fun2novel

When Shigeru Miyamoto created the concept for Zelda he probably had no idea the legacy that will follow after that first legendary game. There were many similar games before but never quite like it. Instead of leaving you puzzled not knowing what to do the game’s design focused on exploration and discovery, instead of frustrating enemies it had a slow strategic anticipation of enemies’ movements, instead of mostly unfair puzzles the playr instead was rewarded with new areas to explore. Many tried to copy the Zelda formula but gave up as the design wasn’t as simple as it first appeared. One game that managed to copy the formula with a few tweaks is Golden Axe Warrior. The game was released in 1991 for the Master System, it is a side story to Sega’s popular Golden Axe series and looks very much like a Zelda with upgraded graphics. Or at least that’s what it appears to be at first glance. Indeed the game was inspired by Zelda with green grassy areas with just as green colored bushes, yellow sand colored beaches, squashed player character, very Zelda like dungeons and Zelda like dungeon maps, the inventory screen, the warping camera from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen. It is definitely a game for the Sega Master System owners who didn’t have a NES to seek their teeth into. At the time of its release almost every magazine pandered it simply for being an exact copy of the favorite and very popular The Legend of Zelda. A copy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a worse version of the original. Plenty of really bad Zelda wannabes were released over the years but very few could replace or even improve on the formula as much as Golden Axe Warrior was able to do while still keeping its own identity as a good Zelda clone with a bit of a different spin on the usual gameplay. Unlike Legend of Zelda’s almost completely barren world except for a few caves somewhere in the overworld with some old man lodging inside giving you incomprehensible advice or selling you items, Golden Axe Warrior has real towns you can visit and houses you can enter with living NPCs that give you clues where to go and what to do. There are even stores where you can buy items, weapons, rest, and save. Yeah, a save system, without the confusing holding the reset button method in Zelda and confused a lot of players who had to restart the entire game from scratch every time they wanted to play. The gameplay differs from Zelda in one basic design choice, the game moves much faster. The player and the enemies move at a faster than expected speeds. In Zelda everything usually moved at pretty slow speeds giving the player enough time to account for enemy’s movement and judge the next action to take in order to attack or avoid fighting altogether. But while in Zelda the player had to make quick decisions, in Golden Axe Warrior the player has to think even faster as every enemy group can surround you or shoot at you from afar while quickly moving in very fast patterns. It sounds very difficult but in actuality it’s pretty simply once you get used to the speeds especially if you just came from playing Zelda. This small design tweak carries a Zelda on steroids like tone that lacks in many Zelda clones and even the Zelda games themselves lack that fast movement. Certainly the Zelda games aren’t built to move at such speeds and they are very meticulously designed, almost to perfection, but Golden Axe Warrior shows that a subtle change can change and redefine how a game feels. Golden Axe Warriors doesn’t hide its self as a Zelda clone, it knows it’s a damn good one and proudly shows off what it’s got. There aren’t too many weapons and items but most have some kind of importance, you begin with a forward stabbing sword but very soon find an axe with a slower but wider attack radius and allows the player to cut down the trees on the overworld. The axe works similarly to how Link slashes his sword in A Link to the Past, which is very interesting, almost as if Nintendo copied the idea back from this game. Golden Axe Warrior also has a magic system as well, though a very basic one acting as sort of an alternative to sub weapons but the magic has its own meter that you can replenish any time. There are also healing items you can use to prevent unfair deaths when you’re running out of health and the enemies don’t give you any health replenishing items either. There are of course plenty of hidden underground passages, once again, just like in Zelda, the stairs down underground even look very similar to Zelda. The dungeons are very similar to Zelda too with the player walking from one room to the next looking for keys to open doors all the way to the final room for a boss encounter or some kind of an important item at the very end. Just like Zelda is a product of its time so is Golden Axe Warrior and carries with itself the same old design decisions as well. It can get pretty tough to know where to go and what exactly you should be doing leading to some really frustrating situations, just like the original Zelda had. It’s great to try this game if you are curious but perhaps it’s better to stick to A Link to the Past or any of the portable Zelda games, they are way better designed and less frustrating. Just as a side not, interestingly enough Sega also released Ax Battler – A Legend of Golden Axe for the Game Gear around the same time as Gold Axe Warrior, only this time it was a combination of Zelda 2 clone for the overworld and the action levels, with a splash of Dragon Warrior for the similar looking towns (a lot of older jrpgs look similar anyway). The player character in Golden Axe Warrior looks sort of like the playable character in Dragon Warrior too.

