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SB Recommends PC-88 & PC-98 Games
Recommended (PC-88)
RELICS
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.
The Scheme
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.
Recommended (PC-98)
See also
Emulation information in the hardware section.
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