Galaxy Fight comp winners!

We announce the winners of our Galaxy Fight competition, and showcase the entries!
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To our pleasant surprise there was actually a healthy diversity of entries, with only one game (Harmful Park) being mentioned by two entrants. Some of these are probably unlikely to see re-release even in Japan, due to licensing issues, but it sure is nice to imagine. Quite a few entries here I’d never even heard of, so well done guys! Finally, I’m fairly sure Ark of Turus and the Admiral gave us fake names – come on chaps, no need for anonymity on here.

Below are the entries (including staff entries), then the winners, then some commentary from myself, finally followed up by an interesting bonus taken from the WAHP podcast.

Enjoy, and thanks to all who entered!

In alphabetical order, with images taken from anywhere we could find them...


Aconcagua
Being a fan of Irem’s Disaster Report games, I think this sounds really interesting. It’s a survival adventure game where you control five characters trapped on a South American mountain. I first discovered it through HG101 actually, and was excited by the fact the voices are in English. (Julie Campbell)

Arthur to Astaroth no Nazomakaimura: Incredible Toons
I’d love to see this brought over to PSN. I’m a big fan of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins and The Incredible Machine series and I first found out about the game when I was reading through fansites. The game looks really fun. (Paul Nguyen)

Fire Pro Wrestling G
While it’s true that if you have a backwards compatible PS3 you could simply buy Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for less than fifteen bucks, most people don't have those. That being said, the chance to get FPWG for five or six would be a pretty great deal. The last of the series made by series originators HUMAN, it’s a great entry in a series known for being the best 2D pro wrestling games ever made. (Joe Drilling)

Harmful Park
Too many ‘serious’ shmups seem to make their way to the PSN. I think
Harmful Park should be released because it will show people that
shmups aren’t all techno-laden guns-blazing laserpaloozas. Nothing
wrong with serious, but there needs to be some balance. Harmful Park
is a great place to start! (Alice Eidson I)

Harmful Park
If any one game jives with MonkeyPaw Games’ motto of retro games with today’s graphics and intensity, it is Harmful Park. It is a great-looking, great-playing game with lots of style that requires little translation. Also, the range of difficulty settings makes it easy for anyone to appreciate.(Joshua Goldberg)

Hermi Hopperhead: Scrap Panic
I remember reading about this in GameFAN and always wanted to try it. It’s a cute platformer which had a lot of praise, especially for the number of parallax background layers it had. The eggs which follow you remind me of Yoshi’s Island, except instead of shooting them they act as platforms. (William Legerton)

Mobile Tomodachi
I want to see Hamster’s Mobile Tomodachi on the US PSN. The game can be best described as a communication game with cell phones. This game would be good for fans of the Sims and similar types of games. It would be good for many fans of other communication games. (Joshua Main)

Panzer Bandit
I'm a sucker for a good beat-em-up, and the Japan only Panzer Bandit looks to be a great one. Anything that draws comparisons to Guardian Heroes is great in my book, and the music and overall presentation are quite good. I'd love to get a chance to finally play it. (Ark Of Turus)

Real Robots
The Real Robots series are Super Robot Wars styled games from developer Banpresto with a focus on a smaller set of four Sunrise properties. Acquiring rights therefore shouldn’t be difficult. Final Attack resembles Virtua-On in design adding a realistic style that should appeal to audiences turned off by Banpresto’s super deformed look. (Christopher Hadlock)

Samurai Showdown RPG
Samurai Showdown RPG. 2D graphics, the music was great, perfect character Roster, but without falling into the fanboy category. The only problem is, that I don’t speak Japanese! (Sebastian Gomez)
[editor’s note: for those curious, a fan translation for Samurai Showdown RPG is being worked on – so even if it never appears on PSN, we should eventually be able to appreciate it fully. Who knows, is this an opportunity for SNK to officially license the translation for a re-release? Good luck to Deuce and his valiant endevour]

SQ Sound Qube
A puzzle game unlike most others. Given a set of blocks and ability to send sound waves to determine which one is the core and not red, blue, or jam blocks. While too many games are matching colours, this is Marco Polo and should not be ignored. (Ken Pittman)

Suzuki Bakuhatsu
This is a mad looking puzzle game with FMV video where a Japanese woman has to disable bombs found in various household objects. In level 1 she has to disarm a bomb inside a fruity orange. To do this she needs to disassemble each item, one piece at a time. (Admiral Pentarou)

