Night Slave
released on Feb 23, 1996
A terrorist organization known as Slave Dog poses a threat to the entire world. Steel Fox is the name of an all-female special squad, highly trained in counter-terrorist combat. Assisting them is the independent, state-unbound corporation Neo Logic, which produces assault suits -basically giant robots with their own heavy weaponry, which can be navigated by a skillful pilot. The young female pilot Rei from the Steel Fox is sent on a decisive mission, codenamed "Night Slave" - an assault on the terrorist base.
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The game is meh…
BUT THE MUSIC IS AMAZING!!!!!
BUT THE MUSIC IS AMAZING!!!!!
Recommended by a real-life friend of mine, Brother_Milkshak as part of this list.
Out of all the retro gaming machines, the PC-98 has always been a bit of a curiosity to me. A machine used mostly by Japanese corporations for business-like affairs, whose direct legacy in gaming was almost entirely limited to its domestic market, obsessed over by only the most rabid and niche of retro enthusiasts (outside of Japan anyways.) Despite its limited hardware, being built with a primary focus on business and number-crunching, it was a massive hotbed for developers both big and small to pump out games of all types on the system, from college students making Shinto-inspired Arkanoid clones to big name companies making sci-fi adventure games. But the most prolific genres on the machine by far were the ones that didn't require a lot of real-time processing power: RPG's, Visual Novels, RTS's, the kind of games that could utilize the larger RAM and clock speeds of the PC-98 to their advantage, while masking its lacking hardware. However, just because these genres were easier to develop for the system didn't mean that other developers didn't try to flirt with the idea of high-octane action, which leads us to the game of the hour: Night Slave
Night Slave is about an all-female extraterritorial counter-terrorist squad of mecha pilots and their decisive, titular operation against the terrorist group known as "Slave Dog". Surprisingly enough given the aforementioned limitations and specs of the PC-98, Night Slave is a real-time 2D action-platformer-RPG-shoot-em-up-visual-novel extravaganza in the vein of something like Cybernator, chock-full of platforming, run n' gun action. Before each level, you choose from a selection of primary weapons, sub-weapons and superfluous accessories for your mechsuit and try to get a high score blasting enemies while collecting power-ups in a system similar to Gradius, where power-ups can be reserved for later use and the more power-ups you have, the better your reward will be when you activate it for use, ranging from a one-time partial health refill to permanent weapon and armor upgrades, capping off at a full-screen nuke. It's a surprisingly thoughtful mechanic all things considered, and it adds some complexity to what would be a rather standard 2D run and gun affair. After completing a level, the player is treated to visual novel-styled story sequences with some rather stunning pixel artwork, usually providing either exposition or something of the more... NSFW variety.
The other prominent thing about the PC-98 is that despite the variety of genres, the most common type of game in its vast library was that of the Eroge (lit. "erotic game"), which usually entailed nudity, sexual themes and lots of lovingly-rendered scenes of the proverbial Beast With Two Backs. Night Slave is no exception in this regard, with your reward for completing a stage usually being a scene of your all female crew engaging in "The Game of Flats," which is probably titillating if you're into that sorta thing, but if you aren't down to see some pixel art of Gals Being Pals, there's an option to turn that off on the title screen, turning Night Slave into a no-buts no-frills action game, but this also turns off the non-H scenes so if you wanted to know what was happening in the plot then tough shit I guess.
The unfortunate thing about Night Slave is that despite its impressive technical showing, fantastic artwork and somewhat thoughtful game design, it sort of sucks to play. Despite being quite impressive technically, Night Slave constantly struggles to render the action on screen at a decent rate, fluctuating between rough at the best of times and PowerPoint presentation at the worst of times; aiming your weapon is incredibly finicky and stiff, oftentimes requiring either a full-speed sprint or a complete halt to adjust your aim up or down; the mech controls can be really clunky and unresponsive at times, which can make both platforming and dodging more tedious that it has to be, and the game seems to demand a lot more than it can feasibly deliver, as the difficulty curve fluctuates between braindead easy due to AI and environmental oversights with enemies and bosses, and unfairly difficult when it expects the player to pull off shenanigans that the aforementioned controls and technical faults make harder than it needs to be. It's all very frustrating, and even considering Night Slave's short runtime, I simply could not be bothered to see it through to the end. The game was slowly wearing away at my patience the whole time and by the time I got a little over the half-way mark, I wasn't having a good time anymore, and I don't have the motivation to go back and finish it. There are a lot better run-n-guns out there, and way easier ways to get your rocks off.
