Image Fight, famicom

Another shoot'em up?! First I would like to make a praise to Irem. The had many ideas for very original games with nice graphics and music, and always great playability. The are like Konami, except that Irem always had much smaller release numbers and so their games are usually harder to find.

Maybe Irem games made their games for adults more than other gaming companies did, becaues in general Irem games have a low amount of stuff that only kids could tolerate, such as cheap deaths, lack of continues, painful music and terrible controls.

I also think Irem famicom carts are the best looking because of their screenshot on the back. 

Image Fight has no passwords or save function and needs to be completed in one go (unless you use a cheat). At first it seemed annoying because of the easy deaths, but then I found that the charm is in the infinite continues. In practice you has infinite lives because even after game over you get to restart at the same checkpoint.

The famicom version has a nice black background like flying in space. From looking at youtube videos, the NES version replaced it with a blue background, which to me seems weird.

There may be other changes between the two version but I have not found them documented.

_
The number at the bottom of the screen indicates plane speed. Change with the A button.

You need to accomplish on average 90% on the first five levels. I have tried looking around the net, but no guide informs what this number refers to or how to get 90%. The guides also say that you have to replay the stages if you get less, but on the famicom version I played you'll be taken to a penalty area (at 5:27 in video). This difficult area is where I took up my turbo-controller, at last, because without it my thumb went numb. The game doesn't otherwise require a turbo controller.

The game isn't always easy, but isn't too hard until the final boss. If you die on the boss there, you'll restart at a check point without powerups that makes it almost impossible. It would probably be easier to replay the entire game. Quite a shame that it went so easy with a good powerup, and so impossible without it. There is a stage selection cheat one can use, maybe I'll try that the next time to replay just the last stage.

You can usually find it cheap. 5-7$ loose, and 15$ boxed, or so. It isn't anything special but it also isn't too bad except that it is annoying how impossible it got in the ending... It has some fun powerups, nice graphics and sound and because you have inifinite lives you'll keep on playing.

The game is also on Pc Engine and is usually considered better than the famicom/NES version. A problem with the famicom/NES version is that it feels like it could need more polish. First you have five "training stage", but they still have real bosses and all. Then three "real battles", that are very easy with the right power ups, but if you die at the final boss the game almost becomes unwinnable.

Here is another review that I thought was most accurate. Maybe because it also reviewed the famicom game, unlike other reviews.

* http://www.videogameden.com/fc.htm?imf

Here is another review. Don't just read the first half of it!
* http://www.honestgamers.com/7780/nes/image-fight/review.html

Parodius on GB, revisited

I wrote about Parodius on GB a while ago, back when I mainly reviwed GB games almost two years ago. (The Japanese game is called Parodius Da!!, the European simply Parodius)

My privilege with a blog is that I can review games how many times I want. Yesterday I took another look at Parodius and recorded a short video too.

Now I can compare it to Parodius on NES/Famicom, a game that is troubled by bad slowdowns. The GB game surprisingly has no slowdowns. Compared to later SFC, Saturn or PS1 games, the GB version is short and has less things going on at the same time. I suppose there is some flickering, although not in a way that makes it harder to play. You can check out the video for yourself.

_
I show some different setups here. It may be interesting to check around 11:20 when things start happening.

Although I still think it is a good game, I now think it lacks depth and while it is fun, it may be too lightweight to be truly memorable. Last time I enjoyed it being simple but I think now I would rate more challenging Konami games like Gradius or Twinbee higher. Or a game like Section Z for Famicom.

Parodius is humorous, a simple joyful playthrough, without demanding too much strategy or thinking. It has infinite continues so you can keep on playing and it is a great shooter for first time shmup-ers (as I basically was back then). I do recommend anyone to pick it up and give it a try. As far as shmup games go on Game Boy, it is one of the best. Grade 5/5.

Othello World, Super Famicom

During the weekend, I played several hours of Othello World.

For this blog post, I will call the game Othello. In the US, the game is known as Reversi. Othello is a trademark name that was developed in Japan in 1971 based on the English game Reversi, developed around 1880. For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversi.

I enjoy to play Othello against computers and I can usually beat the simpler ones, but not this one. As one reviewer on gamefaqs said, this is a hard Othello game.

There are five world. Eventually I did beat Sky World after I found a strategy I could use, but after Sky World there is the Sky Caslte world that is REALLY hard. I may have had a won game at some time, but in the endgame you have to be a master of calculation and that is very hard against the perfectly calculating computer.

