Club Retro 2021: January - Anime Adaptations

Oh yeah, Hi no Tori is similar to Elemental Master if I'm not mistaken. Looked pretty good.


Ex Xeogred I played through the City Hunter game when the fan translation came out. Should be a review somewhere on this forum. It's so-so. You mostly just run back-and-forth through corridors  looking for keys or stuff and the shooting is mediocre. It's still playable, though, and it's pretty short and easy, so it's not painful to go through or anything. It's closest to the NES Golgo 13 games, but simpler and less rough.

I know, I wrote the whole Hardcore Gaming 101 article about them

Before that, I don't think there was anything in English on the Internet about how the first NES Kujaku-Ou shares about half its content with Spellcaster. The first NES game is actually the purely-adventure version of Spellcaster (with a few RPG fights thrown in) but it's very flawed. Spellcaster streamlined the adventure part significantly and threw in a whole action side-scroller. The second NES game has more RPG elements - two huge dungeons that play in a very particular way (I recommend reading the article or a FAQ for an explanation, because it's really something else, and I'm sure most players would have wanted to read the manual at the time) - but it's really easy to get stuck in the adventure segments as it often requires things like revisiting the same location multiple times, talking to the same person (or spirit) multiple times, or a few of them in a particular order, etc. I've played a lot of Japanese graphic adventure games from that era, and while this one is certainly interesting, it's the one where I got stuck in the most. Spellcaster also has its difficulties - there's one or two moments like those I just described, mostly in the late-game adventure segments, and huge mazelike pyramid level that demands some really systematic exploration (or you can just look up a map on gamefaqs). Mystic Defender, being a purely action game, is the most approachable, though it still demands some time to get used to its weapon system and general flow.

Ex: Funny you mentioned Gulliver Boy, as I'd actually very briefly booted it up yesterday. I'll have to give that other one a look, although it sure would be nice to have a fan translation.

I actually think Treasure's Bleach fighting games on DS are pretty good, too.

Ex: Ah, sorry, I typed that somewhat vaguely. I was referring to the other ARPG you posted - it looks interesting from the screenshots.