Tendo City

Threads in this series: Odyssey 2, Atari 7800 (& 2600 games), Game Boy (B&W), Super Nintendo, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, and PC Racing Games. They're also all on Sega-16, but I don't have a handy list of the thread locations for those posts.


System History
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The TurboGrafx-CD, also known as the PC Engine CD, was the first ever home gaming platform that used CD-based media. The only even remotely similar predecessor is the Japan-only MSX Laserdisc drive from the mid '80s, but that was mostly just used for games which played video in the background while putting MSX graphics on top, I believe, and had very thin support and an extremely high price. The PC Engine/Turbo CD was pricey, but was within the realm of possibility for normal people. When Hudson first thought of the idea of a home system with CD media in the mid '80s, it was a crazy-advanced idea. When the system released in late 1988 in Japan hard drives were far too small to fit all of the data from a CD, so they had to use very expensive setups in order to test games -- and to try a game, you'd have to spend a lot of money to get a CD made. This was long before CD-Rs. But after NEC released the PC Engine, a year later they followed it with the PCE CD, so despite an initially extremely thin game library, the CD drive released. The launch games were Fighting Street, a fine port of the bad arcade game Street Fighter (1), and NoRiKo, a "game" about an idol singer popular at the time.

The original Turbo CD and PCE CD are in the form of a two-part addon, one a base unit that your TurboGrafx or PC Engine attaches to (the two regions have different designs, but the same internals), and the other a CD drive that also attaches to the base unit (these are identical between regions except for color and language text on the shell). It's a somewhat odd system, but it works. The base unit has the added hardware in it, including a capacitor-backed save memory chip that allows games to save data to the system and a tiny 64KB of RAM to load data from the disc, plus another 64KB of RAM meant for audio loading, though some games used it for more data, if they could squeeze the audio into a smaller space. The base unit also has composite AV output jacks on the back, for better video quality than the RF that the original TG16 or PCE support. Hudson and NEC would later release many more models, and two more CD formats, the Super CD system card (with 256KB of RAM onboard) and the Arcade Card (with 2MB of RAM onboard), but with addons the first system can play any CD games. The Turbo CD and Turbo Duo (combo system with Super CD and HuCard systems built in to one unit) were miserable failures in the US, selling an unknown but not out of the tens of thousands number of systems. In Japan, though, it was a successful format, and had game support from its release in late 1989 until early 1997, followed by one final game in late 1999. The Turbo/PCE CD is probably the most successful console addon ever compared to the amount its base system sold, probably in no small part thanks to the Duo line getting CD drives into the hands of most everyone who bought a PCE from late 1991 on. However, because of how badly it did in the US, only a small fraction of the systems' library released here. Many games have language barriers, but thankfully, unlike TurboGrafx-16 HuCards, the CD system is region-free, so import CDs work fine on any system. I do have a region-modded TG16, but still, not having to get the CD drive modded too or something is great.

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Notes
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This list seems to have the longest per review of any of the threads in this series yet, I think... but even so, they're not quite as long as full reviews -- compare that Avenger review thread I made recently to the Avenger summary below, this one is shorter. Still, some are not short. I had fewer games to cover, so I put more time into each one, and also a bunch of these games are imports which a lot of people probably don't know all that well or have never heard of at all, so I spent more time explaining stuff. I hope it helps.

For one last starting note, I only have the regular Turbo CD system so far. I got the CD drive repaired, by this forum's Keith Courage, this past summer, but only had a US system card 2.0 at the time, and haven't gotten anything better yet. I think I'll get a Super System Card pretty soon, and more Super CD games to go with it, but I wanted to do this thread as it is first, before I go into those games as well. The CD drive mostly works, but still has some issues, worse with some games than others -- Avenger almost always runs fine for instance, but the sound very often fails early in level 1 of Daisenpuu Custom. There's clearly still something not right with this drive, which is a bit annoying given that the laser is new (replaced with the repairs). Ah well, at least it usually works, and that's fantastic, I love the system despite the occasional music-failure annoyances.

Of course, as I said above, so far I can only play regular CD titles on my Turbo CD system, so that's all I actually review; I've played other games elsewhere, but I almost always only review games I've played on the original system in lists like this one. Super and Arcade CD games usually have better graphics than regular CD titles, since they have more RAM to work with, but these are what I've played so far, and some of them look nice. There are quite a few regular CD titles, so there's been plenty to play.

One last thing: if I don't say what region of the game I have, it's the US version (Japanese titles are marked). Also, for simplicity I just call the system the "Turbo CD" or TCD no matter what region the game is from. It's all the same system after all.


Here normally I list my favorite games for the platform in question, but I'm not sure if I can make a list with much confidence yet, but I can mention some games I definitely like: Alzadick, Avenger, Cosmic Fantasy 2, Shanghai II, Splash Lake, Ys I & II, and Efera & Jiliora. There are more games than those that I like, though; it's always hard to choose, and there are so many more games than these that I need to play, too... I've played some in emulation, but far from all!


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TURBO CD Game Opinion Summaries
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The Addams Family - One player. The Addams Family, from Icom, is a TCD-exclusive, and US-only-released, 2d platformer based on the Addams Family. Ocean also made Addams Family games, released on many platforms, based off of the movies from around that time, but this game is not Ocean's game, it is entirely different. As with most of Icom's platformers, though, the game has issues. Icom could make good adventure games, but their platformer abilities had more mixed results, and you can see that here. The Ocean games are also kind of mediocre, though, so I don't know which is better. So, in this game, as you would expect from an Addams Family game, you play as... their greedy lawyer. Yes, you do not play as any of the Addams's in this game, but instead play as their lawyer, armed with an umbrella which can shoot bullets, who is at the mansion attempting to collect some money from their safe, because apparently they owe it to him. As usual on the Turbo CD, the story is told through static images with voiceover behind them. This game does not have actual cutscenes or voice actors from the movie in it, but instead has static images and its own, lower-budget, cast. It's good enough to do for a game. Your character's job won't be easy, though, because the Addams Family will not just allow him to go in and take the cash, he'll have to earn it, if he can stay alive. It seems like a strange choice of characters to me, as the Ocean games all have you playing as Fester, Gomez, or Puggsly Addams (no, no games for the female characters, Ocean was sexist clearly), but I guess it works. You have several lives, but no continues, in this game, so it won't be easy to complete. As with all of Icom's platformers I've played, the game has somewhat suspect collision detection; they just never quite got it right. This game rarely demands super-accurate platform jumping, as you'll probably be doing more shooting than jumping, but still it is annoying. The graphics and music are okay. They're not high-budget work, clearly, but they're acceptable and look better than some Western movie-licensed games. There are some nice details at times as well, such as areas where one of the Addamses is hitting golf balls at you from the background that you have to avoid, a fight against psychically controlled toys in Wednesday's room, and more.

