Hana no Star Kaidou - a reappreciation

My colleague Fredrik wrote about this game earlier after playing without a guide. After reading other people's reviews, it was easy to agree that it's a bad game. But we found out that many gamers (especially from the US) don't have enough patience with games like these.

The game is about a famous japanese pop star duo and you control both of them at once. There is no GameFAQ for this game but we found another page with useful information. The game is definitely more fun and playable once you figure out how to play.

* Instead of going right towards the wall on the first stage, you can go up the stairs to the left, making it possible to proceed to the next level (pressing up+right+left+fire button).

* You can walk up to an enemy after you stun them and press up. It gives you items that increase your hearts (time) and a cassette tape needed to enter the studio.

So the game isn't as impossible as we thought. You just have to know about these two things. But it's still a really weird game. You can buy it from us here when it is in stock.

Captain Ed, famicom

Captain Ed is an uncommon famicom game. Incidentally,  Chrontendo wrote about it just a month ago or so. In his usual negative way, he calls it "an extremely strange game", "one of the least visually interesting shoot-em-ups I've seen in a while", and in his video he calls it "crap". (http://chrontendo.blogspot.se/2014_03_01_archive.html)

Luckily, I prefer to play games rather than superficially analyze them, and I played this game for 3 hours on Friday and another 2 hours on Saturday. I had a lot of difficulties with the last stages until I found a simple trick to beat the Medusa boss. The ultimate final boss was also tricky until I discovered that you can simply hold down the shoot button to have continuous fire until he dies.

The gamefaqs review didn't know either of this. Probably because he didn't have to replay the last stage for 2 hours... When you are game over and have to type in the 20 character hiragana password, your frustration level increases. I think it took me 5-10 minutes each time I had to type it in, although I did get better at it after a couple of times.

_
The video shows my gameplay and last stage. The game is a bit unusual to understand and I think it puts people off giving it a chance. I know it has put me off it for over a year now.  Clearly, this is one of the "weird Japanese games" that could mean just about anything. (if interested, see my review of Hana No Star Kaidou a few weeks ago. *shivers*)

Some basic information: you fly around and can shoot as well as hitting blocks to get hidden items. The red blocks take away some energy, and the yellow blocks takes away a little energy in the beginning of the game, but not on the last stages because you have a stronger shield. You can refill your energy either with hidden items or buy filling up at Gas. Important note about the gas station: TAP A to fill up, don't just wait.

After you have found a couple of warp areas and bought enough eggs and items from the shop (buy everything as you get money), you'll go to the boss stage automatically. Most bosses are simple and are basically just about shooting them straight up.

Did I cheat in the end...? That's like asking if it is cheating to use the pause glitch in Blaster Master. To most people that is a part of the game, unlike a cheat code that is by definition a cheat code. Should I not be allowed to press Select to enter the menu, if this is part of the game mechanics?

I was actually able to beat the Medusa without the trick on two occasions. The way to do it is because her balls after a while will enter a pattern of getting stuck from one corner to the other. But they are difficult to dodge until then.

Well, it certainly is a weird Japanese game, for those who appreciate those games as much as I do. The simple difficulty made me continue to play it until the end and certainly I enjoyed it enough to spend 5 hours with it, albeit the last of them in frustration.

Here is the 20 character password in difficult to read hiragana. I think it is cool, although unnecessary, that the password remembers your name too. My name is the top word up there.

Some bosses are Parodius funny, like this hardrocker. Watch out for his guitar.

The game also has some mini-games that allows you to make money. One of them is a simple betting cardgame that will almost guarantee you a profit, and another is some kind of beatmania game with a drum. My max profit for the drum game was 610$, please let me know if you get more than that.


You can usually get the game cheap. For 7$ or so I think it is well worth trying out.

And here is where airplanes come from.

Casio PV-1000 console

(Picture and more info at: http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg80-pv1000.htm)

I once had the chance to buy a game cart for the PV-1000 for relatively cheap. But I didn't, because I don't think I'd be able to sell it for a decent price. Who would buy it? I have never seen the PV-1000 console for sale in Japan, though I once read a forum post from someone who found his on eBay.

PV-1000 was released by Casio in Japan in October 1983, a couple months after the Famicom and the Master System. Its retail price was the same as the two others: 14,800 yen.

However, the PV-1000 was a worse machine and it was pulled off the shelves without hardly anyone caring. The Famicom became very popular very fast, largely thanks to all the killer games from Nintendo. And this was even 1,5 years before Super Mario Bros was released. It can be difficult to imagine how the famicom could become popular with all those primitive games such as Donkey Kong, and the best seller: Baseball (true!). But it was the best there was.

Anyways, I do like obscure stuff but only if they either look nice or are interesting to play. Games that are just bad aren't that interesting.

A system sure is obscure if you can't find it on gamefaqs. The system did however have 15 games, according to Wikipedia. According to my theory, that might indicate that 5 are common, 5 are uncommon, and 5 are rare. But that is just an estimate. In any case, all games for it are really hard to find.

This is a video of Super Cobra on the PV-1000, from a guy who modified his console to give out composite signal.When I see games like this I just think: "so primitive... how can you enjoy this?"

But did you know that the first Famicom games were only 16 KB? I don't know when that changed exactly but in the beginning famicom games looked primitive for space reasons. Still, Super Cobra looks worse than any famicom game.

Trying to play the Island Story of Seven Winds for Saturn

Also known as Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari which I will never remember. Except that Monogatari means Story.

But it was too hard to play without knowing Japanese. I really liked the hand drawn graphics so I hoped it would be possible... But you can't even exit the house if you don't write the name of the clock in katakana (the Japanese syllable alphabet).

After you have managed to exit the house, you reach this stage.


The reviewer didn't complete his walkthrough so it's too bad we can't see all the scenes.

The game also comes with a CD with artwork from the game. I was able to access the CD with no problem. :)

I think that apart from the graphics, the gameplay is generic point-and-click. The story is linear so you do things in a certain order. I think a lot of it has to do with catching the right bugs and then you store them in your house. It is slow paced and the menu is complicated to navigate. Not sure if there is music in the game, but not much.

It looks a little like Wonder Project J for the SFC and I read the graphics were made by the same contractor.

Wonder Project J screenshot, from hardcoregaming101.net

If you can read and understand Japanese well, and you like these kind of adventure games, I'd give it a chance. It is also playable with a FAQ and a katakana chart, but will take time and effort.

And you need a Saturn console.... If you don't have a Saturn, maybe you'd be interested in my transparent Saturn for 300$.

I also have normal Japanese Saturns for 495 SEK but they get sold quickly...

Shinri Game 2: The Magical Trip for SFC

 
As I enjoy obscure games, I had to try this one out as it arrived today.
Not sure if it's a game or not. There's a lot of questions you answer in Japanese.

A much cooler feature than the questions is the option menu, where you can listen to BGM (Back Ground Music) and see weird patterns. Sorry, there's no video I could find.
I suppose most people miss the option menu when they try the game. I saw it in the manual. Manuals are nice sometimes, even if they are Japanese.