NEC – Twentieth Century Gamer

Silent Debuggers (TurboGrafx-16)

Last week, I told you about an obscure early survival horror game inspired by the Alien film franchise and released onto a platform not typically associated with the genre. So I figured I may as well switch things up this time and tell you about an obscure early survival horror game inspired by the Alien film franchise and released onto a platform not typically associated with the genre. In space, no one can hear you repeat yourself.

That’s not to say that Silent Debuggers for TurboGrafx-16 plays anything at all like Alien 3 for Game Boy. It’s a first-person corridor shooter, for goodness’ sake, meaning that it was attempting to blaze multiple trails at once back in 1991. Figures it was developed by Data East, who seemingly never hesitated to get weird with a project. Bless them for that.

The game’s background is fed to you via an opening cutscene that both sets the mood with its slick old school anime presentation and calibrates your quality expectations for the English localization, which is a rocky one for sure. Stilted phrasing and bizarre grammatical errors abound in this tale of two hot shot space mercenaries (known as “debuggers”) who find more than they bargained for when they board a derelict space station in search of loot. Their job title comes to ironic fruition as they’re sealed in and forced to clear the sprawling structure of the insectoid monstrosities infesting it in order to escape. Worse, they need to do it before the hundred minute self-destruct timer ticks down. All in a day’s work for an ace debugger, right?

Of course, it’s up to you as the unseen and unnamed member of the duo to do all the actual combat. Your self-proclaimed “buddy” Leon spends the whole game parked in a comfy chair in the station’s central computer room, dispensing iffy advice and nuggets of background info relating to the mystery of where all these creepy monsters came from in the first place. He does do a couple useful things for you, though. First, speaking to him allows you to change your current weapon loadout. You can equip one each of the three primary and three secondary weapons to carry alongside your worthless starting pistol. Very rarely, he’ll offer you a new utility item, such as the vitally important jump unit that teleports you across long distances instantly in exchange for a hefty chunk of battery power. It’s worth checking in every now and then when you’re in the area just on the off chance he has some fresh tech for you.

Your general goal across all six stages is to destroy every monster present so you can move on. It sounds easy enough and would be if the developers hadn’t taken pains to saddle you with complications large and small. The most obvious is the time limit itself. A hundred minutes, no more. Likely less, in fact, since every death results in a five minute penalty and a nasty scolding from Leon. If you want to stay alive, you’ll need to make regular runs back to the station’s lone charging room to top off the battery power that doubles as your health and as ammunition for some of the stronger weapons. Other weapons use conventional bullets instead, but don’t expect that to cut down on your legwork, since you can still only reload them by retreating back to the armory. At least you have a reliable map at your disposal.

As soon as you’ve grown comfortable with managing your time, energy, and ammo, Silent Debuggers introduces yet another complicating factor in the form of a new monster type that launches dedicated attacks on the station’s far-flung facilities. If a single sector takes too much damage before you can get there and eliminate the bug assaulting it, it’ll shut down and remain inaccessible for the remainder of your playthrough. Yes, that includes the aforementioned charging room and armory, not to mention the power plant (forcing you to navigate the twisty halls in the dark) and the sensor array (which causes your handy portable monster detector to periodically crap out on you). I did mention that these resources never come back, right? And just when you’re starting to grow accustomed to this high stakes base defense component, there’s another hitch thrown your way. It’s relentless.

Silent Debuggers has a mixed reputation online, mainly due to how the relatively low number of distinct enemy types contributes to repetitive battles. That, and for how it implements Wizardry-style gridded maze movement instead of the smooth scrolling seen in later efforts like id’s Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. It’s barely a blip on the majority of TurboGrafx-16 ranking lists and although I certainly can’t argue that it’s a brilliant example of a first-person shooter, I did find it to be quite the solid survival horror romp. Its pattern of springing constant insidious surprises on the player continues all the way through to the sixth and final area, making for one masterful white knuckle ride. Losing your lights or sensors over an hour in is utterly brutal. Even if Leon’s gadgets can alleviate the pain a bit, they still take up precious inventory space and thus leave you at a disadvantage.

On top of being tense, immersive, and sporting respectable graphics and music for the format, Silent Debuggers is also more influential than I might have expected. The way your sensors utilize directional stereo sound to assist you in pinpointing hostile aliens was adopted and refined for Kenji Eno’s 1996 Saturn cult classic Enemy Zero. It’s a shame that this freaky little Data East experiment came and went with all the silence its name implies. I highly recommend it if you’re in the mood for something damn near diametrically opposed to the straightforward, arcadey fare the TG-16 is famous for.

Valis II (TurboGrafx-16)

When we last left plucky high schooler Yuko, she’d been transported to the mystical world of Vecanti, gifted the mighty Valis sword (along with a set of kinky bikini armor), and used her fresh new gear to vanquish the evil tyrant Rogles before returning to Tokyo to resume her everyday life. Valis II unsurprisingly sees her doing pretty much that exact thing again, except that Rogles’ older brother, Megas, is the one causing a ruckus this time.

Original it’s not, though that was never really the point of the series to begin with. Valis titles were meant to show off scantily-clad anime girls to the greatest extent the technology of the time allowed. On the TurboGrafx-16 (and its Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine) that meant leveraging the console’s CD-ROM functionality to cram as many voiced cutscenes as possible in between the decidedly rote side-view action stages. Assuming you can make your peace with that, the games proper tend to make for breezy lightweight diversions. They’re nothing you haven’t seen done before, and better, but you can conversely do worse.

While very much cast from this mold, 1989’s Valis II also holds the dubious distinction of being the weakest of the four Valis entries produced for the hardware. The nominal first outing, Mugen Senshi Valis, is a 1992 remake with significantly upgraded control, mechanics, and visuals. Parts III and IV and generally more full-featured due to their multiple playable characters. That leaves the comparatively basic and dowdy II as the odd one out.

