Images

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Review: Dragon Egg - A Good but Rushed Platformer]

Here's another review of the game in English (thanks to BKK from Neogaf for finding this)



... and, like every review of the game I've seen, it mentions how the second half feels unfinished and, beyond that, speculates a bit about why.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Review: Dragon Egg - A Good but Rushed Platformer]

Hard Mode

There is a big elephant in the room that I have been sort of dodging around up to this point, however: the difference between the difficulty levels.  Dragon Egg! has the usual three settings, Easy, Normal, and Hard.  On Easy, the game is a complete and total cakewalk.   Don't bother with it.  On Normal, the game is still really easy.  I beat the game on normal, without dying even one single time, the day after I got this game.  So it may have been easy, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.  But to get a bit more out of this not-cheap game, I decided to try Hard mode... and it's a huge difference from the lower ones!  Hard makes two major changes to the game: first, all enemies and bosses take twice as many hits to kill as they do on the lower difficulties.  This makes everything a lot longer and slows down the game.  And second, and even more importantly, you now are punished not only for dying, but for getting hit at all.  If you have bought powerups from the store, you lose one level from BOTH of those powerups each time you take a hit.  You also take damage, of course. And if you don't have powerups, each hit takes away one dragon egg.  If there are no eggs in the meter at the moment you'll be downgraded to the next level down, down to the minimum of just having the egg with its way-too-close melee attack.  And you REALLY need powerups, because the final boss is brutally, near-impossibly difficult without a significantly powered up dragon; I tried to beat him in Hard with no powerups once, but eventually had to give up, it's just crazy-hard.

Overall, Hard mode's changes make the game a LOT harder and much, much more frustrating.  The main reason why this review isn't happening until now, instead of a week and a half ago when I first meant to write one, is because I just can't stop trying and failing to beat this game on Hard!  I know I need to no-hit-clear it to win, and I keep messing up and dying somewhere in level three.  It's really the "taking away powerups when you get hit" thing that makes it so hard; if you've gotten to the point where you're losing eggs, it's already over.  You cannot grind to get more money in this game, there is a preset number of enemies and each one only drops one coin or egg.  So if you take a hit and it steals 10 or 20 coins worth of powerups from you, that's a hard to impossible thing to recover from.  It's frustrating, because if I could get past the first half of the game with full power I think I could beat the second half with a lot less difficulty, but that's easier said than done... argh.  So yeah, I keep trying, and putting off this review that I was initially going to "write quickly because the game is easy and fun."  Heh.  But hey, as frustrating as that is, it also shows how addictive the game is; I'm still playing it, after all.  Had the game only had the Normal difficulty setting and no others it'd have been another one of those fun but very short game, but thanks to Hard mode the game has some lasting play value.

Archers shoot fire-arrows.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Dragon Egg! is a good game I definitely like playing, but it is also a flawed title that could have been a lot better.  This game has great graphics that are among the best on the platform in this genre, variety to the gameplay due to the different enemies and obstacles you run across, and something for everyone difficulty-wise as the normal mode is short and fun, if somewhat insubstantial because of how quickly you should beat it, while the hard mode is a serious challenge.  On the other hand though, the game is far too short and was obviously shipped in a partially-finished state, as the mostly missing second half of the game and very short ending show.  The unbalanced difficulty and too-easy gameplay if you get fully powered up are also issues; though Hard mode does alleviate that second one somewhat, it is still easier powered up.  The decision to have you lose a full level of BOTH attack-enhancer powerups every time you get hit one single time in Hard mode is also perhaps inordinately cruel for a game like this; it'd have been better if you lost only one attack powerup each time, if that mechanic had to exist. These issues are significant, but still I do like Dragon Egg! overall.  I give this game a B- score.   This is the kind of game this system needed more of and I recommend it to platformer fans, it's good despite its issues.

Links

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/2009/03/dragon-egg.html - The Brothers Duomazov's review has some nice screenshots from later in the game, read it!

http://www.videogameden.com/hucard/reviews/deg.htm - VGDen also has a review, and a translation of the backstory -- the girl's name is Eran, and she is the descendant of the legendary Dragon Warriors and is the only one who can defeat the demon who has taken over the land.  Also, more nice screenshots.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Review: Dragon Egg - A Good but Rushed Platformer]

Platform: PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16)
    Year: Released 9/27/1991
    Developer/Publisher: NCS Masaya
    Title: Dragon Egg!

Colors aside this is representative of the game.

Introduction

Dragon Egg! is a cartoony platformer NCS Masaya published in '91.  This game is a tough one to review, because on the one hand it's a pretty good, fun game, but on the other hand it's also flawed, has an unbalanced difficulty level which is harder in the first half of this six-level game and easier in the second, is absurdly short, and feels unfinished.  When this game released in Japan in fall '91 the PC Engine was still popular, but the smash-hit success of the Super Famicom (SNES) was taking over the market and NEC was moving towards a stronger focus on CD games over HuCard titles.  NCS Masaya may have been a third party, but they noticed this, as Dragon Egg! was their last HuCard release.  This all might be an explanation for why this game was rushed, but whatever the reason, it's unfortunate.  Regardless, the game makes a great first impression with its good graphics and nice cartoony artwork, and it controls well as well, but the serious issues add up to some huge drawbacks.  The story is that you play as a young girl, off to save the world from evil with a dragon's egg.  The text is all in Japanese, but the basics of what's going on is clear enough: there is a demon troubling the land, and a young girl is the only hope to save the land from decay.  An old man, maybe her grandfather or something, gives her some goggles which are apparently dragon-rider gear, and off you go to save the day!  The intro cutscene is fairly long and looks great.  Unfortunately, it's the only real cutscene in the game; the ending is extremely short.  There is a nice credits sequence, but still, as with many things in this game, the ending feels unfinished.

The intro looks great.

Graphics and Sound

Visually, the game is one of the better looking platformers on the system.  The PC Engine or TurboGrafx, on both HuCard and CD, does not have the wealth of platformers that the Super Nintendo and Genesis do.  Its platformer library is smaller, and many of the games are more NES-like in design than most of the games you see on those other two systems. The system had an earlier peak, and that shows.  This game, though, is clearly 4th-gen in style.  The background and character art is colorful and quite well-drawn. It shows off the consoles' ability to put lots of colors on screen nicely, and the art design would look good anywhere.  Buildings do look a bit flat, I guess, but I don't mind.  The sprite art is particularly nice, and well animated too.  The heroine in her pink overalls puts those goggles on once you power up enough to ride on the dragon, for example, which is a nice touch once you notice it.  Enemies raise their weapon as they approach you too, and do a 'swing' animation if you touch them.  Nice stuff.  There are not a huge number of different types of foes, but it's enough for a game as short as this.  Those enemies are varied, and while the game has a cartoony anime look to it, there is some variety here, from the cute to the threatening.  Your dragon is somewhat adorably cute, but monsters vary from the big-headed and not too scary skeletons to the creepier flying bug-men . Other enemies include giants, slimes, and later on several kinds of gun and laser turrets.  Bosses similarly vary, from the barely threatening-looking first boss to the more serious later ones.  They all look great.  On an odd but then-common note though, the main character wears blue overalls and a yellow shirt in the manual art, but pink overalls with a white shirt in the game.  It's odd how some older games have very different art between the manuals and games even in Japan... or sometimes, within the game itself; see Alisia Dragoon on the Genesis for an example of that.

I do need to say though, as in many anime fantasy settings, this world is historically incoherent.  It appears medieval at first and enemies have armor, swords, and bows, but there is electricity in places, there are enemy laser turrets, and the heroine wears modern clothing.  The setting makes little sense.  Is this fantasy or modern ?  It's both, apparently.  But beyond that all-too-common frustration, the game looks great.  The visuals here have a more polished look to them than most platformers on the system do.  Hudson's platformers often match or beat this, visually, but I do think the game is in the upper tier visually, at least for this system.  The developers even pull off a limited parallax effect.  The whole background does not have multiple layers in it, but there are clouds which quickly move across the sky in many stages, to give some of that feeling of parallax movement.  It's a great effect and definitely helps.  The music, however, is unfortunately strictly average stuff.  It's mostly okay, but isn't exciting or too memorable.  Some songs are too short, too, such as the five-second-loop that plays during the first half of the last boss fight. Still, the audio is alright, and after playing it for a while I guess a few tracks are somewhat catchy.

The first level.  Health and lives are in the upper right, dragon egg counter in the upper left.

Controls and Game Design

One thing making Dragon Egg! game good are the great controls.  The controls are precise and accurate. You do move a little fast, so you do need to look out or you'll bump into enemies, but it controls very well.  This is a simple game, and all you'll is move around, jump, and attack.  You start with two hearts for health, though each health heart can take two hits, and you can upgrade this to a maximum of four hearts during the game.  Though you can't save your progress you do have infinite continues, but your goal should be to beat the game without dying, or without getting hit much at all if you're in Hard mode, so the continues aren't always needed.  Levels are all straightforward as well.  There is some depth in the upgrade system, however, though it's badly unbalanced, particularly in Normal difficulty.  Whenever you kill an enemy they drop one of two different types of powerups: dragon eggs to upgrade your dragon's form, or coins you use to buy other powerups.  Which one an enemy drops is entirely random, it is important to note; I kind of wish the powerups were predetermined, but which you get is purely a matter of chance.

Of the two upgrade systems, I will first cover the dragon mentioned in the title. Collecting dragon eggs upgrade your dragon between four forms.  You start out carrying an egg in a backpack, and can attack only at melee range.  You want to get out of this mode as soon as possible, because this attack is too close-range to avoid taking damage sometimes.  All four forms do exactly the same amount of damage per hit, varying on whether you have weapon powerups of course, I should say; it is the range that varies, but those range expansions are vital! It is funny how hitting a badguy with an egg does the same amount of damage as shooting them with a fireball, though.  Heh.  So, the first upgrade requires two dragon eggs.  Here, the dragon has poked its head out of the egg and breathes fire ahead of you.  This short-range fire attack is pretty good and actually will collect items, something the later upgrades' attacks will not do. The third level takes three more eggs.  Now you ride on the hatched dragon's back, and attack with fireballs that go across the screen.  The last powerup takes four eggs, and makes the dragon larger and better.  Now it's got a higher jump that has some float to it for slower descents, and it upgrades your weapon potential as well -- while the basic un-upgraded attack is the same as the level 3 dragon, with upgrades you will see the difference.  The top-level dragon is pretty awesome, and overpowered, so long as you have it.  It is a big target, though only your character is actually vulnerable and not the dragon. This is important to know for getting through the laser gates without taking a hit.

The money system similarly rewards staying alive, and is one more element making the first half of the game harder than the second -- if you can get fully powered up and avoid losing those powerups, you'll be nearly unstoppable.  You use collected money to buy powerups from shops scattered around the game. There are six different items you can buy. For 3 coins, you can buy cure items which you can use in the select menu. These heal half a heart each, and you can carry up to four.  There are three items that cost 10 coins.  First there is a firepower upgrade which doubles the damage you do per hit.  You can buy this again, for the same cost, to almost double damage again -- this reduces an 8-hit giant down to 3 hits, for example.  Next, there is a range / multi-hit upgrade.  This gives the level 1 or 2 dragon a slightly longer range attack, the level 3 dragon two fireballs for an attack, or the level 4 dragon three fireballs.  You can also can purchase this a second time as well, to add homing to your level 3 or 4 dragon's shots or a little more range to a level 1 or 2 dragon.  And last at 10 coins, you can buy additional health hearts, which, yes, you can buy up to two of, though you don't need to as unlike the attack upgrades you can also get these other ways.  And last, two items are available for for 30 coins each: a barrier which gives you an extra hit which you don't lose anything for losing if you are hit, or a skull which is a bomb you can use by double-tapping attack, or something like that.  You can only have one skull at a time in your inventory.  It is important to note that five of these six powerups can be lost, but you won't lose the healthbar-expanding hearts.  I wonder why they decided that health upgrades are permanent, while attack upgrades can be lost.  It's kind of odd. As for the other upgrades, in Easy or Normal you won't lose any dragon or store-bought powerups unless you die, but if you do die you reset to the level-one egg-swing attack, and you lose all money and purchased items except for health expansions as well.  It's painful stuff, if you were upgraded; the easiest way to beat the game is to not die.  In Hard mode the game is significantly more punishing: you lose store-bought attack powerups, then dragon eggs, each time you are hit.  More on this later.

