Croket! Kindan no Kinka Box (Playstation)

So, Croket is based on an anime series from 2003, about the eponymous boy going on a quest to seek out some kind of special wish-granting coins called Kinka. Or so the summary on anidb says, at least. Only a single episode has been subbed, apparently, and I haven't seen it.

In this game (the only one on a home console, though there are a bunch on the GBA and DS), youtake control of Croket, and take part in some kind of fighting-themed gameshow/tournament arrangement. Each stage sees you in a top-down location with other characters, and for the first couple of stages, there's a certain amount of Kinka you need to get to finish the stage. Eventually, I reached a stage with some kind of scavenger hunt arrangement going on, and I couldn't work out the win condition. On the map screen, you see how many Kinka the top 6 fighters have, and you go about looking for them. Walking into another character on the map takes things into a side-view platform/fighting arrangement feeling a lot like the Digimon Battle Spirit games.

In the fighting segments, there are treasure chests that fling Kinka about when opened, and you can also knock the Kinka out of your opponent either with certain moves, or just with sustained beatings. Of course, the winner of the bout also takes a portion of their opponent's Kinka as a prize. Unfortunately, you'll end up having to fight the same opponents multiple times in a stage to get the required amount, and to make things worse, the smart player will quickly work out which characters they can most easily beat, and follow them around the map "bullying" them until they have enough Kinka to end the stage.

The fighting controls are simple, though they do have one odd little quirk: there's buttons for weak and strong attacks, as well as a third button that's only used in conjunction with direction inputs for specials and supers. Specials use up a third of your super meter, while supers use up the whole thing, but if you connect with your super, your opponent will drop a lot of coins, and coins fill up your meter.

It's hard to believe that this is not only a Playstation game, but one that came so late in the console's life in 2003, as it would easily fit in among the many anime licenced games on the Super Famicom. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, of course, it just strikes me as very unusual that not only was a licenced game being released on the original Playstation years after the PS2's release, but it's also such a dated-looking title. I can only assume the developers weren't given much of a budget.

Croket! Kindan no Kinka Box is a fairly playable game, if you're curious about it, it won't hurt to give it a try, but you're not missing out on anything special if you don't. One last note, though: like I said, I've never sen the anime on which this game is based, so maybe it's pretty different, but the game's premise heavily reminds me of the hunter exam arc near the start of Hunter X Hunter, particularly the part where all the candidates have to hunt each other down to steal enough badges to pass. I don't know if the anime was just a cheap, cynical cash-in, but the game kind of makes it seem that way.

Kaze no Notam (Playstation)

You might have already seen the boxart and title screen for this game posted on tumblr before. For some reason, though, no-one seems to have actually taken any in-game screenshots, and with the exception of a miserable, point-missing review on GameFAQs, no-one seems to have written on the game, either.

So what you probably aleady know is that it's a game about riding around in a hot air balloon. It's a product of Artdink, who seemed to be having something of an experimental period in the mid-90s, with this along with other non-traditional games like Aquanaut's Holiday and Tail of the Sun. So, what you might be wondering is how they made a game out of Hot Air Ballooning, and the answer is: they barely did. 

The biggest unique point of Kaze no Notam is its controls. The player can't just steer their balloon about as they like, and are instead subject to the whims of the winds. A column on the right side of the screen shows the direction of the wind at different altitudes, and the only direct control the player has over their balloon is to ascend and descend to try and keep themselves in their desired air current. 

There are a few different game modes: finding a target on the ground and shooting it, shooting at three widespread points to make a huge triangle, and shooting down other balloons. None of them are particularly engaging though, but that's okay, since they only seem to be included as a token concession towards traditional videogamery, and the aforementioned controls mean that trying to beat times or play efficiently is a fool's errand. 

