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Sometimes, a company gets too complacent with its properties, and decides to farm them out. Big mistake. The result is almost never good, as demonstrated by U.S. Gold’s horrible Journey from Darkness: Strider Returns. It took everything the original game did well and buried it up deep, deep in the Earth, and what was released was decidedly un-Strider-like.
Remember when the Genesis launched and there were so many cool games to play? Yes, that September and the following months were chock full of great releases, and among them was Mystic Defender, a spiritual sequel, of sorts, to the Master System’s SpellCaster. It had great graphics and gameplay, and plenty of weird enemies to dispatch.
The Japanese weren’t immune to the puzzle fever of the early ’90s, either. Several companies churned out some fairly good puzzle games, and for the most part they made it to the U.S. and Europe. A few slipped through the cracks, of course…After all, no matter how popular the genre, it’s inevitable that some games will get lost in the shuffle. Namco’s Megapanel is a good example of a good puzzle game that somehow got forgotten.
Curse was released in Japan for the Mega Drive. However, the U.S. release obviously fell through… and I never did find out what happened to the INTV Corporation, the company that was supposed to release it here. Nothing was ever released by them, it seems. Curse was supposed to be their first game, but when they vanished, so did the game.
One of the only games about the anime devil slayer, Mamono Hunter Yohko: Makai Dai 7 no Keishou (or Devil Hunter Yohko: The Seven Bells) is a Valis-like romp through the world of Yohko. It doesn’t seem to be very well known – I’ve never seen much info on the game at all, just a few mentions here and there.