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Post by dsparil on Oct 3, 2023 11:31:42 GMT -5
Double DungeonsDeveloper NCS Publisher NCS Format HuCard Release (JP) September 29, 1989 Release (US) June or July 1990 NCS’s Double Dungeons has a kernel of a good idea. The concept of a two player semi-competitive dungeon crawler is intriguing. However, everything else about the game leaves much to be desired. One of the key issues is the lack of any real variety. The game is divided into twenty-two “dungeons” with most of them more like floors of increasing size while the final few jump up vastly in size and are closer in scale to full dungeons despite still being single floors. With so much space to fill, it should come as no surprise that each is more or less a simple maze with a final boss waiting at the end. Every dungeon progresses the same way. The player or players start at level 1 with the most basic armor and weapon and just constantly grind before finally taking on the boss of the dungeon. Exploration is required as a key is needed before fighting the boss, but the lack of any real dungeon quirks makes every dungeon feel exactly the same minus the size. The extreme simplicity of the character system, a simple linear progression with zero customization, only reinforces the boredom. Double Dungeons is the gaming equivalent of the blandest oatmeal, and not just a bowl of it but an entire shipping container. The game has very little to offer beyond the first dungeon aside from new enemy sprites, and bringing along a friend is sadistic. Even something as small as basic character classes would have gone a very long way to making the game tolerable. Trying to get through all forty-eight hours of the game by the manual’s estimation is a test of pure fortitude and nothing else. You only ever fight one enemy at a time which mostly consists of mashing I since there's no spells or other abilities. There are a handful of attack items that only appear later on. The two player is basically just a race to see who can finish first. The game's sole nicety is the convincing pseudo-3D turn animation. This one feature feels like it got more attention than anything else in the game.
The HLTB time for this is 18 hours which must take a walkthrough or maps into account. I played way more of this than I ever wanted to, and I believe the manual's estimates. They might have rounded a bit, but look at this map of the final dungeon which the manual says takes 16 hours all on its own. For a game with no automap or ability to see your coordinates and the same grey texture for everything, that almost feels a little short when factoring in having to make a map too. Oh yeah, and dying sends you back to the start.
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Post by klausien on Oct 3, 2023 19:42:32 GMT -5
I haven’t posted in a long time, but as an old PCE aficionado I’ve enjoyed lurking in this thread since it began. Chiming in here on Juuouki Hu vs. CD since I too have a strange fondness for good old Altered Beast. In addition to the difficulty differences disparil mentioned, they also have different color palettes in certain spots (partcularly stage one), and the CD version has a long voiced intro. The CD version works Japanese Duos if you have a CDROM System 1.0 card, and it also works on the US version with a converter or region mod for the card. I believe it is the only 1.0 System Card game, but that I cannot confirm.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 4, 2023 4:22:54 GMT -5
I haven’t posted in a long time, but as an old PCE aficionado I’ve enjoyed lurking in this thread since it began. Chiming in here on Juuouki Hu vs. CD since I too have a strange fondness for good old Altered Beast. In addition to the difficulty differences disparil mentioned, they also have different color palettes in certain spots (partcularly stage one), and the CD version has a long voiced intro. The CD version works Japanese Duos if you have a CDROM System 1.0 card, and it also works on the US version with a converter or region mod for the card. I believe it is the only 1.0 System Card game, but that I cannot confirm. Thanks for this info! I had tried to find info on if Altered Beast would work on a Duo with the original System Card, but actually ended up missing a reference to it working. The PC Engine Software Bible's forum has two threads (1) (2) on US vs Japanese v3 compatibility that I had looked at. The first of which does mention it working in a Duo with a v1 SC. There's some good technical info in the second one in particular. It seems like Hudson thought ahead to this type of potential issue and the system will prioritized an inserted SC over the built in one. Altered Beast does seem to be the only game with this particular problem. There's a handful of Japanese games that won't work with a US v3 SC due to some sloppy programming, and a (completely?) overlapping handful that won't work in a Japanese LaserActive for similar reasons. For the changed palettes, I looked into it, and the backgrounds in the first stage are actually slightly different beyond just a difference in palette! The starting temple is different. The second stage just seems to be a different color, and the others are identical from what I could tell based on videos for the later levels. I also added a link to a translated intro.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 8, 2023 4:39:56 GMT -5
