Yokai Dochuki - Tales from the Monster Path - Namco on PC Engine
0Happy Halloween!
I hope you are all happy, safe & healthy whatever challenges you are facing right now.
Fans of my channel will know that I'm a huge Namco fan right from the early days of their strong arcade heritage (before I even realised who Namco were!) I was always happy when their games were ported to home machines.
The PC Engine was one such machine. This diminutive little box was packed with power. Despite an 8 bit processor it boasted a powerful 16 bit graphics chip (hence being branded the Turbo-Grafx-16 in the US). It always had an air of mystique & the screenshots of its games in C&VG & Mean Machines were the stuff of legend. HuCARDs might be my favourite medium and lent themselves to the awesome PC Engine GT/Express. There were many amazing titles but I got mine back in the early 90's for R-Type and the many great Sega ports. Then picked up the CD Rom unit for the utterly amazing Dracula X. My machine has a hardwired RGB Scart mod but these days there are more elegant modern solutions.
This is a port of Namco's fairly obscure arcade game called Yokai Dochuki but commonly known in the West as "Tales from the Monster Path". The game itself is a platformer with mini games sprinkled in & is heavily influenced by the Japanese Shinto traditions & beliefs. This means a platformer littered with all sorts of imagery. Perfect for a Halloween themed gaming session.
As a port it is very good - the arcade also had that half screen view & dynamic map lay-out. I actually got given this for free when I got my PC Engine back in the day. I think it was fairly common & as the game was loose the shop didn't think it would sell - especially due to the Japanese imagery & text through-out. Its a solid & fun game for a play now and then so it was definitely one of the better freebies I've ever received.
I play the start of the game - hopefully it gives you a feel for what the game offers.
My original PC Engine 2 button pad has a weird issue where in-game it suddenly stops registering certain direction on the Direction Pad (although this freeze seems to "unlock" when you press one of the button 1 or button 2 action buttons but not always the same one. Its very odd. I'll dig out my 6 button Avenue 6 pad for the next time I capture PC Engine titles as this happened on several of the games while I was capturing - then again the system and pad are both over 30 years old and other than that it is still performing like a champion!
Want to see more PC Engine games? I have a few decent ones on both HuCARD & on CD.
This is my original Japanese copy - - from back in the day played (at 60Hz) on my RGB modded PC Engine through a Retrotink 5X for ease of capture - although my capture card didn't want to play nicely for some reason.
I'll be uploading more PC Engine games in the future :-) as well as more GameBoy Multicarts, mobile phone games, Saturn, Dreamcast, SNES, Master System, Megadrive & more. Let me know what you'd like to see!
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware. Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox