Use code ERUPTION130 to get $130 off Factor at bit.ly/3xQcfXu! HELLO! IT IS ME. This week (as in 7 days from the time this comment was typed) I released nearly 80 minutes of scripted videos between this and Metal Gear Survive. I am a tired man, but I truly hope y'all enjoy this! This topic is weird as heck, and if you wanna see me do more things like this, consider checking out the sponsors or my personal things as well! Or of course, just keep watching. I can't thank y'all enough, your support means the world to me. ANYWAYS. Know any other games like this? Would *Love* to have more nonsense to toss my friends ways.
@Austin Eruption You must be tired, to have missed Jet Force Gemini. One Must Fall 2097 is a great PC fighting game in the "I like anime!" style. I'll have to look through the GBA library. I remember some horror stories, but none of their names spring to mind.
Ironically enough i have one of those How To Draw Manga books. And also Septerra Core. Oni, and Shogo...and X-Blades and Blades of Time. Please don't judge me.😅
A minor error here that I just found really funny: While Inspector Gadget was created by two Frenchmen and an American, it was largely animated by TMS Entertainment, one of the oldest anime studios in Japan. :P
And it was rumored to be retool of a Lupin III spinoff, Lupin VIII, that never got off the ground past a pilot episode due to a lawsuit from Maurice Leblanc's estate
Well. Honestly guys...most animation from 1978 onward was outsourced to Japan, and then later Korea. GI Joe...was actually "Anime." Austin is taking about organic, Japanese animation.
Fun fact, at the time of its hype building press pieces before release, Oni's devs were making a big deal about getting actual architects to do the level design. They ended up showing why that's not a necessarily a good thing.
Turns out real life architecture doesn't really make fun video game environments(unless the game was specifically made for it, like modern realistic shooters)
@@Azure9577 I think there was only ONE instance where it was. Red Faction. I remember hearing that the physics were so good that they had to learn how to actually build structures and hire some architects. And it actually worked in that game's favor, since destroying it all felt like destroying a real building, because in a way..you kinda were.
@@whatisfzeroanymore2nd yooo red faction was and still is very amazing And again as i already said in my previous comment If the game was specifically made for it, then you want irl architecture
@@greedthesavage9551 mine is still in perfect shape after numerous house and continent moves lol Same as my pokemon emerald and FireRed Almost 20 years. Seems like it was all just yesterday.
X-Blades actually has a minor cult following in Japan, mostly (or, almost certainly _entirely_ ) because over there the main character was dubbed by Rie Kugimiya, a _very_ popular Japanese voice actress.
I started to draw with THAT book. for what is worth and for how ugly I think it looks nowadays, It did had on it's favor being very beginner friendly. It was simultaneously detailed enough to introduce you step by step, yet simple enough to avoid being overwhelming. It geuinely understood what was that a beginner needed to know the most and didn't really talk about stuff that wouldn't make any sense for beginner. All in all, better books with much better art could genuinely learn something of the way this book understood how to teach to someone learning from zero.
The Drawing like Manga book wasn’t actually published by an established author. I think I remember the author being a kid when she wrote it and now she’s a well established illustrator :)
My elderly primary school teacher actually introduced me to manga with those same fake manga books in this video because I love to draw in the class. She likes drawing such inspired styles sometimes.
I don't consider Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi a "Fake anime"... I consider it "Puffy AmiYumi's attempt to be like The Beatles and get a cartoon of themselves... but not building up the years of fame needed to lovingly DESERVE a cartoon, like The Beatles did."
@@jaysonklein6018 Thing is they were getting popular around that time. Popular enough that Nicktoon bought the rights to make a show. It's not AmiYumi that had the idea. They didn't attempt shit. Also, the show is a classic, it did super well. It still holds up even. It succeeded. You are clearly uneducated about all this.
