Psycho Chaser - Hardcore Gaming 101

[Gentlegamer]

While Japanese game developer Sting is most famous for the unusual combat systems in their various RPGs as well as for creating the gloomy cult adventure game Baroque, they actually started fairly small. Their first game is a little known PC Engine shooter titled Psycho Chaser. Made by only five people, it's an impressive debut that already shows off the strong atmosphere and unique power up systems that Sting's later work would become known for. The game's programmer, Shinichi Abe, is also the main programmer for Baroque, and the other five members of Sting that made Psycho Chaser stuck together for a while as well. While Psycho Chaser was originally published by Naxat, most of Sting had previously worked for a variety of developers and publishers. The most notable would be programmer Toyofumi Kunihiro, who designed Xevious: Fardraut Saga (1988) for Namco as well as the excellent PC Engine port of Truxton (1992).

 

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/psychochaser/psychochaser.htm

I bought this from BlueBMW during his super sale a while back, it's a great shooter.

There is one more notable thing about Psycho Chaser, it's one of a few PC Engine games that can be played with four split screens without any extra slowdown. This feat is accomplished by the PC Engine being able to output multiple resolutions on the fly, though very few games on it actually take advantage of this to improve the game itself (two prominent examples that do are Art of Fighting and Order of the Griffon). In Psycho Chaser the feature mainly exists so you can smugly point out to your friends how their Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis can't do that.

Wow! I had no idea about this!

[Black Tiger]

Faceball features multiple vertically split windows. Many 16-bit games feature multiple horizontally split windows for various players.

I'm not sure what the author is talking about though. Maybe a secret 4 player mode opens up when a tap is plugged in. There is no option for multiplayer at the title screen, pcecp (based on the official PCEC) lists it as single player only and there isn't any kind of multiple resolution splits during the regular game.

[esteban]

I am so confused by this.

[Black Tiger]

Maybe this is the same person who did the Metal Stoker article with all the weird speculation about what tricks the developer must have employed to get half as much onscreen without slowdown than a hundred other PCE games do without slowdown.

[Punch]

The split screen, he didn't explain how to activate it. It looks more like an emulator bug than a legitimate game mode in my opinion (it's not a 4 player mode, it is literally the regular, single player mode with the main screen mirrored in 4 parts)

[esteban]

Psycho Review for Psycho Chaser

[Necromancer]

Culled from the interwebs:  For a four way split screen, press Select and Run together 35 times, then hold I, II, Run and press Select at the title screen.

[Punch]

Holy. I guess this is made by setting up the virtual tilemap smaller than the system resolution, so the hardware mirrors both sprites and bgs automatically?

[Black Tiger]

I played a lot of 4-screen SFII' bitd thanks to my kisado.

[ccovell]

No, it's a "glitch" that can be seen in many games, whereby the display timing in the VDC doesn't match that of the VCE, and so the game has 2 sets of "HSyncs" and 2 sets of VSyncs.  On the real system, the upper picture has half the scanlines, and the lower picture has the remaining half, both squashed.

IIRC, there's a password in World Court Tennis that does the same thing.

[spenoza]

Why is the OP posting a whole new topic every time one of these articles shows up on Hardcore Gaming 101? I think things will become quickly cluttered with these. Perhaps a single thread is the best presentation.

[Arkhan]

Psycho Chaser makes the tip of my weener do things.

Also, yeah, you can put in some funny cheats to do this stuff.

I think you have to reset the game like 8492 times to even start entering cheats.

I wish they had another one of these games.

[Gentlegamer]

Video Game Den has this under secrets for Psycho Chaser:

4 SCREENS SPLIT
This tip seems to be familiar with Naxat Soft, wondering why ?... Anyway, On the game title hold (II) then reset (SELECT)+(RUN)

I'll try it on my copy later.

[NightWolve]

There's a sound test as well.

http://www.ysutopia.net/special/nec-cheats.html - via Turbo List's master cheat sheet.

Sound Test	At the title screen press Select x7, Run (you need to pause after each select, the game name will flash at each press of select).
4X mode	From the sound test, press and hold II+Run, press Select

I'll have to keep this game in mind and give it a try someday. Never looked at it. It takes a review and not a full ROM collection to give a shit.

EDIT: Wow, this is a good game! Took a look at it with MagicEngine. It'll be a long while before I have my Turbo Duo back in action with my CRT retro set up, along with v2 of Turbo Everdrive to play this on real hardware, but it's definitely another previously unknown shooter I gotta beat like Tatsujin!

[Gentlegamer]

EDIT: Wow, this is a good game! Took a look at it with MagicEngine. It'll be a long while before I have my Turbo Duo back in action with my CRT retro set up, along with v2 of Turbo Everdrive to play this on real hardware, but it's definitely another previously unknown shooter I gotta beat like Tatsujin!

It's the type of shooter I really like, where the player can switch between weapons or firing modes. It adds an extra layer of strategy rather  than just getting the "best" weapon power up and holding down fire all game.