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Which isn’t to say it’s bad, since this is one of the best entries in the series and, in some ways, is even better than Vajura Fight on the PC-FX. The gameplay though feels totally dialled-in and nowhere as interesting as Hagane. As mentioned it does look similar to Hagane, with some striking backgrounds and terrific renditions of cloudscapes – the company’s pixel artists clearly knew what they were doing, since all the backgrounds in Battle Raiden look absolutely gorgeous, almost like an oil painting in motion.
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The first released Zenki game, developed by CAP, and their third title after Hagane and Sapphire. What we’re left with then are five games of varying quality, on three separate systems, and little other information – a group of binary relics which only hint at the complex licensing deals behind them, and are guaranteed never to see re-release. Even when viewing the ending credits to some of the games, it’s not always clear which company was behind it. This is obviously speculation, but given how poorly documented the games are, even in Japanese, it’s not easy getting any information, let alone something reliable. Other Zenki releases add more companies to the mix, including K-Factory which was also involved with the anime, but it seems Hudson used a different developer for each version and, given the short window of the releases, all likely began development around the same time.
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The company also developed Sapphire for the PC-Engine, and Sky Odyssey, one of the best overlooked gems in the entire PS2 library. Listed on CAP’s website the first game they developed seems to have been Hagane – certainly it bears a visual similarity to Battle Raiden, which came out a year after. Nowhere on this screen does it mention the actual developer, Computer Artist Production (they’re a game development company based in Nagasaki with strong links to the Hudson of old). Then Shuheisha, the manga publisher, and next to them Kitty Film, which was involved with the anime. On the next line is Zenki‘s illustrator, Yoshihiro Kuroiwa.
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Next to it is Kikuhide Tani, the original writer for the series. The title screen of the first SNES title ( Battle Raiden) lists Hudsonsoft, the publisher for all of the games except the GameGear version, which was published by Sega. They’re also all rather interesting, not only in terms of aesthetics and mechanical design, but the companies which actually made them.Īs you’d expect from a licensed property, many hands were involved with development of all the games. All of them are extremely obscure, with the best known possibly being Vajura Fight for the PC-FX, by virtue of its high price and legendary status on a system generally lacking in decent games (don’t argue, NEC’s PC-FX was a failure no matter how you cut it). Of course we’re not here to talk about the manga and its anime offshoots, rather the five video games they spawned, all released in a seventh month period between August 1995 and February 1996 (so therefore likely intended to coincide with the anime series). As expected there’s a diverse roster of secondary characters which appear throughout the series’ various iterations. As luck would have it Karuma’s evil is also back, in the form of seeds which look like giant eyeballs, and which Zenki must destroy… Or something along those lines. Since he takes the form of a child, she has to use a magical bracelet to turn him – Super Saiyan style – into his more powerful form from the past. Fast forward to today and Ozuno’s descendant Chiaki (aka: Cherry) summons Zenki to save her. Afterwards Ozuno seals Zenki in a pillar/monument/shrine. Over a thousand years ago a sorceress named Ozuno (sometimes Ozunu, or even Oz-Nay) battled evil with the help of guardian deity Zenki, and they defeated the evil demon queen Karuma. The story, very broadly speaking, is your standard modern-fantasy hokum mixed in with a bit of Dragon Ball. In 1997 there also appears to have been an OVA. Some say there were 51 episodes, the now-defunct official Enoki Films website claims 52 at 25 minutes each. Irrespective of the number of volumes, it spawned an anime series for the duration of 1995 (from January to December if online sources are correct). In 2005 a company called Bamboo Comics re-released these as 7 volumes. Wikipedia and other sites claim this apparently ran to 12 volumes, ending in 1996. Starting in 1992, Kishin Douji Zenki (or Demon Child Zenki) was a manga serialization in Monthly Shounen Jump.