Tengai Makyō: Ziria (PC Engine)

Long time, no see! Fear not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been plowing my way through another lengthy title. This time, it’s Tengai Makyō: Ziria, occasionally known by the bizarre moniker Far East of Eden. Bizarre because I can’t begin to fathom what connection this 1989 fantasy RPG by developer Red Company and publisher Hudson Soft has to do with American novelist John Steinbeck’s 1952 masterpiece, East of Eden. That head-scratcher aside, I’d been waiting what feels like forever to dig into this one. You see, Tengai Makyō: Ziria holds the distinction of being the first RPG produced for the then cutting-edge CD-ROM format. Despite the obvious historical interest this instilled in me, though, the game itself was doomed to remain largely inaccessible to anyone untrained in the Japanese language for nearly 35 years. Enter the fine folks at LIPEMCO! Translations, who released their magnificent English fan translation this past December. Finally, I was able to immerse myself in the world of Tengai Makyō: Ziria and discover…a fairly rote Dragon Quest clone with some superb cut scenes.

I know, I know, That may come across as rather glib and dismissive of me. Rest assured, however, that I hardly consider a strong resemblance to one of my favorite series to be a net negative. Similar to EarthBound, which I covered last month, tried-and-true mechanics that will be second nature to anyone who’s booted up an ’80s console RPG in the past are used by the designers as a canvas upon which to paint their own vision. In this case, it’s a vision of a whimsical Edo period Japan as imagined by misinformed outsiders. The instruction manual comes with an elaborate behind-the-scenes backstory explaining how the game’s plot is based on a spectacularly misinformed treatise on the nation of “Jipang” by nineteenth century American scholar Paul Hieronymus Chada. There never was such a man, of course, so what Red Company’s done here is to employ essentially the same comedic framing device William Goldman did in The Princess Bride, with its fictitious original author, S. Morgenstern. Cute.

The adventure centers on the titular Ziria of the Toad Clan, a hot-blooded young warrior very loosely-based on the Japanese folkloric hero Jiraiya. We follow him as he undertakes an epic journey to unite with the two other champions destined to defend Jipang against the machinations of the Daimon Cult, a sinister cabal of foreigners seeking to awaken the evil slumbering deity Masakado and lay waste to the country.

The general flow of the quest is episodic, not unlike any given season of a shōnen anime. Ziria and company arrive at a new province, hear tell of a Daimon Cult lieutenant with formidable powers oppressing the populace, and go on a short fetch quest or two before overthrowing that area’s freaky Big Bad and moving on to the next. After a dozen of these little episodes have played out, the group has become seasoned fighters ready to take down the Biggest Bad and save the day…until next season, er, game that is. I have to assume this structure is intentional, since the art style and tone of the cut scenes wouldn’t be out of place in any number of contemporary television productions.

Those cut scenes really are where Tengai Makyō: Ziria shines its brightest. They’re well drawn, professionally voiced, frequently amusing, and would have been jaw-dropping for the average gamer in 1989. I find them endearing enough today, and don’t intend highlighting them as the game’s best feature to be any sort of backhanded compliment.

Beyond that, I found the overall experience quite average. You know the drill: Explore from an overhead view, zoom in for a first-person view on the basic menu-based “fight, magic, item, run” combat, manage your HP and MP, level up, interrogate townsfolk for clues, buy new equipment periodically, and so forth. There’s only one major exception to the standard formula, and it’s unfortunately a doozy. In most RPGs cast from this mold, one of your party members running out of health would necessitate a trip back to town to have him or her revived by a friendly NPC. Or perhaps you’d cast a spell or use an expendable item to accomplish the same result. Not so here. If any one of your three main player characters falls, it’s an instant game over and you’re docked half your money and sent back to the last place you saved. You’re provided no opportunity to continue on without them or revive them yourself. It’s pretty brutal and resulted in significantly more failed dungeon runs and boss battle defeats than I’m used to seeing. At least money is relatively easy to come by and you can safeguard your stash by depositing it at the bank before you set off. Still, it’s a real frustration trigger when one late healing spell seals your whole group’s fate.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria is a solid old school RPG with a charming presentation and 30+ hours of gameplay to grind your way through. It’s also fascinating from a gaming history perspective as the genre’s first flirtation with visual media. That said, I wouldn’t call it one of the best works of its kind, whether today or back in 1989. In addition to the overly punitive character death issue I just described, the cyclical nature of the story beats grows repetitive. The majority of the music is oddly weak, too. While the three orchestrated tracks by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto are predictably excellent, the remainder of the soundtrack consists of short, tinny chiptunes that loop incessantly. Regardless, it sold well and spawned numerous sequels. I can’t wait to see where the saga goes next after this promising start. Not that I have a choice. If I’m lucky, maybe Tengai Makyō II will get translated before I hit retirement age.

Ghost Lion (NES)

Kemco’s Ghost Lion is hardly a celebrated RPG for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Most obviously, it was a 1989 work that looked, sounded, and played years out of date then, never mind by the time it finally reached non-Japanese audiences in late 1992. It presented as a bare bones clone of the original 1986 Dragon Quest by a far less accomplished studio. Not exactly the sort of thing destined to make waves so late in the system’s life. On top of that, it was adapted from an obscure film, Beyond the Pyramids: Legend of the White Lion, that failed to generate much buzz upon its release in Japan. It flopped so hard, in fact, that it failed to find its way to any other markets, despite all its dialog being in English.

I imagine that Kemco may have rationalized their decision to localize and export the game anyway by reminding themselves that it barely resembles the movie it’s ostensibly based on. Anyone bored enough to check for themselves (the entire thing is on YouTube) can verify that the two could scarcely have less in common. What was an overlong and insipid yarn about Maria, a bratty American girl traveling around Africa learning assorted life lessons and wildlife facts from the natives, has morphed on the NES into something more akin to Dungeons & Dragons by way of The Wizard of Oz. It’s bloody weird, to be honest, but I’m not about to complain in light of the alternative.

Your goal in Ghost Lion is to guide Maria through a fantastical dream realm in search of a way back to her parents in the real world. She’ll complete basic fetch quests, chat up fairies and witches, and fight an endless parade of orcs, skeletons, and other generic beasties on the way to a final confrontation with the titular Lion. Maria isn’t alone on her quest. At least not all the time. Ghost Lion’s most prominent gimmick is its summoned party members. Instead of new characters joining up with Maria on a permanent basis, she’ll gradually amass a selection of enchanted items holding different spirits. Using one of these items causes the spirit inside to temporarily manifest and do battle on Maria’s behalf. In addition to taking a bit of heat off Maria by serving as extra targets for enemies, they often have more powerful physical attacks than she does and a few can use magic spells. Defeated spirits vanish, but can subsequently be called forth again at full strength. There’s a practical limit to this, however, as every summoning costs some of Maria’s dream points, Ghost Lion’s equivalent of magic points. It’s a novel concept, especially in the pre-Pokémon age, and is implemented very well for the most part. I appreciate how spirits can act on the same turn they appear, for example, which keeps it from feeling like you’re sacrificing your momentum in combat when you summon them. Smart.

Alas, this is where my praise for Ghost Lion runs dry, as its overall design marks it as a spiritual precursor to Square’s Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: A well-intentioned yet fundamentally misguided attempt to streamline the standard console RPG experience for a younger (or just novice) audience. As I alluded to, the exploration element so crucial to the genre is simplified to the point of absurdity. You’re merely nudged from one miniscule cave/dungeon to the next, popping in to grab whatever random MacGuffin you’ve been sent after before heading back to town and doing it all over again. Sure, that same arrangement forms the skeleton of any given classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest installment. Here, though, all the little ancillary tasks and digressions that break up the monotony of the main progression thread in those games has been pared away. You’re not going to be probing far-flung corners of the map in search of bonus treasures in out-of-the-way locations, as there aren’t any. You’re not going to be amusing yourself talking to the locals because the terse, utilitarian dialog lacks all wit and charm. You can’t even kill some time grinding experience to level up!

That’s right. There are no experience points in Ghost Lion. They’ve been replaced by items called fragments of hope that are found exclusively in preset locations in the dungeons. Each fragment you collect raises Maria’s hope (level) by one. The problems this one design choice creates are manifold. For starters, it makes some sections of Ghost Lion considerably harder than they would be in the majority of RPGs, undermining its credibility as a beginner’s game. If you’re struggling against some of the nastier enemy types, there’s nothing you can do to make Maria any stronger until you get past them to a part of the world with more hope fragments lying around. You have no choice but to tough it out and hope for good luck.

The lack of experience points earned also makes the high encounter rate especially frustrating, since all you’ll have to show for winning a fight is extra money in a game with very little to spend it on. The designers seem to have realized that the smartest choice would therefore be to avoid fights, which is no doubt why the command to flee battle is one of the least reliable I’ve ever seen. You’ll usually lose more health trying to evade enemies than you will killing them every few steps for no real reward. Not fun, and all the worse for how frequently many monsters dodge your attacks.

All these issues tend to snowball as Maria’s journey drags on and individual foes take longer to vanquish, leading to Ghost Lion’s awkward position as a game that makes a decent first impression, only to squander it completely by the halfway mark and then proceed to get downright obnoxious in the last stretch. I could certainly go on listing off other minor gripes, like how the sole means of restoring lost health (or courage, as it’s dubbed here) is by eating bread, a consumable item that restores up to 50 points. Works alright at the outset. Later on, when you might have upwards of 500 to recover? Not so much. But I wager I’ve made my case. The best things about this one are its relative brevity at twelve hours or so and the bizarre circumstances surrounding its creation and eventual localization. I’d be lion if I said it was worth playing.

Valis II (TurboGrafx-16)

When we last left plucky high schooler Yuko, she’d been transported to the mystical world of Vecanti, gifted the mighty Valis sword (along with a set of kinky bikini armor), and used her fresh new gear to vanquish the evil tyrant Rogles before returning to Tokyo to resume her everyday life. Valis II unsurprisingly sees her doing pretty much that exact thing again, except that Rogles’ older brother, Megas, is the one causing a ruckus this time.

