Dark Hunter: Shou Kotojigen Gakuen (Saturn)

I am cheating a little bit here, as this isn't actually a game. It claims to be an interactive learning tool to help Japanese teenagers learn english. It comes in the forms of what is essentially an OAV about various

supernatural goings-on occuring at and around a boarding school at the top of a steep hill. It was made by Koei, who released five such things on the Saturn, two in the Dark Hunter series (of which this is the first), and three in the EMIT series.
THe educational element comes in the form of the language options. You can choose to have the story play out with English or Japanese voice acting, as well as English or Japanese subtitles, in any combination. You can also choose to immediately repeat scenes with different language options, and certain words and phrases in the subtitles will be highlighted, and these phrases can be selected, which will show the selected phrase in the opposite language.
Also, at certain points in the story, the player/viewer can choose which character the story should focus on or choose the next line a character might say, making it slightly ahead of Dinosaur Island in terms of interactivity, and the fact that there's an English language option makes it a lot easier and more enjoyable. There are also short "quizzes", in which the player will, for example be asked to identify ten things in the room, by clicking on

them and choosing from three options the correct english name for that item. Dinosaur Island definitely has the edge over Dark Hunter in terms of animation, though. Despite using a similar system of giant sprites over FMV, Dark Hunter's animation is very limited, with a lot of shots of people standing or sitting around, people talking with their faces out of shot and so on. I think it's safe to assume that this is down to the fact that this release comes on a single CD, and still has room for two full voice tracks. And the bilingual nature of the disc could also explain a lack of fluidity in the lip sync, making it sort-of match both languages could have been a preferable solution to concentrating on one and having the other look much worse.
As for the story itself, it's not great. It really could be a low-budget mid-90s OAV, with a slightly awkward sounding English dub also typical of the era. There's a lot of "mystery" which really feels like an excuse to have not a lot happen. Come to think of it, the "language tutor" aspect of the software is also a pretty

reasonable explanation as to why a lot of the story is made up of conversations. THe fact that you can save which scene you've watched up to and come back to it later is nice, too.
IN conclusion, this isn't really a game, but it is kind of interesting, and it could be thought of as a weird pre-DVD example of a bilingual anime release. I wonder if this series (and the EMIT sister series) ever had a small western fandom for that reason? If there was such a fandom, it must have been tiny, since I've never heard people talking about either of them.

Jushin Liger (1989) Ep. 1

I'll start with the most obvious thing to say about this show, that it inspired the gimmick of a great wrestler of the same name, who uses the cartoon's opening theme as his theme song to this day and who in turn later inspired a live action movie. That's pretty much why I wanted to watch this in the first place, having been a fan of the wrestler for a few years and all. If I'm honest, I wasn't really expecting very much from it.
I was pleasantly surprised! There is a lot to like about this show. Lots of action, it looks nice, dramatic music.
The show starts with some kid dreaming about being killed and eaten by big monsters, before being woken up by his dad. We find out the kid's name is Ken, and he then makes breakfast before going to school, and on the way to school, flips up the skirt of the girl he likes, insults her fat friend, and beats up his own fat friend. Classy.
During class something terrible happens outside! The giant head of Skullgreymon descends from the skies and unleashes a few giant monsters, who wreck the shit out of Tokyo. And this must be the most fragile Tokyo ever, since it takes less than a minute of monstering before it looks like a typical post-apocalyptic cartoon: dark skies, ruined skyscrapers, and so on.
The army turn up, and not only make their usual inept attempt at killing the monsters, they actualy make things worse, as when one of the monsters is hit by tank fire, it splits in two for some reason.
Anyway, more devastation goes on until Ken finally summons Jushin Liger, which only bears a slight resemblence to the wrestler, and looks more like a heavy metal version of Lord Zedd from Power Rangers. A hole opens in Liger's chest, that Ken flies into, before a bunch of bony cable things attach themselves to Ken. Jushin Liger is some kind of living giant robot made of muscle and bone or something. There's then a pretty long (and actually very good) fight scene with Liger beating up/killing the evil monsters, while the real villains also do plot stuff in their giant ship (that really does look like Skullgreymon's head). He usus martial arts more than wrestling, though. One bizzare highlight is that at one point, Ken decides he needs a weapon, and that since he's in a (sort of) giant robot called "Jushin Liger", he'll just summon a sword, and it's called "Liger Sword". And that works.
Liger defeats the monsters, the bad guys run away, episode ends.
As I said at the start, I wasn't expecting much from this show, only watching it out of curiosity, but it actually turned out to be really entertaining, and by the time the next episode preview came on, I really wanted to watch another episode! Unfortunately, as far as I know, this is the only episode that's been subtitled. One last thing: while watching this show, various little visual things reminded me a lot of Go Nagai, then when I looked up the release date on Wikipedia, turns out it was actually by him! Oh ho!