Mystical Fighter (Mega Drive)

This game has so many Japanese stereotypes, you'd think it was a British game, made for the Commodore 64 during the 80s ninja/martial arts craze. But it is, as far as I can tell, an actual Japanese game, made in Japan and everything.
The enemies are stereotypical Japanese things like samurai, running ninjas, sumo wrestlers, kabukimono, and so on. The player character is some sort of kabuki/noh/priest guy (oh dear my ignorance is showing). Even the health pick ups are small platters of sushi!
Other than these things, though, it's a mediocre and generic beat em up, into which not a lot of imagination has gone. There isn't even named player characters, just that one guy, and player two has to be a pallette swapped version of him. Jumping and rolling across the ground use the same sprites, as do the sliding/flying kicks that your guy does when you prress attack while rolling or jumping. There's also a magic system that works in exactly the same manner as in Golden Axe. All the scrolls you're carrying are used up at once when you press the magic button, and more scrolls causing a more powerful attack. One nice little thing I liked though, was that you get a whole three different throws to chuck enemies about with! One has your guy spinning around then flinging the enemy in one direction in a mildly amusing manner, another has you lifting enemies above your head and chucking them (this one is especially satisfying at the liff's edge in stage 2) and the third has you leaping into the air and smashing your victim into the ground. Choosing between the first two throws is a matter of how quickly you press the attack button after grabbing the opponent, and the third is done by jumping and pressing attack after grabbing.
There's not really much reason to recommend this game to anyone, but there's no reason to avoid it, either. It's not especially excellent in any way, and it doesn't look much nicer than most Master System games, but it's not terrible to play or anything.
This game is also known as Maou Renjishi

Disc Station 98 #00

Considering how great the first MSX Disk Station was, surely, the first volume for the much more powerful PC98 must be way better, right?
Unfortunately not. It's kind of rubbish. Well, the original content part is, at least. People who bought it at the time weren't getting ripped off: it comes on three disks, and the first two are full commercial games! Prince of Persia and Powermonger, to be specific! I won't bother writing about those though, since they're very well known, and there are probably a million other places to read about them.
Onto the third disk, then. It has a paltry four items on it.
The first is a non-playable demo/advert for a game whose title I can't read. But it does say that it's a "SPACE WAR SIMULATION", and theres a "II" in the title, so presumably it's also a sequel.
The second option is something a bit odd. It's an interactive... thing. There's a black and white drawing on the room, and clicking on items in the room makes stuff happen. The painting on the wall changes to a different picture, the cat turns into a weird alien, etc. Also, the pillow, TV and teddy bear come to life and start asking questions in Japanese. I wonder if anything happens when you answer their questions correctly. I guess we'll never know.
The third item is a long, boring and very text heavy animation about a UFO travelling the universe. In its defence, it does look very nice, though.
The fourth option is some kind of text content thing, as you usually get on these disks. I wish I could read the text content that's on the disk stations, it would be a window into a pre-internet nerd subculture in a far-off foreign land. Doesn't that kind of thing interest you? It interests me. BYE!