Best non-Japanese exclusive Turbo games?

[schadenfreude]

The vast majority of the best games for our beloved system come from the land of the rising sun, but there are still some non-Japanese gems in the heap. However, I'm interested in hearing opinions on the best non-Japanese Turbo games that were original to the Turbo. So for example, Dungeon Master, while a great game, doesn't count because the Turbo version is a port. But a game like Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon, for example, does count, because it's a console exclusive. So does Darkwing Duck, if that's your thing.

I would start this thread with my own suggestions, but unfortunately (fortunately?) the only games I've so far played in my budding relationship with the Engine were Japanese-developed.

[CrackTiger]

Order of the Griffon and Beyond Shadowgate are pretty much it.

Beyond Shadowgate has a surprising amount of replay value through alternate encounters and outcomes, considering it's a console point-in-click game.

Order of the Griffon is fun once you get the hang of it and the random drops can be very cool. Lot's of non-linear stuff to explore as well.

[esteban]

Ouch. This is a touchy subject.

And by "touchy", I naturally refer to the flawed controls/mechanics of Yo, Bro that prevent it from being remembered lovingly as the primal, genetic soup that Zombies Ate My Neighbors crawled out of. 

It's funny how the trajectory of projectiles, when shifted just a couple pixels off-center (like the projectiles in Yo, Bro or right-handed/left-handedness in Gain Ground) can throw me off. Even though I *can* compensate for off-centeredness, it really irks me.

NOTE: Yo, Bro—even if tweaked—is still not worthy of the label "best"... unless if used in the sentence: "The best way to make me cry is the realization that I won't be able to legitimately beat Yo, Bro unless there are stockpiles of hidden weapons that I have yet to discover."



MY VOTE: Order of the Griffon.

[DragonmasterDan]

NOTE: Yo, Bro—even if tweaked—is still not worthy of the label "best"... unless if used in the sentence: "The best way to make me cry is the realization that I won't be able to legitimately beat Yo, Bro unless there are stockpiles of hidden weapons that I have yet to discover."

The only positive thing about Yo Bro is the Beach Boy chiptunes.

[majors]

..., but there are still some non-Japanese gems in the heap.

The only thing good about the US getting Turbografx-16 was that it introduced us to PC-Engine.

[Flare65]

Did Gunboat and that Falcon jet game get release in Japan or were those USA exclusives?

[NecroPhile]

Camp California, Addams Family, and It Came From the Desert are all decent games, though they're not nearly as good as Beyond Shadowgate or Order of the Griffon.

[bob]

Camp California, Addams Family, and It Came From the Desert are all decent games, though they're not nearly as good as Beyond Shadowgate or Order of the Griffon.

dont forget Ghost Manor

[NecroPhile]

Ghost Manor looks decent but plays like poop.

[CrackTiger]

Ghost Manor is a much better game than Addams Family.

Addams Family balances out to "okay" overall.

It Came From the Desert has a more extreme mix of good and bad, but certainly isn't great overall.

I can't take Camp California seriously, but I'd much rather play Yo Bro!, which I cannot bring myself to do.

Night Creatures is much more enjoyable than any of these and is overall a better game, except perhaps arguably Ghost Manor.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Echoing what everyone else has already said, but I believe most if not all ICOM games were US only TG-16 games.

Beyond Shadowgate and Order of the Griffon are class acts that us yanks should be proud to have in our libraries!

[NecroPhile]

Echoing what everyone else has already said, but I believe most if not all ICOM games were US only TG-16 games.

Not Shapeshifter or the Sherlock Holmes pair.

[csgx1]

I definitely enjoy Battle Royal in short sessions, though it's far from the best.  Multiplayer is fun with friends.

[jlued686]

Woof...hard to pick out the best from this lot. I'd probably have to agree with Beyond Shadowgate or OotG.

I remember having such high hopes for Ghost Manor and Night Creatures and being totally disappointed by both.

[SignOfZeta]

..., but there are still some non-Japanese gems in the heap.

The only thing good about the US getting Turbografx-16 was that it introduced us to PC-Engine.

This right here.

[sirhcman]

Darkwing Duck

[esadajr]

..., but there are still some non-Japanese gems in the heap.

The only thing good about the US getting Turbografx-16 was that it introduced us to PC-Engine.

Lol, Me

[schadenfreude]

Lots of good posts!

Beyond Shadowgate has a surprising amount of replay value through alternate encounters and outcomes, considering it's a console point-in-click game.

I haven't played much of the first game. Is it worth going back and completing that (dunno if I'd pick the Mac or NES version) first?

And by "touchy", I naturally refer to the flawed controls/mechanics of Yo, Bro that prevent it from being remembered lovingly as the primal, genetic soup that Zombies Ate My Neighbors crawled out of.

