Tag: Mega Drive

History Lessons: Phantasy Star II

On June 3, 2025

Other History Lessons posts can be found here. If you’re looking specifically for console games, those are here. This particular entry is also part of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks. 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!

History Lessons: Star Cruiser

By Waltorious

On October 22, 2024

In Uncategorized

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.

I’m on another detour from my nominal timeline for this series. The farthest we’ve reached is January 1989, with Clash at Demonhead. But when searching for a translation patch for the game to follow it in the timeline, I found some interesting games translated by the same team at Nebulous Translations that I didn’t have in my list. So I’m going back to play a few. The first was Getsu Fuuma Den, released back in July 1987. Now we’re jumping to May 1988, when Arsys Software released Star Cruiser for Japanese home computer systems. That places it between Ys II and Lord of the Sword in my timeline. Given the focus on consoles for this series, however — and because it’s the version with the translation patch — I played the port for Sega’s Mega Drive console, which appeared on January 21, 1990, and was handled by Masaya Games.

Star Cruiser caught my eye because it’s described as an action role-playing game combined with a first-person shooter, and, well… first-person shooters didn’t exist yet in 1988. There were a few early games on mainframes in the 1970s and 1980s, and the 1980 arcade game Battlezone might qualify, but most consider the first “true” first-person shooter to be Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. Star Cruiser seemed to do a lot of the same things, four years earlier. It even got a console port several years before Wolfenstein 3D released, which is extra surprising because consoles generally didn’t have first-person shooter games, at least not until Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 in 1997. I was curious to see what Star Cruiser is like to play.

History Lessons: Hydlide 3: The Space Memories (AKA Super Hydlide)

By Waltorious

On July 12, 2022

In Uncategorized

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.

I decided to skip the first Hydlide game for this series. Originally released in 1984 by T&E Soft for the PC-88 and quickly ported to other Japanese home computer systems, it predates even Dragon Quest, and, along with its competitor Dragon Slayer, it established the template for action role-playing games in Japan. There, it’s considered a hugely influential classic: its system of running into enemies to fight them would be used again in Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, while The Legend of Zelda stripped away some role-playing elements but expanded the action by including a dedicated attack button and items like the boomerang and bow and arrows that add tactical options. But Hydlide would not reach American audiences until 1989, after The Legend of Zelda, and by that point it just seemed simplistic and boring in comparison. I know, because I actually owned it as a kid.

Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness never made it out of Japan, and from what I’ve read is pretty similar to the first game. Hydlide 3: The Space Memories, however, did eventually get released in North America and Europe. The Japanese version appeared in 1987 (hence it showing up now in my timeline for this series) for home computer systems, but it was ported to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis a few years later, including a US release in 1990 and a European release in 1991, both using the name Super Hydlide. Even so, I’d never heard of it. But it sounded intriguing when I read about it now: in addition to adding a dedicated attack button like The Legend of Zelda, it features a morality system based on whether the player attacks “good” vs. “evil” monsters, a 24-hour in-game clock requiring the hero to rest at night and eat two meals a day, and all items (including money!) have weight, so players must choose what to carry lest they be overloaded. These mechanics all sounded like those found in Western computer role-playing games, rather than the Japanese style that was more common on consoles. Perhaps that makes sense, given the game was originally a home computer game in Japan, but I was still intrigued. And then there’s that subtitle, which implies a science fiction element, reacalling some of my favorite classic role-playing games. And, since the North American release was on the Sega Genesis, it marks the first game in this series on a fully 16-bit console (the Turbografx-16 doesn’t quite count, even though it’s in the same generation).