3DO ZONE Forums

Hi, i'm new on these boards. My interest in 3do has started only recently, so i'm pretty new to the field, even if i remember reading a lot about 3do and it's games on magazines when i was a kid in the '90s. My interest was sparkled from a rare and unknown japanese game: doctor hauzer. It's a sort of precursor of Resident Evil. The game evolves in many ways the gameplay of Alone in the Dark, focusing it on puzzles (there aren't combats in this game) and exploration. The camera's angle is selectable: third view, overview and first view. This is very interesting and unusual for a game of that time. Even if the game is in japanese, it's fully playable and understandable even for non japanese speakers.
Another rare and interesting japanese only game is the letter that came overtime: it's developed by thinking rabbit, a company which produced some really interesting adventures for the PC-88 and the Sharp X68000. The game is a cartoon adventure, with an engine similar to the one used in japanese adventures like snatcher: you select the action from a list of verbs and play in first person. Unfortunately my japanese isn't so good to understand the game and got stuck really early. But the music and the graphics are really nice and the game deserves a try. Like other thinking rabbit's game the plot seems to be focusing on time travel and murder.

That's it. I'd like to hear more about strange and unknown titles for 3do. Thank you.

You are in the right place, welcome aboard.

BTW, if you have any pics of the latter game I'd love to see them as it is an import that is MIA from my collection.

Have fun!

Hey Trev, do you need pics of the game disk and case (for A Letter That Came Over Time), or do you mean in-game pics? Give me a day or two and I can post some.

In-game would be awesome if you could. I've always been curious about this game, but it is one of those that tends to get overlooked in my pursuit of other imports. Looking forward to anything you could post, thanks bitrate.

Thanks from me too Bitrate! - good to see you on the board again!

and a 3do welcome to Plisskin - you've found the right spot!


as for other "undeground" games - Takeru is an interesting take on the idea of an interactive comic and Ultraman powered is just plain kitsch! - love it!

You coulda asked me anytime.



And yes, the music is very good in this game.

I swear I've asked more than once here on the forum, but I'm too lazy to dig through my old posts. But much thanks 3DOExp!

The look of the game seems quite pleasant w/what seems like water color stills. I wonder, are they at all animated or strictly static? Music is good huh? Is the gameplay passable if I was determined? Stubborness = progress?

I'll have to finally pick it up I guess. I think it is only moderately rare as far as imports go if I'm not mistaken. Thanks again for sharing

Thanks for the warm welcome guys
Replying to Trev, since the game is an adventure, progress is strictly determined by how much of the game you understand. If you don't know a good deal of japanese, progress would be made only brute forcing the game or using some text grabbing utility and then translate the text afterwards. If you are curious about thinking rabbit's games, i would suggest you to try casablanca which is pretty similar to this one. It was developed both for PC-88 and for Sharp X68000 and it's pretty easy to find (it's present in the TOSEC of both systems).
I have found some other japanese only games on which i couldn't find any written review or info apart from release date. I am going to try and document them here.

Can someone spend some words on Takeru? Is it Iron Angel?

No animation, all stills. At least as far as I've gotten, not very far at all.

Takeru (not to be confused with Tesujin) is a comic book that really isn't all that interactive. In fact you don't even need to know one word of Japanese, just look at the pretty pictures and press the button to go to the next screen. It does have animation though.

I have tried N.O.B. Neo Organic Bioform, another japanese only title.
The game relies heavily on spoken japanese, so i couldn't grasp much of the plot. You wake up in a sort of cell and after some long speech you find yourself trapped in a sort of gigerian maze. The game is a mixture between a first person maze crawler (like dangeoun master) and a fighting game, with a very strange fighting system indeed.
The graphics are really nice, especially the monsters. But the loading times are HUGE and the fighting system is bad and unresponsive. I haven't figured yet how to fight properly, but it seems that you have to select your attack, charge it and hope you'll prevail. A very nice idea wasted terribly.

This might help you out.

http://3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1235