Here's the English patch, released in September 2024. archive.org/details/slayers-pc98-eng-patch For anyone who wants to try the soundmod mentioned in the video, the page with the sound driver has been moved to the following URL: www5.airnet.ne.jp/kajapon/ And the direct link to the zip file with the driver is here: www5.airnet.ne.jp/kajapon/dat/pmd48s.zip
The detail of Naga leaving whenever she feels like it is amazing. That is TOO funny. I never made the connection that this game came before the anime! Cool how the style of the games is so similar to the anime, even if Lina's costume is more of the novel. Thanks for showing off this game for us!
I love how well Rui Araizumi's artwork used for the covers and illustrations of the light novels translates to the sprite work in this game, her style really embodies a whole era and style of trashy fantasy light novel and anime that I'll always have a soft spot for. It's a shame the game itself isn't anything amazing, but I guess that's par for the course for anime tie-in games in general.
What a fun coincidence, I was starting to get into Slayers the anime through one of the OVAs. This was a fun video to watch, thanks for letting us hang in the basement with ya.
Apparently Slayers was trending in Japan at one point last month after some influencer tweeted about it. When I saw that I treated it as a sign it was time to do a video on this game. Unfortunately the trend seems to have not bled over into the English world at all, so I'm not sure if it will do me any good with this video's views, but oh well. I always wanted to do this game anyway. Thanks for watching.
@@BasementBrothers If it helps a friend of mine wants to get into Slayers because of your video. Keep up the good work, your content is honestly top tier
You always do a fantastic job with explaining how the sound runs in these PC-88 and PC-98 games. I really appreciate how you provide samples of different music hardware and why certain things happen in the games, such as the sound cutting out. When you discussed the stereo components of some of the music and the PC-98 hardware that came out prior to the game, but not utilized, I was blown away by your historical knowledge and detail. You're my favorite gaming You Tuber! Keep up the excellent work!! Thank you!!
@@fmsyntheses Nah, it's just the whole art-style is more childish and kiddie looking. It all looks the same. There's no grit or rawness to it like 80s and 90s stuff. And the j-pop music they use is simply corny. Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo were the last few that didn't use that aesthetic and garbage "music".
@@gaylordfocker7990 anime changed because of culture shift. vibrant colours, bombastic visuals, and grandiose worlds arent sought after as much because they care more about character dialogue interactions now, so voice acting is more important than making the drawings really pop. go back and watch classic animes you missed. saskgake otokojuku (men's private school) is AMAZING.
@@hawshimagical Lol, I'm not an anime guy. I watched it when it came on Scifi Channel and when videogame magazines would recommend them. And the 2 shows that came on Adut Swim. It's childish and corny now. The music makes me want to stab my ears with a machete. Even the voice acting makes me gag(jap+eng). I can't even stand to watch a videogame cutscene anymore. I just won't even bother with games that have anime art nowadays. It's corny, childish, and ridiculous. It's all made for 10yos.
Funny timing on this; I just played a fan translation of the SNES Slayers JRPG last week. That one actually nerfs Lina by giving her amnesia, so there can be XP progression. That's trite, but to the writers' credit, they came up with a genuinely interesting reason for it that made for a solid original Slayers story with some good gags. (Sadly, the gameplay was crushingly average, never doing more than the bare minimum. 5/10 game, 7/10 for Slayers fans.)
If anyone likes the English dub of the series, JNovel made an audiobook read by Lisa Ortiz for the first volume. Adds a lot of flare to the jokes, highly recommended. They'll do more audio versions if sales are good.
I don't like the over simplification of the magic attacks. Calling Dar Brando just "fire ball" is kinda lame. As if the translatora thought. " No one will accept a magic word.
@@daisukegori2112 Localizers love making bizarre decisions like this. They're envious of actual creators I think and want to leave their own touch on someone else's work, and of course as it turns out they're not very artistic.
You guys can really salvage a bad, bad day, whether it's with neo geo goodness, Japanese pc games which I will never play or some other geeky stuff. Best channel on the 'tube, thank you so much for your work.
I love all thinks Retro gaming. Thank you for your channel for giving us a ressource on a part of retro gaming that is still a big mystery for most westeners
I LOVED this anime. I am super found of this. Such good times. Lina Inverse and stupid Gaurri. Man this bring me back. Pc-98 seems to have a treasure grove of hidden gems we missed out.
I love your reviews! Your voice is soothing and the way you describe things is satisfying. I’m realizing I love PC-98 games, and I like it when you show me what they’re like! Keep making more please! Cheers.
