On the second episode of PC-88 Paradise I do a full playthrough of Falcom's 1989 "shooter RPG" Star Trader. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook! / basemntbrothers / basementbrothers / basementbrothersyoutube
Decided to rewatch the entire series so far yet again, because I always forget about one interesting or funny thing or the other, which just shows how fantastic this channel is.
I appreciate what this game does earlier than Tyrian, but Tyrian basically does the shooting and RPG aspects way better even if it's all vertical scrolling instead of side scrolling. I'd still like to see Falcom try this again, if anything because I like all of their games outside the Trails series a lot more.
I am sooo glad for this history lesson. Shump RPG's are rare every so often and this was nice to know about a gem like this with the open ended choices
That was an awesome episode, thanks so much! Your videos always feel so "complete", for lack of a better word. They've got everything: unboxing, starting up the game, reviewing, a sort of mini-walkthrough, version comparisons... The effort you put in is greatly appreciated! Star Trader looks quirky and interesting, like a relic from a time when developers dared to be innovative and experimental. Would love to play this. So keep pitching that shooter/rpg idea, Mr Jakes, you can use my title suggestion: Star Phantasy. ;D
I've played through the X68000 version on a number of occasions, and wow this is completely different. The X68k version has an absolutely slammin' soundtrack though.
I finally had a chance to sit down and watch this properly (in other words, with no distractions). My only comment is: SPLENDID. Absolutely splendid. I enjoyed every millisecond of this video...your attention to detail is obvious, and I appreciate that. Splendid.
Tyrian 2000 has some elements like this, youncant control your path as well and there's no text interactions to speak of. Just data cubes you can read or not, and they might give you a chance to go to another area
Pretty sure the game concept you are describing is Guardian Legend for the NES. Ok it isn't 100% but it absolutely has the RPG elements attached to a SHMUP and the SHMUP levels are all connected via a Zelda style overworld. UN Squadron and Sigma Star Saga are pretty similar too. Also Falcom is and was legit 😎
Guardian Legend has RPG elements, but it's nothing like what I was imagining at all. My game would have been just shooter stages that you can travel between via maps. It's much closer to Star Trader. In Guardian Legend you can't even go back to previous stages.
Great video. This game looks very interesting. Despite the choppy scrolling it still looks cool. I love that artwork. The anime style characters and all the detail looks great. The inside of the ship reminds me of JUNKER HQ in Snatcher. As you said, a few tweaks here and there and it could be a classic.
Yusuke Urameshi. And man this looks like a prime candidate for a total remake; obviously with the story and gameplay vastly expanded. Maybe in a Wing Commander style.
I love your videos. I'm not really familiar with most of these games, but I grew up on OG Phantasy Star and videos on those games led me here. Really enjoying learning about these games.
First time I've ever seen Star Trader covered in such great detail by... anyone, ever! ;) Which is really cool. I got a complete PC-88 copy of the game a long time ago, but the mousepad absolutely *reeked* of rotting vinyl, so I wound up giving it away as a booby prize in the Falcom panel I co-hosted at Otakon in 2008. ;) And the game itself has been handed over to my Falcom fan friend who actually owns a PC-88, since I figured she'd get more use out of it than I would, given that I'm unlikely to own one anytime soon. Anyway, awesome video! Really cool to see PC-88 games getting some good coverage, too, since few English-speaking sources ever talk about them. As an aside, if you're still interested in finding a shmup/RPG hybrid like the one you dreamed up as a kid, you might want to check out a homebrew MSX2 game from last year called "Sector 88." It's a mission-based story-driven shmup that gets probably the closest to the idea you had of any game I've ever played -- it doesn't have experience, but you do earn money for every enemy ship you destroy, which you get to keep even if you're shot down, meaning you still get SOMETHING even if you lose a stage. Additionally, since everything is mission-based, your goal isn't always just to fight to the end of the stage -- sometimes, you have a specific mission to bomb certain targets within the stage, defeat a certain number of a certain type of enemy before reaching the end, etc., which adds some variety to the mix. And of course, there are cutscenes after every successful mission which advance the (fairly decent) story and unlock the next mission. And multiple endings, too -- three of them, based on how much you've upgraded your shields (indicating whether or not you survived the explosion from the final battle) and how much leftover money you've got (indicating whether or not you were able to pay your way to freedom). It's pretty cool, and also visually quite stunning, pushing the MSX hardware to its absolute limits with lots of beautifully detailed backgrounds and parallax scrolling. Definitely recommended! You can get it from the KAI Magazine online shop, either by itself or as part of a compilation cartridge called "KAI Magazine Collection 2," which also comes with two other pretty cool homebrew titles called "Life On Mars" (a Metroidvania) and "Rune Monster" (a video board game clone of the classic Rune Master II), along with a pretty impressive recreation of the Sega CD intro to "Illusion City."
