Xak II - Still an Ys clone? (PC-88 Paradise) Compared to TurboGrafX, MSX, X68000, FM Towns versions
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- In this episode of PC-88 Paradise, I play Xak II: Rising of the Redmoon, released by Microcabin in 1990.
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00:00 Introduction
00:57 Packaging
01:57 User disk & Opening
03:47 The game
23:23 Spoilers!
25:14 My thoughts
25:57 Other versions
30:58 Wrap-up - Ігри
I really wish there was a Ys Complete equivalent for the Xak games. It's basically a less polished Ys, yeah, but the artists clearly worked their butts off and the characters are uniquely charming in their own respect. I enjoyed Xak 1's fan translation on the SNES, but I can't get over the choppiness of the MSX version of Xak 2, which is the only one iirc that's gotten any translation patches.
Yeah, that would be awesome! Agreed. It's way overdue.
these graphics are phenomenal considering how limited the colors were, I really like the character illustrations
Ever wondered why all versions of Xak II starts you off with 001870 gold? :) 187 can be read as Hiyana, which is short for Hideyuki Yanagishima, the main guy behind the Xak series.
I didn't even notice that. What an interesting piece of trivia.
@@BasementBrothers Heheh, and I mentioned even more interesting trivia on your Xak I video. :) Great videos! I enjoyed them greatly.
@2:29 For a second I was surprised over this seemingly obscure technology that allowed 2 disks to be inserted at the same time!! ..then I saw the edit-cut.
EDIT: Can't wait for you to cover Xak III
This Channel is my perfect midnight thing to watch eating popcorn.
Love you guys
Mmmmm. Popcorn.
I'll be waiting for Xak III in your PC98 Paradise
At this point, Xak was becoming less & less of an Ys clone, between this game taking more stylistic departures & Tower of Gazzel going for a more DRPG-inspired premise. It wouldn't be until Xak III that you have a very different take on the post-Hydlide ARPG format, but they're getting there by this point. What a way to send off the PC-88, too! Micro Cabin would only go on to greater achievements on PC-98, as anyone who's tried Elm Knight or Gal Act Heroism would know.
Love your videos! My only regret is not finding your channel sooner! Keep spreading the Falcom love!
For those watching these videos, I recommend Xak III on the PC Engine CD (Duo). They got it right with that one. Amazingly dark and surprisingly gory (What the demon does to the king and princess during the first level was shocking). Also, the the sexual tension between Freya and Latok is nicely handled with a satisfying, heartwarming conclusion. I am sure those who have played it will recall the bridge scene toward the end where Freya expresses her feelings. An English patch is available. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed! Too bad no more came out. Thanks for the informative vids on JRPGs, Basement Brothers!
yeah, i agree with you there, one of the few rare jrpgs with full fan translation for the turbografx cd
I don't know, I recall the gameplay seeming a bit choppy but maybe I'm remembering wrong. Kinda wish NightWolve would've translated Xak 1 & 2, or Fray CD Xak Gaiden, but I'm sure he had his reasons for doing 3.
Xak III was fantastic. Great game.
I just started playing Xak III, saw it when I was wandering around Cdromance and it's my introduction to the Xak series
And honestly, it shocked me with how polished it was
I'm only through the first level but between the blue hair protag, the gore, and the music I'm sold
I will die on the hill that these old japanese computer games really have a charm that modern pixel art can't capture.
Most attempts at making pixel art nowadays come across as pathetic, so yeah
I'm a sucker for PC-88/PC-98 pixel art games, especially those visual novels with gorgeous pixel arts
It's not that it can't, people either don't try, or can't be bothered to match a style that in their opinion it's not worth the effort.
Sometimes randomly on twitter there is some random person doing cool retro pixel art and they manage to hit these styles, now convincing a professional team to do an entire game like this is another story.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Dark Deity, Symphony of War, Hyperlight Drifter, Cross Code Starsector, and Infernax, to name a few, are great modern titles that have excellent gameplay and pixel art, and I believe are a match in terms of quality to many older games. It is true that, for the most part, quality has gone down in the video game industry, and there is an emphasis on flashy graphics instead of a quality gameplay experience, but there are people that still care in the industry. That's why Dwarf Fortress exists; somebody cared.
