FANTASTIC NIGHT DREAMS COTTON
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コットン
©1993 Hudson Soft
©1991 Success
Release : 1993-02-12 (¥6800)
SuperCDRom² HCD3043
Shooter / Horizontal
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Released in America as FANTASTIC NIGHT DREAMS COTTON
( TGXCD1038 )
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Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton is a cute horizontal shooter by Success and
conversion of the arcade game of the same name originally released in 1991. The player takes
control of Cotton, a young witch riding a broom stick and accompanied by
a cute little fairy called Silk. Her mission is to help the fairies restore the powers
of the Prism of Light, and to save the world from being plunged into eternal darkness.
Cotton must collect special gems called Willows, but her insatiable sweet tooth
makes her readily believe that she is on a quest to recover stolen candies... Consequently,
Silk uses Cotton's obsession to her advantage, and is able to outwit the cute
witch, tricking her into saving the world. Cotton has two forms of attacks - she can
shoot magic blast-beams to enemies directly facing her, or drop bombs at foes on the ground.
The player can also charge up and release powerful magic attacks by holding the fire button
for a few seconds. These spells come in two flavors - the Red Dragon Fire awakens a
dragon made out of fire, and the Blue Electrobolt fires a devastating bolt of lightning.
Unlike most other shooters, Cotton relies on experience based upgrades and her powers
slowly increase as she collects orange crystals left behind by defeated enemies. Finally, more
fairies can join Cotton in her dogged quest, as long as the young witch can free them
from their stone prisons. Cotton consists of seven stages and is single player only.
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The original arcade game was released by Success in 1989 (picture on the right) and
interestingly ran on Sega hardware. It was later ported to the
PC Engine CD (1993), Sharp X68000 (1993), Playstation (1999) and
Neo Geo Pocket (2000). It was the first arcade game in a series of three
installments, and was later followed by Cotton 2 : Magical Night Dreams (1997)
and Cotton boomerang - Magical Night Dreams (1998). However, the series had a
continuing life on several home systems, such as Panorama Cotton (Megadrive, 1994),
Marchen Adventure Cotton 100% (Super Famicom, 1994) (Playstation, 2003),
Cotton Boomerang (Sega Saturn,1998), Rainbow cotton (Dreamcast, 1999)
and the rather unconventional
Magical Pachinko Cotton Pachinko Jikki Simulation (Playstation2, 2003).
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This PC Engine conversion of Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton is incredibly
close to the original arcade game. The most obvious difference is the remixed and CD quality
soundtrack, exclusive to this version (which arguably sounds much better than the original
arcade game). As regards to the gameplay, there are a couple of subtle differences - Cotton
is invincible for a short moment when she uses magic (which wasn't the case in the original
arcade game) and, at the end of each level, the player receives extra bonus points if he avoids
all the tea cups instead of collecting them. All the other differences are really minor, such as
the second stage skeleton boss who only features one segmented head instead of two, or the
screaming sound from the third boss.
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Teaser text from the american version:
The Evil Mist has slipped into Fairyland and smothered the Prism of Light
in an everlasting darkness.The Fairies are gripped with fear and dread
as they struggle in the murky, bleak day... waiting in vain for the return of
the morning light. Then, just when they are ready to give up in despair, one
of them runs into the hungry young witch called Cotton. Hungry ? Yessfree
- she can't get enough of those yummy 'Willow candies. She'll even
risk fighting the big bad beasts that await her for a taste of her beloved
'Willows'. Go Cotton! Go! Save fairyland and get your 'willows'!
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Game Staff (Copied from the end credits) :
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Programmer
M. Hatsuyama
T. Kuwabara
Designer
H. Tamura
S. Itoh
T. Kashima
Music COmposer
K. Hirata
Producer
Y. Yoshinari
The Voice Talents
Tarako
N. Yamazaki
R. Kasahara
M. Ogada
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Music Compose
T's Music
Bang Heads Prj.
T. Satoh
Producer
E. Aoyama
Assistant
E. Yamamoto
Director
Y. Kawaguchi
Technical Support
Kenneth
Sutherland
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Program
Sun Chi Wah, Ricky
Chow Yeuk, Eric
Chow Wai For
Graphic
Yau H.m, Mattew
Siu Wai, Adam
Wong K.T, Carlton
Cheung K.S, Franky
Message
Hideko Harimoto
Kenneth
Sutherland
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Music Director
T. Takimoto
Music Program
M. Inoue
Special Thanks
K. Matsuura
Y. Ichizawa
Licenced by
SUCCESS
Presented by
Hudson Soft
& Hudson-ERA H.K
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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Stage select:
At the title screen, press Select to access the option screen.
There, highlight Exit and press Down, II, Left,
I, Right and Select. Two new lines should appear;
Stage and Credit (picture on the right).
English text:
The whole game can be set to English in the option menu. Go to the title screen,
press Select to enter the option menu and set the text
to 'English'.
Second ending:
When you finish the game, a message asks if you want to "go extra". If you do, then
you will go on a more difficult second loop with a different ending.
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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I'm not sure why, but I have always had a soft spot for the Cotton series. Could it
be the mildly lunatic witch ? Could be the broom stick ? who knows... No, more seriously, I
love games that try to be original within a gaming genre that traditionally relies on spaceships
and invading aliens. And yes, Cotton offers some unique visuals and gameplay mechanics, and
the game is genuinely fun. Graphics are bright and colorful, the enemies are all very unique (some
are plain weird though), and the cutscenes have some great comedic moments. Furthermore,
Hudson Soft has done here a terrific job and this conversion is incredibly faithful to the
original (if not better, thanks to the excellent remixed soundtrack). So why not give the game the
highest score ? Well, I feel that there's something missing here, and it's hard to nail down what
that is (and this also applies to the arcade game)... I feel that stages are fairly linear and the
game lacks in gameplay dynamic - it is rather slow and I wish Cotton could fire more bullets
at once (her firepower is quite sluggish, even when the auto-fire is on). Then the game is overall
really difficult and nerve racking in later stages. Nonetheless, this port is outstanding and somewhat
better, in my opinion, than the original arcade game. All in all, Cotton is a charming and
lovable shooter, and one of the best available for the PC Engine system.
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