The real point of Kaze no Notam is to just leisurely fly around the maps, sightseeing and relaxing. The maps are huge, and full of cool stuff to see: futuristic cities, mountain-topping mansions, ruins of lost civilisations, and so on. The game lets players pick any of the maps right from the start, and also gives a choice from a few different times of day and weather conditions. As if to really hammer home the point that the game is more about aesthetics and mood than it is about mechanics and challenge, neither the time nor weather options actually affect the gameplay at all.

I definitely recommend that you seek out and play Kaze no Notam, for two reasons. The first is that it's a perfect example of how a videogame can be more than just its mechanics, and the second that it's a great little time capsule of a time when the advent of textured polygons was widening the scope of the kinds of games that could exist, and before the risk-minimising homogeneity of large-budget game development had sanitised and narrowed the scope back down.

   This game is also known as "Notam of Wind"

TV Animation X: Unmei no Tatakai (Playstation)

Although the advent of online play has made it pretty clear that I'm actually not very good at them at all, I've always loved fighting games, and the Psychic Force series found its way into my heart during my teenage years, as it put the actual licenced anime fighting games to which I had access at the time to shame: while Dragonball GT Final Bout offered vague approximations of well-known characters having slow, awkward battles in boring, lifeless arenas, Psychic force offered cool-looking original characters in flight, dashing around firing energy blasts at each other in a variety of cool-looking stages. The reason I'm talking about Psychic Force is because Unmei no Tatakai is essentially Psychic Force 3 in all but name and characters.

Not only does this game have the same concept and mechanics as the Psychic Force series, it even reuses a few graphical effects and fonts. But it's not just a simple re-skinning of Psychic Force 2/2012, it is a true sequel, with numerous tweaks and new elements. The biggest all-round tweak relates to the dash system. The Psychic Force games have two main kinds of dashing that can be done: a dash that goes in a straight line in any direction that's used for travelling around the arenas, and a semi-circular dash that's intended for dodging attacks at high speed and quickly ducking behind opponents. In the earlier games, dashing was executed by pressing both attack buttons at once, with the type of dash determined by the direction pressed, but Unmei no Tatakai has dashing mapped to the right shoulder buttons, R1 for the straight dash and R2 for the curved dodge.

Obviously, the entire cast is new, being taking from CLAMP's pre-apocalyptic saga X, but two of the characters in particular bring interesting new ideas to the table. Sword-weilding Arashi Kishu stands out from the rest of the cast by being a melee specialist, with vastly fewer projectile attacks, but with better range and power on her melee attacks than any of the other characters. Yuzuhira Nekoi's gimmick is hard to describe in text, but she comes accompanied by a large dog, and most of her projectile attacks are delivered in the form of that canine companion launching itself at her opponent like a missile. The difference this makes mechanically is that Nekoi and her dog are not always in the same direction in relation to the opponent, who can find themselves coming under attack from all directions.

The game's presentation is also worth writing about, as not only is it easily the best-looking 3D fighting game on the Playstation, with some really breath-taking stages which manage to be varied despite all being set in Tokyo, from a skyscraper encoiled by a huge electric dragon, to a peaceful shrine at night, to the misty, moonlit ruins of post-apocalyptic Tokyo in general. The character models all look pretty great, too, with plenty of detail, even close up. It doesn't stop with the graphics, either, as the soundtrack is also excellent, with some amazing music providing perfect accompaniment to the exciting, fast-paced super-powered battles taking place.

You've probably already worked this out, but TV Animation X: Unmei no Tatakai is an incredible game, that I strongly recommend without reservation.

Ninpu Sentai Hurricanger (Playstation)

So, it's a licenced game based, obviously, on the 26th Super Sentai series of the same game (the suit action scenes from which were also used in the US/New Zealand series Power Rangers Ninja Storm). And it came to be released pretty late in the Playstation's life, the reasoning behind which I assume must be down to the fact that it was also very early in the Playstation 2's life and I guess the idea was that the young Super Sentai fanbase wouldn't yet have been able to upgrade.