Original it’s not, though that was never really the point of the series to begin with. Valis titles were meant to show off scantily-clad anime girls to the greatest extent the technology of the time allowed. On the TurboGrafx-16 (and its Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine) that meant leveraging the console’s CD-ROM functionality to cram as many voiced cutscenes as possible in between the decidedly rote side-view action stages. Assuming you can make your peace with that, the games proper tend to make for breezy lightweight diversions. They’re nothing you haven’t seen done before, and better, but you can conversely do worse.

While very much cast from this mold, 1989’s Valis II also holds the dubious distinction of being the weakest of the four Valis entries produced for the hardware. The nominal first outing, Mugen Senshi Valis, is a 1992 remake with significantly upgraded control, mechanics, and visuals. Parts III and IV and generally more full-featured due to their multiple playable characters. That leaves the comparatively basic and dowdy II as the odd one out.

Yuko’s goal is to jump and slash her way through five extremely long levels before moving on to a sixth and final one that takes the form of a relatively brief auto-scroller. The sheer length of the stages is arguably Valis II’s Achilles’ heel. By the halfway point of each, I was well and truly tired of swatting at the same handful of enemies in front of the same mediocre backgrounds. Compounding this is the overall lack of dynamic platforming scenarios or interesting environmental hazards. It’s a no-frills “walk forward and hammer that attack button” sort of game. Bosses are nothing to thrill over, either, unless you count the chuckles their amateurish pre-fight voice acting frequently elicits. You can outlast most by simply staying put and firing away until they explode.

The designers put in a token attempt to add some variety via the inclusion of four different projectile shot pickups for the Valis sword and a handful of limited-use magic abilities like a rotating shield and a time freeze. Again, however, these are hardly revelatory by genre standards. In a crowning irony, the saga’s trademark element, its cutscenes, are actually displayed smaller and in lower detail here than in later installments, too. That leaves the soundtrack to stand as the sole unqualified high point. Smooth ’80s synth and drum machine ditties that wouldn’t have been out of place in any given anime of the era? Sign me up for that!

When all is said and done, Valis II is a work profoundly of its time. Its presentation alone made it a standout during that brief interval when the TurboGrafx/PC Engine was poised at the cutting edge of the industry, effectively the first and only CD-ROM gaming platform. That hype sold units and made a lasting impression on the public at large. Even kids like me, who only knew of it from magazine screenshots and their accompanying effusive text blurbs. Can I recommend is as an isolated action-platforming experience all these years later? Nah. But I instead prefer to view it as a one-of-a-kind digital time capsule, worth a quick playthrough purely to glimpse how the future looked back at the dawn of the 1990s.

Golden Axe (Genesis)

I’ve long been guilty of giving short shrift to one of the most prolific and popular video game types of the ’80s and ’90s: The belt scrolling beat-’em-up. I’ve covered a handful, certainly, but not many relative to the legions of platformers, shooters, adventure games, and RPGs that tend to dominate my digital leisure time. Unlike the equally neglected sports titles, military simulations, and abstract puzzle games, it isn’t because I’m not fond of the form. Really, it’s down to the fact that these games are virtually always best enjoyed with friends. Not unlike their kissing cousins, the head-to-head versus fighters. This social component is such a keystone that brutalizing endless hordes of palette-swapped thugs solo can feel oddly hollow. Lonesome, even.

Nevertheless, I do sometimes get the urge, so today is the venerable Golden Axe’s turn in the spotlight. Technōs Japan’s Double Dragon had been one of the biggest arcade hits of 1987. Indeed of the decade’s latter half. When it came time for Sega to craft a response in 1989, they opted against aping Double Dragon’s urban setting and street punk antagonists in favor of a savage sword & sorcery saga patterned on Conan and similar pulp fantasy heroes. And that’s not just me making glib assumptions for once. Lead designer Makoto Uchida is on record as saying that he drew on his love for Schwarzenegger’s Conan and similar action flicks of the period to give the competition a run for its money. He likely went a little too far with it, in fact, since the arcade Golden Axe prominently featured voice clips lifted without permission from Conan, Rambo: First Blood, and others. Naughty Sega.

Golden Axe is a classic revenge tale of three muscle-bound heroes, Tyris Flair, Ax Battler (who fights with a sword, naturally), and Gilius Thunderhead, setting out to defeat the evil warlord Death Adder, who wields the fabled axe of the title. Each of the protagonists has lost at least one friend or family member to Death Adder’s villainy. Up to two can play simultaneously, though the choice of character here seems less impactful than it is in many brawlers. They don’t map cleanly to usual stereotypes of the fast one, the strong one, and the balanced one. Rather, the trio is differentiated mainly by their varying skill with magic. Collecting blue potions throughout the journey will fill up the player’s magic gauge. Activating magic will cash in the entire stock to generate a screen-wide special attack that deals damage based on the number of potions spent. Tyris can stock a maximum of nine potions, Ax Battler six, and Gilius just four. Apart from this, their moves are quite similar, making them akin to an easy, medium, and hard mode, respectively.