Digital Champ — Battle Boxing Digital Champ バトルボクシングDeveloper Dual Publisher Naxat Soft Format HuCard Release (JP) October 13, 1989 Release (US) October 20, 2008 (WII VC) Release (EU) May 16, 2008 (Wii VC) With Digital Champ, Naxat gave the PC Engine its first taste of the sweet science, but a taste was all it got. The game has all the makings of an exciting boxing experience with detailed boxer graphics and a first person perspective. Sadly, the actual gameplay feels incomplete as if it were a pushed out the door beta. When it comes to offense or defense, there seems to be little difference between categories of options. Having a variety of moves like quick jabs and charged hooks is nice in theory, but all quick hits are equal as are charged hits making them little more than visual flourishes. Likewise, blocking high or low and dodging left or right are all equally effective at avoiding hits. These deficiencies coupled with the player essentially being rooted in place make Digital Champ only a step or two above Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots in complexity. Some changes like having the opponent actually engage with the player rather than mostly dipping in to the background only to pop out to attack. As it is, Digital Champ is a very easy game to avoid. Its eventual global release on Wii and Wii U VC is not a marker of it being a hidden gem but simply that the game was already in English as if an initial US release was scrapped. The graphics are nice and large, but there's only three total plus a final boss. You loop through the first three a few times before getting to the fourth. You get a little stat sheet before each fight which is a little nice.
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Post by excelsior on Oct 8, 2023 6:27:03 GMT -5
Is there anything beyond this and Champions Forever when it comes to boxing games on the Engine? I know there's a kickboxing game at least, but I don't think that counts. Very slim pickings.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 8, 2023 10:29:20 GMT -5
There's also Bullfight in December 1989, but I think that's it. I don't know that game's reputation but it also includes a brawling mode which is interesting.
A mix of Champions Forever and Digital Champ would probably have been perfect. Take the actual mechanics of Champions Forever and add in a view that actually lets you see the boxers well.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 13, 2023 4:42:25 GMT -5
Dragon Child Fighter 竜の子ファイターDeveloper Tonkinhouse with(?) Mugendai Club Publisher Tonkinhouse Format HuCard Release (JP) October 20, 1989 Release (US) Unreleased In 1989, manga artist Akira Miyashita was in the midst of his popular series Sakigake!! Otokojuku—roughly Charge!! Men’s School—a violent series about a reformatory for juvenile delinquents. Against this backdrop, it may seen strange that he would attach himself closely enough to a fairly family friendly game to the point of being a major character. However, elements of the game line up with his pet interests, and a certain amount of ego stroking can’t be ruled out. The player takes on the role of a child that has been sucked into the world of Miyashita’s newest manga, the fictitious Dragon Child Fighter. Miyashita himself also guides the player before the start of each of the five levels and hands out new polearms on occasion. The gameplay is standard for the genre with a melee attack and an MP-based ranged attack. Levels are broken up into multiple linear sections with two bosses at the end, the first fought normally and the second in a bulked up adult form that only tweaks the combat. Dragon Child Fighter has a reputation for unfair difficulty which is partly true. After being defeated, the player continues from the start of the current level section with unlimited attempts. The penalty is the loss of half their money, but it is plentiful and only used to purchase healing. The game features permanent health and MP upgrades, and grinding for these in the first two levels sections by dying and continuing takes most of the edge off. What tips things into unfairness is the level progression system. After defeating the second boss of the level, the player has a selection of four possible next levels. However, it’s also possible and likely for the player to travel backwards potentially to the first stage and being forced to replay large chunks of the game. This is completely mitigated with a walkthrough, but it feels like it only exists to pad out the completion time for someone playing blind. What sinks the game is that there simply isn’t any real standout quality. The gameplay is mostly basic, and the graphics are decent at best. It’s simply a pale shadow of SonSon II and nothing more. There are some nice enemies at least. There's a fair number of artists credited so it isn't clear how strong Miyashita's influence was, but perhaps he also took the game as an opportunity to work outside his usual style. Your older form is basically the same except with punches and a chain weapon that still drains MP. In practice, there isn't much difference.
The mysterious Mugendai Club is listed in the Planning section of the credits, but I couldn't find any info on them. I strongly suspect that there's an unnamed ghost developer behind the game since most of the staff that's on Mobygames worked on the same games. The audio-visual staff mostly used their real names, but everyone else is mostly using pseudonyms.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 18, 2023 15:36:23 GMT -5
Legend of Mirror Land 鏡の国のレジェンドDeveloper Mewtech Publisher Victor Musical Industries Format CD-ROM² Release (JP) October 27, 1989 Release (US) Unreleased Legend of Mirror Land is the PC Engine’s second idol themed game and also features a Noriko, Sakai in this case. After a string a top twenty albums and singles, label Victor saw a cross marketing opportunity and produced a traditional menu driven adventure game featuring their singer. Considering that Sakai is somewhat wedged into the game, it would not be surprising if Victor took an already in development game and added her into it or used her presence to make a slightly quirky game more marketable. For a Japanese adventure game of the period, gameplay is typical with commands selected from a simple menu system. The story is also a relatively simple tale of the player rescuing Noriko from the fantasy land she has been sucked into. What makes the game stand out are its attractive graphics. Victor did not skimp on this element, and the game is bursting with unique graphics. This is only made more impressive by the game’s rather long length. Legend of Mirror Land is simply a top notch adventure game in this style. It won’t convert the adventure ambivalent, but everyone else is in for a hidden gem on the platform. The game does includes the requisite music "videos" to the best of the system's abilities. They're less dynamic than the one in No・Ri・Ko but more numerous. Sakai mainly appears via a magical compact, and she will also say the player's name after it's been input. The pixel art fairs much better.
Truth be told, I only played through about a quarter and relied on a full playthrough for the rest of the game. That video was nearly five hours long, and I was going to be pushing fifteen to twenty hours at my pace. Unlike Cobra, Google Translate actually does work well enough. This is definitely one to check out even just skimming a video since the graphics are mostly good.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 21, 2023 5:32:47 GMT -5
Doraemon — The Great Labyrinth Operation ドラえもん 迷宮大作戦 CratermazeDeveloper Hudson Soft Publisher Hudson Soft, NEC Format HuCard Release (JP) October 31, 1989 Release (US) March 15, 1990 The 1979 computer game Heiankyo Alien is a slightly forgotten foundational game despite being one of the earliest examples of the maze-chase genre more commonly associated with the slightly later Pac-Man. Its premise, a late first millennium kebiishi (a sort of police and judicial official) defending the city of Heian-kyō from aliens via digging and filling in holes, still had great influence. 1980’s Space Panic took the idea of trapping enemies and rotated it to a side scrolling perspective which ultimately inspired the much better known Lode Runner. In 1987, Nihon Bussan released to arcades a direct clone of Heiankyo Alien officially transliterated as Kid’s Horehore Daisukesen (キッドのホレホレ大作戦). This variation kept the top down view, but also added in an element from Lode Runner, collecting all of a level’s treasure as the goal, along with a variety of power ups, doors that can be used to push and reroute enemies, teleporters, springs and a time travel based visual theme. The quickly released Famicom follow up Booby Kids added Bomberman as a stronger influence with bombs as a permanent ammo-based secondary weapon rather than an infrequent temporary power up. A bit of environmental destruction was also included. A few years later, Hudson applied the famed robo-cat Doraemon to the game whose occasional time-travel antics were a natural fit with the premise. Their game, Doraemon — The Great Labyrinth Operation, is essentially a new set of sixty levels. However, these levels are generally simpler than those in the original and feature fewer enemies and doors. Hudson also made changes to the gameplay largely to detrimental results. The main overriding weakness of the game is that it fails to fully capture the frantic energy of the original. Easy is clearly aimed at children considering the license and turns the game into a nearly pure treasure hunt with no doors or falling into your own holes. Normal brings back the removed elements, but it still has to contend with the duller level design. The unlocked Difficult brings enemies up to the arcade’s standard, but it takes out too many power ups leaving the player in a weaker position. The arcade game is arguably too difficult, but Hudson somehow went too far in both directions without finding a happy medium. A few months later, Hudson brought the game over sans Doraemon as Cratermaze. The TG16 owners of 1990 can be forgiven for thinking the game was wholly generic considering Kid’s Horehore Daisukesen remained a Japanese exclusive until Hamster brought the game to the wider world. This version is almost entirely a visual shift with the Doraemon specific graphics replaced with those from the original including bringing over the title screen. The difficulty labelings also got shifted down a notched with Easy becoming Normal, Normal becoming Difficult and Difficult becoming Expert. The treasure unsurprisingly ecomes Doraemon's beloved dorayaki. The bombs are fairly rare and a bit difficult to use. The highest difficulty is the only one that doesn't sometimes feel devoid of enemies.
I recommend giving the original a try. It isn't a game you can credit feed, but bumping up your starting lives to the maximum of six gives you a good amount of breathing room to figure out each level. What horehore is supposed to represent is beyond me. It has a completely unrelated use in a song about Japanese Hawaiians. If it's supposed to be a reduplication of hole, then perhaps it represents crater?
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grad
Full Member
Enlarge my avatar, yea or nay?
Posts: 129
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Post by grad on Oct 21, 2023 12:34:23 GMT -5
... but everyone else is in for a hidden gem on the platform. The hidden gem is this thread. Holy heck, these reviews are great. Thank you for helping everyone sift through what would otherwise be a much more daunting library.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 22, 2023 6:39:03 GMT -5
... but everyone else is in for a hidden gem on the platform. The hidden gem is this thread. Holy heck, these reviews are great. Thank you for helping everyone sift through what would otherwise be a much more daunting library. Thanks! Originally, I had some thoughts a few years ago about doing a thread on the Game Boy RPGs only because I had been playing Sword of Hope (the second one), but that seemed incredibly foolhardy. Covering all the PCE shooters was much more doable although I wasn't sure about expanding out from there after the SuperGrafx games and the US exclusive games. I guess it was just a weird whim although it's a system I've always had some interest in.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 24, 2023 10:03:29 GMT -5
Tsuru Teruhito’s Practical Double Buy Stock Game 都留照人の実戦株式倍バイゲームDeveloper TOSE Publisher Intec Format HuCard Release (JP) November 1, 1989 Release (US) Unreleased Games have long been used to spice up the teaching of economics which is called the dismal science for a reason. The higher level abstraction of macroeconomics can at least be generally applicable to people’s everyday lives, but the nitty gritty of microeconomics has made many student’s eyes glaze over. Interest rates affect everyone, but most people can go their entire lives without pondering the price elasticity of milk. It should come as no surprise that serious business simulations built for mainframes and meant for education, research and managerial training were some of the earliest computer games. 1955’s Monopologs, produced by the RAND Corporation’s Logistics Department for the US Air Force, is one of the earliest attested and possibly the first. Meant as a training tool for “spare-parts inventory managers”, RAND’s Research Memorandum RM-1917-1 describes it as Monopologs was successful and found itself being used by part suppliers, academics and internally at RAND. Most importantly, it was always described as a game even in its early proposals. By 1960, it even included an optional custom spinner to inject randomness into the simulation. More widely available games like American Management Association’s 1957 Top Management Decision Simulation lead to a boom in the genre throughout the sixties. By the 80s, these types of simulations had diversified and spread with the proliferation of computers and finally landed on consoles. 1982’s The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt on the Odyssey² may be a console first, but the genre on consoles was more or less fallow for a number of years afterward. The Intec released Tsuru Teruhito’s Practical Double Buy Stock Game likely took its “inspiration” from Imagineer’s 1988 Famicom release Matsumoto Tōru’s Foolproof Theory of Stocks, the game that seemingly brought the genre back to consoles. Both titles were endorsed by a business analyst, but Intec’s is by far the drier of the two lacking the life sim elements of Imagineer’s title. What it does have going for it is pure veracity. The game is actually not a simulation per se. Instead, it uses real companies and their historical price data. Only their industry is available during gameplay, but their real names and stock number/symbol are revealed when completing a game. Coupled with Teruhito’s occasional economic advice, the game is very much in line with the earlier mainframe titles. Whether this makes for an entertaining game is a different story. With only the graphics of Teruhito and your secretary to liven things up, the game is almost entirely just charts and table. The manual does go over the basics, but someone that doesn’t already know how to interpret a candlestick chart is unlikely to get much out of the game. Each of the five difficulties uses twelve different stocks taken from a large pool. This view could have been improved by showing the percentage changed since that's more important that than the raw value. This is all the info you really have to go off of. Other stock market games of this period incorporate things like news events to give you a sense of what to do. In a way, this reinforces the sense that speculative investing is essentially gambling. There're elements that aren't implemented in the game like dividends and the tax implications of your trades, but brokerage fees are inescapable.
