Posted on

CrossCode, a retro, Japanese-style action RPG on Steam

I bought this game on a Steam sale the year before last because the ad for it reminded me of Super Famicom action RPGs like The Secret of Mana and Zelda: A Link to the Past. I just played the prologue and when I saw that the gameplay is far more complex than I was expecting, it proved to not be just something I can pick up and play for a bit. Since it was a bit more involved, I decided to play it later. I sort of forgot about this game until last month when I decided to give it another try.

The pixel art in this game is beautiful. It is definitely 16-bit inspired and the in-game sprites are cute and well-detailed, but no Super Famicom could handle the cool lighting and shadow effects that this game has. This game actually comes from Germany and while the up-close character designs show that this is not a Japanese-made game, the actual in-game graphics look very much like a sprite-based, 16-bit style JRPG.

It’s taken me some time to get used to this game’s controls. You definitely need a modern controller with two analog sticks. You have two attacks: a melee slash and a projectile. Enemies vary with which weapon is more effective. Another button activates a spin that helps you dodge. There’s a lot of platforming in this game with pitfalls, but you respawn if you make a fatal fall. Jumping is conveniently automatic, so you don’t have to time jumps perfectly. You also won’t make any accidental jumps.

There are no random encounters, unless you get ambushed as part of the story. Most enemies don’t attack you until you attack them. As you level up, you can upgrade yourself by making additions to your “circuits” by spending CP. This raises your stats and enables you to learn new special attacks to dish out heavy damage. When you begin battles, your rank is at D and the more enemies you defeat, your rank goes up. When you reach rank S, the music changes and you get a disco lighting effect. The more you can defeat at higher levels, the more experience you gain and therefore the more quickly you level up.

I’m at the point now where I’ve learned fire attributes. This helps makes short work of the ice monsters in the mining cave dungeon.

Here’s the jibungous enemy robot in the ice mine. Look at the size of that thing!

Like I said, it takes a bit to get used to the controls. There is a lot of puzzle-solving that involves a lot of platforming. You’ll also have to align surfaces to bounce your projectile in a way so that it hits every surface in order to unlock a door or whatever.

So yeah, the sprites in this game are very cool. You’d think that they came from a Japanese game developer in the ’90s rather than a German indie company! But this is why I’ve come to really love Steam: companies like Konami may as well just not even exist anymore since they have completely abandoned their fans. The big name gaming companies have become pretty boring and I can’t expect Capcom to ever make another sprite-based game again. But these indie game developers are keeping the retrogaming spirit alive, and it’s why I like to talk about them on this stupid blog of mine that hardly anybody looks at.

I found these sprite animations by doing an image search. I assume that these are from the game, but if they are then I haven’t gotten to them yet. Anyhow, play this game or you suck. This game was made in HTML5, incredibly. So, it’s native in Linux, Win, and Mac. It runs fine on my laptop with its 16:9 display, but I have to use Glorious Eggroll to get it to display properly on my desktop’s 4:3 display monitor.

Posted on

Neon Inferno, a new retro-style game on Steam!

Holy crap, this game is beautiful. Featuring gorgeous pixel art with a configurable CRT shader, this game is a cross between Metal Slug and Wild Guns. This is a neo-retro game by Zenovia Interactive, who also made Steel Assault.

Here’s the title screen. So beautiful. The music at the title screen is very Vangelis’s Blade Runner-inspired synthesizer. FANTASTIC!

There are two characters, Angelo and Mariana. Mariana is so beautiful, so I always play as her. There doesn’t seem to be a difference in how these characters handle. The character animations are very well made. It took me a bit before I realized that busty Mariana’s boobs bounce as she runs. It’s very natural and pretty bouncing, and not over-the-top exaggerated as many games are like. Nowadays there are so many Japanese-made games with girls featuring what I call “moon boobs” because it looks like the are nearly weightless. It looks creepy and I can’t stand it. Here Mariana’s tits bounce like they have proper weight to them.