In addition to the magic system, Golden Axe’s second signature contribution to the genre is the rideable beasts that appear in most stages. They’re functionally a variation on the weapons carried by enemies in Double Dragon, except that instead of knocking a baseball bat out of an enemy’s hand and picking it up to swing as his buddies, you’re knocking a rival swordsman out of the saddle and commandeering his fire-breathing dragon or wacky whip-tailed chicken critter. In both cases, you can only get hit a limited number of times before the power-up disappears for good.

As I played through Golden Axe again for the first time in many years, I found myself wondering if this Genesis port had been shortened in some way. Levels seemed to fly by before I knew it, being no more than a half-dozen screens long in some cases, if that. It turns out that the opposite is actually true! The Genesis edition had a brand-new final area added on top of faithful reproductions of the arcade’s six. This effectively nudges a fifteen minute game up to around the twenty minute mark. That’s roughly on par with the aforementioned Double Dragon, but positively dwarfed by 1989’s two most influential beat-’em-ups, Capcom’s Final Fight and Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as the majority of their successors. The presence of that single new stage and Duel mode, an endurance style sequence of twelve matches against increasingly difficult groups of enemies, ultimately doesn’t do much to alleviate Golden Axe’s extreme brevity.

The combat isn’t all it could be, either. While you’re given a varied enough arsenal of weapon strikes and throws on top of your magic, it becomes clear early on that one move overshadows the rest: The dash attack. It’s fast, it knocks any victim to the ground in one go, and opponents are apparently unable to defend against it in any meaningful way. From the lowliest grunt to Death Adder himself, all give way before the almighty dash. This renders Golden Axe fairly trivial to complete, which I suppose could be considered a plus if you’re in no mood for a challenge and would prefer to steamroll the minions of darkness without breaking a sweat. On the whole, however, I’m inclined to count it as a negative.

If I had to summarize Golden Axe in one word, it might be “ungainly.” It carries an air of awkward adolescence about it, releasing as it did right on the cusp of seminal works fated to usher in the beat-’em-up’s true ’90s golden age. Still, this one is fondly remembered for a reason. Its barbaric atmosphere, brilliantly conveyed through quality pixel art and composer You Takada’s bombastic score, remains as appealing as ever and has inspired no less than five sequels and three spin-offs over the years. This impressively accurate home conversion also enjoys its own cherished place in history as a showpiece of early (pre-Sonic) Genesis marketing, when the company was pushing the “arcade experience at home” angle as hard as they could. It absolutely lives up to that hype, despite lacking a few animations, voice clips, and the original’s gloriously nutty fourth wall-breaking end scene. Stay gold, Ax Battler.

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES)

When I reviewed the original 1987 Wizards & Warriors last year, I held it up as an example of a “good bad game.” That is, one with flaws so serious that they could have proven crippling if the designers hadn’t clearly identified and compensated for them. Bumbling knight Kuros was profoundly ill-equipped to handle the constantly respawning monsters bombarding him from all angles. Rare’s solution was to make death a non-event via unlimited continues that revived Kuros on the exact spot he fell. Without the looming threat of lost time and progress, the slapdash combat became, well, not exactly fun, but at least tolerable.

If only Zippo Games, the Rare subsidiary in charge of cranking out this 1989 sequel, had taken better notes. Ironsword commits the fatal error of expecting its players to try, despite doing absolutely nothing to address the chaotic enemy patterns or Kuros’ shortcomings as a swordsman. If anything, he’s less formidable than ever here due to the removal of the boomerang daggers and throwing axes that were his primary lifeline in the first game. Exhaust your two continues (a fate those non-stop cheap hits can bring about shockingly fast) and it’s back to the title screen. As if this somehow wasn’t cruel enough already, there’s also a nasty twist: You can no longer continue at all once you reach the fourth of Ironsword’s five large levels, regardless of how many you had remaining in stock when you arrived.

I’d certainly have dropped the game in disgust at that point if it wasn’t for the password system. It’s what allowed me to grind the final two areas and plot an ideal path by painstakingly entering passwords over and over. So if you’re extraordinarily, downright unreasonably patient about it like I was, you’ll eventually be able to arrive at a password that starts you at the final boss with a full stock of three lives and roll those credits. Honestly, though, I can’t recommend it. The whole process just sucks and is what thoroughly dooms Ironsword in my eyes. I’d love to be able to enjoy it as a companion piece to its predecessor; to kick back and coast through appreciating the colorful graphics, goofy enemy designs, and quality David Wise soundtrack in spite of the busted mechanics. Alas, the Wizards & Warriors gameplay formula simply isn’t strong enough to justify a struggle like this. Not even the iconically oily Fabio Lanzoni cover art can salvage this one for me.