Yuko’s goal is to jump and slash her way through five extremely long levels before moving on to a sixth and final one that takes the form of a relatively brief auto-scroller. The sheer length of the stages is arguably Valis II’s Achilles’ heel. By the halfway point of each, I was well and truly tired of swatting at the same handful of enemies in front of the same mediocre backgrounds. Compounding this is the overall lack of dynamic platforming scenarios or interesting environmental hazards. It’s a no-frills “walk forward and hammer that attack button” sort of game. Bosses are nothing to thrill over, either, unless you count the chuckles their amateurish pre-fight voice acting frequently elicits. You can outlast most by simply staying put and firing away until they explode.

The designers put in a token attempt to add some variety via the inclusion of four different projectile shot pickups for the Valis sword and a handful of limited-use magic abilities like a rotating shield and a time freeze. Again, however, these are hardly revelatory by genre standards. In a crowning irony, the saga’s trademark element, its cutscenes, are actually displayed smaller and in lower detail here than in later installments, too. That leaves the soundtrack to stand as the sole unqualified high point. Smooth ’80s synth and drum machine ditties that wouldn’t have been out of place in any given anime of the era? Sign me up for that!

When all is said and done, Valis II is a work profoundly of its time. Its presentation alone made it a standout during that brief interval when the TurboGrafx/PC Engine was poised at the cutting edge of the industry, effectively the first and only CD-ROM gaming platform. That hype sold units and made a lasting impression on the public at large. Even kids like me, who only knew of it from magazine screenshots and their accompanying effusive text blurbs. Can I recommend is as an isolated action-platforming experience all these years later? Nah. But I instead prefer to view it as a one-of-a-kind digital time capsule, worth a quick playthrough purely to glimpse how the future looked back at the dawn of the 1990s.

Last Alert (TurboGrafx-16)

Military-themed run-and-gun shooters were a mainstay of ’80s gaming. No arcade or home console library was complete without these grim depictions of lone wolf super soldiers machine gunning their way through legions of faceless goons. Primarily inspired by the international phenomenon that was the Rambo film franchise, a few of them even starred the man himself, though most publishers opted for stand-in ptotagonists over shelling out those big Stallone bucks.

Enter Shin-Nihon Laser Soft, a short-lived subsidiary of Telenet Japan that brought Red Alert to the PC Engine in 1989. Red Alert’s claim to fame was its use of the system’s then cutting edge CD-ROM peripheral to add anime style cutscenes and voice acting to the familiar overhead run-and-gun formula. But a funny thing happened on the way to Red Alert’s North American debut as Last Alert the following year. Literally. The Japanese version’s generally respectable voice work was replaced with an amateur English dub so out-and-out ludicrous that it’s likely the only reason Last Alert is remembered at all these days. I’m reminded of how the Mega Drive port of Zero Wing’s “all your base are belong to us” opening scene has long since eclipsed any discussion of its merits as a game.

Ironically, this goofy dub is about the best thing that could have happened to Last Alert. Getting to hear our chisled one man army protagonist Guy Kazama spout lines like “Garcia, nobody can hire my feelings!” with all the grace and gravitas of a high school drama dork hopped up on Mountain Dew is vastly more entertaining than the action on offer. Not to say that the gameplay here is horrible. Last Alert is certainly playable and doesn’t suffer from any especially egregious design missteps. At same time, however, I can’t escape the feeling that those CD bells and whistles were the main point all along.

I can describe Guy Kazama’s campaign against the sinister Force Project and their world-threatening superweapon Indra in two words: Long and mediocre. I’m talking no less than 23 stages of the most resolutely average small arms combat ever programmed. Guy can move and attack in the expected eight directions. One button fires his unlimited ammo gun and the other deploys grenades, homing missiles, and other limited use backup weapons. Most stages require Guy to simply reach and defeat a boss at the end. A handful include miscellaneous objectives, such as rescuing hostages or planting bombs, that must be accomplished for the boss to appear. The bulk of the opposition is made up of bog standard grunts who’ll either stand in place and take the occasional potshot at Guy or slowly jog after him while doing the same. Yes, it all works and yes, it grows quite tiresome by the halfway mark. At least it’s also remarkably easy, so you won’t have to waste any more of your time on memorization or practice.

The only standout mechanic for me is the experience system. Hitting certain score thresholds will gradually level Guy up from his starting rank of Ranger all the way up to a rank nineteen Super Hero. Every level adds another box to Guy’s health meter and a new, more powerful gun is added to his inventory every four levels or so. It’s a solid idea in the context of a lengthier take on the genre and I got more enjoyment out of seeing what my next rank title and weapon upgrade would be than I did out of the actual gunfights.

Visually, the sparse backgrounds and underdetailed sprites are barely a step up from those seen in Capcom’s Commando four years prior. That’s an eternity in ’80s game development terms. We can’t blame the hardware for this, either. Data East’s Bloody Wolf made it to the PC Engine a few months before Last Alert (on a regular low-capacity HuCard, I might add) and still managed to look significantly nicer. The soundtrack fares a bit better, although it never approaches the dizzying heights of a Lords of Thunder or Ys Book I & II.

Last Alert isn’t much to look at and is entirely too basic and repetitive to sustain player interest over the minimum ninety minutes or so it takes to complete a playthrough. As far as old school commando bloodbaths on the TurboGrafx-16 go, the aforementioned Bloody Wolf is the superior game. On the other hand, my fellow lovers of all things camp will treasure every misbegotten syllable of Last Alert’s dialog. If you’re the type to sit through an incompetent movie just for the “so bad, it’s good” factor, you’ll be right at home blasting away as Guy Kazama.

