Dimension Tripper Neptune Top Nep (PC)

 Now, this is  fairly recent release, but the fact that a Space Harrier-alike with actual sprite scaling and stuff managed to exist for almost half a year before I'd even heard any mention of it qualifies it as obscure, in my mind. I'm glad I did eventually hear about it, too, as it turned out to be pretty good!

 

I'd even go as far as to say that it feels like it could be an actual Space Harrier sequel! It doesn't really add a lot to the formula, mostly being, like its forebear, a basic sprite scaling shooting game, with no lock-on attacks or other things added by later games like Afterburner and Galaxy Force, but the couple of elements it does add are ones that really fit, and definitely add something to the game, in the way that a sequel would. (I know there actually was a Space Harrier II, but it was one of those early Mega Drive "straight to video" sequels like Golden Axe II that only really offered more of the same. Not that there's anything wrong with that, though!)

 

There's two main mechanical additions to be found here. The first is a meter at the bottom of the screen, filled by collecting coins. Once it's full, another character will fly in and join you, acting like an option in a more traditional 2D shooting game. The second is a melee attack that you can use to hit enemies that fly in close to you, and more importantly, to cancel enemy bullets. These are both great additions, though it might have been interesting to build on them both a little more. Say, incentivising use of the melee weapon by having it score more points than defeating enemies with shots, or by having cancelled bullets turn into coins that fill the meter, maybe?

 

Something I haven't mentioned is the connection to the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, which is mainly because I haven't played any of them and I have no interest in changing that. It doesn't really affect anything about how the game plays, though, andaesthetically, it looks amazing too, so any effect it's had there is obviously a positive. The sprites are all big and colourful, the stages look great, and it does some cool stuff with sprite scaling, too. The bosses in particular: a dragon swipes at you with his massive claws, and a big frog monster tries to grab you with his stretchy multi=sprite tongue.

 

The only real negative thing I have to say about the game is that it is a bit short and a bit easy. They should definitely at least have labelled the "normal" and "hard" difficulties as "easy" and "normal", respectively. Still, it's only a couple of pounds, and even if it only takes a single attempt to 1CC normal mode, and not many more to get through hard, it's enjoyable enough that it's definitely worth it. Finally, a few people have asked me to mention where I get the PC games I post about, so starting with this one, I'll do that. This game is available on steam, and the past few PC games I've reviewed were bought from DLsite.

Konjiki no Gash Bell!! Yuujou no Dengeki Dream Tag Tournament (GBA)

 This is a fighting game based on an anime and manga series that was renamed Zatch Bell in English-speaking areas, for obvious reasons. I don't know anything about that series, and this game is all in Japanese, so I can't tell you much about the plot. Another bit of bad news is that despite the words "Tag Tournament", this game doesn't actually have tag battles. It's more of a Rival Schools-type situation, where you play as one character, and have another who acts as a striker.

 

Also similar to Rival Schools' sequel Project Justice is that there are seperate single player modes for following the story, where you can only pick from pre-determined teams, and a more freeform mode where there's no story, but you can pick any two characters you like. The roster is a pretty interesting bunch, too: there's a few characters that appear to be little kids, a couple of oddly-dressed adults, and there's a pair of quadrapedal animals in the form of a spikey, aggressive goat and a spikey, aggressive horse. There's also a few characters I fought against, but never figured out how to unlock, who mostly looked like bizarre superhero and villain-type characters.

 

One thing that's very obvious from playing the game is that it's firmly aimed at the kids watching the show, and not at fighting game fans. Not only are the opponents in both single player modes very easy to beat, but the controls are pretty different to what you might expect. There's a jump button and only one attack button, and specials are activated by pressing up or down and attack together. Specials and summoning your striker are done using the shoulder buttons. As for the difficulty, I'm not even particularly good at fighting games, but while playing through both single player modes a few times each, I've only lost one round, and no matches.

 

Still, it is a fun game to play, and it looks great, easily one of the best-looking games on the system. It might also be a fun way to introduce your less-skilled friends to fighting games, assuming you can figure out a way to play it against another person in 2022 (I haven't looked into this, but I assume someones made this very easy via emulation at some point. Actually, can this be done with Game Boy/Color/Advance games via emulation on 3DS? That'd be nice.)

