505 Game Street PS2 Titles - interesting stuffs

G

Gallus Glee

Dandy Guy, in Space
505 Game Street is a Euro-publisher who have been showering us with schlocky PS2 budget titles and mid-full priced games which we otherwise wouldn't get, so I started a thread with some of their releases.

Their budget range are re-releases from the Japanese Simply 2000 budget range, which is here: http://www.d3p.co.jp/s_20/s20_g.html (Japanese text). The original publisher of the Simply 2000 range (D3) is setting up a new company called Essential Games to release them here, so 505 will be concentrating on its full priced catalogue from here on.

Simply 2000 games are numbered by volume, so each title will have their volume listed so you can check out the screen shots on the above page.

Short summary of titles which folk have contributed here, mini-reviews further down.

505's Simply 2000 series games

Demolition Girl Vol. 50 - 'Attack of the 50 foot woman, in a bikini'. Five poor mini-games and a colour-changing bikini.
Dodgeball
Fighting Angels Vol. 55 - extremely poor Rumble Roses wannabe with copy-and-pasted character models and moves lists.
Paparazzi
Shogun's Blade
Splatter Master
Street Boys
Valken
Zombie Attack Vol. 65 - Basic and dull dungeon crawler with poor loading times.
Zombie Zone Vol. 61 - Dynasty Warriors with gore. 6 Stages of zombie-killing with a girl in a bikini and a cowboy hat. Fun!

Essential Games' Q1 2007 releases (all Simply 2000 series)

All Star Fighters Vol. 91
Dragon Sisters (The Senko) Vol. 87
Global Defence Force Vol. 81
Party Carnival Vol. 89
Zombie Hunters (Zombie Zone + 2 new charas) Vol. 80
Zombie Virus (Zombie Vs Ambulance) Vol. 95

505's non-Simply 2000 series budget games

Fantasy Fishing - Seemed decent enough, loading time every time you start casting = pants though.

505's Full Price Range

Bujingai: Swordmaster Shinobi-ish 3D runaround, run up buildings and battle demons head-to-head.
Graffitti Kingdom - Studio Ghibli imagery, draw yourself a new body.
Harvest Fishing - Legend of the River King hits the PS2, relaxing.
Harvest Moon: Special Edition - 'Special' meaning hideous, jerky and with extra loading times compared to the GC version - avoid.
Magna Carta - Slow-paced traditional RPG with a unique battle system. Patience required.
Michigan: Report From Hell Nice imagery doesn't hide the extremely limited gameplay - don't bother.
Steambot Chronicles - Romantic non-linear adventure, with mecha!
 
Bujingai is the one with Gackt right? I had that, the actual fighting was pretty sweet and I liked the novelty of playing as Gackt but there was vitually no story at all :(
 
Ramen89 said:
He's in more than one?
Click to expand...
Squall from Final Fantasy VIII was apparently based off him - from what I read . I agree, Gackt is in too many things..

For other 505 games that I have played and not been listed yet:

Graffitti Kingdom - One of the few Ghibli games I can name offhand that is actually quite entertaining! You play as Prince Pixel who has to save a kingdom from being taken over by evil. Pixel can transform into any creation you draw! It's an easy platformer/rpg-esque game. So far I've made up a crappy looking Sailor Neptune and a few of my made up characters. You draw in 2-D but it gets transformed into 3-D which is harder than you think - you really need to be half decent at drawing to get the most of this, but it comes with it's own creatures incase you can't be bothered drawing your own.

Magna Carta - Bought the US deluxe edition of this. It's a traditional RPG with a unique battle system..which is very very slow. Infact it usually takes me 2-3 hours to get to a plot bit due to the s.l.o.w. battles - but the story is interesting and the characters themselves are likeable. You need a lot of patience to get through this one, I've had it since Novemeber and haven't completed this yet. :?

Stella Deus - I admit buying this way back last year and haven't played any of it. It's a strategy RPG that seems to be either loved or hated. Will get to it one day.

