Chronturbo Episode 5

[ Techno music ]

Alright folks, it's Dr.Sparkle again

Geez, It seems like forever
since the last episode.

Well anyways, sorry it's so late
but here we are again.

The PC engine schedule
seems to get a bit more hectic

as we get closer to the
1989 holiday season.

Today, we're gonna finish up July and
blast through all of August and September.

We're gonna' see a number
of arcade ports today,

as well as some obscure
(and rather shitty) original titles.

[ Techno music ]

We ended last episode with a
classic shooter, Blazing Lasers,

and we begin this episode with a
not-so-classic shooter, Side Arms

(or Side Arms: Hyper Dyne,
as it's officially called in Japan)

This is the second port of a Capcom
arcade game for the system

(the first being SunSun 2)

and, once again, this is published
by N.E.C., not Capcom themselves.

In the U.S., this was one of the very few
TurboGrafx games not published by N.E.C.

Rather, it was by a small company
called Radiance Software,

which seemed to have
very close ties to Capcom.

They were also well known for
their involvement in the canceled, ah,

Nintendo Entertainment System
California Raisins game.

The guy who ran Radiance,
Christopher Riggs,

actually lists himself as being a Product
Developer at Capcom in the early 1990s.

Prior to Radiance, he apparently

co-founded a company called
Pacific DataWorks, with, uh, Troy Lyndon,

who was an interesting guy who much later
was behind the infamous Left Behind game.

Pacific DataWorks mostly did
DOS and Commodore 64 ports

for Capcom (including Side Arms!).

Riggs also had a company that
did computer ports for Capcom.

It's no surprise that the first Radiance
game is, of course, a Capcom port.

Anyhoo,
Earth got blown up or something, and

your little robot mecha dude is out there
to kill lots of aliens.

Mechanics are moreorless like similar
shooters of the era (such as Gradius).

Enemies drop power-ups, speed-ups,
and other types of, uh, special weapons.

Nothing too new or exciting, here,
but there are a couple interesting ideas.

The main one is: you can turn around
and fire in the opposite direction

by hitting the second button

(making Side Arms kind of a
predecessor to Forgotten Worlds).

Now, Side Arms was originally
an arcade game from 1986.

Aside from the ability to fire front and
back, a big feature of Side Arms was

that two players could occasionally
combine into a single more powerful form,

with one player controlling the mech and
the other controlling his weapons.

The home version dropped this 2-Player mode,

(meaning that your combined form is
basically just a temporary upgrade).

It lasts until you get hit.

Another cool feature is that you choose
the weapon you wanna lose from the menu,

instead of losing your current one when you
pick up a new one, like in most shooters.

You can actually carry a whole
bunch of weapons at once.

Now, this is actually very helpful, since certain types of
weapons are more useful than others in some spots.

In fact, certain weapons are pretty much vital for some areas.

And this leads me to one issue that so many Shoot-em-Ups have.
If you die once, you are pretty much screwed.

Side Arms is even much worse than many other similar games.

When the action gets hectic
and you screw up and get killed,

you'll be brought back to life with, like,
a single random underpowered weapon,

generally with enemies, like,
closing in on you from all sides.

So, get killed and odds are good that you'll
get killed again within a second or two.

And there are so many damn enemies
(like missiles, et cetera) that home in on you

and follow you around, as you try to avoid them.

And when you have, like, a very basic weapon that only shoots in one direction, it's pretty difficult to pick these guys off.

Also, like Gradius, picking up too many speed power-ups will make you move, uh, too fast and be hard to control precisely.

Overall, it's actually a pretty hard game
(harder than Gradius or R-Type, in my opinion)

but it actually, uh, looks great and I liked it
better than the Genesis port of Forgotten Worlds.

[ Techno music ]

We exit July with a real stinker.
From AICOM, it' s Takeda Shingen.

"Aha!", you say,
"We've already seen this game on Chrontendo.

It was, like, a strategy game,
published by HOT-B."

Well, no. This is actually a completely
different and unrelated game called Takeda Shingen.

Now, Takeda Shingen (the real person)
was a 16th century warlord, known for

(among other things)
having a badass set of armor

(which is, uh, sort of
semi-accurately depicted here).

Rather than being a Strategy game,
this is a rather dull Beat-'em-Up

And it's a painfully slow affair.

You have exactly two moves
(at least at first).

There's Attack with a sword slash
and Jump.