The first Keio Flying Squadron was a SegaCD exclusive side scrolling shooter with funny wacky premise about Keio and her family worshiping a big golden key and her journey to bring it back after it was stolen. The game opens up with a grainy almost colorless animated anime opening, beginning with a history lesson and suddenly moves to the main part of the story, the history lesson had nothing to do with the main story. The English dub wasn’t good but strangely they did not dub any of the voice clips playing during the gameplay so you still hear the Japanese voices. Overall it was a short but a very fun game with a very good cartoony style to it. Keio Flying Squadron 2 was a different game entirely which came as a shock to those few who played the original. Instead of a side scrolling shooter it was turned into a side scrolling 2D action platform game. It is practically unheard of for the sequel to have such a radical change from the original in so many ways. But it is a change for the better, it allowed the game to keep the same presentation style while making something new and different. Something tells me the developers wanted to start fresh as if the first game doesn’t exist even though there’s a 2 in the title. First thing first, the game opens with another fully animated anime opening. This time due to Saturn’s higher color palette things look much more bright and colorful however it is also very grainy much like it’s predecessor, the Saturn unfortunately didn’t have a dedicated video decoder and the developers were left on their own to come up with something. The dub voices still aren’t very good but once again, just like its predecessor, it does its job. The story is that once again Keio’s family has another holly object stolen, this time it is some kind of magical orb, and Keio must retrieve it from the bad guys. And thus another wacky adventure ensues. As the game begins we are treated to some beautiful lush and colorful graphics and smoothly animated sprites with some really cool rotation and scaling effects that shows the 2D capabilities of the Saturn. There are even transparency effects which isn’t easy to achieve on the Saturn. There isn’t much here that would be considered as pushing 2D graphics to their limits as the Saturn is barely breaking a sweat rendering those images on the screen but visual aesthetics and design are much more important than a technical showcase. One strange or perhaps unique aspect to this game are the controls. In general they are the same as any other platform game but the developers played with the formula a bit. When Keio first starts moving she moves very slowly but after a few steps she gains momentum and starts running faster and jumping farther. But unlike other games, when she stops at a complete standstill still retains some of her momentum so if you stop for a second, or even just climb a ladder, and then start moving again she doesn’t start at a slow speed but instead dashes at a fast speed. This can be a little disorienting because of inaccurate controls and can lead to many frustrating situations and even deaths because you’re not always sure at what speed you’re going to move at. This is one formula that didn’t need fixing. Thankfully, in the options screen you can change how you want Keio to gain momentum. The default is just holding and moving in either direction but you can change the controls to double tap in the left or to the right directions or hold the L+R buttons while moving. However, once again this is not so useful because Keio’s slow speed is really slow, almost as if she’s pushing something heavy forcing the player to hold another button down almost all the time which kind of defeats the purpose of changing controls. Once again, the controls will take some time to adjust. Keio can also pick up and throw objects at enemies. There are many objects in the background she can pick up including statues and sign posts. But there are also all kinds of weapons available for her to pick up. There is a hammer to hit enemies with, an umbrella that can be used both as a weapon and as a parachute to glide over obstacles, a bow and arrow to shoot enemies from afar. Keio can only carry one weapon at a time and if she’s hit she loses it but can grab it again before it disappears. The weapons act as a second hit point, kind of like rings in Sonic, and you’ll need to find weapons as soon as you can because one hit kills you instantly, so save yourself the frustrations as quickly as you can. Keio can of course jump on her enemies as well like every other platform game out there. Depending on how you play and how you kill enemies you gain or lose points. These points unlock some bonuses like images in the extra menu. It’s nothing to fret about but a fun little incentive for those who want to unlock everything the game has. Besides the platform levels the game also has some shooting levels similar to the original game. They have a very samey feel to them and those who played the first game will feel right at home. There are power ups to collect and a lot of enemies to shoot. The game’s presentation is unlike that of Konami’s Parodius games with similar wacky humorous images in the background and funny enemies to shoot. But the real show stealer is the presentation. The localizers didn’t bother to change much except for the menu, the user interface, and the voices which this time even the in game voice clips were dubbed into English, go figure. Call it lazy or not but this helped the game keep it’s distinct wacky Japanese flavor intact, they didn’t change any of the Japanese foods and even left all the Kanji graphics in. Maybe they trusted the idiot gaijins to know that some games come from Japan, who knows. There are lots of very humorous moments going on with some funny bosses thrown in into the mix. One of the bosses is a sumo wrestler who is then replaced by some mascot that spins around on a big pencil and then feels sick and starts barfing giving you an opportunity to hit him. Yeah, you read that right… It really happens. The game feels a bit like something from Konami’s Goemon because of it’s style but unfortunately it’s not as polished as what Konami’s games used to be. I recommend the game for those who want something fun to burn their weekend with. The game can be a little frustrating at times but it’s definitely a fun experience and has quite a few surprises up its sleeve. Edit: I said that the localizers left everything intact but this is a mistake on my part. After playing the Japanese version I notice that they did some Japanese into English but none of that removes the developer's real intention as even the things that have been turned into English continue to retain the original Japaneseness of the game. Even better, none of the sexual and religious stuff were censored. Some of the dubbed lines have been changed here and there.

