Totsugeki! Mix (PC98)

The problem with looking into games that are on systems that never got released in English-speaking territories is that you're usually limited to action games and nothing else. Amd when those systems are computers that were aimed at businessmen, like the PC98, it's even worse, since there's a higher proportion than usual of games in very text-heavy genres. Luckily, Totsugeki Mix happens to be a pretty straight-up platfor game, of the kind kids across the world were playing, no matter what systems they had access to. Less luckily, though, is that there's almost nothing interesting about it at all. (Except the nice pixel art, but that's the minimum you'd expect from a PC98 game, really).

You jump over things, attack enemies, collect stuff, and so on, just like you've don't a million times before. The only ways in which the game stands out are either bad, or just slightly odd. A bad thing, for example, is how there are three playable characters, only one of whom is viable. Because only one of them can double jump, a skill whose absence makes some stages uncompletable. An odd thing is how every platform you can stand on is completely solid. Like, you can't walk in front of it, or jump through it from below or anything like that. I'm not sure if this one is a deliberate design choice, or just a problem deemed too minor to be worth fixing by the devs, but it does make some areas really awkward to get through.

Like I've already mentioned, the one good thing that can be said in this game's defense is that it's got really nice backgrounds: detailed, high resolution, and very colourful. I guess you could also make the case that it is merely a boring, mediocre game, and not one that's actively unpleasant to play. But I can't recommend it on the strength of that alone, and I won't. There's plenty of much better platformers with great pixel art in the world, like the Amiga's Lionheart, or the X68000's Castlevania, for example. Play those instead of Totsugeki Mix.

Elemental Battle Academy (PC)

Elemental Battle Academy is a kind of combination of a multi-person fighting game (with up to eight combatants in a match), and a third person shooter. But the combat's largely base around melee. You know what I mean though, right? Anyway, it's about a bunch of magical girls fighting each other in big arenas, with a camera just behind the one you're controlling, that's the main thing I'm trying to get across here.

I have to say this about the game: it's incredibly well-made. It's only a doujin title, but it could easily pass for a mid-budget console game. Not only that, but it all works like it should, too: no glitches, graphical or otherwise, and it all feels very stable the whole time you're playing. If these compliments seem a bit suspicious that's because the above qualities make it difficult to be too hard on the game, and unfortunately I am going to have to do that. The big problem is: it's just not very fun to play.

For a start, all the characters have way too much health, so taking them down (or being taken down yourself) takes far too long, especially when the default settings have matches going until someone's scored five knockouts. Similarly, the arenas are enormous, and even with the maximum quotient of eight characters in them, they feel vast and empty, and this is made even worse when you play story mode, which largely consists of one-on-one battles in these vast,cavernous stages.

Worst of all though, are the controls, which seem to have been designed for people with an unusual abundance of digits. For example, your character is equipped with a melee weapon and a projectile weapon. You move her with the left stick, and turn around/aim with the right stick. Whichever weapon you want to use, attack is mapped to the square button (or the X button if you're using an XBox controller, but the problem here is that it's a face button). This is fairly manageable for melee attacks, where you just need to be pointed in the general direction of your target, then you press the button to attack. To shoot at them, however, requires you to hold down R2 to ready your weapon, aim it with the right analogue stick, then fire with the attack button. If you're really ambitious, you might also be using the left analogue stik to avoid incoming attacks.

There's also outfits and accessories and joke weapons to unlock for all the characters, but if the game itself is no fun, then that's no t much consolation, is it? All in all, Elemental Battle Academy is a finely-constructed exercise in tedium. I guess it really does offer the AAA experience on a doujin budget then, eh?