My CD drive is still definitely not working right, but I did manage to get it working well to get me through this game with almost no problems -- the only failure was audio in level 5-1, nothing more, despite leaving the system on all day while playing the game. (Of course afterwards audio failed again in another game, so I guess I need to keep adjusting this thing... but at least it's somewhat improved, for now anyway.)
PC Engine (Turbo) CD Game - Regular CD, not Super or Arcade CD. Japan-only release.
Title screen! It has good music, too.
Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken (J) [Legendary Treasure: Chris's Adventure is the best title translation, though there is no official one; all ingame and manual title and character name text is in Japanese.] - This is a fairly average, but decent (at times) platformer from Arc Co. Ltd, now known as Arc System Works. This is one of a few Turbo CD games by Arc; I have three, including this, Minesweeper (yes, a port of the Microsoft PC game), and the super-easy racing game Road Spirits. Anyway, in Hihou Densetsu, you play as Chris Steiner, a girl who is looking for her father, an archaeologist who went missing in the Americas somewhere while searching for the ancient legendary treasure of the Indio (native) people of Latin America somewhere. Naturally, ancient aliens and Atlantis end up being involved. Of course. Also there's plenty of incidental racism, as usual in such stories -- the Indio, if they are indeed alive, are just villains and never appear in any cutscenes past the backstory bit at the beginning of the intro, unless you cout the two Atlanteans, but they really are diffrent. The story is confusing and unfinished, but the gameplay was decent enough to keep me going. This game has some bad, probably unfinished elements, but I enjoy it overall despite them.
http://www.chrismcovell.com/games_illustrated/arc-hihou_densetsu.html That page has a nice summary of the game, but despite its flaws I did enjoy it... when I wasn't hating it for being so frustrating, that is. This isn't all that long of a game, but they try to make up for that by making the game hard and annoying. There are some tough jumps, tight time limits, and annoying enemy placements in this game. You really need to memorize everything in order to get through. I covered this game in my TCD "Game Opinion Summaries" thread, but this writeup is new, since I've beaten the game now and have more to say. Hihou Densetsu is a memorization-focused platformer with a confusing story. On that note, if anyone knows Japanese and can watch the LP and tell me if knowing Japanese would make the story make any more sense, that would be much appreciated.
The cave level here, level 4, looks nice.
Gameplay: Hihou Densetsu is broken up into eight levels, probably the most common number in videogames. Each level has two stages, with a boss at the end of the second stage of each level. You have a strict timer in this game, so you must keep moving if you want to beat each stage without running out of time and dying; I've died from time over within sight of the end of a level more than a few times. I like the "day" theme the timer uses, though -- you have a set number of "days" to finish each level, and there's a graphic in the bottom right showing the day and time. These days are a lot less than a day long, but still it's a somewhat clever way to make a timer more interesting looking. If you die you start from the beginning of the stage you're on. Enemies and traps always appear from the same places, so yes, memorization is what you do here: keep playing until you've memorized the level layouts and boss patterns, then you can win. This isn't the hardest game, but it's a reasonable challenge at times. Sometimes you get sent back to the main menu and have to restart the level from stage 1, though I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it has something to do with if you got enough coin pickups? I'm not sure. You cannot save your progress, which is the worst thing about this game, gameplay-wise. Seriously, one block to save that level-select menu as you unlock stages, that's all I'm asking for... having to play it all in one sitting, or without turning the system off, is annoying.
The second most annoying thing is the weapon powerup system. Now, there are several kinds of pickups in this game, all of which drop from either enemies or the pillars which come out of the ground at certain points and may have items in them. All items are random drops, and none are in preplanned locations. Those pillars often drop nothing, for instance, or maybe something you don't need. They can drop those coins I mentioned earlier, hearts to refill one of your five hit points, weapon powerup orbs, or nothing. This design decision was a big mistake! Chris's default weapon is a pathetically weak knife with a two-millimeter attack range. Hitting enemies wihout getting hit yourself, without a powerup, is often unlikely. If you want to beat this game without too much trouble, try to never die! If you do die, you'll need to find two differently colored orbs in order to get a stronger weapon, and they must be different colors, too. If you pick up one the same color as the one you currently have, it won't count at all. There are three powered-up weapons: Red+Yellow is a stronger close-range attack, Red+Blue is a throwing knife (best weapon), and Yellow+Blue is a boomerang. The default weapon is so hard to hit things with without taking damage that in the later levels I found myself not caring about if I died with my first and even second life of each continue, since all that really mattered was getting a decent weapon so that the next time I could attempt to actually beat the level. I died quite a few times because the game was refusing to give me two differently-colored powerup orbs in later levels. Yes, it's frustrating. And while you do keep powerup weapons between levels, thankfully, if you get a game over of course it's back to square one.