I played the Sailor Moon RPG back when the translation patch was first released. But it's been a really long time ago I have completely forgotten about that game. If I have the time I'll play and see if it's something worth talking about. Working Designs is no stranger to 3D games either. Arc the Lad 3 and Elemental Gearbolt were 3D after all.

In a recent research study that was done by the UC San Diego psychology professor Nicholas Christenfeld about spoilers he discovered that spoilers do not ruin the enjoyment of the story but in fact makes it more enjoyable. I want to take a better look at these finding and let you, my dear readers, decide if you agree with this research or not. Spoiler alert, in my opinion Prof. Christenfeld's research still needs work because as it is right now it completely misses the mark. It's as if this research aims at a target it doesn't know even exists, it just aims its guns into a forest without aiming at a particular tree not really caring which tree it hits just as long as it hits something. One of the examples Prof. Christenfeld uses Romeo and Juliet. Let's take a look at some quotes in a prologue: ..."A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life ... The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love". One of the greatest English writers of all time basically spoils everything before the first act even begins. But Prof. Christenfeld seems to completely miss the point. It was not about spoiling the story but the structure the author decided to go for. Let's look at those lines again, ...A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life ... The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, so it's not that the story was spoiled here, it is what the author himself concluded what is the best narrative structure his story demands. Every author has his own idea what and how he should structure his narrative and where to put these kinds of important details. Furthermore, a sentence like "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life" can be as much of a symbolic meaning as it can be a literal. And it could have no literal meaning at all, only a symbolic. In the case of Romeo and Juliet it is literal, but whose to say that it has to be. Who of us watched an anime that had what seemed to spoil the ending right there in the first minute of the first episode but the real ending turned out to be something completely different. That so called spoiler takes a much deeper and more meaningful meaning than it first seemed to present itself. This makes the story seem even more reverent and meaningful on subsequent viewings. Saying that Shakespeare spoiled one of his greatest masterpieces so every writer should spoil his story completely disregards the ability of the art of storytelling craft to exhume meaningful profound themes as well as stimulating the reader on deep emotional and intellectual levels. Every writer strives to elevate the reader's experience by clever movements and subtle construction of the words, sentences, and paragraphs, leading up to the high emotional catharsis. The main point of the research is that when you are reading something for the first time and have not been spoiled then it's like driving on a road without a sense of directions of where you're going and where you will end up. But if you are spoiled you can see your destination and can enjoy the view along the ride. But the problem is that it entirely misses the point of what is the meaning of reading something for the first time. I do agree that reading something when you know what to expect is much better than going completely blind because when you don't know what to expect from a story you build a perfect image in your mind about how you think the story you're reading should be. In turn you start comparing everything you read and watch to that perfect story you hold onto in your head, the expectations you made up in your mind, but of course nothing is going to be as good as that which only leads to disappointments and makes it difficult to enjoy anything. This is exactly why this research needs more work. It completely misses the point. Spoilers are not what people need to enjoy what they read, it's that they should set their expectations to the right levels. Spoilers don't add to the enjoyment of first experiencing the story. What this research does show is that rereading a story more than once can be a highly pleasurable experience. After you get your first experience you get a bigger overall picture and now you know where the story is going. Being spoiled before your first reading experience gives you some very similar results but it also prevents you from sense of discovery that the first experience provides.Spoilers ruin the discovery and the surprises the author planned for the reader because there is no more tension anywhere, you already know what's going to happen. You can still enjoy the story if it's well written but you will never have a complete experience, it's already been ruined for you. If you ever watched the Sixth Sense you know that the story is carefully written in such a way that once you discover the truth it completely changes how you view the story from then on. Nothing can replace that FIRST experience and having been spoiled means you're experiencing the film as if you're watching it for the second time which completely defies the experiences the director intended have. Once you're finished watching it for the first time you'll love to see it again and really get the genius of the narrative. Remember11 is an amazing visual novel but if you're coming from Ever17 you'll probably expect it to have all the answers by the time you reach the true ending. However, the problem here is your expectations and they are bound to disappoint you. This is because Remember11 is an unfinished game, the story never gives you the necessary answers. Knowing that, but still avoiding spoilers, I had my expectations set a the right level, that is not expecting a satisfying ending, allowed me to enjoy the story for what it is and it turned out to be one of my favorite visual novels ever. It's one of those visual novels I can to read over and over anytime. That is how much having expectations at the correct level helps to enjoy a story and avoid any spoilers. What about games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa? The entire point of these is self discovery, you are the one who needs to solve these mysteries. If you were spoiled on every surprise the writers had in store for you then I don't see the point of playing these games. Oh sure, playing them for a second time is just as fun as the first time, however, if your first playthrough was completely spoiled then it's very doubtful you'll even enjoy playing it for the first time. Spoilers aren't always a bad thing. If you don't care about a certain show and then get it spoiled this might actually entice your curiosity and get you watch the show or read the book.Some people don't care about spoilers and will even read everything the can before watching a show. Do you think it's a good thing to be spoiled or would you prefer to be surprised? This is choice you'll have to make on your own. But try to set your expectations first before you start reading spoilers because honestly, there are some stories that shouldn't be spoiled no matter what anyone says. It is not the spoilers that make things more enjoyable, it's the expectations we as readers place on the stories we are reading. Expectations change how we perceive and experience things. Expectations can change what we take from what we are reading and what we are watching. Saying spoilers enhances the experience is, and I'll be absolutely blunt here, a big huge bullshit. The reason you enjoy a story even if you've been spoiled is all due to writer's mastery of the storytelling craft. Not because you were spoiled, and not because spoiler make the story more enjoyable, they just help you to set your expectations to the right levels. If the story is very good in your opinion, you'll probably want to read it again, this time with a completely different perspective, you will see the entire map of the narrative, it will be a completely new journey for you. To read something for a second time is an amazing experience in and of itself, you'll find that the more you read your favorite stories the more you'll love them. But you need to get through that first non-spoiled reading to get there.