In order to beat Sky World, I had to put some time into actually studying Othello. I read this strategy guide: http://www.samsoft.org.uk/reversi/strategy.htm
and "Othello lesson" on youtube (lesson 2 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0g9zibQZY

These strategies didn't work well against the computer, however, so I played  different against it. I played the opposite of what the guides suggested, but I think I did alright. One needs to realize that I am not an expert player and can't remember long lines of opening play or do long lines of precise calculation.

It was an anti-computer strategy. My plan was to take possession of three of the four sides, and give one of the sides to the computer. Most importantly, I take the side to the opposite of his side. Then I would allow him to give me disks and try not to get outside of the inner 16 squares.

Since I have all sides but one, I will have the last move on any row or column and slowly he will run out of good moves. It is useful here to have a few waiting moves. Because I have given him one of the sides, once he runs out of good moves, he will have to move on that side to give me the corner, and a theoretically won game (just needs some hard calculations). 

There videos might be boring for the average person, but I think that someone who is really interested in Othello or Othello World might find them interesting.

Here is how i defeated the fairy


And here is grim reaper. He was harder than the fairy.

On Sky Zone, you are allowed to get three hints. Just press start, and the computer will tell you how to move. This is useful for the endgame. Unfortunately you con't have this on the Sky Castle and I didn't have much chance without my hints.

There doesn't seem to be any password online for this game so here are passwords for Sky World and to Sky Castle. To enter the password, select Continue from the start screen, then you enter your name in 4 letters (press Select to change to Latin letters), and after that you will be able to enter the password. The password screen allows many letters, but only enter the ones you need.

Here is the password for Sky Zone.

And here for Sky Castle.

There isn't much else to say. It is Othello, and it is hard.

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.

Cobra Command, famicom

Helicopter games are rarely worth anything, no matter if they are scrolling or not. The only exception I can think of is Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra). But that game is exactly like any airplane shooter.

For all Apple fans, I remember I played a helicopter game on Macintosh sometime in the early 1990s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvh0agHVLHQ . 

Anyways, I played a bit of Cobra Command for a Famicom Friday, then read about how to play it properly and went back to play some more. It helps to learn what the game is about. First, you rescue hostages. You have to rescue all hostages in one area before you can continue on the level.  In the rescue hostages theme, the game probably takes from Choplifter, a simplistic game that does have its charm (also available on famicom, and is cheap like all helicopter games).

You can land on supply depots, as I did twice in the video. There you will get weapon upgrades or other upgrades. Go into the equip menu by pressing Select. The Start button is used to turn around the helicopter.


Most youtube videos have different colors for some reason, but this is how the game looks on my AV modded famicom.

Cobra Command has nice graphics, advanced levels, good looking enemies and stages, and a good strategy element. However, the controls are difficult. The helicopter is sensitive and quickly moves you into a wall for sudden death. And when you move helicopter forward it becomes strangely slow to the point that it will become difficult to avoid enemies. I try to counter that by tapping the forward button, but you can also fly backwards if you feel certain there are no obstacles.

If you can learn the controls and accept them, the game is enjoyable. I read that it has only 6 stages and is beatable without being overly hard. You start with four lives and get more from the supply depots. If you die all lives, there are 2 or 3 continues. I only played the first stage though. I rate the game "decent".

The Japanese version has Japanese text. From what I read on gamefaqs, some hostages give you messages but these messages are virtually useless. So I rate the famicom game 95% playable. As you see in the video, all the names of items in the menu are in English.

Kamen no Ninja & Fudou Myououden, Famicom

Full title is Kamen no Ninja: Akakage, and Fudou Myououden is also known as Demon Sword in the US. None of the games were released in Europe. I've played and written about a game called Ninja Crusaders for Famicom earlier. It was a lot of fun so I hoped these two ninja games would be fun, too.