You'll be, uh, taking enemies head-on,
uh, just sort of hacking at them until they die.

They block a lot, so normally
you'll just, sort of, walk up to them

and start repeatedly slashing at them.

They'll block a few times and then you'll get a hit in.

This was a port of a Jaleco arcade game
(which looks a lot nicer).

The game isn't exactly hot shit,

but your character moves much faster
and there's a bit of action.

This is hardly top tier stuff, as of 1988,
but it seems reasonably bearable.

There's even, like, bonus rounds
where you can get on a horse and do some target practice.

The horse stuff got completely stripped
out from the PC Engine version

and the result is just
so damn monotonous.

You know, I got a good way through this game
and there were a pretty limited number of enemy types.

There's basically dudes with swords
(who are just like you),

dudes with a long flail on a chain
(and these guys are annoying),

and dudes with a long spear.

Boss battles are at the end of each level,
though each level looks about the same,

so there's really not much to
distinguish one level from the other.

Bosses are really nothing exciting.
This guy is just a big version of the swordsman.

Post-boss fight, you visit a shop
where you can refill your health

and buy some critical of...
offense and defenseive upgrades,

such as the war fan.

Now, in real life, uh, Takeda's
often depicted with his war fan.

There's a famous story about how he
deflected an enemy blade with his fan, once.

So this game, naturally, has him,
you know, carrying it around.

Takeda Shingen isn't really a fun game to play,
especially in comparison to contemporary

Beat-'em-Ups like Golden Axe or Final Fight.

Later, you get some better attacks, but the
lack of variety really kills any excitement.

It just feels like you're fighting the
same fight over and over and over again.

Your health bar is pretty long
and health refills are pretty frequent

so there's not much challenge at all
for the entire first half of the game

(until you get to this boss, who's, like,
ten times harder than the last one).

So, overall, Takeda Shingen
is a bummer of a game.

[ Techno music ]

So, we enter August with Maison Ikkoku
and a new publisher, Micro Cabin.

We've heard their name come up
a few times before in Chrontendo.

They were actually a pretty prominent
publisher of, uh, games for Japanese computers,

back in the '80s.

Like a lot of other sort of dodgy PC Engine games,
this one has some pretty decent music.

Right. So, Maison Ikkoku is one of these
inescapable menu-based adventure games.

Luckly, for us, we have an English translation
by Dave Shadoff and Matt LaFrance.

You play as one Yusaku Godai:

a down on his luck student, living in
sort of a rundown boarding house.

The manager of the boarding house
turns out to be (of course)

a beautiful young woman who was
recently widowed, named Kuyoku.

This was based on a popular manga, by the
famous manga artist, Rumiko Takahashi,

who you might know from such comics as
Uruse Yatsure and Renma One Half.

It basically chronicles, uh, Godai's desire to express his love for Kuyoku, as well as the wacky residents of the boarding house.

Eventually, of course, at the end of the series,
the protagonists get married.

This first appeared on the M.S.X.,
back in 1987.

It looks pretty similar to this port, actually!

It also wound up on the F.M. 7 and few other computers.

Now, the first console appearance of this game was on the Famicom, which we saw very briefly in Episode 33.

At the time, I'd pretty much said,

"Well, we'll check this out in more detail
when we reach it in ChronTurbo."

and now, my dear friends,
that day has arrived.

It turns out to be a reasonably normal adventure game.

Uh, this character, here, is some kind of weird pervert dude who builds tunnels and peepholes in the walls between the rooms.

Uh... You find a porno mag,
which contains "pretty radical stuff".

Later, you can actually, uh, give it back to him...
sort of, uh, win his favor.

Much of the game takes place inside the titular Maison Ikkoku.

Uh... Maison is simply the French word for "house",
which (I think) is being used ironically

(in the sense that calling this place "Maison" you know,
sort of, tried to, like, give it a touch of class.

Um... Ikkoku, I believe, means
hotheaded or tempermental

(perhaps referring to the
various nutty residents here.

In this game, you actually save
by going to the bathroom.

There's naturally all sorts of goofy sexual
innuendo going on between the characters.

And this, so far, seems to be the first
PC Engine game that actually shows

nipples in one of its human characters
in an obviously sexualized way

(as opposed to nipples on a
statue or a monster or something).

Um... For the most part, you go around
talking to people, collecting items,

and using them in sort of unintuitive ways.

