Curiosities #20 - Wakusei Aton Gaiden (Famicom Disk System)

 The circumstances of this game's creation are somewhat similr to the MSX game The Komainu Quest, which I reviewed back in Small Games Vol. 5, in that it was created by a government agency. This time though, it's the National Tax Agency of Japan, and the aim here isn't promotional, it's educational, aiming to teach Japanese citizens of the 1980s correct tax-paying procedures.

 

It takes the form of a simple vertically-scrolling shooting game with occasional quiz segments. The quiz segments are all in Japanese, and presumably, all the questions are about Japanese tax laws in the 1980s, so I'm going to assume nobody is ever going to bother translating this game, and even if they did, most playrs wouldn't get the answers right without emplying a lot of trial and error anyway. That is, unless a passionate and very competitive high score scene suddenly springs up around the game, since correct answers score points (I managed to get a few through sheer luck).

 

The shooting parts are very simple, you just fly upwards, and every few seconds, a couple of enemies fly down from the top of the screen for you to shoot. Now and then a friendly ship will fly up from the bottom of the screen, and these act like power ups if you touch them, either killing all present enemies, increasing your speed and the power of your guns, or latching onto the front of your ship and acting as a temporary shield. That last one seems the most pointless, thank's to the game's biggest flaw: there's no real lose condition. Getting hit just reduces your speed and firepower, and you can otherwise get hit as much as you like without consequence. 

 

As a result, the only real "game" here is to try and get the highest score before it ends, by shooting every enemy and answering every question correctly. With that in mind, I can't really recommend Wakusei Aton Gaiden to anyone except those curious to see a government-commissioned shooting game about taxes.

Cross The Ridge R (PC)

 Despite the word "Ridge" in the title, this game has a lot more in common with the Initial D series than Ridge Racer. It really does have a lot in common with Initial D, too: it's an arcade-style drift racing game where you take part in one-on-one races that all take place on incredibly bendy Japanese country roads. Also there's lots of eurobeat music.

 

There's some stuff in the game I don't quite get, too. Like how there's a huge selection of cars to pick from, but you only get to pick once, the first time you load up the game. Also, if you're using an XInput controller (or a Dual Shock 4 masquerading as one), the controls are mapped automatically, but accelerate and brake are mapped to two of the face buttons, rather than the analogue triggers. But seeing that the menus are almost totally horizontally arranged, it looks like the developers were assuming that most people playing this game would be doing so with a steering wheel.

 

The main mode is arcade mode, which has various courses, each one consisting of four races, each against a different opponent. Complete one course to unlock the next, though I don't know how many there are in total yet, I've only played the game for a couple of hours at this point. It's been a fun few hours, though! Of course, right from the start, your success relies upon your ability to drift well, so it's important that it feels good to drift. The devs have done a decent enough job of this, I'm glad to report. I think I've been spoiled by the likes of OutRun 2 and Ridge Racer 3D with their incredibly easy works-every-time drifting, but Cross the Ridge R complicates things just enough to make a good successful drift feel incredibly satisfying. You've got to know just exactly when and for how long you need to switch back and forth between accelerating and braking when taking each corner.

 

I have mixed feeling on the graphics, though I do admit that they're not totally rational. There's something in the combination of low poly 3D models with blurry low resolution textures and the high resolution of the game itself that really reminds me of the days of X Box Live Indie Games. It looks fine I guess, if a little sterile. The big problem I have with it though, is that when I think of drift racing games, my mind always instantly goes to the ones on Playstation and Saturn, with their super-grainy textures and short draw distances (especially on the night time stages) that really added to their atmosphere. I know this kind of nostalgic thinking isn't really fair, though, so I won't consider it too thick a black mark against Cross the Ridge R's  name.

 

In summary, Cross the Ridge R is a game I can easily recommend. There don't seem to be many racing games of this kind released in the past decade, it'll probably run at full speed on almost any modern PC, and it only costs a few hundred yen! If you like arcade racers, it seems like it'd be rude not to pick this one up.