Here are some Super Famicom import games you can play without having to know Japanese!
Games Shown:
Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius
Gokujou Parodius
Parodius Da!
Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shougun Magginesu
Ganbare Goemon 3
Zig Zag Cat
Psycho Dream
Sengoku
Mystery Circle
Bomberman 4
Shin Kidou Senshi Gundam W: Endless Duel
Spriggan Powered
Video Transcription:
Metal Jesus: Metal Jesus here, and I am back with John Riggs.
John: How’s it going, man?
Metal Jesus: Good. What are we here for today?
John: We have some great Super Famicom games. These are the Japanese Super Nintendo games that you don’t need to know any Japanese for. You can just pick them up and just start playing them.
Metal Jesus: Dude, and we previewed some of these, and there are some games that are pretty awesome here.
John: “Pretty unique” is a good word for it.
Metal Jesus: Yes. All right, let’s take a look.
John: Just dive right in?
Metal Jesus: Yes.
John: All right. We have this in the Famicom video that we did a little while back. We have, for the Super Famicom, there are three Parodius games. And all three of them are absolutely worth getting.
Metal Jesus: So we were previewing some of these games here earlier, and oh my God, so funny. Right? I was telling you that probably in the pitch meeting for these games, they never ran across an idea that they just said no to.
John: Yeah, no idea too crazy. No idea too out there. Herbs may have been smoked during some of these meetings. It’s just the craziness, and the music is great. And silliness aside, it’s a fun schmup.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, it’s totally legit.
John: Absolutely.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, but I love how
Oh gosh, describe some of the characters in here. I mean
John: Oh, there was a hula-hooping monkey for a while. There was an Easter Island head that was in full makeup, and when it explodes, you find that it’s really controlled by a penguin.
Metal Jesus: And, to me, it was just random penguins in bed, because there are.
John: Because there can be.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, yeah.
John: But it plays just like the Gradius series, and you pick up power-ups along the way. You can choose which character you are, depends on what power-ups you’re gonna get. And there’s still the bell feature from TwinBee, and depending on what color the bell is after you shoot it enough times, you can get things like a giant megaphone that screams at everyone.
Metal Jesus: That’s my favorite. Right? The fact that it shows the words.
John: It’s just the words yelling something–“kono bakayaro” or something like that. Still a super fun game, and there are three of them. All three of them, I wouldn’t put any one over the other ones. All three of them are gonna be the same type of game. But absolutely, if you can find any of the three, I’d say go for it, for sure.
Metal Jesus: Awesome. Awesome series.
John: We have, in America, one of my favorite games. It was one of the first Super Nintendo games I bought, was Legend of the Mystical Ninja. And I absolutely loved it.
Metal Jesus: Yeah.
John: In Japan, there are other ones, including Legend of the Mystical Ninja 2 and 3.
Metal Jesus: Oh, cool.
John: And they have these available, too. I almost didn’t wanna include these because I was thinking about Legend of the Mystical Ninja. And you can go in some of the shops, and you get tips along the way.
Metal Jesus: And so there is some Japanese that you have to read.
John: But you don’t have to read it.
Metal Jesus: Oh, I see.
John: You can still figure your way around. If you see a shop and there’s items to buy, you can just buy them. And there are gonna be some people trying to give you clues or hints or whatever, and even if you can’t read it, you can still find your way around.
Metal Jesus: One of the things I noticed in some of these games that we were playing is that often, yes is the default.
John: Yes.
Metal Jesus: Not always, but that’s nice, right? It’s just sort of like yes or no. Well, most of the time, you’re choosing yes.
John: Absolutely, and more often than not, you’ll see the word for yes, which is “hai,” and then no, which is “iie.” You see that in so many Famicom games. So there’s a few words, even maybe by playing these games, you’ll actually pick up a little bit of Japanese or how to read certain words I grew up looking into. You’ll also find a lot of these games, these ones or other ones, a lot of times, even the options are in English.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, okay.
John: That’s a benefit to me.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, totally.
John: Love that. We checked this game out, which has one of the unique names I’ve ever heard, is Zig Zag Cat.
Metal Jesus: And when I picked that up, I’m like, “What is this?” Is this like the
because you had the other game which was Samurai Pizza Kitten.
John: Samurai Pizza Cats.
Metal Jesus: I was like, “Is this part of that series?”
John: It would be nice if it was. This one’s one of the more unique games I’ve never even heard of until I started playing it.
Metal Jesus: It’s a story-driven game of
John: It’s a story-driven, vertical-scrolling
Metal Jesus: I don’t know. Like, well, I guess a Super Breakout- or Arkanoid-style thing. But you’re constantly sort of going up. You get stopped every once in a while. You break out a couple bricks. This is the type of game, though, where someone would describe it like you originally described it, and I was like, “What? What is this really weird thing?” And then I played it, and I was like, “Dude, I must own this.”