Predictably, it's an action game, with the player taking control of the Hurricangers and their various mecha, fighting goons and monsters and at some points, other giant robots. Each stage represents an episode of the TV show, and is structured in a manner that will strike a familiar chord with Super Sentai fans. Typically, a stage will open with a section where the player defeats gangs of weak enemies, either in short beat em up segments, or occasionally in crosshair-pointing shooting gallery sections. Next up will usually be an on-foot fight against the monster of the week, which will play like a boss fight to the earlier beat em up segment. Finally is the main draw of these shows: the giant robot fighting against the giant version of the monster from the last part.

The giant robot fights don't play out like the other parts of the game, however: they start with a section with the camera behind the player's mech, in which the ploayer must move from side to side to avoid and deflect projectiles shot by the enemy until an opening to move in closer and attack comes up. When this happens, there's a short sequence in which the player hammers the attack buttons as fast as possible to knock the enemy back, followed by a first-person section that sees the player punching and slashing and using special attacks to deplete the enemy's health.

The game's presentation is perfect, with the in-game graphics being pretty much as good as they could be on the Playstation, and even the use of FMV works in the game's favour. The FMV clips used are short bits of stock footage that are used in the same place as they are in the show itself: transformation sequences, final attacks, and so on. The story mode is only a few stages long, but there are a bunch of extras, like a VS fighting mode, with all the rangers, enemies and monsters as playable characters, and an extra stage featuring a team-up with the red ranger of the Super Sentai show precedin Hurricanger, Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger.

You can probably work out what I think of this game by now, but yeah, I definitely recommend Hurricanger. If you're a fan of the show itself or the genre in general, it's a perfect adaptation, and even if you're not, it's just a really fun action game that's also very well presented.

Kotobuki Grand Prix (Playstation)

Augh, this game is terrible. I'd seen it around before I'd actually played it, and wondered if it might be one of those budget-priced hidden gems, of which there are so many on the Playstation and PS2. Then one day, I needed to find an extra game to meet a shop's minimum purchase for paying by debit card, so I took the plunge and bought Kotobuki GP.

Obviously, it's a light hearted racing game, in the time-tested Mario Kart knock-off mould, even down to copying the little mini-jump thing that Mario Kart has. The graphics are okay, considering it's a PS1 budget title, and not even a part of the Simple 1500 Series at that. Although even this concession of going easy on the game because it's a budget title can be eschewed once you realise that it was actually a full price release in 1999, rereleased by its publisher as a budget game two years later. The European release didn't come until 2003, when budget publishers selling Japanese games they licenced on the cheap were pretty much all that was left in the world of Playstation releases.

Why is it so bad? Well, there are a number of problems, with three in particular taking centre stage. Firstly, each track has a set number of items available, and they don't respawn. So by the final lap, there'll be none left, which is very odd for game of this type. Secondly, all the racers feel both slow and unweildy. There's just no joy, no speed, and no satisfaction to be found in racing around the tracks. Thirdly, every track, from the easiest to the hardest, has at least one completely unforgiving 90 degree corner that's almost impossible to take without crashing.

There lots of other flaws, too, like the almost complete lack of structure in the game's Grand Prix mode, or the awful sound effects and music, but generally, I'd strongly advise against playing this game. It's so bad that it's actually depressing. The one positive thing I can say about it is that the same day I bought it, I also bought Ridge Racer V.

Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 5!

Katapila (Ben James, 2003)
This is a really simple game, you play as a bouncing ball and you jump onto ever-higher plaftorms, while trying not to fall off the bottom of the screen. It's the opposite of the games that were pretty commonly found on pre-smartphones in which the player's character had to fall onto platforms as the screen descends. There's also difficulty levels, which affect the speed of the screen scrolling, the speed of the ball's movement, and whether or not platforms disappear fter having been jumped on. It's an okay game, but nothing really special in any department.

Manic X (Tuna Technologies, 1997)
Another simple one, and an idea that's seemingly as old as homebrew games and romhacking itself: it's Pac-Man with some variations. Those variations in this case being different mazes for each stage, and the fact that the food items have been replaced with randomly appearing power-ups such as invisibility potions, dynamite that instantly kills all the ghosts, and so on. It's also pretty nice looking, it looks just like an Amiga game! The only real problem with it is that it seems to be a little unfinished: there's no music or sound, and once the player runs out of lives, the game just quits back to the Yaroze main menu.