I have a soft spot for Sudeki and knew it would make an appearance. A fun fact is that the "trying and not really succeeding to present the game as authentically Japanese" thing goes right down to the title in that one. "Suteki" in Japanese means wonderful or amazing, and one of the devs confessed later that that was what they were going for, but a mistake was made somewhere along the line and they wound up going with a misspelling instead. That error feels like such a beautiful, perfect encapsulation of the era and the rush to present products as "anime" irrespective of whether or not it was a good idea.
This reminds me of as a kid naming my characters cool Japanese names such as: Karoshi Mazushara Sigma Wasawashi Zuky Uzasaki Very well.."if it feels Japanese, it is Japanese!!" How is sigma anywhere close to a Japanese name I must ask. But it was a legit character I made as a kid..
@@kabardino1337 Haha, aw, that's really cute. I mean to be fair, I feel like taking actual Japanese sounds and trying to make names out of them like you did is probably an upgrade from the very on-the-nose approach of just taking an ordinary word in another language and pretending it's a name. I'd rather have some of your names than names like Kenshi ("swordsman") or Shujinko ("protagonist") from Mortal Kombat. "Karoshi" in Japanese means death from overwork, though, so I'm worried about that guy. :( Think you should give them a little holiday.
Sudeki is one of that games from my childhood I actually remember finishing and enjoying the combat quite a bit. Also... Yes, the costumes of the female cast were eye-catcing to say the least.
@D34DB34T People do such stupid cultural mistakes all the time even today. Remember J.R. Rowling's "Other schools of wizardry" and how stupid they sound in the original languages. Most often that means "We're going for a superficial aesthetic and nothing else".
But does Jak & Daxter really count since they went out of their way to appeal to both western and eastern markets for the art style? Which oddly enough succeeded at the time.
Good lord I forgot about Oni. I begged my mom to get that game for months until she finally did for my birthday.....only for young me to have his first disappointing education in computer hardware and how our brick of a computer was in no way able to play it.
@@UltimaKeyMaster What part of "I'm not making this up" do you not understand? I'm pretty sure he's even said so in one of his Fact Hunt videos, if you don't believe me.
I remember getting SHOGO free with a video card. I also remember being disappointed that it never got a follow-up, because honestly, I enjoyed the game a great deal, and the character models never really bothered me.
Megas XLR was amazing and had so many references from Robotech to Voltron to Sailor moon. One episode the main character have an Evil twin character from a different dimension who had a version of the Sazabi from Gundam. I could go on and on about the references but this show should have had more seasons. It was made because of a fan vote and was pitched at a con after a few minute trailer was made on a VHS.
I finally played Valhalla this year and it quickly became one of my favorite visual novel games. Then I learned they were making a Jill nendoroid so it feels like the game finally arrived
Holy balls, I haven’t thought about Adventure Quest in ages. That game had my most favorite stun/confusion ability ever…Your character would point towards the enemy and shout something like “LOOK! A DISTRACTION!” I chuckled every time and still do
I actually went back to some of the games recently to check em out again. It's so cool they're still updated to this day. Dragonfable in particular I went and bought a Dragon Amulet to support the game and live my childhood dreams lol
@@harry9828 I sank WAAAAY too much time into aqw lmao. I think that was the first mmo I bought a subscription for. Honestly was a great time and simple enough for child me to understand.
i'd say my favorite fake anime game would be cartoon network and grigon's fusionfall. though it's a little janky and quite basic as far as combat goes, for baby's first mmorpg and third-person shooter, i'd say it's pretty good. the plot and lore are also pretty crazy.
Played Septerra Core as a kid and I can say its definitely worth a play so long as you can speed up the fights. It has one of the best world designs even if it doesn't make sense but having layers of the planet w/ different societies and people made traveling to each one exciting. Old kingdom on one, a pirate society on another, and two nations at war on another. It was pretty great!