This game starts out with a linear stage where you go to the mansion, but once you arrive, it gets a bit more open-ended. Your goal in the mansion is to search for keys that let you go in doors, so as to explore more of the mansion and eventually find that money. Again, you do a lot of shooting in this game. Bosses take a lot of hits to defeat, and even normal enemies need a few shots, and you can't jump on enemies to hurt them, that'll just get you hurt. Level designs are okay, but nothing great. Because of the loading for each area, it's annoying when I go through a door only to find a single-screen dead end room, because that means right back to the load screen... oh well. This game is on the short side if you know where to go and what to do, but it will take some practice before you get good enough to stay alive and go to the right places. I've gotten partway through it, but haven't gotten more than a third of the way into it so far, I think. It's an okay game, I guess. My first impression of this game was poor, but once I got used to the way the game plays, with having to avoid the enemies and shoot them, and also learning where to go at which point, it started getting a bit better. This game isn't too expensive, so if you have a Turbo CD and like platformers, give it a try; it's average at best and probably isn't quite that, but there are much worse games out there, and this game does have some unique elements to it, such as all of the exploration required in this game that you didn't usually see in platformers in 1991.


Alzadick: Summer Carnival '92 (J exclusive) - One player, saves to internal memory. Alzadick is a time-trial shmup, or space shooter, designed for a contest held that summer by its publisher Naxat Soft. This game doesn't really have a normal full single player game; there is a "Story" mode, but there are only two levels there, and they won't take long at all to complete. Instead, it's just got a 2 minute score attack mode and a 5 minute time attack mode on one level (it's got two bosses, one at 2 mins and one at 5), and a 2 minute score attack practice mode on a second level that has no bosses. And that's it. As a result of the extremely limited content, reviews of this game are usually harsh or dismissive. However, after trying teh game in an emulator, I quickly came to love this game, and I had to have it after I got the actual system, too. And yes, I'm still playing this game regularly. It may have only five minutes of content, but this is my favorite TG16/CD timed-mode level that I've played so far. Alzadick has great graphics for a regular CD title too, and even has some parallax scrolling! Very nice. The next shmup Naxat Soft published, the exceptional Super CD game Nexzr, looks better, but even so, Alzadick does a good job and looks great. The level designs are great as well. As you would expect from a CD title, Alzadick has a great CD audio soundtrack. That is really the only thing here that makes the choice of a CD necessary, but this electronic-music soundtrack is fantastic and easily justifies it on its own! I like Alzadick's soundtrack a lot. There aren't many tracks, but what there are are great. I wish that the game had more levels, of course, but the two that it does have are both good, very well-designed levels. Alzadick isn't a pushover, either; it took me some time practicing until I was able to complete the 5 minute mode. The game actually requires some skill to complete. The game also saves (to the system) your best score in each of the three score-attack modes, which is nice.

Alzadick is a fairly traditional 4th gen shooter. Your ship has four weapon types, each of which is a different firing pattern for your gun. I prefer type 3 myself, since that gives the most forward and side fire coverage. Try not to get hit, since hits will reduce weapon power, and reduced weapon power will greatly decrease your scoring potential. If you get hit at minimum weapon strength you lose a life, and three deaths and you lose. With a little practice game over will be quite rare, but getting hit a time or two and losing weapon power happens, and ruins games. That's okay, though; this game does require skill, and that's great. I wouldn't like this game nearly as much if it was easy. You also have a superbomb, but only have ONE per run and there are no pickups for more. You choose one of four firing patterns for the superbomb before you start each game. Each of the four patterns has advantages and disadvantages, but I think I like the six-lines-up or swirl styles best. I find the bomb most useful at the midboss (2 minute point boss), myself. Graphics and enemy types repeat often, but there is enough variety to keep things interesting. Each enemy wave usually waits until the previous one is done before entering the screen, which is a key strategic element -- killing waves faster will fit more waves into the limited time. There are also some hidden bonuses, of course.

Naxat Soft based its 2 and 5 minute modes in this and their other shmups on Hudson's 2 and 5 minute modes popularized in the Star Soldier series (from Super Star Soldier on), but unlike Hudson, where your goal in either mode is simply to score as many points as possible in the set time, Naxat changes the rules. Two minute mode works like Hudson: Your goal is to score as many points as you can in the set time. The applies to both the "Practice" mode, which is just another 2-minute mode just without a boss at the end due to that level not having one, and the regular 2 minute mode, which takes the first two minutes of the main 5 minute stage and has you play that. In 5 minute mode, however, your goal is actually to see how quickly you can score one million points. Once you score a million points, the game ends. If you fail to reach a million before the five minute timer runs out, you lose. In addition, you must meet a mid-point score requirement too. Oddly, while nothing else in this game is configurable, you can set the time and points needed at this midpoint score. The default requires 500,000 points at 2:30, which is challenging but possible with some practice. Avoid getting hit much! You can easily make impossible goals of course, too. Want to set it to requiring 900,000 points in a minute? You could never succeed, but it lets you set it to that anyway if you want. This is kind of a weird feature, though, considering that you cannot change the overriding 5 minute timer and 1 million point overall victory condition. Still, it's kind of neat to mess with, for making things easier while you're still learning the stage, or harder after you've played the game a lot. As for the "Story" mode, the two levels there are one for each of the two stages. Before and after each level there's a screen of Japanese text telling you the story. I don't know what it is. The levels are the same in Score Attack or Story mode, though, except in Story mode you only get one ship, so if you die you lose and will have to try again. The first stage ("Practice" in Score Attack) still doesn't have a boss, unfortunately. Otherwise I like that stage, though; it's a cool looking big red ship. The second stage (2/5 minute modes in Score Attack) is much longer and better designed, and has those two bosses, but the color scheme is more muted.