I see~ I'll look into Life on Mars and Illusion City, I have been on a Metroidvania and Rougelike kick lately. Looking more into this until this channel I only hard of PC 98 due to looking up Touhou 0-5 but knowing PC 88 is a thing I am sooo hype to learn more. Thank for this comment
@@LunaPrincessNinjato Well, most of what I posted in that comment was about MSX, actually -- a completely separate PC standard from PC-88 or PC-98, codeveloped by Microsoft and ASCII -- so looking into the things I mentioned won't help you learn more about PC-88, unfortunately. ;) But MSX is cool as well, and is my retro PC of choice, so hey, maybe now you'll have even more to learn about! Heheh.
That camera angle actually stained my eyes trying to look at it. Glad you didn't keep using it. Just recently found your channel and am enjoying the content.
I appreciate you taking the the time to make more obscure text heavy content like this more accessible for english speakers. Usually one would have to wait for someone to release an english language patch for rom/disk image. It appears from your other videos that you use an FS-JS220 gamepad that came packaged with the Panasonic FS-A1 MSX2. This was my first MSX machine. I have some fond memories of playing Akumajo Dracula (Vampire Killer in PAL regions) with it, before upgrading to a Sony HB-F1XV MSX2+ for smooth scrolling on Space Manbow.
Yeah. I also have an FS-A1. The pads are really small, but the dpad is not bad. Sometimes I prefer to use one of the boomerang FM Towns controllers or a Mega Drive controller with an adapter. Thanks for watching!
I really enjoy your PC-88 Paradise videos. I've been curious what older Falcom games were like on the hardware they were originally made for were like and these videos help me to know that a little bit more.
I'd say Star Cruiser and maybe Elite are the first. But they're in 3D. Then Hunter, Midwinter 2, Corporation, Mercenary III and Rejection: Den-No Senshi maybe. In 2D, Paradroid is like a free-roaming/maze shooter with some AA/RPG elements. Mind Walker is an AA. Starflight (1986) is like an open world RPG/free-roaming shooter hybrid. WiBArM is a TPS hybrid w/ leveling (1986).
Oh wow, I've actually played this game! I needed help from a friend to even be able to find a disk image of it on the internet, but since I don't know much Japanese I couldn't go very far in it...
I'm cycling back through these PC-88 Paradise videos. These are incredibly fun to watch. It makes me want to considering emulating some of these titles.
I always thought that the shooter genre could mix very well with a Metroidvania. I don't know about it mixing with an RPG though. If so, it should have a plot similar to Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series of books.
Not side-scrolling, but there have been several top-down games that get most of the way there like Escape Velocity, Drox Operative, or Endless Sky. Star Control II was arguably more of an adventure/shooter than RPG, but it's also a classic for a reason. I think it often comes down to whether you're looking for an action-RPG with shooter-esque combat or a shooter with RPG elements.
Falcom is such an incredible developer. One of my favorite game companies today. They were so innovative back in the early days of games and still are unique in their own way with their Ys and Trails games in their respective genres. Great video. I had not heard of this game before watching this. After watching this PC-88 vid as well as your Ys video it blows my mind that Nintendo was the more popular console when the PC-88 seems to have been the more powerful. I wonder why Nintendo won over. Price? Marketing? Ease of use? All of the above? Thanks for the content.
It's been ages since you've done this review, but I've been dying to find a high quality image of the face of the mousepad, and this video is the only place I've seen a full unboxing of this game with the pad in such great condition. It is such an amazing design and I really want to make a pad of my own using it, would it be impossible to do a scan of this mousepad? (assuming you still have the box and its contents) If not, i'll try my hand at vectorizing it. Many thanks for this in-depth video.
so instead of just a review we also got to hear about the game you hypothesized about. and thats like a two fer one. also it was funny when you kept saying no to remi. kinda reminded me of some grumpy dudes i saw in an anime who didnt want random idiots living on their spaceship.