I agree. Most games that try to replicate old school pixel graphics really fail at capturing the art style that gave games of that period it's charm.
I have been really enjoying this series since I discovered the channel in the last week or two.
I did go through the libraries of pretty much all the consoles from the Atari 2600 to today making a list of games to try sometime. But I skipped over old PC games other than what's in my Steam and GOG libraries and a few MSDOS games I knew of. I really didn't think there would be much worth looking at from bespoke 80's PCs, but you've shown that preconception to be very wrong.
Great work and thank you!
Dono how I stumbled onto your channel but I'm glad I found it. Nice and silly fun but also informative and I can tell you have a passion for the things you talk about.
I need to tell you again, i love you guys
2:04 I would have had to fight the urge to name the protagonist マリオ·カート
I think we were all thinking it.
I just stumbled across your channel recently and was instantly hooked. I think you are doing a great service by translating and explaining what's going on in these games.
Your videos and game selections kick ass!
Thank you for covering this. I played through Xak 3 a couple of years ago and I have always been curious about the previous entries but I can't see myself ever playing them. This review scratches my Xak 2 itch.
Great video! It's a shame that the only English translation for this game is the MSX port.
that cover art has so much style
Thank you for the comprehensive overview and recap! I love this series of PC-88 reviews and greatly appreciate the time and effort that you put into it!
Man, I've been binge watching your whole PC-88/98 Paradise series now and I think you deserve 100x the number of subscribers. Your content is awesome, super entertaining and actually also informative. Most gamers, even retro gamers, will never have heard of these old computers and their games - and there are some hidden gems on there that are really great and unique. I personally really enjoyed "Libros de Chilam Balam", "GunSeed" (NSFW, unfortunately), the "Amaranth" series, E.V.O. and of course the Legend of Heroes games. Can't wait for more videos on these two devices!
Thanks!! Unfortunately UA-cam is not based on which content is the most deserving. The most popular games and systems get the most exposure. It has taken six years to build the audience we have now. So... any help getting the word out from our fans is very much appreciated.
@@BasementBrothers if I had greater reach on Twitter, I’d gladly give a shout out. I’ll make sure to make use of opportunities, though! Keep up the amazing work.
@@BasementBrothers I just signed up for your Patreon, I really hope it’ll help at least a bit. I’m not into NeoGeo (I’m an RPG guy) but the PC-88 and 98 are right up my alley. Once again, can’t wait for more great videos, keep up the amazing work and I wish you guys as much success as possible with this channel!
This one got me laffing. Well done!
23:23 have you noticed that you never see the pixie and Gospel in the same room at the same time? Food for thought.
Exactly...
Awesome video as per usual. Rob, King of the North seems to be a reference to Robb Stark, King of the North from George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. First book was published in 1996 though which would make it a few years too early so likely just a hellva coincidence or George owned a PC-88.
Just a hellva coincidence. "King of the North" is just my sloppy translation for "北の四天王". It's probably better translated as "big four" rather than "king", but I thought "big four of the North", "big four of the East", etc. sounded too awkward and unwieldy and just went with "king". I wouldn't bet that George R.R. Martin had a PC-88, or that he played any version of Xak II. Thanks for your interesting comment, though!
Interesting how they tried to make this stand out from Ys, with the revised combat system and whatnot. Nice video :3
Rob Necromancer is clearly Rob Zombie's dad.
とても素晴らしい動画をありがとう御座いました。
the music is pretty good
Wow! I asked in the comments of your previous video covering Xak I if you could do a video on II, and you delivered! And you really touched on most of the same thoughts I had while chugging through the MSX2 version. There's a lot to like in II, but there's more to not like compared to the first game. I'd love to see a proper remake of this game that keeps the stuff that works and fix the stuff that didn't.