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Genesis/Super Nintendo/TurboGrafx-16)

Like many here in North America, the widely available Super Nintendo release of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys served as my introduction to the series back in the ’90s. I played it with a friend and mainly just remember how much we cracked up at the area where a neverending stream of pissed-off birds keeps pouring out of the sky and all you need to do to rapidly level up protagonist Adol is make him stand there with his sword held up as this avalanche of angry avians kamikaze into it ad infinitum. Magnificent. For decades, that’s all Nihon Falcom’s venerable saga was to me: A forgettable SNES action RPG with the easiest, and funniest, level grinding ever. Having recently rediscovered Ys via the remarkable Book I & II for TurboGrafx-CD, I thought it might be fun to renew my acquaintance with Wanderers.

Ah, but why limit myself to one platform this time around? Originally released for Japanese home computers in 1989, Ys III became one of the few games to appear on all three major 16-bit consoles in 1991. I couldn’t decide which version to play, so I didn’t! Instead, I’m pulling out all the stops to bring you my first triple review! That’s right: I played through the Genesis, Super Nintendo, and TurboGrafx-CD editions of Ys III back-to-back. So you don’t have to, I guess. How do they compare? Which is the best overall? Read on!

First, I should probably break down how Ys III works and weigh in on whether any iteration of it is actually worth playing. It has a reputation among hardcore fans as a black sheep entry. So much so that many consider it to be completely superseded by its own official 2005 remake, Ys: The Oath in Felghana. Why? Some point to its status as the lone side-scroller in the franchise. The same could be said of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, though, and I adore it. No, above all, Ys III is simply too basic for its own good.

Wanderers from Ys begins with the title characters, red-haired swordsman Adol and his faithful companion Dogi, stopping in for a friendly visit to Dogi’s home town. They soon discover that the region’s power hungry ruler is hatching a plot to revive an ancient demon of tremendous power and it falls on Adol to sort everything out. He’ll accomplish this by charging down a fixed sequence of corridors, furiously dicing up everything in his path.

Ys III pares the action RPG down to its barest essentials. The player is afforded no freedom when it comes to where to go or what to do next. There’s one town, two shops, and a handful of dungeons that feature plenty of enemies, but zero exploration or puzzle solving. If it wasn’t for the experience system and periodic dialog scenes, you could easily mistake this for a typical pure action-platformer of the period. Such is its strict linearity and unwavering focus on hack-and-slash.

For all that, Ys III might have still been a-ok if the combat was top-notch. Unfortunately, it suffers from a general lack of feedback that leaves it feeling floaty and disjointed. Adol and his foes don’t tend to react to each other’s attacks, so you never get the impression that the characters on-screen are truly interacting. This tactile element is so fundamental to the success of any action game that we only tend to notice it in its absence. That absence makes the game tougher than it otherwise would be, too, as enemies that manage to touch Adol are prone to linger there, doling out constant damage. Be sure to rack up tons of experience early on, and make liberal use of your ability to save progress nearly anywhere.

The sole standout aspect of Ys III is the spectacular soundtrack by Mieko Ishikawa, who was somehow able to maintain the epic energy of the first two games without the aid of former co-composer Yuzo Koshiro. Apart from that, we’re left with a woefully shallow action RPG that’s unlikely to impress fans of either genre, let alone both. While not legitimately terrible, it’s well below the usual Ys standard. It is at least short, however, and I suppose there are countless worse ways to spend two or three hours of your life.

Now, on to the comparisons!

Genesis

Pros:

Excellent music that closely resembles that of the computer originals.
Well balanced combat, neither punishingly difficult nor a complete pushover.

Cons:

By far the worst translation job. Character and place names have been altered, syntax is consistently awkward, and misspellings abound. You know I giggled when the shopkeeper asked if I wanted to “buy harb.”

Super Nintendo

Pros:

Best in-game graphics thanks to larger, more detailed sprites.
Most accurate translation. Character and place names maintain continuity with other installments and the dialog reads reasonably natural.
Fastest experience grind due to the exploitable instant enemy respawns unique to this version. Think those crazy birds I mentioned.

Cons:

Worst music. Questionable sample choices mar some brilliant compositions, leaving them sounding weak and a little cheesy at times.
Extra-durable enemies that constantly respawn disrupt the balance of combat. This is the most difficult playthrough of the three for all the wrong reasons.

TurboGrafx-CD

Pros:

Utterly spectacular CD soundtrack that begs to be heard.
Lovely opening and closing cutscenes.

Cons:

The choppy background scrolling might literally give you a headache if you stare at it too long. I can’t overemphasize what an almighty eyesore this jittering mess is throughout.
There’s voice acting for the majority of the main cast. Wretched, low effort voice acting that isn’t even goofy enough to be amusing. They shouldn’t have bothered.
Arguably too easy.

Winner: Genesis. It can’t quite match the Super Nintendo’s visuals or the TurboGrafx’s stunning CD music, and its script really would have benefited from some additional proofreading. Despite that, it suffers from the fewest major issues and is ultimately the most balanced, best playing option. If you seek out only one 16-bit port of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, make it Sega’s.

Neutopia (TurboGrafx-16)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Clone” shouldn’t be a dirty word. It’s tempting to look down on an obvious copycat game or, worse, the people behind it. 1989’s Neutopia is as rote a Legend of Zelda knock-off as they come, yet it comes to us courtesy of Hudson Soft, one of the most revered developer/publishers of the era and co-creators (along with NEC) of the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 hardware itself.

In other words, these folks were no slouches, and as much as we’re naturally inclined to prize creativity, I feel it’s important to consider the company’s position as a platform owner. When your competition has a bona fide landmark title on the market, there’s bound to be considerable pressure on you to provide your user base with an equivalent experience, lest they jump ship. What should ultimately matter to a gamer is whether or not that equivalent offering is fun, and I’m pleased to report that Hudson Soft did not disappoint. While it packs few, if any surprises of its own, Neutopia is a solid and roundly agreeable interpretation of the original Zelda’s formula.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Neutopia is in peril. The diabolic Dirth has abducted Princess Aurora and hidden away the eight mystic medallions that safeguard the realm in eight perilous dungeons. As brave young swordsman Jazeta, you must recover the medallions, dispatch Dirth, and save the Princess. Yeah. As you can see, there was no effort made whatsoever to paint Neutopia as anything other than the TurboGrafx’s version of Hyrule. They just cooked up a handful of new proper nouns and called it a day. I suppose they didn’t want to chance anyone in the audience failing to connect the dots.

