I have a flatmate thats going to Japan for a week and I have also recently just got my first Japanese System - a Super Famicom. So of course I'm putting a list together of games to look out for if they are a reasonable price loose or boxed. I really like a good Shmup and I can't read Japanese so RPG's are sadly out of the question. Also if there are any good games that are Japan (and not too hard/pricey to find) only or didn't make it over here (or are just hard to find) to PAL land let me know. I'm not sure where abouts they are going thjough so I'll have to ask. Sadly they arn't gamers themselves either so I'll have to be pretty specific what I want. Thanks in advance!
Shmups, eh? I know they're not exactly rare or unavailable in PAL land, but Gradius III and Pop'n Twinbee are must-haves if you don't already have them. Parodius Da! and Gokujou Parodius are also great, if you like really silly shmups, and they're pretty decent ports too on the SFC. Super Famicom Wars is fooking great (it's the precursor to Advance Wars), but probably rare as hell as you could only get it through Nintendo Power magazine IIRC. I can write the names in Japanese (for the ones where it's written in Japanese on the carts/boxes) if that'll be of any help to your friend when looking for 'em.
That would be awesome - means he can just show it to the shopkeeper and not waste his holiday looking for my stuff. I'll post a list here in a day or two and if you can do that for me you would be a real legend!
Macross Scrambled Valkyrie, Axelay, Super Aleste are the three big shooters for me as far as SFC. Area 88 (Japanese name)/UN Squadron is a good game too. R-Type 3 is ok, but Super R-Type suffers from slowdown and is a bit of a shit game. Aside from that, Contra 3 is unmissable. Obviously the Mario games (World, All-stars, World 2:Yoshi's Island, Kart) are great, and don't require any Japanese to be able to play. Cybernator is a lovely looking and good playing side scrolling mecha game. The Goemon series are good too. Oh, and tell him to pick me up Umihara Kawase if he sees it cheap
Yeah, what he said ^_^ Forgot about Contra 3 - possibly the best in the series, and allegedly made by some members of Treasure. Kirby Super Deluxe is pretty good too, but there's a good bit of dialogue in it...
I really recommend Macross Scramble Valkyrie. A friend of mine brought my copy from Kyoto one or two years ago. Axelay is magnificent, though quite common in NTSC US. Super Aleste was quite good if I remember ( played only a ROM before). Kikikaikai was pretty neat, also. R-type 3 was insanely hard but very good. Darius Force, I liked that one a lot. There's also a Cotton game for SNes, though it might be somewhat rare.
Word on the Macross, great game. When the giant ship folds in is a real SFC w0000 moment. Apart from that, Golden Fighter is the great, and Valis IV, and Chibi chara Wars.
Ooh, Super Famicom shooters. Here I go. 1. - Macross Scramble Valkry 2. - Super Aleste 3. - Area 88 4. - Parodius Da! 5 - Gokujou Parodius 6 - Super contra / Contra Spirits 7 - Dezamon Shootem'up construction kit 8 - R-Type III 9 - Asault Suit Valken 10 - Pop'n Twinbee There you go. 10 great shooters for the Super Famicom. There are many duds too such as Super EDF, Phalanx (well it's ok at best), Acrobat Mission, Gradius III (Over hyped with major slowdown) and others. Yakumo
Treasure was originally part of Konami - during their tenure, they were responsible for Gradius, Contra 3, Contra Hard Corps, Castlevania IV, Axelay, and several others. They got tired of rehashing the same franchises over and over again and split to form Treasure, where they could develop the games that they wanted to. Cotton 100%. I don't think it should be too rare - possibly uncommon, but I got mine for relatively cheap. Awesome game and a lot of fun. Also, I'd recommend Darius Twin if difficult shooters sporting cybernetic fish are your thing. Gradius III, as everyone said, is a must have (puts the shit arcade version to shame - I guess one of the programmers forgot to set the IS_IMPOSSIBLE flag to 0 on that), and there's also Raiden Trad. The SNES/SFC version isn't as good as the Genesis version isn't as good as the TurboGrafx-16 version, but the game is still a staple of modern shooting. And for something completely different, definately go with Axelay, it's awesome.
Hmm... Dazaemon construction kit, is it any good? Do you need much Kanji for the level maker stuff? I've got most of those now (just missing the Parodius games), I'm running out of good shooters for the SNES... any more obscure titles that are worth a play?
I've got Dezaemon on Saturn and it seems manageable to make a simple shmup with it, ask Segafreak_NL as he's the expert ;-)
