What game is this?

[Lord Thag]

I got this loose Hucard in a lot. I've no idea what it is, as the name is in Japanese. The game itself seems to be some kind of strategy title, with an overhead map of a bunch of cities. Each city has a 2x3 grid of little gray boxes in which you place a bunch of little guys, who apparently duke it out if you can read Japanese and actually play the game.

The cover art is a picture of a guy's head in a silver/blue helmet with yellow eyes.

Any idea what game this is, and if so, how you actually play it? Thanks!

[Turbo D]

Sounds like the game Gai Flame published by Masaya and distributed by NCS in 1990. Its a wargame like you said and I have no idea how to play it either, lol.

[OldRover]

https://catalog.pcengine-fx.com/#hu1390

If this is the cover, then it's indeed Gaia Flame.

[Sparky]

wow, thats one wi-kid cover, the possible good games we are missing out on because of the language 

[nat]

Gai Flame was NCS's predecessor to the Langrisser (Warsong) series. It was much more primitive in many ways from what I understand. I also heard that you should skip Gai Flame altogether and go straight to the series itself. But, I've never actually played Gai Flame so I can't really say much about it's gameplay.

[Lord Thag]

Yep, that's the cover picture. Gai Flame, huh? Maybe I'll sit down and figure it out. Would anyone be interested in a 'how to play' post in this if I can get it puzzled out?

[rag-time4]

Yep, that's the cover picture. Gai Flame, huh? Maybe I'll sit down and figure it out. Would anyone be interested in a 'how to play' post in this if I can get it puzzled out?

Lord Thag, I would be interested. I've collected most of the turn based strategy games for PCE but playing them is difficult because many of them use a lot of Kanji.

if you're really into the genre, you might want to start a "compendium of PC Engine strategy game FAQs" like Runinruder's RPG thread in the PC-Engine section and cover lots of games. Also, Gamefaqs has no FAQ for Gaiflame or most other PCE strategy games.

Info on PCE strategy games is hard to come by in English.