Saturday, September 4, 2010

Update - 9/4 - Lots of Japanese PC games, Higemaru, Hugo, Leather Goddesses, Secret Files, Strong Bad, Blazing Dragons and Megaten update!



So this site's TV Tropes entry (which I did not write but thanks to those who did) came to the conclusion that the site usually updates about once every three weeks. It's more like once every five..maybe six?...nowadays, although if you follow the blog, join the Facebook group or read the forums, you see things pop up a bit more often. At any rate, this update's pretty big, at least.

Contributor Sketcz wrote awhile back about a neat little old Japanese computer game called Kagirinaki Tatakai. In doing some research, he actually tracked down the original programmer, Hiroshi Ishikawa, and did a profile on him, as well as an article on his other game, Brain Breaker. You may not have heard of or played these games, but it's a fascinating look into the early 90s Japanese computer development scene. Sketcz has also contributed reviews of Hudson's ports of the Mario games to the various home computers, all of which turned out kind of weird.

Further on the old Japanese history side, our reviews include one of Capcom's first games, a single screen arcade title called Pirate Ship Higemaru, which soon bloomed into a Zelda-esque Famicom game which almost came out in America, and then didn't. Rune Master is a cool strategy game for the MSX by HG101 favorite developer Compile. The Megami Tensei article has also been updated to include Devil Survivor, Strange Journey, and Devil Summoner 2, although we're still getting around to Persona 3 PSP, because we're honestly a bit burnt out on it at this point.

On the adventure-y side, old PC shareware fans may remember the Hugo series, not related those weird European games based off that troll thing, which were cheap, Sierra-style games. There's also Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the classic bawdy sci-fi tale, which started as an excellent Infocom text adventure and graduated to a not-quite excellent graphic adventure. Blazing Dragons is a full Discworld-style graphic adventure that, for some reason, was only released on the Playstation and Saturn. And for more modern fare, we have a look at Secret Files, a German sorta tribute to Broken Sword, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Telltale's excellent adaptation of the Homestar Runner cartoon.

And finally, we have the winner of the 3D Dot Game Heroes Copyright Competition, so check out some of the submissions to see game characters reimagined as pixelly warriors, along with save files to try them out yourself!

4 comments:

  1. When I saw 'hugo' I was actully looking forward to your take on those crappy games, ah well.

    I remember watching hugo being played via phone on some early morning kids show, it was so terrible hearing a small kids shouting 'left' and watching hugo, obviously being played by some guy ofscreen, going right.

    Imagine if they had used contra instead of hugo for that phone-in show game :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's always worth the wait for an HG101 update. I thought the Higemaru game was great on the Capcom Classics Collection, so I am eager to read more about Makai Island.

    Also, there is very little information on Tunguska out there, so I really appreciate the coverage. My girlfriend was looking into the game and we couldn't find a solid, trustworthy review.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's the humble opinion of this Megatenist that P3P kind of sucks, so don't expect a glowing write-up. :P

    ReplyDelete
  4. *looks at 3D Dot Game Heroes article*

    There's no 'x' in front of my name T-T

    Thanks for the CD BTW. It kicks several asses :D

    ReplyDelete