I’ve been wanting to start a PC88/PC98 topic for a long time, and now this post on Insert Credit has given me the excuse:
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002283.html
Turns out, Bangai-O began life as a remake of Hover Attack, which was also released on the PC88.
More links here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=257271
and here:
http://www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?p=135820
Really good pics showing the Bangai-O similarities.
The PC88 and PC98 are Japanese personal computers, very loosely analogous to the C64 and Amiga in the UK (and boy, do I feel dirty for even trying to make such a poor analogy, but it’s close enough).
Both were by NEC, the same guys who co-brought us the Turbo Duo.
Anyway, history lesson over, I love both systems because they’re:
1) Very poorly documented outside of Japan, meaning super obscure and super niche
2) Despite a near-infinite amount of lousy hentai adventures, they do have some truly astounding action games, which were never released anywhere else.
3) Due to the difficulty of getting the original computer hardware, emulation is the only way to go, and there’s a rather fun cult of emulation enthusiasts who, with a smattering of Japanese between them, unearth some nice gems.
Part of the fun of these system is working out what’s available.
There’s some cool (NSFW) sites like:
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/
(NSFW) Awesome French site. tricky to navigate and a load of info was lost from their forums, but it’s nice to know there’s some dedicated people out there.
http://pc98.acheronx.com
(NSFW) Another great site which updates every few weeks with new images.
The hentai is annoying, but if you listen to fellow gamers they can steer you in the direction of some decent, mostly clean games.
None of the above links tell you how to get the actual Hover Attack game though, which I desperately wanted to play. So I typed the following:
ホバーアタック
Into Google, which is the Japanese for the game’s name. if you can’t type Japanese, half the titles you can’t search for, since the only time they’re listed in English is when gaijin like us talk about them. 
After an hour I was still no closer, but I’d seen enough screens to REALLY whet my appetite.
(people, you know where my PM button is - wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, IS YOUR WIFE A GOER, and Python foolery)
Unfortunately my collection of PC88 games is mediocre, and they’re not easily available, so when you find something, it feels a bit more special than just downloading a full set of NES roms.
There are other great games which you won’t find anywhere else (or will find elsewhere, but in a slightly different form):
PC88
Hudson’s Mario Bros games
http://andre.facadecomputer.com/saw/pc88.html
http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/special.htm
Hover Attack
And others which I’ve forgotten the names of.
PC98
Rusty - a really cool Castlevania clone. (scroll down with the next link)
http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.c…es/cvlike2.html
Steam Hearts - fairly good shmup, also available on the Duo and Saturn.
Policenauts - visually quite different from the Saturn game.
Farland Story 1-6 (in English!)
Popful Mail (very different to the Sega CD version!)
Plus there are other games, which sadly I can’t remember the names of. The problem is, they’re odd, and you only stumble across them once on archaic forums which soon close down.
And finally, a title I discovered a few days ago…
Night Slave
http://insomnia.ac/reviews/pc-9800series/nightslave/
(link NSFW)
It plays basically like a clone of Assault Suits Valken, and is pretty damn awesome.
To quote text from the above link:
Between missions you get to customize your mech. A cool aspect of the mech customization is that every different component here changes your mech’s in-game appearance.
Night Slave’s stage design is simply unmatched. Enemies, backgrounds, and other such elements are rarely ever re-used from one stage to another.
I have never seen another side-scroller with such incredibly diverse and varied amount of settings and situations.
It’s all true, though like most PC98 games, there is nudity in the cut-scenes.
Which is perhaps another reason why the PC98 isn’t so heavily documented in the West. There’s just too much damned porn on it.
Does anyone else have an interest in these systems?
Has anyone played Hover Attack?
More importantly, is anyone able to recommend more decent games worth investigating? Perhaps we could get a strong thread going, sharing info and the names of decent titles?
Either way, I thought the Bangai-O news was fascinating.
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