You're the first one! One commenter added that it is more efficient to use PMDB2 instead of the PMDPPZ driver I suggested in the video. Either will sound the same, but PMDB2 should use slightly less system resources, and thus is more suited for weaker machines.
@@BasementBrothers im playing the game on weekends and roughly half done i think so a soundfix and additional channels would be neat, im not reaching the site you posted innthe vid so im googling for those drivers.
Oh wow!!! Someone else that buys a game because the soundtrack is so cool, they had to check it out. I thought I was the only one crazy enough to do that. Another awesome video
This game looks kind of wild. It's a shame the gameplay is as seemingly monotonous as it is, since the story seems VERY on-brand for Slayers, and I like that it's a first-person dungeon crawler with diagonal corridors -- I don't think I've ever encountered another game like that before! I'm sure there must be others, but this is definitely the first 8-directional first-person dungeon crawler I'm aware of, at least. Very interesting-seeming game I would've never heard about were it not for this video. Thanks for another great review!
Yeah, from the review, I was impressed at how Slayers-y the writing seemed. When I saw it was a dungeon crawl, I assumed they would have gone light on the plot too.
I wish Slayers had some kind of new anime or game. Like how Record of Lodoss War got a game called Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, and for more older games like this one to get proper ports or even a remake.
Oh my! The line-art coloring of all the images in-game is top quality. Makes the game stand-out even more! EDIT: I wonder if there's a good RPG out there where characters also don't level-up
This feels like it has the issues of a lot of banpresto's catalog of this era, an obvious love of the source material marred by limited, frustrating design. It's neat to learn about though, thanks for an excellent video
LOL, I've been going back and playing 90s fan translated games lately and I've started noticing the same thing. The SNES Slayers game was the same way. The writers were clearly doing their best to do a solid new Slayers story within the format of a top-down JRPG, but the gameplay was utterly bland, without the slightest attempt at feeling Slayers-y outside the story. (And its version of the Dragon Slave was pathetic. It won't even clear out a single trash mob! WTH.)
When this game was developed 1993, data was created using a speak board made by Idol Japan. The designation from the production side was YM2203, but it has 3 hidden channels. (Thank you for noticing !)
Nice review. I didn't know this game exists. I watched a lot of the Slayers anime, nostalgia. The game may be not that much but got real good illustrations
I miss AIC anime. I really enjoyed their productions all the way up to Persona 4 the Animation. Interesting game and more with the configuration settings to learn the capabilities of the PC 98.
The first three seasons of the Slayers anime were some the earliest anime I watched and certainly have fond memories of that series. I noticed that Lina has a slightly different design here than the anime that aired a year later or even the light novel cover art you displayed. I wonder why.
In the last month i have been playing Brandish on the SNES, i'm in the 3 last floors to end the game, good game but i hate it, hope you can do a review on the PC-98 version some day.
I could never get into this IP. I guess I can't appreciate its brand of humor. The battle screens remind me of Grounseed. You should cover that game, by the way. Keep up the great work!
I like how it sets you up to think it's going to be an episodic adventure that just moves on to a completely different thing once each chapter is over, only to bring it back around full circle with your goal from the first chapter becoming the final boss. In this case, being a not-really-RPG where you're no more powerful at the end than you were at the beginning kind of works in its favor; an ending like this would be unthinkable in a typical JRPG where you become powerful enough to kill God and thus the game is obliged to have you do just that.
I absolutely love your channel, thanks for your work. Gotta say I appreciate Slayers more as an adult compared to how I perceived it back in the day; I thought it was too silly and I preferred more serious stuff. TBH, I still prefer darker stories...HOWEVER, now that I have a better grasp of what constitutes good storytelling, I'll take a solid comedy over a badly written serious drama. Speaking about the game, it's a shame it's so frustrating to play because I do agree the artwork is great. I always wonder why there are so few modern anime titles with this amount of cg scenes.
The sound files containing extra data / channels / effects, etc. is likely an issue of the composer and developer not communicating very well -- the composer was contracted to make music, and the developer just chucked it in to whatever driver they were targeting, and no one noticed.
Nah, not getting a CRT as long as I live in this little place. What you can do is hook your modern PC up to a CRT monitor and then watch my videos on it! Done and done!
@@BasementBrothers understandable. But thanks to that small segment in the video I realized how beautiful and close to actual anime the graphics of PC-98 games was
It's very rare to hear a video game reviewer rave on this much about the soundtrack, but yo I'm ULTRA on the train for that. As a huge video game enjoyer myself, with quite a number of PC98 tracks in my playlist too, you have my deepest appreciation. Btw, for a more modern contemporary take on FM-synth style OST, I highly recommend you check out Etrian Odyssey 1-3, composed by Yuzo Koshiro. The remaster is coming out soon for PC, so there's no better time honestly. The game might enrapture you too, as it did for many classic DRPG fans. Another contemporary western composer for such tracks is +TEK, who's biggest claim to fame is Disco Necropolis.