Overall, I really, really like Alzadick. The game is expensive -- expect to pay $50-plus for the game -- but I, at least, think that it's great. The game has limited content, and playing it over and over will eventually reach diminishing returns as the game, like most 4th gen shmups, does not have a complex scoring system so all you can really do is try to kill more of the enemies and panels faster in order to get a few more waves to appear, but even so, this game is just so much fun to play through that I don't really mind that. Alzadick was one of my most-played games in TG16 emulation, and now I'm playing it quite a bit on the actual system too. The game is one of my favorite regular-CD titles on the system, and is a great game to sit down with and play for ten minutes here and there.


Avenger (J exclusive) - One player. Avenger is from Laser Soft, which was one of Telenet Japan's many divisions, along with Riot, Reno, Renovation, and Wolf Team. Telenet released many Turbo CD games, including this 1990 title, but faded mid-generation, and by 1995 Telenet had fallen apart. Wolf Team was bought by Namco (they became Namco's Tales Studio), Renovation's American publishing arm was bought by Sega, and the rest shut down or became a shadow of its former self; Telenet's 1995-2004 (their last year) release library consists exclusively of pachinko, slot machine, and mahjong games. While they lasted though, Telenet made some interesting games. Telenet supported the Genesis and SNES, but they released the first third-party game for the Turbo CD, and supported the Sega CD for several years as well. Avenger is not one of Telenet's more popular releases, however, but I think it's an under-appreciated, quite high quality game. This game released in 1990, still in the early years of CD gaming. The game has a Turbo CD-style introduction (with mostly static images and a voiceover on top) and ending, which is nice; unfortunately the story before each stage is just told in Japanese text, but still, the intro is nice. Many other early, regular-CD Turbo CD shmups don't do that and are just expanded HuCard games with CD music. In between levels there are also some nice static images with a fanfare, showing the level you just blasted through. These recieve praise, but the ingame graphics are often harshly criticized. And while it is true that many of the environments are bland, I think that the art design of the ships is pretty good. I think this game looks okay, really -- the ships look nice enough and are well designed, and the action is fast, furious, and sometimes flashy. The CD audio soundtrack is also reasonably good. It's not one of the system's best, but it's good and does a fine job of backing the action. Overall the game looks okay and sounds good.

In terms of its gameplay, Avenger reminds me a bit of a Toaplan-style game (like Twin Cobra or so) in design, but the game has one key original design idea: your ship, which is a futuristic helicopter, can rotate left or right, and by holding the II button (I fires; leave the Turbo switches OFF for this game or the controls will not work right!), you can lock your turret. With Turbo on the lock won't work, so leave it off. You have autofire anyway. You can aim up to about a 45 degree angle in either direction. You also have a "bomb" attack and secondary weapons, and have a shield which can take 5 hits. One ship type drops powerups when destroyed, which then cycle between upgrading your main weapon, your secondary weapon, or giving you a hit point back if you've taken damage. There are three of each type of weapon, which you slowly unlock over the course of the game (though there is a code that lets you use all of them from the beginning). It's a solid system, and I like the different options you have. The health is important too; it's easy to get hit in this game and if you die you start the level over, so the health system gives you some margin for error. Also, the weapon-select screen options are in English, which is nice. The aiming-lock system is highly reminiscent of the design used in the much later title Under Defeat for the Sega Dreamcast. I absolutely loved that game (it's my second favorite Dreamcast shmup, after only Ikaruga!), and then heard that this one does something similar, and that made me want to check out Avenger. The bland graphics left me initially unimpressed, but after getting my Turbo CD repaired this year I decided to buy the game anyway. I'm very glad that I did, because as I said, I think this game is good. I really love the aiming-with-lock controls, they are what makes the game so interesting I think. Avenger is a challenging game which will require practice to beat. YOu get infinite continues, but because you lose all powerups when you die, and there are some very challenging parts where having more power will be a big help, memorizing the game enough to stay alive is important. Some enemies shoot at you, but others shoot in patterns you must learn the safe points in. The last level can be very frusterating after you die the first time, for instance... but that's how shmups worked back in 1990, I don't hold that against the game. It just made beating it that much more of an accomplishment, anyway. Avenger lets you play some of the levels in different orders, which can add some variety, but you'll need to play all the levels anyway in order to complete the game. Despite the frustration some of the harder parts of the game induces, I keep coming back to this game anyway, which says something. Avenger may not have the best graphics (though they are better than, say, Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra) on HuCard...), but it has some addictive, quality gameplay, and the game is well worth playing. I'd highly recommend this to any Under Defeat fan, and recommend it generally as well. This is a solid, fun, under-rated shmup.


Bikkuriman Daijikai (J exclusive) - One player, password save. This isn't really a game, and I'm not one who can "play" it. Bikkuriman Daijikai is bascally a fan/data disc, full of character descriptions and such, all in Japanese of course, and not much else. The only "gameplay" is some trivia questions, which is where the passwords come into play... though why a game on a system with internal saving has password-only saving, I have no idea. THis was one of Hudson's earlier discs for the system in 1989, so at the time that they could do something like this at all -- a disc full of images and audio clips and such -- was very original, but it has aged very badly and tehre's no reason to touch this today unless you know Japanese and are a serious Bikkuriman fan, which I'm not on either count. I have this because it came in a lot with some stuff I was interested in. Obviously the quiz questions are impossible to answer unless you know Japanese and know about Bikkuriman, too. I don't know either one.