Steambot Chronicles - Playing this one at the moment and it's great! (I have the US version) It's definately not a budget title anyway! Originally called Bumpy Trot, it's described as being a Romantic non-linear adventure. I'm really enjoying it so far and 505 plan to release this in September! So make sure you do buy it. :wink:
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Sex tube
 
I'd noticed Steambot Chronicles on their products list and thought "aha", I'll be giving that one a caning I'm sure.

The other two (apart from Graffitti, which looks great but I can't find it :S) are.. well I don't have much luck with turn-based SRPGs at all. I just can't get my head around having weak characters and having to battle over and over just to get some lesser characters up to speed.

That's what's stopping me playing Phantom Brave, just sick of levelling weaklings. Same problem happened with Makai Kingdom. Spent forever trying to obtain items with the thieves only to have them become weaker and weaker because they weren't attacking. I doubt anyone'll agree but it seems like poor game mechanics to me.

Ordering zombie attack right now, wannit!
 
I was interested in getting Graffiti Kingdom as they had it on play.com for £14.99 a few months ago. It's since disappeared... :cry:

Coincidentally, my mate ordered the sequel to Zombie Zone from Japan last week as is loving it to pieces.

Interesting to see a thread like this. Not released by 505 Game Street, but was released under the same budget line as Zombie Zone in Japan, there's a really cool game called Monster Attack. It's really hard to find, but I found ine for £9.99 in a T.J. Hughes! :shock:

It's a sci-fi shooter where you run around and blast B-Movie monsters (we're talking giant ants and Godzilla here). Genuine destructible buildings too, you miss with a rocket then expect to see skyscrapers collapse! :twisted:

Here's the Japanese site to the sequel. Click on the box over Europe to see Big Ben getting flattened. The best budget game I've ever played!

http://www.d3p.co.jp/top/special/s20_special.html
 
Thanks for the video Ushio, poor old Big Ben! I looked for the original and you're quite right, it draws a complete blank from the usual suspects (Kelkoo etc.).
 
Zombie Zone is suprisingly playable, it's a Dynasty Warriors type game with loads of zombies - LOADS. Though there's only 6 stages and you constantly have to grind them to increase your stats just to progress, I've really enjoyed this one. It's gory, it has zombie nurses and zombie cops, the playable character is a girl in a bikini with a cowboy hat (wielding a katana) and.. did I mention she's wielding a katana? Zombie cops try to pop a cap in her shapely backside with their revolvers whilst she's carving up some poor undead shoppers (zombies' heads and limbs are fully detachable ). Oh, one final thing which is ownage - you can hack zombies to bits until their entire torsos are gone. What's left of them then stalks around and tries to kick you - mint!

Bujingai: Swordmaster is like Onimusha with all the RPGish bits chopped off and with added mad kung-fool dancing stuff. It's not bad, you can run up skyscrapers, which is always a bonus, getting the drop on demons. Boss encounters are special-move tastic swordfights. I was quite impressed with this one, but it's not on 505's budget range.

Fighting Angels was just ... bad. I don't mean bad as in tacky (though it is tackier than an extremely tacky thing smeared in marmite and pushed into a puddle of syrup) but bad as in poor game mechanics. It's a lady wrestling thing, like Rumble Roses but even more cringe-inducing (or at least it is when you sheepishly trade it in). There were 8 characters, though each one was just a different head pasted onto the same character model. Even worse - there's only about 3 different sets of moves, IE instead of each character behaving differently, 3 of them act the same. Copy and paste gaming - BLEGH! Even worse still, you just special-attack the computer till it's poor character folds up. Terrible.

Fantasy Fishing 505 have a few fishing titles, but this one involves a bug-eyed anthropomorphic possum going on a fishing trip to some ancient ruins and discovering new fish types. Looked interesting, but after loading the thing up and then seeing a 'load' screen every time you position yourself to fish, this thing was going. Constant start-stop loading screens on less than demanding videogames are just poor programming or rushing - I don't make excuses for them I just trade-in. Pity, this one actually looked like a fresh perspective on fishing games, but it's the noughties for gawds sake.
 
Thanks for the impressions! Have to get Zombie Zone at somepoint. At least we are getting these obscure Japanese games that wouldn't otherwise be available.