As much as I love Slayers, having seen all of the first two series, I certainly would’ve loved this game. Lina and Gourry are my favorites, although Gourry is the best character because he’s dumb as a box of rocks, often making fun of Lina’s bust size, but he’s very handsome and wields a mean sword.
Okay two things: Was there a reboot of Slayers? Those snippets look fairly recent. And is Tenchi Muyo next? You can't just wave that in our face and fly off into the sunset, like Lina.
They are from Slayers Revolution, which is from 2008, which is actually not a reboot, but rather a continuation of the TV series. The Tenchi and Ah! Megamisama games are not getting videos anytime soon I'm afraid. The Slayers game is really the only truly interesting one of the three, IMO. The other two are fairly basic digital comic type games, which is cool I guess if you like the series they are based on and want an original story. I've finished both on PC Engine and PC-FX. Enjoyable, but not much to talk about other than the plot.
Yes! Getting revenge on a horrible hard game always feel so refreshing. I remember that feeling from beating Sword Of Vermillion......which is another bad game with awesome music. When I was a kid I heard of the Slayers anime before but I just never bother to watch it cuz I wanted to watch other anime shows more.
Hmm. I really haven't played too many to be honest. In general I would say the Arcus series seems pretty good, though the first two of those are originally PC-88 not 98, and I really haven't played them very much yet. I am hoping to maybe do Arcus 1 for PC-88 on this channel someday.
Great soundtrack indeed! God bless HOOT! The track 'Mothod of energy ++' sounds really big. Here's a recomendation for you, Advanced Power DoLLS have an amazing soundtrack, listo to the sond 'WAVE'. :D
Seeing the blur of the image, like when using the blur function in Neko Project II, I wonder, where PC98 CRT monitors really so blurry? My CRT monitor is far sharper and this type of blur is more likely with CRT TVs. PS: Named one of my mages in WoW Classic Linalnverse (because you can't have spaces in between) and people were reading the name wrong. Feels like barely anyone knows poor Lina nowadays (still have my Manga set from the 90s).
Yeah. I used an over-exaggerated blur effect for the CRT simulation in the video, which is closer to a CRT TV. CRT monitors were definitely not that blurry. It seems like whenever I show games with dithered graphics I get a lot of comments from people who love CRT's, so that's why I put that part in the video. I probably just should not have commented on it.
@@BasementBrothers Well, both ways of displaying these games have their charms. Thing is, CRT monitors already had a quite clear image. While dithering wasn't used as much in DOS games, I still remember seeing it while playing Knights of Xentar (Dragon Knight 3).
You said you never read the Slayers novels... you probably should. I've been reading them now that they're out in English and... they're markedly different in a number of ways. At least the main ones are--I've read fan-translations of some of the side-stories and those feel more in line with the anime. Which, that is one notable difference: the novels feel like they have a different sense of humor. Some stuff is still there, like Lina's body insecurities, but... well put one way, it was odd hearing this game which came out before the anime, began with Lina solving an infested castle problem by just blowing up the castle. That's more in line with anime-Lina than novel-Lina. This said, one thing interesting is that the actual stories are... well, the first season of the anime is a somewhat-accurate adaptation of Novel 1 and Novel 3, but after that the anime treats the novels more as vague suggestions, and IIRC Slayers Try is entirely anime-original.
The Lina in this game seemed pretty consistent with anime Lina overall as far as I could tell. Interestingly, according to Japanese wikipedia the original creator Hajime Kanzaka was heavily involved with the Super Famicom Slayers game released the same year, but not at all with the PC-98 game. That might be one reason why.
Well, it kind of makes sense that her antics would get more spectacular once the series moved into a visual medium. If your show's gonna star a temperamental and terrifyingly OP sorceress, why *not* have her accidentally evaporate cities now and then?
3:30 if there's one thing we all as a society should adopt from Japanese animation, instead of "nya" and similar [censored], it should be the Big Boot directly to the mug as a way to communicate your dissatisfaction with the work done.
There's a game based on an anime (or manga, I don't remember) called Dragon Half on the PC98 and FM Towns. Have you ever tried it? I remember playing it for a bit in the FM Towns emulator but it got tedious soon. That seems to be the running theme for most PC RPGs of that era.