Wow, I've never heard of this one. I just watched a bit of it on YouTube, and though it looks kinda ass, the ZAMN similarity and those Beach Boys tunes are kinda nice.

Did Gunboat and that Falcon jet game get release in Japan or were those USA exclusives?

I'm okay with games that were eventually released overseas; I just want to know about the best non-port games on Turbo that were developed by Westerners. I want to exclude ports because oftentimes the original is better — and even when the ported version is better, the enhancements are marginal. There are exceptions, of course.

Camp California, Addams Family, and It Came From the Desert are all decent games

Isn't It Came From the Desert a Cinemaware game and thus a port from the Amiga? Unless the Turbo version is wildly different.

[NecroPhile]

Isn't It Came From the Desert a Cinemaware game and thus a port from the Amiga? Unless the Turbo version is wildly different.

There's no FMV in the Amiga game, so I'd say it's wildly different.

[schadenfreude]

Does it play about the same though? Do the additional FMV sequences make it feel like a completely different game? I'm reading on Wikipedia that the story and characters were drastically changed for the Turbo release, so it's sounding quite different.

[bob]

the turbo game is half "choose your own adventure" (FMV scenes) and half action (mini games).
its special

[Psycho Punch]

Special is the right word to describe ICFTD, yep.

[CrackTiger]

Does it play about the same though? Do the additional FMV sequences make it feel like a completely different game? I'm reading on Wikipedia that the story and characters were drastically changed for the Turbo release, so it's sounding quite different.

Very different, but worth playing through and a cool experience.

[esteban]

Does it play about the same though? Do the additional FMV sequences make it feel like a completely different game? I'm reading on Wikipedia that the story and characters were drastically changed for the Turbo release, so it's sounding quite different.

[CrackTiger]

..., but there are still some non-Japanese gems in the heap.

The only thing good about the US getting Turbografx-16 was that it introduced us to PC-Engine.

Lol, Me

So you guys prefer playing Dragon Slayer, Cosmic Fantasy 2,  Dungeon Explorer II, Dynastic Hero, Dragon's Curse, Exile, Vasteel, etc in Japanese?

[seieienbu]

Darkwing Duck

I feel this is worth a bit of expansion.  I picked up the game rather recently and I found it at least reasonably enjoyable.  More than anything else, Darkwing Duck is potential that wasn't reached.  It needs some hitbox tweaks, ideally more music, and a few changes to play control but there is clearly some good effort there.  The game looks good in stills, DD has excellent animation, and there are even a couple of cool visual tricks (the magnifying glass stage select springs to mind). 

Yeah, it has a bit of an obtuse control scheme; even though it doesn't exactly play as smoothly as it could it's nowhere nearly bad enough to simply write off.

Is it the best?  Obviously not.  But it still has its charm.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Does it play about the same though? Do the additional FMV sequences make it feel like a completely different game? I'm reading on Wikipedia that the story and characters were drastically changed for the Turbo release, so it's sounding quite different.

The Amiga one plays like....

OK.

and the Turbo one plays like "were they drunk?"

lol.

they both are pretty .... special, though!

[the haze]

It's a shame they didn't do a release of Defender of the Crown on the Duo.

With... FMV. 

No, that would have been epic lame. Oh FMV, how you excited me as a child.  What misplaced excitement....
I remember reading about "It Came From the Desert" in magazines for months....  it's delays, and when it was finally released I got it. and my piece of shit TurboGrafx CD unit hated the game. It wouldn't play it.

It wasn't until years later when I got a Duo and picked up a copy of the game for dirt cheap did I have a chance to try it.

I played it for 5min. That's an experience best left to my childhood imagination, it sucks.
Maybe if they had waited a little longer, and made it a Super CD game they could have done it a litle better... also, if they weren't drunk like Ark said.

[Arkhan Asylum]

some FMV games back then were actually pretty good, but it was very hit or miss.

The interactive puzzle/story games seemed to be the good idea to go with those.

Games like Prize Fighter or anything actiony generally sucked.  ICFTD to me was actually better without the FMV on Amiga.

[the haze]

Ok ARK.

Name THREE FMV game's that are great.
They can't be porno.

[Psycho Punch]

Play The X-Files on PS1 or PC and suck my left one!

[the haze]

Let me rephrase.

Name 3 FMV games from the 16 bit area that are good.  Because, even if that xfiles game is shit, it's xfiles so it's automatically awesome.

[CrackTiger]

Let me rephrase.

Name 3 FMV games from the 16 bit area that are good.  Because, even if that xfiles game is shit, it's xfiles so it's automatically awesome.

"FMV" games aren't a real genre. People who don't play games before adopting opinions from others dismiss them and perpetuate stereotypes like the myth that the Sega-CD had mostly "FMV" games (a small fraction of the library features FMV at all). Instead of only calling games like Dragon's Lair, Time Gal, etc "FMV games", anything featuring FMV gets grouped in, no matter how established of a genre the game is. Good examples are the Sherlock games and It Came From the Desert. Yet, you don't here of Shadowgate, Deja Vu, Spell Caster, Snatcher, Defender of the Crown, etc dismissed as "FMV crap" nearly so often.

