Pasokon Deacon | discord.gg/CaDGX9AXyC | Ｊ－ＰＣ　Ｄａｚｅさんのイラストまとめ

Some might recognize this game thanks to its later 1996 port for Super Famicom. Any PC-X8 game in the mid-'90s getting a console port would have already done very well at home, & it's no surprise that this game spawned a good few sequels. For now, I'm just covering the first one!

Many new developers around that time themselves used guides for the games they enjoy. A schism opened between teams creating increasingly easier, more intuitive titles like Ys & Zavas vs. those still valuing difficulty & guide/hintbook usage for titles like Ishtar & Hydlide III.

Past 1984, the FM-7 saw less exclusives than on Sharp & NEC 8-bit micros, only alleviate for a short bit by the impressive but prohibitively costly FM-77AV model. Its own exclusives numbered few, and Oh!FM even published PC-88 titles like Amanai's Gutchan Bank, originally for FM!

His next two original games after Bustle in the Ring—Gutchan Bank and Mike's Lonely Journey—pushed first the FM-7 & then the new FM-77AV to more polished, more Namco-esque arcade excellence.

I plan to cover both in more depth later. They're two of my favorite 8-bit J-PC romps!

Meanwhile, there's very few wrestling games for J-PCs from that era, making Bustle in the Ring a standout. Though based heavily on Technos' hit game, it's distinguished by a great bitty soundtrack from Kawagen & some tricky but finely tuned mechanics from Amanai. Quite a start!

Both games bear the trappings of early '80s bedroom-coder works, more so than most games I've covered so far. For all the fun bits, there's plenty of jank!

T'was a time when PC enthusiast magazines like I/O (Compac here) & Oh!FM published small games otherwise lacking a sponsor.

Delphis, for instance, exemplifies yet blends right in with a crop of PC shooters attempting to recreate Xevious on more limited hardware.

Its simplicity & technical focus, plus a fairly low price, made the game somewhat stand out for FM-7 players. Too bad I lack more box shots.

Koei's later '94 Rekoeition game Progenitor thankfully did release, albeit with a level of fanfare about as low as Kojiki Gaiden's.

Perhaps Shibusawa and co. had reasons to consolidate the Rekoeition brand around three main series & avoid one-off titles like these from then on.

1985's Program Olympics 2 featured games from not just Square, but also:

-Xtalsoft (Sword World PC)
-Thinking Rabbit (Sokoban)
-System Soft (Daisenryaku)
-T&E Soft (Hydlide)
-Technosoft (Herzog)
-Hummingbird Soft (Lodoss War RPGs)
-Micro Cabin (Xak)
-Victor (Mole Mole)
-Falcom!

I hear so much talk in retro circles about Uncharted Waters, or Koei's headline acts like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but these Rekoeition games & other sim-heavy sagas formed a huge part of Koei's J-PC domination in the '90s, matched only by Falcom. Not to forget otome games!