There is no scoring system in this game, so the only pickups in levels are those items enemies drop, and a few scattered health bar-expansion heart, cure, and skull items.  There is also a roulette after each level which spins between a health expansion heart, a cure, a skull, or a 1-up.  Try to time your jump for the one you want the most.  Oddly, while they look identical, the cure items you get from the end-level roulette or that are placed in levels are entirely different from the ones you can buy in the stores, as quite unlike the ones you buy, the cure pickups are instant-use only and cannot be stored, and heal a full heart instead of only a half like the ones you buy do.  The two types probably should have used different graphics to signify that they are not the same.  Still, I like that the full-heart heals exist, they are quite useful because there is no health recovery between levels; you'll start the next stage with the exact amount of health you finished the last one with.  When you add those hearts to your health they start out empty, too, so even if you don't take damage you will need health at least to fill those.  It all works fairly well.

The shop and items.

Level Design and Layouts

The level designs are the core of any platformer, and thankfully stages in Dragon Egg! are nicely varied.  There are horizontal, vertical, and maze-like levels, and you need to approach each enemy type differently.  Enemy AI is extremely basic, as enemies mostly just move or shoot straight at you once they're on screen, but it works as other things differentiate them, such as size, whether they fly or not, and whether they can shoot at you.  The six bosses are each entirely unique as well, so no two of those fights will be the same.  All six boss fights have the exact same stage background as well, with the same platform layout on it. I don't mind this, but it does lack variety.  More importantly, one of the major issues with Dragon Egg! is that the game is badly unbalanced and sort of backwards -- the second half of the game is significantly shorter and easier than the first half is.  The first two levels each are broken up into three stages and then a boss.  The difficulty ramps up just right here, as the game starts out quite easy but slowly gets trickier.  Level three only has two stages before the boss, but the second is the games' one and only maze stage, so it may take a little while to get through.  Level 3 feels as long as either before it, and it might be the hardest level in the game.  But then you get to level four, and it all falls apart; while levels four through six are quite fun, they all have only ONE stage per level each!  One linear stage and a boss each, that's it.  There are also level design elements that only appear once, which can be fine for some original challenge, but why does is stage 1-2 the only one in the whole game with instant-death pits in it, for example ?  It's bizarre.  The only explanation I can think of is that the game must have been badly rushed, shipped before it was really done because NCS needed it out NOW or something.  These and other cutbacks are quite unfortunate, because a more complete and polished version of this game could have been great.

Now, I'd like to go into a little more detail about each of the stages.  Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid any spoilers about the game.  Level one has you traveling across some mountains.  As mentioned previously, stage 1-2 is the only one in the game with bottomless pits.  It's hard to avoid that enemy on the last jump, but you CAN do it without taking a hit if you jump at the last second.  I mentioned the first boss earlier. Level two is harder, as you travel through giant-infested caverns.  It's a fun level, though it can be tricky at points in Hard mode.  The boss is a spawning creature which can be a pain to not take any damage against.  Level three is the maze in an electric castle. It's a good, well-designed level, though it is quite challenging to get through in Hard mode without taking hits thanks to the flying bug enemies, the laser gates, and maybe worst of all the invincible gun turrets shooting at you.  The boss is this cubic thing with tendrils you need to destroy before you take out the core; it's easy powered up, but a bit trickier if not.  Level four is a river-rafting trip over water.  You have to stay on the raft in the middle of the screen and enemies are only a minor threat, so the level is very easy.  The graphics here are great though, as the level has some really nice-looking rippling water effects.  The stage ending is a setup for another stage that doesn't exist though; again, this game must have been rushed.  The boss is interesting, but again is easy at full power once you learn its pattern.  The fifth level goes through an Egyptian desert.  It's a fun level, though again it's too short and badly needs multiple areas.  The level 5 boss is one of the easier ones regardless of your power level.  And last, you go through the bosses' fortress.  The level is only moderately challenging, though the boss is really hard if you aren't powered up. This boss has two forms, and without powerups it takes a lot of hits to kill and attacks with curving fireballs that are hard to avoid.  It's hard to do even a few hits in a row against the guy without taking damage, so you want to be powerful enough to take him out as quickly as possible.

With the level two dragon, shooting a fireball.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Review: W-Ring: The Double Rings - A Very Good but Obscure Shmup]

Hey Black Falcon, I like the game a lot too. It's like Gradius meets thunder-force

But could you be more consise with your posts? You write incredibly long blocks of text. That time could be spent playing W-Ring instead.

I like writing long-ish reviews.  When I want to write less about a game that's what something like a Game Opinion Summaries list is for -- sure, the overall length of the post is long, but the amount for each game is a lot less than a review like this.

Basically, to be more concise I'd probably need an editor.

I'd love to pick up this game, but it seems to have risen up to around the $60.00 mark on ebay for a complete one. 

The Everdrive looks very attractive right now.....

This game definitely has value, yes.  I paid about $25 for a loose copy of the game when I got it two years ago, so W-Ring hasn't had some sudden jump in value I don't think, it's had value for years.   I imagine that enough people know it's a pretty good game to drive up the value; shmups can get pricey for sure.

Somehow got to a "special" stage 3



Love the effects on that level, this game gives me hard "Paranoia/Psychosis" vibes...

Yeah, I definitely agree that level 3 is maybe the best-looking level.  The water effects are great, and the music is pretty good too.  As for the alternate stages, it's fun to try to find and play through them, though you don't get any kind of special reward for doing so, the game has only one ending, and there are only alternate stages for levels 1 to 5 anyway, not the last two.  It's still a great addition that gives the game more variety than most shmups of the time.

This is another nice detailed review, but it's not a good idea to generalize the console/library every time.

It is not "usual" for a PC Engine game to not have any parallax, especially shooters. It's only usual to educate the reader with this misleading factoid in each review.

What?  Yes it is.  I have, and have played, lots of shmups for shmups for this system, but most have nothing more than maybe little tricks like moving dots across the screen as a "starfield" (see Zero Wing for example) or horizontal/vertical-strip parallax, and a lot don't have any.  I presume you're mostly talking about those two things there, because actual full multi-layer parallax is quite uncommon because it's harder to do technically, of course, though a few games manage to pull off that look by using sprites as 'ground' to add in some parallax; I presume this is how the Super Darius games do their impressive full-screen parallax scrolling.  But most shmups on the system certainly don't have parallax on Super Darius's level, and many have none. 

Most vertical shmups on the system don't have any.  Horizontal ones do sometimes, but if it's in even half of the hori shmups it'd only be because of "let's move dots in the background at different speeds"... of the hori shmups I have on HuCard for instance, if I'm getting this right, Saint Dragon, R-Type, Barunba, W-Ring, and Fantasy Zone have no parallax; Aero Blasters and Download have some strip parallax; and Gradius and Sidearms have the moving-dots-at-different-speeds thing.  On CD more games I have try to have some, but CD games have a lot more space to try to pull off fancier graphics, something the Super and Arcade CD shmups show off for sure.  I think it's most fair to compare this to other HuCard games.  And of course if you add in the vertical shmups, on HuCard at least they almost always have either no parallax at all, or only the moving-dots style, and a majority have none I think.  I guess that moving-dots thing sort of counts as "parallax", but it's not nearly on the same level as a fully-drawn parallax background.  Think of how in Zero Wing they had to replace that rocky asteroid field parallax background in one of the early levels with little dots of light as the only objects that move at a different speed from the background, surely because of hardware limitations.  It is a basic form of parallax of course, but it's not the same and it's often seen only in certain levels -- any level with a fully-drawn background in a starfield-parallax game will have no parallax in those stages -- you see this in games like Final Blaster or Final Soldier, for example.  I wish more vertical shmups on the system had something like the fairly cool looking parallax background Alzadick has in one of its two stages (the other one has the usual starfield thing).

But anyway, in this case, W-Rings' impressively animated stages look fantastic!  Most 4th-gen games don't have animated backgrounds in almost every level, after all, but this game does and it looks great.  I don't care much that the game doesn't try any parallax, the graphics it does have make up for that.
 

Your SNES and N64 reviews would be much longer if you wasted time pinting out typical negatives in games from those libraries. But I'm only assuming that you don't.

Of course I would mention negatives about a game if I'm reviewing it, that's what a review is for!  I don't mention things like SNES slowdown, TG16 lack of parallax, or Genesis lack of color every single time I write about those systems, but I do sometimes, because those three things are each respective system's biggest graphical flaw and of course I mention that sometimes.  Not every time, though, only some of the time, and that goes for TG16 parallax (or the lack thereof) as well.  Seriously, stop making every single post into an attack, there's no reason for that.

http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?page_id=78 Read some of my stuff for each respective platform and you'll see I mention those major graphical flaws (SNES slowdown, Genesis/Sega CD lack of color, TG16 parallax) some times but not others.  This is true for parallax in TG16 games as well, of course -- I don't always mention when it's not there, only occasionally.  My Avenger and Tiger Road reviews don't mention that those games have no parallax, for instance, and of the TG16 or TCD reviews I've done only in the Zero Wing review mentions parallax at length, there to compare the game to its arcade and Genesis counterparts.  And anyway, in this review I was trying to say that the graphics the game does have are good enough that I don't mind the absence of parallax; W-Ring looks great!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Review: W-Ring: The Double Rings - A Very Good Shooter]

Difficulty and Expert Mode

I beat this game on Normal several years back; it may seem challenging at first, but even I don't have too much trouble with it anymore and I'm far from great at this genre.  A month or two ago, though, I played the game again for the first time in a while, and started the game on Normal difficulty.  I found it surprisingly easy -- on my very first try, I beat the whole game without getting a game over!  There were a few hairy moments in level 6, but I got through and beat the game.  That's impressive stuff for me, I haven't 1-credit-cleared many shooters, for sure.  So I was feeling good... and then it looped over into Expert (Hard) mode, after the short endgame sequence.  Everything changed; Expert is an entirely different story! As easy as the game is on Normal, it's BRUTALLY hard on Expert. I got my first game over early in stage 1, and it took a fair number of tries at each of the first five stages to get past each one.  I was working my way through Expert mode at a reasonable pace, though.  In addition to wanting to complete this great game on its more challenging setting, I also I wanted to see if the game has a different ending on Expert difficulty versus Normal -- nobody online had mentiond if there is one, and there are no gameplay videos of Expert mode online.  And then I hit stage 6, and a brick wall of bullets and enemies.