I wouldn't go that far, they probably could still go on and continue their work. The closed down because of principle, Victor Ireland was fed up with the bullshit his company had to go through with every game they want to work on and not being allowed to release the Growlanser game separately was the last straw. At least according to his own words before the company finally closed down. It really does seem strange that Sony would do that, what's the point. That's the first and I think the only time I ever heard of a console manufacturer intervening with a publisher AFTER the game has already been approved. They can limit the number of discs pressed like they did to WARP's D. I am not surprised, there are a ton of voices in both Growlanser games. The Arc the Lad games are the ones Bernie Stolar prevented them to release, it wasn't until close to the playstation's life that it finally came out in English. In a better edition than Japan has ever got. Yeah but don't forget games like Snatcher and Metal Gear Solid, both came out long before Growlanser and both have voices not even matched by today's games. It doesn't matter if voices were popular or how much they were used, what mattered whether the people behind it care enough to put this kind of effort. Final Fantasy X had horrible voice acting and I don't even want to talk about X-2. Even Xenosaga Episode I didn't always have good voice acting, I mean it was good in some scenes and pretty bad in others. Episode II had a few changes, some for the better some for the worse. But Episode III had the best voices of all, even those actors that were bad in Episode I suddenly sound good and professional in Episode I. So it comes down to competent and how much the people behind the games care about their projects.

I never been a fan of their approach to localization myself. They do write some good stuff but they go overboard. At least their games where good. If only they didn't make their early stuff unfairly difficult. I'm too lazy to type it right now but read about Lunar: Eternal Blue (SegaCD) or Exile 2 for the Turbographics. Eternal Blue was especially brutal, and it's only the English version that was like that. Thanks Working Designs for making kids investing their hard earn allowance on a game they eventually will just give up enjoying. It was in the early years of the first playstation. Sony was very welcoming of rpgs but they wanted to keep a high quality of stuff being released. They also wanted there to be more 3D games but too many rpgs where in 2D. Bernie Stolar was against rpgs too so he wouldn't allow anything to be localized. As for why Sony wouldn't let WD release Growlanser 2 & 3 separately, that's anyone's guess but I think perhaps they didn't want people to think they are charging 60$ for a playstation1 looking game, lol.

