Game 337: Galactic Wars

Predating rival studios Square, Chunsoft, and Atlus by years, Nihon Falcom is said to be Japan's oldest and longest continually operating JRPG developer, if not their biggest or most famous. Founded in 1981 as a computer store, they would sell and later publish software made by their own customers, and by 1989, become put on the international map with internally developed hits Legacy of the Wizard, Sorcerian, and of course Ys, one of the longest-running JRPG series of all time.

Until about 2004, with the release of Sony's PSP, their games had been almost exclusively developed for computers, with console ports of their most successful often outsourced to third parties. The TurboGrafx CD, relatively unpopular outside of Japan, was their most widely supported console. Consequently, they never quite became the major industry player that their prolific back catalog would suggest, and few of their games made whale status, and fewer still attain it naturally. Data Driven Gamer's projected scope is not representative of their decades-long history, and I do not expect to cover series Legend of Heroes, which like Ys, continues to this day and is arguably more popular.

1984's Dragon Slayer, said to be one of the foundational JRPG titles of 1984, seemed important enough to select as a discretionary whale and an entry point to Nihon Falcom. Two prior games seemed important to cover as ancestors, and the first, Galactic Wars, is one we are fortunate still exists. Game Preservation Society chronicles the story of its creation, initially on a Casio computer rented to then-hobbyist programmer Yoshio Kiya, and digital archiving of a PC-8801 conversion.

Thanks to Redditor mattarod for translating this, and to Pzychotix for further translating ingame dialogs. Some minor revisions for clarity are my own.

• This is a simulation war game. You are the supreme commander of the Allied forces.
• The Third Reich forces, commanded by the computer, relentlessly attacks for control of Space Area M-23.
• Input commands with numbers, following the prompt in the bottom-left of the screen.
• Input is performed entirely with the numeric keypad.
• There are initially three SEARCHERs (reconnaissance aircraft) in M-23, but you can only fly one at a time.
• Once you discover an enemy, it will be revealed on the radar for three turns.
• If it attacks, it will be revealed for 20 turns.
• Enemies flee when it seems they are about to be destroyed.
• When you exit the space area, damaged fighters will be revived, so try not to chase them too far...
• Good luck!!
• Please select a level. [1-3]

 

 

The game is, weirdly enough, a copy of Avalon Hill's Midway Campaign! Planet-M23 serves as a stand-in for Midway, two ships (Falcon and Unicon) are your task forces, and all three are capable of launching aircraft, of which there are three types. Bombers attack enemy carriers, fighters can either accompany bombers to attack carrier CAP or be assigned to CAP themselves, and attackers I assume are like bombers but worse. Or maybe better.

Two additions to the formula make Galactic Wars different. First, the game runs semi-realtime; orders are carried out in turns, but you only have a few seconds per turn to make them. Second, there's an unarmed "Searcher" craft that flies six times faster than your own carriers and can be used to help spot enemy ships. Sadly, I never quite got the knack of using it.

I had Falcon, Unicon, and Planet M23 arm all of their ships - having them below deck serves no purpose as far as I can tell - and send them on a southwesterly direction while the searcher, which isn't listed in the roster and is difficult to see on the map, flew around space aimlessly. Eventually, Falcon encountered the enemy "Alzas."

Too bad I'm not entirely sure what's going on here.

Some animations played out, and from what I can tell, Falcon got lightly damaged by Alzas' attackers and bombers.

That same turn, "Specter" was sighted.

I moved my ships in closer to Alzas, and let all of bombers unload.

A few rounds later, Alzas was destroyed, but Falcon had been badly damaged in counterattacks, losing half of her fighters in CAP.

After rearming the ships, assigning full CAP to both, and sending them toward Specter, a third ship "Gorgon" showed its face, right in M-23's airspace.

Gorgon did a number on the planet, though it would have been far worse without the CAP assignment, and I retaliated right away, on a now defenseless aggressor.

That leaves Specter to deal with. Ideally, I'd want to bait it with the battered Falcon and then wear it down with Unicon.

Something even better happened. Specter didn't even know it was about to be double-teamed, until it was already in range! Its ships apparently were below deck. I hit it hard with unaccompanied attackers and bombers, and unprotected by CAP, did 90% lethal damage in one round, while Unicon shrugged off some token retaliation. One more attack and it was over.

I won handily... on the easiest setting. But I'm okay with not trying again on something harder.

GAB rating: Average. No points for originality - this really is just a copy of Midway Campaign, but the addition of manual searching does make the game better, just not a lot better. The timed rounds, on the other hand, are kind of annoying to deal with, expiring way too soon, and the fact that some of the ingame prompts go away faster than you could reasonably have a chance to read them makes me think this might be a bug or an emulation problem.