Contributions > Descriptions by KEVIN OBORN (683)

The game's limited story takes place at the Ryōran Private School for Women. This school has been established to educate the daughters of the upper levels of society. The school holds a martial arts tournament called the Club Rivalry Budget Contest Mega Fight every year. Each character employs a different fighting style and the techniques are unique to the fighting club that they belong to.

Asuka 120% BURNING Fest. is the debut title of the franchise. It was initially released for the Fujitsu FM Towns, but a short time later it was ported to the Sharp X68000 with three versions of its soundtrack, as well as slightly updated graphics.

The combat system follows a rather standard fighting game scheme; the girls execute a variety of kicks, punches, and attacks with special weapons, by pressing combinations of buttons. Girls might have unique weapons and techniques which are associated with the club/subject they represent; for example, a "tomboy" athletic girl will attack with baseballs and other sports accessories, etc.

Arcshu: Kagerou no Jidai o Koete is loosely related to the greater Arcus series. It is a visual novel created in the parody style, and in the process hits many common pop culture items of the day (movies, novels, comics, animation, etc.). The story follows the main character, Jeda, through a series of still images and standard adventure-game puzzles and menu-based navigation as the player works through an overlaying mystery. As the story progresses, Jeda finds that there is a hole in his dimension, and the only way to repair this hole is to travel through other dimensions (and time) to seek out a mystical holy sword and a group of CDs that will restore things to their proper nature. Throughout this journey, there are numerous cameos and other appearances by other Wolf Team and Nippon Telenet characters from various other media (The Valis Series, Midgarts, Final Zone, etc.). Musically, there are also numerous tracks that have been pulled from these same properties (and in some cases comically rearranged) and are used to good effect here.

Cho Ren Sha 68k (Ultra Fire 68K) is a top-down vertically scrolling Dōjinshi shoot 'em up. It was originally released in 1995 and later it was ported to PC. It is a shooter with classic mechanics modeled after the Toaplan games. There is one ship and it can be moved around freely. Shooting needs to be done manually as there is no autofire. Points are earned by killing enemies, completing levels and collecting items. It has seven stages with up to eight loops and a final boss after a few. Red power-up ships that are shot leave behind one of three items: a weapon upgrade, a bomb that clears the entire screen and a one-hit shield that also explodes when it disappears.

Buster is a Japanese doujin platform game that's clearly been heavily influenced by Arcade platformers of the late 1980s, like Wardner and Legend of Hero Tonma. In it, the player travels, in the traditional manner, from left to right, killing enemies as you go. One standout feature is the sword meter, which decreases every time you make a normal attack, and replenishes gradually when you're not attacking. You do also have an alternate attack, in the form of a sliding kick, performed by pressing the attack button at the same time as hitting the ground after a jump or fall. The sliding kick doesn't deplete the sword meter, and in fact quickly replenishes a large portion of it.

The stages are designed with precision, and they expect to be played with precision in return. The first stage allows the player to get acquainted with the controls and mechanics, but as soon as the first boss is defeated, the game no longer has any mercy. There are jumps which require pixel-perfect accuracy, and a little later, situations that require that accuracy in jumping, but also perfect timing in attacking, and all in tiny time frames with no space for error.

The maker, E. Hashimoto, later went on to make a few fairly well-known PC games, such as Akuji the Demon, and Guardian of Paradise. He's also made a pseudo-remake of Buster, 11 years after the original was released.