This barefaced absence of guile makes Neutopia remarkably easy to summarize. Essentially, if you remember it from the first Zelda, it’s here. Top-down view. Four-way movement. Short range sword combat supplemented by a ranged magic wand. Bombing rock walls and burning trees to reveal secret rooms populated by helpful NPCs. Sword, armor, and health bar upgrades. Healing potions. An item that lights up dark rooms. Another item that bridges small bodies of water. I could well go on, but I trust you get it.

The game’s sole major deviation is at least fairly substantial. Rather than plopping Jazeta down onto a single massive overworld map at the start and leaving him to fend for himself, the land is divided up into four equal size quadrants, each of which has its own thematic identity (earth, fire, water, air) and contains two of the eight dungeons. Accessing a new quadrant requires obtaining both medallions from the previous one’s dungeons. This imposes a semi-linear structure on the quest that may not appeal to veteran players. It does have the benefit of narrowing your search efforts, however, since whatever you need to advance will always be found somewhere in the current overworld section. Apart from this, everything is business as usual.

Again, though, that’s hardly bad per se. Not if said business is handled well, as it is here. Neutopia implements all these familiar mechanics with aplomb in order to create and maintain much the same addictive exploratory flow that made its source material, well, a Legend. I’ve been downright ruthless in the past when it came to nitpicking similar efforts in the same vein (Golden Axe Warrior, Golvellius), so you can believe me when I say that Neutopia gets all the broad strokes, as well as the majority of the fine ones, right. It looks pretty slick in the process, too, thanks to the system’s famously colorful graphics. A selection of rousing chiptunes by Tomotsune Maeno rounds out this generally appealing package. My only real sticking point is the lack of a grueling Death Mountain style lair for Dirth. Instead, you simply teleport straight to the final battle and set to stabbing the dude. A little more build-up would have been nice.

In the annals of video game history, Neutopia represents, at most, a humble footnote. Still, it remains a perfectly playable one; an easy recommendation for any fan of ’80s vintage fantasy adventure willing to overlook its Dirth of originality.

Bonk’s Revenge (TurboGrafx-16)

Critics and fans alike embraced the quirky Bonk’s Adventure when it hit the TurboGrafx-16 in 1990. NEC and Hudson Soft were obviously thrilled by the prospect of having their very own Mario style mascot character, since they promptly made the megacephalic cavekid’s debut outing a system pack-in and commissioned a sequel. Known as PC Gejin 2 in Japan and Bonk’s Revenge here in North America, that sequel is…well, it’s more Bonk’s Adventure, just polished up a bit. The developers at Red Company didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with this one. Fitting, I suppose, for a protagonist who may well predate said wheel.

The evil dinosaur overlord King Drool has returned, and this time he’s stolen half the moon to add to his monster kingdom. Naturally, it falls on our boy Bonk to set things right by headbanging his way through a grand total of 21 platforming stages divided up into seven rounds. Each round has its own overarching theme. Some play into the prehistoric vibe (volcano, jungle, snowy mountain) and others skew fanciful (pirate ship, Drool’s moon castle). What they all have in common are the surreal visuals, jaunty music, and general air of absurdity that are hallmarks of the series.

Bonk’s core platforming abilities (jumping, headbutting baddies, climbing cliffs, etc.) are largely holdovers from the first game. The only new move in his arsenal is headbutting walls to rebound off them and reach higher platforms. Think of it as Bonk’s take on the wall jump. In addition, the mid-air spin that previously enabled Bonk to bypass most threats by gliding over them has been altered to produce far less hang time. It remains useful, if nowhere near as easily abused.

Meat is once again the primary power-up for Bonk, temporarily boosting his speed and offense. Consuming another helping before the previous piece’s effect has expired will compound it, and nabbing the rare giant meat hunk will rocket Bonk to maximum strength on the spot. No matter what, however, the influence of meat is always measured in mere seconds. Longer-lasting enhancement is available in the form of the heart containers that lengthen Bonk’s health bar by one unit apiece. This increase lasts until you run out of lives and use one of your three continues. Do try to avoid doing that. Finally, there’s a rare flower item new to Bonk’s Revenge that allows our hero to slowly fly through the air. The flower will actually stick around until Bonk takes a hit, so it’s well worth playing as carefully as possible when you happen upon one.

Above all, the word that best describes Bonk’s Revenge is “refined.” It takes the basic blueprint set forth in Bonk’s Adventure and manages to fine tune nearly every last element thereof. Never radically, mind you, but always for the better. The graphical detail has been upped. The equally catchy soundtrack is longer. The toned-down spin forces the player to engage with the level design, as opposed to simply gliding over it. The boss rush leading up to the final battle in King Drool’s castle, a real chore in Bonk’s Adventure, is less punishing. I found the going a touch easier across the board, in fact, despite the switch to limited continues. They even found a better use for the smiley face icons Bonk collects in the hidden bonus areas. The more you’ve accumulated at the end of a round, the more health refills, extra lives, and other boons you’re showered with before moving on to the next.

This laundry list of thoughtful tweaks makes Bonk’s Revenge a significant improvement on its predecessor and a genuinely good time overall. That said, some of my biggest pet peeves from the original were left wholly untouched. I’m still not fond of the emphasis on timed power-ups, for example, or the way the lack of a run function limits the pace of the action. While neither game approaches perfection in my eyes, the nascent franchise was clearly on the right track. If you enjoyed Adventure, there’s no way you’ll regret pursuing Revenge.

