Update 8/12 - Super Robot Taisen (Classic), Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, The Sword of Etheria, Mission: Impossible, Prinny, Prince of Persia

Alright! Now that my vacation and resulting super jet lag are pretty much over, we can resume updates as normal, more or less! First up is a fairly large look at the Super Robot Wars Classic series. There used to be a running joke in the forums where someone new would come in and want to write about this series, never minding that there are well over fifty installments and spinoffs, each of which require numerous screenshots. The whole project is a bit too expansive, but SilverStarRipper has done a fantastic job of compiling what's known in Japan as the "DC series", showing how they began up until the beginning of the PSOne era. It also includes a briefing on all of the various anime/mecha shows on display, since they're pretty much the crux of the series.

Next up is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Capcom's brief series of 2D fighters and one of their few games that used the CPS3 system, outside of Street Fighter III and Warzard. The rub of this game is that each character has a partner called a "stand", visible next to your fighter, which attacks along with your character. It's based on the long-running manga series, of which only parts of which were translated into English (although that arc corresponds to this game, so it all fits together) and can affectionately be described as a goofier version of Fist of the North Star where most of the people are named after American pop bands. Also, one of the fighters is a tiny puppy (named after Iggy Pop).

On the Konami front, we have two titles: Mission: Impossible, one of the handful of US-exclusive NES titles put out by the company, which was based on the 1988 revamped TV series which was quickly forgotten. It takes some pages out of Metal Gear, though it's not terribly well balanced and is difficult to play. The other is slightly more recent, the PlayStation 2 action brawler The Sword of Etheria, otherwise known as OZ ~Over Zenith~ in Japan. I was familiar with this game for a long time, since the music was composed by Michiru Yamane and it sounded a lot like a Castlevania game, but only recently gave it a shot. Even though it was localized for European release, it never hit North America, which is a huge shame, because it's easily one of the better overlooked action titles on the system. It also has some very curious (and tenuous) inspirations from The Wizard of Oz.

Rounding out the rest of the regular updates is a review of the Prinny PSP games. We gave this its own separate article rather than updating the Nippon-Ichi SRPG page because, quite frankly, it needs a drastic overhaul, mostly to update with the numerous PSP ports the company's been released. The Prinny games are actually action-platformers as opposed to RPGs, and are quite brutal, in many ways reminiscent of Ghosts n' Goblins.



For our Spotlight Article, derboo dug out Prince of Persia and gave it a huge revamp. I had originally written these back when The Sands of Time had come out, and kept it updated through The Two Thrones, but then got overwhelmed and lost interest. This redone version not only picks up where I left off but drastically expands it with notes from Jordan Mechner's design diary, screenshot comparisons of over 25 different ports of the original game, reviews of the not-too-shabby Disney movie, and many strangely erotic cellphone ports. I can say with great confidence that this is now one of the best articles in the entirety of HG101, and is most definitely worth checking out.

Finally, Your Weekly Kusoge is Koneko Monogatari. They wouldn't make a terrible game about cute little kittens, would they? This sad Famicom Disk System distressingly answers that question. It mostly came to my attention because it's based off the movie known in English as The Adventures of Milo & Otis, as a licensed tie-in a bit different from the norm.