I'm quite floored at how cheap it is to collect for the XBOX Classic. Hence I think now is the perfect time to pick up a replacement, Soft mod that sonofabitch and start playing everything I can throw at it. First thing first, If I am Japanese illiterate how much enjoyment can I get out of Shin Megami Tensei Nine? Second, what goodies await me? Pysvariar 2, Shikigami no Shiro 1 and 2, Metal Wolf Chaos and Guilty Gear Isuka are all I can think of off the top of my head. NUDE as well but that's not a high Priority.
Dinosaur Hunting looks like a pretty solid dinosaur Monster Hunter. It was released only in Japan. But Borman have an unreleased US version, if i'm not wrong.
Like the only JP exclusive I've wanted is Metal Wolf Chaos, but it's easily like $75 minimum. I have no idea why it never came out in the US. It's not only obscenely American, but from what I hear all the voice acting is in English anyway.
Breakdown by Namco. The game is a first person shooter (although you very rarely get a enough ammunition to use a weapon, so you are forced to use melee combat for most of the game), that strives for more 'realism' than most FPSs, so that, for example, you have to deliberately reach down to pick up a fallen weapon (and not just walk over it, as in most FPSs), and when you reload, you insert a new magazine into the gun, and so loose whatever bullets were in the gun before. And there are no cross hairs, as this game does not believe in making things easy for you. It has a lot of fighting moves (have a look at the moves FAQ, at http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/583052-breakdown/faqs), you never leave first person mode (and the first person mode is done much better than in the Half-Life series, as you can always see your arms and legs any time you would in real life, so that for example when you climb a ladder you see your hands moving realistically up the ladder), when you get knocked over your vision goes all over the place realistically, etc. It really is a great game, but it is also strangely flawed - not only is the game short, but it has the worst difficulty curve of any game I've ever played (it goes from moderate to very hard, to above hard to almost impossible then down to OK, etc in a very short time, it's like it wasn't properly tested before release, like so many other games), but it's good points *far* outweigh the bad - it's fun, has an interesting storyline, atmospheric, does the whole first person viewpoint thing better than almost any other game you can think of, and when you do manage to get anywhere in the game you do feel like you've accomplished something. Sadly, it sold badly, and there was never a sequel. And since it was only on the original XBox, and written by a Japanese company (how many Japanese FPSs can you name?), almost no one got to play it. A real tragedy, both as it is so good, and because a sequel could have built on this game whilst fixing it's faults. Incidentally, on the subject of Breakdown, it is a FPS (albeit with almost no shooting by you) about conspiracies, aliens, human soldiers trying to silence you, you drive vehicles, and it's all very Half-Life like. And you also have a female sidekick who is very capable of looking after herself in a gun fight, called Alex. And in Half-Life 2 you have a female sidekick who is very capable of looking after herself in a gun fight, called Alyx. There are more similarities between HL2 and Breakdown such as in both games you NEVER leave the first person point of view, and you have to run from an attacking helictopter, have friendly scientists and hostile human soldiers. Breakdown came out the year before Half-Life 2, by the way, so if there was any copying, it wasn't by Breakdown's creators. To see it in action, go to: And even though it's not Japanese, if you want another XBox exclusive first person shooter, then you must try Unreal Championship 2. It's superb, it's the only Unreal game to properly make use of height in maps and combat, since it allows you to perform acrobatics and jump (climb, in effect) up opposing surfaces to gain height over your enemy or to get onto and over obstacles. It really is first class (and monumentally better than Unreal Championship 1, which is just a cutdown version of Unreal Tournament 2003), with great bots, great weapons (though I don't like the two weapon limit, where you have to choose two weapons to use per match), great maps, and it's very enjoyable. I don't like two out of the six game modes though, and I wish the selection of mutators was larger, but overall it's very good indeed, and I have no idea why it was never ported to the PC.
BTW, forgot to say that the XBox (my second favourite console, after the N64) is also a great emulation box (for 8 and 16 bit computers and consoles only really, 32 bit and beyond emulators are hit and miss), a first class media centre using XBMC (it's one significant limitation that I've found is that it can't play high-definition video, due to the XBox's relatively limited power), and if you put in a larger capacity hard drive, then you can play every XBox game, every emulator, every media file, etc, from the hard drive, which is fantastic for convenience and loading speed.
I'm only modding it to play imports, I'm building my own emulation box. Breakdown is pretty fantastic. although it did leave Japan. I'd put the Original XBOX at around #3 for me behind the PS1 and the Saturn.
It's not a Japan exclusive. Double-S.T.E.A.L: The second clash, I can't recommend this enough, a super fun game. Somewhat an uncommon game though. Some Japanese exclusive titles actually have english in them, sometimes it's set by the dashboard language...
One must wonder since the XBOX Classic tanked in Japan who played these games? Glad I made this thread though I've found a few games I never even knew about and I'm some what of an XBOX Historian I have all the US Demo discs almost every issue of OXM to a point Yet a large chunk of these games never showed up on my radar. Especially Muzzle Flash which looks pretty good
It is cheap enough through. Should I also seek out the XBOX version of Taito Legends 2? Though from my understanding that is a European Exclusive so I'm not sure how it will display.