Hearing the words a movie license game send chills down a gamer's spine causing him to run to the ends of earth and hide under a rock for hundreds of years while forcing himself a life of denial and self exile. Undeniably licensed games have a well earned horrible reputation by showing again and again what the true meaning of horror really means. But it's unfair to say that 100% of all licensed games are bad as there are plenty of good licensed games as well, even if 98% of them are bad there are still 2% of very good licensed games. Magic Knight Rayearth is one such game. Magic Knight Rayearth began as a manga by the popular all women manga writers group CLAMP and very quickly garnered enough popularity to earn a two season anime adaptation and an alternative darker and more serious tone three part OVA series. The series began when CLAMP was asked to make a shoujo manga for one of the popular magazines but instead of following the strict rules of the genre they had a complete freedom to bend those same rules. As a result Rayearth combined magic girl, mecha, shoujo, shounen, jrpg elements, sentai team, everything that blurs the line between the shoujo and the shounen genres and was popular among both girls and boys. The game starts with a beautiful opening which is the opening from the anime tv series with a great upbeat song and well produced smooth animation. As the game begins proper we are introduced to our first of three heroines, Hikari, on a yearly school trip to Tokyo Tower where she and, we the players, meet the other two heroines, Fuu and Umi. Very quickly we get an idea of each of their personality but then Hikari's puppy suddenly appears to her bewilderment, how the hell did it get there anyway and then a chase ensues to capture the puppy. Just when Umi catches the puppy a bright blinding light shone from outside and a mysterious girl appears and calls out to them. The tower disappears and the girls fall into the a new fantastic world where their adventures begin. The very first thing you notice is the Zelda style top down action rpg gameplay. But the game does everything different enough to stand itself apart from Zelda and its wannabe clones. Each of the characters has a health and magic bars and each has their own weapons. There is no huge world to explore typical of Zelda but there is an overworld map where you can travel to different destinations, visit towns, talk to NPCs, go into dungeons, solve puzzles, and fight bosses. It's a very engaging gameplay mechanics. The three heroines are Hikaru Shidou the quirky red colored team leader, her name means Light in Japanese and she controls the fire magic elemental and her weapon is a short sword she can side swipe. Umi Ryuuzaki the mature realistic no-nonsense goal oriented blue colored girl, her name means Sea in Japanese, she controls the water elemental magic and her weapon is a long rapier (she's in a fencing club so it's appropriate) and she attacks with strong straightforward stab, unlike Hikari, her weapon has a longer reach. Fuu Hououji the gentle intelligent green colored but blond haired girl, her name means Wind in Japanese and she controls the the air elemental magic, her weapon is a bow and arrow so she can attack from a distance and probably the most useful of them all. You control all three girls at the same time switching between them as needed defeating enemies, solve puzzles, or just a personal preference of one character of the other. Many licensed games have problems integrating the original story with demands of the gameplay and end up having neither in the process. Magic Knights Rayearth avoids that by following the story through its gameplay so the characters level up not through experience but through progress in the game as the story keeps moving along at a nice pace. The girls start a bit weak but they grow and gain stronger weapons, their hp and mp bars grow bigger, and learn more powerful magics. Hikari gains more powerful fire magic, Umi gains her powerful water magic, Fuu gets stronger arrows which you can even control mid flight and learns the most ever useful healing magic. You'll be relying on Fuu a lot for her long range weapon and healing magic. Even more memorable is the game's presentation. The lush colorful hand drawn backgrounds and the large smoothly animated and creative character sprites really shows off what the Saturn is capable doing with 2D graphics. The game is fully voiced with each story scene reuses the dialogue from the anime and it all sounds perfectly. The game has a few very short FMV cutscenes but the story is mostly presented through in game dialogue with a visual novel style textbox and the character's image on top. There is a good variety of character poses and expressions fitting for each line delivery, sometimes the characters will even turn into the chibi versions of themselves for an additional comedic effect. The English