That reminds me a bit of the game Lost in Random. It's about a country divided into six areas, some of which layered on one another, each named after a side of a die. Some of them capitalize on the number their area correspond to, like Two-town having a theme of duality that manifests differently for different people, such as: -Two personalities in one body that take turns controlling it, -A personality or mood instantly switching from happy to sad when a bell or something sounds. -One body with a face in front and back, also with two different personalities. but they both try to make a potion that essentially kills the other personality -Two bodies that are technically *one* personality. Or how in the town that corresponds to the number three, there's a civil war raging between three children of the royal family, who all have a giant robot that fights one another and of which the movement is also decided by the roll of a die for the day. Gameplay is unusual, but the creativity in Lost in Random is undeniable.
@@austineruption I've got a question that I'm sure you get all the time but would you have any advice for someone trying to make RU-vid their job? So far I have 152 subs.
@@hanginwithyourbuds6240 Videos each days. Also, the content you are making is nothing special. Getting noticed for let's play is a fool journey. You can post them, it's quick and easy content but be sure to have other type of content.
@@alexandrebelair4360 you're not wrong. I know it's an uphill battle but I work 60 plus hours a week so I really only have time to do the let's plays. I at the very least try to make them funny lol I did a couple review type videos early on but I had a lot more time back then and reviews take way more time to make. I appreciate the feedback though.
Weird thing for the Magi Nation game for GBC: they messed up the numbers for selling items, and certain items you can buy sell for more than they cost to buy, so you can get infinite money at any shop in the game. Which... doesn't actually help all that much, cause money isn't hard to get and isn't all that useful since it has no gear, so you just buy consumables you can find easily in abundance.
Claw weapons are dang neat. Maybe not so much in real life, but they just have this look and feel to them when seeing them in video games or comics. Something both brutal and fast. I liked how all weapons were unique in Sudeki and had something different to offer, though i did not nearly use some as much as others-- or preferred the looks of ones i didn't use as much above the ones i *did* use much. Darksiders 2 has a lot of visual varieties of claw and gauntlet weapons too that look very cool. There's also this real-life claw weapon from India called the Bakh Nagh, but that's worn on the inside of the palm rather than on the back of the hand. More for grabbing than slashing.
So glad scurge and sigma Star saga came up, 2 of my favorites on GBA that I always recommend. If you want another ridiculous anime-attempt check out Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ on the DS. On the opposite side of the fence I always thought that the Izuna the Unemployed Ninja games were “fake anime” until googling just now and finding out the devs are in-fact Japanese
The worst part of Sudeki was ALL the side quests were: kill X monsters get their loot, come talk to the npc he says go get some MORE loot then come back again so either you stocked up on the loot or traveled back and forth like an idiot... and the rewards were always some shit like potions and nothing worth it but you GOT to do it cause you never know maybe you get good shit eventually. Also the game was buggy af. I remember the first time i played through it NONE of the videos would play so imagine how fucking confused i was with the game just starting with no introduction and then after hours i beat the final boss and the game cuts straight to credits i was like wtf did the developers never expected it anyone to finish it ?
Very fair. For me it was also backtracking that made it less fun, and as Downwending says the ending is quite a copout. Only one of the four characters playable for the final boss. Thing is, Sudeki wasn't planned to release in this state. It was planned to be a longer and bigger game but some stuff happened with the devs and the timeframe they were given by Microsoft or something (i don't know the details), so stuff had to be cut and changed to still fit the shorter story. There's a video online of a short ending of Sudeki made by the old animators and actors that, although short, still shows what the protagonists decide to do afterwards. And there is also a video that shows someone looking at footage of older builds and concept art of Sudeki alongside one of the devs from back then, showing stuff like more bosses, enemies, characters and what Heigou would have looked like properly. The cult following of this game is still decently strong. I hope it gets a second chance one day.
@@ORLY911 LoL I wouldn't say it's one of the prettiest of the era. Way to uneven for that. FFX piss on it and FFX isn't that good looking for the generation.
No, no it wasn't. I love ol' Larry but I don't understand why he or other people that have heard this rumor grossly overstates his involvement with the game. He was officially commissioned for a promotional piece, so he is correct that he did art for them, but it was not the cover art, or really any of the primary printed materials for the game.
