PC Denjin: Punkic Cyborgs (PC Engine) Translated Playthrough - NintendoComplete
160A translated playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1992 shoot 'em up for the PC Engine, PC Genjin Series: PC Denjin -Punkic Cyborgs- / PC原人シリーズ PC電人.
This is the original Japanese release of the game known as Air Zonk in North America, which published for the TurboGrafx-16 by TTi. In this video I play through the game on the "normal" difficulty level. I have also translated and subtitled all of the game's text (except for the credits). There are several differences between PC Denjin and Air Zonk, so I thought that this would be a fun way spread a bit of awareness for my favorite shooter.
Most of the game's text shows up in the intro and the game over sequence (which I show at the very end of the video). Both feature songs with lyrics that match the music, printed karaoke-style across the bottom of the screen. They're both super catchy and show-off the game's eccentric sense of humor to a T. Unfortunately, as was all too common for US released games on the Turbo, most of this content was outright cut in order to get it onto store shelves with the absolute least amount of effort and money invested in localizing it possible.
(I also romanized the original Japanese lyrics, so if you fancy singing along with it, there you go!)
These scenes weren't the only differences, though. The American version was fairly heavily censored, but there's none of that nonsense here. When Genhed merges with MoMo, he launches milk from his... bowling pins? Bottles? ...teats? I'm not quite sure how to refer to... those... in an entirely innocuous way. Anyways, he looks like he's sweating the Vogue video pretty hard.
You also get to see King Drool dressed as a geisha, Zonk - er, I mean Genhed - poo on his enemies with the force of a nuclear explosion (and in a way so pimp that even the poo itself rocks shades!), and you get to fight Pizza the Hut as a boss.
I mean, Pizza the Hut! How does that alone not qualify this as the best game ever?
Besides all that, this Bonk spin-off has got to be one of the most tragically underrated shooters I've played. It stands out, even on a platform renowned for its shooters, not just for its gameplay, but as a total beast of a tech demo for the PC Engine's hardware. This is some seriously impressive stuff for a system from 1987. It also happens to be the last shooter that Hudson produced in the HuCard format. And it's satisyingly hard if you bump the difficulty. As much as I have played this one, you can see that I still tend to struggle at that last boss fight on even just the medium setting. I keep telling myself that I'll be able to finish it on the super-hard level one day. Pigs might fly out my rear end, too :D
And that soundtrack.... burble, drool... omfg that soundtrack. Oof. So good. If, for whatever reason, someone asked me to defend humanity's need for a well-developed sense of hearing, I'm confident that my thoughts would involuntarily jump to this game's music before anything else. You can think what you will, but I really do love it that much :)
I hope you guys enjoy it all as much as I did. It's such an excellent game.
Here are a few links for you if you're interested in checking out some other entries in the Bonk/PC Genjin line-up:
Air Zonk (TG16): https://youtu.be/Q8bm3-bxVDQ
Super Air Zonk (TGCD): https://youtu.be/srcRvZFlJjs
Bonk's Adventure (TG16): https://youtu.be/z__Bky_cXwM
Bonk's Adventure (NES): https://youtu.be/DEpeEInxVBI
Bonk's Adventure (GameCube remake): https://youtu.be/oONZyiTp8s4
Super Bonk (SNES): https://youtu.be/wvBHYuuuToA
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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