Monthly Archives: September 2026

JRPG 57 – Dragon Ball: Daimaou Fukkatsu (FC)

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Dragon Ball: Daimaou Fukkatsu (ドラゴンボール 大魔王復活), released 8/12/1998, developed by Tose, released by Bandai

Nearly 10 years ago, I played a Super Famicom Dragon Ball game, although I did not finish it. The card battle system of that game originated here in this Famicom game, which is a hybrid between an RPG, an adventure game, and a board game. As I said in that post, my experience with Dragon Ball is pretty limited. I’ve never seen the anime and I read only a few volumes of the manga a long time ago.

In a bizarre turn, CRPG Addict somehow covered this game a while back, and he played the whole thing although he didn’t cover it in as much depth as he usually does for his reviews. But he goes over the story of the game there; I don’t know how much it borrows from the original story.

The adventure parts are pretty annoying. The interface is clumsy and the “puzzles” mostly consist just of trying every option until you succeed. It’s hard to keep track of the locations, and some of what you have to do to progress isn’t very fair — in one place you have to talk to someone 3 times (with the same response) and the the 4th time something will happen to progress the story. It’s possible that if you are more familiar with the source material it’s not so opaque.

Once you figure out how to move on from the adventure part, you get the board game.

You choose a card which determines the number of spaces you move. At the point a random thing happens. The possibilities are:

  • Fight an enemy
  • Get help from the dragon
  • Nothing
  • Old woman, who either has you train with the master (for some XP if you succeed) or a mini game like the card memory game

Fights are based on the cards. The top of each card is the attack and the bottom is defense. The middle is punch, kick, special attack, run, and maybe other options.

You can choose the number of cards you attack with but I’m not sure how much difference that makes because it’s just 1-to-1 card fight with the opponent. You get XP for winning the fight. Raising your level increases your max HP, and I believe also gives you better card draws in general.

One issue with the game is the lack of reliable healing. The dragon can heal you, but the towns you visit do not have any kind of bed or inn you can use to sleep. This seems to introduce an element of luck into whether you will be able to successfully advance, but maybe it’s not as bad as I think (although this is mentioned as a bad point of the game on the “kusoge wiki” site).

I only played to the second town. This isn’t a bad game, and it certainly has better variety and interest than some of the more basic games of the time. The graphics are a bit monotone with all the yellow. If they just did something better with the “adventure” parts and had some good way to heal, the game would be much better.

Atelier Marie/Elie Game Boy

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Atelier Marie/Elie GB (マリーのアトリエGB), released 1/8/2000, developed by Tose, published by Imagineer

Initially I was not going to play this game because I was under the impression it was just a port of the original PS game. But it actually is a new game that takes place after the original. Both the Elie and Marie versions were released at one time; they are separate games but the gameplay and even some of the events and endings are identical. So I won’t be playing them both; this review basically covers Elie as well. In fact, it’s clear that this dual release was yet another product influenced by the success of Pokemon — you can trade items between the games and you can’t complete the item book in either game without doing this (or putting in passwords in lieu of transferring).

The story here is the elder of the forest fairies brings a fairy (who you can name) to Marie, so that she can teach him to be an alchemist. This sets up basically the same situation as the original game, where you have 4 years to craft a level 4 item for the normal ending and there are several good endings depending on other factors.

First off I have to say that I’m impressed by how readable the font is given that this is a Game Boy Color game. I’ve seen worse fonts on much better consoles than this.

The gameplay is very similar to the Marie series. You take jobs at the bar, go out to gather resources, level up your Adventurer and Alchemy level, make items, buy books to learn new stuff, and activate events based on various factors. You can also hire most of the same people from Marie. As far as the “story” goes, there are some new characters, and the characters from Marie have different events. There are also events related to the fairies. So it’s not just a complete repeat of the Playstation game.

There is one new feature called the “aging system” where you can put an item in a special barrel and then wait for it to age. I didn’t use this system much because I only got it before I stopped playing, but it sounds like the precursor of the natural aging system from the Gramnad games, where items will go bad over time (or in some cases like wine and cheese, can get better).

Each area now has 4 subscreens that you can walk around in and talk to people. In addition to all the places from the original game, there is a bell tower, a place with a big tree, a pond, an inn, and more.