@@MediocrityGoggles Ahhh. Thanks for the clarification. Larry saying it himself was probably one of his "Red Herrings" and I, like many others, was duped.
Austin, I have to tell you friend. I've been watching you for a few years and I have to say you're my favorite RU-vid creator. Keep it up, dude! And no, I'm not a bot!
Ah Magi Nation. Loved the card game as a kid. Never played the GBC game though. It's rather funny that the game is Fake Anime as it got a Japanese exclusive remake for GBA that had an anime ary style. Suprised you brought it up as I only found out about it maybe a year ago because of an English translation patch. I completely forgot about Sudeki. I wish I grabbed this back when I worked at Gamestop and original XBox games went buy 1, get 2 free.
A little fun fact - in Poland Sudeki was released on PC in 2005 and it was immediately attached to the video game magazine call CD-Action. That's why in Poland it's kinda cult-following game :)
props for the use of the Tokyo Tower BGM from Magic Knight Rayearth for the Sega Saturn for the video. also I love Sudeki, I'd love a reboot with a refined story but keep it's unique UK influences as well as It's anime influences.
I've been playing both Adventure Quest and DragonFable since 2007, especially DF. It's story has legit grown and matured greatly over the years. I still cry at the end of the Tomix Saga whenever I replay it. Not to mention the gameplay, with it now having an actual more complex endgame with challenges in The Inn at The Edge of Time.
My brother told me about that game way back when. He was also the one making me aware of Kingdom Hearts. I knew the former as BattleOn, and I remember playing for a few hours collectively, paying to get "promoted" with some cool armor, and then putting the game down forever.
I got the septera core/shogo double pack on a walmart for 5 bucks. I had just gotten my first PC back in 2000. Totally worth it in my opinion. It was really fun to go thru the store shelves back then and finding hidden nuggets of fun that I had no idea they existed. Good times.
THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT SUDEKI! I thought that shit was a fever dream, I rented this from family video when I was younger and never returned it. Some voice lines are still burned into my head today.
I will forever be ride or die about Fear Effect. The first game was so rad and for teenager me it was the closest thing to playing an anime movie. Plus the multiple story paths based on your actions and leading to different endings was great. I also loved how just brutal the game was; one of your protagonists gets thrown on a meat hook and has his hand butchered off. Then you continue to play as him later sans hand and royally messed up from the hook.
I was cleaning out my closet full of junk literally yesterday and threw out a bunch of "how to draw" books I got from the scholastic book fair. I had the EXACT "how to draw manga" book you used as an example. What a coincidence!
I didn’t know Magi-Nation had a game boy game. I knew it as a cartoon when it aired on 4kids. It was really good and the fact it’s the first time of hearing it makes me want to get it. I really loved it wish we got more, but that’s some new information.
I was so keen on getting Sudeki back then but ended up never finishing it. To this day though I know the intro, voiced by Tom Baker (the 4th Doctor Who), by heart and it’s truly epic.
0:28 Inspector Gadget's animation was outsourced to TMS. Not the same thing as being native anime, but we outsourced a lot of our animation to Japan in the 80s.
Fun Fact: the PC version of Oni has a dedicated modding scene that makes the game playable on modern PCs, in addition to optional as fanmade levels, weapons, and characters (including an Fight Club level where you can fight Motoko). Side note: seeing someone else mention Sudeki gave me emotional whiplash, since I hadn't thought about that game in years despite still owning my physical Xbox disc for it that I bought in '06.
It was wild seeking out a playthrough of Sudeki in 2022, and comparing it to my hazy childhood memories of renting it for the original Xbox. It was almost the exact same feeling as returning to my childhood home as an adult, and realizing that everything looked so small, when I was a kid it was all so vast. Sudeki is incredibly short for an RPG from that kind of mold, but Kid Me never knew that. I have vivid memories of spending countless hours.
