A little less than a week ago, GungHo Online Entertainment America released six PS One classics onto the Playstation Network for the Playstation 3 video game console. The catch is that while you may think of “PS One” classics as games you would have played during the era of the Playstation One console, these are games that unless you resided in Japan most probably haven’t had the opportunity to check out.
The six Playstation One classics are previous rare “import” titles from Japan which retain all of the original text and are completely unaltered. These titles were: Makeruna Makendo 2, Lup★Salad, Finger★Flashing, Zanac×Zanac, Art Camion Sugorokuden and Vehicle Crawler.
Over this two part review series, thanks to GungHo Online Entertainment America who provided me with these codes – I will be checking out and doing mini-reviews of all six titles to help you determine what games are worth checking out and what ones just didn’t appeal to me.
All games are $5.99 each from the North American Playstation Network store.
Lup★Salad
Last year, ATLUS USA launched Catherine on the Playstation 3 and XBox360. The game involved a group of people who every night were dragged into a puzzle horror world where they must navigate a block tower to survive. While Catherine portrayed a world where adults were hounded by an endless tower of blocks, in another gaming universe and in the eyes of a five year old child, block puzzles play an integral part of her fantasy world…. and still prove a worthy challenge.
Lup★Salad comes with a storyline however remains untouched and untranslated. To give you a gist of the storyline it follows a young girl by the name of Salad, who through her imagination recreates a number of different environments and roles for her to play – from being a penguin to a nurse to a robot. You are treated to two segments of storyline – one at the beginning of each world and one at the end of each world, with puzzle based gameplay in between.
Each of the themed areas are made up of several levels, and to progress to the next area you are required to complete all of them. The levels each consist of several set environment pieces and coloured blocks, with your goal being to have all the blocks of the same colour touch other (Either vertically or horizontally) until none of the coloured blocks remain. You do this by pushing, jumping and avoiding knocking any other block into the incorrect position.
While the idea itself isn’t too complex, it can get quite complicated even in the earlier levels and especially where they go from simple movement puzzles to including blocks on multiple platforms and several different block types that slowly unlock as the game progresses. Given the limited movement capabilities of Salad, it is possible for example that you will need to avoid merging certain blocks together, choosing an option which may initially seem incorrect or reset the stage several times before you can solve it. Sure it can sometimes lead you to frustration, but it is fun. In addition to the main story mode, you can use the Salad character designs to take part in a couple of other single and multiplayer modes
Both the visuals and soundtrack of Lup★Salad contribute to a childlike and cutesy aesthetic, as if the world came out of the imagination of a young child. Each of the games main areas are based on a different theme with character designs for Salad to match. The game also throws in a few pieces of artwork during storyline scenes (See left) which also tries to be cute whilst hiding the fact on the next screen is a number of even harder puzzles. The stage designs themselves are creative and consist of the same background artwork for each area.
Each of the worlds come with two tracks – a lyrical song which is set by default (Involving who I assume may be the Voice actress of Salad) on loop and a lyricless one of a different tune. For the most part while I could tolerate the lyrical songs for the first few levels, but then I chose to stick with the lyricless ones (Also the fact that as with the visual designs, you get the feeling the cutesy songs are taunting you).
Overall, Lup★Salad is a simple but complex game that I am quite glad to see as part of GungHo Online Entertainment America’s six releases. I initially went in expecting a simple puzzle game but ended up dedicating quite a few hours towards it and getting stumped on more than a handful of levels.
Overall Score: B+
Finger★Flashing
As with Lup★Salad, Finger★Flashing initially seems easier than it is. While there is very little in terms of gameplay, you take control of Poi who is about to take her final witchcraft exam when she is attacked by monsters. How does she defend herself and defeat these monsters…? Through a system very similar to that of Paper, Scissors, Rock which sees Poi summon the opposing enemy in order to defeat them. As with Paper, Scissors, Rock the game comes with three different types of enemy, each of which are based on one of the three buttons you can use magic with. To defeat them, you need to summon the enemy who is strong against the other – otherwise the monster you summon will go against you.
The game takes place over five stages and starts you off fairly easy with maybe one or two monsters every couple of seconds. As you progress waves of more enemies will appear quicker as the camera moves closer in to give you less of a view of the route ahead. With six lanes in total to cast your spells towards (and be attacked from), it does require quite a bit of practice to master the later stages but otherwise proves itself to be a fun and intense experience. This is especially considering the game isn’t kind enough to allow you to skip any enemy, and it is game over if you let one pass by.
The only potential qualm I could have with this game is that due to the game not having an English localized instruction manual, you have to aquatint yourself with who beats what through trial and error, leaving some requirement for practice. On the other hand, navigating the menu’s are easy as they seem to have been originally translated into English. Otherwise, along with the stock standard ‘Story’ Mode you are provided with Time Trial and Score Attack modes for single-player and a Battle Mode for multiplayer.
While there isn’t too much to say about the visuals or music quality in this release, the game looked nice on my television screen and while the character designs are average at best the environments each have their own gameplay twists which ensures you aren’t just traversing down the same corridor each time. The designs range from normal bridge to a cave.
Overall, there is quite a lot to do in this game despite it essentially being an intense and prolonged bout of Paper, Scissors, Rock. It didn’t stand as highly for me as Lup Salad did and it took me a while to warm up to it… but otherwise I think it is a solid title to purchase.
Overall Score: B-
Makeruna Makendo 2
The final game in this review is Makeruna Makendo 2, which unlike the first two which lean towards the puzzle side of gaming is your general run-of-the-mill 2D fighter with its own twists. Featuring a small single-digit character cast each with their names beginning with “Ma”, your goal is of course to defeat your opponent in a number of different environments and come out on top. The game comes with a storyline which plays occasionally between battles, but for the purpose of this review I haven’t dived much into translating it.
The core gameplay is what you would expect – you move with the D-Pad and attack with the buttons to form combos which depending on the combinations should cause damage to your opponent. How Makeruna Makendo 2 attempts to differ from other fighting games is they have incorporated a leveling system into the title which increases a number of attributes for your character from hit points to attack strength. It is an interesting system that rewards players for being active in fights however felt at times battles can be one-sided for both parties. Outside of this, the game provides you with Player vs Comp and Player 1 vs Player 2 modes of fighting.
The game’s characters are interestingly designed and the stage designs are decent and well animated, but the musical tracks are simple and quite heavy on the ears after a moderate amount of time spent on a stage.
Makeruna Makendo 2 puts up a solid performance overall, but at the same time outside of the leveling system doesn’t really offer anything in terms of replayability or battle complexity. It may be a worthwhile installment for those who are curious about the fighting genre from the era – but otherwise there are better titles that are part of GungHo Online Entertainment America’s classics release set, and the fighting genre in general.
Overall Score: C-