Kamen no Ninja
Here is some information about Kamen No Ninja from a GameFAQs walkthrough:

Kamen no Ninja: Akakage is a relatively straightforward platformer for the Famicom. The enemies are pretty simple, the stages are short, and to top it off, you have a wide variety of great weapons/items to use! The game is quite linear with the exception of one point late in the game, so you really only need to keep moving right to beat it. Even the boss enemies (the ones with health meters) can all be defeated with the same strategy or the same couple of weapons in your arsenal. Nonetheless, this really isn't a bad game, so I would recommend it to any 2D platformer fan.
-- http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/578587-kamen-no-ninja-akakage/faqs/58865

Personally, I don't like this kind of simplistic platformers. The graphics are simple, just walking from left to right doesn't really do it for me. The music becomes annoying after a while and the game doesn't feel very well thought-out. But as the article says, it's a decent game if you like this kind of games. You can currently buy it in our webshop, link here. When I played, I got tired of it pretty quickly. Here's a YouTube clip I recorded:




Fudou Myououden

The second game was much more exciting! Fudou Myououden is an extremely challanging game, with significant inspiration from Ninja Gaiden. The enemies are thrown at you from every direction. The game is also 3M big and the stages are long. You have unlimited continues and collected magic is saved after you die. With a password you can also keep everything you've collected.

The game is still really hard. For this reason, the game was remade for the american audience. Instead of dying after just one hit, you got a health bar. The stages are made shorter and six stages were removed. The game felt somewhat slower though, and some enemies were easier to beat. My guess is the US version couldn't store as much data, so some had to be removed.

To use magic, press Start and then Down button. Unfortunately, I didn't understand this until stage 1-3, after desperately fighting my way ahead for two hours. After I discovered this, things got easier. By then, I had learned a lot of timing, as you can see in the beginning of the following video:



I made it all through stage 1-4 without any problem but at 2-1, I gave up. I've seen that walkthroughs on YouTube are about 55 minutes long, and that is probably the time spent without dying. For a Famicom game, it's a really long game.

To compare it with Ninja Crusaders, which can be completed in 20 minutes without dying, a more realistic time is about 6-10 hours. So I guess Fudou Myououden therefor would take at least 30-40 hours, and getting enemies thrown at you all the time becomes exhausting. You will need luck and good powerups to complete the stages.

It is a good game in many ways, it has nice graphics, good sound, great controls, fun powerups and the magic adds a strategic element. Reading other reviews, I notice people saying a combinaion between the easier US version and the more good-looking, longer japanese version would be better.



It's funny how I made it to the end of the stage during my last attempt seen in the video, but died when I went back.

To complete the Japanese version you really need to improve your ninja-skills. You'll have to learn exact timing, be an expert at collecting powerups, struggle with mini bosses to get higher magic. But what's most important is to play, play play, and die, die, die. I think people who enjoy Ninja Gaiden might enjoy this. This game was recently sold, but keep an eye out in our Webshop or make a request.

Fudou Myououden is kind of a sequel to another game called Legend of Kage which is much shorter and easier. So if you enjoy ninja games, that is also a game I can recommend.


External links:
* http://lvls.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/cultural-anxiety-demon-swordfudou-myououden-nesfamicom/
* http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/legendofkage/legendofkage.htm

originally posted by Japanspel at swedish blog japanspel.wordpress.com, translated by Kristin Loman.

Go Go Tank, for game boy

Go Go Tank was released in Japan by the end of 1990. It isn't very common, but was released in the US too, and you can usually find it for cheap.

The Japanese version is completely in English.

The gameplay is simple to explain. You are an airplane and have to move blocks so that the tank can move all the way to the right in the level. You can't control the tank otherwise.

_

As you might notice, the tank has a health bar the goes down every time it bumps into something. So while you don't have a time limit, you can't take forever.
You can actually pick up the bouncing letters to get different powerups.

It is a nice idea that is original as far as I know. The graphics are nice without slowdowns or flickering, and all the planes and things look nice. The music is varied too. The main problem is the control of the plane. It always flies upwards and also always moves in the direction it is facing. Trying to pick up the blocks is difficult sometimes, and placing them right takes some attempts. Aiming your bomb is hard too. So it can be a frustrating game to play.

What got me through it was knowing that there are only 10 levels of the game (I know because the manual said so). So it isn't like Adventure Island, where the levels just go on and on and on. Getting through all 10 levels took me 3,5 hours, with the last two levels taking 1 hour each. The game has infinite continues and isn't too hard after all.

It is a nice little challenge, and I recommend you to try it out if you can get it cheap. Be prepared for some frustration though. I rate it 2.5/5 because of the frustration level... Most reviewers (mobygames, gamefaqs) give it a higher score, so you might like it more than me.

With two carts and game boys, you can also play this game 2-player coop.

This is the end screen. That's it.