Opus No Longer With Us

After 34 years in business, game developer Opus declared bankruptcy on April 4, 2024, and the only news item online (as of this posting) was a summary on JC-NET, a news site that specializes in posting bankruptcy information. The reason given for the filing was COVID and the subsequent restrictions on operating hours, which led to a sales slump. A sad ending for such a company, in a year that has been tough for the game industry.

Opus was established on March 6, 1990, by Takayuki Suzuki, a former member of Goblin Sound, a sound team that frequently worked with companies like Seta, BPS, and NCS (Masaya brand). Early on, Opus was mostly a sound production company, like Goblin Sound before it, and continued to work with Seta, NCS, and others. With Suzuki handling executive duties, Masanao Akahori and Jun Enoki became Opus's two primary sound designers. But as time went on, the company became more and more involved with game development.

Opus began to make a name for itself as a developer during the PS1/N64 era. On the PlayStation, it developed the music games Depth (Fluid in Europe), Beat Planet Music, and Groove Jigoku V. Over on the Nintendo 64, it was responsible for the Fighters Destiny series of 3D fighting games (the first of which was developed with a company called Anchor).

Building on that experience, Opus went on to develop UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) games for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. It also developed Wave Rally for the PlayStation 2, a racing game similar to Wave Race 64 that also featured the popular Kawasaki Jet Ski watercraft. During this period, Opus was moving into the field of middleware and development tools; Wave Rally made use of its GZwave "wave engine technology".

2009 marked the debut of Opus's original series for the PSP, Half-Minute Hero, which put a unique spin on the RPG genre by dividing the game into 30-second stages and incorporating an irreverent sense of humor. Versions of these games were also released for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows (Steam).

Opus spent its last years developing and touting its Machine Heads test automation tool and AI matching service. It also developed smartphone games and worked on various games for Square Enix and Bandai Namco, including Final Fantasy VII Remake, SaGa Scarlet Grace, Tales of Arise, and Ace Combat 7.

SD Gundam Rainbow Wars

You won't hear Hideo Kojima talk about it in a Kenji Eno documentary. It's the kind of game, one featuring licensed characters, that Eno seemed to hate making, to the point where he eventually stopped showing up for work. But he made this game; he's credited as the game designer, the only person in the credits to use his full name.

The game is SD Gundam Sangokushi Rainbow Tairiku Senki, an arcade run and gun developed for Banpresto by Kenji Eno's company EIM (as confirmed by the game's director, Takehiko Hoashi) Was Eno a fan of Contra? Because this is a Contra clone, from the weapons pickups to the tank you can drive that's straight out of Contra III, but set in the SD Gundam universe.

Despite the cutesiness of the game, it's still kinda tough. The stage design feels a little basic and bare-bones compared to Contra. Nevertheless, it's a very solidly constructed, competently made game and a fun diversion. Just don't expect, despite Eno's involvement, a subversive take on the genre.

A Word About the Tokyo Xtreme Racer Series

Genki has announced a brand new Tokyo Xtreme Racer game, the first non-mobile game entry in the series in almost 20 years. But the company has a long history in racing games, going all the back to the Super Famicom and Super NES.

Genki developed several racing games for Nintendo's 16-bit machine, mostly motorcycle and F1-type racing games, but they also created the game that started the whole Shutokou Battle/Tokyo Xtreme Racer series, Shutokou Battle '94: Drift King. It features the "Drift King" himself (hence the title), professional race car driver Keiichi Tsuchiya, along with "car tuner" Masaaki Bandoh. A sequel followed in 1995.

The English Wikipedia article for the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series includes Wangan Dead Heat/Highway 2000 for the Sega Saturn; the Japanese Wikipedia article for the Shutokou Battle series does not. I do not count it as part of the series, despite the fact that it takes place on Tokyo highways.

