FANTASTIC NIGHT DREAMS COTTON
game Cover
game CDRom
コットン
©1993 Hudson Soft
©1991 Success
Release : 1993-02-12 (¥6800)
SuperCDRom² HCD3043
Shooter / Horizontal

game HuCard
country
Released in America as FANTASTIC NIGHT DREAMS COTTON
( TGXCD1038 )
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.
Related
MarchenAdventureCotton100% (Sfc)
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screen shot 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).

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.

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'!

Game Staff (Copied from the end credits) :

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
Music Compose
T's Music
Bang Heads Prj.
T. Satoh

Producer
E. Aoyama

Assistant
E. Yamamoto

Director
Y. Kawaguchi

Technical Support
Kenneth
Sutherland
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
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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Cotton manual Cotton American manual Advert Cotton Fan art
Click on picture to enlarge

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Cotton - level select 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.

LK
rating
Add your Pov here !

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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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