I'm also interested in aquiring Harvest Fishing. Has anyone played it?

Gamestreet 505 ftw!
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Zx14 Vs Hayabusa
 
Zombie Attack - notably different from zombie zone. This one plays more like one of the combat dungeon crawlers (like crimson tears) but without much in the way of stats. Your character has a choice of three weapons - rice, sword and gun. Each of these can be levelled up with usage or with picking up power-ups throughout the seven levels. Your weapon levels are carried forward.

Another very noticable difference is that this game concentrates on the Eastern zombie mythos - hopping zombies. The characters have a very Chinese look to them (or at least they appear that way to me), particularly their dress. Another facet of this game is that you have to rescue people from the large shopping mall you're in. You have a few different commands to issue those who follow you to the exit. You can command them to wait somewhere safe, to hold their breath (to avoid being attacked by zombies for a few seconds) etc. If the people you're rescuing get spooked by zombies, they start scuttling around like crazed critters and will continue to do so till you stomp the zombies and then approach them to calm them down. Amusing <.<

My only real problem with the game so far (only on 3rd level) is the loading times, even when you enter a door to a room which is only the size of a single screen, you STILL get a loading screen for a few seconds. In this day and age, such sloppyness really is getting unforgivable -.- Another problem which has come to light as I'm playing through is that this game probably won't take more than a couple of hours to complete and doesn't seem to have any replay value. Of course, this could be different if the protagonist is given a shiny battle-bikini and a laser cannon <.< :D We'll have to see.

Harvest Fishing - I believe this is the PS2 incarnation of Legend of the River King. Players have access to four playable characters (a fishing mad family) and about 6 large areas to navigate in order to find fishing locations. I say locations, one of them is a full-sized lake to walk around and swim through. The game is sedate, with no combat, features masses of different fish types to catch and has some mini-games too. One feature I liked was that the fish you can catch even in the same area can change drastically just by fishing a little further upstream or fishing from a small island in the lake.

My only gripe was that there doesn't seem to be a massive reward in either currency or kudos for catching larger fish, a bit of a non-event :/ That said, the mini-games, challenges from your rival (like in pokemon) and the gorgeous locations made up for it.

Harvest Moon: Special Edition - The reason I bought my current PS2, I couldn't wait to get this. Unfortunately, I'd decided I didn't want the thing within 10 minutes of pressing the on button. It's a farming/dating game from the longrunning series. What irked me about this particular game was the loading times every time you walked into a building (why? Just get on with it!) and that it felt flat and stilted compared to the PS1 game Back to Nature. There also seemed to be a lot of slowdown and jerkiness of camera movement. Shoddy. Perhaps the GC version of this is different, but for this PS2 version I'd say stay well away.

Demolition Girl - one of those eccentric fascination games where the object of the exercise is to oggle at the female protagonist. This one is basically 'attack of the 50 foot woman, in a bikini'. There's 5 mini-games, 3 of which resemble Pilot Wings, one of which is like a painful variation of Afterburner and the last one is an on-rails shooter which drags like a bloody stump. It's obvious that the design team wanted to throw out another Simply 2000 game quick-sharp rather than actually create anything worth playing. My biggest criticism is the supposed 'extra' content - new costumes for the 50ft bikini model. What does costume mean to you? To me it means a different set of clothing, like a bunny suit or a maid uniform or some dungarees or whatever. Apparently what it actually means is a palette change to the girl's bikini. A change of smegging colour. Well, seriously, how big of them! Pheh, there's precious little effort gone into creating this 'game' so I'd spend precious little effort buying the wretched thing.
 
Lol I was wondering what that Demolition Girl was like. Godzilla aka woman in a bikini attacks helicopters et all. It's very tasteful I'm sure!

Harvest Fishing..will probably get that as I mentioned before. I have Harvet Moon Special Edition I already have but not played it yet, I expect major slow down and loading times from what I've read. :wink:

Zombie Attack doesn't sound as good as Zombie Zone :p

Thanks for the impressions once again Gallus! Perhaps we should get a thread for first impressions on games. :lol:
________
SWED
 
That'd be a good thing Neptune, everyone could just drop in their first impressions on games.. that's if they didn't already on your existing thread hrm.. Still, so long as we share info and avoid gump-games one way or the other, it's all good. Run Forrest!