So we move on to the next game for PlayStation, from 1996, simply titled Shutokou Battle in Japan and Tokyo Highway Battle overseas. This is where the series made the transition to 3D. Oddly, the game seems to have been mostly developed by another company called CAPS. Yet Genki developed two 3D racing games themselves that came out the year prior, Hang-On GP and the aforementioned Highway 2000. (And BTW, the Saturn version was by Natsume's Osaka office, then a subsidiary called Osaka Natsume.)

This was followed later in the year by Shutokou Battle Gaiden: Super Technic Challenge: Drift King e no Michi, also developed by CAPS. Again, CAPS is not credited, technically (though their name is clearly written on the speedometer), but it is mostly the same team that worked on Tokyo Highway Battle. Genki is only credited with supervision here.

I don't know the full story or the circumstances behind it, but in May 1996, CAPS president Tsutomu Hagiwara headed up a new Genki subsidiary called Doda. Doda would carry on the development of racing games for Genki. CAPS, meanwhile, would make their own series of racing games called Option Tuning Car Battle. These never left Japan.

Doda developed the next game in the Shutokou Battle series, Shutokou Battle R, released for PlayStation in 1997. This marked the final appearances by Keiichi Tsuchiya and Masaaki Bandoh in the series.

The series found international success when it came to the Sega Dreamcast in 1999. While previous games were more conventional, lap-based racing games, Tokyo Xtreme Racer (Shutokou Battle in Japan, Tokyo Highway Challenge in Europe) added some grit and a degree of freedom to the proceedings. The player is now on their own to roam the highways and find rivals to challenge. Doda developed this and the sequel.

Genki acquired and dissolved Doda on May 31, 2000, less than a month before the sequel was released in Japan. More sequels and spin-offs followed, now developed in-house. Then for a long time, nothing happened other than a couple of mobile games.

In 2008, after poor sales, the original Genki became insolvent and was dissolved. (I don't know if they actually filed for bankruptcy.) The current entity known as Genki was actually spun off from the old one. I don't know if anybody from the old days is still kicking around, but the company has continued to work on the Wangan Midnight series and those mobile games, so that's something. We'll just have to wait and see how the new game turns out.

(This post leans very heavily on videos by Classic Gaming Player, so thanks to them.)

Heart Like a Wheel, Crazy Like a 20th Century Fox

In 1983, the game industry was still young, and all things were possible. You could make a game based on a movie called Heart Like a Wheel, and it didn't seem weird at all!

Heart Like a Wheel is a biopic based on the life of drag racing driver Shirley Muldowney, so it should come as no surprise that the game is a drag racing simulation. Perhaps you were expecting a Donkey Kong-like game where you collect hearts? You're a weird person, reader, but alas, it is not.

Heart, which was set to be published by Fox Video Games, was never released, nor was it finished. The prototype was shrouded in mystery, as no company name appeared in-game. Only the name "Universal" appeared on the EPROM board. Was this a lost game from the makers of Mr. Do!?

No. Programmer Jim Collas contacted AtariProtos and confirmed the identity of the game. Collas was at developer McT at the time, as he worked his way through college. He would go on to have a long career in tech.

While Kee Games' Drag Race and Activision's Dragster, two drag racing games that preceded Heart, have a side view, Heart notably has a behind-the-vehicle view. It brings to mind later Japanese drag racing games like the Zero4 Champ series.

Since Heart was not finished, the controls and settings are rather wonky, but the game is playable. You can read more about all that in the AtariProtos article.

Xenon 2 4 X68000 + PC-98

Following the original Xenon and Speedball, British developers The Bitmap Brothers came out with what stands as one of the better "Euroshmups" of the Amiga era, Xenon 2: Megablast. It's tough, but manageable. It has shops where you can buy power-ups, a feature I usually hate in games like Fantasy Zone, yet they somehow made it work here. It's just an overall decent game. An acquired taste, perhaps, but don't write this off as a game that's all style over substance like Shadow of the Beast, as some are wont to do.

