Shadow Brain (NES)

 I think it's a pretty prevalent stereotype of 8-bit console RPGs that they're ugly, difficult, and just generally hostile to the player. It's not a completely unfounded stereotype, and I know there are people reading this who play those games specifically looking for those qualities. I'm not one of those players, but I do occasionally dip my toes into the genre, to seek out diamonds in the rough, and because I think the developers of games like these often came from the world of indie development on microcomputers, and there's a similar kind of creator-led energy to a lot of them to that seen in OAVs of the same era.

 

I found Shadow Brain in one such toe-dipping session, and I instantly took a liking to the way it bucks the trends in the genre at that time, both thematically and mechanically.  Thematically, it immediately stands out: it takes place in some kind of futuristic cyberpunk dystopia. There are only towns, no dungeons, but the streets of the towns are all plagued by roving criminals, rogue cyborgs, and mutated animals. The grimy look of both enemy and NPC characters juxtaposed with the incredibly sterile look of the faux-3D blobber maps really gives off the impression that this is a world that's still being maintained in terms of things being kept working, but also a world in which the actual inhabitants have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. The closest thing I encountered to any kind of law enforcement are the gates between towns that require security ID to get through.

 

Mechanically, the first thing that proved promising is that while you're a solo adventurer who never gets any party members, you aren't punished harshly for dying. You're simply whisked away to the nearest ressurectionist, who provides the service you'd expect him to, and takes half of your current money as payment. Other than that, there's a lot of interesting little quirks. In battle, you have three attack options: punch, sword, and gun, and you can equip weapons to all three. There's no reason not to only buy and use the weapon that has the highest attack, but it's still a sign that the devs had a lot of ideas they wanted to include. Front Mission 3 fans might also be interested to learn that Shadow Brain also includes an in-game internet!

 

In the same way that Front Mission 3's internet reflected the real internet of 1999, featuring simple, charmingly gaudy webpages, Shadow Brain's internet reflects how things were in 1991. You can only access it via terminals that are dotted here and there around the towns, and when you do, there's a "live chat", where your character can converse with a few recurring characters, a BBS, where people post questions and information about what's going on, and an online shop where you can buy and sell things. It's very rudimentary, but it's still a fun little addition, and it really adds to the feels that this is a sci-fi game, and not just a fantasy game with a shiny metal skin. 

 

Another thing that you might be surprised to hear about is that you can go to the arcade and play minigames! In a 1991 Famicom game! There's futuristic Pong and futuristic clay pigeon shooting, and you can play them as much as you like to win money, plus there's a couple of points in the plot where you have to play special "if you die in the game, you die for real" versions to advance the plot. 

 

Anyway, though Shadow Brain is a lot more player-friendly than a lot of RPGs from that time, I'd say it's probably still a bit of an acquired taste, and while dying isn't a problem, there are still moments when it's not really clear what you have to do to progress. Still, I enjoyed the few hours I played of it (I got as far as the fourth town). I also really loved the way the game looks: the enemy and NPC sprites all look amazing, the world itself is really atmospheric, and even the UI elements feels as if they've been designed as a part of the game's world. This is a high quality work, and was clearly made with a lot of love. There's an English translation patch out there, and if this review has at all piqued your interest, you should definitely give it a try.

Sylphia (PC Engine)

 With this being a vertical shooter by Compile, you might be tempted to think that it's just a fantasy-skinned Aleste game (Though to be honest, that wouldn't really be a negative). But while there's some slight similarities to the Aleste series (there's a few different weapons to try out, and you gradually power up your shots by collecting multiple little P items), it's got enough stuff of its own to be considered its own unique entity.

 

It starts with a really nice pixel anmation intro, showing a female soldier in anceient greek times protecting some civilians from an invading demon army until she's mortally wounded. With her last breath, she crawls into a temple, where she's rewarded for her bravery by a glowing orb that turns her into a battle fairy, and sends her off to destroy the demon hoards. Of course, that fairy is you. After the great-looking intro, the rest of the game doesn't diappoint visually, either: the game itself is full of cool backgrounds, lots of varied monsters that are both well-animated and well-drawn, and the out-of-game presentation is really interesting. Between stages, there's these unique sepia-toned pieces of pixel art that show what the next stage's theme will be, and even the game over screen is cool! It has Sylphia floating above an open, ark of the covenant-style casket, and when you choose not to continue, she descends into it and the lid closes!

 

The game itself, luckily, is also pretty good. There are four different elemental weapons you can pick from (by collecting items, you can't just switch at any time), with wind being the best, fire second, and earth and water being totally useless. As well as the items for changing element, and the aforementioned P items for powering up your shot, another item that appears a lot is something that looks like a little winged CD. Collecting this fills up a meter, and when the meter's full, you get an extra bomb attack. As well as this, the game's pretty generous with the extra lives, giving you one for every seventy thousand points, and if you play well, you'll be getting more than one per stage on average. 

 

It only took me a few tries to get all the way to the final boss! The problem is, though, that after getting a game over, it's a little demoralising to try again straight away. The reason is one you might have predicted if you're familiar with Compile's other PC Engine shooting games: Sylphia is really long, like well over an hour. It flies by while you're playing, but after playing that long and dting, it's hard to get up the energy to start again right away. Still, if you want an easy 1CC, I can't imagine this taking most people more than a week at a rate of one or two attempts a day.

 

Something I'd also like to highlight is the excellent theming, with regard to the stages and enemies. There are no generic enemies in this game, or at least none that are generic enough to appear in every stage. This is because every stage has a theme, and all the enemies fit that theme and are unique to that stage. For example, the second stage has you going through an area full of statues of various stages, and all the enemies are mechanically-animated statues of various kinds: flying cherub heads, fire-breathing colossi, and more. An especially cool little touch in this stage is that when you beat the mid-boss, you see a tiny little pilot escape into the cave its guarding, and at the back of that cave, you see the pilot climb aboard the stage boss: a gigantic mechanical statue, only the top half of which is visible.

 

Every stage has cool moments like that in it to keep you engaged, too. The third stage takes place over a sea, with both archer-manned ships and marine monsters trying to kill you, and it's incredibly satisfying to sweep across the screen with your bomb attack (which takes the form of a big laser), destroying a whole fleet of ships, seeing them all break in half and sink. Then in the second half of the stage you go under the water, and Sylphia's flying animation is replaces with a swimming one! One strange point that's worth mentioning when it comes to the presentation is the music. Specifically, the music used for the boss fights at the end of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages. In this 1993 greek mythology-themed shooting game, you're suffenly fighting huge monsters to the sound of some Jock Jams dance track, complete with that little "woo!" sample. Bizarre!

 

I feel like I haven't spoken much about the game's actual mechanics, but at the same time, I think that like a lot of pre-1994 shooting games, it's mostly pretty simple. Furthermore, I have said a lot about how the game presents itself, and I think it does that so well, and it's such a large part of this game's appeal that it's the right decision to have taken. Anyway, Sylphia is a game that's has enough concessions for beginners to the genre, while being satisfying enough for existing fans, plus there's always lots of cool details and things to see. I definitely recommend playing it if you haven't already. With the Aleste series getting a small revival in recent times, I hope someone at some point decides to bring back Compile's other shooters (including this one) too, as it'd be nice to see them reach a wide audience, and I definitely don't recommend or even condone anyone paying the ludicrous prices legitimate copies of this game fetch.