Random crap.
The PC-98 must have been quite a computer to have experienced it at the time in Japan. Unfortunately, a lot of it was just adult titles. The last one seems at first to be a promising game with obviously Blade Runner-inspired graphics, but it turns out to be raunchy lez-rape crap.
Tonight I bought a new shmup called Crystal Breaker. It really hearkens back to the TG-16/PC-Engine days! You take no damage from collisions and it rewards you for getting up close to enemies by releasing gems when you destroy enemies at close range.
Choose between two characters: Layla with short, auburn hair who has a standard shot, and Jenny with long, dark hair who has a shorter attack reach, but has stronger firepower.
Your powerups max out at the 3rd level, in which you shoot five ways. There are no bombs, but only a dash that can allow you to dodge bullets (however it’s not as easy as you’d think).
Crystal Breaker is made by Terarin Games, who also released the Gunhead/Blazing Lasers-inspired Raging Blasters and Layer Section/Rayforce-inspired Moon Dancer. Terarin’s definite Compile-influences are seen here, following the retro caravan-style shmup style. They do well at capturing that ’90s shmup aesthetic. As with prior games, Crystal Breaker also has a selectable chiptune music option. This game is hard, and I still haven’t cleared the second boss yet. Nice neo-retro style game!
Last night I played the demo of the fan/doujin port of R-Type on the Megadrive that shmuppers were deprived of back in the day! The Master System and PC Engine got ports of R-Type, but not the Megadrive… until now! It’s actually not a “port” per se, as it is being built ground-up by an Italian family guy living in China who goes by “TheRoboz” on YouTube. The MD-generated music is fantastic! I paid for the demo rom and gave it a shot. You go from stage 1 to stages I’ve never gotten to before. The game isn’t complete and it seems to be a bit too liberal with the 1UPs for some reason. You can play as the standard R-9 Arrowhead, but also the “Leo Prototype.” Don’t get too excited about the Leo though… it doesn’t have the dual force orbs that R-Type Leo has, but rather no force orb and each powerup gives you the instant special weapons. You can shoot the powerups to change their color, like a Cotton game does. It’s definitely the Leo though, as you can tell by the sprites that it’s a rendering of the ship from R-Type Leo, but on the Megadrive. Neat gimmick, but I think I prefer having the force orb.
I used SimpleScreenRecorder in Linux to record playing as both ships. I did better the first try, but then I realized that it was recording audio from my webcam’s mic and not the actual game. So I re-did the video all over again and I ended up not doing as well. That’s what you see here. Stick around to the end… the music for the ranking screen is a fantastic MD chiptune!
(Gosh, it is a pain in the ass to embed Odysee links in WordPress!)
The site to buy and download the rom: https://theroboz.itch.io/mega-r-type
The creator’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theroboz
I’ve had this since I was a child in the early ’80s. The steel balls inside once shown with luster, but have dulled over 40 years. The plastic has gotten scratched up considerably. This is a pocket pachinko-type game. Roll the dial and it drops the balls onto the pegs. Move Pac-Man across the bottom to catch them as they fall and bring them to the center hole for points. My daughter Ulan used to play with this in the car when she was a tiny girl. Now she’s grown up and has a smartphone. She’s growing so quickly…
When I was a boy, the #1 game arcade I went to in Glendale, AZ was Bag-A-Tel in Valley West Mall. My #1 go-to game was, of course, Atari’s Star Wars sit-down cabinet. Released in 1983, this game came out the same year as Return of the Jedi, yet it involved the first Star Wars movie. I remember playing Atari’s Red Baron, a similar vector graphics shooter cabinet, before Star Was was released. The Return of the Jedi game by Atari came out in ’84, featuring an isometric view that I really could not get the hang of. Then in ’85 the first game was modified to play the Empire Strikes Back vector graphics game, which was not as good.
If Star Wars was occupied, my #2 choice was the Namco’s Pole Position II (released by Atari in the US) sit-down cabinet, which was located next to Star Wars. (This animated gif is actually of the first Pole Position game though.)