Terra Incognita (Mitsuru Kamiyama, Shintaro Tajima, Kunikatsu Tachi, 1998)
Terra Incognita is a game that doesn't really fit on an obscure games blog, as it's by far the most well-known Net Yaroze game, but it is so well-known that it's monolithic and almost synonymous with the system. For those who don't know it, there's two main reasons it's so well-remembered: the first is the legendary English translation of the script, and the second is the fact that the production values are so far beyond anything else done on the Yaroze system. It's an action RPG about a guy going to a monster-infested island to seek out treasure. It's just typical action RPG stuff: hitting monsters and finding keys and so on, but obviously, the way it looks and sounds makes it something of a spectacle.  Also of interest to long-time readers of this blog is that the makers of Terra Incognita (collectively known as Team Fatal) also made the weird Fatal Fantasy VII demo.

Super Mansion/Yakata Plus (Tomukazu Sato, 1997)
So, this is apparently a port of a game from the FM Towns Marty, and it's kind of like Resident Evil, but without any monsters or combat, just puzzles and keys and the like. Unfortunately, it's all in Japanese, and I don't have the patience to stumble through an action-free adventure game like this. It all seems competently made, though, so the Japanese-literate and the patient might want to give it a look. Otherwise, there are also a few playthroughs on Youtube. While I was playing it to put it in this post, I noticed a poster on a wall in one of the rooms, which caught my interest.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information on it, though luckily, selectbutton forum members Dark Age Iron Savior and Takashi (who have both also helped researching stuff for posts on this blog in the past) were able to dig up more: The artist of the Brainax poster was a friend of the game's programmer, who, in times long since past, had a website, which is archived here, which contains more Brainax art, as well as other art for projects that unfortunately don't seem to have gone anywhere.

Chaos Break (Playstation)

So, in 1998, Taito released an arcade game entitled Chaos Heat, it's a pretty good game, like a 3D beat em up with guns. I'll probably do a post on it at some point in the distant future. For some reason, Taito, instead of porting Chaos Heat to the Playstation, made Chaos Break, a spin-off set in the same universe (or an "Episode of Chaos Heat", as the title screen puts it).

This port doesn't have the constant, fast-paced action of its arcade parent, eschewing it in favour of Resident Evil-esque exploration and puzzles, in what can only have been an ill-advised attempt to cash in on the popularity of that kind of adventure game on the Playstation at the time. Ill-advised because, while Resident Evil, as an example takes place in an atmospheric mansion, with many unique rooms containing interesting puzzles and memorable items, Chaos Break doesn't have any of those things.

The setting is a scientific facility that's futuristic in the least interesting way possible: everything made out of grey metal, no decoration, sliding doors, all that kind of thing. The rooms and especially the corridors all pretty much look alike, which I guess is realistic for a facility of this type, but in a videogame that contains as much backtracking as Chaos Break, it's not only ugly and boring, but also impractical, leading to endless flicking to and fro between the game and the map screen in the pause menu.

The biggest crime Chaos Break commits, however, is in its puzzles. Using Resident Evil as an example once again, the puzzles in that game included logic puzzles with verbose clues, block-pushing puzzles, fitting items in different slots, and so on. The puzzles in Chaos break are neither fun nor interesting. To find the first password you need to unlock a door, the player simply has to find it written down on a piece of paper found in the possession of a dead scientist found lying around. The second takes the game to new depths, being a randomly generated sudoku puzzle. Not only is the puzzle itself a tedious, slow, laborious chore, it completely shatters any atmosphere or immersion the player might be feeling, which would be bad in a regular game, but remember that Chaos Break is supposed to be a horror game (though the near-infinite ammunition available coupled with the feeble monsters might have already convinced you otherwise) and the sudoku puzzle is like a testament to this game being an awful, poorly thought out mess.

