Doki Doki Poyatchio (どきどきポヤッチオ) Developer: Studio Sanzensan/M2 Release Date: 1998 Platforms: PlayStation This article is part of our Japanese Obscurities feature. We put out a whole book about them, which is available as both a full color hardcover and a Kindle ebook from Amazon! If you’d like to see more of these features, please check out the book and if you enjoyed it, leave a five star review so we can do a follow up with even more interesting, offbeat, or historically important Japanese games! Doki Doki Poyatchio is an early example of a “slow life” RPG, which focus on idyllic rural life ..read more

Just a year later, though two for everyone else, Nagoshi and team, including a returning Hase Seishu in his final bit of work for the franchise, released Yakuza 2. This is where the real legacy of this franchise begins, and it truly sets itself apart from any and all contemporaries. Every significant flaw was addressed, new ideas were thrown on the table, and the legend of the Dragon of Dojima was truly cemented in the minds of players. Non-JP regions, however, had to put up with a release that was sub only, but with the iffy localization efforts of the previous release, still leaving in lot ..read more

In the early 2000s, Sega developer Toshihiro Nagoshi had an idea for a game. He had been working on arcade hits and cult favorites for the company for years, including a stint as director for the Super Monkey Ball series. He had to fight for it, even sneaking in a reel during a meeting with a then CEO, but eventually got to get a team he was leading to bring an idea he had to life. That idea was Ryu ga Gotoku, or Like A Dragon, localized as Yakuza initially for the west. It was to be something aimed specifically at adult Japanese men, taking inspiration from crime dramas, and most likely som ..read more

This game is featured in our Arcade Cult Classics book, which is filled with other interesting and obscure arcade games! Gamshara (“Daredevil”) meshes Sengoku-era Japan with futuristic technology, much like the shoot-em-ups MUSHA and Sengoku Blade. As the warriors Saika Magoichi and Hotaru, you take up arms against the mechanical army of Nobunaga Oda. While there were a handful of Cabal-like gallery shooters released in the early-to-mid 90s, the genre petered out with the advent of 3D. However in 2002, Mitchell released Gamshara in arcades, making it seem like a relic out of time. While the c ..read more

This game is featured in our Arcade Cult Classics book, which is filled with other unique and obscure arcade games! Technos created the foundations of the beat-em-up genre with the Kunio-kun and Double Dragon games, but before those series really took off, they released the arcade-only China Gate. The Japanese title is Saiyuu Goumaroku: Ryuubouyougi no Shou (“Journey to the West Exorcism Record: Chapter of Flowing Stick Magic”). Taking on the role of Gocoo (Son Goku) the monkey king, Hakai (Cho Hakkai) the pig, and Gojoe (Sa Gojo) the kappa, each of the game’s five stages takes place in a to ..read more

Iwatobi Penguin: Rocky x Hopper (（イワトビペンギン ロッキー＆ホッパー）) Developer: F2 Company. Release Date: 1998 Platforms: PlayStation This article is part of our Japanese Obscurities feature. We put out a whole book about them, which is available as both a full color hardcover and a Kindle ebook from Amazon! If you’d like to see more of these features, please check out the book and if you enjoyed it, leave a five star review so we can do a follow up with even more interesting, offbeat, or historically important Japanese games! An iwatobi penguin is what’s known in English as a Southern rockhopper penguin ..read more

Our latest book, HG101 Presents Arcade Cult Classics is now available! Paperbacks are available on Amazon. Many of our books focus on publishers (Sega, Konami, Taito) or genres (shoot-em-up, beat-em-up). Our Cult Classics line started back in 2018 with NES Cult Classics, which is a catch-all for all kinds of interesting and cool games that didn’t fall into any other these categories. It seems like the preferred YouTube/SEO terminology is “hidden gems”, but it was too late to course correct whenever that term took over. Most of the games covered here are 1990s Japanese arcade games, but there ..read more

Even in a series as prolific as Metal Gear, it is not immune to missing or lost releases, and there are blind spots in the series that many don’t know about or haven’t heard of. Metal Gear Solid Mobile is one such game. It is a ‘lost’ game in the series, released solely on mobile platforms & not widely publicized. It’s also unique in how advanced it was for a mobile game at the time. MGS Mobile reaches toward the level of the console games, despite a smaller screen & keypad controls, and it gets might close that lofty aim. Announced at an event to mark the series’ 20th anniversary, MG ..read more

Console games and mobile games are often distinct experiences, and what works on one doesn’t necessarily work on another. A high flying big budget game like Metal Gear Solid 4, for instance, doesn’t really translate well to a small screen. In 2009, Kojima Productions put out Metal Gear Solid Touch, exclusively on iOS devices. It’s a rough approximation of the PS3 exclusive, becoming a shooting gallery rather than the stealth action the series is known for. Compared with some of the other mobile experiments from Konami at the time, it works as a pick up and play game, but ultimately ends up un ..read more

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Perhaps exponentially so, in the creation of a video game. All of the moving parts – the circuitry that powers it, the code that gets it running, textures painted and models animating on screen, the timing and waveform of sound coming out of the speakers – are so complex and deeply entwined, that it can feel like a miracle whenever a game just stands on its own legs and waddles around, let alone one that is released in as mature and polished state like Metal Gear Solid did in 1998 on Sony’s PlaSstation. When it was reissued in Japan a year later, w ..read more