The Legendary Axe II (TurboGrafx-16)

Almost three years ago now, I looked at The Legendary Axe, a highly regarded 1989 launch title for the North American TurboGrafx-16. In that review, I made only the briefest mention of its “very different sequel,” 1990’s The Legendary Axe II. Why the wait to cover said sequel? Because while it’s not terrible by any means, Legendary Axe II is a prime example of how a few seemingly minor aesthetic and mechanical tweaks can result in a significantly less appealing package.

Legendary Axe II is known as Ankoku Densetsu (“Dark Legend”) in Japan, and boy, did its makers take that name to heart. Gone are the bright colors and upbeat tunes of the previous game’s Tarzan-inspired world. In their place is the grim fantasy styling of the Ancient Kingdom, which resembles nothing less than Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age by way of H. R. Giger. The Conan influence extends to the look of our new hero, Prince Sirius, whose long black hair and ripped physique are unmistakably homage. Sirius is on a seven stage quest to regain the throne from his brother, Zach, who usurped it with the aid of the demonic King Drodam. I wish him luck. Could you imagine having to bend your knee to a monarch named Zach of all things? The indignity!

Apart from the changes in setting and art direction, Legendary Axe II dispenses with the weapon power gauge that governed the flow of combat in the original. You no longer need to judge when it’s better to attack with a flurry of fast, weak swings versus going on the defensive for a bit as you wait for a single mighty blow to charge up. The designers attempted to compensate for this loss of tactical depth by including multiple weapons accessed via in-level pickups. The starting sword is relatively balanced. The chain sickle offers improved reach at the cost of lower damage. The punishing axe hits like a truck, but requires you to get up close and personal with your target. And yes, you read that right: The axe isn’t the default weapon in this Legendary Axe game. Go figure.

In addition, there are pickups that restore lost health, extend the health bar, boost the strength of your weapon, and grant extra lives. When the going gets tough, you can also press the Select button to deploy one of your limited stock of “magic bombs” that damage every enemy on the screen. Beware of foes that attempt to use the very same bombs against you, though! Your last offensive option is jumping on the opposition’s heads à la Super Mario. A strange maneuver indeed in a weapon-based action-platformer like this, but I’ll take what I can get.

On one hand, I can applaud the teams at Atlus and Red Company for daring to try something fresh here rather than merely rehashing what Aicom did with the first Legendary Axe. Unfortunately, the majority of their final design is mediocre at best. The dim and frequently under-detailed backgrounds of Sirius’ kingdom literally pale next to Gogan’s lush jungle stomping grounds. Worse, the presence of multiple weapons doesn’t come close to making up for the loss of the power gauge. Regardless of which one you’re wielding, dispatching baddies large and small is mainly a matter of simple button mashing. This gets old well before you reach the finale in Zach’s oddly high-tech stronghold. Oh, and I wasn’t a fan of the more vertically oriented stages, either. They have a bad habit of sending fast-moving enemies swooping at you from off-screen, resulting in loads of knockback and repeated platforming segments.

All that said, Legendary Axe II isn’t a disaster. Some of the bosses look pretty cool. The creepy possessed doll that spawns decoys of itself comes to mind, as does the massive King Drodam himself. The true star of the show, however, is Hiro Suzuki’s intense, brooding score; an exceptionally atmospheric set of chiptunes that really deserved to be showcased in a much better game. Drab and shallow as it is, this one still rates as a mostly adequate arcade style hack-and-slasher. Just don’t expect it hold a candle to the best the genre had to offer at the time, including its own predecessor.

Bloody Wolf (TurboGrafx-16)

Now that’s what I call a relatable ending.

After losing myself in the intricate turn-based RPG Live A Live last week, I wanted something nice and basic to ease me back into the action groove. What could be more straightforward than a military-themed overhead run-and-gun?

Though relatively rare today, these games were inescapable throughout the ’80s and early ’90, their popularity fueled by the big screen bloodbaths of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and countless other uber-macho action icons. Key titles such as Taito’s Front Line (1982), Capcom’s Commando (1985), and SNK’s Ikari Warriors (1986) codified the template: A hardass super soldier (or possibly two, if you have a buddy with a second quarter to spend) stomping through the jungle, ruthlessly gunning down legions of hapless mooks. Sometimes he’s out to liberate P.O.W.s or take out a world threatening megaweapon. Other times he’s taking on the enemy because, hey, what else are enemies for?

In 1988, developer Data East threw their green beret into the ring with yet another take on this crowded subgenre: Bloody Wolf, also known as Narazumono Sentō Butai Bloody Wolf (“Rogue Combat Squad: Bloody Wolf”) in Japan and Battle Rangers in Europe. I’m thinking this original arcade release must be pretty scarce here in the U.S., since I’ve never actually encountered the cabinet in the wild. That’s why I’m reviewing the much more common TurboGrafx-16 port from 1990 instead.

TG-16 Bloody Wolf adds an extra stage and expands most of the others, albeit at the cost of the arcade’s two-player functionality. That’s a tradeoff I can live with. The real loss, however, is the new English translation. Arcade Bloody Wolf’s script is a sublime catastrophe which includes perhaps my favorite mangled video game line of all time: “Get you the hot bullets of shotgun to die!” Mmm. That is some primo stuff right there. The home version swaps it out for “You’ll make a nice target for this gun!” Weak.

Bloody Wolf tasks you with rescuing your kidnapped president from behind enemy lines. There’s no hint anywhere as to who your antagonists are supposed to be. The instructions simply refer to them as a “berzerk military unit” led by a “crazed General.” Maybe it’s supposed to be a coup attempt of some kind? All that really matters is there’s two of you and hundreds of them, so you’d best get shooting!

