up, have a really unique Sharp MZ-700 classic from 1988, six years after the (intentionally) underpowered machine came to market:
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1269743435189125120
This week's Disc Station Digest instead goes into a time when Compile made strategy wargames a la Fire Emblem, just with a more character-centric premise:
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1270834373625909248
Lots to say for both. I'm very fond of Side-Roll F as a sit-down-and-enjoy experience, a technical marvel for hardware dating back to the turn of the 1980s. But I also really like Goddess' Sword, simple as it is compared to some of its contemporaries.
Side-Roll F is super impressive, and has a discernible style which is hard to say of many games for platforms like this! Sometimes I wonder what compels folks to go back and do something so impressive in this kind of timeframe. 20 years later I understand - but 6 years after a platform comes out, does okay-ish, and then is immediately supplanted by better hardware… that is some real specific kind of dedication!
As for Goddess Sword, nice music! and the battle sprites almost look like low-res pre-rendered CG... I wonder if they are?
This week's belated showcase comes in the form of a John Carpenter-esque sci-fi dungeon-crawler set on a desolate lunar base:
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1272702500446056448
Atlus did bring this over to the U.S. on PS1, which is unfortunate because that version's mostly a sidegrade vs. the Windows/Dreamcast remake's considerable advances. But the PC-98 original must have been impressive and very fun for its time, just before Doom and Ultima Underworld's influences would gain global reach and revolutionize the genre.
Wow, there is a lot going on with this!!! I can‘t really wrap my head around all the stuff they’re doing. is that transparency also!? are they just layering ui on top of ui? is it polygonal or a bunch of power drift style logs!?
what a curiosity, thanks for sharing.
If you‘re talking about the text-window-atop-text-scroll effect, that’s just me masking that part of the intro (all black aside from the text and portraits) and fitting it atop the other part (starfield sequence).
And I'm pretty sure the game's using some kind of polygonal rendering, either using raycasting or full worldspace calculations. Either way, it's impressive stuff.
Really cool. I knew about the Space Griffon VF-9 genealogy but I had no idea the original game was also in 3D and had such a striking visual look. It looks like one of those many fake retro games that would release on itchio next Thursday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6VbSyi7vLA
Was there no X68000 version? It's rather surprising that such a game concept and tech demo would come from the PC-98 scene. Speaking of 68000 machines, I wonder if the developers got inspiration from Corporation (Amiga, 1990) which also got a MD/Genesis port in 1992, although I believe neither version released in Japan officially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jflI-riB4To
Well, uh, it‘s been a month. I took a longer break than expected, but I’m ready to get back into J-PC stuff starting this weekend. In the meantime, I‘ve also been working on new maps for classic Doom, which will likely be the next thread I make since that’s an incredible time-sink I want to feel validated for taking part in.
Before asking on Twitter, I want to know from y'all: what's a kind of classic Japanese PC game that you've been very interested in or have heard interesting things about, but haven't seen any in-depth look at before? Preferably not eroge, Kojima, or anything Touhou; I'm thinking a bit lesser-known than those tend to be.
Welcome back!
Here are some I'm interested in:
Star Cruiser (people know it, but I'd like to see more in-depth) and also earlier games from them
Lesser Mern (mostly I like the name)
Nightmare Collection (dead of the brain and the underwater one)
My Eyes (a VN about a young woman befriending an Orca)
The early Valises (maybe you covered this already)
the original XZR
that's enough out of me probably!
Anything Game Arts and Zoom, please!
I am really interested in both stories, and I would especially like to better understand how and why Game Arts ended up becoming the premier game developer for the Japanese Mega Drive catalogue (check how many of their games feature in [BeepMD’s readers Top 100](https://youtu.be/y4ig2hsWIXk) ranking!).
Regarding Zoom, I am just curious if I have missed anything interesting besides their more famous X68000 releases.
While you‘re looking at Zoom (if you do) maybe see when their cat mascot started showing up!! I’ve been mildly curious about that since they put it or phalanx into everything they had around the 90s.
P.S. I‘ve just heard that the Rune Worth series (PC98) has no EXP - so I’m curious about that one as well!
@exodus#3543 star cruiser is pretty cool, I was messing around with the mega drive port the other day. pre 32-bit 3d is always interesting.
It seems like Star Cruiser and Zoom games are winning out! If I‘d have to narrow down a Zoom game to showcase, I’d probably go with Genocide Square for FM Towns, as that‘s the ideal way to play both games but particularly the sequel. Normally I’d avoid stacking one sci-fi game on a 16-bit platform after the other (going from HAMLET on PC-98 to either of these picks), but circumstances are different now and I need a game that gives me much to say.
I'd read about these!!
Gordon's alive!
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1368686746439987203
My apologies for the radio silence. I have a new, improved workflow for videos and streams now, so I've got plenty more coming.
And the return of Disc Station Digest, also!
https://twitter.com/DragEnRegalia/status/1369773810950488064
The creator of this interactive monke mosh got interviewed for the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers a while back, so I was able to pull quote from that.