Balancing out the clean colours and comical stylings of Westone's Wonder Boy series is the Super Famicom title Dark Half, a turn-based RPG soaked in sombre colours and painterly artwork. The game's defining feature is its unique "zapping" system, the plot switching back and forth between heroic protagonist Falco and Demon Lord antagonist Rukyu over one in-game week, … Continue reading A game of two halves
Septentrion is so unashamedly eager to ape '70s disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure it doesn't just broadly copy the setting and flow of its memorable inspiration, the game even makes the effort to lead with a movie-like opening sequence and later end with a fake cast roll, complete with legally-distinct actors (such as "Jean Hickman") for every part. … Continue reading Found at sea
I know reading an article about an old digital recreation of a traditional tabletop card game might not sound like the most exciting way to spend a few minutes of your precious free time but this is a good one (honest), and a longstanding personal favourite of mine. Card games are card games - nobody … Continue reading Finding fun in strange places
How could I possibly resist a Shin Megami Tensei themed SRPG, the happy combination of two of my favourite things - tiny people waiting to be ordered around a large map and demon-infested 90's cyberpunk? And oh, that soundtrack! Hidehito Aoki's work on Majin Tensei's soundtrack is just superb, a sort of dark industrial goth rock via the SNES' soft-sounding … Continue reading HUGE art… and really tiny scraps of strategy
Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest, also known in other regions as Mystic Quest Legend... but not that Mystic Quest, which would be the Game Boy title US Squaresoft fans will remember as Final Fantasy Adventure, which was actually Seiken Densetsu, better known as the prequ- [sigh] The game in the photo at the top. You know, that … Continue reading Hi-speed fantasy
Pioneer's 1995 "Active Real Time SRPG" Bounty Sword takes place in a world of steampunk-ish gritty fantasy, a place where the divide between the almighty power of forgotten ancient technology and true magic is barely the width of a fairy's finger, where people from all walks of life take on whatever dangerous jobs turn up at the … Continue reading Sword, swords, and strategy
The Super Famicom's rather plainly titled Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor game, um, Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor (from the same development team later responsible for the Saturn's Gundam Side Story trilogy) defies neat description. Much like the source material it's a game filled with enormous mechs more than capable of punching each other to bits yet fighting isn't always the answer, a game … Continue reading The mobile police at home
This Super Famicom exclusive has the distinction of being the first to be directed by Eiji Aonuma, a name you may remember from his work on another little Nintendo series called... oh, what was it? Ah! The Legend of Zelda (Ocarina of Time onwards, as I'm sure you already know). Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima is at heart … Continue reading A link to the past
At first glance, a second look, and even after skimming over a few screenshots, anyone interested in playing Heisei Shin Onigashima could reasonably assume this 1996 (Satellaview release, with some differences)/1997 (Nintendo Power service)/1998 (boxed retail cartridges shown above) two-part Super Famicom adventure game wasn't much more than a graphical overhaul of Nintendo's 1987 8-bit … Continue reading Super [Famicom] storytelling
This 1996 Super Famicom RPG may have been published by Squaresoft but it's actually the work of a certain Sting Entertainment, the same developers behind many unusual titles over the past thirty years including the Dept. Heaven series (Yggdra Union, Knights in the Nightmare, etc.) and a rather atmospheric dungeon crawler called Baroque... And that … Continue reading Two siblings, a mysterious girl, and a monkey go on an adventure…
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster 