Pro Yakyuu Super 94 By Windancer

The Pro Yakyuu Super 94 is Translated The Pro Baseball Super 94. This is one of my favorite baseball games of alltime on any system. It's on super cd and has a Ton of very cool options on top of nice graphics and sounds from the game of baseball. Not only will it impress you with the gameplay, options and sounds it has each and every player from the japanese Pro baseball league from 1994. It also has most of the stadiums from the Japanese pro league. The pro Yakyuu series has 3 releases Pro Yakyuu, Pro Yakyuu super and Pro Yakyuu super 94 all three games are great But the Pro Yakyuu Super 94 has a ton of options with a homerun derby added in. Who says there are no good sports games on the PCEngine hasnt played these 3 games! Lets get to those options.

The options in these games are abundunt. First off from the start of the game. You will get to choose from the following: Exhibition game, Full season 140 games (Yikes), Home Run Derby, Versus mode and options. In the option menu you can shut off the homerun cut scene and turn errors off. Now after you choose to play say exhibition game you will be listed with teams to choose which are very well represented with all the teams from the japanese Pro Baseball league. Then you will get too choose which stadium to play in from a list about 12 (not all stadiums are represented but the ones that are happen to be very nice) after you choose the stadium you may change your lineups. After linups you get a screen that you get to choose how your feilders play. You can choose to have the computer control your outfielders or you can can play them yourself. You can also just choose watch the game and not play at all. However I tried watching once and my team got smoked so I dont recommend watching! I highly recommend after you have played a few rounds and gotten used to throwing the ball around you choose to control your own fielders as the computer will sometimes make a bonehead play for you.

Now let's get to control. This is the usual play control as just about every baseball game on the planet. Right and Button 2 throws to First, up and button 2 throws to second, left and button 2 throws to third and down and button 2 throws home. To advance runner you press up and button 2 to make them run back to a base press right and button 1. To steal a base while in pitching mode just press up and button 2 before the pitch to steal second. Pitching in this game is alot of fun. You will notice a pitcher will shake off and accept signs from the catcher this is really cool as it adds some realism to the game. Myself I do the inside out pitching method I throw the first pitch inside for a strike then on the next pitch I try to hit the outside for a strike. You will notice that once you get strike 2 on a batter they get super tough to strike out. I go all the way inside on the 3rd pitch and dont even get the ball close to plate they will make contact but most of the time will hit it to the outfield or a groundball to one of your fielders. learning to pitch is of the utmost importance or you will fall behind in a game very fast. Also learning a batters stats is very important. If you see a guy comming up to the plate and his ratings are say 5-5-5 in every catagory he can pop one outa the park on ya so pay attention to those stats. That inside pitch I told ya about maynot help against a better like this. Now lets get to one of the coolest features of this game!

After each homestand or away series. You get a Training a screen. You get to add one point to any player on your teams skills! This is in the season mode. I started with 1 player who is my cleanup hitter and I have his offensive skills now set at 7-7-7 he doesn't hit the ball out of the park everytime with those skills but he comes darn close and pops one out about every 4 at bats. You can also add to a players defensive skills but I havent messed with this to much. the catagories are as follows for offensive and defensive skills: Offensive: Batting, Strength, Speed Defensive: Catching, Throwing, Speed. I would assume adding to defensive skills is really important to slow down another teams offense but I have been going with the approach that you cant stop my offense LOL.

Another Nice thing about the game is that it keeps running stats. It has a leader boards complete with standings and how many games your out of first place. Player stats that have a leader board for RBI's, Homeruns, ERA's. The stats are announced by commentators after each game.

These Games are just awesome! I highly recommend picking them as I have picked up every game in the series. If you just want to get 1 I would recommend the Pro Yakyuu super 94 as it has the most options to play with. These games can be picked up very cheap from Rising Stuff and from Hit Japan. Hit Japan sells them for about 3.99 to 5.00 each. Again though they charge alot for shipping so if you order from hit japan you might just want to order all 3 to save on some shipping. I usually recommend ordering 5 titles from hit japan. Also Check with Alex or Kevin at Rising stuff although they might Charge a few bucks for the games you may be able to get the set cheaper with lower shipping. always a good idea to price match with Rising Stuff.

