Dogimegi Inroyku-chan (3DS)

The first time I played this game, I was impressed that there were still people able to come up with new mechanics for a Bubble Bobble-style platform game focussing on defeating multiple enemies in a single attack. As I played it more and more, I also got frustrated with the awkward controls, and I also came to relaise that the game's real focus is figuring out the exact right way of defeating all the enemies in a stage without dying: a test of smarts, rather than skill. I should really have realised sooner, since the game doesn't have any kind of scoring system, which is one of the two main keystones of a Bobble-like (the other being secrets revealed only through Druaga-esque byzantine methods).

So, you're a rogue cupid who has been causing havoc on Earth by setting up ridiculous couples that don't fit together at all, and God has seen an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by sending you to hell to bring peace there by making all the demons fall in love with each other. How this actually works is that you shoot an arrow at an enemy, then shoot another arrow at something else, be it another enemy, or the wall, ceiling or floor, and the two will smash together. If two enemies smash together, they'll both disappear, as will any enemies they hit on the way to each other (does this mean they all became a polyamorous unit together?). If you hit an enemy and an inanimate object, the enemy will fly towards the object, and receive damage based on how far they had to go. Hit two inanimate objects and a temporary trampoline will appear, which is necessary for getting to places slightly out of reach of your normal jumps.

It's an okay game, the biggest flaw is its controls. Everything feels very awkward, especially jumping, over which you have no control after leaving the ground, with all jumps being an exact distance. Of course, I eventually figured out that it is the way it is because it's a puzzle game, and if you can't make a jump, you're meant to figure out a different way to get to where you want to be. The problem is that I just can't get past the fact that it looks like an action-platform game, and it's so frustrating that it doesn't work that way. I guess that's more my fault than the game's, though.

Even with that in mind, I find it hard to recommend Dogimegi Inryoku-Chan. It's not very exciting to play, it's even less exciting to look at and solving the stages isn't at all satisfying.

Sion II (X68000)

It seems like the last couple of posts have been a bit negative, but luckily, this one has come along to buck that trend! Sion II is a game for the X68000 which was given away for free with a magazine in 1992, which is pretty amazing to be honest, for a couple of reasons, which I'll get around to shortly. Before I do, I'm going to make a point of mentioning that along with all its other fine traits, it's got an incredibly good soundtrack, right up there with Cho Ren Sha 68k as one of the best on the system.

Now, the reasons it's amazing that this is a coverdisk game I mentioned. Firstly, there's the fact that it's a fully-featured game, that could easily stand alongside any commercial games of the time, on pretty much any contemporaeous system. I mean, it's a fairly simple arcadey shooting game, but you know, it came out in 1992, and it has a proper attract mode and other little bits of presentation polish. It plays well too, but you know, there's been plenty of good games given away free on various formats over the years, but ones with these kind of production values are pretty rare.

The other reason you can figure out by simply looking at the screenshots alongside this review: it's a polygonal 3D action game on a 16-bit system in 1992. That's a year before Starfox hit the SNES, and two years before Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive. It's also two years before the better-known 3D X68000 shooter, the Jumping Flash antecendent Geograph Seal. The framerate might drop a little when things get busy, but honestly, even with that taken into account, it still feels like a technical marvel.

Anyway, yeah, as I mentioned, it plays pretty well. It's obviously heavily influenced by the Star Wars vector-based arcade games from the 80s, as you fly forwards, shooting enemies and avoiding their shots, with a first-person cockpit view. There's even a stage taking place in a trench! The trench is as far as I've been able to get, actually, as it features sections of girder-dodging, between shooting sections, and eventually the girders start moving. I've tried a few times, but I have not yet been able to proceed any further than that. But yeah, it's a simple 3D on-rails shooter, so it's very linear, but only an idiot would complain about that (like the guy who wrote the Panzer Dragoon review in Sega Power a million years ago). I definitely recommend playing it, or at the very least looking up the music on youtube.