Thus, a promising setup that sees Kuros befriending a series of Animal Kings and harnessing spells to free the land of Sindarin from his arch-foe Malkil’s elemental sorcery ultimately comes to naught. On the plus side, brothers Ste and John Pickford of Zippo Games would dust themselves off from this debacle and go on to create the excellent Plok for the Super Nintendo a few years later. If Kuros had to stumble so Plok could run, that’s fine by me. Here’s to learning experiences!

Super Mario Land (Game Boy)

How can you not appreciate good old Super Mario Land? Much has been made in hindsight of its simple presentation, short length (four worlds consisting of three stages apiece), and atypical setting and characters, but to encounter it at the time of its release was to love it. Recall that this, the plucky plumber’s inaugural Game Boy outing, arrived here in North America in August of 1989, around half a year before Super Mario Bros. 3 hit the NES. In light of that, the fact that SML sees Mario out to save Sarasaland and its Princess Daisy from the alien invader Tatanga isn’t really that strange. We’d already witnessed him battle a giant gorilla (Donkey Kong), assorted sewer pests (Mario Bros.), Koopa King Bowser (SMB), and overgrown amphibian Wart (SMB2). That’s in addition to moonlighting as a demolitions worker (Wrecking Crew) and even a sadistic villain (Donkey Kong Jr.). In other words, we simply didn’t have a stock series template in place to compare this to yet. Context is king.

On that same note, it’s equally important to keep Mario Land’s status as a Game Boy launch title in mind. Its two sequels would present grander, more visually rich quests to tackle. They’d leverage later generations of ROM cartridge to do it, however, taking full advantage of their added memory and battery save functionality. This first entry is best understood as a pleasing diversion, ideal for passing a thirty minute car trip, bus ride, or waiting room sit. The basic visuals come with a distinct upside, too: The smaller, less detailed sprites allowed the designers (led by none other than the Game Boy hardware’s primary architect, the late Gunpei Yokoi) to maintain an NES-like field of view around Mario despite the Game Boy’s significantly lower resolution. That means no getting surprised by enemies and other hazards popping onto the screen faster than you can react.

The moment-to-moment action here closely follows the original 1985 Super Mario Bros. formula, complete with one-way ratchet style scrolling. Our hero can run, jump (doubling as a means of traversal and primary attack), collect coins, and hit blocks for power-ups. The Super Mushroom, Super Star, and 1-Up all function as you’d expect. The sole twist comes in the form of the Superball Flower, a variant of the Fire Flower with ricochet properties. You can bank these bouncy projectiles off walls, floors, and ceilings for trick shots against enemies and to collect distant coins. Make sure to try entering every pipe you come across, too, as you never know which ones will lead to coin-filled bonus rooms.

All that isn’t to say that Mario Land packs nothing in the way of innovation. The new enemy designs are a treat, and they all tend to tie into the themes of their native worlds. World three, for example, is based on Easter Island and sports a number of distinct moai statue opponents that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gradius game. Mario must also contend with fire-breathing sphinxes in the Egyptian area and tenacious jiāngshī (hopping vampires) in the Asian-inspired final world. We get some interesting tweaks to established baddies, too. Koopa shells aren’t as helpful as they used to be in Sarasaland.

I’ve saved Mario Land’s biggest surprise for last: It’s a shooter! Two levels actually play out as horizontal auto-scrollers where Mario hops into a handy vehicle (a submarine and plane, both of which handle identically) and unleashes a torrent of hot lead at Tatanga’s flunkies. Is it weird? Again, only in hindsight. Mario was created to be a versatile, one-size-fits-all sort of gaming protagonist. Why shouldn’t he try his hand at such a popular genre? If anything, I wish this aspect had been expanded upon relative to the platforming bits. The shooting stages are over far too soon for my tastes and could have used some power-ups unique to them. Oh, well. They’re a most charming diversion as-is, albeit a lightweight one.

So that’s Super Mario Land. A trifle, sure, but what a trifle! It was by far the best platforming experience available on the go back in 1989 and holds up today as a quick, concentrated burst of Mario goodness. Not to mention a quintessential Game Boy exclusive. For as humble a work as it is, its creators should still be quite proud.

Phantasy Star II (Genesis)

When I finally got around to completing the original Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System back in the summer of 2020, I found it to be a visually stunning RPG (by 1987 standards) with a nifty Star Wars-inspired setting. I wasn’t nearly as thrilled by its restrictive combat mechanics and convoluted first-person dungeons, but ended things on a hopeful note, stating that I was looking forward to seeing how its Genesis follow-ups improved on the formula. Well, I apparently spoke too soon, because here I am seventeen months later, wondering just how Phantasy Star II managed to impress me significantly less than its predecessor in spite of the more powerful hardware it runs on. Serves me right for assuming, eh?

Our story once again takes place in the Algol solar system, some 1000 years after Alis Lansdale and her companions overthrew the tyrant Lassic in Phantasy Star. In the meantime, Mother Brain, a supercomputer of unknown origin, has taken control of Algol society. It provides for all the inhabitants’ daily needs and has even converted large portions of the desert world Motavia into a verdant paradise. Lately, however, twisted bio-monsters have appeared to torment the populace. The main hero is a government agent sent to discover the source of the monsters and set things right. Could something be amiss with Mother Brain? I doubt it. When has that name been associated with anything but goodwill? Besides, if you can’t trust an unseen god-computer with almost unlimited power, who can you trust?

