Japanese Price = $ 30-50
American Repro Price = $ 30ish - Complete = 80-100$
Players = 1
'30 years prior to the story, famous artist IchirÅ Mamiya hid several precious frescos in his huge mansion before he mysteriously disappeared. In present day, a team of five treasure seekers seek to recover the paintings from the abandoned, dilapidated mansion. Upon entering, they are trapped inside by the ghost of an unknown woman, who threatens to kill all trespassers. The team decides to split up and find a way out, but the mansion is both in danger of collapsing and is occupied by countless monsters.'
-Note: This game was developed by the designer of Resident Evil! Pretty sweet!
HOW DOES THE GAME LIVE UP TO IT'S EXPLANATION/BOX ART? (10/10)
If you are a Capcom fan, you already know that almost every Capcom game on the NES is pretty amazing. It doesn't even matter what the title is. Little Mermaid to Mega Man; They are all pretty good. Now this game on the other hand is no usual Capcom game for the time period. Or really any game at the time for that matter. This game Screams HORROR MOVIE!!
And, well, It is actually based directly off a horror movie. Which as far as the NES went. Most of those are pretty terrible... generally. But, This one at first glance says hey Horror nerd... you need this.
The explanation of the game is pretty straight forward. What it says is pretty much what you get. So over all.. this box did a pretty good job at telling you what's going on. Now do note, that this game was not an american release, and recently was translated and printed for america through a reproduction site. It's slightly hard to come by, but you can find them, or even get them printed yourself through a few different websites.
http://www.thenesdump.com/index.html
To give you one. ;)
HOW IS THE GAME PLAY? (10/10)
Now I can tell you that I wasn't really prepared to be playing an NES style RPG. These are not too common on the system and generally do not play anything like this game... At all. It does have a Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy attack style, with random battles. But, the game itself is more directed towards solving tons of puzzle like elements, using items you find around the house.
Now one of the things that is completely strange for a game of this genre, is having complete control of 5 different characters. Each character has their main item you can use in the game for certain areas. So each person has their own 'expert' item. Which as you play for a while, you do find substitute items for these characters. WHY? you might ask yourself... BECAUSE YOUR CHARACTERS CAN ACTUALLY DIE! What? Die? No revive spells? My camera man is dead? Well wha...? Yes... this was amazingly surprising to say the least. If your character dies... he or she is dead.. forever.
Another weird aspect of this title is that you can pair up any 3 characters as you wish. and move each person individually. Pairs of two or three. Because you do actually have to use each character's abilities. There is a master of unlocking, a master of lighter, a master of camera, a master of healing ailments, and a master of vacuum. Yep. Vacuum. ha.
You do not get an unlimited amount of items either. Each character can carry one weapon, and 2 extra items, so you have to be very careful as to what you are doing.
The only blunders are a few items only work in certain situations and can be horribly used and wasted. I will just say the block of wood. It is amazingly important earlier on. But, if it's used too many times.. you can fall into quite the predicament. There are a few other things, but they really aren't that annoying. I ran into a couple glitches here and there, but it was nothing that froze the game up or screwed me in any way.
HOW DOES THE GAME LIVE UP TO IT'S GENRE? (10/10)
I can say that this is probably the best RPG I've ever played for the NES. And I absolutely love Gargoyle's Quest II, Dragon Warrior(s), Final Fantasy, Faria, StarTropics, and so on and so forth. But, this was just something I had never expected to play. It was like they looked into the future of what games could be and made one of the best possible Rpg of it's time. It's a shame that I never got to play it as a kid, you know, being american. But, I can say if you love RPGs, You need to play this game.
THE 'GAME OVER' ALL? (100%)
If I haven't said get this and play it yet. That's my over all review. If you don't dig RPGs, you probably won't like it. But, if you don't like RPGs, but you do enjoy horror related stuff. You should play it. There is really no learning curve. The stuff does what you would expect it to. EXPLORE, FIGURE OUT THE ODD MESSAGES, KILL, and SURVIVE!
As I've mentioned a few times already. This game was not released in America. The reason being is the gore, story line, and some of the 8 bit video scenes that do happen. I won't tell you any of the wow... moments. I can just say that if you give this game a chance, and play through it. There are a lot of Holy Crap.. Okay.. yeah.. that wouldn't have gone over well in 1989. At this point in time. This game would easily still be an M rated title, but it was released long before that system even existed. Capcom said we made this. An american censor checked it out and went nope... not in our country. Which is unfortunate and has happened, and still happens, with a lot of japanese titles today. But, as we move forward; our fellow nerds find a way to get it to us.
So I'd like to give a big thanks to the teams of people or the one guy that translated this to a point that someone could print it and slightly Market it to us.
arbitrary credit for gore and nudity = 10
GORE! GORE! GORE! GORE! and GORE!
-Felix "the Brett" Prescott
02-07-2013
