Fun & Free - Freeware games from Japan #2

Hey, all my blog visitors (yeah, all five of you guys!) It's time for another bunch of freeware games... FROM JAPAN! I brought a little bit of something for everyone this time around, and. Today's featured freeware games are Cave Story, Guardian of Paradise and Gunroar, all great freeware titles that would pass off as commercial games... sort of.


Cave Story

Here's an internet favorite. Many of you already know about this game, But if you don't know, your missing out on some old school pixelated action. Cave Story is a side scrolling action/adventure/shooting game. The game starts out with your little warrior (that has been sent in from the the surface of the island) inside a cave to discover more about the island, and as the game continues, you then have to save a dying race of bunny-like people called the Mimigas.

The gameplay is very simaliar to Super Metroid and Castlevania, where you destroy enemies and take in little crystals to Level up your weapons. Maxing out your weapons to LV 3 isn't hard. But if you get attacked, your HP will go down and the Weapons LV bar will go down as well, sometimes causing it to LV Down.

There is about 4-6 hours of gameplay here (Plus the serval minutes of getting lost if you don't know what you are doing.) There are a bunch of sercets to find, and 3 alternate endings. Its truly an awesome game. And for such a small filesize, there is no reason you shouldn't give this a try.

The game became such a worldwide sensation that creation teamed up with a small indie group to remake Cave Story for the Wii. For info on this, check out my previous review.

http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html

GunRoar

Gunroar is an arcade gunboat shump instead of a spaceship shump. It has trippy REZ style visuals, A cool techno soundtrack and and three different game modes.

Normal mode is straight foward, Kill the enemies in your little gunboat before they kill you. You control your boat with the WSAD keys, use the the Z/L-CTRL Keys to fire and don't die.

Want some more challenge? Try Twin Stick mode, where you use the WSAD keys to move and use the IJKL Keys to shoot.

Then try the Double Play mode. In this mode, you have 2 boats that you must control at all times. Plus both boats are tethered to each other AND there is a mini gun in the middle of the rope. If both boats sort of rotate around (with one boat going up and the other going down,) the direction of the rope gun changes. It's loads of fun. (You can try this mode by yourself, but its more enjoyable playing with a friend.)

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/gr_e.html

Guardian of Paradise

This game just screams "Legend of Zelda" ripoff, but hey, it's freeware! Guardians of Paradise is a great SNES style RPG. It features a lot of puzzle solving with some action like you'd find in a Zelda game. It also has some decent cutscenes from time to time. The story is pretty mediocre, though. It's about saving your sick sister from an illness. Still, it's free, so I wasn't expecting a 5-star quality story in the first place.

As a small note: The resolution the game is set on is very tiny, and I mean GBA size tiny. If you play the game in window mode, I hope you enjoy squinting!

(The original website seems to be down, so here's a mirror site)
http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=870

Well that's all for now. Stick around for more freebies here on my humble blog!