Happy Console Gamer was talking about
Wild Guns in a video today. It got me thinking about other games that Natsume has developed or published. They're probably best known for HM (especially in the west), but they've really done a lot over the years. They'd been around for nearly a decade by the time the first HM was released, making a name for themselves with some pretty decent games on the NES and SNES.
One of those games was
Shatterhand. I don't know if it's my favorite non-HM game, but it's definitely up there, and I wish I still had my copy (or at least not sold it for the ridiculously low price that I did, it turns out it's pretty rare!). It's a solid beat 'em up with platforming elements. Natsume's name doesn't appear on the title screen or anything, it was published by Jaleco in the west.
Natsume also made a Super Sentai game that I'm pretty sure uses the same engine as
Shatterhand because it plays so similarly,
Chojin Sentai Jetman. Lending credence to this idea is the fact that the Japanese version of
Shatterhand bore licensing of another one of Toei's toku shows,
Tokkyū Shirei Solbrain, and that both
Solbrain and
Jetman were published under Bandai's Angel label. They were even published the same year. Methinks Natsume had a multigame deal of some sort going on with Bandai (who handles all
Super Sentai and
Power Rangers merchandising), and decided to reuse the engine to save time and money. They apparently (if an unsourced bit of Wikipedia is to be believed) also reused the Jetman engine years later for the MMPR game on the SNES. I dunno about that, but there are a couple of other PR/SS games they did on SNES (better ones, IMO),
Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Zenkai! Racer Senshi and
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition. Anyway... I've got an AV Famicom and a tabless SNES, I'm definitely gonna grab legit copies of these eventually.
I picked up
Legend of the River King from a shop in Reno a couple years ago. I can't say that I've played it very much, but I kind of just bought it for the gimmick factor anyway: it's a Super Gameboy Game (which I'm collecting), and one with a pretty cool border at that.
Some of you probably already know this, but the Medabots franchise was developed by Natsume. It's never been all that popular in the west (despite still going strong in Japan, the latest game drops this Christmas Eve), most people just remember the anime from the early aughties (what I call the 00s, deal with it
). The only one of the games I've really played is
Medabots: Metabee/Rokusho (for clarification, the one called
Medarot 2 in Japan), but it's a lot of fun. I've played through it like four or five times, trying out different combinations of parts, raising different medals. As you'd expect, it's basically a Pokemon clone, but it plays differently enough to be worth it. I'd recommend emulating it, though. The battles are really long (the animation is ludicrously slow), I probably wouldn't have had the patience to beat it even once if I couldn't overclock.
I've emulated
Wild Guns before. It's fun, but it's another rare one, and I dunno if I like it enough to pay that much. You're looking at about $100 just for the cartridge (and don't go thinking you'll be smart and just get the more common Japanese version, it goes for about the same because there isn't much text and it's otherwise identical). I always chuckle at that first stage... I lived in Carson City for just shy of three years and elsewhere in that part of Nevada for most of my life, I can tell you that the landscape looks nothing like that.
What about everyone else? Developed or published, it doesn't matter which. They don't even have to be ones you like, just what other Natsume games have you played? Want to play?
). The only one of the games I've really played is Medabots: Metabee/Rokusho (for clarification, the one called Medarot 2 in Japan), but it's a lot of fun. I've played through it like four or five times, trying out different combinations of parts, raising different medals. As you'd expect, it's basically a Pokemon clone, but it plays differently enough to be worth it. I'd recommend emulating it, though. The battles are really long (the animation is ludicrously slow), I probably wouldn't have had the patience to beat it even once if I couldn't overclock.