Here are a few good 16-bit games featuring FMV:

Sherlock Holmes 1 & 2
Gulliver Boy
Power Golf 2
Dune
Silpheed
Record of Lodoss War
NHL '94 CD
John Madden Duo CD Football
Sonic CD
Adventures of Batman & Robin CD
Terminator CD
Heart of the Alien
Flashback
Rise of the Dragon
Son of Chuck
Popful Mail
Keio Flying Squadron
Dungeon Master II
Brutal

[Arkhan Asylum]

Uh, FMV games are definitely a genre.

games with FMV in them aren't always FMV games. 

Nobody in their right mind would call Dune, Silpheed, Terminator CD, Flashback, Rise of the Dragon, Popful Mail or DM2 an FMV game.    Or Sonic CD.   

Those aren't FMV games.   Those are just games with FMV cutscenes and crap.

If you just assume FMV game is anything with FMV, that means basically every RPG on PSX is an FMV game.

I don't know what genre you really want to call a game like Sewer Shark other than an FMV game.   

If you remove the FMV and you no longer have anything to play, it's an FMV game.

Ground Zero Texas and Prize Fighter on Sega CD for example, don't really exist if you remove the FMV.   You aren't treated to a cool scene between levels, or when a story event is going on.

You're FMVing the entire time.

Straight up "FMV games" would be like

Double Switch
Night Trap
Battle Heat
Sewer Shark
Voyeur (? kinda)
Time Gal
Dragons Lair and Space Ace.

A lot of those games aren't "bad", anyways.

They are just boring, because you spend the majority of the time clicking, while watching scenes.  They are not very interactive.   Or some of them would've been better as light gun games.   Area 51 is technically an FMV game.   Corpse Killer, Ground Zero Texas and MadDog McCree would be (or were) better with lightguns.

Now, some good FMV games are (some of these are going to overlap into not 16 bit land I guess)....

Battle Heat
Queen of Queens
Voyeur
Burn Cycle
Mad Dog McCree
Ripper
Phantasmagoria
7th Guest and 11th Hour
Galaxy Express 999 (Escape from Cyber City)
you could sort of classify Cadillacs and Dinosaurs on Sega CD also.  That game was frigging goofy.

Sega CD's FMV games weren't even all bad.   I have Prize Fighter.  I grew up with it.  It was fucking moronic at first but then it starts to click. 

Crime Patrol, Corpse Killer, Lethal Enforces and shit.. they were all fun.   Dracula Unleashed was too.



I get that SOME of these games are more like point n' click adventures, but, they pushed the FMV envelope so hard in those games that they deserve to be grouped in. 

I think Double Switch was maybe the worst FMV game, and Corey Haim didn't help matters.

[Magister]

No mention of Harvester?

[Arkhan Asylum]

DAMN.

I forgot about that game.

Gonna need to fire me up that fucker again.

[NecroPhile]

Nobody in their right mind would call ... Silpheed ... a FMV game.

Aren't the backgrounds all FMV?  It wouldn't be much of a game with just a handful of sprites left to play.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Nobody in their right mind would call ... Silpheed ... a FMV game.

Aren't the backgrounds all FMV?  It wouldn't be much of a game with just a handful of sprites left to play.

Yeah, it would be about on par with the PC88 one without the fancy backgrounds. 

Silpheeds use of FMV in lieu of not having the processing power to render that much polygon crap on the fly was a pretty smart use of the hardware.   If only the PCFX had tried something like that for some action games.

Nirgends kinda did it almost but forgot what it was doing and gave up and went with TackyScaling9000.

[Serega81]

Psychic Detective
7th Guest
Strahl

All released on the 3do, were pretty good FMV games.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Wirehead.  Love that silly FMV game. 

I guess you could consider Sewer Shark just as much a shooter game as you would Silpheed?

[xcrement5x]

Wirehead.  Love that silly FMV game. 

I guess you could consider Sewer Shark just as much a shooter game as you would Silpheed?

Personally I consider Sewer Shark a pretty fun game, say what you will but it was a solid pack-in for the system later on when the Model 2 came out.  Showed off the FMV capabilities, is entertaining enough, and the gameplay is fun but also not too tedious.

I'm also a big fan of Ground Zero Texas as a game that does story based FMV on the SegaCD pretty well.  I still see people whine about how the SegaCD was "all FMV gamez" and I want to correct them but I've just gotten tired of saying the same thing over and over.

[geise]

I loved the LD Arcade ported fmv titles. 

In regards to US only turbo I have to go with Beyond Shadowgate.