Here's your love interest, though you actually call
her by the rather formal name, um, Kanrinin-san,

rather than her real name.

You can't interact with her too much yet.
Um... You actually have to get on her good side first.

A lot of the game involves, uh, talking to people and
getting on their good side by giving them things.

Among the other things, uh, you find, uh, her bra is
up on the roof and you have a daydream about her,

um, once, uh, you found the ladder
that allows you to climb up on the roof.

Aside from the house, you can travel to a
couple locations nearby, such as this store.

The cashier is meant to look like Lum from Urusei Yatsura.
Ya' buy things here to bribe the residents with.

Um... A great deal of time is spent, you know,
sorta' dealing with these annoying housemates.

Just like in the comic, Godai tends to fantasize
about putting the mack on his landlord,

but he's too scared to do anything.

The main goal of the game revolves actually
around trying to look at that picture you see

on the left hand side of the screen,
believe it or not.

And, you know, like a lot of these sorts
of things, your goal is kind of vague

and you make progress
in seemingly random ways

but the art is good, the music is decent,
so it's still a lot better than some of the awful,

uh, the other awful Adventure games we've seen.

[ Techno music ]

Hudson was, of course, the
co-creator of the PC Engine

and they published all the console's
games in Japan for about the first year.

But by this point, they are outnumbered
by third party publishers (at least in Japan).

This is the first of three Hudson-published
games today, Power League II

a baseball game, of course, and the
sequel to the first Power League game,

which was released about
14 months before this one.

There are a plethora of modes here
- typical stuff:

Single Game mode, a Penant Mode, All Star
(nothing we haven't seen before).

Now, the first Power League game
got a U.S. release, under the name

"World Class Baseball".

Power League II was never
released outside of Japan, though.

In fact, there are six
Power League games on the PC Engine

and the first one was the only one
to get a non-Japanese release.

Naturally, this looks and feels a lot
like the first Power League game.

If we look at the two back to back,
we see the sprites have been changed a bit,

but both games look very similar
(with one exception).

In the first game, after the batter got a hit,
it showed the outfield straight down,

with the uh, camera's line of sight
being perpendicular to the ground,

much like the, uh, Sega Genesis', uh,
sports games, like Tommy Lasorda Baseball.

Power League II uses a much
more traditional 45 degree angle

(looking sort of down and out over the field).

As always, playing against the CPU is tricky.

There's certainly a way to strike
out the CPU, but I didn't find it.

Generally the CPU would get a good powerful
hit against anything I would throw at it.

When I was at the bat, I'd get lots of fly balls

(and, uh, the computer would actually
catch these with absolute 100% accuracy)

as well as tons of foul balls

(like, about 4 out of 5 hits would
be a foul ...or just really weak hits).

Of course you have to play these things for a
little while to sorta' get, you know, the feel to them

and I didn't play it long enough to actually,
you know, get very good at this thing.

So, Power League II is
(just like its predecessor)

a sharp-looking baseball game that
doesn't really stand out in any way,

other than its, you know,
nice looking graphics.

And we will get to see four more of
these during the life of the console.

[ Techno music ]

Our third PC Engine game,
from Naxat (a.k.a. Taxan)

who had previously released the, uh,
great pinball game, "Alien Crush"

as well as a golf game.
Now, we have a pool game from them.

Break In, featuring
Simulation, Action, Technique

Geez! is this an instructional sex game?

Simulation is sort of a tournament mode,
Action is just like one-off, uh, playing a game,

and Technique is like a
tutorial practice mode deal.

Break In is pretty generous with
the types of games you can play.

For example, you have, uh, Yotsudama

(a four ball game that's played
on a table with no pockets

and doesn't really resemble
normal pool that much)

and "Bowliards", which appears to be
a, uh, (actually is misspelled here)

is sort of a hybrid between
bowling and billiards.

Hmm! Yes, I would like some nice shiny oranges and a glass of... orange soda? ...or maybe a big glass of [???]?

Man, we're gonna' get f---ed up
on that [???] there.

Lots of options, here.
Choose singles versus doubles,

who is controlled by computer
and who is controlled by... "Man"

(Sorry, ladies! This is a man's game.)
Pick a character,

(choose from either seven
men characters or "Woman")

"Dragon"!? Come on!
This guy's hobby is golf?

I'm surprised it's not...
you know... Billiards.

Actually, I'm kidding.
There are seven female characters as well.

