SB Recommends PC-88 & PC-98 Games

sharc: On its own merits this is a somewhat standard horizontal shooter for its time. However, the PC88 really struggles with fair, playable shooters in general and fast-moving sprites, smooth scrolling and layers of parallax in particular; it's quite a feat to wrangle the hardware for all that in one game. Despite different team names, this is the work of the same doujin circle that did MELTDOWN and ReFight, though this is probably the most polished and professional of their games. Unsurprisingly, it's also the only one with a retail release.

sharc: A truly unusual adventure game that throws you into an alien world with no information, with success depending as much on observing and understanding the world around you as it does on exploring, fighting or solving puzzles. As a disembodied spirit, you first need to possess bodies for basic physical tasks like opening doors or picking up items. Noting details about your enemies, like which of the first area's soldiers outranks the others, is crucial.
Obtuse in every sense, especially some of the puzzles you have to solve, but as an interesting touch all the dialogue is in some form of English. While this was intended to obfuscate even basic communication, for native speakers it makes the game more or less entirely accessible.

sharc: Action platformer with a dash of Metroid-style exploration, though the non-linearity is mostly an illusion and you are fenced in to certain areas until you kill a boss and get the item that lets you access that one blocked-off spot on the opposite side of the map that you forgot about unless you were taking notes. Still very playable, except for the last boss which will probably kill you unless you found the secret health boost.
Music is by the famous Yuzo Koshiro, and because this was made right as the Sound Board II debuted, the game includes two different equally amazing FM synth soundtracks for both standard and enhanced hardware.

Loki Laufeyson: An excellent shooting game with excellent graphics and music. Excellent.

Loki Laufeyson: Nice shooting game that seems to be set inside a computer, with stages themed around different videogame genres.

invisibleyoghurt: Expect to do some considerable mucking around to get a PC-98 emulator and a ROM up and running, but it's well worth it—if you can get past the presence of the (not all that game-pervasive, really) H-scenes, it's a real treat from the depths of obscurity and absolutely what Valken on SNES should have been.

Loki Laufeyson: There's atually an option to turn the cutscenes (including all the porn) off!