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Post by Ex on Jan 19, 2023 0:04:46 GMT -5
From that point it seemed all that was left was (mostly eroge) doujinshi and Falcom. I do wish, wish, WISH we'd gotten Brandish 3 and 4 for DOS in English. Officially I mean, back in the '90s. Guess it fits here, but I actually have all four Megatech releases. I have wondered about Power Dolls ever since I watched the anime forever ago. Did you ever play it? Is it anything like Front Mission?
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Post by dunpeal2064 on Jan 19, 2023 0:05:54 GMT -5
Like Sarge, I found those games through abandonware sites over a decade ago. Aside from Cobra Mission (which I dropped because of the constant random encounters while you're trying to investigate), Knights of Xentar and Metal & Lace, there was another RPG titled Mad Paradox. I finished it and it was nothing special IIRC (though I don't think it was terrible or anything), but I always liked the title. I don't know for Cobra Mission, but in the case of Knights of Xentar and Metal & Lace, they have that distinct PC-98 look. That use of dithering. Y'all know Zeliard was a PC-88 game, right? Wibarm too. I don't believe Japan had a market for DOS games at the time, so any Japanese game brought over to American PCs in the late '80s/early '90s (and there aren't many, to my knowledge) was going to have to be ported from a Japanese computer to DOS. IIRC it was with Windows 95 that Japan began using American standards with computers. I think it had to do with improvements in terms of how it handled Japanese fonts and text. From that point it seemed all that was left was (mostly eroge) doujinshi and Falcom. Oh Hey I have Mad Paradox too! I think this is the only release by Samourai, and honestly from playing it, I don't think Samourai actually got the rights to publish this, I suspect they did this without the original devs knowing, because it reeks of emulation, even has the scanlines that you have to turn off in PC-98 emulators present. I specifically collect "Pc-98 games that were localized in english on dos or early windows" stuff, so I have a bunch of these. Most are extremely hard to find, I'm not sure Mad Paradox has even been listed for sale more than once.
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Post by toei on Jan 19, 2023 0:17:53 GMT -5
Didn't know about Mad Paradox possibly being unofficial, that's interesting. I know several MSX games with terrible truncated translations were sold in Europe in the 90s without a license. Also Samourai is the French spelling of the word and it's an English-language release, so that's weird.
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Post by dunpeal2064 on Jan 19, 2023 0:33:45 GMT -5
Didn't know about Mad Paradox possibly being unofficial, that's interesting. I know several MSX games with terrible truncated translations were sold in Europe in the 90s without a license. Also Samourai is the French spelling of the word and it's an English-language release, so that's weird. I can't say for sure as there's so little info on it, this is just me being suspicious when playing it, it feels very unofficial compared to even the lazier pc-98 ports at the time. The game itself is actually pretty cool though, good fantasy rpg art with some sweet sword and armor action. I have wondered about Power Dolls ever since I watched the anime forever ago. Did you ever play it? Is it anything like Front Mission? I haven't had the chance to play it yet, but plan to soon. From my initial look into it, it does look Front Mission adjacent at least. Its also the only Megatech release that isn't 18+, guessing the adult approach wasn't working. Cobra Mission was full on 18+ and floppy only, but Metal & Lace and Knights of Xentar both come as 13+ games,with both floppy and CD-ROM releases, and require a separate mail order for the 18+ floppy patch. My copy of Knights of Xentar still has the invoice for the floppy in it. Leads me to think that they ran into issues selling these games, which explains why Power Dolls was their 4th and final choice (This one is CD-ROM only too). They seem like an interesting team, all the manuals are full of random talk about the industry, their advertisement division being a pain in the ass to work with, all that stuff. Truly feels like an unhinged version of Working Designs.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 19, 2023 0:42:05 GMT -5
Cobra Mission was full on 18+ and floppy only... Floppy hehehe... get that on a haaaaard disc... (I'll see myself out.)
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Post by dunpeal2064 on Jan 19, 2023 0:52:14 GMT -5
Cobra Mission was full on 18+ and floppy only... Floppy hehehe... get that on a haaaaard disc... (I'll see myself out.) These gentleman of fine taste would certainly be Megatech and PC-98 fans. I forgot to mention, Cobra Mission also claims to be the first eroge ever released in the states. Its hard to say for sure, but I can't recall anything predating it, so that is one hell of a landmark if its true.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jan 19, 2023 11:09:41 GMT -5
Nice set there. Yeah the Knights of Xentar dub and translation is kind of amazing. Also love seeing Donald Trump references in an early 90s game lol.
The whole series is good, btw. The first two games are first-person dungeon crawlers with the fourth being a strategy RPG.
The automated battle system in Xentar is really cool. Kinda strips away the whole "mash A" element.
As I recall Xentar had to be "patched" to see the adult content. Note the "NR 13" on the box. When I initially played it I just downloaded it from an abandonware site and the eroge stuff was included. But when I eventually obtained (and played) a physical CD-ROM it wasn't. (Edit: didn't see dunpeal's latest post when I posted; interesting stuff).
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Post by Kazin on Mar 10, 2023 13:12:50 GMT -5
Probably the only complete collection of a particular system I'll ever do: These are only the English language games, which Pokemon Tetris was only released in Europe and Japan, the other four games were released in America. This is a complete English language collection of the Pokemon Mini - Pokemon Puzzle Collection, Pokemon Pinball Mini, Pokemon Party Mini, and Pokemon Zany Cards are all the NA versions. These are also all three models of the hardware: the Chikorita Green, Smoochum Purple, and Wooper Blue, which is also the order of rarest to most common btw. Got a great deal on the green model, $150 for it and Pokemon Pinball Mini, which is about half the cost of just the unit itself. Pokemon Tetris wasn't cheap and isn't listed very often on eBay so I lucked out there as well - about $150 for that, CIB, which I think is far cheaper than it's worth, when and if it even shows up on eBay. I probably won't attempt to get the remaining five Japanese games. Togepi's Great Adventure and Pichu Bros. Mini go for $200+ each, and I think Togepi may be worth like $400. I have a flash cart with English translations for all the Japanese games anyway - those two would play fine in Japanese, but the Breeder game (itself nearly $100) is unplayable in a language you can't understand. Anyway, chuffed! Go ahead and install an emulator on your device of choice and play Pokemon Tetris - it's easily the best game on the system. When you get a Tetris, you catch whatever Pokemon is silhouetted, and I enjoy trying to complete the ingame Pokedex.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 10, 2023 14:23:15 GMT -5
That's really cool! I honestly know almost nothing about the Pokemon Mini, much less that there was a flash cart for it. Wild stuff, and awesome you got some great deals to get it assembled!
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Post by Kazin on Mar 10, 2023 14:28:50 GMT -5
Sarge That flashcart, now that I think about it, was tougher to get than the rest of the stuff lol. I had to buy the cart itself from the website, but the flasher was unavailable ( and still unavailable, apparently), so I had to get into a Pokemon Mini focused Discord and ask around if anyone had a flasher they didn't need, and some dude in the UK had one, so I had to buy that from him and hope the thing worked when I got it. Luckily, it did! lol. I then bought a 3D printed shell off Etsy so I didn't have to take apart a legit game to use it, though that was easy to get and use lol
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