Of course, it would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that the style is probably what people remember most about Xenon 2, whether that's its detailed landscapes or its copious use of "Megablast" from Bomb the Bass. You'll be hearing that particular track throughout the game, over and over again. Maybe you'll learn to love it.

Xenon 2 made its way to various computer and console platforms, mostly in Europe, but there are also ports for the Japanese X68000 and PC-98 computers, which will be the focus of this post. These come courtesy of publisher Epic/Sony Records and developer System Sacom.

Western audiences only know of System Sacom from games like Mansion of Hidden Souls and Lunacy, two of the few games of theirs that made it outside of Japan. That's unfortunate, because they did a lot more than that. (This is where I would link to a write-up about their "Novel Ware" series of games, but nobody's written anything like that in English.)

I'm not sure how System Sacom got roped into doing ports of Xenon 2, but they seemed to have a close relationship with Epic/Sony at the time. Some employees were transferred to the Epic/Sony office, including the renowned programmer Mark Flint, and had their own room there, most likely to make games for the canned PlayStation/Super Famicom/Super NES CD-ROM.

The big new addition to the X68000 and PC-98 ports of Xenon 2 is the Special Mode, featuring (per the manual) new music and a new ending (nothing too exciting, I don't think). The new music is very good and is a nice alternative to listening to "Megablast" non-stop. It's credited in-game to Yuji Nomi and Manabu Saito, though only Nomi is credited in the manual. Yuji Nomi is the composer who later worked on Mega CD/Sega CD Mansion of Hidden Souls and several Studio Ghibli films. Manabu Saito is the System Sacom music composer who died much too young at the age of 22.

The X68000 version of Xenon 2 is very close to the Amiga version, but apparently someone did not take into account the difference between PAL and NTSC, so "Megablast" plays a little faster than it should. I also think the game is running a little faster, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The PC-98 version has all the features and new music from the X68000 version, but the graphics and sound take a significant hit. The foreground graphics still look good, but a background layer is missing. The game also runs much slower and choppier.

X68000 soundtrack:

Space Harrier...on a Nintendo System?

Space Harrier for the Famicom is kind of an odd duck. It was the only Sega port Takara ever published on the system, and there may be a reason for that.

FC Space Harrier was developed by Whiteboard, which had a close relationship with Sega. Programmer Sotaro Suzuki was a guest on OBSLive in 2014 and revealed that it was originally supposed to be a game based on Licca-chan, Takara's fashion doll. I don't believe any other details were given on why the change was made. The Space Harrier port was done without documentation.

In fact, it appears to be based on the Mark III version, but the graphics have been greatly cutesified/simplified, probably because of technical limitations. The bigger problem is the slowdown, which seems to adversely affect your firing. Rapid fire helps, but not completely. It makes you appreciate the Mark III version more; despite that version's problems, it's still very playable. FC Space Harrier is decidedly less so.

The PC-98 Version of Karateka is a Thing

Karateka was released across multiple platforms, even NEC's PC-9800 series of personal computers in Japan. The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse's "interactive documentary" on the classic martial arts computer game, only features some screenshots of the PC-98 version, but there's a whole playthrough of it on YouTube.

My experience with Karateka is mostly limited to the Famicom version, so I won't speak to any differences in gameplay, but the PC-98 version seems to run faster. The other major, and certainly the most obvious, difference is the music playing throughout the game, to the extent that they may have missed the point of the original game.

PC-98 Karateka was published by Brøderbund Japan and developed by a company called Masternet, an online service provider along the lines of CompuServe or AOL in the States. It was originally a subsidiary of Meiji Dairies Corporation. You can look at a pamphlet for the online service here.

The ending credits are surprisingly lengthy. More people worked on this version of Karateka than any other, and yet I don't suspect Masternet had much to do with game development, at least outside of online games. I could not even begin to speculate on how they got involved with this.