I have very fond memories of Bag-A-Tel. I loved that place. Whenever we’d catch a movie at the dollar theater, we’d be sure to stop by that arcade. Valley West Mall was eventually closed down, then later re-opened as Manistee Town Center. Eventually that mall went goodbye as well, and the mall was used for filming the movie Eight-Legged Freaks starring David Arquette and featuring a very young Scarlett Johannsson. The mall was demolished for that movie.
Hyper Dyne Side Arms (Capcom, Arcade 1986)
This game blew me away as a kid when I first saw it. That two mecha could transform into starfighters and form one big robot was too cool. At the time, I was unable to get enough powerups to make that happen.
If I recall correctly, it was a drugstore called Skagg’s that had this game. Mom would ask me to go and I would be excited to go so that I could look at this game. After my quarter was gone, I’d still just love to watch the screen. It was so great how stores and convenience stores would have arcade games by the entrance. I miss those days.
When I bought my PC Engine in Osaka in 2001, Side Arms was one of the first games I bought for that system. Neat stuff.
Sailor Moon (Banpresto, Arcade 1995)
I played the Super Famicom Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R brawler games by Bandai quite a lot, but it wasn’t until much later that I learned of this arcade game by Banpresto much letter. The gameplay is pretty solid and I love the screen-clearing magic attacks, but it lacks the standard projectile attacks that the SFC games featured, done by holding the attack button and charging it for a moment. It would have made this arcade game better IMHO.
Retro gaming spotted in a classic anime! From Devil Hunter Yohko episode 2, here we see that Yohko is an avid gamer from the early ‘90s. You can spot an NEC PC Engine Turbo Duo-R, Sega Megadrive, Nintendo Super Famicom, a Sega Game Gear, and even an Atari Lynx! Oh yeah, and there’s some manga there too.
In 1996, the video game scene in the USA was heavily focused on 3D-rendered graphics and I was disappointed. I was not opposed to 3D, but I much preferred 2D pixel graphics. I had finally bought a SNES with my high school graduation money in the summer of ’94. But now it was two years later, and by then nearly everything seemed to be 3D.
I went to a place called Laser Quest with my friend Nathan, which is a Laser Tag type of place. In the lobby were several arcade machines. Two that stood out to me was Gunbird and Power Instinct 2. I was fearing that shmups were a dead genre, as everything on the dominant Playstation seemed to be focused on 3D gameplay. Power Instinct 2 was a Street Fighter-style fighting game, but with quirky characters and a Sailor Moon-style girl character that transforms into a chick on rollerblades.
Gunbird’s publisher was Jaleco and Power Instinct 2’s publisher was Atlus. I managed to track down an email for Jaleco and asked them if they could release the game on a home console. A Jaleco rep responded to me, who happened to be an import gamer. He told me that Gunbird did get a home port on the Sega Saturn, although it was through Atlus. This Jaleco rep was the first to tell me about how incredibly awesome the Saturn was for 2D gaming, and how there is a treasure trove of such games that was not being released for the domestic US Saturn, particularly 2D shmups. It was then that I knew I had to get a Saturn.
Atlus released both Gunbird and Power Instinct 2 in Japan for home consoles, however the latter was released for the Playstation rather than the Saturn. This is disappointing, because the Playstation could not handle the game like I am sure the Saturn could. Load times are atrocious for this game’s home port. Power Instinct 3, aka Groove on Fight, was released for the Saturn, but it just didn’t have the same charm, I thought.
I got these on AliExpress.com. I didn’t notice the size of these stickers. I was hoping to put the RetroPie sticker on my Raspberry Pi case, but it’s way too big for it!
Here is the link to the sales page for these stickers. You have to choose which ones you want. They also have a Konami sticker, but it’s the newer logo and not the classic logo, unfortunately. So, I passed. I do want to buy a smaller RetroPie sticker now.