Kidding aside, the mystery of exactly what’s going on behind the scenes is one thing I can applaud Phantasy Star II for. The ending twist in particular ranks among the cleverer ones I’ve seen in an early RPG. I wouldn’t say it has a great story overall. There are far too many dead patches where nothing of interest transpires for hours at a stretch and the localization is a rocky one. Still, one or two solid twists are all it takes to make a game of this vintage stand out from the crowd.

I’m also happy to laud the diverse character roster and deeper battle system. A total of eight party members will eventually join your cause, each with his or her own unique skills. Deciding on who to use and who to leave at home isn’t always easy, since some allies are better suited to taking on specific enemy types than others. Anna’s boomerang slashers tear through entire groups of fleshy foes, for example, while Kain’s anti-machine techniques reduce heavily armored robots to scrap.

Your group is no longer limited to encountering a single monster type at a time, allowing for a multitude of enemy formations to spice up the constant random fights. The new auto-battle function helps keep the pace up by letting you repeat the last round’s commands with a single button press if desired. Simply not having to navigate menus for every character every round saves more hassle than you might think over the course of a long adventure.

Alas, this is where my enthusiasm for Phantasy Star II hits a brick wall. There’s no use sugar-coating it: This is one barren shell of a game. By my count, there are four meaningful plot developments supporting around thirty hours of play time. Your party members are no help in this regard. They’re virtual blank slates that speak a couple sentences apiece when they show up to join and then absolutely nothing else until the ending scene. It’s just one generic dungeon fetch quest after another as you wait…and wait…and wait for something, anything, new to happen. In terms of inventiveness and scope, it fails to match, let alone exceed Phantasy Star. There are fewer planets to visit, fewer cool vehicles to drive, and so on.

These may actually be my most hated RPG dungeons to date, too. I’d hoped that the switch to an overhead perspective might at least make them quicker and easier to navigate. Quite the opposite! The very first one you visit is a sprawling four floor maze of interconnected teleporters. In any other RPG, such a layout would be deemed endgame material. They only get crazier from there, with the designers abusing concentric spirals and similar tedious corridor arrangements to ensure that your slow moving party has to spend as much time as possible trekking through each and every area. It’s so bad that Phantasy Star II shipped with a massive strategy guide containing maps of all the dungeons. If that’s not a tacit admission by Sega that these suckers are beyond the pale, I don’t know what is.

The crowning irony for me has to be the fact that the 16-bit Phantasy Star II doesn’t definitively outdo its 8-bit ancestor in the visual department. Even for an early Genesis release, it’s lacking in eye candy. I was missing both little touches like the full body portraits for generic NPCs and big ones like the location-specific fight backgrounds. All combats in Phantasy Star II play out against the same abstract blue grid pattern for whatever reason. Thank goodness returning composer Tokuhiko Uwabo’s score is on-point.

If you happen to be one of Phantasy Star II’s many fans and find my critique a tad harsh, I do get it. Historical context is important. When it hit American store shelves in early 1990, it shared that space with exactly two other prominent turn-based console RPGs: Dragon Warrior…and Phantasy Star. For an NES owner coming straight off Dragon Warrior, it would have been a revelation. Sure, Final Fantasy II and Dragon Quest III were already doing more interesting things with narrative and gameplay, but that was in Japan. We gaijin were still waiting on the first Final Fantasy. So Phantasy Star II was, for that brief, shining moment, the pinnacle of the genre in these parts. Does that mean a thing to a newcomer over thirty years on? Sadly, no. Lord, was this one boring! I did learn my lesson, though. I’ll be keeping my Phantasy Star III expectations nice and low.

Last Alert (TurboGrafx-16)

Military-themed run-and-gun shooters were a mainstay of ’80s gaming. No arcade or home console library was complete without these grim depictions of lone wolf super soldiers machine gunning their way through legions of faceless goons. Primarily inspired by the international phenomenon that was the Rambo film franchise, a few of them even starred the man himself, though most publishers opted for stand-in ptotagonists over shelling out those big Stallone bucks.

Enter Shin-Nihon Laser Soft, a short-lived subsidiary of Telenet Japan that brought Red Alert to the PC Engine in 1989. Red Alert’s claim to fame was its use of the system’s then cutting edge CD-ROM peripheral to add anime style cutscenes and voice acting to the familiar overhead run-and-gun formula. But a funny thing happened on the way to Red Alert’s North American debut as Last Alert the following year. Literally. The Japanese version’s generally respectable voice work was replaced with an amateur English dub so out-and-out ludicrous that it’s likely the only reason Last Alert is remembered at all these days. I’m reminded of how the Mega Drive port of Zero Wing’s “all your base are belong to us” opening scene has long since eclipsed any discussion of its merits as a game.

