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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 17, 2014 19:56:39 GMT -5
www.hardcoregaming101.net/heiankyo-alienHeiankyo Alien is the first game in a long lineage of trap-'em-up games. The main goal of the game is to lure enemies into holes and bury them. A year later, Universal's Space Panic and its many imitators would be approaching this same concept using a side-scrolling perspective. Broderbund would take a similar concept and create Lode Runner, a long-running series that has been ported to virtually every platform imaginable. While not as prolific as static shooters or maze games, a ragtag group of university students virtually created a genre overnight. Probably most well known due to its Game Boy version.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2014 20:08:09 GMT -5
Was the US Game Boy release the first Japanese game localization where the publisher went out of their way to emphasize that they were preserving the cultural authenticity of the game?
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Jul 17, 2014 20:22:13 GMT -5
www.hardcoregaming101.net/heiankyoalien/heian1.htmHeiankyo Alien is the first game in a long lineage of trap-'em-up games. The main goal of the game is to lure enemies into holes and bury them. A year later, Universal's Space Panic and its many imitators would be approaching this same concept using a side-scrolling perspective. Broderbund would take a similar concept and create Lode Runner, a long-running series that has been ported to virtually every platform imaginable. While not as prolific as static shooters or maze games, a ragtag group of university students virtually created a genre overnight. Probably most well known due to its Game Boy version. BTW, the aliens make a cameo in the Kyoto level of Genpei Toumaden (Heian Kyo being the Heian era capital, Kyoto). The director of Genpei, Norio Nakagata, is a huge fan of Heiankyo Alien, hence the reference. Not coincidentally, he worked on the Gameboy adaptation of Heiankyo as well. Sorry, the images I've got from the arcade/X68 versions don't have a clear shot of them, so you'll have to settle for PC Engine ;p.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2014 20:29:46 GMT -5
There was a soundtrack of sorts on cassette that Meldac produced for the Summer 1990 Consumer Electronics Show to promote the US Game Boy release. Only one copy has been confirmed to exist. It includes a voiceover recording that seems to have been made for a promotional phone hotline, where they would have given a T-shirt to the first 80 buyers of the game.
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Post by arugulaz on Jul 17, 2014 20:55:03 GMT -5
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Post by derboo on Jul 17, 2014 21:10:24 GMT -5
I just uploaded a lot of last-minute fixes. Mostly html stuff, but I also changed the bit about the release date, because there are some things fishy about it, but if the author is on the forums, we can discuss this here further: The original article stated that the game was "published" for the computer in 1979 and in arcades in January 1980, which seems to be taken from Wikipedia. However, none of the sources cited by the English or the Japanese Wikipedia seem to support the January date, and the one full text source uses "発表", which can mean "published", but also just "introduced", "shown" or "announced", which possibly could refer to that media event the Japanese Wikipedia talks about (just skimmed the Japanese text about the development, so I don't know exactly what was going on there) The oldest public release I could find info about was the publishing in I/O 2/1980: www.geocities.jp/upd780c1/n80/list2/compac/index.htmlI've changed the text to only include what can be positively known, and listed the year in the title line as 1979/1980. EDIT: The Japanese Wikipedia's story about how this game came to be is super interesting and we should definitely expand the article with it. Some more reading: d.hatena.ne.jp/nicotakuya/20110914/1315977336Also it looks like the code was for TK-80BS, with MZ-80, VIC-1001 and PC-8001 versions following only later. The Japanese Wikipedia and this page ( www.geocities.jp/upd780c1/n80/list1/io/index_1980.html ) also suggest that it was originally programmed on an Apple II.
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Post by derboo on Jul 17, 2014 22:16:37 GMT -5
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Post by jorpho on Jul 18, 2014 8:49:37 GMT -5
I remember that the game got a fairly extensive writeup in one of those "Nintendo Game Boy Secrets" books at the time. I doubt I would have heard of it otherwise.
I'm assuming this was intended to mean "An EZweb version of the game is also mentioned".
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Post by Ike on Jul 21, 2014 14:07:52 GMT -5
Heiankyo Alien was one of my first Game Boy games. The cover art always scared the hell out of me, mostly because I couldn't tell what the hell it was supposed to be.
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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 21, 2014 14:29:32 GMT -5
I remember it winning an "award" from EGM (I think) about the game with the most unpronouncable title. It's kinda neat that they kept the Japanese flavor, but I can't imagine any kid outside of Japan is familiar with Japanese pronounciation, much less the city of Kyoto or the Heian era, which is where the title derives. As a kid I pronounced it "Hen-a-kyo".
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Post by Ike on Jul 22, 2014 13:56:07 GMT -5
I always called it hanky-o or "the red one."
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Post by Terrifying on Jul 22, 2014 14:01:25 GMT -5
Nice! It was one of the first Game Boy games I ever played (through the neighbor's daughter). Others were Amazing Penguin and Lock'n Chase...
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Lord Dalek
Full Member
WHY DOES HE HAVE A SECOND/THIRD/FORTH/ETC. FORM?!?!
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Post by Lord Dalek on Jul 23, 2014 14:03:32 GMT -5
So any possibility you might cover some of the other trap-em games like Space Panic and Berlin Wall?
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Post by drpepperfan on Nov 18, 2015 13:42:25 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Nov 18, 2015 14:06:28 GMT -5
Nice! Also, I had no idea anyone had their avatar changed.
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