Wait, two? Didn’t I say this was a one-player game? I did and it is. At the outset, you’re expected to choose one of the two strapping commandos shown on the title screen. He’ll then serve as your primary character, although you’ll still end up controlling both heroes as the story plays out. You even get to name these guys. Their default handles are Snake and Eagle, but that’s no fun. I named the one with hair Will after myself and the bald one…Baldo. Guess I wasn’t feeling very creative that night.

Gameplay-wise, Bloody Wolf doesn’t break the mold in any major way. Your primary weapon is a pea shooter rifle with endless ammo that can be temporarily upgraded to a shotgun or bazooka via pickups obtained from crates and rescued prisoners. In addition, you start with a secondary attack in the form of grenades. These can later be powered-up or swapped out entirely in favor of a flamethrower or flash bombs. Finally, there’s your trusty combat knife, which is automatically used in place of your main gun whenever a bad guy is within shanking range. Redundant as this last option seems, some armored foes are bulletproof, so getting in close to stab them may be your best bet.

Taking a page from Ikari Warriors, Bloody Wolf also allows you to commandeer enemy vehicles in order to create even more carnage. Bizarrely, these aren’t tanks or other common weapons of war. Rather, they’re Harley-Davidson style motorcycles you use to run your adversaries down. It’s as effective as it is hilarious. Sadly, these have a very limited supply of fuel. Enjoy them while they last.

The one slightly unorthodox thing here is your characters’ ability to jump, a feature more closely associated with Contra and other side-view run-and-guns. Hell, even the Harleys can jump! They don’t need ramps to do it, either. They just spontaneously levitate when you tap the button. I love it. A few levels and boss fights incorporate rudimentary platforming, though this aspect of the game comes across as a mere novelty, by no means co-equal with the combat.

In light of its arcade roots and hardcore two-man army premise, you might expect Bloody Wolf to offer up a fierce challenge. If so, you’d be wrong. Your characters enjoy the mercy of a health bar rather than the usual one-hit kills. Body armor, medicine, and sketchy sounding “muscle emphasis tablets” can all either restore lost health or lengthen the bar itself. On top of this, the eight short stages include frequent checkpoints and continues are unlimited. This makes for a smooth, low pressure play experience from start to finish. I can see this being a point of contention for those who bought the game at full price and weren’t expecting to race through it in a couple of hours. Me, I found it pretty fun to be able to kick back and casually exterminate the opposing force on my mystical leaping motorbike.

While neither a historically important work like Commando nor a must-play masterpiece like Jackal or Shock Troopers, Bloody Wolf is a successful arcade conversation and a thoroughly competent example of its kind. It looks fine, sounds fine, and delivers precisely the sort of no frills testosterone-drenched thrill ride you’d expect. If all you’re looking for an excuse to switch off your brain and take in the interactive equivalent of a vintage Chuck Norris flick, you can do a whole lot worse.

Will and Baldo, I salute you!

Super Star Soldier (TurboGrafx-16)

I wonder if I can get away with listing “flying away from big explosions” on my resume at this point?

Off to the PC Engine I go for another bout of alien ass whupping in 1990’s Super Star Soldier. To understand the origins of the Star Soldier series, we need to start back in 1984, when Tecmo (then called Tehkan) developed the fast-paced vertical shooter Star Force for arcades. The subsequent home release of Star Force on the Famicom proved so wildly popular that its publisher, Hudson Soft, made it the centerpiece of their first annual All-Japan Caravan Festival in 1985.

This nationwide high score contest generated considerable publicity and Hudson was understandably eager to make it an annual event. Problem was, they needed a new game to center Caravan ’86 around. Preferably one very similar to Star Force…. In other words, Star Soldier was a bit of a copycat. It was a worthy shooter in its own right by the standards of the time, however, and all three of its PC Engine follow-ups (Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, and Soldier Blade) would headline their own Caravans from 1990-1992.

Before I move on to discussing Super Star Soldier proper, here’s one last Caravan fun fact I couldn’t resist sharing with you all: We have these early competitions to thank for the rise of none other than Toshiyuki “16 Shot” Takahashi, the gaming prodigy named and famed for his rapid-firing skills in Star Soldier who later served as the real life model for Adventure Island’s Master Higgins. Yes, without these space shooter festivals taking place on the other side of the world, we would never have known the serene majesty of a portly gent in animal skins and baseball cap hurling stone axes at snails while riding a skateboard. What a bleak existence that would be.

Though developed for Hudson by Kaneko, Super Star Soldier will remind PCE/TurboGrafx fans of another, better-known shooter for the platform: Compile’s Blazing Lazers. In much the same way Star Soldier was “inspired” by Star Force, its sequel feels like an unofficial extension of Blazing Lazers. Many of the weapons feel familiar and your ship controls much the same, right down to having variable speed settings toggled with the Select button. Enemy and stage designs have a very Compile/Aleste look and flow to them, as well, although the settings you fly through are slightly less wild here. There are no deadly rainbow bubbles awaiting you this time out, for example. Even the quirky “special lives” mechanic introduced in Blazing Lazers, which has you repeatedly shooting certain power-up icons until they turn into flashing orbs and then collecting those so you can respawn in place when destroyed instead of being sent back to a checkpoint, is carried over. Considering Compile’s towering reputation among shooter fans, the same principle that exonerated the first Star Soldier holds true here: If you’re going to crib, crib from the best.

The plot, if you can call it that, is like so: Earth is under attack by a pack of evil space brains and their leader, Mother Brain. I tell you, it’s always brains in these old Japanese sci-fi games. So far this year alone, I’ve already killed one at the end of Gradius, another (also named Mother Brain) in Metroid, and a third in Section Z. That’ll teach those squishy bastards to think so much, I guess. Anyway, there’s still hope for us humans because an improved version of the Caesar craft from the last game, dubbed Neo Caesar, has been engineered for just such an emergency. The player assumes the role of the Neo Caesar’s pilot, referred to in the manual as “Starbuck.” Dirk Benedict’s character from Battlestar Galactica, then? Excuse me, but if I have to play as an A-Team alumnus, I’d much prefer Mr. T.