Ironically, this goofy dub is about the best thing that could have happened to Last Alert. Getting to hear our chisled one man army protagonist Guy Kazama spout lines like “Garcia, nobody can hire my feelings!” with all the grace and gravitas of a high school drama dork hopped up on Mountain Dew is vastly more entertaining than the action on offer. Not to say that the gameplay here is horrible. Last Alert is certainly playable and doesn’t suffer from any especially egregious design missteps. At same time, however, I can’t escape the feeling that those CD bells and whistles were the main point all along.

I can describe Guy Kazama’s campaign against the sinister Force Project and their world-threatening superweapon Indra in two words: Long and mediocre. I’m talking no less than 23 stages of the most resolutely average small arms combat ever programmed. Guy can move and attack in the expected eight directions. One button fires his unlimited ammo gun and the other deploys grenades, homing missiles, and other limited use backup weapons. Most stages require Guy to simply reach and defeat a boss at the end. A handful include miscellaneous objectives, such as rescuing hostages or planting bombs, that must be accomplished for the boss to appear. The bulk of the opposition is made up of bog standard grunts who’ll either stand in place and take the occasional potshot at Guy or slowly jog after him while doing the same. Yes, it all works and yes, it grows quite tiresome by the halfway mark. At least it’s also remarkably easy, so you won’t have to waste any more of your time on memorization or practice.

The only standout mechanic for me is the experience system. Hitting certain score thresholds will gradually level Guy up from his starting rank of Ranger all the way up to a rank nineteen Super Hero. Every level adds another box to Guy’s health meter and a new, more powerful gun is added to his inventory every four levels or so. It’s a solid idea in the context of a lengthier take on the genre and I got more enjoyment out of seeing what my next rank title and weapon upgrade would be than I did out of the actual gunfights.

Visually, the sparse backgrounds and underdetailed sprites are barely a step up from those seen in Capcom’s Commando four years prior. That’s an eternity in ’80s game development terms. We can’t blame the hardware for this, either. Data East’s Bloody Wolf made it to the PC Engine a few months before Last Alert (on a regular low-capacity HuCard, I might add) and still managed to look significantly nicer. The soundtrack fares a bit better, although it never approaches the dizzying heights of a Lords of Thunder or Ys Book I & II.

Last Alert isn’t much to look at and is entirely too basic and repetitive to sustain player interest over the minimum ninety minutes or so it takes to complete a playthrough. As far as old school commando bloodbaths on the TurboGrafx-16 go, the aforementioned Bloody Wolf is the superior game. On the other hand, my fellow lovers of all things camp will treasure every misbegotten syllable of Last Alert’s dialog. If you’re the type to sit through an incompetent movie just for the “so bad, it’s good” factor, you’ll be right at home blasting away as Guy Kazama.

Energy (PC Engine)

Hoo-boy! Who’s ready to dive head-first into some hot garbage? Energy here is what I’d call a true deep cut. It’s obscure, even among those intrepid souls who regularly dip into the PC Engine’s extensive back catalog of Japanese exclusives. It was originally released in 1988 as Ashe: Legend of Toma for NEC’s PC-88 line of home computers. Publisher Masaya must have seen something they liked in Ashe, because they partnered with its developer, Quasar Soft, to produce this infamous PCE port the following year.

What is Energy? Well, I suppose I’d call it a side-scrolling action-adventure…if it had scrolling. This serves as the initial warning that you’re dealing with a deeply flawed game. Lots of ’80s computer platforms lacked built-in support for smooth scrolling, but there’s no good reason why Energy had to retain its archaic flip-screen transitions on the PC Engine. They’re maddeningly slow ones, too. Somewhere in the vicinity of five seconds or so. If that doesn’t sound too bad, try mentally multiplying it over the course of an extended play session. Every dozen screens you traverse amounts to a full minute of forced inactivity. What a perfect sign of things to come.

You play as a member of the Toma Force, a group of psychic troubleshooters dispatched to the ruins of Tokyo after it’s suddenly devastated by a bunch of freaky monsters. Your character (who you get to name) immediately loses touch with his teammates and must now track them down on top of tackling the monster situation with his psychic energy blasts. This is all told to you in the unskippable cutscene that opens the adventure. The unskippable cutscene that you’ll have to watch again every time you die because Energy expects you to make due with a single life and no continues or save feature. Joy!

Which atrocity to showcase next? How about the fact that Energy’s 16-bit graphics would be considered below average on the Sega Master System? Or maybe the literally broken jumping physics, which cause your hero to get stuck in mid-air while the sound effect loops continuously if he’s anywhere near a wall or platform? Unavoidable damage from enemies spawning directly on top of you with no warning? Bosses that keep tossing projectiles at you from thin air for several seconds after they’ve been destroyed? Oh, here’s a fun one: Your character doesn’t have an idle pose, so if you stop him in the middle of a run, he’ll just freeze instantly in whatever frame of the running animation he happened to be in. Oof.