One large change is that there is no actual battle system. Instead, Marie stays back in town while the fairy goes out (with any companions you hired). You choose how you want the excursion to go — you can pick between three levels of aggressiveness in fighting enemies, and whether you want to stay until you fill your basket or come back earlier. You then get a report of how things went, showing you how many battles you won and how much XP was gained — or sometimes you will be defeated in battle and come back crying.

This, to me, was an unfortunate change. The original game is already so simplistic that it gets a bit dull after a while because you’re just going through the same loop — by removing the battle system it makes the loop even simpler and duller. They also removed the alternate “rich people” quests in the tavern, meaning that it takes a lot longer to find jobs you can actually do. Going around to see what events might be available also involves more work than the original game because you have to walk around to all the different screens and buildings.

Eventually I was able to make enough money to get all the alchemy books and I got the fairy’s alchemy level up enough to make a level 4 item, earning me the Normal ending. I considered playing more to see if I could get one of the good endings, but I decided not to for two reasons. First, I was getting bored with the gameplay, as I said above. Second, although I could find a list of endings online, I could not find any details on how to get the necessary events to trigger (although the names of the events had some clues). If the game had been more fun I might have tried to play more just to see what ending I could get, but I think this game is kind of a relic of its time. Like a lot of Game Boy games from this era, when you take away the advantage of being able to play the game on the go, there’s just not much reason to play it in preference to the original game unless you really like Marie and Elie’s gameplay.

I do think that the designers put more effort into the game than they might have, though. They put in some inset graphic scenes (which are saved in an “omake” library along with the endings). There are a few little voice clips (including the iconic “taru!” (barrel) quote). They did add some new locations and characters, as well as the aging system. So while it’s not the most fun Atelier game you can get, at least it’s not a totally lazy slop port.

SRPG 137 – Ningyo no Rakuin (PS)

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Ningyo no Rakuin (人魚の烙印), released 8/3/2000, developed by Highway Star and published by NEC

This is a short (20 stage) game that takes place on a creepy island and is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. It does not actually take place in the world of HP Lovecraft’s stories, although the plot is inspired by The Shadow over Innsmouth, and there are a few nods to his mythos (like one of the characters coming from Miskatonic University).

The title means “Brand of the Merfolk” — the ningyo of the title is more like a monster than the more Disney-fied association of Mermaids. There is an English translation patch in the works, but unfortunately the people doing the project are the “we know better than the original writers” type. They changed the title to something that sounds more Lovecraftian, making the bizarre claim that the original title has no relevance to the game. They have also rewritten a lot of the prose to make it sound more like Lovecraft’s prose. I suppose it’s not that big of a deal but I think this was unnecessary; the Lovecraft themes are inspiration, not a direct attempt to place this in Lovecraft’s mythos.

The game begins with a plane crash on an island. The main character and his girlfriend are there, along with Reiji (a machine gun fighter) and Howard (a medic), who have crashed on this island once before. Later your party is expanded by Stacy, a researcher who has come to the island (despite it not appearing on any map or GPS), and several people from the natives of the island. They seem to be divided into two groups, one of whom is opposed to you.

The “Mermaid brand” of the title refers to the ability of some of the people on the island to turn into fish-monster type people, and when MC’s girlfriend gets infected by something that starts turning her into a merperson, the goal changes from escaping the island to curing the girlfriend.

The atmosphere is creepy; the decision not to use the usual anime-style characters fits the setting. Unfortunately none of the dialogue is voiced.

The story takes place over 20 stages, with no free battles. There are a few places where you can choose one of two stages (I think there are 25 total stages?) This does mean that you have to make my least favorite decision in SRPGs — is the game going to punish me for not levelling everyone, or punish me for not focusing on a few characters? In this game I’m not sure it matters too much. There are some forced deploys here and there but I don’t think there are any places where you are completely screwed if you didn’t level a particular person. On balance I would say it’s better to not let anyone lag too far behind but it’s OK if you focus mostly on one party.

