Underdressed Teenage Girls and Robot Ninjas

I suppose those two things sum up the Japanese videogame experience quite nicely. Both of them will be on display today. Throw in tokusatsu heroes, golf games, mahjong, manga adaptations, turn-based/action RPGs, and panty shots, and you have summed up Chronturbo Episode 4.

Just like Chrontendo and Chronsega we've moved Chronturbo into a decent sized HD format on Youtube, so you can totally watch it fullscreen on your big-ass monitor and not have it look like shit. The Youtube version is here.  As always, I still recommend downloading the 60 frames per second h.264 version from Archive.org. 60 frames per second is the only way to experience the full glory of these things. Find it here.

Chronturbo 3 covered January through March of 1989, and Episode 4 basically takes us through the next three months. We actually reach the first week of July, which was just a little bit before the TurboGrafx-16 was released in the US. But for the moment, let's discuss the CD-ROM² add-on.

At first glance, its another Dragon Quest clone.

Despite being the most important technological innovation we've seen in the entire Chron series, the CD-ROM² hasn't born much fruit yet. There was a port of Street Fighter, which didn't make good use of the medium, and was a terrible game to boot. This was followed by one non-game and one barely-a-game (Bikkuriman Daijikai and No Ri Ko.)  In March Hudson gave us a very high quality release with Space Adventure Cobra, but this was mostly a menu-based adventure game. Finally, in June, Hudson produced their attempt at a killer app for the CD-ROM²: Far East of Eden: Ziria, a massive, ambitious Dragon Quest style RPG.  Far East of Eden outdid DQ in every department (except originality, I suppose.) Big name voice actors were brought in to record the game's many dialog scenes and its colorful, animated charterers were much more detailed than any found on a Famicom game. Musical legend Ryuichi Sakamoto created some of the in game music.

High res graphics set this apart from Famicom RPGs

 Far East of Eden ended up becoming quite successful in Japan. The second game in the series was massively popular, so much so that it ended up at the number 12 spot on that Famitsu readers' poll I discussed earlier. That puts it well above Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI or any Mario game! It's a shame than none of the Far East of Eden RPGs received a US release, or even a fan translation.

He's right behind you!

The other  game is a little different, but also quite important. Valis II may be a bit more familiar to you, since it was released in the US, by NEC. While not a great game, it is the first platformer for the CD-ROM², as well as the first third party published title.  It helped introduce a popular feature to consoles: the anime-inspired cutscene featuring skimpily dressed young ladies. By the end of its lifespan, the PC Engine was kept afloat by games based around naughty cutscenes. Also, since Valis II was one of the first CD games to be hastily dubbed into English, it started the grand tradition of really awful videogame voice acting.  This tradition continues to this very day.

A highly unlikely outfit.

As magnificent as Far East and Valis II are, they stand cold and shivering in the shadow of a far greater game: Gunhed/Blazing Lazers from Compile and Hudson. There is no denying the fact that Blazing Lazers is The Shit. Don't take my word for it. Google "best 10 TurboGrax games" or something, and check out the lists that people have put together. This is one the best games for the system and everyone knows it.

Cool robots = rad

What makes Blazing Lazers so great? Simple: radness. Try it yourself. Turn on the game and ask yourself, "Is there anything happening here that is not rad?" The answer will always be, "Nope. Every single thing on the screen is completely rad." Sure, some of the earlier shoot-em-ups we've seen have been pretty darned cool, such as Xanac, Salamander, R-Type, etc. But here, Compile just dialed up the coolness to extreme levels.

Space bubbles = also rad.

Bad Games:

The PC Engine is not known for its kusoge. There were some awful PC Engine games, and Energy and Jinmu Denshou would qualify as awful games by almost anyone's standards. Yet, there is one thing that redeems them: the music. Many of the main Famicom kusoge such as Athena or Super Monkey Daibouken have these ear-piercing, screechy, tuneless, music tracks. Yet Energy, despite being an ugly, buggy mess, manages to serve up some sick tunes. Jinmu Denshou -- an unpleasant Space Harrier clone which tries to integrate bits of platforming into the shooting action -- also has a pretty well done musical theme.

I have no idea what's going on here.

The RPGs:

Aside from Far East of Eden, we have two lesser RPGs, Makai Hakkenden Shada and Susano-ou Densetsu. Data East's Hakkenden is based on the same classic Japanese novel as SNK's Satomi Hakkenden, which we covered in Chrontendo 41.  The unusual thing about this game, is that rather than modeling itself after Dragon Quest, it is instead an extremely blatant rip-off of Falcom's Ys. Of course, the PC Engine version of Ys wouldn't be released until December 1989, making Hakkenden the Missing In Action to Ys's Rambo: First Blood Part II.

It's just like Ys, only terrible.

Susano-ou Densetsu, from Hudson, is a bit more original, though it is based on a Go Nagai manga, and is named after the Shinto deity.  In the world of video games, Susano-ou will familiar to Megami Tensei fans. It's a pretty large game, in terms of cartridge space (and price), but was overshadowed by Far East of Eden, which came out shortly afterwards.

This looks a wee bit like Dungeon Explorer.

The Golf Games:

Two golf games this time around: Hudson's Power Golf, which had colorful, dynamic box art (in Japan) and Naxat's Naxat Open, which had boooooring box art, and did not get a US release.  I suppose Power Golf is nominally the more interesting of the two, but both are just standard console golf games.

Arcade Ports from Namco:

Namco tends to focus on ports of earlier arcade games when it comes to its PC Engine releases. This time they dig deep into their vaults and pull out a port of Pac-Land, the pioneering game which is not that much fun to play nowadays. But it was the first Pac-man game to break away from the "running around in a maze" genre,. Instead it went on to create many of the conventions  of the side-scrolling platformer.

Ghosts flying airplanes?!

Wonder Momo is an odd, single plane beat-em-up with a tokusatsu theme. Like a lot of similar games, such as Sega's My Hero, it focuses heavily on knowing enemy patterns and finding the correct rhythm. It is also one of the most common HuCards in Japan, according to Kevin Gifford.

Yes, part of the game is a guy who tries to take an up-the-skirt photo.

Final Lap Twin - now here's an interesting one. Final Lap was a perfectly typical racing arcade game from 1987. For the console version, Namco decided to add an RPG mode. The results are very much like an improved World Tennis - that weird tennis RPG from Chronturbo 2.

Yes, this is somehow a racing game.

The Rest:

Fire Pro Wrestling Combination Tag -  The first Human published game! Having developed numerous games for other publishers, Human finally struck out for themselves with the first game in their long running wrestling series. Several key members of Human worked on Nintendo's Pro Wrestling, and Combination Tag resembles that game more than it does the later Fire Pro games. The high degree of customization that defined the Fire Pro series is not yet in place.

Screenshots of wrestling games often look a little risque.

Cyber Cross - You are a Japanese superhero. You walk from left to right and punch aliens that are walking from right to left.

Not much to see here.

Ninja Warriors - Port of the Taito arcade game that had the big, long screen, like Darius. It's basically Rush N Attack with ninjas minus most of the fun.

Wai Wai Mahjong - A mahjong game with colorful graphics and goofy characters.

There we have it. By my reckoning we'll need three more Chronturbos to finish off 1989. But that'll be a little while. Right now we need to deal with the next Chrontendo, which will feature a long-awaited game from Nintendo. Until then, check out Chronturbo 4 on Youtube and Archive.