For more on the price elasticity of milk, please see USDA Technical Bulletin Number 1928, An Analysis of U.S. Household Dairy Demand. Mainframe sims really were a major thing in the past especially at universities. In doing some research, I came across a master's thesis from the sixties describing one called MONABUS which has a modern Javascript implementation!
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Post by dsparil on Oct 29, 2023 11:18:04 GMT -5
NeutopiaDeveloper Hudson Publisher Hudson, NEC Format HuCard Release (JP) November 17, 1989 Release (US) April 15, 1990 per EGM Hudson’s Neutopia is about as direct a clone of the original The Legend of Zelda as something can get. For example, all of its items come directly from it usually with no tweaks, but there are also far fewer of them. The most major change is that rather than a single overworld, the game is a progression of four each with two dungeons. Purely by screen, the game ends up with a twice larger surface, but this comes at the expense at each individual area. What truly lets the game down is the poor dungeon design. They do not use keys except for the boss door, and the puzzles are no more complicated than pushing a block to unlock a door. Since, with one small exception, none of the items are actually found in dungeons either, none of the dungeons feature significant quirks. Instead of items, most of the game’s equipment is found inside of them. All this leads to a dullness which is not ameliorated by the so-so bosses. Considering the totality of the system’s library up to this point, Neutopia is better than its only other top down action adventure competition, Makai Hakkenden — Shada. A shallow clone is better than a poor clone by any measure. It is clear though that Hudson didn’t put their A team on the game. The other credits of the staff point to the game either being a side project for most of them or a game put together very quickly. In any case, Neutopia may have filled a rather long standing gap in the library, but its ambitions weren’t much greater than that. The copying goes down to the enemies including faux Moblins and Tektites. It's not all copying, but most are using LoZ the base. The Fire Rod is sometimes singled out as a new element, but it's just a souped up Level 2 Magical Rod. It's actually a source of some of the game's problems because as the first item you get, it obviates the need for a whole host of items and upgrades. It's major difference is that it has three power levels based on current health, but it makes it go from overpowered to vastly overpowered. One nice graphical tweak though is that there's a wider amount of graphical variety for NPCs. Old men still show up except as dungeon prisoners. Bombable walls aren't hidden, but burnable squares still are.
A note on the title. The Japanese cover also includes the text Frey's Chapter (フレイの章) in a small emblem above Neutopia but I take this to not be part of the title. It doesn't appear anywhere else including the title screen, manual or spine.
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Post by dsparil on Nov 3, 2023 18:29:39 GMT -5
Daichi-kun Crisis — Do Natural 大地くんクライシス Do NaturalDeveloper Salio Publisher Salio Format HuCard Release (JP) November 22, 1989 Release (US) Unreleased The late 80s children’s variety show Pao-Pao Channel was known for its songs with quite a few seeing release as singles. None entered the popular consciousness quite as much as the show’s early ode to Hokkaido’s dairy industry and the cows that make it possible, Yaren Soran Hokkaido (ヤーレンソーラン北海道). The song had remarkable staying power to the point that the lead animated cow, Daichi, become somewhat of a mascot character in his own right. Publisher and developer Salio was relatively new to the industry having only published a pair of Mark III ports of Tecmo games. They seemingly funneled this money into what could have been their big break, Daichi-kun Crisis — Do Natural. Given the license, a game themed around farming was an obvious choice but more outré was the fusion of agriculture to the nascent RTS genre. Daichi and his family along with a bear and crow must reclaim a series of ash filled islands after being tricked by the witch Yaren into making them volcanic for nefarious purposes. Daichi is directly controlled by the player while the others stick close and automatically clear out ash and fight the waves of enemies that appear every few minutes. The goal of each of the seven islands is to reforest them by planting trees (which also spread automatically) and subsequently fight the boss of the island. The RTS elements have some slight similarity to Technosoft’s Herzog and its much more well known sequel which was on the verge of release, but the manual farming may be a real first. Earlier farming titles on various computer platforms focused on the business side rather than hands on planting and harvesting. Farming is a simple square by square affair that can only be done by Daichi in combination with the Geiger, his dual harvester and ash cleaner. The resulting crops are then sold at the quarterly markets in order to buy various supplies, saplings and seeds. Innovation without the gameplay to back it up is a surefire path to obscurity, and Daichi-kun Crisis is sadly all too eager to walk it. The core gameplay is interesting in theory but fairly dull in practice. Since only two crops are provided with no real random events affecting them, the game quickly falls into a repetitive cycle. This isn’t an issue per se, but crops can only be grown half the game year with the rest filled with tedious waiting around occasionally broken up by simplistic combat. Trees spread slowly even if supplemented by purchased saplings, and it can take hours to complete a single island. It is admirable for such a small company to take on such a unique subject, but the overly long play time sinks the game. What could have been a brisk game of two or three hours instead is an agonizing dozen or more. The game luckily supports a back up unit, but the relentless boredom makes it a masochistic experience. Enemies come out of the island's volcano in groups of four to eight and of a randomized type. They vary in health and danger and it's completely up to chance which you get. It's pretty easy to tell when crops are ready. Daichi looks a bit scary in the boss battles.