You see, stage 6 plus X in Expert mode is INCREDIBLY difficult.  Again, there is no continue point at the last stage, 7 aka "Stage X", so you have to go back to the start of stage 6 upon game over, had me frustrated for hours as I kept trying, and failing, to beat the game.  This stage-and-a-half of game is super, super hard on Expert. I did beat it, finally... sort of: I ended up having to use a cheatcode to win because I just couldn't quite manage it otherwise.  I came very close once to beating the game without the cheat, though, in my time trying, but more on that soon.  I spent more hours trying to beat stages 6+X than I did level 9 of Zero Wing for the Turbo CD, to compare it to another tricky shmup I played recently, and to less avail.  Stage 6 is so narrow and confined that sometimes there is nowhere to go to avoid bullets, and there are SO many enemies on screen all shooting at you! Not getting hit is near-impossible at times, even with the best weapon for the stage, the Red + ? weapon that sends bouncy spheres around the screen forwards and back.

In all my tries, I defeated the final boss twice, once without the cheatcode and once quite a few hours later with it. See, that first time, I beat the final boss, but somehow died moments later. I don't know how, I should have been safe with the boss dead. Killing me after beating the game was incredibly cheap, and I never managed to get that far again, frustratingly.  Perhaps the worst was a time I got to Stage X with four lives left, only to waste all of them and reach the boss on my last life since Stage X is really hard unless you have weapon powerups when you reach it, which I didn't because I'd messed up at the Stage 6 boss and got hit. Eventually I gave up and turned off the game... then looked the game up on the PC Engine FX forums and found a cheatcode. If you go into the sound test and start playing music tracks 7, 9, 3, and 10 (in that order), you get an additional pair of sphere-shields rotating around your ship. You're not invincible, but this help was enough to get me through Expert mode on this second attempt, though it did take more than a few tries to get past level 6+X even with the help. I'll count it as a win.

Level 2 looks like something straight out of Alien. (Screenshot from Youtube.)

Conclusion

So, W-Ring is a great game, but the difficulty level is a bit unbalanced.  I do love W-Ring, more than many people seem to, but still, the stratospheric jump in challenge between the rest of the game and Expert mode is a bit much.  This is a very easy game on Normal, and even EASIER on Easy... and a near-impossible nightmare of frustration on Hard ("Expert"). And in Expert, the last level (6 and X combined) is exponentially harder than any other stage in the game. A smoother difficulty curve would be much better than what you see in this game; it doesn't need to be much easier, just not have as massive a gulf between the rest of the game and this.  Just having a checkpoint in Level X so that if you get game over you start from there might have done the trick, really.  It's too bad they didn't do that.

My other main issue with the game is that I never really felt like I could just get through with pure memorization -- I felt like there is a random element to the hit detection in this game, more so than a highly-precise game like R-Type or Zero Wing has.  It's very hard to tell when a bullet was going to hit my ship versus and when it was going to harmlessly bounce off the shields, and the bullets are fast, small, and SERIOUSLY blend in to the background too, particularly in level 6. So, I often just had to take my chances, and this often resulted in getting hit. And in a level where taking even one hit is doom because you lose your weapon when you get hit and weapon powerups in lv. 6 are far apart, so you'll get hit again and die, that is a problem. I still like this game, but I wish the bullets were easier to see and it was clearer about whether something is going to hit the ship or the shield ring. The game has great graphics and music, with impressively animating backgrounds and lots of color and variety, but the hard-to-see bullets are its one visual flaw.

Finally... why is the title "The Double Rings" when that shield around your ship is a single ring? There are some things constructed out of two rings, such as the red-weapon balls or that twin rotating shield from the cheat, but I don't know if it's meant to refer to any of those things, the single ring around your ship is the most obvious thing. It's a weird title. I wonder if the manual explains it... but I don't have the manual, just a loose card for this game, and it'd be in Japanese anyway of course.  Someone on PC ENgine FX has speculated that the cheatcode's added double shield explains it and the "double rings" refer to those, but I'm not so sure; each of those balls is made up of two rings itself, so that adds up to well over two rings, between teh two of them and that single ring around your ship.  So it's a bit of a mystery.  Regardless, though, W-Ring is a very good game I highly recommend.  The game has flaws, but it also has strengths, and overall I quite like it even if it's not Gradius or R-Type precise.   With great graphics and music, varied levels, and plenty of challenge, I give W-Ring: The Double Rings an A-.  It's good.

Video

- This is a longplay video of Normal difficulty.  The player does not enter any of the hidden alternate versions of stages in this run.

- In this longplay the same player as above enters all of the special hidden stages.  Note that many of them do have multiple entry points so this doesn't show every way to get into the special stages, but it definitely is a nice help for anyone who doesn't want to have to find them the hard way by just shooting at stuff or lucking into one.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Review: W-Ring: The Double Rings - A Very Good but Obscure Shmup]

I expanded out that post I made here about how hard the last couple levels of this game are in Expert mode into a full review.  Enjoy!


Platform: TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine (Japan Only Release)
Year: 1990
Publisher/Developer: Naxat Soft
Single Player Only

The cover art is pretty nice.

Introduction

W-Ring is a great shmup for the Turbografx from Naxat Soft, one of the stronger third-party supporters of the platform on both card and CD.  I've liked this game since the first time I played it, but I went back to the game recently and finished it this time (pretty much) on the highest difficulty setting.  As I will explain, this was quite a task; Normal is quite easy to beat once you've learned the game, but Hard is an entirely different story.

This game is a horizontal scrolling shmup released during that genre's peak which lasted from the mid '80s to early '90s.  The game was clearly inspired by Gradius, but isn't just a straight clone of that series.  W-Ring has normal weapon pickups, instead of the Gradius powerup system, and has a narrow shield ring around your ship that can protect you from some hits from above and below. You also can, as in many TG16 shmups, change your ship's speed with the press of a button between three speeds, instead of needing to use powerups for that as you do in Gradius.  Also unlike classic Gradius games, you have infinite continues in W-Ring, which definitely makes the game a bit more approachable.  Dodging bullets is much less predictable here than in Gradius or R-Type, though, an issue which is my biggest problem with the game, particularly in Expert mode; the lower difficulty settings are fairly easy and disguise how frustrating the shield and bullet-dodging mechanics can be when the game gets hard.  This means the game should be playable by players of almost any skill level; just choose the appropriate difficulty setting for you.

For the plot, I'm not sure what the story is in this game, there isn't really one in the game itself and while I don't have the case or manual for this game, only the HuCard, even if I did it'd be in Japanese so it probably wouldn't be too helpful.  I can say that the game is set in the Solar System.  I presume that you are defending the Earth from evil aliens who have set up camp in the outer solar system. The game does have an English-language name for each stage -- Stage one is Saturn, 2 is Uranus, 3 Neptune, 4 Pluto, 5 Main Gate, 6 Death Hole, and 7 (if you count it as a level) Stage X.  If not for those names you'd never guess where the stages are set, though -- they don't have much of anything in common with their supposed settings.  They are just fairly standard stage settings for shmups of the day.  I'm fine with that, though.  Each of the seven stages looks different, and there is a good degree of variety in the game as well, with nice gameplay variety from stage to stage, great graphics and music, lots of enemy types, interesting bosses, secret alternate versions of most or all stages for you to try to find, and more.  The game does have some issues, which I will cover below, but for the most part it's a pretty good game.

Flying through level 1. Note the ring around your ship and the rocky green and brown visage of ... Jupiter?

Basic Design - Weapons and Your Shield

For weapons in this game, your basic gun shoots a gun ahead and bombs angle down.  One enemy type drops weapon powerups which replace your default armament.  The powerups alternate between five colored weapons.  If you collect several of the same color powerup in a row without getting hit, you will power it up several times.  However, it's important to note that if you get hit you lose your weapon powerup and go back to the normal gun, so don't get hit if you want to stay powered up.  Getting hit without a weapon powerup will kill you of course.  And just like in Gradius (well, the '80s Gradius games at least) or R-Type, when you die you go back to the last checkpoint, you don't continue right where you died. There are infinite continues as I said, but only from the beginnings of levels 1 through 6, not from the last checkpoint in a stage.  The final stage isn't a continue point either, it sends you back to the start of level 6, but much more on that later.

There are also alternate versions of those weapons if you are in a stage with a hidden "?" weapon-modifier item to find.  The five weapons are colored blue, green (both straight lasers), pink (spread shot), red (shield-orbs), and orange (missiles).  Each weapon is potentially useful in different situations, though some are maybe a bit too similar --I'm not sure why the game really needs both blue and green.  Still, there is nice variety here, particularly with those hidden "?"-mark alternate weapon variations.  These secret powerups will appear if you shoot in the right places.  One of the most interesting weapons is the alternate version of the red shield-orbs weapon.  Normally, this 'weapon' just gives you the normal gun but with a trail of round shields which follow your ship, ship protecting you from enemies and doing some damage if you maneuver them onto an enemy.  It's too close-range to be useful most of the time.  But with a secret "?" powerup, this weapon is great!  Now it shoots out a constant stream of balls which bounce off of any walls in the stage, taking out bullets and enemies along the way!  This is very useful in stage 6, particularly.

A key mechanic surely inspired by R-Type is that shield-ring.  Bullets which hit it will bounce off and can hurt enemies.  Bullets are very small, fast, and can blend in to the backgrounds, however.  Trying to bounce bullets off of your shield ring can be a 50/50 thing sometimes -- the shield-ring is very narrow, it's not large like in R-Type or R-Type Leo, and you NEED to deflect bullets with it at times, particularly in stage 6 of Expert mode, the games' hard mode.  W-Ring does have good, accurate controls, but it's not as consistently predictable as those other games are and that is an issue.  This game can feel unfair at times.  In Gradius or R-Type, with tight controls and clear graphics, when you die it is your fault.  To beat those games, next time learn the levels better and don't mess up.  In W-Ring, though, sometimes it feels like I did nothing wrong, but just got unlucky.  Even so, with only seven levels, infinite continues, and forgiving lower difficulty levels, W-Ring isn't anywhere near as hard as Gradius or R-Type.  It's only in Expert difficulty where the issues I just discussed help make the game a serious challenge, and even there Gradius and R-Type are probably even harder, but also more innovative and more fun.  Overall, while it is pretty good, W-Ring isn't quite as great as the Gradius games are.  Gradius is my favorite shmup series, though, so that is a very high standard.  W-Ring is a very good game that I like a lot.

Game over already? Whoever played this on Gamefaqs for these shots wasn't very good. Do note the ship in the upper right, though — that's the type of ship that drops powerups.

Graphics and Music

In addition to playing great, W-Ring also looks and sounds great.  This game is one of the better-looking, and better-sounding, HuCard shmups for the TG16/PCE!  Every stage looks good, and the background environments are very well animated for a 4th-gen console game.  While the actual background behind the playable space only animates in some levels, there are often animated elements on the platforms and other areas you can't fly over on the screen.  From the flowing water in stage 3 to the giant spinning mechanical wheels and moving lights in stage 6, every stage background is interesting.  The game looks better than you might expect a HuCard shmup would look, and that animation is cool.  Those two levels probably are the two best-looking ones in the game, but every stage looks very good.  The game also can throw lots of enemies and bullets on screen with no slowdown to speak of, which is reasonably impressive.  Sometimes, particularly in Expert mode, the screen can be loaded with stuff.  The lack of slowdown does make the game harder, and the bullets sometimes are too hard to see versus the background colors, but still, it's a nice technical accomplishment to see so much stuff on screen running so well.  The game doesn't have any parallax scrolling, as usual on the console, but the animated water on stage 3 has a slightly fake-parallax look to it.  The graphics in this game are good enough, though, that for once I don't mind the absence of parallax.

Aurally, W-Ring has a really fantastic soundtrack!  This game sounds very, very good.  I'm very far from an audiophile so I can't really explain why in detail, but I love chiptune and early CD console game music, and the electronic music soundtrack here is richer than usual on this platform.  Every level has different music of course, and each boss as well, but all of the hidden special stages (see below) have unique music too, surprisingly enough.  It's very cool, and encourages exploration to find all of them and hear all of the great music!  The normal stage 3 theme might be my favorite track, but there are lots of good music tracks as you go through the game.  The good graphics and sound definitely add something to this game.  This game really sounds fantastic.  If you want to hear all the music watch both videos at the end of this post, one for the regular stages and one for the special stages.