Out of all the retro gaming machines, the PC-98 has always been a bit of a curiosity to me. A machine used mostly by Japanese corporations for business-like affairs, whose direct legacy in gaming was almost entirely limited to its domestic market, obsessed over by only the most rabid and niche of retro enthusiasts (outside of Japan anyways.) Despite its limited hardware, being built with a primary focus on business and number-crunching, it was a massive hotbed for developers both big and small to pump out games of all types on the system, from college students making Shinto-inspired Arkanoid clones to big name companies making sci-fi adventure games. But the most prolific genres on the machine by far were the ones that didn't require a lot of real-time processing power: RPG's, Visual Novels, RTS's, the kind of games that could utilize the larger RAM and clock speeds of the PC-98 to their advantage, while masking its lacking hardware. However, just because these genres were easier to develop for the system didn't mean that other developers didn't try to flirt with the idea of high-octane action, which leads us to the game of the hour: Night Slave
Night Slave is about an all-female extraterritorial counter-terrorist squad of mecha pilots and their decisive, titular operation against the terrorist group known as "Slave Dog". Surprisingly enough given the aforementioned limitations and specs of the PC-98, Night Slave is a real-time 2D action-platformer-RPG-shoot-em-up-visual-novel extravaganza in the vein of something like Cybernator, chock-full of platforming, run n' gun action. Before each level, you choose from a selection of primary weapons, sub-weapons and superfluous accessories for your mechsuit and try to get a high score blasting enemies while collecting power-ups in a system similar to Gradius, where power-ups can be reserved for later use and the more power-ups you have, the better your reward will be when you activate it for use, ranging from a one-time partial health refill to permanent weapon and armor upgrades, capping off at a full-screen nuke. It's a surprisingly thoughtful mechanic all things considered, and it adds some complexity to what would be a rather standard 2D run and gun affair. After completing a level, the player is treated to visual novel-styled story sequences with some rather stunning pixel artwork, usually providing either exposition or something of the more... NSFW variety.
The other prominent thing about the PC-98 is that despite the variety of genres, the most common type of game in its vast library was that of the Eroge (lit. "erotic game"), which usually entailed nudity, sexual themes and lots of lovingly-rendered scenes of the proverbial Beast With Two Backs. Night Slave is no exception in this regard, with your reward for completing a stage usually being a scene of your all female crew engaging in "The Game of Flats," which is probably titillating if you're into that sorta thing, but if you aren't down to see some pixel art of Gals Being Pals, there's an option to turn that off on the title screen, turning Night Slave into a no-buts no-frills action game, but this also turns off the non-H scenes so if you wanted to know what was happening in the plot then tough shit I guess.
The unfortunate thing about Night Slave is that despite its impressive technical showing, fantastic artwork and somewhat thoughtful game design, it sort of sucks to play. Despite being quite impressive technically, Night Slave constantly struggles to render the action on screen at a decent rate, fluctuating between rough at the best of times and PowerPoint presentation at the worst of times; aiming your weapon is incredibly finicky and stiff, oftentimes requiring either a full-speed sprint or a complete halt to adjust your aim up or down; the mech controls can be really clunky and unresponsive at times, which can make both platforming and dodging more tedious that it has to be, and the game seems to demand a lot more than it can feasibly deliver, as the difficulty curve fluctuates between braindead easy due to AI and environmental oversights with enemies and bosses, and unfairly difficult when it expects the player to pull off shenanigans that the aforementioned controls and technical faults make harder than it needs to be. It's all very frustrating, and even considering Night Slave's short runtime, I simply could not be bothered to see it through to the end. The game was slowly wearing away at my patience the whole time and by the time I got a little over the half-way mark, I wasn't having a good time anymore, and I don't have the motivation to go back and finish it. There are a lot better run-n-guns out there, and way easier ways to get your rocks off.
Like an improved Assault Suit Valken/Cybernator game that also has hentai scenes between missions in addition to the story. Plays similar to those games but allows you to find power ups on a level that can be used to heal yourself or level up your primary and secondary weapon over time. Almost didn't play it because just about any action game I've seen on the PC-98 has a terrible framerate but this runs very well.