I don't have much to say here, it isn't Space Invaders with boobs or Space Invaders with the highest quality cutscenes you can find, it's plain old Space Invaders. If you like Space Invaders, you'll enjoy this but there is an interesting 2 player mode which I think has unique females representing player 1 and 2. I don't think they're in the SFC version. I sadly couldn't play it due to no CPU support. I don't have much to say on this other than I can't believe it came out so late but it must have pleased some.

I feel so indifferent about this game because while it plays really well, something about the experience feels off. I know this series doesn’t have the best track record with quality control with some of the earlier games but for 1995, I expect better from Konami. Akumajou Dracula XX is like this weird version of the PCECD game where it tries to have the characters and setting but retcons some plot elements and completely changes the level design. It reminds me a lot of Super Valis which changed a lot for the worse compared to the PCECD game Valis IV. The game is really nice graphically, the music is pretty good, and again it has good controls. There’s just something about it that feels odd to me.

Maybe it’s the level design? It’s not offensive but I don’t find it as fun as the PCECD game. It still has alternate stages but the first one is more treated as punishment. The game doesn’t let you save so there’s no reason to even do every stage. Maria is no longer playable which is a damn shame, she’s only there for not getting the worst ending. They also made this awful design choice of needing a key from the end of stage 3 and then surviving all of stage 4 with it to save Maria and then go to the correct stage. Die once and you gotta use a password for stage 3 to get the key again. I don’t get it, the PCECD got the key stuff right, what happened here? Why are sub-weapons also up and attack again? I could get it for a controller with two buttons but this system has four buttons and two triggers.

Idk, I don’t feel like going in depth about this game, maybe in the future. It’s a good game but I just wish I enjoyed it more. I wish the SFC got another game that took more advantage of the system, I’m not saying I want it to be like Akumajou Dracula (Super Castlevania IV) but I want it to be more like Vampire Killer (Castlevania Bloodlines). That game felt like a really cool evolution of the 8-bit games while still feeling very mechanically similar. You should still try this game out as it’s not a bad game but since it’s pretty easy to play the PCECD game nowadays, I doubt many will want to.

Also can someone explain to me why this was in the GBA collection? That still makes zero sense to me. I swear Konami did that so they had an excuse to not put it on NSO.

There’s a lot of fascinating games out there for me. Lately it’s been with RPGs and I like just seeing the whole catalog of RPGs for a system to see what’s worth giving a review. One game I’ve been thinking of doing ever since last year was Kemco’s Ghost Lion. An RPG based off of a mediocre movie of the same name (well Japan’s name White Lion Densetsu). I was gonna watch this movie in preparation but sadly this movie just isn’t easy for me to find but maybe it is somewhere obvious I’m not looking. I wasn’t too upset seeing as the game doesn’t follow it too much but still would have liked to see it. Now I don’t give Kemco a good rep. They at best make decent games like Mickey Mouse III and Space Hunter and when it’s not those, it’s some of the bargain bin stuff you find for the system. Though this one has always piqued my interest so why not, I gave it a try finally.

Well hate to say it but the plot here is pretty miniscule even for a Famicom RPG. It stars a girl named Maria as she departs to learn more about the White Lion after her parents have disappeared. After exploring a bit, you get put in the water due to a flooding that broke the bridge you were on and after waking up you’re in a strange world. So you just need to explore and figure things out with some guidance from NPCs. The game doesn’t really have much else and the game is handled very linearly and gives the player some very basic life lessons about how you shouldn’t give up dreams and stuff. I do find it interesting that at least some NPCs mention how corrupt humans are but the game doesn’t really go any further outside of flavor text to give a reason for why the White Lion exists. By the end you find out it was basically just a test for Maria and it’s kind of a dream but also not really? It’s weird, the game kind of just abruptly ends afterwards.

