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極楽！中華大仙
©Taito Corp.
Release : 1992-03-13 (¥6800)
HuCard (4 Mbits) TP03021
Shooter / Horizontal
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Gokuraku! Chūka Taisen (also known as Cloud Master) is a very unusual, yet cute,
horizontal shooter by Taito. It is the home conversion of their own arcade game released back
in 1988 - however, this PC Engine version could easily be seen as a sequel (both games
do share a lot in common but levels layout and the overall design are very different).
The game features a boy riding on a magic cloud who embarks on a journey to free his
cute friend. The poor
girl has been kidnaped by some evil magic forces and was imprisoned inside a large
crystal ball. Weird mythological creatures and other flying cakes and buns try to stop
our hero and prevent him to reach his goal. Thankfully, formation of flying dumplings
often hide power-ups which either increase our hero's fire power, get him to fly
quicker or just make him invincible for a short period of time. Also, special cloud
riding enemies are scattered around each stage and reveal magic doors when defeated.
These doors lead to shops where a cute shopkeeper provides free secondary
magic weapons. Yes, you read it well, no money involved here, everything is free, but our
hero can only use one magic weapon at the time. At the end of each area, our friend
flies over the clouds and gets to fight an obligatory end-of-stage boss.
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The original arcade game, named Chūka Taisen, was released by
Taito in 1988 (pictures on the right). As expected, several home versions
followed : MSX (1988), Sharp X68000 (1988), Master System (1989)
and Famicom (1989).
Chūka Taisen is largely inspired by a very popular 16th century Chinese legend
featuring a monkey-kid riding on a magic cloud (see
Son Son 2 for more
information). This PC Engine version is however very different than
the original arcade game and can be viewed as an enhanced sequel rather than a
straight port.
Interestingly, the Japanese company Starfish later acquired
the rights of the game and released Shin Chūka Taisen: Michael to Meimei no Bōken
(aka The Monkey King: The Legend Begins in the west) for the Wii in 2007.
This new sequel featured a monkey-girl and an interesting feature where the
screen could be tilted with the wii-remote to speed up or slowdown the scrolling.
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Game Staff (Copied from the end credits) :
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Executive Producer
Takeo Shirasaka
Producer
Yoshio Imamura
Manager
Shoji Takahashi
Director
Harutoki Kume
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Graphic Design
Keisuke Miyanaga
Kazuhiro Ohara
Akishi Imai
Hitomi Kusano
Erika Tsukahara
Hirofumi Aizawa
Norio Nakagami
Masamoto Fujiwara
Makoto Kimura
Naoko Kitagawa
Yuji Ueno
Hideko Nomura
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Sound
Noboru Koshinaka
Isao Mizuguchi
Bug Checker
Kiyoshi Bandoh
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Special Thanks To
Mr. Tanizawa
Mr. Takagi
VG Section
Mr. Itoh
Mr. Horimoto
Mr. Kawano
New Face
Program
Yujix 'JN1KTJ' TERADA
GAME OVER
© TAITO CORPORATION 1992
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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Gokuraku! Chūka Taisen is based on a Chinese legend made
popular in the west by Monkey King and Dragon Ball,
which gives the game an extra appeal in my eyes.
Graphics and character
design are very oriental and enemies can look a bit 'weird' at times - well, thinking about it,
'wacky' would sound like a better suited word though. The best example is probably this
flying golden statue found later in the game which smokes a cigarette and blows rings of
smoke at you. All in all, Gokuraku! Chūka Taisen is a fun and more than
correct shooter with a great gameplay and flawless controls. I personally think this version
is way better than the original arcade game. The only down side is its difficulty
level - I find it way too hard and frustrating to my taste (hence my final score)...
but don't get me wrong, Gokuraku! Chūka Taisen is a fine game
with really unique premise and visuals (especially for the genre).
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