Ok, I really need to become a better person to be able to play Image Fight II, so I moved on to The Lost Sunheart, a game I briefly tried about a year ago before dismissing as too weird and ugly.
Well, it's still weird, but this is actually a great game. It has a satisfying difficulty curve, lots of intense moments and a very peculiar rhythm, with waves of enemies coming at you in oscillating patterns that seem to move in sync with the music. And although the graphics are definitely not pretty, they have character and present a very realized world.
The whole game comes across as a confident realization of some designer's drug induced vision that somehow managed to make it into a fun video game. It's games like these that make me love the PC Engine!
(PS- Managed to 1 CC it this past weekend, but I did use the 1Up trick against the floating head to max out to 9 lives).
(PSX - Has anybody translated the story in the adventure mode? WTF is going on?!?)