Starbuck’s mission consists of eight stages. Most are variations on the outer space theme with only a couple taking place planetside. Each is fairly long and has its own unique final boss. The exception is, of course, the final stage, which is a punishing five boss gauntlet with a generous compliment of standard enemies sprinkled in for good measure. The entire journey takes around 35 minutes, assuming highly skilled play. That’s a respectable amount of play time for the genre, albeit also less than Blazing Lazers.

The Neo Caesar has four primary weapons at its disposal, accessed via colored-coded orbs dropped by enemies. These include the default multi-shot machine gun, the wide-angle ring laser, the more focused spread laser, and the powerful, short range swing fire. You can upgrade each weapon multiple times, increasing its area of effect considerably in the process. Taking damage will lower your weapon’s power, so these enhanced armaments also double as your armor in classic Aleste fashion. In general, I found the multi-shot and ring laser to be the best at taking out swarms of regular enemies, while the piercing spread laser was ideal for dealing heavy damage to single targets (i.e. bosses). I actively avoided swing fire for the majority of the game, since its flame jets share the same bright orange color scheme as the enemy’s bullets, which resulted in far too much accidental damage. Too bad. Double flamethrowers should equal pure bliss in any game.

Rounding out your arsenal are a couple of useful supplementary items. The Starbuck Defense System is a very fancy name for a very basic pair of “option” satellites that hang out near your ship blocking enemies and their shots. While these will damage foes on contact, they don’t actually multiply your firepower like the options from Gradius. Your other choice, the homing missiles, are entirely self-explanatory. You can only have one primary and one secondary weapon equipped at a given time. Thankfully, power-up drops are quite frequent, so you’ll never have to wait too long for your favorites to show up in the rotation.

Super Star Soldier poses a respectable challenge without being too overwhelming. For the most part, anyway. It’s definitely tougher than Blazing Lazers thanks to denser enemy patterns, trickier bosses, and no shield pickup or stock of super bombs. At the same time, it’s not totally lacking in clemency. You have weapons-as-armor to prevent those one-hit deaths and unlimited continues to boot. The biggest hurdle by far is the final stage. Defeating five tricky bosses in a row, the last of which has four distinct forms, is no joke. Worst of all is the three minutes or so of regular enemy waves you have to fight your way past before the boss rush even starts. It doesn’t sound like much, but having to wade through these guys over and over each time you continue can really start to wear on you after a while. This is another of those games where I spent significantly more time on the last level than on all the rest combined.

Oh, and I can neither forget nor forgive the hellish glitch that put an ugly end to my first full playthrough. See, crashing into enemies in Super Star Soldier damages both parties. The first time I managed to defeat the final boss, it was by accidentally colliding with it, destroying us both in the same instant. I had a ship in reserve, so I wasn’t worried. All I had to do was respawn and watch those credits roll, right? Wrong. I came back like normal, but the game just hung there. The boss music kept on looping as I sat there alone on an endlessly scrolling starfield. With nothing left to kill me and no time limit, all I could was give up and reset the machine. Did I eventually start fresh and beat the boss the normal way so I could have that true ending? I did. Was I happy about it? I was not.

That freak occurrence aside, there’s very little in Super Star Soldier that’s objectionable and much to appreciate. The audiovisuals meet the usual high Hudson standard and the shooting action is fast, precise, and, above all, satisfying. It’s true that the difficulty curve is a tad lopsided due to that crazy brutal eighth stage and the weapon selection, while adequate, could stand to be broadened. The three other games on the system that share this exact style of play, Blazing Lazers, Final Soldier, and Soldier Blade all have a little more going on mechanically and can be considered slightly better overall. Fortunately, being the weakest of these four still allows Super Star Soldier ample room to stand tall as one of the best shooters on a console synonymous with them. Just don’t try to kamikaze its bosses. Let my pain be your gain.

Keith Courage in Alpha Zones (TurboGrafx-16)

Ah, Keith Courage. There’s likely no more despised whipping boy in all of classic gaming than this nondescript sword wielding pre-teen. Bubsy the Bobcat, perennial punchline that he is, still hasn’t been the target of as much heartfelt vitriol over the past three decades. Why is that? At first glance, the original PC Engine version of Keith’s one and only adventure, 1988’s Mashin Eiyūden Wataru (“Spirit Hero Wataru”), is that most ubiquitous of things: A mediocre anime-based platformer from a C-list developer. Japanese gamers were practically downing in quickie contract work like this during the ’80s and ’90s. They were the equivalent of the ever-present Hollywood movie cash-in games that littered my own childhood. Pretty worthless for the most part, sure, but nothing worth holding a grudge over.

That’s how it was in Japan and would have been here, too, if it hadn’t been for one fateful decision by NEC, the electronics giant that co-created the PC Engine itself in conjunction with Hudson Soft. In early 1989, they were gearing up for the system’s big summer launch in North America as the TurboGrafx-16. It must have been clear to everyone involved that they had their work cut out for them. Sega was on track to roll out their 16-bit Genesis the very same month. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s NES still maintained its iron grip on the hearts and minds of America’s children. NEC needed to pair their new machine with a true killer app in order to have any real chance of breaking through. I’m talking a stone cold instant classic. A Mario slayer. What they ultimately bet the farm on was our boy Keith. Yikes. It’s like if the NES had shipped with Karate Kid or Total Recall.