When it comes to gameplay, it’s a very blatant DQ clone at first. I don’t even mean DQ III, I mean like the first game. You move around to interact with things with a menu and while it won’t have stuff like a menu for doors or stairs, it still has stuff like interacting with the chest while on top of them. Now I think about it, there’s really only doors in the intro section, how weird. Though when it comes to battles it’s anything but normal. You only have Maria as a playable character but she can summon spirits with special items. You start with two which are the spear and lamp. They cost dream points to use but you can have as many as you want out. They can also take hits for you but be careful as they use health doing attacks. You can just resummon them if they get knocked out. Maria herself is not especially strong unless you have a good weapon but it won’t mean much when she can easily die with no spirit usage. Her health is what is called Courage and if it runs out then it’s back to the last fairy fountain with half of your currency gone. The way you level up is also odd as you have to find fragments of hope to level up which also levels up any spirits you have. This also means the only benefit to defeating enemies is to obtain currency. So yeah, it can be a bit strange.

Those spirits are sadly situational. I mostly tried to focus on offense because trying to do stuff like buffs or statuses just never felt worth it especially when Maria can be a bit frail at times. Despite the game being labeled as easy and yes it is easy in some ways, the game only has three options for healing. You can go to a fairy fountain which also acts as a save, you can grab a fragment of hope, or you can eat bread. Bread sadly only heals 50 Courage and you’ll have hundreds by the halfway mark. There’s not even a spirit with healing abilities which can be a bit annoying. Battles won’t always go your way so if you don’t wanna waste bread, you might need to reset until you get a good run. It’s especially obnoxious when the game has an enemy with high evasion and it feels like it can take a while to win all while the enemy is beating you up. Think maybe you can run? Well no dice there as you have what feels like a 20% chance of getting it to work. Don’t even bother if there’s more than one enemy, I swear it never works. The encounter rate isn’t the worst I’ve seen but it has a nasty habit at times to just keep giving you enemies every 5-7 steps.

The game is set up in a very linear way as many roadblocks will keep you from progressing and the world isn’t too big especially for 1989. Again it’s partially why I compared it to DQ 1. There’s not even cool transportation outside of an automatic boat that you do about halfway through the game and never again. Dungeon designs are also incredibly basic and rarely feel creative or even visually interesting. I don’t know if they were trying to appeal to a younger audience but these just don’t cut it for me.

So this may sound like I really hate this game and while I do have issues with the adventure, I for some can’t fully hate it. Like look I have issues with the game but I know some of it is just me issues or just nitpicking. I’ll give the game this, it’s very short so the issues don’t last long. Literally the only reason it wouldn’t be even faster is because overworld controls feel oddly clunky and slow. I also like how this game lacks really any grinding meaning there’s no annoying roadblocks. The localization also does a good job of still helping you go the right ways and NPCs do give helpful advice. Since every town is small, it wouldn’t hurt if you talk to everyone. Including the NPCs that sometimes look like a Red Mage.

The game graphically is very unimpressive as you can already guess why. I guess it’s not offensive but this feels like a game from the early years. This was even worse when considering the US release of October 1992. It’s already unimpressive compared to the two other 1989 RPGs I reviewed recently. The music is not the worst, one of the dungeon themes is kind of catchy but good god the battle theme is repetitive and annoying. Also the overworld theme sounds like it could be in Kemco’s Looney Tunes games. Probably cause it’s the same composer. Is it too late to say he went on to work on Puyo Puyo n?

Shouldn’t really be surprised how the experience went with this one. I expected a decent game at best and I got mediocrity. I went into the review expecting something to be like my Space Hunter review but while writing this I realized I had way more issues with the game then I thought. I feel kind of bad for being so negative about the game because it’s not offensively bad like some RPGs on the system. Not like I’ll probably upset anyone anyway, the game has left barely an impact on the system even in Japan. Kemco does still make RPGs I believe but I hear they’re even worse and all just worthless titles. How sad now I’m thinking about it. It’s hard to recommend the game even as a curiosity because outside of some unconventional mechanics, it’s an easy flawed game that will probably be forgotten from your mind in a month. Could have been better, could have been worse, that’s the story of Ghost Lion. At least you'll be remembered for that really awful US cover.