Friday 25 May 2012

Disc Station MSX #01

I'm loving these DS posts, aren't you? Each volume is like a little cave of videogamey treasure. Compile must have been feeling amazingly generous when they made them, they're always packed with stuff!
This volume has two discs, though most of the cool stuff is on the first.
"Cool stuff" meaning two full games, one of which is (as far as I know) exclusive to this disc station! The first game, the exclusive one, is a version of Aleste, which isn't a demo like what was on DSMSX#00, but a full game with newly arranged stages! Really hard newly arranged stages! Seriously, it makes regular Aleste look easy! The gameplay and weapons and such are the same as in the original game, of course. Just the stages are different.
Xevious also makes an appearance on this disk. I'm not sure whether it's a full game or a demo, though. If it's a demo, then I'm terrible and can't stay alive long enough to get to the cut off point. If it is a full game, then that makes three on this disk, and Compile are like 8-bit Santa Clauses.
Next up is another Last Armageddon-related item. When I saw it on the menu, I didn't know what to think! Was it the same demo again? Were they giving the game away free, but in a serialised form? It turns out to be neither of those things: It's actually a bestiary, listing all the monsters in the game and their statistics and such. Imagine if Western games magazines gave away RPG bestiaries! I would have loved that, I've had a life-long interest in such things. Unfortunately, the text is all in Japanese, and the pictures are tiny. Boo.
The last point of interest on the first disk is another full game, Megalopolis SOS. It's kind of like a mix between Missile Command and Galaga. You move your little gun/tank/base/thing along the bottom of the screen, shooting ufos and also sending out air-mines (or "floaters" as the game amusingly calls them). There's also six cities at the bottom of the screen, which you should probably protect. It's nothing special, but it's a nice little distraction for a few minutes.
On to disk 2, then! It doesn't contain any playable stuff, unfortunately. Most of the disk is taken up by the usual magazine stuff.
There are a couple of interesting things, though. Literally a couple. Two. The first is an animation featuring a girl standing in front of a taiko drum while Compile's mascot Randar bounces around and music plays.
The other thing is a non-interactive advert for Compile's action RPG Golvellius, which features some nice little pixel animations.

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