I hadn't seen slayers ever but knew of its existence, this is definitely the first I've heard of this version of it though! nice that the mini-map is the larger screen I mean it does make more sense... I would say surprised more point-and-click dungeon crawlers didn't do things that way but this game probably didn't get much traction outside of Japan. pretty good soundtrack though! although I don't understand the stereo/mono thing if that upgrade for stereo had already been out for three years IDK why they didn't take more advantage of it?! definitely have to find a way to play some of these emulated!
Thanks. There are tons of games for both PC-88 and PC-98 that only use the old monaural soundboards despite the stereo ones having already been around for years. One major reason is because most people didn't have the stereo soundboards. There was a much bigger userbase who had models with only the monaural soundchip built-in to the system, and there was only a relatively small number of people who had gone out of their way to either buy an add-on board or had one of the rare models with one built-in. Many developers didn't feel it was worth bothering adding the capability if most people wouldn't be able to benefit from it anyway.
@@BasementBrothers ah that makes sense, I was curious as to why it wasn't more of a thing in that game if it's been out for that long. thanks for clearing that up!
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Here's the English patch, released in September 2024.
archive.org/details/slayers-pc98-eng-patch
For anyone who wants to try the soundmod mentioned in the video, the page with the sound driver has been moved to the following URL:
www5.airnet.ne.jp/kajapon/
And the direct link to the zip file with the driver is here:
www5.airnet.ne.jp/kajapon/dat/pmd48s.zip
Lina is also another amazing Megumi Hayashibara role. She's always at 100%.
a man of culture 🎩🎩🎩
Yeah, she's a real prodigy. Amazing voice acting, sings her show's theme songs, and even hosted her own radio show for awhile.
@@Conan_the_Based Have yet to hear her phone in a single performance. She did a loosely Slayers-themed album that I like to listen to when I run.
Megumi also took a role in Sonic Frontiers like wow!!
She also voiced another PC-98 redhead - Popful Mail
The detail of Naga leaving whenever she feels like it is amazing. That is TOO funny. I never made the connection that this game came before the anime! Cool how the style of the games is so similar to the anime, even if Lina's costume is more of the novel. Thanks for showing off this game for us!
Just wanted to write that i love your classic Japanese pc game videos. I feel like i get a sneak peak into a world I'll never get to experience.
a sneak peek into the world of the past, that subtly helped build up to the world of today
I can't get enough of the older rpgs art and manuals especially for the pc 98 pc engine etc! So much personality! Great video thank you 👍
Me too! Great looking boxes, manuals, inserts, etc.
I love how well Rui Araizumi's artwork used for the covers and illustrations of the light novels translates to the sprite work in this game, her style really embodies a whole era and style of trashy fantasy light novel and anime that I'll always have a soft spot for.
It's a shame the game itself isn't anything amazing, but I guess that's par for the course for anime tie-in games in general.
Absolutely. I believe anime tie-ins started getting better after 2003. Not sure why but it started to kind of happen after that time.
@@khaimk4r4suI don't have fond memories of games like
.hack and the Haruhi Suzumiya games...
Quick correction but Rui Araizumi is a man. That aside I agree
What a fun coincidence, I was starting to get into Slayers the anime through one of the OVAs. This was a fun video to watch, thanks for letting us hang in the basement with ya.
Apparently Slayers was trending in Japan at one point last month after some influencer tweeted about it. When I saw that I treated it as a sign it was time to do a video on this game. Unfortunately the trend seems to have not bled over into the English world at all, so I'm not sure if it will do me any good with this video's views, but oh well. I always wanted to do this game anyway. Thanks for watching.
@@BasementBrothers If it helps a friend of mine wants to get into Slayers because of your video. Keep up the good work, your content is honestly top tier
You always do a fantastic job with explaining how the sound runs in these PC-88 and PC-98 games. I really appreciate how you provide samples of different music hardware and why certain things happen in the games, such as the sound cutting out. When you discussed the stereo components of some of the music and the PC-98 hardware that came out prior to the game, but not utilized, I was blown away by your historical knowledge and detail. You're my favorite gaming You Tuber! Keep up the excellent work!! Thank you!!
The admixture of 90s anime, hair metal, and high fantasy is my favorite. Bastard is excellent as well.
80s anime> 90s anime>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2000s and after anime
What happened?
@@gaylordfocker7990 Normal people started watching anime
@@fmsyntheses Nah, it's just the whole art-style is more childish and kiddie looking. It all looks the same. There's no grit or rawness to it like 80s and 90s stuff. And the j-pop music they use is simply corny. Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo were the last few that didn't use that aesthetic and garbage "music".
