Battle Mania Daiginjou - or as it's known on my English patched reproduction cart, Battle Mania 2: Trouble Shooter Vintage - is the Japan-only sequel to Trouble Shooter, a game which is very middling if you played it before Daiginjou and maybe straight up bad by comparison.
Seriously, most reviews here will probably mention how much of a step up Daiginjou is over the original, and that is 100% the case. In absolutely every regard, it's just the better game. Catchier soundtrack, more detailed and expressive graphics, better controls, more dynamic levels, better power-ups... Fundamentally it's the same, but the quality is elevated so much that ends up becoming one of the better shoot-em-ups on the system. That said, it's also much more difficult than the original game, and I'm ashamed to say the only way I was able to push through it was by playing on easy mode. Even then, I had my share of deaths, though there was thankfully much fewer instances of me being crushed by something unexpectedly.
Something I didn't get into much in my Trouble Shooter review was the quality of the writing. It's obvious what they're going for, but whether it was written this way to begin with or the result of a poor localization, it's a bit dry. Daiginjou opens with you throwing a car at the first levels' boss from the 70th floor of a skyscraper. This game sets its tone immediately as a more fun, quirky send-up to Dirty Pair and other female-led anime of the 1980s and early 90s, and the way the absurdity escalates throughout the adventure is great. By about the middle of the game, the villain is telling you your brain would make a great CPU for his war machine because you're single-minded and driven by destructive impulses. Towards the climax of the game, you're informed that while everything else has been going on your apartment has burned down. The end credits also feature a bunch of developer nicknames (something I really like about this era of gaming), including stuff like "Coffee Freak Kitamura - "My stomach hurts!"" Concerning amount of allegations in those credits about members of the team being alcoholics, though...
It's just a shame Daiginjou never came out here officially. If I had to guess, the original game probably didn't perform too well, but even then Daiginjou was printed in a very limited quality in Japan, with few CIB copies existing today. This has made it one of the more coveted - and consequently expensive - games in the console's library. Thankfully, emulation and fan translators have swooped in to remedy that, meaning there's very little reason for you to not give Battle Mania Daiginjou a shot.
Seriously, most reviews here will probably mention how much of a step up Daiginjou is over the original, and that is 100% the case. In absolutely every regard, it's just the better game. Catchier soundtrack, more detailed and expressive graphics, better controls, more dynamic levels, better power-ups... Fundamentally it's the same, but the quality is elevated so much that ends up becoming one of the better shoot-em-ups on the system. That said, it's also much more difficult than the original game, and I'm ashamed to say the only way I was able to push through it was by playing on easy mode. Even then, I had my share of deaths, though there was thankfully much fewer instances of me being crushed by something unexpectedly.
Something I didn't get into much in my Trouble Shooter review was the quality of the writing. It's obvious what they're going for, but whether it was written this way to begin with or the result of a poor localization, it's a bit dry. Daiginjou opens with you throwing a car at the first levels' boss from the 70th floor of a skyscraper. This game sets its tone immediately as a more fun, quirky send-up to Dirty Pair and other female-led anime of the 1980s and early 90s, and the way the absurdity escalates throughout the adventure is great. By about the middle of the game, the villain is telling you your brain would make a great CPU for his war machine because you're single-minded and driven by destructive impulses. Towards the climax of the game, you're informed that while everything else has been going on your apartment has burned down. The end credits also feature a bunch of developer nicknames (something I really like about this era of gaming), including stuff like "Coffee Freak Kitamura - "My stomach hurts!"" Concerning amount of allegations in those credits about members of the team being alcoholics, though...
It's just a shame Daiginjou never came out here officially. If I had to guess, the original game probably didn't perform too well, but even then Daiginjou was printed in a very limited quality in Japan, with few CIB copies existing today. This has made it one of the more coveted - and consequently expensive - games in the console's library. Thankfully, emulation and fan translators have swooped in to remedy that, meaning there's very little reason for you to not give Battle Mania Daiginjou a shot.
3 Comments
yee there's one translation that tries to be literal/1-to-1 wherever possible, and then the other is re-written to resemble the localization style of trouble shooter and other localized games of the 90's
YEAAAHHH REAL REAL REAL
Weatherby
1 year ago