Simple 2000 Series - Opinions, Experieces, Suggestions

[Big_E]

Hey there,

recently i imported the Simple 2000 games Vol. 87 (The Senko) and Vol. 101 (Onechanbara 2 special). I was aware of this series of budget titles for quite some time but never dug any deeper into this matter. D3 also worked together with Sega for their 3D Ages series (and Gain Ground is still a great game!) but they just remade already existing games. As far as i could get to know, the Simple 2000 games were produced with low budget and development times, minimizing the financial risks and giving the producers more creative freedoms. But because of the sheer number of games (and the fact that i don't know any japanese) it's impossible for me to take a look at this series as a whole.

This is where you come in. What are your experiences with this series' titles? Are there some hidden treasures in it (and which games are they) or are they just crap to hoard money fast?

Here are my opinions so far:

Vol. 87 - The Senko
A pretty basic Beat 'em up, but solid and mindless fun nontheless. It has a basic combo system (which i have to figure out completely yet) and elements of crowd control, and the sounds are satisfying and controls are relatively fluent. The Budget nature shines through though in form of bland graphics, almost no enemy variety and very few music tracks. It's not a bad game per se but far from outstanding also, so if you find it at a cheap price or as a download, you should give it a try.

Vol. 101 - The Onechampon
Onechanbara for the Wii is one of my favourite games for the system (along with Sin & Punishment 2, Xenoblade Chronicles and maybe Resident Evil 4) so i decided to dig a little bit deeper into this series and bought Onechanbara 2 Special. For those who don't know, the Onechanbara Series is a hack 'n Slash series starring some fetishized girls wielding swords. I don't think it's as fun as the successor on the Wii, especially the purple blood irritates me and the combos don't come of as fluent as on the Wii (although i didn't manage to max out my cool combinations bar yet). The camera control is a bit awkward since you can't move the camera through solid objects (like walls) and the levels are big and tedious sometimes. Most of the fun comes due to it's cheesyness and not through it's gameplay (or even it's story) so same as above, if you happen to find it cheap, it's worth a try.

Do you have any any other recommendations (or obscure titles) of this series? Let's hear about it.

[crusher]

Most people are probably aware of the Earth Defense Force series but may be unaware that it started out as a Simple 2000 game. Or maybe everyone knows that... Anyway that is my contribution. EDF is vol. 31 and EDF2 vol. 81.

Oh and Eternal Quest (vol. 20) seems pretty cool from the Youtube videos I've watched. It's a pretty basic graphical roguelike with procedural dungeons and what else.