I played most of this back in Russia in the 90s. Thanks austin, that was awesome. Especially Septerra core. I've been looking for it for ages googling "rpg giant wrench" haha
I'm definitely glad to see VALL-HA11-A mentioned in videos like this because while this is something you'd never really think of (though its not that you think about someone's nationality when they do something cool lol), the devs are actually from Venezuela (though moved to the US) and the cyberpunk motif as well as dystopian events happening in the background are all based off stuff that happens there. I know that because I also live there and that one moment where "people making long lines just for milk" on Jill's phone actually hit home with how shit was back in those years. They really put their hard work there and earned their reward thanks to how the anime style REALLY caught on with people, to the point that the game actually has an official Japanese translation...but not an official Spanish one lmao So yeah, that's one funny story about how embracing anime style was the ticket for some inspired guys in a third-world country to achieve their dreams and get their foot somewhere else :)
Loving these long episodes! I think this is really where you shine. From Boku No Eruption, to Arcadea, to Austin...I really do appreciate this content and what you put into it. You shine when you really just let yourself be you!
I went on a "bargain bin" shopping spree a bit over a decade ago and got Oni for $3.00 at a California GameStop. I ended up really liking it despite it being about 60% harder than I was prepared for.
And poor Exosquad. Create it by Jeff Seagal at Universal Animation Studio with heavy Japanese anime-inspired storylines and getting the late Michael Edens the guy that helps write EPs for X-men animated series and many other cartoons as head writer. They licensed their toy making, as well as anything, Connect to Exosquad to Playmates. And after Universal Studio fired Jeff Seagal and canceled Exosquad they basically let Playmates do whatever until their license ran out giving us a board game and a very strange Sega Genesis game. The show talked about racism, how slavery was horrible, the horrors of war, and losing loved ones in war. The Sega Genesis game Exosquad was about Time travel. The show came out in 1993.
I bought Sepettra Core and Shogo in a really cool two pack from Best Buy when I was 10. My friend and I would play Shogo with cheats and run around causing insane amounts of chaos.
Dude, I sang along with that shogo theme so loud when you played it. Thanks for putting this in, literally had no idea this was a western studio, thought it was an Eastern studio trying to be western. I'm glad others remember it!
Holy shit Sudeki. I played it on PC, incredibly buggy mess but I still loved it. I dont remember what was the game about but I do remember that I was fascinated by it.
I think I remember playing Oni. My roommate bought it, and I definitely remember the action being a bit jank, but I got pretty far in it. I remember fighting a rogue AI in a heavily trapped room near the end of the game.
I remember watching one RU-vidr playing a game that I feel fits is Custom Robo. As they described it as the art looks like it was commissioned from early deviant art trying to draw anime.
Man, its such a throwback to see Drei from the "how to draw anime and manga" book on the thumbnail. That takes me straight back to middle school my dude.
I played the shit out of the demo version of Oni as a kid and I really want to play the full version now holy shit. The combat honestly feels great in that game for being what it is
I watched this with the hope you’d mention a certain game and you did. Sudeki is the one game I have never been able to describe right for reddit and I always wondered what it was. I played the HELL out the demo and as soon as I saw this video I hoped it would be here. I’ve literally been racking my brain for years thank you Austin 😅
You FORGOT to mentioned the scrapped Sudeki ending, overall I played it as a kid and still sometimes to this day despite how cheesy and cheep it may look Sudeki has a unique plot and story setting that it made a really enjoyable experience. I really suggest to check out the scrapped ending as you will actually see what happened after the game ended originally
Oh god, Blade Kitten. That activated some long-dormant neurons. Kinda sad we didn't get to hear more about it, cause the way it tries to tell its story (I think it was tied in with a webcomic?) and the future-slang it threw all over the place was so painfully of the time (not to mention it was super easy to yet the best sword in the game after the first level).
MAN Magi Nation was a wild thing I fell in love with when I first opened that box as a kid. I still lament that it feels like the game got rushed out to get shipped because collecting the strongest monsters in each zone - the Hyrens - was a fun challenge, but couldn't be done with the base game. The encounters to find the last two - Bolt and Thunder - in the air zone weren't coded and could only be gotten with a GameShark. Regardless, a fun collectable game that had some real dark moments throughout the story for my impressionable child mind.
Ah, Sudeki. One of my favourite childhood games. It was so unique at the time, I dont remember the story at all, but I still remember the unique mechanics and the fact that every character got new cooller costumes as the story progressed.
Wow! I had completely forgot about Adventure Quest. All my memories just came flooding back all at once. Thanks Austin! Imma have to check it out again.
There are two flavors of western media inspired by Japanese media. 1. Actually pretty charming passion projects that have a clear understanding of what they're inspired from 2. Cringe
@@alexandrebelair4360 lots of 18+ games which take place in Japanese setting are the epitome of this. These projects are usually passion projects (some of them may bring the author a good income), authors are clearly inspired by lifestyle, culture (sometimes superficially) and whatever else from Japan. And it's usually cringe, sometimes unplayable/unwatchable and sometimes unfappable.
Actually I always thought Inspector Gadget's niece looked like she was from an anime and then it made me feel like it was an old anime like Speed Racer.
Damn I never thought I'd remember X Blades ever again. That game fooled a lot of boys in my class into buying it cause of the hot chick in the cover. I actually got the game from a friend who didn't want it anymore and I don't blame him for getting rid of it, it was hot garbage
It’s amazing that how Western and Eastern animation are so different,based around culture. Now anime became so mainstream these days,even Western animation studios begin to make their cartoons look more like anime. Some are good but most of them not so much.
Inspector Gadget was literally animated by TMS Entertainment, a Japanese company famous for Lupin the Third and Detective Conan. Most 80s/early 90s cartoons were animated in Japan by famous Japanese companies.
Great video, I've had Sudeki on my Steam due to sheer curiosity so thanks for covering it. Orbital Media had another anime-ish game in the works called Pirate Battle; I was looking forward to since it looked similar to FF Tactics Advance but they shut down before releasing it unfortunately.
1:59 Jesus, Sader. What a freaking throwback. With Fate/GO, the dozens of anime, and Melty Blood 2.0 nowadays, you'd get that figure burnt at the stake if you made it today.
Oh boy! Sudeki! I remember playing that on my XBox but never finishing it - I guess I should leave it at nostalgia for this one. The weird artstyle and voice acting really stuck with me though, cause that was a rarity in RPGs at the time.
The early 2000s were when anime was starting to become somewhat big in the West and attract a sizable audience, so it makes sense that we’d get plenty of “fake” anime games to cater to that crowd.
Shantae, Septerra Core, Oni, Malice, Sudeki... i know them all. I played and quite liked some of them. If not for the game, then for the ideas. ESPECIALLY so with Malice (and Sudeki). You are very right in that the finished product feels like half-baked idea-- that is because it is more of an assembly of finished pieces they tried to rework into a logical, coherent story, just to finally get it done. There is a longplay of an earlier build of Xbox Malice floating around that shows a lot of cool ideas that did not get to make it in. Lore such as Malice having to time-travel to bring the unborn children of the war-torn future to the past until the future has been safeguarded, and there being a system of the Chinese five elements (Metal, Earth, Water, Fire and Wood) with a respective deity ruling over each: -Dog God is Fire -The Siren Tree is Wood -Metal Guardian (who forms the hub of the released product) speaks for itself -In that earlier build, there was this imprisoned giant mermaid creature Malice had to release and later fight, who speaks for itself too. -Malice herself is often called mother by the bird militia characters that fight the crow army. She's Mother Earth. And this elemental system would be reflected by the magic. Every element would be strong against two particular ones and weak against two others (Wood is burnt by Fire and chopped down by Metal, but fed by both Water and Earth) and Malice would obtain different spells relating to each element over the course of this story. The main goal of the game, as said before, would have been to safeguard the future and prevent Dog