Metal Jesus: This is the one to get.
John: And again, it looks like it turns into kind of like an RPG element where you’re walking around, you can talk to people. But if you just do that enough and you find the door and you go through it, it turns into the game. And you just scroll vertically, and then that Breakout/Arkanoid technique of
And the other one, I wish they had that option on Arkanoid, but you can actually push your mallet.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, very handy. So as your ball or your cat or whatever is sort of bouncing up there
John: It’s a Zig Zag Cat.
Metal Jesus:
yeah, but you can actually push your paddle up to grab power-ups or take out enemies. And actually, it’s a huge bonus in this game.
John: It is.
Metal Jesus: Actually, I want this game. This game’s awesome.
John: Okay. Zig Zag Cat. It’s worth looking out for.
Metal Jesus: I know. Who knew, right?
John: Who knew? Absolutely. I’m a huge Valis series fan, and this one plays a lot like that. It’s called Psycho Dream. Psycho Dream. You can play as a boy or a girl. It’s gonna be the same game anyway, the same story line. It’s honestly pretty simplistic. You just go through the game. It’s side scrolling–again, like Valis–and you get power-ups along the way. You get a lot of power-ups along the way to make your weapon and attack stronger. That’s really about it.
Metal Jesus: That’s all you need!
John: But it’s worth playing. And it didn’t come out in America, and you don’t need to know Japanese to play it.
Metal Jesus: Now, how expensive is a game like this? I don’t know if you bought this recently or not, but if you have any idea.
John: No, I looked this up recently. This game specifically, I think I paid $10 for it.
Metal Jesus: See, that’s totally reasonable, right?
John: Ten bucks, yeah.
Metal Jesus: Cool.
John: Always a fan of Super Nintendo games. This one I wanted to pick up because I’m such a fan of Neo Geo, and when the Super Nintendo was hot, I couldn’t afford a Neo Geo. That’s a $500 system. Games are $200 each. So we got the Super Nintendo version of games like Art of Fighting, games like World Heroes 2, games like Samurai Shodown. One of my favorite games was Sengoku, and we never got that in America. But they did make a Super Famicom version of Sengoku, so I was really happy to find this because I wanted to see the game that I could’ve had as my favorite Neo Geo game that I never got.
Metal Jesus: And this is actually pretty decent, too. The sprites are really big. It’s really colorful.
John: Very colorful. It’s a fun game. It’s a great port of the Neo Geo version, so worth checking out if you can find it.
Metal Jesus: Very cool. Mystery Circle. What is that?
John: Mystery Circle will not win any awards for most spectacular game play, best use of graphics, best use of mode 7 for a Super Nintendo game.
Metal Jesus: Way to hype it up.
John: But it’s a really fun puzzle game, and it’s a puzzle game not so much that I’ve heard of in America. It’s kind of like, I hate to use the Tetris example, but pieces fall from the top to the bottom, and then once they have attached, then you as your ship, you have to do the kicks thing of draw around it.
Metal Jesus: Oh, really?
John: As a mystery circle. And then that’s what disappears, the blocks. And then once they start falling down faster, then you have to drag around more intricate pieces to get to where you’re going.
Metal Jesus: Oh, I see.
John: So very simple, very fun. They could have made this for the Atari 260, if they would have known about it.
Metal Jesus: But you know what? Often, it’s just game play, and if it’s solid and interesting and unique and fun, that’s all that matters.
John: That is all that matters. So Mystery Circle, another just fun puzzle game. You don’t have to know anything about it.
Metal Jesus: That’s cool.
John: I love it. One of my favorite franchises of all time is the Bomberman series.
Metal Jesus: For a lot of people, absolutely.
John: Love the Bomberman series. Most of them have story modes, most of them have multiplayer factors, and almost all of them always have just the classic Bomberman battle mode. In America, we have Super Bomberman and Super Bomberman 2 for the Super Nintendo. In Japan, they had Super Bomberman 3, Super Bomberman 4, Super Bomberman 5, and a couple of other incarnations thereof. And I do have Super Bomberman 4, and that, I think I actually like it even a little bit more than Super Bomberman 5. I figured later on in the series it’s better, but Super Bomberman 4, totally worth having. It’s Bomberman. It’s Bomberman. You blow up stuff. You get power-ups along the way. You can actually uncage helpers to help you play through certain levels. And it has the animal element too where you can find an egg, hatch it, and then ride on a dinosaur to help you blow stuff up, which also counts as an extra hit. So instead of it being a one-hit kill, you have a little leeway for you.
Metal Jesus: The Bomberman series is one that, for whatever reason, because I didn’t own a Super Nintendo back in the day, I need to play more of this because I hear about it all the time.
John: Bomberman?
