Tag Archives: fantasy

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible III, Super Nintendo

The third game in the Last Bible series (a subseries of the Megami Tensei games), was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and published by Atlus – in Japan only – for the Super Famicom in 1995. It is a Role-Playing Game with random encounters and turn-based combat, and features the unique Megami Tensei trait of talking to monsters to try to recruit them, calling them into your party, and fusing them together to make more powerful monsters who will fight with you. This is a Japanese-only release that currently benefits from fan translations into both English and Spanish, which makes this excellent game playable to a good proportion of the Western world.

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Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible II, Game Boy Color

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible II is the second game in the Last Bible series, which is a spin-off from the Megami Tensei RPG series. Last Bible II was originally released in Japan in 1993 for the original B&W Game Boy, with the Game Boy Color version coming out in 1999, some six years later. Neither version was ever officially released in the West, but there is an English fan translation for the Game Boy Color version, which is what I’m showing here.

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Revelations: The Demon Slayer, Game Boy Color

Revelations: The Demon Slayer is the localized English language version of Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible, which was first released for the original Game Boy, in Japan only, in 1992. This Game Boy Color version was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and published by Atlus, in Japan and North America, in 1999.

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Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible, Game Gear

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible is a handheld RPG that was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and initially published by Atlus for the original black and white Game Boy, in Japan only, in 1992. The Game Gear version was developed by Sega and was first released in 1994 – once again: in Japan only. A fan translation into English was released in 2019, which made the Game Gear version finally playable to Westerners. Which is great because the Game Gear port is the best version of the game available. Let me explain…

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Sword of Fargoal, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 conversion of the VIC-20 classic, Sword of Fargoal, was published in 1983 by Epyx. It features the same Roguelike gameplay of the original, with a few small enhancements.

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Sword of Fargoal, VIC-20

Written by Jeff McCord of Automated Simulations, Inc. and first published for the expanded VIC-20 by Epyx in 1982, Sword of Fargoal is a simple dungeon-crawling, Roguelike action game where you play an explorer who is searching a series of randomly generated levels for a legendary sword.

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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, FM Towns

LucasArts‘ classic point-and-click adventure, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, was released for the FM Towns by Victor Musical Industries in 1993, and although it was a Japan-only release it does include the English language version, which makes it perfectly playable to Westerners.

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Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the second SCUMM game from Lucasfilm Games (aka LucasArts), after Maniac Mansion, with game development led by David Fox, and with Matthew Alan Kane as co-designer and co-programmer. It was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, and this enhanced FM Towns port was published in Japan in 1990 by Fujitsu. The game is playable in both English and Japanese.

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Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, FM Towns

Origin/Blue Sky Productionsclassic MS-DOS RPG, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, was released for the FM Towns in 1993 by Electronic Arts Victor, Inc.*

*= Electronic Arts Victor was a joint venture between Electronic Arts and the Victor Musical Industries subsidiary of JVC, established in September 1992 in Tokyo. Electronic Arts Victor‘s mission was to translate Electronic Arts‘ library of games to Japanese language and to distribute them in Japan, as well as to create original titles for the Japanese market.

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Chaos Strikes Back, FM Towns

Chaos Strikes Back is a continuation of the classic Role-Playing Game, Dungeon Master. It’s a sequel – but not the sequel – to the first game, and was originally released as a stand-alone expansion disk on the Atari ST. On the FM Towns it was published on CD-ROM by Victor Musical Industries in 1990, and there’s a bit of faffing around to do before you can actually start the game*. Thankfully you can at least do this in English as there’s an option to play in that language.

*= Before you can play Chaos Strikes Back you must either create a new party (by entering the prison and choosing from the available portraits), and then save it to a new 720Kb floppy disk; or load a set of characters from a pre-existing FM Towns Dungeon Master save. You then need to enter the CSB portrait editor utility program and then click on ‘Make New Adventure’ to activate and save a new Chaos Strikes Back file to the disk. Only then will you be able to load and start the game…

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