Cosmic Fantasy 2 - One player, saves to internal memory. Cosmic Fantasy 2, by Laser Soft (Telenet) and translated and published in the US by Working Designs, is a traditional JRPG. It's a very simplistic one, with Dragon Quest-inspired but even more simplified combat that has basic, special attack, critical hit, and miss-free combat, but it is an RPG. The game has cutscenes (with minimal animation as per usual on Turbo CD), nice in-game graphics with decent-sized sprites and some nice graphical design, and a story that is part cliche, part original. The extreme simplicity of the battles may seem bad, given that even bosses will just do a set amount of damage per hit, every turn, but you get used to it, and the good graphics and decent, if initially cliche, story keep you going. As for that story, you are of course a boy from a medieval village who has to rescue his childhood friend/female love interest after she gets kidnapped because she is actually a princess. Yeah, zero points for originality there, even back in the early '90s. It gets a bit more interesting later, though -- as per the title, this isn't a pure fantasy game, but does have sci-fi elements and a darker side to its story. I'm not all that far into the game, but honestly, even though I didn't really expect to, I'm liking this game. The encounter rate is annoying, but it could be worse, and the presentation helps as well. Also, even though the combat is extremely simple, that isn't all bad. Sure it means there isn't much variety, but it also means you can plan what will happen quite nicely. I do like that. Cosmic Fantasy 2 got at least one US magazine's "RPG of the Year" award in 1992, and I can kind of see why -- between the then-impressive CD elements such as CD music, cutscenes, etc (this was the first menu-based RPG on a console in the US, after all), the good graphics, and the simple but decent gameplay behind that, it's an okay package. I would have liked to see more complexity for sure, and don't know if I have the patience to get all the way through this game, but still, for what it is, with good graphics, a decent story, okay gameplay, and more, it is good and was worth getting. Also available on Sega CD, in Japanese only, in the "Cosmic Fantasy Stories" collection.


Daisenpuu Custom (J exclusive) - One player. Daisenpuu, or Twin Hawk as the Western arcade release was called, is a vertical shmup from Toaplan. The game is somewhat like Twin Cobra (aka Kyuukyoku Tiger), but has several unique elements, most notably its allied-fighter system and its complete lack of any aerial enemies. In this game only bullets can kill you, all enemies are strictly land or water-bound. Indeed, almost all enemies in this game are tanks or ships. There are a lot of different kinds of tanks, but at first the very limited enemy variety can get repetitive. I got used to it after a while, though, and it does make the game unique. The idea is that your nation has planes, while the enemy in this World War II-analog world has only ground forces, tanks and ships particularly. So, you're going in to stop them. You gain greater firepower yourself with some powerups, but it just adds more guns; there are no alternate weapons. This is a simple game. The allied-fighter system brings six fighters onto the screen when you press the other button. This replaces the megabomb many shmups have. These fighters will fly straight ahead and shoot, too, so they will increase your firepower. However, if they get hit by bullets, they'll go down. They will shift left and right slightly if you move left and right, but you can't really maneuver them much. Still, they can help kill enemies, or protect you in key moments if you plan ahead, since it takes a little while for them to fly onto the screen. Daisenpuu has lots of bullets to avoid, and is a challenging game as always from Toaplan. Daisenpuu isn't their hardest game, but it is a good challenge.

This version, however, is Daisenpuu Custom, the CD release. Most reviewers are very harsh on the CD version, and say that you should play the HuCard version instead. Well, I have that version as well, and honestly, I like this CD version more. The biggest difference between the two versions is, of course, that the CD version has CD audio music. Unfortunately this was clealry a very low budget port, so there aren't any cutscenes whatsoever, but at least it does have a quite nice CD audio soundtrack, which is a massive improvement over the poor, annoying music of the HuCard version. Toaplan could do great cartridge music, but Daisenpuu doesn't show that at all. Fortunately though, this CD version exists as well. Second, the CD version adds one all-new level, and has new bosses for the first and last levels as well. Also, it breaks the game into levels, instead of being one always-scrolling game as the cartridge versions are. This was necessary because of the CD medium, but some people might dislike it. I don't mind, though, and like the new bosses -- the game fills in some areas where the HuCard has bizarre gaps, where I expected a boss but there is nothing. The new level is nice as well. However, and this has gotten a lot of criticism, they did change some things, and reduced level variety in some areas. So, the flooded-city section in level 2 is gone, replaced with more generic streets. Level 1's bridge is gone, replaced with a rock bridge that matches the rest of the area. Some other areas later in the game are altered as well. This was likely done in order to give each level a more consistent visual look beginning to end for RAM-restriction reasons; remember that regular CD titles have only 64KB of RAM to work with. It's not much. I do wish that that flooded city section had remained, but overall, I think the complaints about the graphical alterations are overplayed. The actual gameplay is exactly the same, after all, and there IS more content overall thanks to those added bosses and that new level, where you go through a desert city. Overall Daisenpuu Custom is a simple but very fun shooter that I think is pretty good. This game is not visually complex and doesn't have much depth, but the simple fun of flying along and shooting tanks and ship turrets with solid Toaplan shooting design behind it holds up. This is another good, under-rated game. It can't hope to compete visually with the later Super CD shmups, but the gameplay is good. Daisenpuu Custom is an arcade port with added content, so this version is TCD-exclusive, but the original Daisenpuu is available in arcades, Genesis (Japan only release), and TurboGrafx-16 (Japan only release).


Deko Boko Densetsu (J exclusive) - Five players (with multitap). Deko Boko Densetsu is a racing game from Telenet (yes, again!) that was clearly inspired by the Moto Roader games for the TG16. Essentially, Dekoboko Densetsu is a somewhat cutesey and simplified Moto Roader clone. The game is a top-down racing game where all cars are always on the screen together at all times, as you'd expect, and you have to complete a series of races. If you win, you move on to the next race; otherwise, try again. There are five racers per race, and each can either be a human or an AI, as in Moto Roader. Unlike that game, though, Dekoboko does not have car part buying or different course options. Instead, you just play through one championship, that's it, and go straight from each race to the next. The part-buying element to Moto Roader added some strategy, but as it basically ended up being a frustrating puzzle minigame (in Moto Roader, you need to buy parts in the correct order if you want to have a serious chance at winning races), that's not all bad. Losing the different circuit choices is unfortunate, though. To mix things up a bit, the game does have some weapon pickups, which is nice. As with Moto Roader though, if you're at the forward edge of the screen, and thus ahead in the race, you have almost no forward vision. This means that either you must memorize all the tracks, or stay farther back on the screen until late in the race. You get used to it, but it can be frustrating sometimes. There are also obstacles and traps to avoid on the course. If a car takes too much damage it will explode, so try to avoid them if you want to have any hope of finishing even the first race -- this game is challenging at first. With practice you will get used to the game, but there is a learning curve. As for the visuals, I like the graphics. The game has an amusing opening which starts out trying to fool you into thinking that this is some serious racing game before revealing the cute reality underneath that. Not bad. Ingame, the graphics are simple, but competently drawn and reasonably varied. The music is decent as well. Overall Deko Boko Densetsu probably isn't as good as the Moto Roader games, since it is simpler and has less content, but it is a decent little game worth a try. Even though I find Moto Roader kind of annoying, I do think this game is alright.


