{"id":20379,"date":"2020-08-21T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T00:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=20379"},"modified":"2020-08-06T03:26:55","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T03:26:55","slug":"the-games-of-the-tg-16-mini-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/21\/the-games-of-the-tg-16-mini-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"The Games of the TG-16 Mini: Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As I mentioned in previous TG-16 Mini blogs, the Mini has two different menus you can choose from.\u00a0 One has US releases on the TG-16 side, and one has Japanese games on the PC Engine side.\u00a0 Since we\u2019ve gone over all the US releases, now we\u2019ll look at the Japanese ones.\u00a0 I\u2019ll split these into two blog parts.\u00a0 In the first one we\u2019ll look at the Japanese games I\u2019m not so familiar with, and then in the final blog we\u2019ll look at the games I\u2019m more familiar with.\u00a0 So let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n

The Kung Fu<\/strong><\/p>\n

I THINK this game came out in the US as China Warrior or something.\u00a0 I just remember them really showcasing this game because the character sprites were HUGE.\u00a0 Like, taller than half the screen!\u00a0 It plays a lot like Kung Fu Master.\u00a0 Your Bruce Lee lookalike walks forward, kicks a bunch of robed sleepwalkers and avoids rocks and bees.\u00a0 Lots of bees.\u00a0 What, did the bad guy just train bees to fly in formation toward you?\u00a0 It\u2019s not as good as Kung Fu Master, though, as it\u2019s very hard and when you duck, you can\u2019t kick, which doesn\u2019t make any sense.<\/p>\n

Jaseiken Necromancer<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a standard top down RPG except since all the text is in Japanese, it\u2019s impossible to play if you can\u2019t read the language.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty old school, too, like in you have to select \u2018talk\u2019 from a menu to speak to anyone.\u00a0 Gameplay wise it looks a lot like Phantasy Star, just without the futuristic setting.<\/p>\n

Appare!\u00a0 Gateball<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh wow, you know what this is?\u00a0 It\u2019s a croquet game!\u00a0 Of all the sports to make a video game out of!\u00a0 Have you ever heard of a croquet video game?\u00a0 I haven\u2019t.\u00a0 Anyway, you pick from several chibi manga style characters and pick your opponents and gameplay is a lot like other golf video games.\u00a0 But, croquet?\u00a0 Weird.<\/p>\n

Nectaris<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well had I known earlier that this was the Japanese version of Military Madness, I would\u2019ve mentioned it when I talked about that game on the TG-16 side!\u00a0 Just one of those cases where Nectaris SOUNDS like a cooler name, but Military Madness is more descriptive.\u00a0 Anyway it plays just like Advance Wars, and since you can play the English version on here, not sure why you\u2019d want this one.<\/p>\n

Snatcher<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a text style graphic adventure by Konami.\u00a0 At least I think so.\u00a0 Since it\u2019s all in Japanese it\u2019s impossible for me to play.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard that this game has ties to Metal Gear, but since I\u2019m not a big Metal Gear fan, that\u2019s about all I can say about it.<\/p>\n

Super Momotaro Dentetsu 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a board game involving trains and the Japanese fairytale Peach Boy is the main character.\u00a0 In Japan it\u2019s one of Hudson Soft\u2019s longest running popular series.\u00a0 You have to know the language to play it, though.\u00a0 Supposedly it\u2019s a lot like Monopoly.<\/p>\n

Aldynes<\/strong><\/p>\n

All right, the last five games on here are shooters.\u00a0 When you first boot this game up, the first thing you see on screen is \u201cA.D. 2020: Earth.\u201d\u00a0 Uh oh.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got a lot of catching up to do if we want to be at the level of technology this game has.\u00a0 But then, at the rate this year\u2019s going, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me.\u00a0 Anyway, this is a standard side scrolling shooter where you blast all manner of mech and space craft.\u00a0 One of the power-ups you can get is a bit different in that you can get two ships that move on their own and shoot at things in front or behind you.\u00a0 It\u2019s also really hard so I didn\u2019t get very far.<\/p>\n

Seirei Senshi Spriggan<\/strong><\/p>\n

After looking at it, you might think this is just a reskinned version of Blazing Lasers, replacing flying craft in outer space with mechs soaring over Earth-like terrain.\u00a0 But then I saw Compile on the title screen so that explains it.\u00a0 The backgrounds are so colorful that it makes it hard to see bullets and power-ups, so I didn\u2019t get very far.<\/p>\n

Spriggan Mark 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s a sequel.\u00a0 Compile made it, too, and it has flying mechs.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a horizontally scrolling shooter, not a vertical one like in the last game.\u00a0 And the power-up system is different, too, and you can take multiple hits before exploding.\u00a0 Still hard, though.<\/p>\n

Cho Aniki<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a famous series of weird shooters in Japan that have a lot of homoerotic muscle man images and just general weirdness.\u00a0 This first game doesn\u2019t go too overboard with the muscle men, but there are some strange bosses.\u00a0 Such as one that looks like Thomas the Tank Engine but he’s been working out and eating his spinach and has two muscle arms that help him go down the track!\u00a0 The music is weird, too, and kind of sounds like off-key classical opera music.\u00a0 It\u2019s just bizarre.<\/p>\n

Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire<\/strong><\/p>\n

And last, I think this is my favorite shooter on this part of the list.\u00a0 It plays a lot like Hudson\u2019s Star Soldier games, but this one has more of an interesting premise and presentation.\u00a0 From what I can tell, the story involves time travel and you\u2019ll fly though horizontally scrolling stages set in different time periods.\u00a0 Some include the Dark Ages and Ancient Egypt, but they mix period based enemies with futuristic ones.\u00a0 So you may be flying down the Great Wall in medieval China while mechs walk across it!\u00a0 You can choose from four different ships piloted by four different anime lady Tenchi Muyo style rejects with multicolored hair (my favorite is the green one).\u00a0 It plays so much like Star Soldier that I wonder if it\u2019s supposed to be a spinoff.\u00a0 It\u2019s brutally hard, but luckily you can put the game on Easy mode and give yourself more credits so I can at least see a few stages!\u00a0 I also like how they combined sprite based graphics with polygonal ones.\u00a0 It’s very cool!\u00a0 I was pleasantly surprised with this one.<\/p>\n

And those are all the Japanese games on the TG-16 Mini that I\u2019m not as familiar with.\u00a0 For the final blog, I\u2019ll look at the Japanese games I have more knowledge of.\u00a0 You might, too!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in previous TG-16 Mini blogs, the Mini has two different menus you can choose from.\u00a0 One has US releases on the TG-16 side, and one has Japanese games on the PC Engine side.\u00a0 Since we\u2019ve gone over all the US releases, now we\u2019ll look at the Japanese ones.\u00a0 I\u2019ll split these into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20379"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20381,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379\/revisions\/20381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}