Of Import: Atlantis no Nazo (Famicom, 1986)

Since I've been playing a lot of NES games lately, I thought I should stick with the platform's Japanese cousin for this round of import gaming.  Sunsoft published global 8-bit Nintendo console hits like Blaster Master and Batman, but their early home system output included unassuming titles like Atlantis no Nazo, published in 1986 for the Famicom and never released in North America.  This title screen references Sunsoft's parent company, Sun Electronics Corporation:

Atlantis no Nazo ("Mystery of Atlantis") is a fast-paced, simple but not overly easy platformer that sends a pith-helmeted man through a series of short, scrolling zones.  He can jump about three times his own height, and throw small bombs to take out enemies willing to sit still long enough to be knocked out that way.  Most of the challenge comes from the time pressure -- we have to get from each level's entry to an exit doorway before the rapidly ticking timer runs out.

The game's biggest weakness is a general blandness -- the music rarely changes and the color palette is similarly static.  The game occupies a relatively tiny 48K cartridge, and while the backgrounds and enemies are refreshed on occasion, many of the level layouts are repetitive and predictable.  The first zone sends our hero across a flat landscape -- all we have to do is dodge some incoming birds, and their, erm, air-to-surface missiles:

Note an early use of the standard Japanese video game iconography for animal droppings -- somehow this bird manages to repeatedly disgorge output nearly as large as itself.  Birds fly by at only two heights -- up high, indicating we must dodge the poo, and at face-height, where we can jump or duck.

The second zone is different in style but still straightforward -- we have to climb around some rocks, bombing shell-armored enemies who are only vulnerable while moving:

And zone 3 challenges us to make some tricky jumps while avoiding flying fish (a la Super Mario Bros.) and more of the molluscs from zone 2:

The design does make a few attempts to be more adventurous in its layout -- if we fall down certain gaps in Zone 3, we are taken to Zone 6, a spooky graveyard scene where we must dodge bat guano instead of bird poo:

Zone 6 leads, oddly enough, to Zone 8, where we must try to leap across jagged spires and avoid falling into gaps.  I had not figured out how to pick up the apparent boot power-up floating in the air on Zone 6, and thus found myself unable to make certain critical jumps in this level.  There's also no way to return to the previous level to remedy such an error, so my adventure ended here:

If we skip the first exit to Zone 1, and use a bomb to blow open the next door we see, we can jump straight to Zone 11... but it's a lot like Zone 8, as the limited cartridge capacity starts to reveal its weaknesses:

Note that there's not really much we can do here -- we can grab two treasure chests, and if we can get ourselves out of the deep pit associated with the leftmost chest, we can bomb the door open to return to Zone 1.

Atlantis no Nazo is not an easy game, despite its simplicity -- we start with a generous 7 lives, but we die if we make contact with an enemy, jump or slip into a fatal gap, allow the level timer to reach zero, or foolishly drop explosives at our explorer's feet.  When we're out of lives, the game is unceremoniously over, displaying the player's final score and number of treasure chests collected, with no continues, and no indication of whether we've made a good or bad showing:

Early games for any console are always interesting to evaluate -- the Famicom was around long enough to see considerable growth and improvement in its library, and Atlantis no Nazo is more of a curiosity than a classic.  Still, it's challenging and non-linear enough to make it a worthy challenge for platform game fans, and a forerunner of better titles from Sunsoft just a few years down the road.

Of Import: Star Luster (1985, Famicom)

Japanese arcade giant Namco (a.k.a. Namcot) was active in home videogame publishing during the 8- and 16-bit era.  While many such titles were ports of the company's arcade hits, occasionally they targeted the home market more directly, with titles like Star Luster, released in 1985 for the Nintendo Famicom:

"Luster" in this context appears to refer to starshine, not to, shall we say, more earthly fires; it's clearer in motion, where the outline around the logo shimmers through a rapidly shifting palette.  Star Luster is another in a long line of games that starts with the mainframe computer "Star Trek" programs, travels through Atari's Star Raider, and still turns up now and then today.  The player's mission, as usual, is fairly straightforward:

The main display features a map of enemy clusters (denoted with the letter E), intent on destroying the player's star bases (B) and neighboring stars (*); asteroid fields (//) appear to serve no purpose beyond creating risk when we try to fly through them.   A cursor is used to select a destination, then we shift into hyperspeed to reach the targeted sector, while the action continues in real-time in all the sectors we are not dealing with at the moment.  The action is seen from the player's cockpit perspective; the player aims and maneuvers with the D-pad, using the B button to fire and the A button to accelerate.

