Graduation (PC)

The Graduation/Sostsugyou series was pretty big in Japan in the 1990s, and spawned a bunch of sequels, anime adaptations and other spin-offs. You probably already know that that success never travelled abroad, though, but there was one attempt at making it. Oddly, that one attempt was made by Mixx Entertainment, the company that would later become Tokyopop, a big part in the turn-of-the-century english-translated manga boom. I'm no industry analyst, but I suspect that a big part of the reason why they failed so hard that most people aren't even aware that any of the Graduation games got a western release is because they chose one of the PC versions to bring over, rather than one of the many console ports. (As an aside, despite the name, this game is actually a translation of one of the sequels, Graduation II: Neo Generation.)

I'm sure the reason they made that decision was to cut costs, though at the same time, they also redubbed all the dialogue instead of just subtitling it (and of course, this being a 90s dub of a Japanese property, all of the girls are from the UK and various parts of America now). The problem is that, before the likes of Cave Story started the big indie boom in the early 00s, PC games had a bit of a problem with aesthetic and thematic homogeneity. That is, it seemed (at least to a casual observer) that PC games were all about manly men doing violent things in grim worlds, compared to consoles, which hosted games of almost every genre, with settings and styles for every taste. Combined with the fact that PCs weren't as ubiquitous then as they are now, and you get the situation that most of the people who would have been interested in playing this game had no way of doing so, or even of finding out it existed. (And there are even more factors you could take into account, like how PCs were usually kept in shared family rooms back then, and toxic masculinity being what it is, a lot of male potential players probably wouldn't have wanted to play something that looked so "girly" in front of their parents, while consoles would more likely be kept in the privacy of one's bedroom).

So, the English release of Graduation sank without a trace. The only reason I know it existed is because I happened to pick up an issue of Mixx-zine from around the time of its release on one of my first ever trips to a comic shop, in which it was heavily promoted (along with another Mixx CD-Rom, a weird multimedia Sailor Moon thing that I'm yet to track down). Nearly twenty years later, I finally get ahold of it, and I have to say: it's not for me, to be honest. The premise is that you're a teacher with a class of five girls, with different personalities (nerd, airhead, delinquent, annoying child, and generic pretty girl), and you've got to guide them through their final year of high school, with the aim not only to keep their grades up, but also to make sure they turn out to be happy, well-rounded individuals. You do this by choosing once a week which subjects to focus on, which girl needs more attention, how strict your teaching style is, and so on. You even have control over what the girls do at the weekends!

The problem is, I'm just not very good at this kind of semi-abstract strategy game. To me, it mostly feels like I'm clicking on boxes and watching numbers go up and down, and I just don't see the logic to any of it. I'm sure someone with the patience and desire to see it through could play the game over and over, eventually learning all its systems and how every thing works, eventually getting a perfect ening where all five girls go on to have amazing lives, but I just don't have the patience for that. I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's just one that doesn't work for me at all (I mean, it might be a bad game too, I guess?). Still, hopefully someone who would be interested in this game, but didn't know it existed might read this, track it down, and write a better, more qualified review of it. But until then, this is probably going to be the only review on the whole internet. Sorry. One final note: since this is an old PC game, you might be wondering about compatibility. Well, as long as you go into the .exe's properties and run it in Windows 95 compatibility mode, it works perfectly in 64-bit Windows 10.

Genji Tsuushin Agedama (PC Engine)

This is an anime licensed game, based on an anime that, as far as I can tell has never been translated into English. So I can't really tell you anything about it, other than it ran for 51 episodes, and didn't have any other videogames. I can guess that it wasn't massively popular, then, since a fair few kids anime from the early 90s had a game each for PC Engine, SNES, Mega Drive, Game Boy, and sometimes even Game Gear, too!

Unusually for a licensed game, this one is a fairly original concept. Well, original might not be the right word, but it's not well-worn territory, at least. Genji Tsuushin Agedama is what might be the first and only Atomic Runner Chelnov-alike, being as it is, a platform/shooting game hybrid with a player character that can't stop running forwards. Obviously, that means that there's no exploration or anything, and the platform elements are mainly limited to trying not to fall into pits while simultaneously fighting off enemies.

So you run, jump, and shoot, and you've also got magic attacks performed by holding and releasing the fire button. As you hold it, a meter at the top of the screen fills up. The meter's split into differently coloured sections, each colour is a different attack, more powerful than the last. The longer you hold the button, the more powerful the magic you cast, though also, all the magics after the first are unavailable until you collect items to unlock them one by one, though this doesn't take long or force you to go out of your way. Another ability you've got is that you can do a quick roll along the ground by pressing down on the d-pad. You're invincible during this roll, and it can do a lot of damage, but it's very quick, so you're at risk of getting hurt as soon as it ends.

Though getting hurt isn't itself that big a risk, either, since you can take eight hits from the start, and there's plenty of healing items to pick up, too. In fact, though this is a fun, cute, and charming game, the one big criticism that can be levelled at it is that it's very easy. On my first play, I managed to get pretty far into stage four, and there are only six in total. Despite that, it is still a lot of fun, and definitely worth playing. I'd recommend buying a real copy, but I feel like I got lucky with mine: I got it for about a third of the usual price, since the ebay seller clearly didn't know the game's name, or how to look it up, and had it listed as just "Japanese PC Engine Game". But still, it's pretty fun, though maybe not be £30+ worth of fun.