The boss of level 3, the water level. The moving blue 'waves' along the platform edges look very cool. (Image from Youtube.)

Level Designs - Graphics and Gameplay

The level themes are not original, though., just well designed and interesting.  I like the designs, and the game has a great and very well thought out difficulty curve, but there's noting too original in the level settings and such.  Stage 1, Jupiter, has grassy rock platforms with alien ships scattered around.  The stage is several screens high and is a good starting point for the game.  Stage 2, Uranus, is a brown stage that looks like something straight out of the movie Alien, with the usual alien heads, dripping fluids, and such.  Again the stage is two screens tall.  Alien clearly made a huge impression on games, seeing how everything from Contra to W-Ring copy its style.  Stage 3, Neptune, is the water level, because Neptune is blue so it's got water on it, right? :p  As I said that water looks great. Stage 4, Pluto, is another base, this time a research lab with biological cell and robot enemies and a green circuit-board-like background.  There is some animation on the circuits on the platforms.   Stage 5, Main Gate, is the fast stage, so you have to set the speed to max and try to learn the layout.  This stage is another all-metal base.

Stage 6, Death Hole, has a similar theme to the last stage, but with some pretty cool machinery around the stage as I said earlier, and some animation in the main background  behind your ship as well.  I love the large spinning wheels of lights, they look pretty cool.  Also, things have slowed down; you are now nearing the final stretch, and have a narrow pathway to make your way through, the titular 'Death Hole' I guess. While earlier stages often give you a screen or two of vertical space to move up and down, this level varies between half a screen and very narrow passages, so you are very constrained and there often isn't much room to avoid the enemies.  This level is tough!  And last, Stage X plays over an animating wavy red screen.  The background looks great, but it can be very distracting.  This stage is short but the enemies are tough, the background crazy, and the boss hard.  And if you get a game over here, you learn one of this games' crueler tricks: if you get a game over on stage 7, you go back all the way to the beginning of stage 6; Stage X doesn't count for continues.  This makes the game so much more difficult than it needed to be, when you try to play the game in Hard mode!  I wish Stage X was a continue point.  Ah well.  What's here is mostly quite good.

There is one last thing to mention here, those alternate stages.  As with the ?-mark alternate weapon powerups, alternate stages are accessed with hidden "EX" icons which you have to shoot to see.  If you touch the secret warp point, you'll go into an alternate version of the level in question. These levels are generally shorter than the regular stages, but can be harder -- the speed stage is even faster for example, in alternate mode.  Interestingly, the color palette changes in the alternate version of each level, so the water level has red water instead of blue if you're in the secret variant version.  It's cool stuff.  It's more fun to try to find them for yourself, but if you want to be spoiled watch the video at the end of this post which shows ways to get into all the special stages.  Many do have multiple entry points so there are other ways to enter some special stages, but still it might be handy.  I found almost all of them myself without that video, only perhaps missing the one in, oddly, stage 1.  That explains why I never have been able to can't find a special stage in level 6 -- there apparently isn't one.  Too bad.  Stage X doesn't have one either, but I never thought it would with its short length and focused design.

The level 4 boss, from the computer/bio-research stage. (Screenshot from Youtube.)

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Review: Zero Wing (TCD) - A Very Good Shmup (even without CATS)]

Review: Zero Wing (PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD)
------------------------------------

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/arcade/581639-zero-wing/boxes/4904

(Note: See the video and links sections at the bottom for screenshots and footage of the game.)

Zero Wing is an infamous game thanks to how amazingly entertaining the badly translated introduction to the European Sega Genesis (Megadrive) version of the game is. The game isn't just "All Your Base", though, it is also a horizontal-scrolling shmup from Toaplan, one of the masters of the genre, the company which Cave would descend from after its collapse in the mid '90s. I did not buy the European Megadrive version of Zero Wing, though. Instead, a few months ago I got a good deal on the Japanese Turbo CD (PC Engine CD) version, if a bit under $40 is a good deal (it seems to be!). The infamous European MD version costs a bit more. I like shmups, particularly horizontal ones, so I was hoping that the game would be as good as it seemed to be from my playing bits of the Genesis version here and there. It did not disappoint; as a shmup, Zero Wing is somewhat under-rated. It's actually a good to great game, no question. This is a good version of the game, too. CATS is missing, but it does have two added levels, one a full stage and one a new final bossfight, and a fantastic CD audio soundtrack as well. They are nice additions.

STORY

So, what is Zero Wing? First of course, it's a cutscene, the intro to that Genesis version of the game. There are three versions of Zero Wing, though, each with a somewhat different story. There's the original arcade version by Toaplan, released in 1989, where you fight the evil CATS in your Zig fighter; Toaplan's Genesis (MD) version, released in 1991, of the infamous intro where CATS, now seen in person on screen (unlike the arcade game, as far as I know, where I think it's just text), threatens and destroys your base just as the Zig launches; and this version, Naxat Soft's 1992 Turbo CD version of the game. Brace yourselves, CATS fans -- CATS is not in this game. Naxat Soft replaced the original story with a new one. The levels are the same (with some additions); you still pilot a Zig fighter, which looks the same as before; but the story and characters are different. There's a big more story now. It's a bit like what was done to the Turbo CD version of Hellfire, Hellfire S, except without as disastrously, insultingly bad a story as the Turbo CD version of that game has, but I'll discuss that another time.

You play as a guy, off to save the day in your Zig fighter.  The villain is a bishounen-looking blond guy.  I dxon't know his motivations, I can't understand much Japanese.  His name seems to be Ludavig-sama or something like that, though that's probably wrong; the name is Luda-something, anyway.  In the intro, he talks with some cohorts of his while a woman who is spying for your side listens in.  She appears in most of the cutscenes, and is either the hero's relative or love interest, I'm not sure.  Near the end of the game, naturally, because she's female in a game with a male hero, she gets found out and you have to rescue her.  [spoiler]In the end you save her, this game has a happy ending (unlike stupid Hellfire S).  You don't kill the main villain in the end, but he is clearly defeated.[/spoiler]  After learning the mission, the hero is off in his Zig with a nice classic launch animation.  No attack is shown, but as in the other versions of the game your base ship is exploding as the Zig launches from it; maybe this is explained in the script somewhere, though the attack wasn't shown on screen?  That was a bit weird. 

In addition to the intro and ending, there are also short scenes between most levels.  They are thankfully short, so they won't interrupt the action for long at all.  Shmups should be about the shooting, not the story; I find the cutscenes in Macross 2036 for Turbo CD too long, for example.  Overall, the game has a very cliche but okay story.  I wish it had CATS from the Genesis version, but this new story is fine.  It is unfortunate that they added in a girl to rescue, but at least she has an active role in the story through most of the game, before getting captured late.  That's a little better than just a basic "rescue the kidnapped girl" plot.  I would like to see a translation of the game to know the details of what they're saying; the basics are easy to understand, but I'm sure there are things I'm missing.

GRAPHICS

Graphically this is a fairly nice-looking game.  When comparing this version to the Genesis version, each one has some plusses and minuses, but I might prefer this game despite its drawbacks.  The more colorful art on the Turbografx looks a bit better than the somewhat drab Genesis visuals.  It would have been nice to see Turbo versions of Toaplan's three Genesis-only shmups that generation, Slap Fight MD, Grind Stormer, and Fire Shark; I think the Turbo or Turbo CD versions of most of their other five shmups, the five that are on both platforms (Hellfire, Zero Wing, Kyuukyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, Truxton/Tatsujin, Daisenpuu) look better.  More CD versions of the games would have been nice too, the three there are all have great CD audio soundtracks! Ah well.  Anyway, Zero Wing is a good but not great-looking game.  Interestingly, for a 1992 game, this game does not use the Super System Card for additional RAM: instead, it only uses the usual basic 64KB of RAM built in to the Turbo CD.  For a regular-CD title, this game looks nice.  It's not the best looking regular-CD title, but does have good visuals and a good amount of graphical variety.  The sprite work is good, better than Genesis as I said.

The game does have one graphical downside, though, and that is, as usual for TG16 games, lacking parallax scrolling.  As with the Genesis and colors or the SNES and CPU speed, the Turbo has a design problem, no hardware parallax scrolling support.  It's very noticeable when you compare the Genesis and TCD versions of this game, the Genesis version has at least one more scrolling layer at pretty much all times than this one does.  All foreground parallax objects from the arcade and Genesis versions, which they have some of, are also entirely gone on the Turbo CD.  However, Naxat Soft did put in parallax where they could.  They managed a nice scrolling starfield effect that appears on several levels, and there is some use of horizontal-strip parallax as well.  Most levels have at least a bit of parallax, which is more than you can say for plenty of shmups on this system.  It's great to see.  Still, seeing the ground you can hit and first background layer always scrolling together is unfortunate, I wish Hudson had realized parallax was needed in their system.

MUSIC

As expected from a CD game, Zero Wing for Turbo CD has a great CD-audio soundtrack.  The soundtrack is better than the soundtracks of either the arcade or Genesis versions for sure.  All three versions have great soundtracks, but the CD quality makes this one a bit better than the other two.  I love the sound of early CD system music, it's a distinctive style you don't hear anymore.  This game is a great example of good early game CD music.  Each level has a unique music track, which is good.  I don't know if any of the songs are truly memorable, though, and they might get old if you get stuck on a level for a few hours as I was in one level in this game.  I never wanted to mute the audio though, so the music held up well enough.  Zero Wing has very good music, and I will definitely be listening to it more in the future.

GAMEPLAY SYSTEM

Finally, we get to the most important thing about any game, the gameplay!  Zero Wing is often accused of being a very, or perhaps overly, average shooter, but that's unfair; it's a good, above-average game with some unique design elements.  It is quite hard, but it's a doable hard, if you are willing to learn the game.  It isn't the most original game, but it is better than most.  In the game, you control the stubby Zig fighter.  The controls are good, and ship movement is precise and accurate.  When you die, it's usually because you missed a bullet, not because of the controls.  The only issue is your ship's hitbox (where you can get hit to die), it seems like it might be slightly bigger than the ship, but you do get used to it; just stay away from bullets! Certain ship types drop powerups; all powerups will come from these ships.  The first powerup will give you two invincible helper drones above and below your ship, then after that the other powerups will appear in order, as you destroy the powerup ships.  The helper drones are a bit smaller than you, though, so expect them to regularly fail to protect you from bullets you're counting on them to protect you from; I died many times because of this, and when you die in this game you go back to the last checkpoint, or the beginning of the level if it was a game over.  Also, they can damage some enemy types by bumping into them, but not others.  Generally enemies attached to the ground, such as turrets or such, seem to take damage, but not most flying ships.  I really wish they could hurt everyone, it'd be a huge help.  The other items are a quite useful speed-up item, and a very powerful single-use bomb that can attach to the front of your ship.

On that note, the most unique thing about Zero Wing is the tractor beam.  One button shoots in this game, and the other uses the tractor beam.  This beam will grab smaller enemies and hold them in front of your ship as a shield.  By hitting the button again, you can throw the enemy at other enemies, to do more damage than basic shots.  A bomb works similarly, if you have one -- hit the button to toss it at the enemies and watch the explosion unfold.  The grapple beam is nice, but not as central to the game as the enemy-takeover mechanics in BlaZeon (Arcade/SNES) or Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 (Sega 32X), for example, and you can only have one enemy at a time, unlike the later PC/Wii title Tumiki Fighters (aka Blast Works: Build & Destroy, on Wii).  Still, for its time this might have been a new idea, those other games are newer than this one.  It is a good idea which works to give you a bit more protection.  You'll need the help!