According to Wikipedia, Star Luster is set in the same universe as the Galaxian / Galaga / Gaplus arcade games, but there's not much evidence onscreen; the style reminds me more of Xevious. The cartridge label depicts a starbase that looks very like the ones in Namco's Bosconian arcade game, though I never actually saw one in-game (and I suspect the NES would have had a hard time managing a sprite that large.)

The enemy aliens are generally blue or gray, rendered in a variety of detailed shapes with different attack patterns and behaviors.  They flit about the screen fairly quickly, exchanging fire with the player against a 3-D starfield, and while there isn't a lot of variety to the gameplay, the intense dogfighting and chasing is fun and challenging.

We're free to travel around the galaxy as we please, but occasionally an onscreen alert calls upon us to DEFEND STAR or DEFEND BASE, and it's good etiquette to check the map and fly to the vicinity of the fading target (the icons turn black when they are under attack.)  Sometimes multiple enemies attack the same base or star, and we have to cross our fingers and hope we're taking on the biggest threat first.

Eventually, of course, our bases and stars are taking heavy damage, and more critically, we start to run low on energy, which is consumed by taking enemy damage as well as by traveling.  Eventually the EMPTY ENERGY message pops up, and the game is over.

The scoring model is fairly complex, taking time and energy use into account against enemies and outposts destroyed.  I played a couple of times, and didn't do tremendously well on the scoring or ranking front:

I got the same ranking both times, so I have no insight into how the scale works -- if I did better, would I be upgraded to Ensign Wang?  Or am I a step up from Cadet Butt?  Does British New Wave band Wang Chung, popular at the time, figure into it at all?

Star Luster never came to the US -- by the time Nintendo's console was released here, this cartridge probably looked a bit simplistic, though Acclaim released a similar game in the US called Star Voyager early in the NES' life (no relation as far as I know to Imagic's Atari 2600 Star Voyager, which was also a Star Raider clone.)  It's not a great game, but it's well implemented and I enjoyed spending an hour with it.

Of Import: Nuts & Milk (1984)

It's been quite a while since I've had time to do any import gaming, so I'm shifting back into gear with a change from my usual PC Engine fare.  This summer my excellent brother and sister-in-law ran across a batch of Nintendo Famicom cartridges, and a colorful stack of rectangles has been sitting here awaiting my attention.

I had to start with Nuts & Milk (translated phonetically, Nattsu & Miruku) whose mysterious title manages to sound cute and potentially salacious all at once.  With a little research, I discovered that this particular cartridge represents a significant piece of Nintendo history.  Produced by Hudson Soft, later co-creators of the PC Engine, Nuts & Milk debuted on Japanese home computers like the MSX series.  It was also the very first third-party cartridge released for Nintendo's 8-bit Family Computer system.

Nuts & Milk is an arcade-style puzzle-platform game featuring cute animated blobs with big eyes and feet -- our hero, Milk, is a pink blob, and his enemy, Nuts, is a blue blob (some levels feature multiple Nuts running around).  Each level challenges Milk to collect several pieces of fruit, after which the door to his girlfriend's house will open so he can join her for a brief moment of bliss.

Unlike this game's obvious inspiration, Donkey Kong, there's no external force tearing the couple apart at the end of each apparent success; presumably, Milk's girlfriend eventually tires of his gambling and womanizing and throws him out.  He wanders off in a drunken haze; eventually he gets her new address from her confused, passive-aggressive mother, and their whole insane relationship plays out another cycle.

Seriously, it's hard to believe that this game was not created specifically for the Famicom, as it wears its Nintendo influences on its sleeve.  There are jump-boosting springs and sections of green pipe a la Super Mario Bros., and a countdown bonus for completing each level borrowed from Donkey Kong.  The game is also an excellent fit for Nintendo's 8-bit hardware -- the chiptune music is bouncy and charming, and everything is colorful, cartoony and simply animated, taking full advantage of the system.  Later NES games sometimes tried to do too much, adding visual detail that became muddy and confusing; Nuts & Milk keeps it clean and simple.

The controls are solid, and the gameplay fairly challenging.  Milk's jump distance is powered in part by his momentum, and it's a lot easier to drop down than climb up, making careful route planning a must.  There's time/score pressure to finish each level quickly, and while we can earn bonus points by leaping over Nuts, it can be dangerous.  There's also no way to dispatch Nuts other than tricking him into falling into the water or getting him temporarily stuck someplace, and he re-spawns almost immediately so timing remains critical.

There's no real story to Nuts & Milk, or rather there's just one venerable classic tale, as old as humanity itself.  The player's only goal is to reunite Milk and his best girl, as the levels become progressively more difficult.