 

So yeah, it looks nice, and it's a moderately fun game, but it's way too easy. Also, being a fighting game on GBA, it has cast over it the massive shadow of the miraculous port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 that's also on the same system, and I don't think it's interesting enough to step out from that shadow.

Floating Runner (Playstation)

 This game apparently got a worldwide release, though I somehow never heard of it until many years later, when I saw an ad for it in an old comic. It's one of those early experimental 3D platformers, like the Jumping Flash games and Bug. Though it's very primitive in various ways, it does more closely resemble a more typical example of what the genre would become than those other games, though.

 

The stages are a pretty fair rendition of the concept "platform stages, but now in 3D", with bottomless pits, annoying enemies, moving platforms you have to wait for, and so on. There's even bits in some stages where you can fall (or get knocked) off a platform and have to painstakingly climb your way back up again. Oddly, it uses Resident Evil-style swivelling controls for movement, though, which isn't a great fit for platforming.

 

There's other little annoyances that all add up, too. Like how your main weapon fires in a weird arc that means that a lot of the time your shots just go harmlessly over the heads of your enemies, or how those enemies are placed in incredibly dense hoards that are all constantly attacking. You die very easily, and when the enemies start crowding round, almost instantly. After a few attempts, I managed to get three stages in, then did a bit of credit-feeding to get screenshots of a few more. Eventually, though, I gave up on that, too.

 

There are some good things I have to say about Floating Runner, though! First, I love the way it looks: super-low polygon counts on everything, most objects and environments are just flat-shaded colours. It's very charming. Also, despite the swivel controls, there were a few parts, where there were few-to-no enemies around and I was gopping from platform to platform where I was actually having a lot of fun just controlling the character, running and jumping.

 

Those little positives aren't really enough to save it, though. Emulate it for a bit to enjoy the aesthetics and indulge your historical curiosity, but don't expect much more joy out of it than that. Definitely don't pay the ludicrous prices a legitimate copy fetches these days, either.

Curiosities #21 - Windows 98 (NES)

 One category of pirate original that always draws attention when screenshots emerge is the "fake operating system" genre. Presumably made for Famiclones that are sold with keyboards as "educational computers" (though I have to emphasise this is just a theory on my part. I have no evidence, but those machines do exist, so it'd make sense). Unfortunately, these things are also pretty elusive. None of the ROMs are in any of the big ROM collections, they're not sold on cartridge on AliExpress or any other easily-usable-in-the-west sites as far as I'm aware.

 

But I managed to track down a copy of this one, and satisfy my curiosiity. There's not really much to do in it, unfortunately. It loads up in a pretty authentic PC-like way, with a fake bios screen and a Windows 98 loading screen, then you're on your desktop. There's a few icons to click and you can also open the start menu. You can open a few folders, which might have files in, you can get a fake command line prompt, and you can open a fake web browser.

 

The only files in the folders that actually do anything are image files, that show you a nice little picture. The web browser can show you a mock up of what was probably the default page on Internet Explorer at the time, a Microsoft page, or a page that is presumably relatd to this ROM's developers. Some of the things you can click open what look like Windows dialogue boxes in Chinese, though none of the buttons in them actually do anything. I was surprised that there doesn't seem to be any actual game in here, like a super-simple Minesweeper-type thing or something. As it is, there's maybe five minutes worth of stuff to look at in the ROM, and no reason to ever go back to it after that.

 

An interesting technical note is that I think every window is a full screen back ground. You can't scroll or move anything in them, and when you open or close a window, it involves the entire screen going black for a split-second. Even just opening the start menu on the desktop does this (and you can't open it when a window is already open, lending a little more credence to my theory).

 

So that's it. my curiosity is satisfied. If I manage to get ahold of any similar ROMs (I know there's a Windows XP one out there somewhere), I might post about those too. But like I said, there's only a few minutes of stuff to do in here at most, and it's not like anything really interesting or cool is being lost by this thing being so rare and elusive.