I’m back in my PS2 era, and to kick things off I’ve been dabbling with a couple of Japan-exclusive licensed games.
Adventure of Tokyo DisneySea (PS2 / Konami / 2001)
My first instinct was to call this “Kingdom Hearts at home,” but then I realized it came out three months before KH1.
This is a pretty basic 3D platformer, loosely based on the Tokyo DisneySea theme park. You hop, you bop, and you collect things. The hour or so I played was pretty linear and tutorial-heavy, but I did appreciate the KH / Wind Waker / Ni no Kuni vibes of the visuals- especially considering this game came out before any of them.
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (PS2 / Sega AM2 / 2003)
Kinda like a cross between Ace Combat and Virtual On, this is probably a dream game for some folks.
I don’t have the Macross background knowledge to know if this is a good adaptation of the source material, but I will say it’s a pretty fun arcade-style aerial / ground combat game.
While I’ve mostly enjoyed my time with it, I don’t love the sections where you have to shoot down a certain number of enemies in a limited amount of time. These bits just feel like frantically spamming the missile lock-on, and if you fail, you have to replay a chunk of the mission again. Aside from that, the presentation is slick and it’s generally joyous blue skies Sega arcade-style fun.
Photos by me, screenshots captured by me from actual PS2 hardware.
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