Hope you enjoyed this review of The Pro Yakyuu (The Pro baseball) series as it is my favorite sports series on the pcengine. I will need to play some power league now so that I can compare the 2 series. I have power III and have power league V on order. Thanks for taking the time to read this review see ya soon with more reviews!

Graphics: 9

Sound: 7

Gameplay: 9

Replay Value: 10

Overall: 9

Spread the Joy of PCEngine! By Windancer

Go Go Birdie Chance By Windancer

Go Go Birdie Chance is a title that is much sought after and very expensive to obtain. The opening to the game has some very nice anime stills and music. The game looks great from the from the opening. You have 2 choices of play when you start the game. You can choose story mode or free play. In story mode you play the part of a coach and have to level up your golfer to get better abilities so you can hit the ball farther and accurately. The story mode is pretty bogged down with a ton of text to get through before you even hit the course to play. I'm into the story mode 5 hours and still im having no success at winning a round against my computer opponent. The graphics in this game are pretty ugly and the gameplay itself is not much better. However I must say the sound in this game really sets the mood for the game. You can hear birds, wind , frogs croaking, just an overall good feel when it comes to the sounds.

Gameplay consists of the usual power bar in golf games. However after 5 hours of playing this game I still have trouble with accuracy. when I click the 1 button to swing the club the power starts to go up then when I click the 1 button again to set power the accuracy part of the swing wigs out and goes really fast to set the accuracy for a 3rd click. Also one thing I noticed is that there are no trees in front of me according to the onscreen map but in the 1st person screen there are trees sitting right in front of me from the tee. Like i'm never looking down the fairway?Hmmmm! No matter where I set the direction target the trees are always there. After I hit a ball, it flys right into the trees no matter if I hit the ball right on or I hit a missed swing! These trees are really annoying me and never looking down a fairway annoys me even more!

I must say, for such a high priced rare title this game really stinks. I realize you have to level up your up your golfer that you choose for the story mode to get anywhere in the game, but after 5 hours of play and making no headway I have totally givin up on this game and wont be forking out the 100+ This Game costs to obtain. The Fact that these trees on the 3d screen are constantly in your way when the 2d map shows no trees is just totally annoying! No matter where you set your aiming crosshair the trees remain in your way. I had such High hopes for this game as I love a good sports title, especially golf games. I even tried the free play mode and didnt have much luck playing that either.

If you want to play a good a golf game on pcengine, I highly recommend picking up Human sports Festival for the rock bottom low price of 5.00 bucks. You can get it from Rising Stuff. Just request it by emailing either Alex or Kevin (sensei) either one can get it for you. Also Hit Japan on Ebay has copies and have sold it as low as 3.99. If you must get a copy of Go Go Birdie Chance for collecting purposes it will run you anywhere from 120.00 to 150.00 but is not worth that cost. It's one game that I will skipping and very dissapointing. Now this is just my oppinion on the game. There have been good reviews on Go Go Birdie Chance. Obviously this game is not for me. But I'm not willing to take that chance on such a high priced title. There are better golf games out there for your hard earned money.


Spread the Joy of Pcengine! Windancer

Digital Champ By Windancer

Here's a cheapy that any fan of boxing will apreciate. You can find this game very cheap on EBAY or any online japanese import store will have it at rock bottom prices.

Digital Champ is a pleasant surprise from the time you put in. It's a boxing game from the first person view. The PCEngine is not known for very good sports titles. The game is entirely in english right down to player taunts after you win or lose. It's beyond me why this game was not released here in the US. I must say that the sound in this game is very basic but serves the game well.

Now lets get to gameplay! This game plays like the old Mike tysons Boxing. From the time you start this game you are thrown right into the action there is no messing around here. A major difference from Mike tysons boxing is the cast of characters are nothing like the goofy but fun group like from Mike Tysons. Instead I think the programmers were looking to make a more realistic boxing game with their cast. The first guy you fight happens be named Marciano and looks alot like that guy from the Rocky Movies (Syvester Stallone). You can dodge right and left to avoid your opponents punches. Also a very cool effect is the fighters scale to and from you, then will move in to attack you. Holding down the 1 or II button will charge up a hard punch to hit your opponent with, while tapping will jab at him. Button 1 is the right hand and button II is your left hand. Holding down on the direction pad while pressing punch will produce a low body blow while holding up on the direction pad and punching will take a head shot. also holding up or down on the direction pad will block up and down.


The controls in this game are nice and smooth and work just perfect for Digital Champ.The game play is very fast and smooth. The first guy Marciano is kinda easy to defeat. I hammered him with left and right dodges with body blows and very few shots to the head. The second fighter who is from Iraq was alot faster and tougher but I hit him with head shots then started to notice that I was damaging his face LOL. One cool feature you will notice is that the fighters start to show damage as you hammer them. I cut the second fighter pretty bad and he had blood running down his face. The graphics are very sweet in this game. The characters are very well done and look very realistic for a game that was made back in 1989.

I Highly enjoy playing this game! It's smooth and it's fast! The controls are right on and the sound effects and music fit right in. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who likes sports titles. If you like Boxing games like Mike Tysons Punchout I think you will enjoy this game even though it's not quite as good. However with that said, it's a great cheapy to pick up for your PCEngine collection that you can display with pride. You can purchase this game from Rising Stuff for about 9.00 dollars or if you would like to poke around on ebay you can get it from Hit Japan a seller on abay for 3.99 with hefty shipping. I highly recommend both sellers but if you do buy from hit japan I recommend buying multiple games to save a little on shipping.


Spread The Joy of PCEngine! By Windancer

Super Power League FX By MissaFX

Super Power League FX, which I will now simply refer to as SPL is the only Baseball game on the FX. It’s also the only sports title on the system. I guess somewhere along the way when Hudson was cancelling all non anime titles for the system like the unreleased Soldier game this one slipped through the cracks and actually got released. It’s a damn find thing it did.


The Power League series on the PC-Engine was to my understanding the best baseball series released on the system and the adaption to the FX was a golden one. The team behind this game basically applied the “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” approach to the updated graphics the PC-FX could deliver. This approach in the end no doubt made a sports game compelling enough to play that there was just no way they should shelve it away, to rot for eternity.


Gameplay: SPL offers you two modes of play: A single 1 team on 1 match and a 2-8 player tournament mode. There is also a mode to let you modify the teams in some way and I am guessing save the modified team to your memory card, the Japanese level required to do this though is fairly intense. You can also view pages and pages of statistics for the teams, these seem to be based on 1995 Japanese baseball statistics I am assuming. The oldest statistics I was able to find online in English were from 1996, but only so many changes happen in baseball over 1-2 years so you can go off the 1996 stats to get an idea of what teams are better than the others: http://www.japanesebaseball.com/teams/index.jsp?Year=1996 .


Once you choose your mode of play you are presented with a choice of 12 real life based teams or 6 invented ones which are grayed out and not selectable until unlocked. Because these teams are based on real baseball teams, some of the teams are clearly superior to others, as a new player I chose the Giants and I chose the Swallows for my opponent. While statistics are not everything since this is a baseball game, not a baseball simulation, it sure can’t hurt to stack the odds in your favor when you play as few sports titles as I do.


The game plays out just like the Power League games on the PC-Engine, which play out basically like Baseball on the NES. This gives you your standard selection of pitching options, chosen by the D-Pad, batters can move freely in the batter’s box, you can steal bases, move your fielders around between pitches, all the standard stuff and no crap like magic shoes to run faster or remote control baseballs or anything else which can ruin a perfectly good baseball game. The only gripe I have with the controls may be due to the D-Pad on the PC-FX, often if I am not super careful when I try to throw the ball to first (right), it throws to home (down). It seems that down was programmed to override right when both are pressed at the same time or something. Failed easy outs at first have caused me to have more than one argument with my players over their tactical decision to throw home. Other than that though, the play control is great.