Ain't love grand?

East Vs. West: Magical Saurus Tour (1990)

One of the more unusual PC Engine titles to make it from Japan to the United States, Magical Saurus Tour (known here as Magical Dinosaur Tour) was published in 1990 by Victor Musical Industries on the console's original 1.0 CD-ROM System Card.  I had a copy of the American version back in the day, but no longer own it, so I will have to go on memories and research for comparison purposes.  The Japanese title screen calls the Toho kaiju movies to mind -- if you don't speak Japanese, you can easily imagine this says something about King Ghidorah:

This was a surprising choice for NEC to import, although the company did make a lot of strange decisions when it came to populating the US TurboGrafx library; the rich, high-quality Japanese PC Engine software lineup was barely in evidence on our shores.  Magical Saurus Tour seems an especially odd choice, however, because of the amount of translation and voice-over recording the localization required (no word on whether the Beatles had to approve the title.)  My only hypothesis is that NEC felt the expensive CD-ROM accessory might be an easier sell if there was some educational content available.

By the standards of the day, Magical Saurus Tour does a pretty good job at delivering on the cover's English-text promise: "A NEW PICTORIAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DINOSAURS."  It's a CD-ROM encyclopedia, of the sort usually devoted to anime fandom, and it's pretty comprehensive.  While the text could have used substantial fleshing out, this was designed to be read on a TV screen with a gamepad; the primary attraction may be the full-color artwork, most of which matches the best scientific anatomical modeling available at the time.  And it's not limited to the obvious, well-known saurians of later Jurassic Park fame; it takes the task seriously, covering more obscure creatures like Metriorhyncus:

And Archaeopteryx, the first known dinosaur-bird species (probably a relative but not a direct ancestor of modern birds; more recent finds are indicating that feathers were much more common than believed in 1990):

And Deinonychus, a member of the raptor family:

My only complaint about Magical Dinosaur Tour was the limited text -- we only get a few screens of large-print text, though the Japanese version likely crams more content into the limited space (if I could read it!)

These individual dinosaur pages can be accessed by a number of pathways, lending significant organizational value to the encyclopedia.  There's an alphabetic index, of course, as well as an evolutionary timeline tree, allowing users to see how various families of dinosaurs changed over geologic time:

There's also a time-shifting geographical map, showing the regions of the earth as portions of the Earth's original single continent moved (borne by the tectonic plates of the Earth's crust) into its modern configuration, and allowing the user to examine the dinosaurs that inhabited each region:

And a sightseeing tour allows users to view the dinos in approximations of their contemporary habitats, with some limited animation depicting hypothetical behaviors derived from anatomy and observations of similar creatures in our time.  These hard-headed little guys are battling for dominance:

There are also some entertaining bits of trivia, like a "Best of Three" awards ceremony (Biggest Dinosaur? Tyrannosaurus!) and other notes with fanciful illustrations:

The science is respected, and so are users, as then-current uncertainties are documented in these sections --- my own knowledge had become outdated in 1990, and I remember learning about the whole "Brontosaurus" mix-up from the American version.  (In short, an Apatosaurus had had a reconstructed, semi-hypothetical head stuck on it for a museum display; further analysis established that this was in error, and both skeletons represented the Apatosaur.)

There a poignant end-of-the-dinosaurs section that presents various hypotheses about the demise of the thunder lizards, and the subsequent rise of the mammals, as depicted in this asteroid-induced winter image:

Magical Saurus Tour isn't a game, but a high-tech reference work circa the pre-Internet era.  I can't really recommend it in either its Japanese or American forms for a 2012 audience; the information presented is too limited in the age of Wikipedia and Walking with Dinosaurs.  But it was a credible attempt to document our understanding of these fascinating creatures circa the late 1980s, and remains a unique entry in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-CD library.

---

This one wasn't a huge seller in the US, but is also not much in demand so it's generally inexpensive.  You may be able to purchase the Japanese version here:

 Magical Saurus Tour PC-Engine CD

or the American one here:

Of Import: Slot Gambler (1995)

Nichibutsu is best known in the West for the arcade game Crazy Climber, but in Japan the company's output seems to have been dominated by risque pachinko and mahjong titles.  Slot Gambler, a similar game involving slot machines, was released in 1995 for the PC Engine's Super CD-ROM format.

Many of the images in this game are NSFW -- there's nothing X-rated, but for propriety's sake I'm going to put the later parts of this post below the fold, including the title screen that usually serves as my lead. I'll try to describe the gameplay first, so people with scruples and dignity can avoid the seedier side of the game.