I totally forgot about the Pray Duel option, and yeah it's so weird! I remember using it right off the bat in my first playthrough, meaning it was unavailable to me for the rest of the game, and boy could I have used it at later parts of the game. And yes, that Karma system is just such an unnecessary hurdle.
Also, the English patch for Xak II MSX is quite lacklustre.
One little thing I think you forgot to mention is that I think the Necromancer that attacks your ship in II is supposed to be the same guy you encounter in Zeglard Tower in the first game, which is another nice bit of continuity.
One minor note, Shana reminds me of Karna from Dawn of Ys - a tough-looking and acting forest warrior girl with cool-looking 90s anime hair and pauldrons. Sadly, Shana does need saving quite a bit, whereas Karna kicks a lot of ass and never does need saving.
Yeah, I did realize that Rob Necromancer was in the first game and thought about mentioning it. But man, in the PC-88 version of Xak 1 he doesn't even get any face artwork or anything. So, yeah... Thanks for watching.
@@BasementBrothers Necromancer does get an after credit scene in the MSX version of one! It kind of makes him the Dalles of Xak.
Yeah. I believe that scene was in all the versions from PC-98 on.
It's funny that the king of the north name is also Rob like game of Thrones lol
So thankful for these videos. I'd love to see Dinosaur and Popful Mail one day, and the Gagharv trilogy too seeing as how the PSP versions we got in English mucked it all up. Also, you know you're a boomer when you get more excited about UA-cam videos for 30 year old games than more recent ones...!
Your pc-88 videos are my new addiction
I've always been curious about PC-88/98 and the japanese market PCs, especially since I don't read / speak japanese, I've emulated the X68000 and that was a hoot, but the language barrier has always deterred me. I can't wait for a Xak III or Xak series retrospective video from you.
I'd also love PC-Engine reviews, That will probably be the next set of RPGs I'd like to take a look at since console games would be less complicated to try out in this day and age, only input device to contend with being a controller...
I imagine the intro is you and your brothers in the basement having a blast playing video games and your mom yells. " you boys be quiet down there".
Yes. That's the idea! Thanks for watching.
Hey, did you hear that Falcom are re-releasing Y's III for the PC-88SR in December?
I believe you are referring to "Wanderers from Ys PC-88SR" for X68000 which BEEP is releasing this December. It's a port of the PC-88 version to the X68000.
You live in Tokyo?! Always nice to find fellow foreigners living in Japan 🙂
Another excellent video covering a game I've got sitting in my collection but have never gotten around to playing yet. ;) Mine is the MSX2 version, of course, though I do own a Turbo R, and as you noted in your own coverage, the game plays at a perfectly acceptable clip on Turbo R, so I'm pretty sure it'll ultimately be about on par with the PC-88 experience -- just a lot lower-res, but with better colors.
I HAVE played Fray, though! I played through it on MSX2, before I got my Turbo R, which was a little bit... miserable. There's a shmup stage in Fray as well that does EXACTLY the same thing you described with Xak II's shmup stage (and uses the same music, I believe), only at MSX2 speed, which... honestly, I can't believe I got through that stage at all, as it was literally running at like 0.5 fps. Most of the latter half of the game ran at single-digit fps, in fact -- which might have kept me from playing that version of the game, had I know about it. But Fray is sneaky, as the first few stages (as yeah, Fray kind of has arcade-like stages, with town and/or story segments between them!) actually play at a perfectly reasonable clip even on MSX2, so it kind of lulls you into a false sense of security before bashing you over the head with a nearly unplayable mess toward the end.
I've since snagged a copy of the separate Turbo R release of Fray, but have yet to play through it, so I can't say how much it helps during the second half of the game. The first half is noticeably faster and more responsive, though, and the opening is more anime-like, complete with a few lines of PCM voice-acting! So I'm betting the game will be a lot more pleasant to play through on Turbo R indeed.