That wasn't a typo BabyDaddy ;) You use the rice for an area attack. I think rice can be blessed or something? Sure it's similar to what you can do with salt in some cultures? It makes the zombies cry anyway, bwa ha ha ha. Carbo-bomb the bleeders.

Note to self: find out what a gackt is. Sounds like a disease...
 
Well now I know what a Gackt is, wish it wasn't so.

Michigan: Report From Hell is another mid/full price game from the range, currently only £15 from Play.

Gameplay involves taking up the role of a TV news crew camera man, filming news reporters around Chicago as they investigate the strange mist and monster sightings which plague the city.

You see everything through the camera lens, you cannot manipulate anything except objects which you can ram into. Keys etc. must be filmed to encourage the reporter to pick them up, likewise doors must be focussed on for the reporter to open up.

Unfortunately, there are a stack of flaws in this game, more's the pity since some genuine time and money appears to have been slung into it. The voice acting is painfully bad and bizarrely slow, it just sounds terrible. The dialogue is beyond comical, it's worse than Resident Evil (no joke).

Despite being able to wander around large locations, you are very restricted in where you can go, the reporter has to go with you into every room, and you can only go into the rooms when the script allows you to - you're near as dammit on-rails.

The monster encounters are bizarre also. The monsters will just sit there and repeat their attacks whilst the reporter just sits there and crouches... it's a ridiculous display which would have been much better handled on a 'proper' big budget game.

The biggest reason to play this is to knock the annoying sound man down the stairs, I really can't recommend it unless you enjoy silly and badly designed software.
 
Sorry to bump this thread back, but I just got Steambot Chronicles for only £20 at GAME today, I've not played it yet since I just got back home
 
505 Game Street's Wild Arms 4 was £20 in GAME as well (a friend texted me about it anyway). Looks like a few of their new games are going on the cheap at the mo!
 
Funny that I should wander back to the boards and this topic was up again - I did a little daydream/snooping the other night and might have stumbled on some exciting news.

In a nutshell, it appears that 505 game street is not releasing any more Simply 2000 games (originally published by D3 in Japan), but is instead concentrating on mid-range games like Rule of Rose and Wild Arms 4 etc.

This might sound bad, but it gets better, apparently D3 is branching out to publish their games themselves in this country and others.

So, we gain one publisher concentrating on releasing mid-range games which would otherwise not be published here and another showering us with budget chortles.

It doesn't stop there.

The next part of this rumour (I got this from another board, who were discussing Zombie Zone) is that the sequel to Zombie Zone (the one Ushio's friend got on import) is being released in Q1 2007, along with about six more titles for the PS2, by D3. One of the other touted titles was Zombies vs The Ambulance, a craptacular looking GTA clone with zombies, where you can pimp your ambulance up with rocket launchers etc. and has a cast of several characters (even a kinky nurse). Running over zombies... kinky nurses... I think if it does get released it'll get ordered and locked in the cupboard <.< >.>

Not sure about the other titles, but those two alone have really got me excited, Zombie Zone was a real find in the first place.

One last thing, I've just ordered a half dozen of 505's budget games (more simply 2000 ones) from an ebay seller who's knocking them out at a fiver each new. If it's a good experience, the guy doesn't swizz me for postage and they're any good, I'll drop a mention on the game sale thread. This seller is also selling Zombie Zone - of all the budget games that's the one to get.

Right, that's me chattered out, 2007 is probably going to be my best PS2 year yet when some of this year's great titles take a price tumble and some of these corkers get released.
 
Unfortunately it seems the new Zombie Zone game is in fact the old one with two new characters. Bummer. Not that it will stop me from getting it, not a bit, but it isn't an opportunity to get at some new levels and enemies..

New games haven't arrived yet, but I'm getting ready to do some mini-reviews, looking forward to getting Splatter Master at last.
 
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