I've never been a big fan of gambling videogames -- there's nothing at stake, really, and most of the time the results are completely dependent on chance.  This game features two types of slot machines -- 3 x 3 grids where success can be scored in numerous ways a la Tic-Tac Toe, and separate single-window machines where a row must be matched.   The slot machines look different on each island, but the seem to fall into these two categories consistently.

The player can bet one to three medals on each round, with the rewards scaled accordingly; some games allow better chances of success if we lose bet more on a given round.

The game's Story Mode is structured as a series of islands in a manner reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. 3:

Oddly, the game casts the player as a totally 80s American boy, with blonde hair, a backwards baseball cap, blue jeans and a hot pink jacket.  There is a little bit of skill involved here, as to clear each island we have to visit all the establishments there, sliding map tiles around on occasion to open up pathways.

Beyond the cheesecake and slot machines, sometimes we find bonus round kiosks on the island that offer more traditional game-like activities:

And... below the fold you'll find further discussion of Slot Gambler's aesthetic.

East vs. West: Dungeon Explorer II (1993)

I wrote about the original Dungeon Explorer a few months back, and realized I'd never played Dungeon Explorer II, the Super CD-ROM sequel released by Hudson Soft four years after the original.  This one even came to the US for the TurboDuo courtesy of TTI, as the original NEC-published game was fairly popular here, though I only own the Japanese version so my comparison will have to rely on a few YouTube clips.

The title screen, as usual, is largely the same -- the US version simply omits the line of Japanese text from this display:

The opening animation emphasizes the various character classes that can make up the player's party, introducing each in dramatic fashion as they work together to fight off some attackers, and take time to strike a pose for the camera.  There are eight character types available in this CD-based sequel, an upgrade compared to the HuCard original.  Each class is represented by an individual with a given name, for example, Liot the Bard:

These names are Americanized in the TurboDuo release, so that Liot becomes Riot, Eflaim the Wizard adopts the new moniker Efrem, Alden the Hunter is now Ardin, and Sepia the Thief is shortened to Sepi.  Sorn the Cleric and Alex the Fighter retain their original names, and Dooze the Dwarf is Americanized to Dorz.  The oddest renaming is that Feena the Elf becomes Fina in the American version.

After we start the game proper, there's a second opening animation, beginning with a black-and-white flashback to the first game's finale (SPOILERS!):

Clearly, the defeat of the evil NATAS (see what they did there?) was only a temporary thing, as now the land is under demonic attack once again:

There's a new Big Bad on the scene, an elfin sorceror who invades the king's castle to seize power directly:

And a Princess is kidnapped by a minotaur -- I presume the gentleman pictured above has something to do with this turn of events:

And then we select a character class, wait for up to four additional friends who are joining us in co-op multiplayer via the TurboTap to do the same, and we're off.

What's most surprising about Dungeon Explorer II is how very little it varies from the original formula; it looks like Hudson Soft simply dug out the old code and assets, built some new maps and added a little CD production value. It uses the same muted, darkish color palette, and follows the same RPG-lite format -- we wander around town and talk to various people to learn about bosses lurking in nearby dungeons:

Even the town interiors look much the same as they did in the original game, and the early dungeons create a sense of deja vu as well:

Fortunately, there has been considerable design improvement in the dungeon maps -- there are more environmental hazards, like the lava in this early level, requiring players to manuever more carefully, especially in a crowded multiplayer scenario.  Diagonal areas requiring the player to attack at an angle create a little more challenge, forcing us to dodge and parry the creatures emerging from the monster generators before we can get a clear shot at the source:

And the bosses are more varied and imaginative -- the first dungeon features this pair of leaping wolflike creatures, along with a nasty little sphere that doesn't attack aggressively but does quite a bit of damage if we aren't keeping track of its whereabouts:

The CD-Audio music sounds very nice quality-wise, but some of the arrangements are surprisingly cheesy.  The castle theme in particular sounds like a late-1970s American TV series, with soaring strings and safely inoffensive percussion, and the CD remix of the first game's outdoor exploration theme suggests that Tiffany is going to break in with a vocal part at any moment.  But the dungeon theme is pretty good -- the squealing electric guitars still sound dated, but at least it fits the theme of the game and it stays listenable in the face of repetition.

Dungeon Explorer II feels more like a remake of the original than a true sequel -- the gameplay introduces almost nothing new, but the CD format does allow for a lot more variety.  If the original had never come out, this would still be a competent little Gauntlet-style game, and fans of the first one will likely enjoy this one.  It just feels more like a substantial expansion pack than a new game.