I'm sure you've already guessed, but I don't recommend this game. It's just an ugly, boring mess. Don't play it.

Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 4!

Sam the Boulderman (James Hobden, 1998)
Like Rocks n Gems, Sam the Boulderman is a Boulderdash clone, though it has a slightly different take on the concept. Rather than RnG's big, sprawling stages full of enemies, Sam's stages are all single screen, and as far as I can tell, enemy-free. This means it's entirely puzzle-based, with none of the nerve-wracking chases of the more well known game. It plays alright, though movement does feel a little jerky, and the presentation is pretty shoddy. The graphics are grubby-looking, and the music and sound effects are the same as those used in Clone (though whether this is stealing or just the use of some common Yaroze sound library is beyond my knowledge). Still worth a look, though.

Blitter Boy in Monster Mall (Chris Chadwick, 1998)
This game was critically acclaimed when it came out, winning competitions and awards and the like, and comments I've seen online often name it as one of peoples' favourite Yaroze games, but I really don't like it at all. It's a semi-Robotron-esque game, without the twin-stick shooting in which the player must go about stages shooting ghosts and UFOs while rescuing babies and taking them to the centre of the screen to be beamed away. It can't be denied that it's competently put together and the graphics are incredibly slick, looking like it could be a commercially released Amiga game from only a few years earlier. The biggest problem Blitter Boy has, though, is the sound effects: there's always something making some kind of loud, shrill noise, and worst of all are the babies you're tasked with rescuing. Getting hit by one of the player's stray bullets or coming into contact with any of the enemies makes the babies stop what they're doing and cry, loudly. The constant, awful noise made this game unplayable for me for more than a few minutes.

The Incredible Coneman (Lars Barstad, Per Ivar Pedersen, Rune Solberg, Jostein Trondal, Frode Kristensen, Bjorn Ullevoldaeter, 1998)
The Incredible Coneman is a 3D Pac-Man clone. The player controls Coneman, a kind of robot/tank thing round various mazes, collecting pyramids and stars and avoiding ghosts. The face buttons can be used to move the camera, a function which seemingly has no restraints, allowing the player to zoom out until the entire map is just a tiny dot on the screen. The most distinguishing feature of the game is its sound: the music is a short, mellow, almost hypnotic beat, and the game plays a nice little saxophone doot-doot-doo when the player loses a life. TIC isn't essential playing, but it's not terrible either, and it does have some charm.

Arena (Tom Madams, ????)
A pretty impressive 3D shooting game, starring a mech that looks similar in design to the one from the Amiga game Walker. The player controls the mech, goes about a maze shooting enemies and turrets. It's really hard, so much so that I couldn't even get past the first stage, but I like Arena. The mech's fun to control, the enemíes are satisfying to shoot and destroy, and the graphics are easily some of the best I've seen in a Yaroze game. It's full, texture-mapped 3D, and it looks like it wouldn't be too out of place on the 3D0 or one of those other forgotten consoles of the early 32-bit era (something I say here totally as a compliment).

Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 3!

Samsaric Asymtotes (Phillipe-andre Lorin, 2003)
I've written in an earlier volume about one of Phillipe-andre Lorin's other game, Invs, which I thought was a pretty good game. Unfortunately, Samsaric Asymtotes doesn't live up to its predecessor. Although it does have an attractive and unique visual syle, with a combination of monochromatic sprites and backgrounds with the player's attack being a wide, brightly coloured laser, it's also boring to play. There's no scoring at all, barely any mechanics besides shooting enemies and avoiding their shots. It's just not fun to play.

