The 16-bit Arcade and Console Era (1990-1995) - Psycho Dream

RELEASE DATE: 1992

DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Riot

BEST VERSIONS: Super Famicom (or via Nintendo Switch Online)

Telenet Japan is one of those game developers that never really sent a lot of its games to North America, and though it had a portfolio of studios including Wolf Team, Laser Soft, Renovation Game and Riot (together responsible for series like Valis, Zan, Exile and Cosmic Fantasy and games like Arcus Odyssey, Last Alert, Earnest Evans, El Viento and Sol-Deace) that harbored some serious talent. Psycho Dream in particular had a bunch of talented developers working on it including scenario writer Kenichi Nishi (who’d go on to create Moon: Remix RPG Adventure and write the script for Incredible Crisis), composer Michiko Naruke (who’d go on to score the Wild Arms games), art design lead Kiyofumi Katō (who’d go on to design characters for SquareSoft titles including Live a Live and Super Mario RPG) and director Eiji Kikuchi (who’d help transform Wolf Team into the studio behind the Tales series).

So when I tell you that this game is has many flaws but is still incredibly worthwhile, it’s in part because of that pedigree. Psycho Dream is not your typical action platformer, and it feels a lot more like some of the console adaptations of the Valis games than the arcade-style hack and slasher it first appears to be.

The game also was exclusive to Japan until Nintendo added it to their Nintendo Switch Online service in 2021, and it’s also since received a translated modern console and PC port via Ratalaika Games.

The premise of Psycho Dream is that a girl named Yuki Sakaya has become trapped in an immersive virtual reality “D-movie” called “Story of the Ruined Capital,” and a team of D-movie rescuers called Debuggers are sent in to rescue her before she permanently abandons her physical body and dies within the dreamlike world. Players select either swordsman Ryo Shijima or the clawed dominatrix Maria Tobari to fight their way through to Yuki. Along the way, they have to battle all sorts of bizarre biological horrors and giant insects in each of the D-Movie’s “Tracks,” which represent the levels of the game.

The game starts out as a standard action platformer with melee attacks and a screen-clearing magical power attack called a Fatal Attraction, but as Ryo and Maria collect crystals dropped by enemies. The most important of these crystals are the yellow ones, which upgrade their melee weapons and the blue ones, which upgrade their weapons into guns. Getting to level 4 on either weapon and then picking up a red crystal changes them into their superior state. In these forms, Ryo becomes a cyborg and Maria becomes a demonic clawed creature with fairy wings. Both also gain the ability to shoot in six directions at once, but Ryo’s bounce off walls while Maria’s blasts home in on enemies.

As a result, Maria is the better of the two characters if you can keep her powered up. She looks cooler, she tears through the stages with incredible ease, she can float after jumping and her attacks overcome one of the game’s biggest flaws – terrible hit detection. But there is a downside to the superior mode, and that is that you can only take three hits before you lose it and revert down to your weakest weapon state. Maria is far less useful with just her claws, and even if you upgrade her gun instead, you’ll find it less effective than her homing ability.

Another problem with Psycho Dream is that the game is slow-paced and repetitive (made even worse by the fact that it suffers constant slowdown during enemy encounters), often putting you through the same encounter multiple times in a track before you fight the boss. It’s easy to forget that you can use the shoulder buttons to run, but also advisable not to since jumps are hard to control precisely and you really need to kill a lot of enemies as efficiently as possible to keep your weapons leveled high. Grinding for gear is not easy because the game has a timer, and while it’s not too onerous, the general difficulty of hitting aerial or bouncing enemies with your weaker weapons without taking damage can cause you to want to try to find more health that you have time for.

The game’s boss battles are also tough and are much easier if you can use Maria’s homing attacks or if you have plenty of Fatal Attractions saved up. But they’re also where the game shines, especially on Tracks 1, 3 and 5. The bosses are big, they’re ugly and most require some careful timing to take down. On Track 3, you see Yuki curled up like a fetus inside a chrysalis while a giant butterfly attacks you. Defeating it saves her, but she vanishes, only to reappear inside the final boss’s pelvis. While every boss is big and ugly, the final boss is multiple screens tall and you have to defeat him by destroying his arms and separating his head from his neck. Oh, and for whatever reason, this final encounter seems to be occurring inside the castle at Disneyland – the game zooms out to show the park after you defeat him.

But before you get to that stage, you’ll wander through cities, caverns, subway tunnels and biological horrors and also blast down a highway at maximum running speed. The standout stage is Track 3’s scaffolding elevator, which seems to be covered in alien gunk and which shows off an amazing vista as you battle the monsters shooting out of the sphincter-covered mounds traveling with you. And even though some of the other levels have really repetitive areas, they all look distinct from each other.

Beyond the difficulty and slowdown issues with the game (which fans have attempted to fix over the years through ROM patches with varying degrees of success), Psycho Dream also has a love it or hate it soundtrack. It’s minimalist fare and very repetitive, befitting of the paranoia-inducing theme, but I find it really unpleasant to listen to in places and wound up turning it down. The sound design is also kind of bad, with effects that don’t quite fit the action and very little to add emotional quality to the game’s visual splendor.

So go into Psycho Dream knowing what to expect and maybe consider playing on your favorite emulator with saved states and cheat codes rather than the official builds so you can get the most enjoyment out of the game. It’s not a terribly long game – you can beat it in about an hour if you can survive to the end – but it is an interesting one that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever played. Given how easy it is to experience today, it’s worth at least checking out.

We’re moving on to the 1990s console and arcade games to cover one of the golden eras of video gaming as gaming shifted to 16 bits at home and true 3D in the arcades!

We’ll cover shoot ‘em ups, run and guns, fighters, brawlers, RPGs, platformers and, of course, strategy games, sports games and more. Take some time learn about great games you may have missed like Power Blade, Ranger X, Thunder Fox, Liquid Kids, Alligator Hunt, Arabian Fight, Crystalis, Popful Mail, Alisia Dragoon, Kid Dracula, Little Samson, The Space Adventure, Rocket Knight Adventures, Rolo to the Rescue and even oddities like The Haunting Starring Polterguy and The Ooze!

If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC, console and arcade games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!

If you missed my previous series on the hundreds of 1980s console, arcade and PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!