Hmm! I like Emmy's dumb '80s fashion and,
uh, Sophia's, sort of, adorable geek chic

but really, uh, Sigrid, the boozy
actress seems like the coolest to me.

So picking a card determines who breaks.

Now, when you actually get ready to
shoot a va... shoot the ball, here,

you have a great deal of control, much
like the typical golf games of this era.

You have this image ball concept

(not something I've seen
in pool games prior to this)

CPU players are generally
decent but not 100% perfect,

which is a nice switch from the
various baseball games we've seen.

Franky's pretty cool, but I
think that mustache is fake.

Like a lot of other PC Engine games,
Break In has some pretty chill music.

Now, this is the Technique part.
(I'm trying to learn trick shots.)

Good luck.

We've only seen a few pool games
throughout the Chron series.

I still kinda like Compile's nutty "Lunar Pool"
game the best (which was on the N.E.S.)

but among sort of like regular serious pool
games, "Break In" is definitely one of the slickest.

[ Techno music ]

Whoa-hoa! Did I load up a Famicom
game by mistake? What is this?

Well, it's yet another Capcom arcade port
(and we're not really getting top tier Capcom

stuff here).

The MegaDrive gets "Ghouls and Ghosts"
and the PC Engine gets "F-1 Dream".

There's a bit of a story here.

F-1 Dream is one of those
career type racing games.

Alright, so let's fire up
some F-1 racing action.

Wait. What's going on, here?
These are not F-1 cars.

This is apparently kind of a prologue
to the main F-1 racing game.

Your car is super lame
(and I'm sure there's no way to win).

Anyway, the original F-1 Dream was a 1988
arcade game, which used the likenesses of

real Formula 1 drivers in the intro.

It's a pretty basic top-down racer.

I guess there was still, like, some sort of
demand for this kinda thing in the late '80s

(I don't know why.)

One funny touch was, if you smack into the
guardrails near spectators, they all go running

hysterically.

Right, so I'll fill you in on the basics of F-1 Dream.

This is one of those racing games where
you collect money for racing and then

use it to buy upgrades for your car
(which starts out super shitty).

First, you actually need to
hire guys to work on your car.

Here, I'm, uh, hiring a tire guy
and an engine guy.

After paying these dudes, I have enough
money left to put some better tires on

my car and then it's off to the F-1 race!

(Well, this is technically the tr... time trial
but the actual race is up next.)

So, you just sorta cruise around the track
and, uh, (in order to qualify for the race)

however there's a couple things about this
type of game that drives me crazy

(namely the controls).

I've seen this in other Japanese
top-down racing games on the Famicom

but it drives me nuts here as well.

The controls are not from the perspective
of the driver, but from the viewpoint of the

game's camera (meaning that if you're
pointed up and wanna turn right, you

press Right on the directional pad -
which makes sense so far - but if

you're facing down (towards the bottom
of the screen) and you wanna turn the

vehicle right, you press Left, because the vehicle's
right is towards the left-hand side of the screen.

This tends to confuse me, since we usually
think of, you know, driving from the driver's

point of view, especially when I'm heading
towards the bottom of the screen and drift

towards the side of the road, trying to correct
myself will usually result in me driving off the

road, since it feels to me like
the controls are reversed.

You start bringing in money pretty quickly
(even for doing poorly) and you will slowly

be able to improve your vehicle.

Among other things, if the car gets damaged
too much, it'll explode in a rather cool fashion

and you'll get a Game Over.

Beyond that, there's really not
that much to say about F-1 Dream.

We've already seen a lot
of games like this already.

We saw a much more creative take on a
career racing game last time, with Namco's

Final Lap Twin.

Quite frankly, the most distinguishing thing
about F-1 Dream is just how appallingly

last-generation the graphics look.

[ Techno music ]

So, after taking in that weird looking box cover,
you really should pause this and take a moment

to read this batshit insane intro, here.

It's about, uh, finding mysterious fortunes
and "Busters" (uh, "the name..." for "...people

we call... fortune hunters".

Their "historic journey" is to get "FISA"
("called legend by the people"). Hmm.

The "one person..." who
"...can make it real ...

has got to be billionet and radical,
physically and mentally"

and "Yes, you are the one!"

One of the great things about doing a
series like this is you find shit that

doesn't seem like it has any reason to
exist (for example, "Rock On").

This is the second game from publisher,
Big Club and developer Manjyudo.