Since we are on an island there is no money or shops, so all the equipment you get comes from treasure chests on the stage, stage-end bonuses, or (ugh) hidden items on tiles. I don’t know who started this game feature or why it’s lasted this long, but it has to be one of the dumbest things that designers include in games. It’s one thing if there is some ability that lets you figure out where they are, or maybe even if the hidden items only appear in conspicuous spots. But when it’s a game like this where there is absolutely no way to tell where the items are on the board, it’s just annoying. I think that you could get enough decent equipment to beat the game without the hidden items, though.

The system is pretty typical SRPG. There are two main things peculiar to this game. The first is that every move costs MP. Characters learn additional moves as they level up, but even a basic attack takes MP. But you can restore either MP or HP with a command. This also gives XP to the user, so this is a good way to gain extra levels — if you are ever in a situation where the enemies are not moving and you have no reason to hurry, you should use this until everyone is healed to full.

The characters have different attack types; the MC uses a handgun that has a long range but cannot fire close. Reiji has a machine gun, which attacks multiple squares but doesn’t have a great hit rate. Howard punches, so his punches can’t kill the enemies, only bring them to 1 HP (although some monster enemies were able to be killed). In addition to the attacks, everyone has techniques they can use as well, which tend to be buffs or heals.

Overall the game is relatively easy. Defeated characters just leave the battle. The final boss can be defeated by shooting it from outside its range with the main character so it never gets an attack.

When you win the game you can play New Game+, which allows you to find everyone’s strongest weapons…..as hidden items on the map.

In the end this game is perfectly playable and a nice change from the usual setting and atmosphere of SRPGs. It’s a bit amateurish in its design in places, but if the translation patch ever comes out it’s worth a play despite the translator’s questionable localization decisions.

JRPG 56 – Sylviana: Ai Ippai no Little Angel (FCD)

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Sylviana (シルヴィアーナ -愛いっぱいの冒
（リトル）険者
（エンジェル）-), released 8/10/1988, developed and published by Pack In Video

I missed this game when I initially made my list but I noticed a week or two ago that I had skipped it. The subtitle of the game translates to “Adventurer Filled with Love” but there are furigana above “adventurer” reading “little angel”.

This is a top-down action-RPG where you run into enemies to attack them (in Ys style). However, there does not seem to be any way to hit the enemies from a right or wrong angle. It seems like when you run into an enemy, how much damage you and the enemy take is simply determined by statistics. There may be more to it than that, but I was never able to actually reduce the damage I took from enemies by how I hit them (and I saw some other comments about the game that agreed).

The story is pretty simple. Sylviana’s mother is sick, and Dr. Doppler demands that you recover 8 treasures that got stolen from him before he will give the medicine. This is pretty much the whole story; there’s one or two further developments but the entire story script of the game would probably be one page.

This is another early game featuring a woman protagonist. So far in these early RPGs I’ve played, the only games that featured a woman protagonist are Legend of Valkyrie and Phantasy Star. A few other games either have women as part of the party, or allow you to create women characters.

The game has no XP or leveling system. The only way you can improve your survivability is to buy or find weapons and armor, and to increase your maximum HP by finding “hearts”. A big part of the game is just finding good places to grind money. You can recover HP either by going back to your house (seeing your sick mother restores your HP to full) or staying at an inn.

The enemies leave behind bags that can have money, items (like curing items and such), or sometimes traps that poison you. If that happens you need cure items or to get back to a town.

If you die you go back to your previous save. This is a Famicom Disk game, but fortunately it has a “memory save” option so you don’t have to deal with the disk save every time.

I started out by farming enemies near the first town to upgrade my weapon, then went into Dr. Doppler’s cave to hear about the main quest. From there I bought healing items and went to the closest cave to recover the first treasure. You can open chests in the dungeons. Doors need keys, and you can also find items that warp you back to your mom’s house (but you can only hold one at a time).

The bosses are all pretty similar from what I gather, they just go back and forth and shoot things. What you need to do is wait until they get left or right and just push them back into the wall where you can kill them.

That’s where I stopped. This game is OK for its time. It is playable and has no serious problems — no secrets or hidden things that you have no chance of solving, and you don’t start out with enemies that will destroy you until you figure out how to play. It’s a bit basic and probably involves too much grinding money, but there are definitely worse games out there than this one.