On a completely unrelated note, I don't know why, but I always assumed you lived somewhere in the West -- this video is the first time I recall you ever mentioning that you live in a Tokyo apartment. I also live in Tokyo (Kichijoji, to be specific). I guess it's a little creepy to say "we should meet up sometime," but legitimately, if you ever want to try out some of these MSX games on real hardware or something, I'm totally happy to invite you over, or even lend you some games as needed -- just hit me up sometime. I really enjoy your content, and would be more than happy to help contribute to it -- and it can never hurt to make a new friend in the city, too!
Additionally, I regularly attend a monthly retro PC meetup in Kayabacho, near Akihabara, where between a half-dozen and a dozen or so members show up every month and bring their PC-88s, FM-1s, MSXes, Apple IIs, Commodores, etc. to either fix/tinker with, or just plain to show off and play around with. It's technically a meetup for members of a certain Telegram group, but... I mean, I'm not in that group, as I don't even use Telegram! I'm just good friends with one of the members, so I just often tag along with her. And a lot of the people who regularly attend are in the same boat. I feel like you'd probably enjoy this meetup as well, and make a lot of friends with similar interests to your own, so again, feel free to reach out to me and I can get you in touch with the group's sponsors, or at least give you some additional info on it.
Anyway, thanks again for a great video! Looking forward to the next.
Fray's "shmup" stage music is not the same as the one from Xak II (I think Fray was also released before it).
It's a re-arrangement of the Xak (1) one, like a few more of songs in that game are re-imaginings of things found in the first Xak. To be exact - the "Fearless Village" theme, the church music, the ending song (which is played quite early on in Fray), an originally unused song (re-dubbed as "Milly's Theme") and the aformentioned "shmup" stage music.
@@JohnHassink Oh! Thank you for the correction. I recalled the shmup stage music from Fray being reused from somewhere else, and mistaken attributed that to Xak II. Obviously, though, since Fray came out before Xak II, it would make sense that that's not the case.
This is what happens when the only game in a series I've played is the cutesy spin-off, I guess. ;)
Xak! Xak! He's a Lego maniac!
Monsters, chickens or spaceships too
How about a mask or a dinosaur for you?
Another great video,the older japanese pcs had so many hidden gems it's crazy.
I did not played it,but judging by the video the PC 8801 version had a beautiful character artwork, why they change it for the PC Engine version?
This annoying karma mechanic can be well be a homenage to Falcom's Xanadu (1985),where the same thing happened.
Hah,Toru Furuya (Amuru Ray and Pegasus Seiya seiyuu) was the narrator of one version?
They generally change the artwork for MSX, PC Engine, and other console versions because the PC resolution and palette doesn't translate over well. It can be done, but it generally means having to stretch/shrink the pixels in an unbalanced way. Usually they choose to just redraw everything instead.
I love to see all these old Hydlide/Ys style games. Thanks a lot!
As for Karma, I think Xanadu and Romancia did some interesting things with it, but it seems that having karma in this era was just a common thing.
I love that you and one other commenter pointed that out. I haven't played Xanadu or Romancia enough to have ever really had to worry about the karma stat, but now reading up on Xanadu it sounds like the karma stat also stops you from gaining experience (and is exactly intended to stop you from picking on weak enemies). So that's where Xak II got it from. Weird that they decided to add it for Xak II when the first game didn't have it. Xak II is too new. RPG's generally no longer had rules like that by 1990.
Overall, I tend to think that most of those punishing rules of Xanadu tend to be rightly left to the garbage bin of gaming history. Gaming would have never gotten very far if RPG's had remained as difficult as Xanadu. Ys made things more fun for everyone to enjoy.
@@BasementBrothers How it works in Xanadu is basically that you have to watch which enemies you kill, if they are "karma monsters" (basically monsters that aren't evil in the lore) and if you accidentally do kill them you can then bring your karma score back down by drinking poison. Balancing your karma, as it were, hurting yourself because you hurt other good people.
Ah. Gotcha. That is actually a little more interesting than just adding karma every time you kill anything like Xak II does.
Awesome! Thanks for this video! Didnt know you live in japan! How about a video about your life, job, apparment there?
Dork...