Velldeselba Senki: Tsubasa no Kunshou
I would like Velldeselba Senki on PSN. It’s an RPG for the PS1. The theme to the game are airplanes and sky travel influenced by Studio Ghibli films such as Castle in the Sky and Nausica the Valley of the Wind. I think this game looks cool and would make a great import game on PSN. (Peter Gormley)



BONUS STAFF ENTRIES:

The Divide: Enemies Within
Technically, being staff, I’m not allowed to enter. So I’m not even going to bother following the rules. My vote goes for a game which never even reached Japan, the US exclusive Divide: Enemies Within. It isn’t so much a Metroidvania as a flat-out Super Metroid clone in 3D. As we’ve mentioned, it’s awesome and deserves a re-release. Someone email Viacom! (Sketcz)

Ghost in the Shell
While I’m procrastinating in announcing the three winners, I’m also going to mention Ghost in the Shell (which also saw Western release). It was made by the Jumping Flash guys, using the same engine, and it stands as one of my all-time favourite PS1 games. The GitS licence means it’ll never, ever, ever see re-release, but damn, how many games allow you to crawl around on the ceiling like a mechanical spider? (Sketcz)


OK, enough time wasting, the winners who were chosen at random are:

Sebastian Gomez

Christopher Hadlock

Joshua Main


Congratulations gentlemen, expect an email with your download code soonish.


As for the entries, they were all excellent, and I’m especially pleased to read about games I’d not know about previously. Of those I did know about, Aconcagua is a great one to mention especially since it has English dialogue. Harmful Park and Panzer Bandit meanwhile are two excellent and also very expensive PS1 games, making them perfect for re-release. Considering the high resale prices for those two, it’s strange the publishers haven’t done this– surely it’s easy money? Suzuki Bakuhatsu is another favourite, though I’m a sucker for anything with FMV film footage in it.

One game mentioned which is on the Japanese PSN already, is Velldeselba. It was the first Japanese PS1 game I bought on PSN actually, and it is an extremely beautiful RPG with an incredible other-worldly feel. As Peter says it’s very Miyazaki – though the language barrier is extremely high. I never completed it, but it has a great atmosphere. People have mentioned it in fan-translation circles, so maybe we’ll get lucky and see a patch for it one day.

One game which is undergoing fan-translation is Samurai Showdown RPG, the uniqueness of which makes me keen to see the results. Beat-em-ups often have interesting back-stories to facilitate all those characters fighting each other, so the prospect of having such an intimate look inside one of SNK’s coolest creations is really exciting. Such a shame it never reached the west back in the day.

While the entries were overall quite fabulous, I must say I’m a little disappointed no one mentioned PepsiMan, a game with no real language barrier. Browsing HG101 there’s also quite a few other games which could have been mentioned, though perhaps people didn’t want to cover old ground. Some of my favourites include the Goemon PS1 games, and two of the best in the series (Uchukaizoku Akogingu and Oedo Daikaiten) are already on the Japanese PSN. I bought them off Play-Asia several years ago, as part of Konami’s budget re-release series, and they were both excellent. Then there’s Gamera 2000, Speed Power Gunbike, and of course the Love-De-Lic games which are covered on HG101.

Which is apt timing, since only just yesterday I discovered my friend and ex-colleague Mr Ash Day, Vice President of GamesTM magazine, has been secretly running a blog detailing all of LDL’s games. Well, maybe not secretly, but he doesn’t tend to brag about it, so I’m going to embarrass him and do so myself. If you’re curious about Moon RPG on PS1, or just LDL’s unique games in general, it’s worth having a read and it’s a great accompaniment to HG101’s own in-depth article.
(above fan art by Ryan Medlock, courtesy of the Lovedelic blog)


Oh, and as a bonus, I also discovered yesterday in the WAHP 14 podcast, that in Japan there was a poll to find which PS1 games the Japanese would want remade for PS3. Which is vaguely connected enough to our competition to list them (maybe). If you’ve got the podcast, it’s from around the 1.02 mark. Remember, these are for remakes, not re-releases.

“What PlayStation era games would you like see remade for the PS3”

10. Dino Crisis
09. Klonoa: Door to Phantomvile
08. Art Truck Battle
07. Ghost in the Shell
06. Parasite Eve
05. Valkyria Profile
04. Xenogears (28% of respondents)
03. Final Fantasy 9 (91.2%)
02. Final Fantasy 7 (99.2%)
01. Final Fantasy 8 (100%)