version of the game was released by the now gone fan cult favorite Working Designs. The company's president Victor Ireland had a very bitter relationship with Sony's at the time president Bernie Stolar who believed people in the west aren't interested in rpgs and shut the door to most rpgs (and other unique games) to ever come out leaving most western playstation gamers starving. This strict policy was quickly remedied and the playstation western market opened its arms to welcome many Japnese rpgs. However after Working Designs announced the localization of Magic Knight Rayearth for the Saturn, Bernie Stolar left Sony and was hired by SEGA and this led to WD distancing themselves and turning their backs on SEGA, their once home, and instead their focus moved entirely to the playstation. Working Designs kept delaying the game again and again with a very slow progress while putting most of their focus on the new Lunar remake for the playstation. Lunar:The Silver Star Story Complete still took WD years to polish and release. It seemed like Rayearth was not what WD wanted to focus on anymore, they wanted to move on. But the reality was more troubling, according to an interview with Victor Ireland, the game's Japanese source code was completely destroyed in a hard drive crash and with it all the original data was lost. Working Designs had to recreate entire sections of the game from scratch. The lip sync time data for the in game dialogue was gone along with the crash and Working Designs had to reprogram everything themselves. If that's true then Working Designs made a very perfect recreation of the Japanese version of the game. This is a bit suspicious of the facts since recreating everything to the latter will not be possible, how much data was exactly lost might be just an exaggeration. The English lip sync time data cannot simply use the Japanese lip sync data, why then did they need the original Japanese data. The English version starts fully voiced but then suddenly the story sequences aren't voices anymore, with only a few and far between scenes still having voices intact. The reasoning behind this is, as Victor Ireland said in an interview, in the Japanese version which was fully voiced the player couldn't skip those scenes and was forced to wait for the cutscene to finish before moving on. Once again, this is a very shallow excuse to not give the players a completely voiced game. To compensate for that, each heroine also has a diary accessible through the menu, the diary entries are updated automatically as the player progresses through the game, in the English version the diary entries are voiced. These diaries are a lot of fun to read and give a unique perspective on the plot through each heroine's point of view. However this isn't enough for the lack of voices in the game and the truth of the matter is that Working Designs just didn't want to invest their already limited resources into this game. This is not to say Working Designs didn't love the game, every single game they worked on was done with a lot of love from the team and it always showed in their games (even if some of their decisions were, to put it gently, STUPID and IDIOTIC and DUMB, Lunar:Eternal Blue saving system anyone?). It should be noted that what voices the English version does have are mostly very good with a few exceptions, it's a staple of Working Designs' high level of production values, even if there was plenty of room for improvement , they still did one of the best voice jobs in the industry at the time. The English dubbed anime series had a very good English rendition of the Japanese original song (which was completely abandoned in the remastered versions, it's baffling the decisions these companies sometimes make), yes they used to redo the songs in English for the dubbed versions of anime. Working Designs made their own rendition of the song in English with different lyrics which was just as good as the dubbed English and the Japanese versions. All three versions of the songs are really good and up beat fun tracks that deserves to be on anyone's top favorite anime songs of all time. As Working Designs kept their non-stop delaying the game again and again Victor Ireland admitted that they wanted it to be the last game ever released for the Saturn, as sort of goodbye to the system and proof to the fans they stayed loyal to the end. This is not unlike what they did with Lunar: Eternal Blue for the Sega CD a generation back. But no matter the facts and blurred truths Magic Knight Rayearth is still one of the best licensed games and one of the best Saturn games. Working Designs did everything they could to bring the game for the English fans. Even if you never seen the anime or never read the magna, maybe you never even heard of Magic Knight Rayearth, all that is completely inconsequential, you will enjoy the game regardless what your experience with the franchise is.