@@gaylordfocker7990 anime changed because of culture shift. vibrant colours, bombastic visuals, and grandiose worlds arent sought after as much because they care more about character dialogue interactions now, so voice acting is more important than making the drawings really pop. go back and watch classic animes you missed. saskgake otokojuku (men's private school) is AMAZING.
@@hawshimagical Lol, I'm not an anime guy. I watched it when it came on Scifi Channel and when videogame magazines would recommend them. And the 2 shows that came on Adut Swim.
It's childish and corny now. The music makes me want to stab my ears with a machete. Even the voice acting makes me gag(jap+eng). I can't even stand to watch a videogame cutscene anymore. I just won't even bother with games that have anime art nowadays.
It's corny, childish, and ridiculous. It's all made for 10yos.
Great video! I'm gonna have "Get Along" stuck in my head all day now, heh.
I love the Slayers so much I named my daughter Lina after it.
Nice
That's funny. One of my uncles named their daughter Amelia after he watched it a long time ago.
Funny timing on this; I just played a fan translation of the SNES Slayers JRPG last week. That one actually nerfs Lina by giving her amnesia, so there can be XP progression. That's trite, but to the writers' credit, they came up with a genuinely interesting reason for it that made for a solid original Slayers story with some good gags.
(Sadly, the gameplay was crushingly average, never doing more than the bare minimum. 5/10 game, 7/10 for Slayers fans.)
If anyone likes the English dub of the series, JNovel made an audiobook read by Lisa Ortiz for the first volume. Adds a lot of flare to the jokes, highly recommended. They'll do more audio versions if sales are good.
I don't like the over simplification of the magic attacks. Calling Dar Brando just "fire ball" is kinda lame. As if the translatora thought. " No one will accept a magic word.
@@daisukegori2112 Localizers love making bizarre decisions like this. They're envious of actual creators I think and want to leave their own touch on someone else's work, and of course as it turns out they're not very artistic.
Such a great story, feels like a bunch of short novels which culminate in a final one.
Every time I think about Slayers, I also think Popful Mail. Great video man!
I always think about how deadly Naga's smug laugh would be in an RPG.
I love the ohohojousama channel.
ah slayers, that takes me back, i LOVED the anime back in the day. would love to play this game
You guys can really salvage a bad, bad day, whether it's with neo geo goodness, Japanese pc games which I will never play or some other geeky stuff. Best channel on the 'tube, thank you so much for your work.
Slayers was one of my first anime. Love that series. I have a soft spot for it. Thanks for doing this review, your PC series is always a great time!
Man. This game's art style looks so nice
I love all thinks Retro gaming. Thank you for your channel for giving us a ressource on a part of retro gaming that is still a big mystery for most westeners
I LOVED this anime. I am super found of this. Such good times. Lina Inverse and stupid Gaurri. Man this bring me back. Pc-98 seems to have a treasure grove of hidden gems we missed out.
I love your reviews! Your voice is soothing and the way you describe things is satisfying. I’m realizing I love PC-98 games, and I like it when you show me what they’re like! Keep making more please! Cheers.
Awesome review! I love Slayers and this game really seems to have nailed the feel of the show and early mangas.
Excellent video as always, thanks for the upload.
This soundtrack is absolutely killer.
Liked the slayers anime a lot, didn't realize there were game adaptations. Great video.
I’m so so happy this game finally has an English patch today. Great video ^^
There's an English Patch now! :o
I love the art on these old PC-98 games.
Densetsu no Shinryuu - Legendary Dragon
Densetsu no Raochuu - Legendary Old Brew
For those with an interest
I love your channel and I'm really impressed with your collection 👍
Six floppy disks - what a time to be alive.
Thank you for this visual archive of gaming history. I was much to young for this but its kool to see
thanks! i'll be trying that soundfix
You're the first one! One commenter added that it is more efficient to use PMDB2 instead of the PMDPPZ driver I suggested in the video. Either will sound the same, but PMDB2 should use slightly less system resources, and thus is more suited for weaker machines.
@@BasementBrothers im playing the game on weekends and roughly half done i think so a soundfix and additional channels would be neat, im not reaching the site you posted innthe vid so im googling for those drivers.
Well, I'll be darned. Looks like Kajapon moved his site since I made that video.
Here you go: www5.airnet.ne.jp/kajapon/dat/pmd48s.zip
I was hoping for a video tonight! :)
Oh wow!!! Someone else that buys a game because the soundtrack is so cool, they had to check it out. I thought I was the only one crazy enough to do that.
Another awesome video
Video be like *PC-98 SOUNDBOARD AND DRIVERS* with bonus Slayers content.
Yes!
Being from the UK where anime was nothing untill about 5 years ago, These are a education for me thanks
Another great video ^_^
I love the portraits in this game. I'll have to check this out myself.
I love Slayers, thanks for posting this, I never seen any of their games.
This game looks kind of wild. It's a shame the gameplay is as seemingly monotonous as it is, since the story seems VERY on-brand for Slayers, and I like that it's a first-person dungeon crawler with diagonal corridors -- I don't think I've ever encountered another game like that before! I'm sure there must be others, but this is definitely the first 8-directional first-person dungeon crawler I'm aware of, at least.
Very interesting-seeming game I would've never heard about were it not for this video. Thanks for another great review!
Yeah, from the review, I was impressed at how Slayers-y the writing seemed. When I saw it was a dungeon crawl, I assumed they would have gone light on the plot too.
Thanks for the story play by play. The adventures sound just like good ol' slayers.
Another day in paradise.
Great video, thank you very much! So much great artwork here, I need to try and find it.
I wish Slayers had some kind of new anime or game. Like how Record of Lodoss War got a game called Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, and for more older games like this one to get proper ports or even a remake.
Oh my! The line-art coloring of all the images in-game is top quality. Makes the game stand-out even more!
EDIT: I wonder if there's a good RPG out there where characters also don't level-up
An RPG with no character progression seems pretty pointless. At that point you just have a tedious visual novel.
Zelda?
This feels like it has the issues of a lot of banpresto's catalog of this era, an obvious love of the source material marred by limited, frustrating design. It's neat to learn about though, thanks for an excellent video
LOL, I've been going back and playing 90s fan translated games lately and I've started noticing the same thing. The SNES Slayers game was the same way. The writers were clearly doing their best to do a solid new Slayers story within the format of a top-down JRPG, but the gameplay was utterly bland, without the slightest attempt at feeling Slayers-y outside the story.
(And its version of the Dragon Slave was pathetic. It won't even clear out a single trash mob! WTH.)
When this game was developed 1993, data was created using a speak board made by Idol Japan.
The designation from the production side was YM2203, but it has 3 hidden channels. (Thank you for noticing !)
Yes, and I felt the need to tell the world about the hidden channels in this video. I love the music in this game!
Nice review. I didn't know this game exists.
I watched a lot of the Slayers anime, nostalgia.
The game may be not that much but got real good illustrations
Aaaaaaaah! I am a late eighties Brazilian guy and I demand to born again as an early eighties Japanese guy to play these games on release. I DEMAND!
Boa sorte com seu desejo.
I miss AIC anime. I really enjoyed their productions all the way up to Persona 4 the Animation.
Interesting game and more with the configuration settings to learn the capabilities of the PC 98.
Heck yes!!
More love for the Slayers!!
what a great lil short story for slayers!
The first three seasons of the Slayers anime were some the earliest anime I watched and certainly have fond memories of that series. I noticed that Lina has a slightly different design here than the anime that aired a year later or even the light novel cover art you displayed. I wonder why.
It's the OVA design where she's traveling with Naga the Serpent.
So happy it ended up being the slayers game
Giving Lina a million spells is kinda strange since she only casts Dragon Slave and maybe Ray Arrow...
Maybe you're meant to role play it?
@@SnakebitSTI Think like Lina Inverse? Don't suggest that! Not even in fun!
@@MarginalSC Can't get a game over if you blow up your computer!
In the last month i have been playing Brandish on the SNES, i'm in the 3 last floors to end the game, good game but i hate it, hope you can do a review on the PC-98 version some day.
It's on my (very long) list. I love Brandish and think it's definitely meant to be played in its original PC-98 form.
@@BasementBrothers Im having a bad time with the mazes, bosses and cheap deaths with the boulders; but im impressed with how far i got
I could never get into this IP. I guess I can't appreciate its brand of humor. The battle screens remind me of Grounseed. You should cover that game, by the way. Keep up the great work!
Another masterpiece of a video
I like how it sets you up to think it's going to be an episodic adventure that just moves on to a completely different thing once each chapter is over, only to bring it back around full circle with your goal from the first chapter becoming the final boss. In this case, being a not-really-RPG where you're no more powerful at the end than you were at the beginning kind of works in its favor; an ending like this would be unthinkable in a typical JRPG where you become powerful enough to kill God and thus the game is obliged to have you do just that.
You intending on checking out Macross games on the PC-98?
Your info on Slayers was amazing. I hope you do a review on the Tenchi Muyo PC-98 game.
Yeah, that would be a fun one to do eventually. It's definitely not on my immediate list.
I have the vhs series of the slayers.