I can't help thinking that in this era, Japanese developers just heard certain English words and liked them, without really understanding what they meant. Quite a bit of that going on back then, I think.
It really was never intended to be the English word "Dork". They just chose the random nonsense sounds "ドルク" ('"DORUKU") cause they thought it sounded like a good name for a JRPG character. They probably had no idea there was an English word "dork". It was whoever made the English patches later who decided to spell it "Dork" instead of "Dolk" or maybe "Doruk" or whatever, which would have been more inline with the random nonsense fiction name that the developers originally intended. Calling him "Dork" adds a sort of comedy to the game that was never intended, and is maybe actually a bit unfortunate for those who want to take the game seriously... though it is hilarious.
@@BasementBrothers It also rhymes with Zork.
Donkey Kong
Maybe they meant for it to be "Dolk" (Dutch for "dagger")...
It is funny how words translate differently between languages. One example I always enjoyed was Lord Kashu in Record of Lodoss War. The writers even joke about the similarities of his name to the cashew nut.
I love Ys and haven't heard of this game. Would like to give it a try sometime if it's in English somewhere. I'm actually playing ys books I & II right now. Finished 1 and in middle of 2. Origin is last Ys game I haven't finished so gonna do it afterward. (Yes I played V lol). This was good video, gonna watch more on series you posted. I subbed!
Honestly, it's probably better to say it's equal parts Ys-inspired and Xanadu-inspired to make it what it is. Which is an amazing kind of irony since when Falcom tried to do something like that, they ended up with Brandish on the PC-98 and FM-Towns, one year later.
The Eternar Recurrence is my favorite atmosphere in any of these old kinds of games
Thanks for doing this series. I hope we dont have to 6 months between each of the Xak games you review (ie, please do all of them! I've always liked the look of them but can't read Japanese).
I keep hoping someone will make a like switch collection of all of them *cough in English, since the switch seems to be the retro collection machine. Id pay $60 for 5 games, heck yeah!
Amazing illustrations by Kia Asamiya, btw.
That's not "frames per second" for the flying stage... that's "seconds per frame" haha
Haha. Yeah.
But in all seriousness, I actually did look at how often the screen updates in Adobe Premiere, and it was roughly 5 times per second. I was actually a bit surprised cause it looked to me like it might be even less than that.
I really enjoy your videos... these PC-88 ones, as well as the Neo Geo stuff, have a sub. Thanks.
Pretty sure the clear illustration card thing at 1:13 is an iron-on decal. You can transfer it onto a T-shirt and impress your friends :D
LOL. It definitely isn't, but fun guess. Thanks for watching!
Rob Necromancer does sound like a member of Mayhem, lol
I hope one days you'll touch Tower of Cabin
Talking about the TurboGF, any chance we could get a video on Vasteel 2?
Edit: grammar
You boys be quiet down there!
Seriously, just look at how much cool stuff we'd get on those releases. nowaways, something with HALF the amount of stuff and A THIRD of quality is called deluxe premium turbo sucker edition.
It is definitely one of the prettier PC-88 games but it is a later day title so the pixel artists were pretty good at 640x200 by then. Shame it didn't have a DOS port since they could have run the graphics fine. Yeah window clipping is a common PC approach to overcoming hardware limitations when doing something taxing, noticed the shorter window height but I've seen much worse examples on the Amiga heh.
The audio however is definitely of the Japanese computer fare and wouldn't have been as good in DOS except maybe with an MT-32. I'm not even an audio whore but the soundtrack for Xak II sounds lovely.
Karma anti-grinding mechanic aside I think I'd like this one, I guess it could be said of Ys also where it doesn't feel too far away from D&D for us traditionalists heh. Always interesting to hear about the degree of disk swapping, been a while since I've done that so I forget how often one had to do that, certainly utilizes the dual drives well. ;)
The OPL3 is capable of playing the MSX2 OPLL+PSG nearly perfectly, so the MT-32 wouldn't be exactly a requirement. And the MSX has arguably the best soundtracks from Micro Cabin.
