PC Engine / PC FX

Danso Toshi: Stray Road [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Danso Toshi: Stray Road (断層都市ストレイロード) is a cancelled cyberpunk RPG that was in development around 1993 by IGS (AKA International Games System, アイ・ジー・エス) planned to be released on the PC Engine CD. The settings are quite similar to another cancelled IGS RPG titled “Blunders”: from the available screenshots it looks like players would have been able to explore a fantasy world filled with sci-fi cities and weird monsters. Combat was turn-based, looking similar to Phantasy Star.

Lots of details about Danso Toshi: Stray Road were published at the time in PC Engine Fan magazine and IGS flyer: if you can translate the most important parts in English, please let us know! Some information is also found in japanese fan sites (translated with Google):

“The hero who wanders in search of lost memories in the “fault city” that was once born in the barren wilderness called Tokyo. Eventually he gets caught up in a huge conspiracy.

The February 1993 issue of the monthly PC engine is introduced over two pages. Release price 8900 yen Scheduled release date is written as scheduled to be released in March. It feels like it’s boiled down to the very end, but it has been discontinued.”

Someone on Twitter said a former IGS employee revealed the reason for the game cancellation was a complaint by Aya Sugimoto, a ‘80s / ‘90s J-Pop singer, actress and gravure idol that was hired by IGS for the game promotion and to write a song for the OST (Le SOIR Eternal Farewell). We are not sure about what happened between Aya and IGS, so if you can find more details please let us know!

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Geisha Warriors [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Geisha Warriors ( 芸者ウォーリアーズ) is a cancelled parody action game that was in development by Taito around 1993, planned to be released on the PC Engine Super CD ROM. It seems this would have been a humorous take on The Ninja Warriors, in which players would fight enemies using a japanese geisha instead of a Ninja.

The game was shown in various japanese magazines and by looking at screenshots it seems it would have featured animated cutscenes and many parody characters, such as drunk old men, almost naked workers and tanks with legs. Geisha Warriors could have been quite the fun game for its time, but in the end Taito cancelled the project for unknown reasons.

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Blade Land [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Blade Land is a cancelled RPG that was in development by Nihon Soft Hanbai / Manjuydo for the PC Engine around 1990. For its time it looked quite original: with quirky characters and enemies moving around a modern-day city setting it reminds us of Shigesato Itoi’s Mother / Earthbound series. The game was shown in a few gaming magazines at the time, such as Famitsu and PC-Engine magazine: if you are able to translate these japanese scans let us know if there is some interesting information in there!

  

Battle Jungler (Konami) [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Battle Jungler is a cancelled sequel / reboot of Konami’s 1981 Jungler, planned to be released on PC Engine around 1992. In the original game players move a long creature inside a maze, trying to eliminate three similar enemy creatures, so we can assume Battle Jungler would follow a similar gameplay (but with anime-style protagonists). This PC Engine version was showed in PCE Fan magazine, but then vanished forever and is mostly forgotten even by hardcore PCE players.

We can’t find much more information about this canned Konami game, but if you can read Japanese let us know if there are any interesting details in the scan below!

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Blunders (Branders) [PC Engine – Cancelled]

Blunders (AKA Branders, ブランダーズ) is a cancelled cyberpunk RPG that was in development around 1992 by IGS (AKA International Games System, アイ・ジー・エス) for PC Engine. From the available screenshots it looks like players would have been able to explore sci-fi cities in a top-down view, with turn based combat similar to Phantasy Star. At the time PC Engine Fan magazine published a 2-pages preview of Blunders, so there are some details available: if you can translate the most important parts in English, please let us know!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution

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