Just as with Agetec's previous release of Disaster Report (aka Zettai Zetsumei Toshi), the publisher is attempting to make Raw Danger more palatable to US audiences. They've done this by changing location and character names to be non-Japanese, and have made both of the main characters blonde. But it seems that their fiddling has caused some possibly unexpected results:
It looks to me like they've modified one or two hair textures that are actually used for most of the characters onscreen as a memory-saving measure. So by making the main character blonde, they've made... everybody else blonde.
I'm of the opinion that measures like the ones Agetec has taken with localizing this series amount to going a little too far, but this is just hilarious. But then again, the above video is from last February, so there's a possibility things have been tweaked since this build.
Here's one I picked up when I was checking out flight-based PS1 and PS2 games. Released waaaaay back in 2001, it's a civilian helicopter-rescue action game like Rescue Copter, but it's decided less sim-like than even that. You start out already hovering and receive dispatches to missions that involve putting out fires, rescuing survivors, training your searchlight on suspects' cars during chases, and so on. To put out fires, you can use water cannons and some hilarious extinguisher-missiles. Picking up survivors feels like good old Choplifter, as your chopper can only hold a few, and you can empty out your cabin at a helipad. A successful rescue will usually reward you with a few missiles. That and the score bonuses you get for putting out fires give the game a nice arcadey feel.
The analog sticks do collective and cyclic controls, as well as the rudder, which makes the controls feel pretty realistic. There's a good deal of idiot-proofing here, though, so the helicopters aren't nearly as twitchy as those in Rescue Copter. But the single camera angle completely sucks. The game only allows you to use an overhead angle, which severely limits your forward visibility and makes it really, really easy to smack right into buildings, even when you think you've got enough altitude to be safe. Plus, it's hard to tell how much room you've got between yourself and nearby skyscrapers, especially when you're using the heavy-duty search & rescue-style chopper.
This is one of the few PS2 games that runs in that PS1-style 240p resolution, and even with that it never manages more than 30 frames per second. And it's telling that the surest way to know that you're approaching the scene of an accident is that the framerate starts to drop even further.
It seems like it'd be good for an hour or two of mindless fun. It's got letter ratings and a time attack, so I'd have incentive to improve my game if I was so inclined. But I get the feeling that if this had originated as an arcade game, I'd have been content playing a single credit and leaving it at that. Maybe I should've left this one to obscurity.
This year's release schedule seems to be mopping up all sorts of titles from the previous generation that nearly slipped through the cracks. Chulip, like The Red Star, managed to slip from its originally-scheduled 2004 release until this year. Naturally, the title's elusiveness has contributed to its allure, as has the reputation (by association) of developer Punchline's relationship with the immensely creative developers Skip (Chibi-Robo, bit Generations) and Love-De-Lic (Moon, L.O.L.). So was it worth the wait?
If you've heard anything about this game, you've heard about its premise. Our junior-high-aged protagonist has just moved with his father into a shabby house in an unfamiliar town. The protagonist immediately falls in love with a cute girl who lives nearby and persuades her to come with him to the Lovers' Tree, underneath which one can kiss one's sweetheart and - as legend has it - have one's love blessed for all time. But since the main character lacks a good reputation in town and barely knows this girl, she puts him in his place and breaks his heart. So what's to be done? You've got to get to know the townspeople and improve your reputation by gaining their approval - which is manifested by a great big smooch on the lips.
Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it? Due out in July is Simple DS Series Vol. 18: The Soukou Kihei Gunground, a side-scrolling mecha action game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Omiya Soft's Super Famicom mecha-shooter Front Mission: Gun Hazard. (Gun Hazard itself strongly resembled previous genre classics Cybernator/Assault Suit Valken and Target Earth/A.S. Leynos.) This one's a bit different in that it uses some sort of cel-shaded 3D models instead of sprites, but the robots and their armament will be fully customizable. One of the selling points seems to be the wireless multiplayer, which allows for co-op and versus.
Rideon is developing. You'll have to excuse me if I don't feel that their previous turn with the Simple Series fills me with confidence for this game. But all the same, this kind of thing tends to come along once every five (or ten) years, and it's budget-priced besides, so I'll probably bite the bullet.