---

The American version is fairly hard to get hold of, but the Japanese edition turns up fairly regularly.  You may be able to find it for import purchase here, though this one is popular enough that it's actually easier to find at Amazon:

Of Import: Mad Stalker (1994)

Sometimes I can't resist picking up a Japanese game based solely on the way its name plays in English.  And that's certainly the case with Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force, a 1994 scrolling mecha beat-'em-up created by KOGADO STUDIO and Fill in Cafe Co. Ltd., published by NEC on the PC Engine's most powerful iteration, the System 3.0 Arcade CD-ROM format:

It's not actually a game about a mad stalker -- the title seems to refer to a class of mechanical exoskeletons driven by human pilots, in the standard mech mold.  The production values are high, as was usually the case with these late-in-the-life-cycle PC Engine games.  The CD-Audio soundtrack is typical of the era, with synthesized horns, bass guitars and percussion driving the action forward.  And even though the game's voice-acted dialogue is in Japanese, all of the onscreen text is in English, so it's not a difficult game to get one's Western head around.  The game opens with a lengthy animated sequence, apparently pitting two CEOs against each other -- this grumbling, angular older gentleman:

And this attractive female executive and her attractive executive assistant:

The introduction also introduces us to three playable mech pilot characters -- Chico Rodriges, Richard Winston and Eve Lurdia, with the traditional stats and blood type:

Each stage is preceded by another lengthy intro, though the animation is simpler, limited to lip-synced portraits and illustrations that pop up over the player's radar:

And then, we select our pilot of choice, and the action begins... or ought to.  First, there's a lengthy loading screen -- something of a rarity on the PC Engine, or at least it's usually better disguised.  (This is the same image displayed if we try to boot the game with a System 1.0 or 2.0 card, along with a Japanese message indicating we need to use the 3.0 version.)

Once we get into the action, we discover that this is basically a scrolling beat-'em-up in the vein of Final Fight or Golden Axe.  Our mech runs from left to right, knocking various robot enemies out of commission with punches, kicks, grabs and throws.  Some of the one-on-one fights are a little more challenging, feeling more like a Street Fighter clone based on duration and the quality of the enemy AI.

I'm running this on the Magic Engine emulator for ease in capturing screenshots, and it appears that the official System 3.0 card is NOT the best way to run the game -- the graphics tend to get rather garbled, though it does provide an interesting look at how the sprites are laid out and the matrix of occupied "squares" modified from frame to frame:

Running correctly (using the Magic System 3.0 card in this case), the game looks much more like the mid-80s coin-op standard many PC Engine games successfully mimicked:

This flying mech is an interesting enemy to deal with -- we have to jump up while he's preparing to fire to knock him down, and then attack steadily and rapidly to keep him grounded.  I spent quite a bit of time ducking his attacks while the clock counted down before I realized patience was not going to win the day.  He's initially presented as if he's a mid-level boss, but then more of them show up and we realize we're just going to have to deal with his like on a regular basis:

The game's engine does have its limitations -- while the animation is very smooth and flicker-free, it can only handle so many moving objects at once.  This battle near the end of the level features clinging robots that push the player's mech around; they're meant to attack as a swarm, but only four are ever seen at the same time.  When one is disposed of, another one flies in until the supply is exhausted and we can move on:

The game is fairly difficult -- we have a limited number of credits, arcade-style, and I had burned through my second token by the time I did much damage to the first stage's boss:

Continuing, I used up at least another credit before I finally managed to dispose of this charging, hopping robot:

The next mission takes place in an industrial building of some kind, and we see pretty much the same assortment of enemies we've already met, just toughened up.  The boss at the end of stage 2 proved to be my undoing; the mechs occasionally suffer equipment malfunctions after taking damage, making it impossible to do anything for a few seconds, but this is a proud boss, who stands by patiently until his opponent recovers.  I was unable to get past this guy, even after starting over with the difficulty turned down to easy:

Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force is remarkable primarily for its system requirements -- most of the Arcade CD-ROM games for the PC Engine were ports of SNK coin-ops, and while this game takes advantage of the extra memory, it seems like it could have been squeezed onto a lower-spec configuration.  But the game clearly had its fans -- an enhanced version made it to the Sony Playstation in 1997, upgrading the audiovisuals but retaining the basic gameplay.  The action is competent and challenging in the classic arcade tradition, and sometimes that's enough.

---

This is a decent if unspectacular game that collectors and mech fans might want to own.  Keep in mind that the American TurboDuo was only a System 2.0 console, so this is one of the rare Japanese PCE CD-ROM titles that will not work on a North American system.  If you're equipped with suitable hardware or emulation technology, you might be able to buy a copy here (and there's actually a copy in stock as I write this, which is often not the case!)