Character designs are by Tsukasa Jun of Psikyo fame, who did the designs for games like Gunbird and Sengoku Blade. Kickass.

The Blade Runner/cyberpunk scenery is wonderful, showing New York streets covered in snow. The lighting is gorgeous, and you will see light sourcing at work. The graphics make this game more reminiscent of 24-bit Neo Geo games rather than the 16-bit Super Famicom.

The left trigger button locks the direction of your shooting while the right trigger button has you stand in one place while you can aim around you. There is a dodge roll to duck bullets like in Wild Guns and you can parry bullets and knock the bullets back where they came from, or you can hold the button down to enter “bullet time” and you can change the direction of the bullets. The parry acts as a melee attack which does stronger damage than your gun, helping you make short work of stronger enemies at close range.

At times the enemies are in the background. Use the RB button to fire at them. Here you can take cover behind the police car. In the game, you fight against the enemy gang members as well as the corrupt NYPD apparently.

You steal a racing bike and action ensues on the road. You can shoot at the background or foreground as well as behind, front, and above you. The above screenshot was taken with the CRT filter disabled.

Here is your bounty: a yakuza guy.

You have to take out this mobile weapons truck’s cannons as well as shoot at your target bounty guy who is in the open doorway shooting at you.

Finally you fight him after the truck is destroyed. He will fly into the background as well as shoot at you from the foreground. You have to wear down his shield until he dies.

Here’s the game over screen. I could beat the game in Medium mode, but not in Arcade mode. It’s pretty tough in Arcade mode as there are no checkpoints.

This is just the free demo of the first level. I’m really looking forward to when this game gets released! What’s more, I did not have to specify any compatibility tool version to get this to work on my Linux desktop. The game just loads without having to do anything. Nice!

EDIT: I didn’t have the same luck running the game on my laptop. I had to enter this for the boot option to get it to work: PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

Posted on

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth on PSP

Last week I was sick with influenza and stayed home. I stayed in bed for 5 days and slept. I also began playing Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth for the PSP and I really like it. I got about 4 hours in, realized I was not playing it right, then started over. It’s really not your typical JRPG in which every new town you visit you buy new weapons and armor for your characters at the armory shop and buy item supplies at the store next to that. In this game you must craft your own items and such. My complaint is that when I am creating new weapons and armor, it does not tell me which characters can use them, nor how much their stats would increase with the items.

I remember when this game first came out for the Playstation, at the end of the ’90s. It was refreshing to see screenshots of this game in magazines with its pixel graphics. At that time, nearly everything had to be 3D rendered and I didn’t like that. However, Valkyrie Profile came out late in the console’s life, and not many copies of the game were made. I was unable to procure one and before long, it had become terribly expensive. When it was re-released for the PSP as Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, I definitely bought it.

The world in this game is rather dreary. So much death and betrayal. As Lenneth, you must collect the souls of people who’ve died and recruit them to fight creatures of darkness so that you can send them to Asgard to fight for King Odin. Lots of sad stories. “I promise you, I won’t die! After this war, I’ll return and marry you!” Sorry bud, you’re dead. Now you get to die again in Ragnarok. That sort of thing. Perfect game for this joyous holiday season.

Posted on

Screenshots of retro arcade games in Tokyo

We went on a family day trip to Tokyo today. I was able to go do my own thing in Akihabara and took some photos of game screens there.

These last few I took at the small game arcade on the top floor of Super Potato.

Posted on

blink blink

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.

Posted on

Crystal Breaker: a new PC-Engine-style shmup on Steam!

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 and Hudson influences are seen here, following their retro 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!

Posted on

Mega R-Type: a fan/doujin R-Type game on the Megadrive!

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.

R-Type Leo (Arcade)
Leo Prototype (Megadrive)

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

Posted on

Memories of the Bag-A-Tel arcade in Valley West Mall (Glendale, AZ)

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.

Posted on

Side Arms arcade game by Capcom

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.

Posted on

Sailor Moon arcade game by Banpresto

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.