@@fr_schmidlin That's good to hear that there's some hardware equivalency among differing ones.
For me it's aftermath comparisons, the fanciest soundcard I ever had was a Gravis Ultrasound. I'm not much an audiophile but I'm glad there's FPGA efforts now since original chips are finite.
Nice!
Hell yeah harem end
Thanks.
Who did the chara design? Looks like old work from Michitaka Kikuchi(Kia Asamiya)
Decided to watch this a couple days after Toru Furuya (the narrator in the FM-Towns version) got outed as a huge scumbag.
LOL. I heard it here first!
Looove your videos!! So excited to see a new one upload!
I've got a semi-random question but I'll ask since you mention the 512 color / 8 at a time palette - do you have any info about what colors the full 512 color palette actually contains? I'm thinking of starting a retro-inspired game project using PC-88 visual limitations (watching this series has got me excited!!) and I can't find any real information about what the full available palette might be. I know that the NES, for example, has a very unique and idiosyncratic set of colors for its 56 color palette. I'd like to make my PC-88 project as "accurate" to real hardware as I can.
Anyway - no worries if you don't know :) Thanks for such an awesome series.
Man I don't know much about palettes. I can see how with only 56 colors the NES might have a distinct-looking palette (and I am aware of the whole palette debate that goes on in the NES RGB modding community). I would assume, though, that with the PC-88's 512 colors there are plenty of colors to show just about any shade or hue the developer wants, but I guess that probably shows my ignorance. Sorry I can't be of more help.
@@BasementBrothers No worries at all, I really appreciate the reply! I suspect that you're correct - it's just a full / broad range of 512 colors which is why nobody's bothered to catalog all the specific colors online.
I don't know for sure, but i'd bet money it is just 333 RGB.
The Nintendo's palette issues are fairly unique, and a product of the very low-cost(and janky) way it generates color. (Which is also why the Nintendo only has 56 colors, despite having a full 64 palette options. There's several duplicate entries.) Most hardware, both older and newer, has much more reasonable color selection.
I wonder how small a small Tokyo apartment is. I've been in small Tokyo hotels that were pretty damned small... the second time I visited Japan, when I checked in to my hotel the check-in clerk said "ooh, wow, you got the BIG room!" This was my second time in Tokyo, and my first hotel from last time was really really really tiny, so I didn't expect "big" to be much, but hey. they SAID "big" so that's got to be SOMETHING, right?
So we get into the room... the BIG room... and............ I think it was smaller than my first hotel. I literally don't know how you could make the room smaller. There was nowhere to put my suitcase except directly in front of the door, which blocks the bathroom (bathROOM, hehe... for those who haven't been to Japan, just imagine an airplane bathroom, but with everything positioned in really convenient places for the most part).
So you walk into the room. and right next to the front door on your left is the bathroom, with a wall exactly to the right of the front door. You have a tiny walking space to the back wall of the place, and there's a bed that's the same width as the bathroom touching the bathroom wall going back to the back wall of the room. There's a desk next to the bed, blocking most of your walking space. You basically have a teeny tiny path to the bathroom, if you can get there since that walking space is the only place your luggage can possibly go, unless you keep them in the tiny bathtub/shower, maybe?
So.... how would you even make the room smaller? It cannot be smaller horizontally because it's already ONLY a tiny bathroom and the front door wide.
The only way I could see it being smaller would be to turn the bed 90 degrees, get rid of the desk, and push the whole front wall back by however much space you just saved from the bed. I'm not sure you'd get any more rooms that way though since your new space would be hallway space.... maybe the "small" rooms have a shared bathroom???????? I think that would still be hallway space unless the rooms are literally just a door with a bed inside and maybe a little bit of space for the door to open.
I so regret not asking to see a small room....
Anyway, apartments should be a little bigger than that, I'd hope.
Posting this from my small apartment in Taiwan, where I don't even HAVE a computer desk. I have one table, and I keep my computer there, which is also my only place to eat or write or do anything. It's a low table. so I sit on the floor. I have a chair but it has no legs... I don't know what you call that. a seat with a back.
