I have neglected one of the platforms I claim to love so much, the unsung hero of the Fourth Generation, the PC Engine aka TurboGrafx 16. Granted, a lot of those games were ports (but really fucking good ports). But there were some solid games for it that never got ported to the NES or the PCE’s closest competitor, the Mega Drive. At least not here in North America.

Anyway, I’m rambling about “the war” again… let’s grab some games and put ’em on the stove.

Bravoman

Namco, 1988

Much like the system itself, Bravoman was a big hit in Japan but blended into the crowd when it hit Western shores. It was originally an arcade title developed by Namco for domestic-only distribution, but was licensed for North American release on the TG-16 in the flurry of games meant to compete with the Genesis and NES.

Bravoman is a superhero-type whose main talent is doing crazy shit with his fucked-up cartoon body. He battles across 22 stages to stop Dr. Bomb (creative naming was at its height during this period) from ending the world.

“Here I go, in the most exciting screenshot available, ever!”

Why are pop culture villains always trying to end the world or destroy it? Like, what’s the end game? What’s the reasoning? What do you have left to be proud of, and to whom will you brag? We have enough dangerously crazy people in the real world, but even they aim for rulership, not annihilation. On that note, how do you sell that to your rank and file? “Yeah, there’ll be nothing left, and everything you ever loved or cared about will be gone. Now get to work.”

Anyway, You go bopping around as Bravoman, punching and kicking the shit out of enemies. There are underwater levels, where you transform into a weird fish. These play a lot like Darius or any other side-scrolling shmup, and were the most fun part for me. Goofiness aside, Bravoman is a pretty decent platform game. It mixes things up a little bit and has a sense of novelty that’s aged really well considering it’s a slightly pared-down arcade port. It’s visually colorful, gently funny, and plenty of fun to play.

JJ and Jeff

Hudson Soft, 1987

You know how I like to try and pick at least one game for these articles that either is a piece of shit, or at least borders on being a piece of shit but is so ridiculous that is’ still fun to know it exists. This one blurs the line for me pretty hard. It’s equal parts travesty and tragedy.

Yes, it is absolutely this painfully retarded, all throughout.

The travesty is the game itself. It’s supposed to be some kind of detective-themed action platformer, but it just comes off as a lazily-skinned Mario clone where you go around jumping on people or kicking them to death in a big-head cartoon world. Apparently it’s based on the “detective” segments of some Japanese TV show, and that’s where the tragedy comes in.

The tragedy is that this game is funnier, and thus more tolerable to play, when you’re talking about the native Japanese version. Apparently there’s rather graphic and overt toilet humor rampant throughout, which really could have hung on in America, but it was edited out for the NA release. Not just edited out, but watered down so much that it comes off as some shit a “cool” youth pastor would make if he or she programmed games.

Don’t you miss cartoon butts? I miss cartoon butts. Wait, that came out wrong.

I would rather see someone peeing than see them doing most of what they do in JJ and Jeff. And that’s saying something. I got bored so fast that I couldn’t hope to offer you a full appraisal of the game, but I’d say overall it’s “average.” The boring kind, mind you.

Air Zonk

Red/Naxat Soft, 1992

Air Zonk is sort of a companion title to Bonk’s Adventure, etc, with the main character even bearing a close resemblance. That’s about where it ends. Whereas the Bonk series are some very good games, Air Zonk is the best game. I won’t say “ever” or “for the TG-16,” but I could. It’s just the best game, though. The best fucking game. Sure, it’s a shoot-em-up, but it’s also the most “dynamic” game I’ve seen so far for the game system; both visually and in terms of action, Air Zonk beckons you over and all but sells you itself.

I am just going to let this gameplay montage I found do the talking for Air Zonk. Sometimes I struggle for human words adequate to describe the things I find while writing these articles. In this case, it’s in a positive light. Hallelujah.

Bravoman – 6/10

JJ & Jeff – 4/10

Air Zonk – 8/10

As always, it has been real, and I’ll see you again later this month. Stay Retro!

When we were kids, and we first beheld the wonder of console video games, the entire thing would sometimes seem like one huge river – no, an ocean is more appropriate. One deluge of games would be released, then another, and we’d still be tackling the first. Then here, a whole new system, and there, crazy new peripherals we never even knew we wanted (but we wanted them). It was like we could never run out of choices. The best (but perhaps most bewildering) part: we were duplicating a primary cycle that was approximately 3 years ahead of us in Japan, where all (most) of this stuff was getting made. One thing most of us were guilty of, though, at least until we were older, was that we’d make strong mental associations with the games and characters, but maybe not the great companies creating them. Now, as a grown-ass man writing about video games three times a month, I try to explore what I clearly missed as a child… the mostly unsung sagas of these companies, some of whom came from humble beginnings and seemingly faded away without the public noticing.