Down Load 2 (J exclusive) - One player. Down Load 2, aka Download 2, is the sequel to NEC's great HuCard shmup Down Load, and it's an interesting game. Flawed, but interesting. Both games are cyberpunk-themed shmups with a decent story and good graphics and gameplay. As with the first game, Down Load 2 is a horizontal shmup. This game is easier than the first game, and indeed the low difficulty level is probably this games' greatest flaw, but with some good cutscenes, solid gameplay, and good graphics with some impressive effects, Down Load 2 is a good game anyway. While you play as the same guy from the first game, this game changes the game system significantly from the first one. In the first game you had a health bar, but if you died you started the stage over. Also you could choose from two of each of your two weapons at the start of each level (which you were then stuck with for the stage), and had a speed-select button. This time your ship is larger -- it's a ship, not just a bike -- and you can switch between your four weapons at any time. The weapons themselves are different, too. Also it now has speed powerups instead of letting you choose, and most importantly, you die in one hit this time. You do get multiple lives now, though, and most levels have some checkpoints. The reduced difficulty means that it's much easier to avoid taking damage than it was in the first game, though; the removal of the health-up item, as there are no extra lives in this game, is really not a problem at all.

Now, for a HuCard game, Down Load had a lot of cutscenes. In a longplay where the player doesn't die, cutscenes took up 17 minutes of DL1's 45 minute length. DL2 is 50 minutes, but 25 minutes are taken up with cutscenes this time, so overall this CD game actually has several minutes LESS gameplay than its HuCard predecessor does; disappointing! Also, this time each level is about the same length. In the first game one level had only one section and was over in a minute or two, while the last had four stages and took over seven minutes. This time, all levels are two to 2 and a half minutes long, and have only one stage each. There is a boss at the end of each level. Some are easy, others are hard; this games' difficulty balance could have used some work. Harder difficulty settings are badly needed too, since some bosses are way too easy. Ah well. The graphics in this game are fantastic, though. TG16 games, and regular CD titles in particular, rarely use any parallax scrolling, but this game is FULL of it! And it's not only the basic "different vertical strips of the screen scroll at different speeds" stuff, either; this game has some real "scrolling plane behind the playfield" parallax too. Awesome. The visual themes are interesting, too. The first two levels look very similar to some stages from the first game, but after that it branches out as you start using your VR/computer to travel through time as you chase the villains. The cutscenes look nice; though the character art is by a different person from the first game (another change!), it looks great. Your main character guy sure has a lot of nude scenes in this game... As always animation is limited, but they did a good job with the system. Of course the voice acting is in Japanese, so I don't really know what was going on, but the basics are easy enough to figure out. For one mild spoiler, yes, at the end of this game, you fight a reborn infant-Hitler-monster thing, on a level full of red biological stuff and Nazi imagery. Yeah, really. Killing Hitler once again? What could be better, for a videogame story? Some of the earlier levels, as you travel through time, are very cool as well. The Rome level is particularly interesting. I thought it was quite clever how the background "pictures" attack you. The Hindu-themed level looks great as well, though it was too short.

Overall, Down Load 2 is a good game, but don't expect it to last very long at all. This game is short and isn't very hard, and as with far too many TG16/CD games, there are absolutely no modes or options in this game; it doesn't even have cheat codes! And since you have infinite continues, unless you artificially limit yourself by not continuing, getting to the last level will be easy. I had a bit more trouble with the final boss, and he did take some effort, but still, this game left me wanting more. I like the game system here -- it's different from the first game but is also good -- but while the first Down Load is probably one of the best HuCard shmups I've played, this game is not quite on that level. The game isn't cheap, either -- expect to pay $25 to over $30 for this. If it was cheap I'd probably be more forgiving, but it's not. Still, this IS a good game. I like the graphics and gameplay, and I'm sure I'll replay it. DL2 is a decently good game, and a nice technical accomplishment for sure.


Efera & Jiliora: The Emblem from Darkness (J exclusive) - Two player simultaneous (with multitap), saves to system ( blocks). Efera & Jiliora, from Brain Grey, is a clearly Ys-inspired top-down fantasy action-RPG starring a pair of female warriors, one a mage and the other a fighter. This game has a somewhat dark story, good gameplay, two player co-op multiplayer, and good graphics, as well. Indeed, Efera & Jilora looks FAR better than Ys I & II does, with both a larger play window and larger, better sprites too. Very nice. The gameplay probably isn't quite up to Ys's level, though. While this game is pretty good, it can be frustrating at times -- your melee weapons have a very short range, and this game does use a button to attack instead of Falcom-style bonking (see Ys below), so be careful. Grind is also required in this game, just like in Falcom games; after reaching the first town, for instance, the very next combat area is quite tough. Fortunately, like Ys, you can save anytime. Also, naturally, language is a factor here. It's nice that the gaem does have voice acting in many cutscenes, and the cutscenes look good (even if, from the beginning, the story is not exactly happy), but there's text as well, in towns and the like. Most of the time this game is easy enough to play, but you will need to talk to everyone in town, and then wander around as well looking for where to go next, if you can't read the language as I can't. Figuring out how to buy items takes practice too; stand on the little platforms in shops to buy. There are no walkthroughs in English for this game, so you're on your own. Make sure to talk to EVERYONE, and explore the towns thoroughly. This game is manageable, as it's reasonably linear, but I did get stuck sometimes starting early on, and had to explore and/or grind more in order to progress. The good gameplay and graphics made me want to keep going, though. I wish that someday this game gets a translation patch, and that would be really awesome, but it IS playable with a little effort -- and that effort is worth it! Despite the occasional frustration, I definitely like this game more than Ys I & II. It looks better, and when I know what I'm doing it plays just as well or better, too. It's also very cool that it has two player co-op! In single player you have to play as either Efera or Jiliora (I prefer playing as the mage, myself), but with another person, both can go through the game together. This is a relatively long RPG, so of course this will take a while, but if you have someone to play this with, go for it. Recommended! This game is sometimes overlooked, probably because of the language barrier, but it's a great game that I really like, and it's well worth getting.