GAME Watch have screenshots and character illustrations.
I've realized that the only way I'm going to keep this site updated regularly is if I relax my threshold for posting to a point at which I can allow myself to speak more casually than I do in my reviews. 'Cause for a long time now, I've kept topics under my hat until I've had enough to say to compress it into a full-blown review. I'd rather keep the site updated more often than that, and it's a bit stressful to only be thinking of the next long-form piece I've got brewing. So, hopefully, from now on the site will start to resemble a blog more than a rarely-updated review site.
I'll kick things off with a bit of a playlog.
Okami While this game - more than most - feels like it's made of pure love, I can't shake the feeling that every hour of the game is like replaying the first hour or two over and over (and over) again. Draw a circle around that tree, clear out that monster house, feed those animals, purify that landscape. And after ten hours or so, well, I'm having to stretch to find a reason to continue. The game is beautiful, but bloated.
For a game that spent three years in publishing-hell and entertains such lofty influences as Treasure's Ikaruga and several of Konami's classic 2D series, one might expect The Red Star to end up rather disappointing. This isn't the case.
This is a no-nonsense deep-action game that successfully fuses bullet hell with beat-'em-up mechanics. Bullet patterns start off rather calm - almost patient - but by the end of the game things get as hairy as the latest Cave game. I've seen the melee mechanics compared to Streets of Rage or Final Fight, but there's a lot more going on here than in the 2D classics. Branching combos, down attacks, fall recoveries, juggles, air combos, and more make for some seriously dynamic and (satisfyingly) abusable combat. And thanks to unique movesets and capabilities, each of the three characters must be taken on his or her own terms. Makita is all speed, Kyuzo is all power, and the unlockable Maya is somewhere in between yet almost entirely focused on ranged attacks and tricksy magic.
Koei has quietly released another entry in this long-running series in English, and it's received the same sort of reception each game usually does: fan excitement, concessionary reviews in the sixes or sevens, and widespread indifference. It's kind of a shame that the series that represents what's perhaps the only gig in town for Civilization-style strategy on consoles is so consistently ignored by most gamers. But given this site's previous coverage of Koei's forays into Chinese history, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is certainly not going to be the first to be ignored 'round here.
What makes a Simple 2000 release worthwhile? Does the concept need to be original? Does the game have to be "good?" Or simply playable? There are roughly three grades of Simple 2000 games out there: those that are terrible and unplayable, those that are terrible and playable, and those that are not terrible. I had fully expected this game to fall into the first category, but I found something that just barely sneaks into the second.
The Tairyou Jigoku, which loosely translates as "The Overwhelming Hell," puts the player in the shoes of high school student Erika Mizusaki, who at the game's outset has lost her cell phone and has returned to her school to retrieve it. Unfortunately for her, it's not where she left it, and it turns out that a very Carrollesque white rabbit has swiped it. Erika, of course, gives chase, through several nightmarish environments, covering (roughly) four stages.
Since this man is one of my absolute favorite game music composers, I had to post the news here instead of just on the linklog. Masashu Hamauzu, composer for SaGa Frontier 2, Unlimited SaGa, FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus, and collaborator on FFX and the Musashi sequel, has a solo album coming out at around the end of May. He's just finished recording the album in Munich, and it'll have 20 tracks including new compositions and arrangements of existing game music. There's sure to be piano solo work, and I think I saw something in there about string quartets.
Hamauzu's music, traditionally, is more classically-influenced than most RPG-focused composers. SaGa Frontier 2's soundtrack included precise, evolving melodies and rhythms that were as addictive to listen to as they were moving and almost mathematical. An album based on this soundtrack, 'Piano Pieces SF2: Rhapsody on a Theme of SaGa Frontier 2,' included solo piano arrangements of many pieces from SaGaFro2 that breathed life into the pieces and introduced expression and nuance that the PlayStation's music synthesis inherently lacked. Hamauzu's contributions to FFX lent the soundtrack most of its soul, and a Hamauzu-arranged FFX piano album was as complementary to that game's score as Hamauzu's previous piano album was to SF2. While Unlimited SaGa's soundtrack swung away from the Classical influence and closer to the Romantic, it showed Hamauzu growing as a composer and getting his feet wet with more complex arrangements. His music is my favorite part of all three of those games, and I'm really looking forward to hearing him revisit and reinterpret tunes from those and other games - and to hear what he comes up on his own.
