Monday, 18 June 2012

Disc Station #09 (PC98)

So, after skipping the Disc Station 98 series, as well as the floppy volumes of the relaunched Disc Station series, we arrive at the first Disc Station to come on a CD! And Compile definitely weren't shy about making good use of the massively increased storage space, since this volume contains SEVEN full games! First, I'll tell you that the positions of the screenshots in this post don't necessarily coincide with which game is being talked about. Sorry!
The first of which is Madou 456. Not, as you mgiht assume part of the Madou Monogatari series of dungeon crawlers, but an RPG/board game hybrid thing, similar to the Rune Master series of games that Compile released on the MSX, but with Puyo Puyo characters as the players. I didn't get far into this, because of all the Japanese text. It has a nice looking intro, though!
Next on the list is Devil Force II, which sounds like a shooting game, but is actually a Shining Force-esque turn-based strategy game. Although there is a lot of Japanese text in this game, a lot of the commands are represented by little icons with obvious meanings, so I actually managed to get a few battles into this before I got bored and moved on to the next game. I might even go back to it at some point!
The third game, Imahori 2 is a card game that appears to be some kind of Uno variant. Not very interesting, although the cards have some nice little pixel arts of the Puyo Puyo characters on them.
Next up is Ceramic Ball, a really fun action/puzzle game. You control a very fast-moving, incredibly bouncy ball, and you have to get it to the small blue blocks to finish the stage. The game is very, very fast paced, to the point where each stage has a time limit of less than ten seconds! Not a classic for the ages, but worth a look.
Game Number 5 is a top-down action game entitled GaGaGa Sprint. In it, you run around the stages drawing lines on the ground. When the enemies touch your lines, they get stuck for a few seconds. Touch an already drawn line to create a loop, and all the enemies stuck on the looped bit of line get killed. Of course, you get more points for killing more enemies in one go. Again, not a great game, but not a particularly bad one, either. Unfortunately, the PC98 emulator I use (Anex86) has an ugly graphic glitch when running this game, though it doesn't get in the way of playing.
The sixth game on the disc is Manpuku, a strategy/card game about feeding a king that I liked so much, I'm going to give it a post of its own (eventually)!
Finally, there is Nazo Puyo Vol. 9. If you don't know, Nazo Puyo is a spin-off of Puyo Puyo, though rather being a Vs. puzzle game or an endless survial-type puzzle game, it uses the rules of Puyo Puyo in a different way.
Each stage already has some Puyos set up, and you have to arrange pre-determined falling Puyos to get rid of them all within a certain number of moves. It's okay if you like that sort of thing, I guess. I don't see why it gets to be its own series of games, rather than an extra mode in the Puyo Puyo games, though.

Friday, 15 June 2012

Fatal Fantasy VII in English! (And Portuguese!)

I'm sure you remember the previous two times I posted about the strange Net Yaroze oddity that is Fatal Fantasy VII. Well a helpful guy named E. Shiroma has kindly translated the text in the video into both English and Portuguese!



He also added these comments:

* * *

In the first screen of the video there are some words that I didn't mention in the captions.
● "Terra Incognita" is the first game that appears on the list;
● Below the words "Fatal Fantasy VII Playable demo" (フェイタルファンタジーⅦ体験版 Feitaru Fantajī VII Taikenban) there are the following sentences: "You can play only a little!" (少しだけ遊べちゃう! Sukoshi dake asobechau!) and "Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack - Please insert Disc 1" (フェイタルファンタジーⅦ オリジナル・サウンド・トラック Disc1を入れて下さいFainaru Fantajī VII Originaru saundo torakku - Disc 1 o irete kudasai).

Besides the images are clearly related to Final Fantasy VII, some passages of the text also refers to the game. The "Nude Company" (全裸カンパニー Zenra Kanpanī) makes mention of the "Shinra Company" (神羅カンパニー Shinra Kanpanī).

I translated the compound word makōshū (魔公衆) as "public devil", but I think it could have been better (I'll end up changing the translation later…). Ma (魔) means several things: "devil", "evil spirit", "danger", "temptation", "disaster", etc. As I don't know exactly what the word means in this case, I used the most common meaning. Kōshū (公衆) means "public". Makōshū is a pun on the words Makōro (魔晄炉), which was translated into Final Fantasy VII as "mako reactor", and kōshū benjo (公衆便所), that means "public toilet". As you may have noticed, "mako" is composed of the kanji ma (魔) and (晄). means light, shine.