I love Slayers so this was a great look at a game i never heard of lol
Wow, I with I knew of this game back when I stidied in Japan in the early 2000s. I was a big fan of Slayers, and bought several of the mangas there.
I absolutely love your channel, thanks for your work.
Gotta say I appreciate Slayers more as an adult compared to how I perceived it back in the day; I thought it was too silly and I preferred more serious stuff. TBH, I still prefer darker stories...HOWEVER, now that I have a better grasp of what constitutes good storytelling, I'll take a solid comedy over a badly written serious drama.
Speaking about the game, it's a shame it's so frustrating to play because I do agree the artwork is great. I always wonder why there are so few modern anime titles with this amount of cg scenes.
Ahhh Slayers. A classic.
I love Slayers. Thanks for for sharing this game.
OMG THAT "ART" at the end of the video hahaha
I enjoyed this video.
The soundtrack is really nice I can see why you like it
Great Stuff!
Woohoo
I wish i could have played a Slayers game. It’s such a great series
The sound files containing extra data / channels / effects, etc. is likely an issue of the composer and developer not communicating very well -- the composer was contracted to make music, and the developer just chucked it in to whatever driver they were targeting, and no one noticed.
Someday you have to make a video that shows how beautiful these PC-88/98 games look on a CRT monitor
Nah, not getting a CRT as long as I live in this little place. What you can do is hook your modern PC up to a CRT monitor and then watch my videos on it! Done and done!
@@BasementBrothers understandable. But thanks to that small segment in the video I realized how beautiful and close to actual anime the graphics of PC-98 games was
It's very rare to hear a video game reviewer rave on this much about the soundtrack, but yo I'm ULTRA on the train for that. As a huge video game enjoyer myself, with quite a number of PC98 tracks in my playlist too, you have my deepest appreciation.
Btw, for a more modern contemporary take on FM-synth style OST, I highly recommend you check out Etrian Odyssey 1-3, composed by Yuzo Koshiro. The remaster is coming out soon for PC, so there's no better time honestly. The game might enrapture you too, as it did for many classic DRPG fans. Another contemporary western composer for such tracks is +TEK, who's biggest claim to fame is Disco Necropolis.
The patch was just finished and is on Internet Archive now
Can you link up with the helpful walkthrough or manual that you mentioned that let you find the crucial beasts and such, etc?
Yeah, here you go. www.aya.or.jp/~kidparty/slayers/game/map.htm
@@BasementBrothers Thanks so much! Appreciate it!
As much as I love Slayers, having seen all of the first two series, I certainly would’ve loved this game. Lina and Gourry are my favorites, although Gourry is the best character because he’s dumb as a box of rocks, often making fun of Lina’s bust size, but he’s very handsome and wields a mean sword.
Everyone that plays DND expects to play out Record of Lodoss War, but they always wind up being The Slayers....
I'm praying this gets translated someday.
Designating your floppy-drive as 'C' and your HDD as 'A' is so cursed.
No choice on PC-98. The drive you boot from automatically becomes A. I didn't designate it.
Okay two things:
Was there a reboot of Slayers? Those snippets look fairly recent.
And is Tenchi Muyo next? You can't just wave that in our face and fly off into the sunset, like Lina.
They are from Slayers Revolution, which is from 2008, which is actually not a reboot, but rather a continuation of the TV series.
The Tenchi and Ah! Megamisama games are not getting videos anytime soon I'm afraid. The Slayers game is really the only truly interesting one of the three, IMO. The other two are fairly basic digital comic type games, which is cool I guess if you like the series they are based on and want an original story. I've finished both on PC Engine and PC-FX. Enjoyable, but not much to talk about other than the plot.
Yes! Getting revenge on a horrible hard game always feel so refreshing. I remember that feeling from beating Sword Of Vermillion......which is another bad game with awesome music. When I was a kid I heard of the Slayers anime before but I just never bother to watch it cuz I wanted to watch other anime shows more.
Are there any particularly good PC-98 first person dungeon crawlers you have enjoyed?
Hmm. I really haven't played too many to be honest. In general I would say the Arcus series seems pretty good, though the first two of those are originally PC-88 not 98, and I really haven't played them very much yet. I am hoping to maybe do Arcus 1 for PC-88 on this channel someday.
@@BasementBrothers That would be awesome to see. Thanks for the recommendation. PC-88 games are great too!
@@BasementBrothers speaking of, any plans on doing Falcom's "Dinosaur"?
Yeah. Dinosaur definitely eventually as well.
I would have loved pc-88 games ive never really heard about them until I was an adult
Same here!
Is this OST anywhere on UA-cam? I can't seem to find it...
