WARNING: massive brain dump ahead!
I've played a lot of fantastic games recently. I had to do some travel, so I brought along my Express and ended up playing a lot of Super Star Soldier. This is an awesome game! Stupidly hard. I guess I'll reveal that a suck at shooters and say it's only recently I could pass the first level without dying.
This week a bunch of PCE games I've never played finally arrived! I got Shubibinman 3, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury Special, World Heros 2, Strider, Star Parodier, Legend of Xanadu, Anearth Fantasy Story, Space Invaders and Kaze Kiri. I haven't spent of ton of time playing them all yet, but...
Shubibinman 3—Holy shit! This game is
awesome! Great graphics, great game play, awesome music - this game is just all around fantastic! I can't say enough about how cool I think this game is. The train scene was awesome, the suicide bombing boss was awesome (and he lived?!), and the music... so good!
Star Parodier—Talk about a game with charm! I absolutely love the announcer. I'm only kind of ashamed that I cycled through the characters repeatedly just so I could hear her declare "Paro Ceaser!", "PC Engine!" and "Bom-ber Man!"
The game is super fun and just looks amazing. The music is, as always, incredible. A real treat, I can't believe I haven't played this before.
Space Invaders—OK, I have to admit that I'm a long time fan of this game. It was one of, if not the first video game I ever played. This version is really cool: there's an old school arcade mode that as best I can tell is the same (though I guess it's been a long time since I've played any variant of this game), and a "new" school mode where your ship has multiple hits and the graphics are better.
Kaze Kiri—Another great game! The controls here are deeper than I initially realized. Up left/up right causes your character to run. Up/Down plus button I causes your character to front or back flip and it appears your character is invincible while doing so. The graphics are very good, I really like the animation. The sound effects are some of the best I've heard on the Duo. I vaguely recall reading that the game is pretty easy, but I got my ass handed to me pretty quick (third level maybe?). I need to play more of this!
The Neo Geo fighters are all cool I guess. I haven't really played enough of of any of them to really formulate an opinion yet. Fatal Fury Special is my favorite, but honestly I probably prefer Kabuki Itoryoden to any of the Neo Geo fighters. At least so far, and I guess I should clarify I'm a SF2 whore.
I played a touch of Strider and wasn't really blown away. I'm wondering if turbo on button II isn't the best choice. Movement was slow and jumping seemed jenky to me. Then again, I played it once so my opinion isn't valid.
The RPG's I only watched the intros to. I'll track down walk throughs after playing some more of the other games I got.
TL;DR There are a lot of really good games that never made it to the US. Glad I'm getting a chance to play them now!