They had released a game in June called
"Jinmu Denshō Yaksa" (covered in

Chronturbo 4) which took a character
from a PC-88 game and stuffed him into

a Space Harrier clone.

As far as I can tell, "Rock On"
is a completely original game.

It's a Shoot-'em-Up (and
not a great one at that).

In fact, uh, VG Den (a review site for the
PC Engine and Super Famicom games

calls it the worst
Shoot-'em-Up for the console.

I don't know if that's true,
but damn, it sure ain't good.

If nothing else, you get a lot of power-ups!

So, this looks pretty boring, huh?

Well, I guess there's a couple
things we can say about this.

First of all, the power-up
system is a little different.

You can carry three different special
weapons at once, though none of them

display even the slightest
amount of creativity.

There's the three way shot, the laser
(you know, the one where you shoot

both directions vertically, one where you
shoot both directions horizontally).

Use the Start button to move between them
but there's no Pause feature in the game,

meaning you have to switch weapons on the
fly (unlike in Side Arms) which is, you know, kind of a pain.

Rock On uses kind of like a cute pudgy design
style; your ship looks a little bit like Opa-Opa.

One annoying factor here are these warps.

They actually send you back to the
beginning of a level if you... if you

don't know what they are
and accidentally go into one.

I don't know much about the developer
Manjyodo, except they made a handful

of PC Engine games and were mostly involved in importing/distributing arcade games.

As of 1998, their website was still up,
but all it had was listings of arcade

cabinets for sale, along with
commercial boats (like, big boats).

For example, they were selling
an 11 million cargo boat.

There's really nothing interesting
or exciting or creative here.

In fact, uh, this boss is ripped right
out R-Type. (the nerve!)

Instead of points, you get money,
though I never did see a shop or

anything to spend the money in.

I love the way the interface at the bottom
actually gets covered up by background objects.

I haven't seen this happen in other games
on the console, so I assume it's a problem

with the game, itself, not the emulation.

So we're definitely scraping
the bottom of the barrel, here.

It's a real puzzler, this one is, and I still
have no idea why it's called, "Rock On".

Oh, hey! One important thing
happened in August 1989.

The TurboGraphx 16 was released in
the United States (purportedly debuting

on August 29th) though as was often the
case, it was apparently a limited launch

(just in New York and California).

And, while Hudson was the most prolific
publisher for the system in Japan, almost

all the games, here in the U.S. were
released by NEC, themselves.

With NEC's U.S. headquarters apparently
being the (I'm sure very lovely) town of

Woodale, Illinois.

The console itself was redesigned
quite a bit and turned out quite a

bit larger than the PC Engine.

Uh... It had a pretty decent selection
of launch titles, actually.

Aside from, of course,
"Keith Courage in Alpha Zones"

which was the pack-in game,
there was "R-Type", "Legendary Axe",

uh, "Alien Crush", and "Dungeon Explorer".

along with the ubiquitous golf and racing
games, "Power Golf" and "Victory Run"

Rounding it out was two Beat-'em-Ups,
"Vigilante" and "China Warrior"

(a.k.a. "The Kung Fu", which was the first
game released for the system in Japan.

So, eight games, which was actually a pretty
hardy, uh, launch lineup, for back then.

Some sources say "Blazing Lasers" was a
launch title, but upon further inspection,

this appears to be false.

Here's an ad from GamePro in late 1989
(not as cool looking as the Genesis ads).

The TurboBooster, by the way, was an
add-on that allowed for a composite video

output and stereo sound, instead
of the standard R.F. connection.

The TurboCD is featured in the ad,
even though that would actually

not come out until later in 1990.

As you'll recall, the TurboGraphx came
out, um, in the U.S. about, uh, two

weeks after the Genesis, so this was
sort of like the first battle in the

16-bit wars, with the still-somewhat
mysterious Super Famicom lurking

somewhere in the wings
in... in the... the future.

E.G.M. did quite a bit of coverage on the
new PC Engine, along with lots of Sega

coverage as well.

The Genesis was ten dollars
cheaper than the TurboGraphx

(a hundred and ninety
instead of two hundred)

and, uh, both were noticeably cheaper than
either the N.E.S. or the Master System

with inflation factored in.

While Sega obviously overtook NEC eventually
in late 1989 the 16-bit playing field appeared

to be, uh, completely up for grabs.

[ Techno music ]