Curiosities Vol. 13: CD Battle - Hikari no Yuushitachi (PC Engine)

I'm sure anyone reading this blog is probably aware of the Monster Rancher games, especially the first one on Playstation, that did some kind of scanning thing to music CDs you put in and turned them into monsters you could train to battle other monsters. CD Battle: Hikari no Yuushatachi is essentially a kind of primitive ancestor of that game. So primitive, in fact, that it's barely a game at all.

You load the game up, then insert two CDs, which are turned into RPG parties of three members each. The two parties then fight in front of a fantasy backdrop. There's not much in the way of balance, and some CDs will generate a party member with masses of HP that can just steamroll the entire other team solo. Also, though the boxart promises robots, dragons and other cool stuff, all I ever got were archers, fighters and (very rarely) magic users. I guess the point of it is that two players put their CDs up against each other, then pass the controller back and forth, commanding their parties, to determine through combat who has the best musical taste.

It's a shame there's no kind of single player content, like a quest to send your party on or something, but as I played a few times, I begun to realise why there wasn't much to the game (and also why a game with such simple graphics requires the Super CD Rom RAM card). I noticed that to change the backdrop for your battles, you had to reset the console and load the game up again, and that's when I realised it: once the game is loaded up, you never have to put the game disc back into the console. So clearly, the entire game is loaded into RAM before you start.

I haven't been able to find any information regarding this game's price on release, but I really hope it was a budget title, since there's really nothing to it at all beyond a few minutes' mild amusement. You can find copies online for only a few pounds now, though, if you're interested. (I haven't tried to play it on an emulator, but it seems like it'd be more hassle than its worth.)

And in case anyone's interested, the CDs I used in the making of this review were Blind Guardian - Beyond the Red Mirror, Cradle of Filth - Bitter Suites to Succubi, The Offspring - Americana, Rhapsody - Rain of a Thousand Flames, and Arch Enemy - War Eternal (which defeated every opponent put in front of it).