Final Zone II[/b - Final Zone II is a top-down run & gun developed by Telenet and released in the US by NEC. It's considered somewhat average, but I like it. This game is the sequel to a Japanese computer game which was not released here; "Final Zone" on the Genesis is actually a version of the third (and last) game in this series. Final Zone II is one of the earlier CD releases in the US, which means, yes, horrendously bad voice acting! Somewhat like Last Alert, Final Zone II has comically bad voice acting its cutscenes which make even the tragic moments (such as the intro) kind of funny. It's not all bad, though; this is "so bad it's funny" stuff sometimes for sure. Final Zone II is a fairly simple game: get through the eight levels, all linear, vertically-scrolling stages, and you win. The graphics are good-sized and look pretty good for an early CD title. No complaints there. The music is decent to good, as well. The game has a sci-fi story, as you play as a small group of soldiers in powered armor suits who are teh only survivors from their ship and have to defeat the enemies and escape from the planet they crashed on. You start with only one guy, but unlock more as you progress. The female characters are in pink armor, of course, and there are some pretty sexist moments in the story, sadly. Fortunately, the actual gameplay is a lot better than the story. Yes, I like this game! Final Zone II is a simple game, and does not have Last Alert's great strafing controls; instead, more like a Commando game, you simply shoot in the direction you're facing, can use a special attack with the other button, and that's it. The levels are well-designed and can be challenging at times, which is great. With enough replay I'm sure this game gets easy, but I think it has a good difficulty curve, and die regularly even on the first level. It's not impossible though, just a solid challenge -- which is great, compared to way-too-easy Last Alert. This is a simple, classic shooting game, and it's a reasonably good one. I can understand why it gets some criticism, but I think its gameplay is a bit under-rated -- I found myself having a lot more fun with this game than I expected to. Final Zone II doesn't quite have Last Alert's flash, as it has many fewer levels, simpler, more dated controls, no saving, and not as many cutscenes, but it does have solid gameplay, and it costs a lot less than Last Alert, too! So yeah, pick it up for a few bucks. It's worth it, if you like action games (but if you don't and can't speak Japanese, then probably don't bother with the TG16...).


[b]Gulclight TDF2 (J) - One player, saves to internal memory. Gulclight TDF2 is a very basic, and flawed, turn-based tactical-style strategy game from Data West. This is an incredibly simplistic top-down sci-fi strategy game where you control a fleet of warships which have to defeat an alien menace. There aren't any cutscenes here, though; the only story to be found here is the Japanese-language manual and the sentence or two of Japanese text in each mission briefing. The story is that you control the T.D.F. (Terrestrial Defense Force), Earth's defense force of planes, land vehicles, and mechas who have to save the world from the evil Plea alien monsters. Production values don't get much better ingame. Indeed, this is one of those games where the only thing justifying its choice of CD media is its CD music. The music is decent to good early-CD-videogame stuff. I like the opening-screen theme, and the ingame music is nice too. As for the graphics, the sprite work is decent; it's average early '90s mecha and monster stuff, which is a plus if you like that kind of thing. There are little "battle" animations between ships, when they fight, but they're nothing a HuCard game couln't have done. Military Madness's are better, in fact -- those actually have a custom background. Here, larger versions of your and the enemy's ships appear with the stage map as a background, nothing more. And those stage backgrounds are not too thrilling. The first level is supposed to be a city at night, but it just comes across as a blue map with little rectangles and stuff on it, with no variation. The second level is better, with trees, roads, and hills (plus your units can move farther on roads than through the trees, too), but still the graphics are basic, and it doesn't get better. This game has to have been made on an extremely limited budget! It is interesting that your units change from mission to mission, though. You are not following one unit, or one person's, story, here, it seems. Instead, you're just following the TDF's battles in this war against the Plea.

As for import-ability, while the gameplay is too simple, this game is at least easy for the English-only speaker to play. The main screen displays and ingame menus are in English. Only the manual, mission briefing screens (there is nothing important on them), and ship and weapon names are in Japanese. Ship stats? What stats? All you can see is each TDF or PLEA ship/monster's name, location, health bar, "Lv" bar, and movement range. Yes, this game is really stripped-down. Also, all units attack the same way: left/right/up/down only, and only to the next space. There are no ranged attackers here, no units that can use special abilities, heal the other ships, etc. Each one of your ships IS different -- the weapons they are armed with (each unit has one or two weapons, but which ones each unit has vary) are not the same, and max health and movement ranges vary as well -- but still, since all units operate and attack the same way, the game feels samey. Enemies have a similar lack or worse of variety -- generally each mission has only a couple of enemy types. Since units don't have real strength stats, levels, or anything, it's hard to know exactly how strong any ship is, which is frustrating. On that note, as for that "Lv" bar, I'm not sure exactly WHAT it means. I'd to be able to read the manual to know that, and I can't read Japanese, sadly, and there is no information about how to play this game online. I can tell that it changes based on which weapon you equip, though, so my only guess is that it represents max weapon power, or something along those lines. Lv is definitely not much of an indicator of unit strength. For instance the enemies on the first level have low Lv levels, but are much stronger than your individual ships anyway. This lack of numbers really is an issue. Imagine playing something like Fire Emblem, except your specific potential damage range and hit-chance percent are never displayed to the player! Yeah, it's a pain. Those numbers have to exist, but you aren't allowed to see what they are. Awful design there. All you can do is just look at how far the enemies' health bar goes down, or doesn't if it was a miss as it often is.

