Bouken Danshaken Don (The Lost Sunheart)

~ THE LOST SUNHEART ~

I'MAX / Manjyu-do

HuCard

1992

The Lost Sunheart has garnered the reputation of being a "diamond in the rough" among the not-so-many who have experienced it. Personally, I have no qualms with it being left off lists of unappreciated PC Engine gems. To credit it as a neat little game that few have heard of is acceptable, but it does very little in my view to deserve true sleeper status.

Coming in, I was expecting unimpressive visuals and weak weaponry. I was sure there were reasons the game receives so little attention, after all. The fact that it met my pessimistic expectations in those respects was not a big deal. But I also anticipated that it would display some intriguing concepts at work to make it worthy of the "cult following" its few fans profess to be a part of. I didn't see much along those lines, but I did meet up with lots of small enemies who loved to fly in erratic patterns, move in from behind, and fire tiny projectiles that would tirelessly follow my ship around the screen. These enemies were not cool and not fun to deal with. But deal with them I did, enduring horrible sound effects all the while and "enjoying" cinematic break scenes barely up to the level of Energy's bookend story bits.

I searched high and low for the promised "cool stuff." I discovered that I could earn new auxiliary items for my craft. But when I actually bothered to pause the game (required to switch between them), I found nothing particularly cool in the heap--just typical charge lasers and option orbs and the like. I stuck with the heat-seeking whatever-they-ares for the most part, anyway. I fired them from a variety of ship types throughout the adventure, but there were really no non-cosmetic differences between the ships themselves.

The music could've been a "redeeming factor." I fell in love with the rich, heartfelt third-stage tune after a mere four seconds... and then realized that those four seconds of notes would loop throughout the entire lengthy level. Still, the soundtrack is nice at times, even though it doesn't work any miracles. Neither do the bosses and mini-bosses, though they actually are pretty cool. The face-offs aren't all that cerebral, really, but there's enough thought involved to make them enjoyable and fairly challenging, and some of the adversary designs are quite cool.

Is Lost Sunheart bad? Nah. But it's a PCE shooter, for crying out loud, and PCE shooters are supposed to show some guts and pride. This is a staunch lot we're talking about. If I'm gonna play a chip shooter with poor presentation elements and heavy reliance on ideas, I'd rather play Rock On. (Call me a madman, but that game is fucking ace concept-wise.) Lost Sunheart is pleasant to listen to at times and offers some neat bosses to spar with, but overall, it disappoints.