You have three weapons in this game, with three power levels each.  There is a spread shot, a straight laser, and a homing shot.  It's a serviceable arsenal, but feels a bit under-powered without enough powerups.  Later levels have enemies and obstacles that are nearly impossible to get past without a certain level of firepower, so particularly in level 9 I found myself almost always having to suicide multiple times to get game over just so I could get another chance at the game, because progress from the checkpoint was completely impossible without powerups the game doesn't give you.  Yeah, it's cruelly designed.  Fortunately, you have infinite continues, which is great!  I much prefer games to allow infinite continues and saving, it makes games better.  Zero Wing doesn't save, but at least you can keep trying until you either win or give up.   There are no difficulty level settings, though, typically for the Turbografx, and unlike the Genesis version.  There also are no additional loops, unlike the arcade and Genesis versions -- finish it once and it's over.  Having at least one additional loop would have been nice, but it's not really needed; this is a plenty hard game as it is.

THE LEVELS

As in most horizontal shmups, Zero Wing has both enemies and walls to contend with.  If you touch anything, you die instantly.  Your two helper bits are invulnerable, but you need to be careful or bullets will slip past them.  Most areas are fairly open, but you will have to navigate some narrower spaces here and there, and contend with waves of bullets to attempt to avoid as well.  Some bullets home in on you, others fly straight.  I love horizontal shmups, so I think this game plays great!  It's a bit like Gradius or R-Type but not quite as good and with a more conventional powerup system.  Even if it doesn't match those all-time classics, though, this is still a great, and very well-designed, game.  Each level looks and plays quite differently, and has unique enemies to face as well.  The variety is a strength of the game.  Zero Wing has a great difficulty curve; almost every level is harder than the one before it, which is how things should be but not always are. 

There is a big difficulty cliff in level 9, though -- it is significantly more difficult than any other stage in the game, appropriately for the last full level.  I made steady progress up to level 9, but that level is HARD and took me hours of frustrating replay to finally get past. It was very satisfying when I finally got through the level, though!  It would have been nice had the checkpoint locations not been impossible to progress past more often than not in level 9, as I said earlier, but the level isn't so long that getting through is impossible; it just requires a lot of practice.  This is a hard, hard game, but the infinite continues really help take the sting off of it.  I hate having to replay parts of games I've beaten repeatedly, and you don't have to do that here.  It's too bad more Toaplan 4th-gen shmups don't have this option.  Even without the continues this game isn't as hard as Truxton or Twin Cobra, either.  It's a tough game, with challenging levels to learn and tough bosses, but not one of Toaplan's hardest games.  In those encounters, a lot of classically Toaplan enemy patterns appear.  Anyone who has played Truxton will definitely recognize some of the ways enemies attack you, but it's slightly easier here than there.  Each level has a miniboss and a full boss, and they are all huge and threatening.  The final level, level 10, is just a bossfight, but it's a hard one!  Fortunately it dies fairly quickly, but it shoots a lot of fast bullets.  It's a good addition to the game, the ending feels more complete with it than on the arcade or Genesis version where it ends with the last boss of what here is level 9 (there .  The new level is good too.  It's not the games' best, but it does have weird, creepy graphics and solid design.

For flaws, other than the difficulty for those who dislike hard games, there aren't many.  Most notably, this game has some weird bugs, if that's what they are, about progression in bossfights.  Sometimes, if you die in a bossfight, you will go to the next level, instead of being sent back to where you should be!  I read about this happening in the Genesis version in a GameFAQs review, and the same thing happened to me in the Turbo CD version.  So, I'm not sure if it's some bug with the arcade game they intentionally kept or what, but it is real.  In one of the later stages (7 or , I died after killing 2 of the 3 big enemies that made up the final boss that level... and I was sent to the next level, not back!  That was odd.  Then in the final stage, level 10, I died moments after killing the final boss, but it counted as a win anyway, something most games would not do.  I don't know if these two issues are bugs or features, but they do happen.  I also wish the game saved your scores and a level select.  That's about it for flaws, though.  This is a great game, I like it a lot!

OVERALL

In conclusion, Zero Wing for the Turbo CD is a very good shmup. One of only two horizontal shmups from Toaplan, it shows that they could do a great job with this type of shooter. Zero Wing is a nice-looking game with good, interesting art design and a great soundtrack. It's not the best-looking regular-CD shmup on the Turbo CD, but it definitely is an above-average game visually, and well above average in terms of gameplay. This is a really fun game to play, with highly polished controls and level designs. Sure, it was tough and took some time to beat, but it was a fun experience beginning to end. I definitely recommend Zero Wing to anyone who has an interest in horizontal shmups. This Turbo CD version of the game may be obscure and may not have CATS or hilarious Engrish in it, and it's not cheap either (though the EU MD version costs at least as much or more), but it's very well worth searching for, because it's the longest version of a classic shooter. Zero Wing's gameplay shouldn't be nearly as under-rated as it is. Recommended! Score: A-.

VIDEOS

PC Engine CD Longplay:

Genesis Longplay:

Arcade Longplay (loops 1 and 2):

LINKS

PCEngine.co.uk Page: http://www.pcengine.co.uk/HTML_Games/Zero_Wing.htm  -This page has screenshots and some nice version-comparison images between the three versions.

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/2009/05/zero-wing.html - The Brothers Duomazov review.  They're a bit harder on the game than I am.  The review has more screenshots.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Review: Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights (TG16/PCE) - It's Surprisingly Good!]

The front of the box

This is a 2d platformer for the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16), developed by Hudson Soft, that released in 1991.  There is also a CD version released the next year, but I have the HuCard.

The title screen, and one of the few times all characters are seen in their Arabian outfits. It's a nice title image.

Introduction and Story

This is a game I got fairly recently, and decided to try out.  At first the game seemed simple and average, but it actually gets pretty good, so I stuck with it and finished the game in a few days.  This game's fun stuff!  Dorabian Nights is a fairly standard Hudson platformer, so it's not one of the greats of the genre — Hudson platformers never were — but it is a good, solid game that's fun to play. This game is a licensed platformer based on the popular, long-running childrens' comic series Doraemon.   As usual in Doraemon games, you play as Doraemon, the silly blue cat/alien/robot guy, and have to save the day.  Unlike the SNES or N64 Doraemon games, you cannot also play as Doraemon's human friends, only Doraemon himself.

In specific, this game is loosely based off of the animated movie of the same name as the game.  One odd thing about this game is that even though it's a licensed game based on a movie, from what I've read about the movies' plot, almost none of that happens in the game.  The movie is almost entirely set in the fantasy Arabian setting of the title; Doraemon and his child friends go on an adventure there.  The girl character gets kidnapped and the others have to rescue her, etc.  I hate 'rescue the girl' as a plotline, and you still have to do that here, but it's different.  In this game, in the intro cutscene the four children jump into four different storybooks, and Doraemon has to go into the books to rescue them.  Each book is set in a different time period.  The first is dinosaur-themed (just dinosaurs, thankfully, no cavemen!), the second ancient Japan themed, the third creepy/'horror' themed, and the last Arabian themed.  You rescue a child at the end of each book, with the girl last, but as they're not playable in the game, this doesn't matter as much as it would in the SNES games.

So, as far as the Arabian, or "Dorabian" (heh), setting goes, on the title screen Doraemon has a turban on and the four children are in Arabian outfits as they fly on a magic carpet, fitting the Arabian setting, but ingame he only wears this in world 4 and the final level.  Similarly, his human child friends only have their Arabian outfits on on the title-screen image and in the second part of the end cutscene, too.  It's a little odd, but there's only five levels in Arabia in this game.  So yeah, don't expect much of the movie here.  Of course, games that try something different often end up better than movie games that strictly follow the plot, so it's okay.  Plus, I like the variety of the four worlds.  Every level has a different setting, and they're interesting to see as you progress.  I'll get back to that, the level variety is a strength of the game.
Level 1

The first level. Doraemon starts out with just the stun gun, in the age of the dinosaurs.

Level Setup and Items

Another good point of the game is the mostly well-designed difficulty curve that starts out easy, but gets much more difficult in the second half of the game.  By the end, the game's a legitimate challenge.  Dorabian Nights uses a map screen between levels, with a new map for each of the five areas.  You can go back and play earlier levels whenever you want.  The game has four worlds of four levels each and a final level at the end, so it's not long, but it isn't overly short either.  The first world is very easy, the second fairly easy, the third pretty tough, the fourth about on par with the third or maybe slightly easier, and the last level is hard.  Overall I had the hardest time with level 3-3, I died more in that level than any other.  It had me stuck for some time; beating that level took a few days of leaving my TG16 on.  I had to do that because you can't save in this game, sadly, though you do have infinite continues... from the beginning of the world.  Die in a level and you start it over, lose all your lives and it's back to level 1 of the world.  This may be a kids' game, but it's not as easy as you might think.  The first SNES Doraemon game is a lot easier than this game, for sure, and all of the SNES Doraemon games have password save too.  Still, I like the challenge in this game, and it's probably more fun to play than most of the SNES games as well.  The game is by a more prominent developer and it shows.

While the game is fun, replay value is somewhat limited.  You can go and play the levels again after beating the game so long as you don't turn it off, because the map screen is accessible if you start the game again, but there is little reason to; there are a few areas in earlier levels you can only access with items you get later in the game, but these only give you extra lives and such, so they probably aren't worth it unless you really want to replay the game right away, or see absolutely everything.  Ah well, it's fun while it lasts.

In the game, you have 4 hits per life.  Green things you can dig up give you a hit point back, if you've been hit, and these do respawn... but so do the enemies.  Doraemon has five different weapons, one of which you only use during the final boss fight.  You'll get a new weapon in each world, pretty much.  The four weapons you use through most of the game have some nice variety.  The starting gun stuns enemies, the second is the best all-purpose gun, the third is a homing gun which fires slowly but the shots will curve to hit a target, and the last is a cape which sends enemies flying back to damage other enemies, which can be fun.  You also can collect some other items which give you a shield, invincibility, and more.  You get these items from doors; hit Up at a door to go in.  Doors either have a powerup, a bonus minigame (for an extra life or health), or in a few cases some other usually-silly scene in them. There are never enemies in these rooms.  The bonus rooms are amusing and add more variety to this already varied game.  This is a slow-paced game, though — Doraemon moves slowly and there is no run. I don't mind, though some people do.  I think the game plays well despite its slow-ish pace.
Box Back

The back of the case shows some the games' level variety.

Visuals and Level Design

Graphically, the game looks like a standard late '80s to mid '90s Hudson platformer, with Doraemon in it. As with all of their platformers from the era the game is cute and cartoony and looks nice.  The art is well-drawn and there's more graphical variety here than in many cartridge games.  Visually, the one downside is that, as usual on the system, there isn't much parallax scrolling, unfortunately — only two stages have any, the rest are flat.  one of these two is the first level, and it looks good, but you won't see parallax again until one of the last levels, and that's its only other appearance.  The graphics are better than I thought they'd be; I was expecting something maybe more like the mediocrity of Bakusho Yoshimoto Shingeki, but this game looks better than that one for sure, and it's also a lot longer and harder than that game is. The music is good, but not hugely memorable. Still, it's catchy, fun stuff, and it held up well throughout my time playing the game.

