The Shadow Hearts series of RPGs is somewhat brilliant. Before getting off to a rocky start with the survival horror/RPG PSOne title Koudelka, it started officially on the PlayStation 2, where it was released within weeks of Final Fantasy X and was summarily trounced. It's true that this first entry was rough around the edges as well, but the sequel refined its technical aspects, and it developed a unique voice, one that carefully balanced horror with comedy. The third one is honestly my favorite of the bunch, since it takes place in a whacked-out version of the Americas circa 1920, although some do (understandably) find it a bit too goofy.
Knight Arms is a fairly cool combo side-scroller shooter/Space Harrier clone, while Journey to Silius is one of Sunsoft's best NES titles, also well known for its immensely epic soundtrack. And Four Winds Fantasy is an extremely bizarre RPG on the XBLIG, scribbled out in MS Paint.
It was mentioned on the blog last week, but make sure to check out the interview with Jim Gregory regarding the cancelled SNES version of Akira, which reveals some fascinating information on an ambitious multi-platform project that just didn't work out.
The latest episode of Game Club 199X focuses on the legendary Deus Ex, which should really get an article here some day, once I figure out how to get Invisible War to not crash continiously on my computer. The spotlight article focuses on After Burner, which includes some pictures of various computer ports I'd missed initially, nicer screenshots in general, and a proper review of After Burner Climax. Your Weekly Kusoge is T&C Surf Design, one of the many poorly thought-out games to capitalize on the surfer dude fascination of the late 80s/early 90s. And Part 17 of the iOS Shooter Article covers iFighter 1945, Magnetar: Space Fighter, Blastian and The Orbital Hive.
Also, I am going to shamelessly mention a few eBay auctions I have going on for the next week, mostly really offbeat stuff that's been covered on the site before. Cave Love is a cool doujin music CD with music from Cave shooters, which was reviewed here. Cheetah in the Dark is another fascinating Japanese doujin CD with vocal remixes from Cheetahmen II. Hagane is a fairly decent Strider-type game for the SNES, which was reviewed here. The American release suddenly shot up in value over the past year, so here's a chance to get the cheaper Japanese release. And Kyozou Musume is the infamous "Shadow of the Colossus monster as sexy moe girls" doujinshi which was also featured here awhile back. Also up is a lot of 16 factory sealed PlayStation games and a Godzilla vs. Destroyah Real Action figure.
I was delighted the second I saw the article on Shadow Hearts. Thank you, thank you very much for showing this great series some love.
ReplyDeleteToo bad last time I heard of it Aruze was making some Pachinslots games and ...argh...Chaos Wars
As a minor addition to the Journey to Silius article: If I remember correctly, the European/PAL release used the title screen from the American release while the sprite for main character was from the Japanese release.
ReplyDeleteIt made my WEEK to finally see Silius on hg101. YES!
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