Same. I can't either. I recommend the HOOT Archive. The whole soundtrack is available there.
@@BasementBrothers thanks👍
I still need to watch the last 2, R and something else.
Great soundtrack indeed! God bless HOOT! The track 'Mothod of energy ++' sounds really big. Here's a recomendation for you, Advanced Power DoLLS have an amazing soundtrack, listo to the sond 'WAVE'. :D
Yay Lina! 🎉
Nice game! Sorry it took me so long to find it! I'm trying to get a PC-98 emulator to work myself!
Seeing the blur of the image, like when using the blur function in Neko Project II, I wonder, where PC98 CRT monitors really so blurry? My CRT monitor is far sharper and this type of blur is more likely with CRT TVs.
PS: Named one of my mages in WoW Classic Linalnverse (because you can't have spaces in between) and people were reading the name wrong. Feels like barely anyone knows poor Lina nowadays (still have my Manga set from the 90s).
Yeah. I used an over-exaggerated blur effect for the CRT simulation in the video, which is closer to a CRT TV. CRT monitors were definitely not that blurry.
It seems like whenever I show games with dithered graphics I get a lot of comments from people who love CRT's, so that's why I put that part in the video. I probably just should not have commented on it.
@@BasementBrothers Well, both ways of displaying these games have their charms. Thing is, CRT monitors already had a quite clear image. While dithering wasn't used as much in DOS games, I still remember seeing it while playing Knights of Xentar (Dragon Knight 3).
Oh its banpresto. I know them, they made 2d ds and arcade games. Never saw how pc-98 works though, very interesting.
You said you never read the Slayers novels... you probably should. I've been reading them now that they're out in English and... they're markedly different in a number of ways. At least the main ones are--I've read fan-translations of some of the side-stories and those feel more in line with the anime.
Which, that is one notable difference: the novels feel like they have a different sense of humor. Some stuff is still there, like Lina's body insecurities, but... well put one way, it was odd hearing this game which came out before the anime, began with Lina solving an infested castle problem by just blowing up the castle. That's more in line with anime-Lina than novel-Lina.
This said, one thing interesting is that the actual stories are... well, the first season of the anime is a somewhat-accurate adaptation of Novel 1 and Novel 3, but after that the anime treats the novels more as vague suggestions, and IIRC Slayers Try is entirely anime-original.
The Lina in this game seemed pretty consistent with anime Lina overall as far as I could tell. Interestingly, according to Japanese wikipedia the original creator Hajime Kanzaka was heavily involved with the Super Famicom Slayers game released the same year, but not at all with the PC-98 game. That might be one reason why.
Well, it kind of makes sense that her antics would get more spectacular once the series moved into a visual medium. If your show's gonna star a temperamental and terrifyingly OP sorceress, why *not* have her accidentally evaporate cities now and then?
@@jasonblalock4429 What do you mean "accidentally" evaporate cities?
3:30 if there's one thing we all as a society should adopt from Japanese animation, instead of "nya" and similar [censored], it should be the Big Boot directly to the mug as a way to communicate your dissatisfaction with the work done.
If you emulate this in retroarch, there's a screen filter that can blend the pixels to look more solid and less like the mesh look.
I can add blur! Oh goody... Haha. Thanks for your comment though.
There's a game based on an anime (or manga, I don't remember) called Dragon Half on the PC98 and FM Towns. Have you ever tried it?
I remember playing it for a bit in the FM Towns emulator but it got tedious soon. That seems to be the running theme for most PC RPGs of that era.
I have that game, but I don't think I've ever really played it.
I hadn't seen slayers ever but knew of its existence, this is definitely the first I've heard of this version of it though! nice that the mini-map is the larger screen I mean it does make more sense... I would say surprised more point-and-click dungeon crawlers didn't do things that way but this game probably didn't get much traction outside of Japan. pretty good soundtrack though! although I don't understand the stereo/mono thing if that upgrade for stereo had already been out for three years IDK why they didn't take more advantage of it?! definitely have to find a way to play some of these emulated!
Thanks. There are tons of games for both PC-88 and PC-98 that only use the old monaural soundboards despite the stereo ones having already been around for years. One major reason is because most people didn't have the stereo soundboards. There was a much bigger userbase who had models with only the monaural soundchip built-in to the system, and there was only a relatively small number of people who had gone out of their way to either buy an add-on board or had one of the rare models with one built-in. Many developers didn't feel it was worth bothering adding the capability if most people wouldn't be able to benefit from it anyway.
@@BasementBrothers ah that makes sense, I was curious as to why it wasn't more of a thing in that game if it's been out for that long. thanks for clearing that up!