Update itself was supposed to be meatier, but one game turned out longer than expected so I'll finish it incognito. I would like to use this opportunity to heap praises upon the tireless fan translation community which has made so many formerly obscure games available to audiences unable to understand Japanese. In this particular case I opted for somewhat less known titles and went in blind. I bring you the following; King of Demons (grim action platformer of controllers snapping variety) and Violinist of Hameln (escort quest re-defined with platformer puzzles galore). It should be pointed out I do not claim credit for any of screenshots attached seeing as I merely found them online. Oh, there are also some novels I reviewed in a new streamlined format for your pleasure. Enjoy the read.
I would also like to pose a question to my readers – what are your favorite fan translations, if any? Are there games out there you would've regretted have you not had the chance to try them thanks to community efforts? I know I for one would not have gotten around to Live A Live or even more acclaimed titles like Star Ocean, for example. Japan was particular about what they were bringing over to English during the '90s.
P.S.
This is also a good opportunity to point out I’ll most likely be taking a break from regular updates for a while. Have some RL stuff that needs tending to and a coworker got me into FF14 again with the release of its recent expansion. Means you get a break from my walls of text. :D
Holy shit, son. Looking back at its 1995 release, and SNES being a Nintendo console, I can kinda understand why a game like Majyūō aka King of Demons would never reach audiences outside Japan and in many ways that's a shame. Somewhat simplistic leading to my frustration fighting with enjoyment more and more as the game went on.
I assume there is more to this story in the manual provided you can read Japanese, but from what we're told in the game you're a badass dude called Abel who has to go down the very depths of hell to save his daughter and wife after they get kidnapped. What amused me at first is you're just a dude armed with a gun, pistol with deadly potential to stunlock, before your unceremonious “upgrade” following the thrashing you get in the opening bit. Let me just tell you upfront that despite getting encouraged by your loving wife, daughter and even the family cat pawing at you there is no happy ending to this story and I wish I got more of the story beyond some boss taunting and finale. Game includes then still rarely used voice clip for chilling effect later on.
Upgrade? There is no way to be nice about it so I'll just say it upfront – you defeat bosses, they drop crystals and you become a demon to handle your action platforming business. Only the earliest parts of King of Demons will have you playing as regular dude, albeit one who can shoot a Hadouken style energy attack if you hold down attack, and sadly staying purely human throughout the game is not possible. I know because I tried. In that case progression will simply stop after you defeat the next boss, timer will count down and you're stuck in a no-win loop until you spend all your lives. So you gotta choose and there are three main forms depending on which colored crystal you take. I won't go into details, but it's a smaller faster, normal balanced and larger stronger formula. Considering this is a primarily RANGED game, and you need to kill enemies to upgrade your health, what you really need to look out for is what kind of attacks each form has. For example, I found the small fast knock off Devilman the best even if I had to content with his somewhat unpredictable boomerang attack. At least it was spammable and you'll want that because area control is king. I've found health to be exceedingly rare and only in the last level did cannibalizing some enemies become viable, or perhaps I never noticed it because the game sure won't tell you about it.
Good or bad? I don't know, but I'd think real hard first. It goes back to controller snapping urge King of Demons invoked in me. I'm not that type, but games that ease you in and then pull the rug from under you are the worst. It's almost easy at first and when you get your first demon form it's like Christmas came early. Then the last level rolls and game throws a boss gauntlet at you with slim recovery chances unless you cheese it. And final boss. And then the real final boss. It is difficult to put into words how frustrated I got simply because I could not sustain high enough health. Impressive visuals, though.
Violinist of Hameln is definitely a game I can see having appeal, but would also say ends up divisive depending on how much you like can stand escort missions in games. I say that because the entire game has you babying a side character, which is admittedly also the one solving most of the puzzles, while the protagonist himself does the bare minimum. Prior to playing the game I had no idea it was based on existing manga so it's a safe bet I just got the bare minimum out of it as an ignoramus.
A wandering minstrel called Hamel comes upon a village which seems to be plagued by some kind of monster invasion coming from a nearby castle. They have no idea what to do about it and somewhat cowardly aloof protagonist hears their pleas for help while a local girl named Flute seems ecstatic about the prospect... just as the village elder offers her to Hamel as payment for saving their village. He accepts and so begin humorous adventures of the unlikely pair, as well as Hamel's talking crow familiar Oboe, as they travel through various equally musically-named places and fight bosses like Trombone and such. It is hinted at and pointed towards the finale of the game there is more to our “hero” than meets the eye and he may have ties with demons, but is doing the right thing regardless and maybe fighting his destiny. I wish the story continued rather than ending in open ended fashion it does, though. Guess I should check out the source material if it's available.
At its core Violinist of Hameln is a gorgeous looking platformer with strong puzzle elements. Keep in mind when I say “puzzle” I really mean “Flute can wear costumes you find/buy and acquire new powers”. In practice this translates to the following – you come across a pit of spikes and can't progress anymore, but you also found this weird Ostrich costume some time back. Enter the menu, make Flute wear the costume and you can now get across. There is quite a number of costumes, and some do end up overlapping to add more progression, but it is nonetheless an intriguing mechanic because later on game stops spelling out which costume to use where in the levels. Speaking of levels, each world map has zones comprised of multiple levels and they're definitely in small enough bits. This brings us to the game's sidekick Flute who happens to be your permanent companion following you through levels, but you have little direct control over her beyond telling her to stop or follow. Which can be a problem when you need to navigate through levels. It's something you get used to and game never demands pixel perfect accuracy or insane reflexes to get through. There are some helpful items you can buy at village stores like more time in levels or taking less damage, but I never found myself needing either.
