Violinist of Hameln: Something tells me this game is based off of an obscure manga. The plot doesn’t make much sense, which doesn’t matter as it’s a straightforward platformer, but it’s FUN. Your sidekick is stupid and apparently suicidal, but she’s also more or less immortal (although if she gets hit more than once, you lose all benefits of killing monsters), and you get to throw her at whatever you like and make her dress up in wierd costumes to get back at her/ help you along. Also, you can buy a “bomb” costume, which means that you throw her straight up three times to kill the final boss (since it covers half the screen, as does the boss, it’s almost impossible to miss). Available freely at many abandonware sites.
Akuji the Demon: After three runs through, it takes me about 15 minutes to play this (relatively new, <2 meg freeware) game. It’s worth the hour it’ll take you to go through it.
Apparently, anything on the SegaCD- Mine died a short while back, leaving without a home such classics as Popful Mail, Silpheed, Willy Beamish, Dark Wizard, and the unforgetable original version of Lunar: Eternal Blue. Sven T. Uncommon, from Popful will always hold a special place in my heart. I could probably recite all of his lines off the top of my head without missing a beat. Since 1994, I have considered the Mine stage of that game to be the absolute peak of gaming humor, plot, writing, and (up until I learned all the “right places to stand,” and after I decided to ignore them) challenge. The fact that I decided to ignore the “right places to stand” speaks volumes for how important I considered the final showdown between him and yourself (and I always used the main character and no-one else for him), considering how much I hate actually working for anything when I’m supposed to be having fun. This, as with Eternal Blue, is one of the six RPG’s I’ve ever played through more than twice Secret of Mana, FF6, Earthbound, and Breath of Fire II, if you must know. BoFII is the only other game where I chose extra work willingly, fighting Barubary alone instead of with the party. It seemed important for him not to hate you as he died.)
I know there’s gotta be somebody who’s played Gunstar Heroes here. It’s exactly what you’d guess from the name. You are superhuman heroes with guns that to impressive things. You get the choice of combining four weapons, any two at a time, including two of the same. Fire-anything ALWAYS kicks ass, and Laser-homing will annhiliate the whole damn screen while you just dodge.
And something that I can only make one guess as to how it did not achieve success- it was on plenty of store shelves and I think there was a picture of the female lead on the front, even- Brandish: The programmers were all abused as children, and decided to take it out on whoever played this game. If you play this on an emulator, don’t use the save/reload functions there, or you will have to restart the game just about every time. If you use the ingame functions to reload, you might have to restart more than once. If you die and have a ring of life, let yourself be revived and do not hit reset. A key that is gone is gone for good, and the door doesn’t always stay locked. The key doesn’t always stay in your inventory when you save, quit, and reload. This is the only problem with the game, except the controls and the menu.
The controls are incredibly confusing and took me about 15 minutes to figure out that I was turning when I first played the game (at 9 years old), and counter-intuitive in any situation, especially trouble. Open the menus does not pause the game, so you have to make sure you know exactly where you keep your cure potions/spell and be quick about it. And be sure you hit the (Use) button, which is the equivalent of (make a beeping sound) and (do nothing) outside of the menus, instead of the (Drop), which is where you think it should be, the equivalent of (attack) in the real world, and both (accept) and (go back a menu) in shops. to (Use) something in the menu, you have to hit (jump). In short, absolutely never open the menu in front of a pit, or you will drop half your gear and never see it again.
There’re at least two secret drops, which I ran into by pure chance both times, which apparently work randomly half the time if you fulfull an aribtrary set of requirements exactly right. One of them gives you a free “warp” spell, with takes 90% of the annoyance out of the game by letting you revisit anywhere you’ve already been for all your MP, and the other drops you on some water, and then you get some free armor which disappears out of your inventory the next time you save.
Then there’s the Dark Gear, which is cursed, except in the dark zone. With one of them, you are “possessed” and can’t do anything, including close then menu or take it off. If you leave the dark zone, it hits you immediately and you’re stuck until you reload. And then the key is still gone, but the door isn’t unlocked so you have to start over.
And the shield is up in exactly two instances-when you give the (attack) command and no-one is there, and two- when something is there and you’re not hitting (attack).
The programming is still better than Working Design’s travesty for the PS1, Arc the Lad II, but you’re still inclined to think that they intended this game as revenge for Hiroshima. And it will annoy you, because once you figure it out, aside from all that, it is barely possible to put it down. The gameplay is still kinda fun once you figure out how they turned 4 buttons into 13 with very little overlap and figure out which is which. The storyline is excellent, as is the writing. The first time I ran into the female lead, my heart stopped beating because I was so scared. The third time, I literally did laugh out loud. I eventually learned to both pity and like her. The music ranges from intriguing to excellent to merely pretty good. The graphics, for the time, were leaps and bounds ahead of the average. Every item is remarkably useful. The bosses, until you get the barrier and/or double spells, are fun and challenging (at which point they do 1-4 damage per hit and you do in the triple digits. Of course, you only have double for two bosses unless you find a serious programming defect, and one of them hits you around 30 times a second and has to have at least 5 digit HP, so it evens out). This game, as much as I want to castrate the programmers, is fun.