What, no love for Interview with Kaziklu Bey? I'm sad.

The anime industry used to be dominated by the super robot genre and nowhere is it more prevalent than the 70's when every other show was about a giant robot the protector of all good and keeper of piece while fighting the great evil organization/alien/ lizardmen/ invaders/army. By putting the pilots inside the machine and glorifying it as something mystical or even godly, Go Nagai practically invented the genre. The idea about the cockpit being inside the robot [head] came to him after he worked on Mao Dante, the work that lead into the creation of the hugely successful Devilman and its spinoffs and sequels. Go Nagai himself was trying to do something completely different from Mazinger Z but just couldn't think of a way to make things work so Mazinger turned the way it is known today. Working with his partner, Ken Ishikawa, together they finally made the concept work, combining robots. Thus the Getter Robo was born. Once again, another mecha sub genre born, the combining super robots. The concept is very simple, have three pilots fly three different machines that can combine into a big robot. The order also dictated what kind of robot they combined into so the order of assembly was important as well. There were basically three combinations, Getter 1, Getter 2, and Getter 3, each with a special tactical advantage like fighting underwater. This brought an interesting team dynamic as well making it as much about the people as it is about the robots and changed the anime genre landscape completely, until Gundam and later Macross and even farther down the line Evangelion will change and revolutionize the genre once again. Even the 90's anime were making affectionate parodies of the genre, like in Nadesico a real robot show with a show within a show, Gekiganger 3, a parody of the combing robot genre suspiciously similar to Getter Robo team. But some anime like GaoGaiGar and Gurren Lagann played it completely straight and glorified the genre and complete redefined what epic really means, but that's a story for another time. Released for the original playstation Geppy-X is a love letter to this exact sub genre of combining giant super robots. The gameplay is a typical side scrolling shooter. The player can transform the robot into three different combinations with very little different between them besides how the robot looks and which weapons it has. Each of the three combinations has it's own 3 different weapons, lasers, machine gun, wind tornado and so on. Killing enemies builds a power bar and lets the player unleash a powerful attack. The gameplay doesn't have much of anything, that's not to say the game isn't fun but it's also quite generic and you'll find better side scrolling shooters than this one. Presentation is a real winner and the sole reason for Geppy-X existence. The game has an animated 70's style opening which if you didn't better you would believe it was done in the 70's with lyrics and subtitles to get you sing along, that's how good the imitation is. Every level is like an episode from an actual show and in fact that's how levels are called, episodes. The structure is very formulaic with every episode starts with an opening then a short cutscene, then they show episode title, and then the game begins proper, then you get to a boss fight, and then they shows an eyecatch, and show a fake commercial. The commercials feel like a genuine advertisement with ads for Geppy-X toys, Geppy-X souse, Geppy-X manga, a promotion for Ashita no Joe parody anime and so on. Then back to another eyecatch, back to a cutscene and then back to the 2nd half of the game with an end level boss. After defeating the boss there's an episode ending cutscene, continuing to an animated ending with credits and song and end it with a next episode preview. There are also 3D prerendered cutscenes too but they completely feel out of place, it was just a shortcut for the developers not to make any more 2d animated cutscenes. The game's audio is very awesome too. It's fully voiced during the cutscenes but what makes it a real winner is the glorious soundtrack. During the gameplay sections Geppy-X has some of the most awesome hotblooded 70's anime songs. Every single level has it's own song playing. Even every single half of each episode has its own different song playing. There are even two or three songs exclusive for the boss fights. It oozes with awesomeness and heroic passion, I just wish there was a soundtrack available somewhere out here. The story plays straight with its tropes and cliches. If you watch a few classic mecha anime you'll notice quite a few similarities. Including the 3 cliche characters with one of them a generic hero, another the cool cold and mysterious, and a fat guy. The good guys have a base HQ laboratory where they apparently live with some professor and other researchers. Every episode the bad guys come and the good guys have to pilot their combining robot and defeat the anime to live another day. Yeah... it's as if Geppy-X was an unreleased show in the 70's and during the 90's someone found clips of the show and made a game out of it. Not that it's a bad thing, Geppy-X feels like a genuine 70's robot show. With so much love and passion the developers poured into this project it is a shame they did not put as much love into the story. After a few episodes the initial excitement wears off and the cracks in the scenario become apparent. The cutscenes are so short the story is paper thin and completely fails to engage and connect with the player. it plays the cliche for the sake of cliche with absolutely no build up. In the anime they take time to develop the character to make as understand and care for him, the build up to the heroic sacrifice stirs emotions and becomes meaningful. In Geppy-X when one of the characters dies the game expects the player to feel sad but it just doesn't work, even a few episodes in we know this character for barely 2 minutes and now we're supposed to care and feel sad? The game is very easy so obviously the developers wanted the player to enjoy the story and presentation more than the game itself, however they did not put any effort to write a decent story. Even if the story was to be a one-to-one copy of Getter Robo or any of the other classic shows it would still succeed to elicit some kind of reaction from the player. However the game fails to elevate itself anything above just a fun little cute thing lacking any sort of depth to the source material it tries so hard to imitate. It's hard to recommend Geppy-X to anyone but the most curious or the most hardcore 70's mecha fans. Check it out just for the curiosity's sake but don't expect to come back to it once the novelty wears off. A shame really because it's a perfect homage to the classics and had so much potential.

