Strange Free Games: Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new game. Lets talk about an MMORPG, shall we? Here’s one addicting, but queer RPG called Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Why queer? Well, for a Japanese anime inspired game, the visuals are oddly gothic and religiously offensive. Unusual to this genre, the game even has some cinema-scenes, too. And the most interesting part? It plays a little likePokémon.

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online can be downloaded at Aeria Games.

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online starts off in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where the city has been leveled by demons. As the typical MMORPG trope, you are a Demon Buster, one trained to fight against demons. While investigating a ruin, your leader takes a significant blow as a gigantic demon emerges. You’re rescued, barely alive, and decide to take some vengeance against this boss.

It wouldn’t be a Shin Megami Tensei game, however, if you couldn’t befriend these demons. As luck may have it, you have a talent to convince demons to join your cause, and have them fight alongside with you. Some NPCs are demons themselves, proving once and for all how resilient the human species are.
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Weekly Game Music: Opening Credits (Little King Story)

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music. Like classic music, with a modern twist? Here’s an a cappella remix of Ravel’s Boléro: the Opening Credits for Little King Story, composed by Yutaka Minobe. The royal music helps set the stage for the toybox-like environment in this dictator-takes-over-the-world game.

Little King Story starts with a little boy who comes upon a crown that magically turns him into a king of a country. A shoddy, failing country. Taking a bold leadership role, our king directs the civilians to rebuild the country, and eventually take over neighboring lands and their princesses.

Little King Story is frequently described as Pikmin, if it were themed aroundPsychonauts. As the king, you approach and charm workers to follow you to quests. Each worker can be thrown to handle a certain task correlated to their profession, including building, digging, and of course, fighting. The boss battles you encounter when invading rival countries are widely varied, including straight-up fights, answering questions from trivia shows, and even a ping-pong tournament. Despite its childish graphics, the game frequently delves into the surreal and disturbing imagination of a child’s mind.

Little King Story was released on the Wii in 2009. No other ports exist.

Extra!

Title: King Jumbo Champloon
Game: Little King’s Story
Composer: Yutaka Minobe
Comments: Remix of The Infernal Gallop from Offenbach’s opera, Orpheus in the Underworld

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Strange Free Games: Cave Story

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Taro Omiya

Ah, yes. Here’s the game that inspired me to create this entire blog series. It’s a game that inspired countless independent game developers. It’s an epic, a mystery, and a tragedy. And it was made by one man, in Japan. Here’s Cave Story, a cute Megaman-inspired platform-shooter, with an excellent but bleak story.

Cave Story has been translated and ported to Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It’s hard to tell the story of Cave Story without spoiling much. As an example, the protagonist’s name is a spoiler in and of it itself. The game drops you completely confused: you witness a scientist retrieving what looks like a crown surrounded by two bubbles containing statues. Then, you witness an online conversation between what looks like a scientist and another girl named Suzie. After that…you wake up in a cave. No memories, no idea where you are, no nothing. Yet, that starting point becomes the strength of the game: as the details pour in, the first two scenes start to make sense. You learn who you are (and that itself will surprise you), what Suzie is, why a guy was trying to chat with her in the first place, and what that crown was about.

For its bizarre story, Cave Story has a simple and straight-forward gameplay. Much like old-school shoot’em-up, the protagonist can jump from platform to platform, and shoot his gun (which has limited range) up, down, left or right. Defeating enemies either gives you health or XP: experience points upgrades your weapon with more power and longer range, while being hit by an enemy reduces your experience points. The joy, of course, of discovering new guns is finding out what they do at their highest levels, level 3. One gun grants you the power to fly, while another acts as your shield. Learning to use which one, in what situation is one of the charm in this game.
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Weekly Game Music: Annul (Neotokyo)

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Taro Omiya

New week, new music, and what better way to start than a weird music that mixes futuristic sounds in a spaghetti-western composition? I’m talking about Annul, by Ed Harrison. It’s used in a Japanese-themed Half-Life 2 mod, Neotokyo. It’s an action-filled, yet melancholy music of the ever-growing conflict between the government military and the terrorists.

Since Neotokyo is a Half-Life 2 mod, it is currently only playable on the Mac and on the PC. The mod can be downloaded here.

The story for Neotokyo, like Team Fortress 2 is merely used to explain the settings and missions. An extremely nationalistic group attempts to take the Japanese government for themselves when an amendment to the constitution doesn’t come through. Fortunately for the country, the government successfully foils the group’s actions, but at a price of scattered terrorists roaming in the streets. Neotokyo sets the stage for these terrorists fighting against the government law enforcers.

Like Team Fortress 2, Neotokyo is an online multiplayer first-person shooter. The main draw are the “capture the flag” missions, where the object to capture is the Ghost. When the player carries the Ghost, he or she becomes capable of seeing opponents coming from behind the walls. In exchange, the player is unable to fight back, and must flee back to his or her base as fast as possible. Neotokyo also takes cues from theMetroid Prime series, where different classes have different visors to visually detect invisible opponents. Every class, of course, have their own camouflage suits. Lastly, the mod is reveled for its art direction and graphics. Asian cities aren’t a common sight in video games, after all.

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Weekly Game Music: like stars (CLANNAD)

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Taro Omiya

A while ago, I’ve mentioned that one of my favorite parts about doing this series is that I discover games I’ve never played before. Here’s one of those games: CLANNAD, a visual novel that became an inspiration for many mangas and animes. One of its trance music, like stars by zts, is a sorrowful but hopeful tune that sets the tone for this tear-jerker game.

CLANNAD is a slice-of-life story that chronicles the life of Tomoya Okazaki from high school to parenthood. Tomoya leads a inward, negative life in high school. His delinquent life can easily be connected to his terrible relationship with his father. Recently, Tomoya’s alcoholic and angry father accidentally dislocates his son’s shoulder, forcing Tomoya to quite his sports team. Likewise, his father becomes apologetic and distant, only worsening Tomoya’s life. Despite these misfortunes, Tomoya befriends the sickly and low esteem Nagisa Furukawa. Together, they attempt to start a drama club.

CLANNAD is a visual novel where you converse with other characters. Like a choose-your-own-adventure, there are multiple choices that will lead to multiple different stories. Most interesting in this game are the dream sequences, where Tomoya dreams of being one of the only 2 living things in a barren, soulless world. Tomoya himself has no body in this world; instead, the other living thing, a girl, provides a body for him using a robot-like toy. The lights that appears here also mirrors those in the real-life sections. Once all of them are gathered, the true happy-ending is unlocked.

CLANNAD was released on the PC, PS2, PSP, PS3, and the Xbox 360, in Japan only.
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