On the note of damage, at first I thought this game was broken and impossible. Looking at the two bits of "review" this game has online in English that I could find, at Mobygames and GameReviewDen, both comment on how hard this game is. And indeed, I lost badly my first handful of times I tried the game. The first level pits five of your ships against six enemies, and as I said earlier, on a one-on-one basis you are outgunned. Even though all units heal a bit every turn, I lost badly, rarely even managing to take out one enemy before being wiped out, or losing my lead unit; if your leader, the unit in the center of your starting group, loses, it's an instant game over. I didn't give up on the game, though, and eventually through luck and experimentation managed to figure out the key to the game: You can stack units! Specifically, you can put two units on a space. Then, if you tell one of those two units to attack, your first unit will attack, then the enemy will attack your first unit, and then your second unit will attack, become the "top" unit (swapping with the other unit). The enemy cannot attack that second unit, which is really important because they CANNOT stack like you can. There is one thing to be cautious of, though: your other units cannot move through a space which currently has two of your units on it. In the first mission this is irrelevant, since it's in the air, but in land-based mission two, for example, this matters. Also, since you often seem to start with five units, you don't start with an even number of units to group. Still, with this strategy, I was able to get through the first mission in only a couple of tries. Since luck is such an important factor in this game, both in hoping for enemy attacks to miss and for yours to hit, victory took a few tries, but this made it possible. What was my reward? A screen, in Engrish, saying "Congratuation", of course! I could expect no better. However, I WAS surprised to see that the game saved my progress afterwards! The game does not initially create a save file, you see, so I thought it didn't save... until I hit reset after losing a few times at mission two, and I found that yes, the game does indeed then create a file, so you can continue from any level you have reached. That's fantastic. I also liked that mission two has a somewhat more strategic map, as I described earlier. So yeah, the very few things I've read about this game in English call it a terrible game, but it's not THAT bad. The game is too simple (not much variety here!) and definitely has flaws, but I kind of enjoy it anyway, and will continue to play it once in a while for sure. It may or may not be worth a look, if you like this kind of game.


Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken (J exclusive) - One player. Hihou Densetsu is an okay, but not great, platform-action game from Arc Co. Ltd, now known as Arc System Works. Yes, they did not always make good fighting games. Hihou Densetsu clearly was inspired by sources such as Indiana Jones, Ghosts n Goblins, Ys I&II, and other popular platformers and TG16 games. The game stars Chris (or something like that; the game has absolutely no English text either in the manual, CD, or ingame, so that's just the best guess at how names should be spelled), a girl (yes, she is a girl, even though her sprite design and costume are somewhat androgynous) who is searching for her father, an archaeologist or something, who is missing in South America. So, she's off on an adventure to go through tombs, kill Indians, villains, monsters, and the like. You know, it's your usual racially insensitive adventure story through jungle tombs. There are a few twists along the way, though if you can read Japanese you'll be spoiled for them, since apparently the manual describes every one of them in detail! Yeah, great idea there... or not. The story is told by cutscenes, and there is a cutscene between every level. They are done with TGCD-standard very limited amounts of animation. This game has even less animation than most games on this system, though; usually it's just got a sequence of stills with a voiceover. The art design is solid, though. It's nothing great or original, but the game is decently drawn. Don't expect anything fancy like parallax here, though, and the graphics could look better, but aren't awful either. Overall, the graphics are probably average. The games' sound is also average.

Hihou Densetsu is a somewhat short game, but it makes up for its length with its difficulty. Please note, this game does NOT have saving. You do get unlimited continues, but have to start the game over if you turn the system off, always a very unwelcome "feature". Each level in the game is made up of two stages and a bossfight at the end of the second stage, and the saving is between levels, not stages; run out of lives, and you start the level over. The stages in this game are short, but there is a clock and the time limits are even shorter, so it will take practice and memorization in order to get through each level. Thanks to the traps and tricky jumps this game really is memorization-heavy. The game is linear, though -- there are very few times when you're doing anything other than moving straight along a set path, so there isn't really exploration. I don't mind that, myself, and honestly kind of like the level designs, but some dislike the games' fairly simple, linear stage layouts. The environment often is more of a threat than the enemies, but you will need to fight them off along the way as well, and learn boss patterns at the end of each level. One hint: The first disappearing platforms in the first level won't disappear if you are standing on them, so after jumping on one don't rush to try to get to the top quickly -- you're in no danger of falling. By level three or four the game won't be so kind, though, so don't get used to it. I haven't managed to finish this game, but it's decent enough that I expect I will eventually. Thanks to all the traps, memorization, and frustration the game sometimes stops being fun, but I do want to see the rest of the levels, and the game is decent enough to certainly be worth a try, at least for platformer fans. There are very few non-Super CD Turbo CD platformers outside of the Valis series, but this is one of them, and while nothing above average overall (and perhaps below it), it's decent enough that I kind of like it.


Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Shutsoudouhen (J exclusive) - One player, saves to system. Jantei Monogatari, published by Atlus, is a series of mahjong games. Yes, Atlus's longest-running TG16/CD production was a mahjong series. As with most mahjong games, you play as a guy and play against various girls, with fanservicey scenes your reward for victory. This game has more story than just that, though -- as the title (detective something) suggests, this is a sci-fi game. You play as future detective Deiban, and with your female sidekick have to stop various female villains before they can accomplish their villainous plots by beating them at mahjong. You start out defending some children who are in trouble in their school thanks to one of the villains' underlings, for instance. The story scenes play out with limited interaction -- you don't just watch all the time and then finally play mahjong, but do make choices. There are two choice wheels at the bottom, with eight total options, but this is a simple game and trial and error will get you through even if you don't know the language, fortunately; just keep trying options until something works and progresses the story. There is plenty of voice acting, which helps as well. The visuals are nice, too -- the cutscene/adventure part of this game looks good for a regular-CD title. Once you get to a mahjong battle, your guy faces off one one one against the opponent. Yeah, this is 1-on-1 mahjong only, no full four-player games unfortunately. Also the game fills up a bit too much of the screen on my HDTV, so the bottom half of my tiles is cut off -- very annoying! It does display the whole picture on my CRT, though; must have a smaller cut-off area around the screen (my HDTV is rear-projection and not new...). Also, if you are successful in the battles, there are some special options you can buy with points between rounds. The options are all in Japanese text, though, so good luck figuring out what they do. You can also transform into super mode, for a slight power boost I presume, but only do so if you have a good hand I would expect.

Beyond that though, this is a mahjong game. It is important to note that like most such games, this game game does NOT explain how to play. The manual has a several-page-long comic, some basic control and interface descriptions, and that's it; nothing at all about how the game plays. You'd better already know how to play two-player mahjong. I don't know the rules very well, and aren't any good at memorizing what winning hands are, so I haven't managed to win rounds of this game. I don't know poker, and with more tiles in your hand and a great many complex rules, mahjong is a lot more complex than that game is to learn. This game will not help you with that in any way. I'll return to this after I manage to learn some more about how to actually put winning hands together in this game. Overall though, with good visuals in the story scenes and okay mahjong action, this seems like a decent mahjong game. The system has a lot of them, though, so I have no idea how it compares to the others.


Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Kanketsuhen (J exclusive) - One player, saves to system. Released a couple of months after the above title, this second volume of Jantei Monogatari II is very similar to the first, except with a few additions. Most importantly, the story is new, and you fight new opponents. Also, this game adds a Mahjong mode in addition to the main Story mode, if you want to go straight to the action and do some one-on-one fights against five opponents from the game. This is a welcome addition for sure. The interface graphics have also been improved a bit, particularly in the story scenes. The game does reuse a lot of animations from the first game, though; even though the story is new, the hero's transformation scene, the overlong die-roll animation, etc. all are reused from the first volume. The gameplay is just the same as the first one, too, with no changes. The few improvements it has, though, put this as slightly better than the first volume of JM2.


Last Alert - One player, saves to system. Telenet's Last Alert is a top-down run & gun action game. With many cutscenes, lots of levels, some variety in level designs along the way, and that the game saves your progress as you play, Last Alert is a pretty impressive game for 1990, when it released. The gmae also has fantastic controls -- unlike many run & gun games from its time, this one has a strafe-lock button, so you can lock your firing direction with ease! It makes shooting easy. Controls are good, as well. The game has some flaws, though. Most notably, the voice acting in this NEC-published US release is absolutely abysmal, to a comical degree. Also, the graphics are small, there is no multiplayer, and the game is easy and sorely lacking in challenge. This game gets a fair amount of praise from Turbo fans, and it deserves some of it, but the downsides are real. In Last Alert you play as Guy Kazama, a muscular '80s style action hero. You're off to beat a series of villains who want to take over the world, naturally. The game has cutscenes between missions, with the usual Turbo CD-style barely-animated-scenes-with-voice, and conversations with each boss once you reach them. However, the story is generic action/spy movie stuff, and the voice acting really is awful. That bad voice acting is entertainingly bad at times, though, so there is that. Also while the story's far from great, a game, or even movie, in this genre rarely does much more. Back in 1990, just having voiced story cutscenes in a game was a pretty big deal, of course. Now it's not, but the story here is mostly fine. Gameplay is what matters the most in games, anyway, and the plot sets the scene for each of Guy Kazama's exploits.

Last Alert has 23 levels spread across a sequence of missions. Each mission is made up of several levels, and sometimes you can choose the order you play a missions' levels in. The game will also autosave after you complete a mission, which is great (it does not seem to save after each level, though.). Levels are reasonable length in Last Alert, and you get experience as you kill enemies. As you level up you'll get more health and unlock more guns. However, as I said earlier, the game very rarely provides much challenge. I'm not the greatest at games, but I do not die very often in this game, that's for sure. Honestly I find the game getting tedious after a while, thanks to the low difficulty level and long length of the game. Sure, the controls are great and wiping out the enemies is usually easy, but it's often TOO easy. You can also often shoot through cars, which is weird. The games' internal rules for which things you can shoot through and which you can't don't make much sense, and more obstacles to your fire probably would have been a good thing. And as with many TG16 games, like a NES or SMS game don't expect to find any difficulty level options here, there are none. The game does have a few different level types, though. The variants don't change much, but in this genre anything is nice. In most levels, you're navigating through a fairly linear level, looking for the boss and wiping out the enemies along the way. A few missions have you instead "infiltrating" a base trying to rescue prisoners. Here, the amount of enemies you face depends on how often you shoot your gun. So, arm your machine gun and fire away if you want to face endless waves of respawning foes, or use the pistol and have an easy time of it. There are also some levels where you have to explore around an area, finding all of the bombs to disarm for example.

The basic gameplay of going around and shooting enemies as they appear never changes, though, and nor do those small graphics. HuCard games in this genre like Legend of the Valkyrie or even Bloody Wolf probably look better than this game. This game does show off its CD format by having a lot more levels than those games do, of course. The game also has a decent CD audio soundtrack. Overall, Last Alert is an okay game. The firing-lock button makes moving around and shooting where you want easy, and the game is plenty long and it is a fun game, at least for a while at a time. The game costs quite a bit more than the other Turbo CD topdown run & gun, Final Zone II and I don't know if it's a better game, though. Since it saves you don't have to play the whole game all at once, though, unlike that game, and that's great. Still, slightly bigger graphics and some difficulty level options would have gone a long way here. Still, Last Alert is reasonably good, overall. It's worth a look for sure.


L-Dis (J exclusive) - One player. L-Dis, from NCS Masaya, is a hard cute 'em up-styled horizontal shmup. This game is reasonably well regarded I think, but isn't one of the better-known Turbo CD shmups. For a regular CD title, though, this game looks and plays great. L-Dis has a very basic sexist videogame plot: you play as a boy who has to save the girl he likes, who has been kidnapped by aliens. Yeah, this plot again. Fortunately the game is a lot better than the story, though. You pilot a cute little ship, flying through six or so several-part levels on your quest. L-Dis is a very tough game, and beating it will take quite a bit of practice; I haven't gotten even close yet, so far. If you run out of lives you can continue, but you start the whole level over, which is quite cruel when you've gotten to the final boss. Most levels do have obstacles to avoid, and of course the level designs get even tougher as you progress. The game has a powerup system of course, with floating powerups some enemies drop. There is a problem here, though: unlike almost all shmups, the powerups here are Japanese text boxes. So yeah, memorize which one is which, or else you'll have problems getting what you want. It's kind of annoying, but with some practice you will get used to it. The text color tells you which of the two different powerup types the powerup will give you, weapon or ship, so that's a help. Weapon powerups give you different weapons, while the ship ones can give you helper ships (like Gradius Options), a shield, and and such. You can have a few (but limited) options, and have to choose between either option helpers or bombs which do nothing until you use them as screen-clearing superbombs. The weapon system works well, as long as you can figure out what you're getting.

L-Dis is a pretty good looking game. The game does have some parallax scrolling, though not in every level. Still, on the Turbo, any parallax is great to see. Backgrounds are well-drawn as well, and the sprites are done in a nice cartoony style which looks quite good. The ships all ...