Here you go, the interview:

I don't know. Maybe add some more details to the sides of the original artwork?

I read the non 18+ version and it didn't look like anything was missing. There were one or two scene where I thought if this was the adult version they would have put an h-scene right about here but other than that nothing felt missing. The version I played had a few extra stories which are way more interesting than any h-scene. Let's hope they don't crop the images but simply upscale them. Light did a high res vn that was in 4:3 so I don't see why they can't do that with Dies Irae either. It's their most popular game so I think they will handle this stuff with great care.

Intentional or not it still says they are working on it. Why doubt what's right there.

Then don't play it, lol.

Damn troll, lol.

Where is this from? Who will publish what?

Maybe this https://vndb.org/v15708

Dude, play Dies Irae already

Are these announcements even need to be at panels? Why can't they just announce it at their website and stop trolling people?

I am looking forward reading the Xtend edition, and in English at that. But in my opinion the original version is pretty amazing on its own.

That review contains spoilers.

First of all, it's not full of asspulls and it's not a 'hilariously complex mess'. It is a complex story but it is also very carefully thought out to the minute detail. It answers every single mystery and question you have. You just gotta pay more attention. Going through the game a 2nd time you will understand things far better. Let's not label I/O as something on the level of some badly written nukige or something. Anyway, here's the answer to your question (SPOILERS TO THE ENTIRE GAME):

It looks awesome. I'm impressed. It is also a great idea to have a choice to ignore the gameplay element for those you just want to enjoy the story. Good luck and looking forward to play this myself.

Demonbane might fit as well. It is translated and has plenty of action.

This was before 5pb. was all anti-pc. Hey, I'm all for S;G 0 to come on pc but I don't see it happen at least a year after it comes out on consoles, if ever. But I also lost hope of seeing Chaos;Child on pc so who knows, lol.