cabbage – Waltorious Writes About Games

This is Console History, a special sub-series of my more general History Lessons series, covering console role-playing games, action role-playing games, Metroidvanias, and action-adventure games in nominally chronological order starting in the late 1980s. The chronology is garbled in the beginning as the scope of the series expanded, but it gets more organized later on. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

We’ve just completed a detour from the nominal timeline for this series. Having reached Phantasy Star II which released on March 21, 1989 in Japan, I went back to play several games I’d missed or passed over: Glory of Heracles: The Labors of the Divine Hero, Bionic Commando, Valkyrie no Densetsu, and (jumping backwards again) Golvellius: Valley of Doom. Now we’re all caught up, and proceed to April 1, 1989, when Data East released Makai Hakkenden Shada in Japan for the PC Engine. It was never localized in English, so I turned to a fan translation from cabbage, Shubibiman and onionzoo.

I’m glad I did the detour, because Data East also developed Glory of Heracles, making for a nice comparison. Unfortunately, Makai Hakkenden Shada doesn’t fare well in that comparison.

Other History Lessons posts can be found here. If you’re looking specifically for console games, those are here. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our detour continues. If I’d managed to be chronological, then the latest post in this series would have been the one about Phantasy Star II. But I found a few games that I missed, so I went back to play them: first Glory of Heracles: The Labors of the Divine Hero, followed by Bionic Commando. Now, we’ve arrived at what was supposed to be the last game of the detour. I say “supposed to” because I already found another game I missed… but more on that later. For now, we’re talking about Valkyrie no Densetsu, which translates to The Legend of Valkyrie. Developed and published by Namco, Valkyrie no Densetsu first appeared in arcades in March 1989, placing it between Clash at Demonhead and Out Live in our timeline. A port for the PC Engine appeared in August 1990, which is the version I played. Both versions were limited to the Japanese market, however, so I used a fan translation from shawnji (AKA Shawn Cox) and cabbage to play.

Game-related ramblings.

Tag: cabbage

Console History: Makai Hakkenden Shada (Shada, Legend Of The Eight Dogs Of Hell)

History Lessons: Valkyrie No Densetsu (The Legend Of Valkyrie)