Hudson Soft is a tale that begins with Hiroshi and Yuji Kudo. In May of 1973, they opened a simple shop called CQ Hudson, which sold radio equipment and also had some nice art photographs. You know, stop in for a transistor, get a nice shot of the ocean for your mom as a gift. It’s worth noting that the company was named after a train, specifically the Japanese C62 which had been produced originally by Hudson Locomotives. Japan saw a lot of railway growth after the Second World War, which was when the Kudo boys were coming up.

The post-war choo choo that inspired two young Japanese boys to innovate and entertain.

Things went well for the Kudo brothers, and in 1975, they began selling products for personal computers. Around ’78, Hudson began inching into video games. At first, the firm was putting out around 25-30 titles a month, which sounds impossible; given the simplicity of the platforms in that era, however, it was far from it. Needless to say, this clone-vat approach bore only modest fruit, so Hudson leaped at the opportunity when given a shot a developing for Nintendo’s new Family Computer. Let me re-phrase that: Hudson strode confidently into video game history by becoming Nintendo’s FIRST third-party developer. They immediately met with strong success; both their port of Lode Runner and their self-conceived game Bomberman sold over 1 million copies. Bomberman had been released previously for Microsoft’s Japan-geared MSX computer, and Broderbund had done well with Lode Runner in the US and Europe, but the Famicom was the desired platform and the timing was just right.

Two titles that solidified Hudson Soft’s position in the top tier.

From its new office in Midtown Tower in Tokyo, Hudson continued to carve a place for itself in video game history. Starting in 1985, the company began doing something we wouldn’t even think of until the early 1990s: tournament-style video game competitions. Their first one revolved around the Hudson title Star Force in Summer of ’85; its sequel Star Soldier was used in ’86 and even had 2 and 5 minute modes built into its home version to reflect its status as a competitive game. These remarkable yearly events, which took a much less competitive tone after 1992, solidified Hudson Soft’s notoriety and popularity at home.

In 1987, Hudson teamed with NEC to create perhaps the greatest dark-horse console of the 20th Century: The PC Engine. Known in the West as the Turbo Grafx 16. I’ve already written a love letter to that console, so I’ll spare you the gushing… but it’s important to remember a few things. With this platform, Hudson Soft beat both Nintendo and Sega at a few things. The PC Engine set the record at the time for the smallest console. It also achieved graphically what the Mega Drive did, except almost three years earlier. Lastly, the portable version of the PC Engine wasn’t using its own pared-down set of games. This wasn’t some wrap-it-up Game Boy shit. It was using the same media as its mother system. It did this five years before Sega could pull off the same thing by producing the Nomad. There’s more to how awesome the PC-Engine is, but you’d be better served by reading my original article.

You’re not losing a whole lot visually, either.  Sorry, I just like rubbing this in because so many Sega partisans tend to studiously overlook it.

Other memorable titles from Hudson Soft (many of which saw multi-platform release) were Starship Hector, the Adventure Island series, Faxanadu, Milon’s Secret Castle, and my two favorites of theirs… Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu and Felix the Cat.

Hudson Soft’s main bank collapsed during a financial crisis around the turn of the millennium, driving the firm to offer itself on the Japanese stock market. To speed up a sad and tedious tale, Konami bought majority stock in Hudson; the two companies had worked amicably with each other since the early 80s and Konami sought to help give lift to the tired bee’s wings. Hudson still self-published until 2011-2012, when Konami bought what was left and absorbed it into itself. The final vestiges of Hudson Soft vanished in 2014, when its website began redirecting to Konami’s. Officially, the Hudson brand still exists, but it is part of Konami Digital Publishing.

The Hudson Bee about to be taken down from over the firm’s original HQ in Sapporo, 2/29/12.

I tell myself sometimes (And I’m sure someone reading this will laugh at me) that I’m helping preserve and curate history when I write articles like this. I know it’s not terribly significant stuff to the world at large, but it is to me… and to any gamer who likes knowing where things started. Thank you, Kudo Brothers. Thank you for starting a radio parts shop in 1973 and naming it after a train.

Thank you for everything.

More in February! Take care until then!