~ VALIS VISUAL COLLECTION ~
Laser Soft / Telenet
CD-ROM
1993
This is basically just a collection of cinemas from the second, third, and fourth PC Engine Valis chapters, but it makes for a pretty nice collectible, as it's fairly hard to find and it features a hot-looking Rena on its cover. People make a big stink about
the absence of scenes from the PCE rendition of the first Valis, but at least we get more here (relatively speaking) than we do with the Cosmic Fantasy Visual Collection, which offers cinematics from only the first two CFs.
The few who are thinking about bothering with this non-game are probably Valis fans who've already hacked their way through all four adventures, and those folks won't find much new material here. Watching the cinemas from II and III with Japanese voice work
might prove interesting for those who have experienced only the English versions of those chapters. But while it's nice to be able to view said cinemas sans goofy English voices, it seems like the Japanese actors "underacted" a bit, ironically enough.
One neat thing about the collection is that it grants you a look at how PCE CD intermission artistry evolved (while sticking with a core group of characters throughout the string of images). Watch as the series progresses from tiny-window-enclosed blockiness to polished, full-screen glory.
One neat thing about the collection is that it grants you a look at how PCE CD intermission artistry evolved (while sticking with a core group of characters throughout the string of images). Watch as the series progresses from tiny-window-enclosed blockiness to polished, full-screen glory.
This is a legitimately rare disc, but demand for it is very low, so once you do find it, you probably won't have to pay an outlandish sum to acquire it ($50-60 was once the going rate, but $30 seems a common enough asking price these days). It really has no
practical purpose, but Valis fans will reap enjoyment enough just from welcoming it into their collections.
