This was a game I picked up on a whim after finding it for just 100 yen at my local Book Off. The cover looked neat, the pictures of it on google looked cool, and the handful of old review scores I found for it were positive on both the English and Japanese side of things. Even if it ended up being terrible, it was still just 100 yen at the end of the day. My final game-clock was 2.5 hours, but that doesn’t seem to count times in pause menus or cutscenes (of which there are many) at all, so I’d reckon my actual time with this game was something closer to like 4-ish hours. I played the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

The year is 2096, and humanity has been colonizing the solar system for many decades now. Several days ago, the titular Beltlogger 9, a research and mining station in the asteroid belt, sent out a distress signal, and nothing has been heard from them since. You play as Sergeant Patric Salu (that’s how they spell it <w>), the singular surviving member of the beta assault team of the small military contingent sent there to figure out just what’s going on in this research station that is clearly not what it seems to be.

Bursting with cutscenes and voice acted dialogue, Beltlogger 9 is really pushing the limits of what storytelling in games could be in 1996 with this relatively new CD-based format. Tech-wise, nothing it’s doing is particularly new or special, of course, but it regardless uses what it has very adeptly. I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as to call this an outright horror game, but they’re definitely taking a lot of inspiration from sci-fi horror films of previous decades to create the atmosphere of grim isolation the game takes place in. It’s a relatively short story, but it does a lot with its small cast and quick pacing. It didn’t have quite as dark an ending as I was predicting (or as its genre conventions would otherwise lead you to predict it would), but I really liked what they did with it either way. It’s a well told story with a nice and interesting moral at the end, and a good story is certainly not what I was expecting from a PS1-developed Quake-like game from 1996.

Now while I haven’t played Quake myself, I’m more than familiar enough with id’s shooters to know that Beltlogger 9 is quite clearly going for that style of gameplay (at least in the broad strokes of things). It’s a sci-fi 3D FPS game that’s largely corridor-based, where you explore one stage at a time (22 in total) looking for keys to doors, finding new weapons and passive options to equip, and fighting the nasty robotic enemies that come your way. You also have a shield you can manually activate to guard yourself when you’re not firing, and while it’s not the hardest thing in the world, it does take some practice to get used to switching between raising your shield and counter attacking against more aggressive enemy types.

You have 5 different weapons (a rifle, a laser, a missile launcher, a heat-seeking missile system, and a big AOE bomb super weapon) that you can switch between on the fly as well as find new variants of that switch up things like fire rate and power. You can also find stuff like health and energy upgrades, miscellaneous items, audio logs of the crew, and even upgrade bits to simply make your existing weapons stronger. Those extra optional passives are no joke either, as they can do anything from make your energy weapons take less energy, your energy itself recharge faster, or even let you run WAY faster. What it comes down to is that exploration generally feels very well rewarded, and I always wanted to see what was around the next corner (even if it was just a new enemy to mulch my face off XP).

The game isn’t that hard, ultimately, though for someone relatively inexperienced with FPS games (especially pre-analog stick aiming ones like this), that was very much appreciated (though it’s certainly worth pointing out that this game’s English-language cousin, BRAHMA Force: Assault on Beltlogger 9, does have a significant difficulty boost compared to this version that I played). The bosses were easily the toughest general parts of the game, but those were also some of the coolest parts for sure as well, and new boss fights were always a treat to encounter if only to see their mechanical designs.

The mechanical designs and presentation in general are really good in this game. A large reason for the former is that they actually got one of the major mechanical designers for Z and ZZ Gundam to do the robot designs for this game, and it really shows with just how striking they look (with the final boss being a particular favorite of mine). The music is also very fun, with the bosses having some great tracks to fight them to, and the general ambient music making for a great creepy atmosphere to explore the base in. Having to use R2 and L2 to look up and down just added to that whole vibe of “in an awkward battle mech in a weird place” too~. The game is still visually absolutely an early-life PS1 3D game (complete with the texture warping in the walls that that kind of thing entails), but it really rocks the look, imo, and it made for a really fun time~.

Verdict: Recommended. Even though this sort of thing is generally quite far from my genre of choice, I ended up having a really great time with it! It’s worth keeping in mind that the localizations are a fair bit harder (and less fair, from the sounds of things), and I can’t speak to the quality of the localization either, but in Japanese at least, this was a really cool sci-fi action game with a story I really enjoyed my time with. If you like sci-fi or just FPS games and you don’t mind having to use pre-analog stick aiming controls, this is a really fun and short game that’s really worth checking out~.