I was asked via Patreon to write about my favorite anime computer games, which should theoretically be an easy proposition. The only problem: I’ve never been much of a PC gamer, and more recently, I haven’t had much access to a Windows PC, where most computer games reside. Thus, the scope narrows from “my favorites” to “the couple I actually played and remember with some fondness.” Hopefully that still counts.

The #1 title that sticks out in my mind is Melty Blood. Though it hasn’t been exclusively a computer game for a very long time, and it’s nowadays known for the running joke that Melty Blood tournaments can (or are forced) to be held anywhere and everywhere, it did start off as a doujin game on PC. I happened to be part of a fighting game forum at the time the game first appeared, and I had recalled a Japanese forum-goer singing high praises for the Tsukihime franchise as a whole. Lo and behold, here was a game that married those two forces—Type Moon and fightmans—together. 

I was never good at the game by any means, but when I think about that very first rendition of Melty Blood, I mostly recall the little humorous touches that faded away over time in favor of a more competitively robust experience. In the first Melty Blood, when Arcueid and CIel clashed with punches, it could set off a sequence that ended with both of them getting cross countered, Ashita no Joe-style. And whereas Mech-Hisui in later iterations has a more conventional forward and back air dash, she originally had a Jet Scrander from Mazinger Z, and she flew at an oddly steep angle when air dashing. It reminds me of the fictional Kujibiki Unbalance fighting game in the Genshiken manga, where the club members talk about how the game adheres so closely to faithfully capturing the characters’ qualities that the balance went right out the window. 

Another game I enjoyed a lot was MegaMari, a fan game that basically took the characters of Touhou and put them into a Mega Man clone. It was more than just a reskin, however, as the game took Mega Man’s famed platforming and added Touhou’s signature bullet hell. Nothing in Mega Man (except perhaps the abusiveness of later entries into the Mega Man X series) could compare to the ridiculous yet beautiful sprays of icicles and swords, and that was in addition to old blue bomber staples like the Quick Man stage instant-kill laser beams. I was never able to complete MegaMari on account of the difficulty, but I appreciated the marrying of two great flavors. It also introduced me to a lot of Touhou characters I didn’t know much about otherwise—Konpaku Youmu, Saigyouji Yuyuko, Reisen Udongein Inaba, and so on.

While my experience with anime computer games is extremely limited, there is one area I wish I could explore more: the Japanese home computers of the 1980s, such as the PC-88 and the PC-98. This is especially because there are a lot of secret shames buried within that time, and it’d be a fun and enlightening experience. Probably the closest I’ll be able to get without jumping through too many hoops is to just get the PC-98-inspired VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action on the Switch. Although that game isn’t made in Japan, it actually got a variety of official art made by Suzuki Kenya (Please tell me, Galko-chan!) for the Japanese release. 

Expect my thoughts on that game in the near future?

This post is sponsored by Ogiue Maniax patron Johnny Trovato. You can request topics through the Patreon or by tipping $30 via ko-fi.