Energy is bad, people. I’m talking at the most fundamental level, artistically and technically. Tedious, uninspired design is one thing. Couple it with a near total inability to competently implement baseline gameplay functions, however, and the result is some staggering holistic suckage. If you placed a gun to my head and demanded I say something nice about Energy, the best I could muster would be, “A couple of the chiptunes are okay, I guess.”

Fortunately for us latter-day English speakers, two individuals going by the handles cabbage and onionzoo have seen fit to grace Energy with a fan translation/improvement patch. Yes, you heard that right: Out of all the text-heavy PC Engine games that could have been introduced to the West, including history’s first CD-ROM RPG, Tengai Makyō: Ziria, frigging Energy scored itself a fan translation. What a world. In all seriousness, though, this patch is fantastic. Beyond simply letting you understand the dialog, it greatly speeds up those glacial screen transitions and allows you to skip the introduction. If I read perfect Japanese, I’d still consider it mandatory.

Anyway, here’s the thing: As bloody stupid as Energy indisputably is, I rather enjoyed it. Granted, I’m the sort of weirdo who enjoys Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the NES, but hear me out. Playing Energy is like watching a film where the screenwriter can’t write, the actors can’t act, and the cinematographer can’t focus his lenses. Patch notwithstanding, it’s the sort of unmitigated creative disaster that has the potential to be hilarious when approached in the right state of mind. It helps that Energy is super short for an adventure game, only requiring around twenty minutes or so to complete once you’ve learned the correct path through it. To think that Masaya had the nerve to charge people actual money for this! Perhaps they were the real monsters lurking in Tokyo all along.

Neutopia (TurboGrafx-16)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Clone” shouldn’t be a dirty word. It’s tempting to look down on an obvious copycat game or, worse, the people behind it. 1989’s Neutopia is as rote a Legend of Zelda knock-off as they come, yet it comes to us courtesy of Hudson Soft, one of the most revered developer/publishers of the era and co-creators (along with NEC) of the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 hardware itself.

In other words, these folks were no slouches, and as much as we’re naturally inclined to prize creativity, I feel it’s important to consider the company’s position as a platform owner. When your competition has a bona fide landmark title on the market, there’s bound to be considerable pressure on you to provide your user base with an equivalent experience, lest they jump ship. What should ultimately matter to a gamer is whether or not that equivalent offering is fun, and I’m pleased to report that Hudson Soft did not disappoint. While it packs few, if any surprises of its own, Neutopia is a solid and roundly agreeable interpretation of the original Zelda’s formula.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Neutopia is in peril. The diabolic Dirth has abducted Princess Aurora and hidden away the eight mystic medallions that safeguard the realm in eight perilous dungeons. As brave young swordsman Jazeta, you must recover the medallions, dispatch Dirth, and save the Princess. Yeah. As you can see, there was no effort made whatsoever to paint Neutopia as anything other than the TurboGrafx’s version of Hyrule. They just cooked up a handful of new proper nouns and called it a day. I suppose they didn’t want to chance anyone in the audience failing to connect the dots.

This barefaced absence of guile makes Neutopia remarkably easy to summarize. Essentially, if you remember it from the first Zelda, it’s here. Top-down view. Four-way movement. Short range sword combat supplemented by a ranged magic wand. Bombing rock walls and burning trees to reveal secret rooms populated by helpful NPCs. Sword, armor, and health bar upgrades. Healing potions. An item that lights up dark rooms. Another item that bridges small bodies of water. I could well go on, but I trust you get it.

The game’s sole major deviation is at least fairly substantial. Rather than plopping Jazeta down onto a single massive overworld map at the start and leaving him to fend for himself, the land is divided up into four equal size quadrants, each of which has its own thematic identity (earth, fire, water, air) and contains two of the eight dungeons. Accessing a new quadrant requires obtaining both medallions from the previous one’s dungeons. This imposes a semi-linear structure on the quest that may not appeal to veteran players. It does have the benefit of narrowing your search efforts, however, since whatever you need to advance will always be found somewhere in the current overworld section. Apart from this, everything is business as usual.

Again, though, that’s hardly bad per se. Not if said business is handled well, as it is here. Neutopia implements all these familiar mechanics with aplomb in order to create and maintain much the same addictive exploratory flow that made its source material, well, a Legend. I’ve been downright ruthless in the past when it came to nitpicking similar efforts in the same vein (Golden Axe Warrior, Golvellius), so you can believe me when I say that Neutopia gets all the broad strokes, as well as the majority of the fine ones, right. It looks pretty slick in the process, too, thanks to the system’s famously colorful graphics. A selection of rousing chiptunes by Tomotsune Maeno rounds out this generally appealing package. My only real sticking point is the lack of a grueling Death Mountain style lair for Dirth. Instead, you simply teleport straight to the final battle and set to stabbing the dude. A little more build-up would have been nice.

In the annals of video game history, Neutopia represents, at most, a humble footnote. Still, it remains a perfectly playable one; an easy recommendation for any fan of ’80s vintage fantasy adventure willing to overlook its Dirth of originality.