You can pause the game at any time and view your player/teams statistics and a wealth of other information which is largely useless to the English speaking player. Again, if you can read Japanese, I am sure the information is utterly fascinating. It sure is detailed though from what I can tell.

The above and below images were taken with emulation so you could see what the players look like. The feild looks great trust me!

Graphics: Graphically, Super Power League FX is an updated version of the Power League games. Everything about SPL looks more realistic than the more animated look of the PC-E games. Each batter has their own unique look and many, many frames of animation to show the swing, when they strike out, when they are hit with the ball, etc. The only downside to this is that every time the batter changes, there is a two second load time before you can bat again. This delay is more annoying at first, but it does give a great quick second to take a drink or to scratch your nose before the pitcher send the next ball your way. The pitchers too from what I can tell all have their own unique look. The rest of the players on the team, the fielders and basemen though seem to be much more generic, but they get the job done. There are quite a few stadiums you can play in and they all look a little different and have slightly different dimensions, but one field is about as good as another in my book.


There is a lot of 2D graphics transforming and scaling in this game as well and the PC-FX makes the rendering look effortless. This scaling allows you to follow the action and works surprisingly well. The frame rate is always high and never slows down.

There is one laughable aspect of the graphics in SPL however, and that is the intro. The intro, unlike almost every other PC-FX game is done in 3-D rendered graphics. These 3D graphics look like a very early rendering, done real time by the PC-FX PC kit using the 3D chip. They are laughable and it makes one wonder what they were thinking putting such a crappy intro on such a great game.

Sound/Music: The soundtrack of Super Power League FX is again more realistic than the PC-Engine predecessors, dropping the video game like music, for rhythmic, highly organized cheering and appropriate sound effects to accompany it. This change makes SPL very engaging at first by bringing you right into the action. However half way into your game, you may find that you want to turn the volume down because while it never gets truly annoying, I can only take so much cheering at high volume. The sound effects are clean and were well thought out. But there just isn’t very many sound effects in the whole game (although not many are needed) and it is hard to really say the game has a musical score. Still what it has matches up perfectly with the more realistic graphic feel of the game, I mean, did they really play a soundtrack score through real baseball games in the 90s…no. Complaining about the lack of real music in the game is like complaining about the lack of music in a NASA space simulation game, so it’s hard to fault it there.

Closing: Super Power League FX on the PC-FX (shocking no?) is an extremely well polished baseball video game, and has to be one of the FX games which was not rushed, not one bit. It is a great example of what kind of games could have been released for the system if NEC had only been a little bit more open about what kind of software could be on the PC-FX. A lineup of improved PC-Engine games could have done wonders for console and software sales on the system, while I don’t think it would have allowed the PC-FX to smash the Saturn or Playstation in terms of sales. We might have seen closer to 100 titles on the system had they taken a more liberal route.

Gameplay: 8.0
Graphics: 8.0
Music: N/A
Sound: 6.5

Secret Santa Express Mail Contest Sponsored by Rising Stuff

Well guys I was sitting around getting bored so I decided to run a new contest for those peeps who signed up for secret santa. Here is how it works. I know it says mail your gifts out by december 20th but really getting the gift out asap is the way to go. So here is what we are doing here at pcenginefan. When you recieve your gift please email me the

post mark date on your package. The Santa who sent out their gift first will recieve their choice of either Street Fighter II or Bomberman 93 for pcengine (both games are complete). If you are a Santa and may

be a little worried that your recipient maynot email us. please just take a pic of the shipping label and email it on over.

When the winner of speedy shipping is decided you will receive an email from me requesting which game you would like to receive. Again it's meant for fun so have some fun with it and get those gifts out! Checkout the great deals at Rising Stuff our sponsore for this contest.