Metal Jesus: Yeah! People love the series. I need to do it. We need to plug it in and do some
John: Go for it!
Metal Jesus: …do some multiplayer.
John: There’s usually a Bomberman for just about every system.
Metal Jesus: It seems like it.
John: But yeah, Super Bomberman, given in America, we have Super Bomberman 1 and 2. That’s it, for the Super Nintendo, just like with Mystical Ninja and [inaudible 00:09:23] few of them.
Metal Jesus: Which is surprising considering that a lot of people love the series. It’s weird that they didn’t bring it over.
John: Yeah, and it’s not much to port over because it’s mostly in English, anyway. You don’t nearly need to know much about it.
Metal Jesus: Cool.
John: Whatever.
Metal Jesus: Yeah.
John: This is the one that you said looked familiar.
Metal Jesus: It did, yeah.
John: And it should be. It’s Gundam Wing. This one is Gundam Wing: Endless Duel. It’s a two-player fighter, versus fighter game, in giant mecha robots.
Metal Jesus: Nice. Love it.
John: And that’s the way to go. Top-notch Super Nintendo. Super Famicom definitely pushes the limits. Huge sprites, super colorful. Even the segues between player-one fight and stuff like that, it has little staticy-, glitchy-type elements to it. And it’s super fun to play. And it’s Gundam Wing. If you love the Gundam Wing series, it has the anime elements of cut scenes and all that, that if you love the series
Gundam Wing came out right around when the height of my anime otakudom of the mid to late ’90s was at its highest peak. So Gundam Wing holds a dear place in my heart, and during that generation, Gundam Wing, the way to go. So Endless Duel, mecha versus fighter.
Metal Jesus: That’s awesome.
John: That’s the way to go, for sure.
Metal Jesus: And then, surprise, I actually have one game to contribute to this video.
John: I wish had it. That’s one game I don’t have.
Metal Jesus: Well, it was given to me by a Drunken Master Paul when he went over to Europe. He went on vacation, and he was looking for a gift for me. And he didn’t know anything about it, but he knew it was a shooter. And he picked well.
John: He made the right choice. You chose wisely, Paul.
Metal Jesus: I know. So that is Spriggan Powered.
John: Yes.
Metal Jesus: This is a really cool shooter, and I’m so happy that he got this for me. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. It didn’t come out here, obviously. But this is an awesome shooter. A couple things I like about it is that, one, at least in the initial stages, the difficulty is just spot on. We were playing it, and I made it through the first level. And you don’t have to be a master to do it, right?
John: Right.
Metal Jesus: Now, there are six levels in this game, and it obviously does get tougher.
John: Sure.
Metal Jesus: But it’s definitely…
John: It’s doable.
Metal Jesus: It’s totally doable. It also has mid-level bosses as well as end-level bosses. There’s power-ups. There’s also this ability where the closer that you get to the enemy bullets, it gives you this tech upgrade, which essentially is a bonus.
John: Right.
Metal Jesus: So there’s this sort of risk-versus-reward element to this game which can kind of get a little hairy. But it’s got great graphics, and this game is pretty collectible, actually. I would say this is not really an affordable game, per se.
John: It’s getting up there. I looked it up recently.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, I know. And now, Paul actually had a really good deal on this, but the card alone is anywhere from $50 to $60.
John: Right.
Metal Jesus: A complete copy will cost you $120 plus.
John: Right.
Metal Jesus: I don’t have any complete copies, but I do think it’s really worth it. It’s definitely an awesome game.
John: I love the graphics in it because, to me, the Super Nintendo was all about, to me, what are you gonna do with mode 7? To me, the Super Nintendo was all about mode 7, when’s it coming up, what are you gonna do. Like Mario Cart, it was the racing element. F0, that’s what was going on. You wouldn’t have Pilotwings without mode 7. So I always looked for any Super Nintendo game or anything I picked up, I was like, “Where are you going to use mode 7? Let me see it.” I like how, in this game, they used their mode 7 for just background graphics.
Metal Jesus: Oh, interesting.
John: You didn’t have to use it for the game play. You didn’t have to use it for story line. It’s just this very subtle in-the-background. And in the first stage, the scene’s scrolling towards you a little bit and has a little fold to it and everything. It’s beautiful. It’s such a great-looking game.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, definitely. So I have a question for you.
John: Yes.
Metal Jesus: And we get this a lot on these import videos, is that, how do you play them if you don’t live in Japan, right?
John: Right. And you don’t have any Super Famicom, per se, but you do have a Super Nintendo.
Metal Jesus: Right. So what do you recommend to do that?
John: Well, if you don’t have a RetroN 5.
Metal Jesus: Right, so that’s what I have.
John: So that works.