God from even beginning the war-- and to do so, she must make the Siren Tree aware of his death in the future to have him agree to making preparations against it, as well as resurrect the Metal Guardian who seems to reside out of normal time and has been killed by Dog God in the past already. So over the course of the game, Malice would have been instructed by left-behind messages by the Metal Guardian to collect scrap to slowly repair and rebuild him, alongside the Logic Key collectables you see in the final game. Which, if i remember correctly, open some doors around the Metal Guardian's home that would give things that benefit Malice. The witch would have had a slightly different role as an advisor to the Spirit Tree of sorts, there was meant to be a callback to earlier Malice ideas such as the segment that turns her into the PS1 version of herself (which *is* in the final game) as well as a cat, the structure of the game would not have been irrevocable level-to-level without a way of replaying it, Juju Man would have been a more direct and prevalent character that would first appear directly in the Siren Tree area... My man, there is *so* much interesting stuff to what ideas Malice carried and what it COULD have been. I'm probably one of the biggest apologist out there, but i sincerely believe that Malice, with all these past ideas, has potential to be a really good and memorable game. That it would benefit from a second chance by a team that knows what they're doing and can give it a proper second chance, to breathe new life into that weird world that never truly got to live.
I became a fan of this channel due to your love of Phantasy Star…. And now you go and talk about Shogo. Austin, I love you, my dude, you just became my favorite youtube channel!!
Holy shit. You brought up Malice and even followed it's development? That games a childhood classic in my opinion. (even though it screams rushed in the cutscenes... with animations not lining up with the voice lines...)
It's sweet to see at least some people having had a good experience with it. There was so much more planned with Malice, like an element system based on the Chinese Five Elements (Metal, Earth, Water, Fire and Wood) which would be the crux of the magic system too, where one element would be strong against two specific ones and weak against two others. There would have been some sort of deity too, corresponding to each of the five elements. Dog God for Fire, Siren Tree for Wood, Metal Guardian for... well, guess, and a giant mermaid monster-looking creature shown in an earlier build that Malice would have had to free and fight in a boss battle. And also time-travel to bring the unborn children of the future to a safe point in the past/present as Malice tries to safeguard the future, as well as collect scrap throughout the game to repair the Metal Guardian for he had been killed by Dog God in a place outside of the normal flow of time. There's an 11-or-so-episodes longplay of an earlier build of Malice that showcases a good number of differences between the released product and the ideas they had for it. There's so much cool stuff in what Malice *could* have been and i don't think the released product is all that great. But by gosh, the potential and music of it can be really awesome. And like games such as Sudeki, Kya: Dark Lineage and Haven: Call of the King, i hope it may get a second chance someday.
Thanks, I've been trying to remember the name of Septerra Core for years now. I read RPGamer's review for it back in the day and thought it looked so cool, but never found it in stores. And yeah.. as an anime-style visual novel and RPG enjoyer (but not necessarily a japan-purist) it's a good time to be alive. The explosion of great indie stuff the last few years has been incredible.
Growing up on mostly bootleg games on PC in a third-world country, I actually could recall playing most of these games in the past. Spent so much time shooting your fellow comrades in the first on-foot level in Shogo lol. There's one other anime-styled PC game I played around the time of Oni and Shogo called Tsunami 2265. It's an Italian-developed mecha-based action game that's not particularly good, but it had quite an opening that wouldn't be out of place during Toonami's block.
I freaking adored Sudeki as a young Xbox fan. Even playing it a 2nd time as an adult was still a fun experience, and I liked the characters and locations. I always held out for a sequel (one was in development for a while before getting cancelled), and I find it interesting how obscure it's become today despite being on Steam and everything. It's up there along with Blinx: The Time Sweeper as deep-seated fever dreams from my childhood that no one else remembers.
I haven't thought about Scourge: Hive in years. I got it for Christmas one year from my mom, because it "looked like one of those screaming cartoons you watch".