As I said earlier, the game also has some nice gameplay and enemy variety. Almost every one of the 17 levels in this game is visually unique!  Every single level has multiple enemy types you will only see in that level as well, and no enemies return when you go from one world to the next.  As a result, Dorabian Nights is always mixing things up by introducing new enemy types and level styles.  Many levels have one-off challenges or stage-design gimmicks that only appear in that one level.  For example, there is one (and only one!) underwater level, one level where you ride a dinosaur for part of the level, one level where you shuffle along platform edges where one hit knocks you back down (this is 3-3, the hardest level), one level is loaded with these pots you can break, some of which keep spitting out enemies at you, and more.

The variety is great, but I kind of wish some of the better ideas appeared more than once — more later levels with platforming as hard as 3-3 might have been a good idea, for instance, or an animal or vehicle to ride on after the first stage other than those flying-carpet bits in the last level — but still, it works, and the game is challenging even without more levels like that. The final boss is definitely a good challenge, for instance.  This is one of those games where the final boss plays differently from anything else in the game, and it uses that special 5th weapon as well, but I won't spoil how it plays; I'd recommend playing the game instead!  The boss took a while to beat, and I finally beat the game with 1 hit point left on my last life.  Yes, really; it was pretty tense! I thought that a death would send me back to 4-1, but I think that actually you might be able to start from the last level, since it has its own screen on the level-select map, though fortunately I didn't test it. That was close, though... I had to survive for quite a while with only that 1 hit point left! Tense stuff, but it was fun.  The ending's decent.   A bit short, but good enough.
Doraemon Nobita No Dorabian Night Screenshot

This is from the CD version, but the HuCard version looks the same here. This is the first level in ancient Japan.

Conclusion

Overall, Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights is a simple but fun platformer, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  I didn't think this would be all that great, but it's a fun game for sure.  It's not as good as the Bonk games, but after them it's better than some of Hudson's other platformers for the system.  The game has decently nice graphics, lots of variety (I really like that every single level has a unique look and feel to it; that's not common in a game like this!), and good level design.  It's a good game.  The main flaws are that the game should have had saving (having to leave the system on for this long is annoying), I'd have liked to see parallax in a lot more levels than just two, and the difficulty is uneven — why is 3-3 the hardest level (other than maybe the final boss), for instance?  And why is the desert stage, 4-3, super easy, while the other levels in world 4 are a reasonable challenge?  Ah well.  The game is pretty good, these issues aren't too bad.  The game is also slow paced, something some people really dislike, but I don't mind this; as with, say, the Bonk or Tempo games, the slow pace fits the design well.  I give the game a solid B.

On one final note, there is also a Turbografx CD Super CD version of the game that released in 1992, a year after this HuCard version.  Sadly, it is an INCREDIBLY lazy port — Hudson just redid the intro and ending with voice acting and more animation, redrew some graphics to make them look a little better, put in vocal songs on the title screen and in the new end-credits sequence (yes, there are actually credits on the CD version), and added some voiced sound effects. That's it, no other changes. It even still has chiptune music ingame. That's not an issue with this version, though, just with Hudson failing to improve the later CD port much at all. Anyway, this game is fun, try it out if you like platformers.

Videos

PC Engine / TG16 version longplay:

PC Engine CD / TCD version longplay:

Or read this on my site with better formatting

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What were the life time sales for the PCE/PCEDuo]

I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.

I don't understand why you think this matters.  Systems are what they are, they don't change classification midlife.

I think that the point you're missing is that since Nintendo failed time and time again at something, anyone else succeeding at the same thing can't be acknowledged as legitimate. Doing so would admit to Nintendo being fallible.

The Famicom Disk System and Satellaview weren't big failures, though.  They weren't as successful as Nintendo might have wanted, sure,  but they weren't big failures.  Of Nintendo's addons only the 64DD was a big failure.  So as usual your Nintendo-bashing attack is off base.

I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.

 O:) 

As I said in my last post that's irrelevant.  How successful an addon is doesn't matter, what it is matters.

I can't think of even one reason why the fact that the Duo replaced the PCE/TG16, while the Twin Famicom did not replace the Famicom and the CDX did not replace the Genesis, is at all relevant when classifying them.  All that matters for classification is that they are addons, with combo systems that released later.

I think "(intentionally)" is the key point of your paragraph.  I don't think Black Falcon trolling for the purpose of trolling, as I honestly believe he believes the things he is saying.  However, the fact remains that there is no other system that was ever replaced by a new variation of the system as its primary SKU.  The Twin Famicom is another good example where a niche item was introduced (this one by a third party), but there was clearly no intention for this new product to take over as the main SKU.  That is why the PC-Engine is different, the Duo was clearly INTENDED TO REPLACE THE ORIGINAL SKU, whereas the other systems mentioned were introduced as niche alternatives with no intention of replacing the primary SKU.

Seriously, your argument has no basis! 

First, is there any basis for thinking that the Turbo CD was ACTUALLY originally "intended to replace" the PCE HuCard system?  It was intended as a supplement, but as a replacement?  Hudson's continued support for HuCards up until the end of '93 suggests otherwise, considering that they invented the thing.  It was meant as a supplement which, as SamIAm said and I completely agree with, after the SNES released became the main focus as a way of differentiating the TG16/CD from the SNES.  But that probably wasn't the original intent.  It's something which NEC decided on later, and a majority of their audience did not follow them on that route, given the under-40%-adoption-rate-by-HuCard-system-owners fact.

As for the Duo, the Duo isn't a new system, just a TG16+CD combo system.  The Turbo CD predates it by years, and its place in classification had already been permanently set as an addon.  You can't go back and change that years after the fact, that's just silly!  The Duo is not a new system.  It's a combo system.

As far as classification goes it doesn't matter, just like the Twin Famicom and CDX  don't matter.  I can't understand why you'd say that somehow the TG16 and CD are the same system.  I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who's played both of them that they are not, just like the NES and Famicom Disk System are not, and the Genesis and Sega CD are not.  That the Turbo CD became the only addon to outlast its base system is a very interesting and cool historical fact, but for classification purposes it's irrelevant.  And again, the HuCard system sold better!  Remember the sales SamIAm has shown.  ~6 million systems with HuCard vs. ~2 million CD systems, 1 million of those the Duo systems which count towards both.  The Turbo CD outlasted its originator, the only time an addon has ever done that, but it didn't outperform it.  Addons never do that.

If the CDX was truly intended to replace the Genesis, then Sega would've moved all its AAA titles to the Sega CD format.  This did not happen, as it had happened with the PC-E.

This is completely irrelevant when it comes to classification, as I said.

As for using success as a separator -- that is, saying that because the Turbo CD was more successful than other addons it deserves to be counted separately than other addons and isn't really an addon -- that is something I strongly disagree with.  For example, one big issue I have with listings of console generations is that the new consoles of 1982 are (wrongly) listed on all the big sites as being "2nd generation" platforms.  That's ridiculous of course; the Atari 5200, Colecovision, and Vectrex are in no way 2nd-gen.  They are early 3rd gen systems, which released less than a year before the NES (looking at first-release-anywhere, not just the US).  And yet most people dump those systems in with systems released five or six years earlier, simply because the systems of 1982 all crashed and burned in the crash, while the NES released in the West several years later and brought back the market.  I don't think that that should matter -- what matters is when it was first released and the systems' hardware power, and by those standards, there is absolutely no question that the 5200 and Colecovision are much closer to the NES than stuff like the 2600 or Odyssey 2.

This is another odd viewpoint you hold.  I don't think that "generations" were ever defined by a year, but rather an event.  The Famicom/NES was an absolute game changer to the industry, which is why it ushered in the new "generation" on its own.  I tend to argue that the "generation" thing is foolish in general, why do these systems need to be grouped in some manner?  But, if you are going to do it logically, then you need to take into account key events and not just dates.

Think about other entertainment, such as music.  When Elvis or the Beatles hit the scene, everything changed.  When Babe Ruth stepped on the baseball field, the entire game changed.  When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores, gaming changed and everything on the shelf even months prior didn't matter anymore.

That's an America-centric viewpoint which is irrelevant nonsense from a technological point of view, or an international point of view.  When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores in July 1983, everything did not change.  All other platforms were instantly dated, as it was the most powerful console yet by a good margin, but the Colecovision, 5200, or Sega's Colecovision-based SG-1000, which, remember, launched in Japan the same week that the Famicom did -- were competitive.  Early Famicom games, which didn't use any mapper chips, have better graphics than anything on those other systems -- compare NES to Colecovision Donkey Kong to see that -- but they're clearly in the same generation of systems.  Again, look at the Colecovision homebrew game Ghostblaster, it looks about as good as a mid '80s NES game.  It took a few years until, thanks to better mapper chips, NES games really crushed the competition, and even then Ghostblaster shows that the Colecovision hardware wasn't completely hopelessly dated when really pushed.  Conveniently, this happened at about the same time that the system released in the West, so here we had Super Mario Bros. at launch in fall 1985, shortly after the game released in Japan.  But look at the kinds of games available on the Famicom over the two years before SMB's release.  In terms of both graphics and gameplay, they're nowhere near its level.  The release list was thin, too -- in 1983 and most of 1984 Nintendo was pretty much the only publisher on the Famicom, and they had a slow release schedule.  It's only once third-party games started appearing in '84-'85 that the library expanded.  And pretending that the NES is a 1985 console and its first two years don't exist and don't matter simply because they only happened in Japan is absolutely wrong!  They matter just as much as any other part of its history.

So should we say that 1983-1985 Famicom stuff is "2nd gen" but 1985-1994 Famicom/NES stuff is "3rd gen" because the NES mapper chips were a generational leap?  I guess you COULD, but I would strongly disagree.  No, it's all 3rd gen.  People knew it at the time when the Colecovision released that it was ushering in a new console generation, and it was.  It and the 5200 are in the same place as the Turbografx in the 4th generation, the Jaguar or 3DO for the 5th generation, or the Dreamcast for the 6th generation.  For another game example, in addition to Ghostblaster, look at Wonder Boy on the SG-1000.  It's clearly a lot worse looking than the NES version, Adventure Island, but it's also clearly not a full generation behind.

When historians talk about real history, there are various "ages."  These ages are all triggered by key events, which is the sane way of looking at history.  If your timelines only looks are the start and end of each year and clumps all that middle stuff on the line together because it is the same year so it must be similar, then you are not plotting things appropriately.

Wha... no, of course generations are tied to years!  For instance, the Wii is a 7th gen console, not 6th.  Everyone not crazily trolling it knows this.  This is true despite its "last-gen" power.  The same is true for the Wii U this gen.  When a system releases is absolutely key.  System power does not determine which generation a system is in.  When it released does.  Video game console generations are not like historical periods; they are more like, well, human generations.  What separates them is time, not specific events.  There's a reason the word "generations" is used for them, after all!  The way that specific events matter is that when a new, more powerful system releases, after enough time has passed since the last-gen systems to make a generational gap (in gaming, a couple of years), it's a new console generation.

Now, there are some weird things which are hard to classify -- handhelds in the late' 90s and early '00s are probably the best example of this, or for a console case what about the Neo-Geo CD -- but they are the exceptions.

I would argue there's often a weird, transitional generation. 3DO, at least, falls into that category. Some would argue the PC Engine does. The PC Engine may have heralded the 16-bit generation, but in so many ways it was rooted very solidly in the 8-bit generation of the NES. The reason I think the PC Engine fits better in the 16-bit generation is because it was popular and hung in there and was ultimately able to be competitive. The 3DO, however, didn't last long into the 32-bit generation and so it really wasn't a part of it. It fizzled out before the 32-bit generation hit its stride.

You really need to play games like Gex, Blade Force, Star Fighter, and The Need for Speed.  The 3DO is a 5th gen console, absolutely no question.