It's definitely an interesting concept for a game. I've always wanted a shooter with a bit more story involved as well, but one that didn't feel like it was just getting in the way of the shooting parts like how some games tend to feel. I think it's a tough balance to strike between twitch-gameplay and telling a compelling narative.
I'm curious as to what you would think of Sundog: Frozen Legacy by FTL on the Atari ST. It was also a space trading game with a story, although not a side scrolling shooter. It had segments of 3d~ish space combat, and some 2d gunfights in the cities. It was pretty open, and used the economics and game goals to tell the story rather than dialog trees. No anime characters there. I guess it's a very different game, but as a space trading game with action elements and a story from roughly the same era, perhaps you would find it interesting.
There's another niche in games that I don't see being very well explored: racing games with RPG mechanics. The few ones I can remember are F1 Built To Win (NES) and Gran Turismo 2 to an extent. Drive across different cities with different tournaments, level up your car, opens up new tournaments, level up some more, etc etc I would like to see more of that. Also, randomized tracks like the Road Rash series has.
There's even an Arkanoid-clone for MSDOS on which you earn credit for killed enemies, buy weapons, buy extra lives, etc... it's called Powball... there's a freeware version too... very few "RPG elements" if you can even consider them that, but they are there
@@BasementBrothers Wooooow I had forgotten about that game, let me add it to the "reminders" list real quick before I forget it again... Thanks so much... that's another great game yeah
Great video once again. Thank you. As a huge Falcom fan, I do own the game and played it, but I gave up quiet fast because of the choppy scrolling. I still find the concept very interesting but had to stop the video to the spoiler alert because your video encourage me to try to beat the game. By the way, the Takeru version on X68000 is the one you want to get if you want to play this game in the best conditions.
Thank you for the information. Just watch the last part. Did not know that the X68000 version had these kind of change making this pc-88/98 version quiet unique. It is the same kind of remake than Mid-Garts for X68000.
40 hours of game play sounds cool. i think to concept of the 1CC should be included. the concept of getting hit 3 times = game over can be included. lets say you make it through a whole section with a "1CC" then you would get rewarded or unlock something.
Have you played Sigma Star Saga on the GBA? That's another side scroller shooter RPG, one that actually lets you level up and more. It was pretty decent I thought.
Have you played the Assault Suit series? Leynos, Valken and Front Mission Series : Gun Hazard? They are technically run and guns but as you have a mech and you can fly a bit they play more like a shoot'em'up in a lot of ways. But Leynos also has pure space battle massive ship fights as well.
Hmm, it's sad to hear this game wasn't the sci-fi shmup RPG hit it could've been. Still, it's nice to see an attempt was made. Maybe there are more of these nowadays?
It would have been nice to get a shooter with more RPG elements, the closest thing I could think of is Tyrian but it doesn't quite fit the scope of game you were describing in your concept.
It would be awesome if somebody try to make something similar of this game for Sega Genesis / Mega Drive and make some changes or totally different shooter RPG
I’m curious. Do you live in Japan, or aree rich, or have a good connect or great luck for finding this stuff? I can’t imagine pc88 being anything but expensive to import.
All the music near the 20 minute mark is from Star Trader. There is a very nice Falcom-y sounding track there, indeed. I think I mentioned the same track again near the end of the video. Thanks for watching.
Shmup RPGs are rare for a reason. Shmup is a delicate genre where when the balance calibration is wrong just for a bit, it will ruin the experience. RPGs are built to have fluctuating numbers. When that happens, the player must either face repeated game overs while not having fun or have to grind and repeat stages while that grinding time can be used to practice a far better shmup instead. Plus, from the review the game is a convincing case of Euro Shmup. We use this derogatory term for shmups that use RPG elements like thicker shield, shop or levels to cover is underlying bad game design :P You know it sucks when it got a remake, it becomes a normal shmup instead of preserving its RPG elements. As a shmup veteran, whenever you see (another) shmup RPG / Euro Shmup, proceed with caution! Not saying these games are automatically bad, but these have a high likelihood to suck. At least if you expect these games as proper shmups.
Indeed! I think you're exactly right. To make a good shmup RPG you would have to calibrate it like an RPG, where the shooter stages would feel just right when the player first arrives at each stage, and then later in the game you'd also get the satisfaction of easily mowing down enemies when traveling back through previous stages. I can imagine it being awesome if done right.
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