Salio stuck around for a few years after this but largely faded away. GDRI says that they actually had a relatively close relationship with Tecmo, not surprising considering the ports. A little weirder and less verifiable is that they later changed their name to Kankyo Kagaku Co., Ltd. (環境科学株式会社), changed industries and that the founder of Tecmo became its president and brought his ownership stake in Tecmo along with him. Kankyo Kagaku just means environmental science and there's a whole lot of waste water treatment companies with that name although GDRI on Twitter said its a real estate holding company. A Kankyo Kagaku is a large shareholder however with a stake of about 7% in the company. A bit of mystery!
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Post by dsparil on Nov 10, 2023 10:21:07 GMT -5
Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf Jack Nicklaus’ Turbo GolfDeveloper Beam Software Publisher Victor Musical Industries, Accolade Format HuCard Release (JP) November 24, 1989 (Greatest 18) Release (US) Unclear in 1990 (Turbo Golf) The golfing career of Jack Nicklaus has had its ups and downs, but his eponymous golf series was one of the consistent marquees of the genre from the late 80s to the late 90s . The initial title, Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf for DOS, featured a curated selection of Nicklaus’s favorites. The success of the game lead to a panoply of expansions and ports for nearly every major platform. Starting with the sequel, Jack Nicklaus’ Unlimited Golf & Course Designer, the series took on user generated courses as a key feature which lasted until the final entry, Jack Nicklaus 6: Golden Bear Challenge. With the PC Engine port, the system finally got a golf game that was state of the art. With a true behind the golfer view, adjustable camera and a true club suggestion feature for the Beginner difficulty, the game is closer to a modern title than its platform-mates aside from some quirks like the aiming angle being chosen using a bar at the top of the screen. Not everything is so rosy however because the game represents a specific state of the art. DOS gaming was still mired in 16 color EGA or worse, and the game is more or less a straight port graphics and all. With the launch of Mega Drive, the PC Engine was no longer purely competing with 8-bit systems. Although Sega's variously endorsed Tournament Golf from a few months earlier has much simpler course graphics, it does feature richer color and substantially faster draw speeds. For the US market, Accolade did not release the game despite it already being completely in English. Instead, they produced a sort of v1.5 as Turbo Golf. The EGA-ish graphics are largely the same, but the title screen and digital Nicklaus look substantially better. More substantially, a different course was used presumably to avoid directly competing with the NES port which did not received an accompanying Famicom version. Rather than rehashing the greatest 18 once again, the Australian Golf Club was featured whose course had been redesigned by Nicklaus in 1977. The course was also included in the contemporaneous computer expansion Jack Nicklaus Presents the International Course Disk. This gave the TG16 both a real differentiating factor and fresh content. The original course features some subtle 3D geometry, but it's much more obvious in Turbo Golf. For both versions, the more detailed courses do take a serious toll on draw speed. Unlike other games where the view pops in, it instead draws in left to right over six seconds. In a few places, the game also models the characteristics of pavement. A minor change with a big impact considering you see this before every hole.
Two games in one this time sort of. The Japanese, American and later CD release usually get lumped in together, but they are in essence three different titles. I wasn't able to find the actual release date of Turbo Golf since it doesn't seem to have many reviews. The Chicago Sun Times makes reference to it in a 11/4/90 article, Games to Liven Up the Winter, so that's potentially an upper bound. Their archive is paywalled and I don't have access to any library archives of it either so I wasn't able to verify what it actually says.
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