If I recall correctly, this whole tangent started over whether it was valid to compare the number of SNES games released every year to the number of HuCard and CD releases combined.

You're right, it did.

If the PCE and the CD expansion are some super-special case that needs its own special classification, then at least you have to admit that you can't really compare it head-on with the SNES or the Genesis in certain aspects. Apples and oranges, right?

If you're going to combine TG16 and CD (inc. Super/Arcade Cards), then of course you must compare it to the Genesis + Sega CD + 32X, and SNES + Satellaview.  Anything else would be an obviously biased double standard.  Either a console and its addons are one system, or they aren't.  I know that online listing sites have to draw a line somewhere for what is a "system", and they list the Sega CD and 32X and 64DD as "systems" but not, say, the Turbo Super or Arcade CD or N64 Expansion Pak Required titles, and I agree with those classifications, but once you've chosen where to draw your line at what is an addon and what isn't, you have to be consistent.  The things some people said here about how the 32X or Sega CD don't really count because they have more processors in them while the Turbo CD doesn't, or whatever... come on, that's just being biased.  Either count addons or don't!  Splitting hairs like that purely to get the better outcome for NEC isn't right (and something similar wouldn't be right in favor of any other console manufacturer either, of course).

So yes, you're right if you're saying that consistency is better.

Although I posted way back that I don't think we'll ever agree to what the PCE really "is", I personally think it's dubious and even lazy to just say that the PCE and the CD expansion are the same thing by just calling them one console. If the CD expansion goes beyond being an add-on, then to me it looks more like it's a new console entirely that grew out of the PCE. It sure as hell was priced like one.

I agree, except on the 'it's a completely new system' point; sure it was priced like one, but it really isn't one.  But otherwise, yeah, you're right.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken - Review of this okay-ish platformer]

My CD drive is still definitely not working right, but I did manage to get it working well to get me through this game with almost no problems -- the only failure was audio in level 5-1, nothing more, despite leaving the system on all day while playing the game.  (Of course afterwards audio failed again in another game, so I guess I need to keep adjusting this thing... but at least it's somewhat improved, for now anyway.)

PC Engine (Turbo) CD Game - Regular CD, not Super or Arcade CD.  Japan-only release.

Title screen!  It has good music, too.

Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken (J) [Legendary Treasure: Chris's Adventure is the best title translation, though there is no official one; all ingame and manual title and character name text is in Japanese.] - This is a fairly average, but decent (at times) platformer from Arc Co. Ltd, now known as Arc System Works.  This is one of a few Turbo CD games by Arc; I have three, including this, Minesweeper (yes, a port of the Microsoft PC game), and the super-easy racing game Road Spirits.  Anyway, in Hihou Densetsu, you play as Chris Steiner, a girl who is looking for her father, an archaeologist who went missing in the Americas somewhere while searching for the ancient legendary treasure of the Indio (native) people of Latin America somewhere.  Naturally, ancient aliens and Atlantis end up being involved.  Of course.  Also there's plenty of incidental racism, as usual in such stories -- the Indio, if they are indeed alive, are just villains and never appear in any cutscenes past the backstory bit at the beginning of the intro, unless you cout the two Atlanteans, but they really are diffrent. The story is confusing and unfinished, but the gameplay was decent enough to keep me going.  This game has some bad, probably unfinished elements, but I enjoy it overall despite them. https://www.chrismcovell.com/games_illustrated/arc-hihou_densetsu.html That page has a nice summary of the game, but despite its flaws I did enjoy it... when I wasn't hating it for being so frustrating, that is. This isn't all that long of a game, but they try to make up for that by making the game hard and annoying. There are some tough jumps, tight time limits, and annoying enemy placements in this game. You really need to memorize everything in order to get through.  I covered this game in my TCD "Game Opinion Summaries" thread, but this writeup is new, since I've beaten the game now and have more to say.  Hihou Densetsu is a memorization-focused platformer with a confusing story.  On that note, if anyone knows Japanese and can watch the LP and tell me if knowing Japanese would make the story make any more sense, that would be much appreciated.

The cave level here, level 4, looks nice.

Gameplay: Hihou Densetsu is broken up into eight levels, probably the most common number in videogames.  Each level has two stages, with a boss at the end of the second stage of each level.  You have a strict timer in this game, so you must keep moving if you want to beat each stage without running out of time and dying; I've died from time over within sight of the end of a level more than a few times.  I like the "day" theme the timer uses, though -- you have a set number of "days" to finish each level, and there's a graphic in the bottom right showing the day and time.  These days are a lot less than a day long, but still it's a somewhat clever way to make a timer more interesting looking.  If you die you start from the beginning of the stage you're on.  Enemies and traps always appear from the same places, so yes, memorization is what you do here: keep playing until you've memorized the level layouts and boss patterns, then you can win.  This isn't the hardest game, but it's a reasonable challenge at times.  Sometimes you get sent back to the main menu and have to restart the level from stage 1, though I'm not entirely sure why.  Maybe it has something to do with if you got enough coin pickups?  I'm not sure.  You cannot save your progress, which is the worst thing about this game, gameplay-wise.  Seriously, one block to save that level-select menu as you unlock stages, that's all I'm asking for... having to play it all in one sitting, or without turning the system off, is annoying.

The second most annoying thing is the weapon powerup system. Now, there are several kinds of pickups in this game, all of which drop from either enemies or the pillars which come out of the ground at certain points and may have items in them.  All items are random drops, and none are in preplanned locations.  Those pillars often drop nothing, for instance, or maybe something you don't need.  They can drop those coins I mentioned earlier, hearts to refill one of your five hit points, weapon powerup orbs, or nothing.  This design decision was a big mistake!  Chris's default weapon is a pathetically weak knife with a two-millimeter attack range.  Hitting enemies wihout getting hit yourself, without a powerup, is often unlikely.  If you want to beat this game without too much trouble, try to never die!  If you do die, you'll need to find two differently colored orbs in order to get a stronger weapon, and they must be different colors, too.  If you pick up one the same color as the one you currently have, it won't count at all.  There are three powered-up weapons: Red+Yellow is a stronger close-range attack, Red+Blue is a throwing knife (best weapon), and Yellow+Blue is a boomerang.  The default weapon is so hard to hit things with without taking damage that in the later levels I found myself not caring about if I died with my first and even second life of each continue, since all that really mattered was getting a decent weapon so that the next time I could attempt to actually beat the level.  I died quite a few times because the game was refusing to give me two differently-colored powerup orbs in later levels.  Yes, it's frustrating.  And while you do keep powerup weapons between levels, thankfully, if you get a game over of course it's back to square one.

The surprisingly simple mine-cart segment.

As far as the level designs go, Hihou Densetsu has virtually no exploration. This game is entirely linear, and you need to keep moving in order to finish levels before the tight time limits run out. I'm alright with that -- not all sidescrollers need to have you going around collecting things during your adventure -- but it does reduce replay value and make the game shorter.  Only one stage's layout is at all mazelike, and that level, 4-2, is a small, simple 'maze'.  Ah well, I don't really mind.  The level designs in this game are straighforward, but I thought they were okay. You do do a lot of walking to the right or left while attacking enemies as they appear, but there is just enough variety to keep things interesting.  Most stages have at least one unique level element, such as various types of platforms you have to jump on, tricky jumps on moving objects, a surprisingly easy mine-cart segment, orbs you shoot to move them out of the way, and more.  And once again, thanks to the weapon powerup system the game gets much harder if you die, and you will until you've memorized the game.  Stage 5-2 probably took me the longest amount of time to beat; it may look simple in that LP, but that second moving-orbs jump is quite tricky, and if you don't have the throwing knife the stone circle enemies are hard to hit and shoot fire at you.  I finally managed to beat the stage, though it took a while.  The last stage, 8-2, was tricky too, but in a fun way.  That's a short level, but reasonably fun.  It is kind of weird looking, though, and the organ-style music is a strange choice.  The later levels have somewhat odd visual/audio themes. Seriously, from levels six through eight this game got weirder and weirder... and yet there's very little to no reaction from Chris like that in the cutscenes. Maybe there is in Japanese, but shouldn't she say something obvious about how this trip to the Americas to look for her father has turned into a battle against an ancient-alien Atlantean demigod or something in his spaceship hidden under a Latin American jungle temple??  I guess she's slightly surprised when she first sees Fillia, but not much obvious about the crazy adventure.  No, just some fairly calm conversations with Fillia, after the drama with the traitor guy got resolved after level 5. She's tough.  Or maybe it's just that she probably can't hear the awesome, and sometimes strange, music?  But those blob-monster enemies in level 6 and the like are weird looking too...

Cutscene (before lv. 3).  Chris and the kid explore.

Graphics and sound: This is a CD game, so it's got CD audio and cutscenes between each level, as you might hope for.  The cutscenes are done with vey limited animation, but the audio track and art design are decent to good.  Environments look particularly good, which characters look only okay.  The ingame graphics are similar, with good backgrounds but somewhat bland character sprites.  Chris's sprite has a bland, androgynous look; it's okay though.  I couldn't tell for sure that she was a girl until I played it and heard the voice acting, but she is.  The shirt and shorts adventurer outfit seen in the game is the only one she wears throughout the game, too -- so yes, this is a game with a female lead which doesn't sexualize her at all!  That's worth some praise, though they aren't consistent -- her shirt is blue ingame, but white in cutscenes.  Also she's always holding a knife, no matter which of the weapons she has.  Ah well.  Enemy sprites are mixed, with some cool looking ones and some very bland.  The climbing skeletons in the first level are interesting, and I like the art design in some of the caves and alien base levels too.  Hihou Densetsu has somewhat simple graphics and makes almost no attempts at parallax, except for stages 5-1 and a few clouds behind a window in 7-1, so it looks like a Turbografx game for sure, but it's a decent-looking Turbografx game.  This game clealry didn't have the largest budget, but they did a decent job with what they had. 

The music is even better.  This game really has a great soundtrack overall.  It's all at least good, and it peaks in level seven; that track is fantastic.  Even though the graphics are not complex, with simple and repetitive environments within each stage, the visuals and sound together combined to make the last three levels seem kind of weird, as I travelled through the alien/Atlantean/whatever spaceship and the like.  The sense of atmosphere in those levels worked great for me!  It's really unfortunate that level 7-2 is the easiest level in the game after 1-1, and that the level 7 boss is the only one I beat without dying at even once, because that music is great.  Some other levels' music is almost as good too, such as level 6's, but 7 has the best one.  I'll have to listen to this soundtrack sometimes for sure.  Watch the LP linked at the bottom if you want to listen to the whole soundtrack.

Weird monsters here in level 6...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Avenger (Turbo CD) - Under Defeat's under-rated, and great, TCD predecessor]

I've done various game/system reviews/opinion summaries that I've posted on other forums (mostly posted on Sega-16 and NeoGAF).  But this one is TG16 related, and I do post here now, so I thought I'd post it here too... I changed the first paragraph (most of it was quite unnecessary on this forum :p), but the rest is the same as posted elsewhere.


Review: Avenger (TurboGrafx CD, Japan only release)
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Intro

The Turbo CD is awesome, I wish more people in the West had access to it so that they could see how great a system it is... but even among the TG16/PCE fan community, this game is pretty heavily under-rated.  It's actually quite good!

Background

The box does a good job of showing what the game is like.