Luckily my place isn't THAT small. I just meant that it's small by Western standards. My place is actually pretty roomy for Tokyo.
The "boss mode" sure was different between Japanese and western games wasn't it? I was half expecting to see a VisiCalc spreadsheet with line items for fairies and swords pop up.
Fuck no. Clone is a derogatory term, in my point of view, that should only be used to games that can ONLY replicate, and never add something of their own.
Big fan of your channel, by the way!
👏👏👍
Somebody kept their games in good condition.
how DARE you headcanon that Pixie is evil, she's my favorite character!!
He may have played a modern-ish 3DS RPG with a character who may have given him some similar vibes to Pixie from these games...
Seems like a lot of work to play pc88 games back in the day
it has shooter segments? wtf
Short sword reach.... needing to jump over insta-death holes....
Why is this game giving me a Lagoon vibe?
If someone could get a phone with xak 1 and 2 on them they could be dumped it uses a stripped down version of java and has a few emulators for old j cell phone games
No, in my headcannon the Jedi are evil.
Rob Necromancer? Is that Rob Zombie's manager?
18:57 me talking about why I dislike Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles:
Wait. You live in Tokyo too? Do I know you?
I've got all the Xak games for PC Engine and whilst I think they're an overall improvement over their computer incarnations you really can't beat that FM synth. And whilst the first two games are blatant Ys clones I did really like the jump feature they added to both PC Engine versions so enemies couldn't corner you so easily as in Ys I-II. Xak III really gave the series an identity of it's own and it's a shame the series was never continued.
You can't be serious about the PC Engine version of Xak I-II. They're lacking all the cool little details from the PC originals and most of the soundtrack of Xak II is gone (instead it just repeats tracks from the first game). Not just that, but they're buggy as all hell. For instance, you can just jump over locked doors, making looking for keys pointless. You kill the final boss of the first game in a second, and you can't even see the whole boss. It was seemingly a rushed release by RIOT, which probably explains why Micro Cabin themselves handled Fray CD and Xak III for PC Engine, which again are great.
More bugs from Xak I-II PCE: Enemies can walk through locked doors, certain bosses don't spawn sometimes (you will get stuck in a limbo), you can clone Fray, there's a way to get Latok stuck in a floating state (being unable to attack), the insta-death holes on the ground have misaligned hitboxes. The only praise that I can give to Xak I-II PCE is that the music tracks that it does have, do sound really good in redbook audio format, and the anime cutscenes are great.
8,800 yen is nuts.
Pretty typical price for Japanese PC games at the time though.
So PC-8800 games cost ¥8,800? Convenient. Pretty expensive though isn't it?
Well, some console games still cost about that much in Japan. My copy of Kuro no Kiseki 2 (standard edition) for PS5 coming at the end of this month is 8,580 yen.
In Brazil, the word "Shana" has a whole different meaning...
No wonder noone made a Longplay of the of the English MSX version. It looks very problematic. Just like the previous version the x68000 seems t be best versions, Such a Shame they arent translated
ザックじゃなくてサークって読むんだよ
ZAVASと書いてサバッシュと読んだり、日本のゲームというものは不条理だろうけど
もちろん、知っています。読み方については僕のサークiの動画で説明しています。
しかし、英語圏の人は「Xak」という文字を見たら本当に「ザック」と読むしかないんです！
英語の動画で「ザック」という発音にしないと絶対「なんだその変な読み方は？」というコメントばっかりになってしまいそうだから、あえて「ザック」という読み方にしました。
動画をご覧いただきありがとうございました！
should have swapped the keyboard and kept the original in a corner... smh
What's the point of keeping it "in a corner" though?
@@BasementBrothers I just meant to keep it stored somewhere out of the way, because it's not the kind of thing I would want to just give up on a whim.
I enjoy playing Xak 1, but i can't play this game because how bad the combat and dungeon design is
Theyre so much better at managing money in Japan it makes incredible technology a lot more common. They can create so much cause they trust each other and live within their means.