I'll sidestep discussion of recent and upcoming D3 titles except for what will likely be the only important Simple 2000 release this year: The Nekomura no Hitobito. The rough English equivalent of the title is "The People of Cat Village," and the game is subtitled "The Three Evil Deeds of Magistrate Pug." It's clearly a spiritual successor to last year's excellent The Genshijin, and it's also developed by Vingt-et-un Systems Corp. This time, instead of controlling a band of apes, or men, or ape-men, you lead Nekomura's residents around, foiling the plots of the nefarious, corrupt magistrate Pug. Your villagers may have different callings, like swordsmen or fishermen, and this time the levels have a more action-adventure bent to them than the more puzzle-like levels in Genshijin. It looks like there will be plenty to see and do, and so far the game is looking like one of the prettiest Simple-series releases yet. VSC have certainly honed their craft since Genshijin, and all the characters, from the cats to the villain to the recently-abducted Nekohime-sama are immediately appealing. Keep an eye on it! It'll be out this April.
The Oretachi Geisen Zoku series of PS2 retro releases seems to have reached a new low. Upon the release of the ports of the Data East cult classic Trio the Punch and Konami's shooter Thunder Cross last month, Japanese gamers discovered that Thunder Cross has serious emulation problems, including lockups, missing background music and sound in places, and sprite priority problems. And to make matters worse, it's been discovered by 2chers and Arika's VP Mihara that MAME's copyright notice is present on the Thunder Cross disc. This means that both Thunder Cross and Trio the Punch likely used MAME code for their emulation, quite possibly without authorization, and the same code may have been used on previous Oretachi Geisen Zoku releases. Way to go, guys.
I hope to have a barrel of regular updates coming this site's way soon, including some impressions posts and reports on new releases, like Monster World Complete Collection and The Overwhelming Hell. I've got a hankering to write up an obscure Japanese developer or three, too, so watch this space!
Here's one I picked up when I was checking out flight-based PS1 and PS2 games. Released waaaaay back in 2001, it's a civilian helicopter-rescue action game like 
This year's release schedule seems to be mopping up all sorts of titles from the previous generation that nearly slipped through the cracks. Chulip, like 
Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it? Due out in July is 
Okami
For a game that spent three years in publishing-hell and entertains such lofty influences as Treasure's Ikaruga and several of Konami's classic 2D series, one might expect The Red Star to end up rather disappointing. This isn't the case. 
Koei has quietly released another entry in this long-running series in English, and it's received the same sort of reception each game usually does: fan excitement, concessionary reviews in the sixes or sevens, and widespread indifference. It's kind of a shame that the series that represents what's perhaps the only gig in town for Civilization-style strategy on consoles is so consistently ignored by most gamers. But given this site's previous coverage of Koei's forays into Chinese history, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is certainly not going to be the first to be ignored 'round here. 
What makes a Simple 2000 release worthwhile? Does the concept need to be original? Does the game have to be "good?" Or simply playable? There are roughly three grades of Simple 2000 games out there: those that are terrible and unplayable, those that are terrible and playable, and those that are not terrible. I had fully expected this game to fall into the first category, but I found something that just barely sneaks into the second. 
Since this man is one of my absolute favorite game music composers, I had to post the news here instead of just on the linklog. Masashu Hamauzu, composer for SaGa Frontier 2, Unlimited SaGa, FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus, and collaborator on FFX and the Musashi sequel, 
I'll sidestep discussion of recent and upcoming D3 titles except for what will likely be the only important Simple 2000 release this year: 
The Oretachi Geisen Zoku series of PS2 retro releases seems to have reached a new low. Upon the release of the ports of the Data East cult classic