The surprisingly simple mine-cart segment.
As far as the level designs go, Hihou Densetsu has virtually no exploration. This game is entirely linear, and you need to keep moving in order to finish levels before the tight time limits run out. I'm alright with that -- not all sidescrollers need to have you going around collecting things during your adventure -- but it does reduce replay value and make the game shorter. Only one stage's layout is at all mazelike, and that level, 4-2, is a small, simple 'maze'. Ah well, I don't really mind. The level designs in this game are straighforward, but I thought they were okay. You do do a lot of walking to the right or left while attacking enemies as they appear, but there is just enough variety to keep things interesting. Most stages have at least one unique level element, such as various types of platforms you have to jump on, tricky jumps on moving objects, a surprisingly easy mine-cart segment, orbs you shoot to move them out of the way, and more. And once again, thanks to the weapon powerup system the game gets much harder if you die, and you will until you've memorized the game. Stage 5-2 probably took me the longest amount of time to beat; it may look simple in that LP, but that second moving-orbs jump is quite tricky, and if you don't have the throwing knife the stone circle enemies are hard to hit and shoot fire at you. I finally managed to beat the stage, though it took a while. The last stage, 8-2, was tricky too, but in a fun way. That's a short level, but reasonably fun. It is kind of weird looking, though, and the organ-style music is a strange choice. The later levels have somewhat odd visual/audio themes. Seriously, from levels six through eight this game got weirder and weirder... and yet there's very little to no reaction from Chris like that in the cutscenes. Maybe there is in Japanese, but shouldn't she say something obvious about how this trip to the Americas to look for her father has turned into a battle against an ancient-alien Atlantean demigod or something in his spaceship hidden under a Latin American jungle temple?? I guess she's slightly surprised when she first sees Fillia, but not much obvious about the crazy adventure. No, just some fairly calm conversations with Fillia, after the drama with the traitor guy got resolved after level 5. She's tough. Or maybe it's just that she probably can't hear the awesome, and sometimes strange, music? But those blob-monster enemies in level 6 and the like are weird looking too...
Cutscene (before lv. 3). Chris and the kid explore.
Graphics and sound: This is a CD game, so it's got CD audio and cutscenes between each level, as you might hope for. The cutscenes are done with vey limited animation, but the audio track and art design are decent to good. Environments look particularly good, which characters look only okay. The ingame graphics are similar, with good backgrounds but somewhat bland character sprites. Chris's sprite has a bland, androgynous look; it's okay though. I couldn't tell for sure that she was a girl until I played it and heard the voice acting, but she is. The shirt and shorts adventurer outfit seen in the game is the only one she wears throughout the game, too -- so yes, this is a game with a female lead which doesn't sexualize her at all! That's worth some praise, though they aren't consistent -- her shirt is blue ingame, but white in cutscenes. Also she's always holding a knife, no matter which of the weapons she has. Ah well. Enemy sprites are mixed, with some cool looking ones and some very bland. The climbing skeletons in the first level are interesting, and I like the art design in some of the caves and alien base levels too. Hihou Densetsu has somewhat simple graphics and makes almost no attempts at parallax, except for stages 5-1 and a few clouds behind a window in 7-1, so it looks like a Turbografx game for sure, but it's a decent-looking Turbografx game. This game clealry didn't have the largest budget, but they did a decent job with what they had.
The music is even better. This game really has a great soundtrack overall. It's all at least good, and it peaks in level seven; that track is fantastic. Even though the graphics are not complex, with simple and repetitive environments within each stage, the visuals and sound together combined to make the last three levels seem kind of weird, as I travelled through the alien/Atlantean/whatever spaceship and the like. The sense of atmosphere in those levels worked great for me! It's really unfortunate that level 7-2 is the easiest level in the game after 1-1, and that the level 7 boss is the only one I beat without dying at even once, because that music is great. Some other levels' music is almost as good too, such as level 6's, but 7 has the best one. I'll have to listen to this soundtrack sometimes for sure. Watch the LP linked at the bottom if you want to listen to the whole soundtrack.
Weird monsters here in level 6...
Topic: Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken - Review of this okay-ish platformer (Read 291 times)