Adventure Game (Robert Swan, 1998)
I loved this game as a kid, when it appeared on one of the Official Playstation Magazine's coverdiscs. It's not what you would traditionally consider a good game, but it is mildly amusing (admittedly, it was more so when I was 12, but it still has its moments). You play as some guy with a sword, who goes on a quest to save the stupid people of a small medieval town from some vaguely menacing birds. The script is full of silly conversations, with a lot of the humour coming from the low intelligence of the NPCs, though there are also a few jokes about the shoddiness of the game as well as references to other Yaroze games. I'm sure I was able to finish this game at some point in the ancient past, but now the terrible camera in the action parts caused me to quickly give up after going round in circles a few times.

Time Slip (David Johnston, Mike Goatly, 1999)
It might sound a little hyperbolic to say so, but this game has probably the best use of time travel ever seen in a videogame. It's a platform game, in which the player controls a snail who, for some reason, is trapped in an endlessly repeating minute of time. They have to collect a certain amount of coins and reach the exit, while every minute they are sent back in time one minute. As a result, there will eventually be numerous snails going about the stage, holding door switches for each other and so on. The real challenge comes from the fact that if you touch any of you past selves, you create a time paradox and destroy the universe. It's a good game, though it's very very hard, and it's also been ported to the Xbox 360 via the Xbox Live Indie Games store.

Robot Ron (Matt Verran, 2001)
Obviously, it's a robotron clone with an amusing pun for a title. You control a small mushroom thing and shoot swarms of enemies who look kind of like multi-coloured alien glyphs. If you've played any robotron clone, you pretty much know what to expect with this one. There is one nice little touch, that a point is scored for each bullet the player fires, as well as the obvious points scored for killing enemies. This seems like an odd choice at first, but since all power-ups are lost with the loss of a life, and the power-ups make the player shoot bullets faster, it does kind of make sense, since players that stay alive longer will end up shooting vastly more bullets.

Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 2!

Decaying Orbit (Scott Cartier, David Dewitt, 1999)
This was a game I loved back when Yaroze games were being given away with magazine demo discs. In it,

the player controls a tiny spaceship, flying from planet to planet, shooting enemy turrets and activating beacons. The interesting part, however, is the psuedo-realistic physics engine. Every planet has gravity, and not only will larger planets try to pull your ship into orbit, but you can also "slingshot" around planets to travel at super-high speeds. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really want to put up with these kinds of shenanigans, and travelling at extreme velocities will usually result in either flying off the map or smashing violently into a planet. There is, however, an edit mode, allowing players to create their own maps, and play with the engine to their heart's content.

Hover Racing (Tomukazu Sato, 1997)
People talk a lot about Terra Incognita being a yaroze game of particularly high production values, and though it's not very well known, Hover Racing is another one that with a bit of polish could at least pass for a Simple 1500 Series game. In essence, it's a blatant F-Zero knock-off, with low-poly hovering vehicles
speeding around floating racetracks. It's of a high quality, and there's lots of tracks, but it is brutally hard, both by design and by virtue of its bizarre controls. Left and right on the d-pad are used to go left and right on the track, to avoid walls and the like, but to actually turn corners requires an unusual combination of shoulder buttons: to turn left, the player must hold L2 and R1 together (and vice versa). If you have the patience to learn it, it'd probably be very satisfying to play.

Bouncer 2 (Scott Evans, 1998)
It's an Arkanoid clone with a gimmick! A pretty interesting gimmick at that: instead of a ball and a bat, the player controls a small see-saw, with two men bouncing on it taking the place the place of the ball. Although
the gimmick is interesting, unfortunately, it doesn't save the game. The problem the game has is that the stages are enormous, and it feels like it takes forever to get through them. It's a shame really, as I do enjoy a good Arkanoid clone.

Clone (Stuart Ashley, 1997)
A first person shooter that places the player in dark, gloomy mazes inhabited by strange zombie-like monsters with transparent skin and targets on their chests. It's definitely atmospheric, and there's a simple charm to the way it plays. There's nothing particularly wrong with the game, it's just that all the stages look
the same and there's only one kind of enemy, so it struggles to hold my attention for long. But still, it is a little bit charming too, and despite the primitive visuals, it does manage to maintain a sliver of tension and atmosphere.