Taking into account you can upgrade your health size, attack range four your flute as well as get more lives, on top of game giving you unlimited continues, I can safely say we've entered an age where console platformers decided to mellow out a tiny bit. This is an approachable title I would recommend to most people because of the inviting visuals, humor and ease of play.
Earthworks ( ₪ Science Fiction, ☑ 1965, ⇲ 155 pages )
Novel presents a dystopian future where Earth has been polluted to such a degree that minority of people is forced to live in cities that stand apart from the ground on mechanical elevation and where even the smallest of crimes will get you sent to the Farms upon which you're expected to die working so cities can keep on going... that's the majority of the population. Both life styles are presented as horrible, but there is hope in the form of Travelers who move about and try to live a free life despite being hunted down by police and robots which effectively makes them terrorists of this reality. It's a grim world and our protagonist has mental issues on top of it all which result in him hallucinating things that may not be there. Novel follows his escapades throughout this world after crashing an automated freighter before some major revelations are made about African countries being the new rising power due to their largely untarnished land that can still be used to grow food and this does not sit well with current Powers That Be.
I cannot rightfully say whether I enjoyed Earthworks and to what degree. Its biggest weakness probably lies in characters themselves which are Aldiss' regular Achilles' heel from what I've experienced so far. Setting is interesting, but whenever people start speaking it begins to rely on author telling you what they're saying versus characters themselves, well, saying it. It's a weird style and I have a feeling it may be a personal dislike of mine. Story also sadly ends just as the finale is being set up and our protagonist Knowle finally commits to it. Talking about general broad strokes I'd say Earthworks delivers a heavy handed ecological message worth reading in modern times.
The Violent Century ( ₪ Alternative History, ☑ 2013, ⇲ 352 pages )
I don't know when was the last time I started reading a book while knowing nothing about it beforehand, but I think it worked out in this case. This is a superhero novel albeit not one in the sense you probably imagine. It starts during WW2 when a certain German scientist devises a peculiar device that ends up sending mysterious "waves" across the world giving very few people super powers. What makes this interesting, other than the fact Yanks' RL superheroes would be styled after cape comics compared to everyone else's, is the fact these Changed-People or Ubermenschen if you're German and your superior race argument just got a tangible leg up, is the fact they're immortal unless actually killed. This leads to portrayal of events over said century as novel touches on major happenings like Vietnam, etc as seen from perspective of the Brits who feel slightly waylaid by the rise of US and Russia with their own brand of nationalistic superheroes. Thankfully, this offsets somewhat poor characterization of our protagonist Fogg, and Oblivion, who subscribe to that "special ops in tweed" style their government opted to use superheroes with during the war. Book does have some similarities with the Watchmen and mainly deals with how immortals recruited to a World War cope with life they don't recognize and just what the hell is Project Sommertag?
The Violent Century gets a thumbs up from me. Sure, it's not perfect and I'd argue it suffers from this very terse approach to dialog it went with, not to mention following a story that jumps between decades and couple of characters in a short span takes a while to get used to, but the premise of seeing flawed super heroes who are essentially timeless soldiers out of touch and time is engaging.
Finches of Mars ( ₪ Science Fiction, ☑ 2013, ⇲ 187 pages )
In the future, mankind, spurned on by a new organization titled United Universities or UU, has settled Mars. Taking into account UU is comprised of major universities across old Earth and they have the final say said new settlement on Mars took form of six towers divided by regional/political lines. Some obvious like Chinese or West, and some like Singa-Thai or Sud-Am less so. Keep in mind going to Mars is a one-way trip due to costs and few accept this self-imposed exile, but there are those do and Finches of Mars follow people in Western tower as troubles arise both on the red planet and back home. Stillbirths plague Martian women as no successful child births have yet to occur bringing the viability of the entire project in question because they are entirely dependent on UU's backing. To make matters worse, albeit coming off as tangential to these new Martians due to distance, things are getting worse on Earth as new conflicts between nations escalate. How will people on both sides deal with the rising tensions and problems?
Putting aside my own bias against Brian Aldiss aside I have to say I'm not a fan of FoM. Which sadly coincides with this being his last novel. Signature uninteresting characters strike back, although this time fault of the setting itself as new colonists are assigned randomly generated names to “let go of their old identities”, and a lot of the plot points are just dropped or forgotten about. Don't get me started about that goddamn ending that has nothing to do with anything and completely blindsided me. What even was that?
This comment was deleted almost 5 years ago.
Hey, it’s King of Demons! I actually played that one! I remember the boss gauntlet being really tough and annoying, too, though I never realized you could slide. I also didn’t get the good–
uh…the second ending because the game arbitrarily locks that (and the true final boss) behind using a different crystal/playable character for each level (which unlocks a fourth one for the boss gauntlet), and I didn’t even know that’s what the crystal did at first. Though the most annoying part for me was that I ended up with the wavy-bullet character in the train level, so all my shots kept getting blocked by the ceiling.
As for Violinist of Hameln, that’s another game I’ve yet to play but have been interested in. I think I only found out about it just by going through the list of translations on RHDN.
Say WHAT? Although, to my defense, I would never replay the game just to try out different crystal combinations. Feel free to miss me with that game guide stuff.
Yeah, there’s an absolute ton of fan translations for NES and SNES in particular. I wasn’t even aware because I mostly just did JRPGs for the longest time.