Avenger is a shmup from Laser Soft, which was one of Telenet Japan's many divisions, along with Riot, Reno, Renovation, and Wolf Team.  Telenet supported the Genesis and SNES as well, but while they did make cartridge games, they were also an early pioneer in CD gaming.  From 1989-1994, they supported the Turbo CD and then Sega CD as well.  Telenet was the first third party to support the Turbo CD, which was the first ever CD-based gaming platform.  However, several years later, Telenet fell apart.  By 1995 Telenet was collapsing; Wolf Team was bought by Namco (they became Namco's Tales Studio).  Renovation, their American publishing arm which had focused almost exclusively on Genesis and Sega CD games, was bought by Sega.  At the time they were just starting to support the SNES, so they released only one SNES game.  Renovation never supported the Turbografx, sadly.  Too bad.  NEC released a few of Telenet's TG16/CD games, most notably Valis II and III, but Avenger, like most of their games, stayed Japan-only.  The rest of Telenet either shut down or became a shadow of its former self, as Telenet itself devolved into being pretty much a gambling games only studio from about 1995 on, and closed in 2007.  Looking at their games from their 1989-1994 time as a major console games publisher, Telenet's games are often flawed, and are not as polished as, say, Nintendo's, but they made quite a few but while they lasted they made some interesting games. 

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Review
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Title screen.

So, on to the actual game.  Avenger is not one of Telenet's more popular releases, for sure, but I at least think that it is an under-appreciated, quite high quality game.  This review will cover all major elements of the game, including the gameplay, weapons and upgrades, cutscenes, ingame graphics, options, and music.  Lastly, final thoughts and a grade for the game (since I have finished the game, so I think scoring it is reasonable).

Game Design

The city level (level 3 or 4) is the best-looking level in the game.

Avenger is a vertical shmup clearly inspired by Toaplan games like Kyukyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, but it has one key original design feature: the aiming system.  Your helicopter rotates as you move right or left, and fires at the angle it is facing.  You can aim up to about a 45 degree angle in either direction.  By holding the II button while firing with I, your futuristic helicopter will lock at the angle you're currently firing at, so that as you move around the screen you continue to fire in the locked direction while moving wherever.  This is the key design decision Under Defeat would reuse, over 15 years later.  That game is certainly better (and much, MUCH better looking) than this one, but any Under Defeat fan should find Avenger interesting.  It's important to note, though, that you must leave the Turbo switches on your controller OFF for this game, or the controls will not work right!  The lock won't work with the switches on.  You have autofire anyway, so it's not needed. 

From the last level, this is one of the harder parts of the game, if you're not at full power... but I did eventually figure out how to get through this corridor safely.  Watch those bullet patterns!  Also note the angled fire from your copter.

Apart from that, though, Avenger definitely feels inspired by Toaplan games and other major '80s shmups like, perhaps, Raiden, though this is not a "Raiden-style" game like Cyber-Core (TG16) is.  The game is a vertical-scrolling shooter, and feels somewhat like Kyukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra), except not quite as hard, and better looking than that game is.  The game has about eight stages, but is somewhat nonlinear -- you will play all of the levels every time, but can choose which order to play the middle levels in (2-3, 4-5, 6-7).  You choose one or the other, then will go to the other stage next.  It's a minor, but nice, addition.  Avenger heavily relies on memorization.  Each time you play the game you will get better and learn more, so your first few times through the game might be tough.  This isn't the hardest shmup, though, s stick with it and it is doable.  Even so, the game can be challenging in that classic shmup way because of how it demands memorization, and also punishes you for dying.  I think the difficulty level is balanced very well, though.  This game is not nearly as hard as Kyokyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, thankfully.  I completed the game after some practice, and I'm definitely not the best shmup player around.  Overall Avenger isn't easy, but it's not super hard either -- it's just right.    While many enemies shoot at you, bosses and some certain enemy types shoot preset patterns instead.  These are not bullet-hell-impossible, though; with a little practice, and watching, I could figure them out.  There are often safe spots in a pattern, so look for them.  I like the bullet pattern design in this game for sure.  It's good.

Weapons and Upgrades

Level 2 or 3, the canyon.  Hit the sides and you will blow up!  Only some levels have instant-death walls, but this is one of them.  So watch out.

Avenger lets you choose which weapon/item you want for each of your copter's three slots: main weapon, secondary weapon, and special ability.  Helpfully, the weapon-select screen is entirely in English, even though the between-mission story text is in Japanese.  There are three things you will unlock in each category over the course of the game; at the start you have no choices, but by the end, or if you use that "unlock all weapons from the start" code you can find on GameFAQs and elsewhere, you have some choices for sure.  The three main guns are a machine gun, a laser, or rockets.  I like the rockets at first, then lasers later, though all three are good.  You don't start with a secondary weapon, but will get homing missiles at the start of the second level, and then later get a directional gun (useless) and side gunpods.  I find the homing missiles and gunpods both useful in different levels.  For special abilities, you start with one which destroys all bullets on screen (3 uses per level).  The other two come much later in the game.  One is a one-time-use invincibility item, and the last a two-uses megabomb (finally!).  You also have shielding on your copter which can take 5 hits before you are destroyed, which is very handy. 

As in Toaplan games, or others, one enemy ship type drops powerups when destroyed.  The drop will cycle between different letters.  "R" restores one hit point (up to a max of 5).  The others upgrade your main weapon and upgrade your special weapon (only appears in level 2 and on).  You cannot upgrade or restore your special item, so use them carefully.  Your secondary weapon maxes out with only a couple of powerups, but the main gun takes four or five to hit max power, so try to stay alive.  If you die, though, you get game over and will have to continue and start the level over.  You have infinite continues in Avenger, but can't save your progress, and this game can get hard at times if you die, due to losing all of your powerups.  This is an oldschool game, and getting reverted to base power HURTS.  Even though you can take multiple hits, which adds an very helpful margin for error to the game, it's easy to take damage quickly once the hits start coming.  Some skill will be required, though again, the difficulty here is reasonable overall.  Tough, but reasonable.  Overall, the weapon and upgrade systems are classic, and work well.  It is very annoying how once in a while the upgrade icons will fly off the screen before going to the powerup you need, though, so watch them carefully and try to destroy the ships carrying them as far up the screen as you can!

Cutscenes

Beginning of the intro.  Poor city...

This game released in 1990, still in the early years of CD gaming.  So, the cutscenes here are important.  Telenet did a nice job with the presentation in Avenger.  Unlike some early Turbo CD shmups (Legion, Daisenpuu Custom, Sidearms Special...), the game has not only CD-audio music, but also has voiced introduction and ending cutscenes.  The voice acting is in Japanese, but the basics of what is going on are simple enough to understand: with our high-tech futuristic helicopter, defeat the badguys attacking your country.  Beyond that, apparently the story is about a military commander from your nation who became a traitor and is trying to take a large carrier, which was supposed to be your helicopter's base, to the enemy. You have to stop him, and the carrier.  As with most Turbo CD games the intro and ending are "animated" in a very limited fashion.  The Turbo CD has only 64KB of RAM by default, and this game released before the RAM-expanding Super or Arcade Cards, so animation in cutscenes is limited and cutscenes have frequent black screens for loading.  Still, the two cutscenes look nice enough. 

Options

Avenger has no options or settings, unfortunately.  This is a common issue in Turbografx games, and probably comes from NES-era design since most NES games work like that as well.  The game does have cheatcodes, but only to let you have all weapons from the start or for invincibility.  That first code is nice, though, for trying out after you've beaten the game.  Beyond that though, all you can do is start playing.

Ingame Graphics

Beginning of the first level.  Yes, it looks bland.

Once you get into the game, you see what is perhaps the most-criticized element of Avenger: the bland in-game background graphics.  I first played this game, emulated, several years ago, because I heard that it controlled like Under Defeat for the Dreamcast, a game I absolutely love.  Well, I saw how bland these graphics look compared to other, later Turbo CD games, and didn't play this much at all.  After finally getting my Turbo CD fixed, though, I made Avenger one of the first import games I bought, because it was something I wanted to play for sure, once I had the actual system.  I'm glad I did; the game is fun, despite the mediocre background art, and it's cheap too.

Once you look beyond the backgrounds, however, Avenger actually looks okay.  I think that the ship designs are good, and while the ingame ship graphics aren't quite at the level of the cinema scene ship graphics, they still look nice.  Look at the ship designs in the various screenshots above; This is no Nexzr, for sure, but I think they look okay to good.  The various laser bolts and bullets are well-drawn and large as well.  I think Avenger gets something of a bad rap for its graphics -- play it for more than a couple of minutes and you'll see that there are some nice things here, graphically.  Get beyond the first impression and there is more here.  The gameplay is definitely the biggest draw here, but Avenger doesn't look THAT bad.  As I said earlier, the game at least looks quite a bit better than Kyukyoku Tiger's TG16 port, and some other HuCard shmups besides.  The best looking level is definitely the level set in a city at night; that one honestly looks nice.  Unfortunately there are a few too many bland desert levels, but still, I think the game looks okay.

An end-level screen.  These are nice.

While there are no cutscenes between the beginning and the end, there are Japanese-language text-only briefings befor missions, and nicely drawn static-image cinema scenes after them, with a fanfare, showing the level you just blasted through.  The "game over" screen is also nicely drawn.  Looking at reviews of this game these screens receive praise, but the ingame graphics are often harshly criticized.  And while it is true that many of the environments are bland, I think that the art design of the ships is pretty good, and levels like the city or final level look decent as well.  There are also some interesting boss designs, and nice big flashy lasers sometimes too.  Avenger's graphics aren't the greatest, but they are better than some of the critics suggest.

Audio
Avenger has a CD audio soundtrack, and it's good.  I don't know if I will really remember most of the songs in the game, but some of them are quite nice songs with do a very good job of backing the action and keeping the game more exciting.  I like the soundtrack, it's solid early-game-CD music, and I love this kind of stuff!  I will definitely be listening to this soundtrack sometimes in the future.  Composers who previously had only worked on sound chips suddenly had access to CDs and could do higher-quality music, but still were often thinking in terms of videogame music.  The results are often unique, and it's really unfortunate that the days of getting such soundtracks passed in favor of generic licensed soundtracks and the like.  Well, at least we still have stuff like Avenger.  The game doesn't have one of  the best TCD soundtracks, but it does have a solid, good one.  The sound effects are average; nothing special, but most games have okay sound effects I think.  Overall, the game looks okay and sounds good.  Youtube musical selection: PC Engine Music: Avenger


Final Thoughts
Avenger is a good game that I liked quite a bit.  Despite the frustration some of the harder parts of the game induced, I kept coming back to this game anyway until I finished it, which says something for sure!  I have probably thousands of games now I haven't finished, but this is one of the ones I quickly knew I'd be playing to completion.  It took a few weeks, but I accomplished that.  I am sure that I will replay this game, too -- it's quite fun, and I am certain to play it again, probably in the near future.  Avenger may not have the best graphics around, though they are better than, say, Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra) on HuCard, but it has addictive, quality gameplay, and the game is well worth playing.  I'd highly recommend this to any Under Defeat fan, and recommend it generally as well.  This is a solid, fun, under-rated shmup.  B+.

Warning!  Ending spoiler.

[spoiler]Yes, in the ending, you learn that yo
ur helicopter's pilot is a woman.  This was secret up until the end.  The "twist" was probably inspired by other games of the time that did similar things, I assume, but it's a nice touch.  At the end you're shown the "use all weapons from the start" password, but this comes first.[/spoiler]

Finally, here's a Youtube LP someone did of the game, for anyone interested in seeing the whole game.
PC Engine Longplay [229] Avenger

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Tennokoe Bank translation? Change battery?]

It doesn't look hard to replace. I ordered some batteries that have solder tabs on them already.
I'll post another pic of the new battery installed when I swap it.

Huh, what is that, CR2320?  I wonder why you have that battery, while that post linked earlier says it's a CR2016...