Psychon (Ben James, 1998)
A top-down shooter that's obviously heavily inspired by the Alien Breed series on the Amiga. The player controls a space marine-looking guy around a dirty, cramped spaceship/futuristic slum/place, shooting everyone one they meet and collecting bullets, keys and healing items. There's also four glowing things that need to be found and switched off on each stage before the exit will open. The game looks great, in a grimy, British sci-fi kind of way, and it plays pretty well too, though it's a lot harder than I remember it being.
Psychon's another one that was a favourite back in the days of yore, especially thanks to it having a 2-player co-op mode.

Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 1!

I've been wanting to feature Yaroze games on here for a while now. Originally, I was going to have a themed month, but I didn't like the idea of having consecutive posts on a single subject. Then, I considered a "Top 20" of my favourite Yaroze games, but list posts are a bit sterile and "clickbaity", and I have my integrity to think of! Plus, a Top 20 would mean leaving out games that are interesting, but not particularly fun to play. In the end, I've decided to make this an occaisional series of posts, kind of like the Disc Station ones (which will return someday, I promise!). Oh, and in case any of you aren't familiar with Net Yaroze, it was a scheme by Sony in the late 90s, where they would sell Playstation dev kits to homebrew developers. Some of the games were distributed to the public via magazine coverdiscs, others were only available online between other Yaroze users. Luckily, a lot of the games and demos have been compiled and made available online by kindly hackers and pirates and archivists.

A Bob (K. Okada, H. Endo, J. Suehiro, M. Taniguti, 1998)
A Bob (also known as Airbob) is a cute little bobsledding game. You pick a team, tap square to make them run to the ramp, use the dpad to steer their sled down the ramp, and then press buttons according to the onscreen prompts to make them do stunts and open their parachutes on the way down after jumping from the end of the ramp. There's really only about 2 minutes of game in here, but the graphics are really cute, with the sledders looking like cuddly little space robots. It's worth at least one play just for that, right?

Rocks n Gems (Gerhard Rittenhofer, 1998)
It's a Boulderdash clone! A really well presented Boulderdash clone, too. It looks great, and it mostly feels pretty professional, with only one crack in its veneer: the player character moves way too fast. The game's hard enough as it is, but it also requires precise movement in almost all situations, but the protagonist's speed makes this a pain. The difficulty didn't go unnoticed either, as I definitely remember the UK Official Playstation Magazine printing a password to unlock every stage, which is pretty special for a Yaroze game.

Haunted Maze (Edward Federmeyer, 1998)
Essentially a kind of minimalist Pac-Man clone, Haunted Maze has the player running around a fairly open-plan maze, avoiding skinless zombies and collecting "goodies", which look a lot like giant Lucky Charms marshmallows. Despite the incredibly simple premise, I really enjoy this game. The speed of the game, coupled with the classical soundtrack and the somewhat basic visuals give the game a kind of silent movie slapstick feel.

INVS (Philippe-Andre Lorin, 2001)
I really like this one, it's a psuedo-old-school single-screen shooting game. It kind of anticipates the experimental direction Taito took with some of the more recent Space Invaders games, like Infinity Gene and Extreme. There's some cool enemy concepts, like ones that intercept the player's shots with lasers, and dive-bombing enemies that create pretty large explosions if they're allowed to hit the ground. There's also a nice little mechanic whereby enemies will sometimes release small snowflake-like particles, that are collected to activate the player's shield and temporarily power up their shots.

Gas Girl (Koji Yoshikawa, 1998)
This is one of those games I mentioned in the intro, one of the ones that is more interesting than it is good. It's a platform game about a woman who gets abducted by aliens, and must fart her way to freedom. The one positive thing that can be said about this game is that the farting gimmick is using in a number of ways: it's a weapon to defeat enemies, a propulsion system to boost the distance of the player's jumps, and it can be used to affect the movement of certain obstacles. But otherwise, the game is awful in pretty much every way, and I suspect it mainly exists because of some kind of special interest on the part of the creator.