Waltorious Writes About Games

Game-related ramblings.

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The Great Console History Reorganization

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On January 12, 2026

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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.

Right. Longtime readers will know that my Console History series has been a little chaotic so far. It started with the simple goal of playing the early Final Fantasy games, but soon expanded to include other early Japanese-style role-playing games, then action role-playing games, then Metroidvanias and action-adventures. I’d intended to be chronological with all of it, but kept finding games I’d missed and going back to fill them in. So, I’ve decided some reorganization is in order, as I describe below.

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

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On December 2, 2025

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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.

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Console History: Golvellius: Valley Of Doom

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On November 26, 2025

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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 are finishing up another detour from our nominal timeline in this series. The farthest we’ve reached is Phantasy Star II, the first true 16-bit console role-playing game, which released on March 21, 1989 in Japan. Then I took a detour to play some games I’d missed, namely Glory of Heracles: The Labors of the Divine Hero, Bionic Commando, and Valkyrie no Densetsu. We should have been all caught up after that, but then I found another game I’d missed: Golvellius, which was originally released by Compile in April 1987 for the MSX home computer in Japan, placing it between The Goonies II and Rygar in our timeline (I think… I couldn’t find the exact day of the release, so it might have been after Rygar). Sega licensed the game in 1988, bringing a remade version with a totally new world layout — now with the “Valley of Doom” subtitle — to their Master System console on August 14, 1988 in Japan, and December 1988 in the US. So this isn’t some semi-obscure Japan-only game that I had never heard of, like Glory of Heracles or Valyrie no Densetsu. Nor is it a game I knew about but thought was out of scope for this series, like Bionic Commando. No, it’s nothing less than Sega’s answer to The Legend of Zelda. I have no idea how I missed it.

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Console History: Bionic Commando

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On August 29, 2025

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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.

I’m in the midst of another detour from my nominal timeline for this series. Having reached the first truly 16-bit console role-playing game, Phantasy Star II, in March 1989, I then went all the way back to June 1987 for Glory of Heracles: The Labors of the Divine Hero. I’d originally skipped that because I thought it was a simple Dragon Quest clone, but in fact it has a bunch of interesting ideas of its own. Now, I’m jumping forward to July 20, 1988, when Capcom released Bionic Commando in Japan for Nintendo’s Famicom system (although I played the US port for the rebranded NES, which released in December of the same year). That puts it between Blaster Master and Exile in our timeline. Like Glory of Heracles, I’d originally skipped over Bionic Commando, in this case because I thought it was a pure action game and thus outside the scope of this series. Later, I learned that it had a lot of design ideas that would influence the nascent Metroidvania genre, which puts it in scope after all. Bionic Commando also has another, far more notable claim to fame: it is the first game with a grappling hook as a central mechanic.

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Console History: Glory Of Heracles: The Labors Of The Divine Hero

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On August 13, 2025

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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.

It’s tradition, at this point. Whenever I get my timeline sorted out for this series, and start actually working through things chronologically — as I recently did with Out Live and Phantasy Star II — I always find some other games I missed and end up going back to play them. I’m tempted to tell you that this detour will the the last one, but that’s what I think every time. Hopefully it will at least be brief, and then we can head back to 1989.

For now, though, we’re going way back to June 1987, for the Japan-only game Glory of Heracles: The Labors of the Divine Hero by Data East, for Nintendo’s Famicom. That places it a few weeks after Zillion and about a week before Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished in our timeline. I’d originally skipped over Glory of Heracles because I’d heard it was basically just a Dragon Quest clone (indeed, the first two Dragon Quest games, as well as Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord, are the only proper Japanese-style role-playing games to precede it), but then I read that the later entries in the Glory of Heracles series are good, so I decided to play it after all, using an English translation from DvD Translations (who also did the translation for Cleopatra no Mahou). It turns out it has a lot of interesting ideas of its own.

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Console History: Phantasy Star II

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On June 3, 2025

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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.

I’ve been looking forward to this one. The original Phantasy Star was the subject of my fourth ever post in this Console History series, before I expanded the scope and went back to add in a lot of games that released before it. But it remains one of my favorite discoveries. Sega’s first foray into the nascent console role-playing game genre, Phantasy Star is both a technical showcase for their Master System and a forward-thinking design that introduced many elements that would become genre standards. Its sequel, Phantasy Star II — which I vaguely remembered seeing once as a kid, at a friend’s house — is regarded as one of the most influential Japanese role-playing games ever made. And like its predecessor, it was a technical showcase, this time for the Sega Mega Drive (AKA Genesis), the first truly 16-bit console (NEC’s PC Engine/Turbografx-16 had 16-bit graphics, but an 8-bit CPU). In fact, Phantasy Star II was the sixth game ever released for the system in Japan, appearing on March 21, 1989, only about five months after the Mega Drive itself (and a mere four days after our last entry, Out Live, released on the PC Engine). It also came to the US about a year later, which means American players actually got it before Final Fantasy!

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Console History: Out Live

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On February 17, 2025

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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.

Reader, we are back on our nominal timeline for this series once more. In fact, this is the entry that sent me on my latest detour, investigating other Japanese-only games that were translated by the team at Nebulous Translations: Getsu Fuuma Den, Star Cruiser, and Shiryou Sensen: War of the Dead. Now I’m back to Out Live by Sunsoft, a grid-based mecha dungeon crawler role-playing game that released in Japan on March 17, 1989 for the PC Engine. That puts it almost two months after Clash At Demonhead in our timeline. It was never officially localized in English, but thankfully I was able to use the fan translation from Nebulous Translations to play it.

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Console History: Shiryou Sensen: War Of The Dead

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On December 15, 2024

In Uncategorized

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.

I’m almost finished with the latest departure from the nominal timeline for this series. It was triggered by finding several interesting Japanese-only games that have been unofficially translated by the team at Nebulous Translations, first Getsu Fuuma Den and then Star Cruiser. This time, however, it’s not my fault! Fun Project’s horror game Shiryou Sensen: War of the Dead (Undead Front: War of the Dead, according to Google Translate) was indeed a Japanese-only title that was translated by Nebulous Translations, but it was already in my list of games to play. The problem is that I wrote down the release date of its PC Engine port (March 24, 1989), not realizing that it was originally released for the Japanese MSX2 home computer sometime back in 1987! I’m trying to play games in original release date order, even if I’m actually playing a later port like the CD-ROM versions of Ys I & II or the Genesis version of Hydlide 3: The Space Memories. So I’m extending my detour to cover the PC Engine version of War of the Dead now.

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