Metal Jesus: I was setting you up for that. But the RetroN 5, for those of you that don’t know, is a really nice alternative. It’s a clone system, and essentially what it does, you have to have these, you pop it in there, and it takes the ROM, downloads it into RAM, and that’s how it plays it. But you can play North American PAL, Japanese.
John: Sure. But the problem with these compared to a
You wanna grab me a random
Oh a different random game than that. No, no, that’s fine. You can grab that. You could’ve grabbed that one.
Metal Jesus: Well, I didn’t know if that was a bad one or not. Here you go. That’s a game I like.
John: There we go. Biker Mice from Mars.
Metal Jesus: Yes.
John: We’ll stick with this. Similar in size, similar in shape. On the back, Super Nintendo games have this notch. Super Famicom games do not. And the Super Nintendo does have a place for those notches to fit in. So a couple ways you can do it, you can modify the card.
Metal Jesus: So it’s only a physical.
John: It’s a physical, yeah. Unlike the Famicom, which does use two different chip sets, the inside is gonna be the same.
Metal Jesus: Oh, I didn’t know that.
John: But the cartridge itself, it’s gonna be the same chip size and everything.
Metal Jesus: Oh, okay.
John: So either you have to modify the card–I would not recommend this–burn it, chop it, sand it down, whatever you gotta do to make those notches. The other way you can do it is by using your actual Super Nintendo and removing the notches with those pliers.
Metal Jesus: I’ve heard of people doing this.
John: I don’t know what I’m mutilating, but just grab it and twist it and you yank it in. When you’re done masturbating, then you can actually go in and actually remove the notches. Two things I’ve done in the past. One of them is I use a Super Nintendo Game Genie.
Metal Jesus: Okay.
John: And then I remove the notches on the inside of there, where they would be there, so then through a Game Genie. And you don’t have to use codes if you’re not using the Game Genie. But then once you have that, that’ll go in there. It’ll fit in your Super Nintendo just fine.
Metal Jesus: I see.
John: I do use this technique, too. Someone actually tipped me in on this. I’m gonna show you this, is if you have an SNES mini, this is the second incarnation of the Super Nintendo.
Metal Jesus: Okay.
John: This one’s actually pretty beat up. It’s all grungy and green.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, I know. It’s got goop on it.
John: Yeah, that was chocolate pudding, I think. I don’t know. I have no idea what’s doing that.
Metal Jesus: Lick it.
John: Yeah, a little bit of that. On the inside, and I already removed this part, couple of screws on the back. Nothing wrong there. The inside here, where the game cartridge would go in, is where those notches are.
Metal Jesus: Oh, okay, I see them.
John: I just removed this and chucked it over there, and now I have this.
Metal Jesus: Oh, because you don’t need it at all.
John: Which the only thing that you would need it for is now this is open, so unless you’re gonna keep this
Metal Jesus: So it could get dusty.
John: It’ll get dusty. So put it in a ziplock bag here or put in Tupperwares. If you do that, that’s fine. But now that fits in there just fine. If I’m not doing that.
Metal Jesus: And you could always put it back, too, for whatever reason, if you needed to.
John: If you need to put it back, you can put it back. That’s not a problem. It’s a couple of screws. And you unscrew it, and you put it back on there. So this is how I do all my
it’s actually with this literal Super Nintendo system, play my Super Famicom games.
Metal Jesus: Huh!
John: Who would’ve thunk it?
Metal Jesus: Yeah, I know. That’s interesting. But of course, again, I have the RetroN 5.
John: That works.
Metal Jesus: It works really well, too. And not just a RetroN 5 by Hyperkin, there’s a bunch of them out there that do something very similar to that.
John: Sure. And there’s a couple of other things like a Game Genie. There’s one thing that I do have. I didn’t bring one. It’s called the
It’s like a Super 8 UFO. I forget what it’s called. It’s one of those you can save and download your saved games and whatnot. Anything that gets past the “putting it in there and then putting this cartridge on top of it” is the way to go. But Game Genie, I picked up this Game Genie for, I think, five bucks. This Game Genie worked for me for many, many years until somebody tipped me in on the Super Nintendo 2 idea.
Metal Jesus: Yeah, that’s cool.
John: So that’s what I got.
Metal Jesus: Dude, more awesome games I wanna add to my collection.
John: Yes.
Metal Jesus: So this is a good day.
John: Love it.
Metal Jesus: All right. Hey, thanks for coming on, man.
John: My pleasure.
Metal Jesus: All right, thanks for watching my channel. Thank you for subscribing. Take care.
It’s always awesome when John Riggs comes on the channel. Love that dude. He knows so much about Japanese imports and Nintendo. Always a pleasure to have that guy on. Now, if you like these videos, he and I have done a bunch of them on my channel, so go check them out. Also, you will want to be subscribed because I release new videos every single week and they’re all awesome, just like this. So thanks for watching.