Yes, most gamers who picked up a TurboGrafx-16 during the first two thirds of its three year run were introduced to their expensive next gen console by an utterly unremarkable throwaway title by Advance Communication Company of all people. Not the arcade quality spaceship shooting of Compile’s Blazing Lazers. Not the four-player fantasy epic that was Atlus’ Dungeon Explorer. Not even Hudson’s own established mascot Bomberman. When the system predictably failed to take off, Keith Courage in Alpha Zones was condemned to go down in history as not just a bad game, but the game so bad it sank the TurboGrafx. Say what you will about Bubsy, at least he never had the weight of an entire gaming platform’s future resting on his furry shoulders.

That’s the boilerplate version of the tale, anyway. Now for the fun part! Is this really so wretched a game? Did it bury the machine it was bundled with? And before we can tackle those big questions, just who is Keith Courage and what the hell is an Alpha Zone?

Well, the instruction manual informs me that Keith Courage is an agent of N.I.C.E. (Nations of International Citizens for Earth) and he’s out to save the world from B.A.D. (Beastly Alien Dudes), the invading force of evil aliens that killed his scientist dad. Ugh. Could the middle-aged marketing geniuses behind this localization have possibly been further off the mark with this dreck? Kids in the ’80 were into awesome heroes like the Masters of the Universe and the Thundercats fighting against the likes of the Decepticons and Cobra. N.I.C.E. and B.A.D. would have stood out as corny and patronizing to a first grader. The buff, lantern-jawed adult version of Keith created for the manual and cover is equally laughable when you consider that he’s still represented in-game by the same exact sprite of nine year-old Wataru. In fact, nothing about the whimsical cartoon fantasy world of Mashin Eiyūden Wataru was altered to fit the new story and character designs given in the manual. Yeah, I totally buy this goofy smirking kid as a badass warrior on a mission to avenge his slain loved one. Seamless.

As for the Alpha Zones, that’s just what the manual calls the game’s seven side-scrolling stages. While nominally distinguished by simple themes (Fire Zone, Glacier Zone, etc), these all play very similarly in that each one is split up into two distinct halves. First comes a rather drab and empty Overworld area, where an achingly slow-moving Keith marches from left to right and swats puny basic enemies to earn the money needed to purchase power-ups in shops. You then transition to an Underworld section that sees Keith hopping into a giant robot called the Nova Suit for a spate of faster-paced, more challenging combat that culminates in a boss fight.

In other words, what we have here is a much hated platformer from Advance Communication Company that alternates between two jarringly different gameplay modes. One is slow and boring while the other focuses on constant combat against trippy monsters. Oh, and it features music by Michiharu Hasuya. Hmm. Maybe they should have just gone all the way and called this one Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Courage.

Okay, okay, so maybe that’s not entirely fair. The similarities between Keith Courage and ACC’s infamous NES stinker are interesting for sure (the two were released a mere four months apart), but the former is admittedly much less of a confusing mess overall. Keith Courage presents a more traditional action gaming experience and benefits from a far greater share of nostalgic defenders willing to stand up and declare it an underrated gem. That said, both halves of the game are still plagued by some egregious design flaws in my eyes.

The Overworld areas are devoid of anything resembling thrills or challenge and seem to exist exclusively to lengthen the play time through cash grinding. Adding insult to that injury, the shops themselves aren’t exactly filled with exciting gear. The sword upgrades for the Nova Suit are a must for sure. Apart from them, the only other items on offer are limited use projectile weapons called Bolt Bombs and these are largely underwhelming. You’ll quickly learn not to waste your money on them. Playing as Keith here may not be anywhere near as frustrating as navigating the streets and parks of Henry Jekyll’s London, but it’s just as tedious in its own special way.

The Underworld is a bit better than that, at least. The Nova Suit can run fast and jump high, while the enemies you face off against are a lot bigger and showcase some pretty outlandish designs at times. You’ve gotta love the dudes that are giant revolvers with faces or the Frankenstein monster heads with no bodies, just limbs sprouting directly from their humongous craniums. Once the novelty of these critters and the initial exhilaration of simply being able to move around at an acceptable speed wears off, however, it’ll dawn on you that these Underworld areas repeat themselves quite a bit. You get the same couple of alternating music tracks, the same background tiles (recolored occasionally, at least), and the same baddies and insta-death spike hazards over and over. Leaps of faith are also a regular annoyance, since Keith is tasked with making his way downward to the boss waiting at the lowest point of each level. You’ll frequently have to cross your fingers and hope there’s not a bed of spikes lurking just out of view as you drop from a ledge. Your chances are about 50/50 in my experience. Hooray for unlimited continues, I guess.

The mushy cherry atop this failure sundae is the lackluster presentation. Keith Courage’s Overworld graphics are closer to an NES game’s than what Sega brought to the table in their own debut Genesis pack-in, Altered Beast, and the Underworld’s are no great shakes, either, with their overreliance on recycled assets and plain black backgrounds. At least the music’s alright. Not exceptional in any way, mind you, merely competent.

Having now laid out all the evidence, is Keith Courage in Alpha Zones truly a bad game? Yes. Yes, it is. I wouldn’t single it out as excruciatingly awful or anything like that. It’s not even close to being the worst thing I’ve played on my PC Engine in the past year. I’d rather run through Keith Courage another ten times over than touch War of the Dead again, for example. Even so, there’s nothing about it I can actively recommend over the dozens, if not hundreds of more polished and exciting 16-bit action-platformers. The localization is inane, the pace drags, the combat is shallow, the level design is barely there, and it can’t even bring the eye candy. Keep in mind that all this is coming from the guy who did end up recommending Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde to fans of crazy experimental fare.

Did Keith single-handedly throttle the nascent TurboGrafx-16 in its crib, though? Hardly. NEC’s management missteps were legion throughout the life of the system. They failed to beat Sega to market, refused to bring over many of the PC Engine’s best releases, hesitated to match their competitors’ marketing budgets…the list goes on. They were consistently their own worst enemies and that extended far beyond the choice of a resoundingly weak pack-in game.

So leave poor Keith alone. He didn’t kill your favorite console. He’s not a bad boy, really, just a touch slow.