Cobra Mission
hentaiRPG, English translation 1992, DOS/VGA.
Your name is JR (or you could use your own name) and you're the sharpest P.I. this side of Florida. An unexpected call from Faythe, an old flame and school buddy, sends you to Cobra Island off the Florida Keys. Her friends have been disappearing left and right and strange things have been occurring there as well. Rescue Faythe's friends and they'll reward you…very well. Find out who this Kaiser character is and restore Cobra to its formal tranquil pleasure resort it's known for.
The English version of
Cobra Mission (Panic in Cobra City) was released in 1992 as
Megatech's first game. It was the first
hentai
game ever to be released outside Japan, at least on the
PC, I'm not entirely sure about MSX.
I long had my doubts that this is actually a Japanese game, and in a way I was right. The English version is a Chinese-American co-production and added a lot of new content, so most of the art was done by Chinese, not Japanese artists.
Credits list names like Kenny Wu, Erwin Mab, Hang Peng, Team Rai-Chee, Team Neuronus. Kenny Wu also appears in the credits of Knights of Xentar and Power DoLLS, and not too long afterwards wound up at Electronic Arts. It is more likely that he was part of the Megatech team and not an original developer. Of the rest, there is no further trace.
Megatech's English version sold well even though critics did not like it. It was in the top hundred shortly, it only reached place 80, but that's still not bad. What information there is still to be found on the internet comes mostly from Russian sites.
Installed it takes up 10MB hard disk space. I have played it on a well-tuned 386 25MHz, where it does not run perfectly, but overall enjoyably. Something a wee bit faster is recommended, even though official requirements name a 286. A sound card sure is nice, and you should not try to play it without a mouse. You need it for combat. Only problem on a modern computer is the sound. It's only half the fun without.
The story is simple to tell. It takes place in the presence in Cobra, a little island off Florida. You are P.J.—but like in every good Japanese RPG, you can insert names of your own choice for yourself, your partner Faythe Watson, and in this case also for the criminal mastermind aka End Boss, Kaiser—, a private eye from Florida. You come to visit an old friend or childhood love, who lives in Central Cobra. She is worried about her friend Donna, who works in a research lab in East Cobra and is missing. After—and related to—your arrival, the bridge to East Cobra has been blown up, the repair company is in South Cobra, the only connection to South Cobra is the railroad, but trains are not running because the engineer is looking for his missing daughter in West Cobra. The only entrance to West Cobra, however, is a locked railroad gate.
I guess you see by now how the story unfolds. It is basically the old "beat the boss and get access to the next level"-scheme, but more plausible than in many other games. And of course, after you've killed the Central Cobra boss and taken his key, found the engineers daughter and killed the West Cobra boss, rescued Donna (after killing some more bosses), there will be yet another map with yet another boss to kill and finally, the Big Bad End Boss, Kaiser. Of course, there are lots of random encounters with sometimes rather weird enemies, things to find in wells, bushes and houses, and little quests to solve. Combat here is a real-time thing, where you click on the graphic of your enemies, and it matters where and when you click.
There is also an otaku who will trade you a sexy pic for every piece of female lingerie you bring him, and then there are the girls. Whenever you finish a map, you will get a girl's phone number. Than, from Faythe's house (ironically), you can call them, date them, take them to the motel and try to satisfy them. They are far more complicated and—naturally—less fun than their real-life counterparts so I soon gave it up. It is not mandatory for finishing the game. It's basically what you do in which order, and practising with the two prostitutes in the game will make it easier.
Graphics are rather primitive. Tiles and sprites were obviously drawn for a 320×200 resolution and are now displayed pixel-doubled. That makes the tiles are rather large, the playing field consists of only 7×5 of them. The sexy pics are quite nice.
Cobra Mission is probably unique in that the translation is far better known and documented than the original. It had the same name, was developed by Inos, released on 1991-10-25 for the PC-9801 (it was never ported to another platform), and cost 6800 Yen, which was about all I could find out about it for a long time.
But meanwhile I managed to dig up a copy. It runs well in Anex86,
only the character animation is too fast, that could probably be fixed
by changing the settings, but in any case it does not impair
playability. Looking at the screenshot above, you will already notice
three differences: The playing field is not pixel-doubled, the female
character looks quite different, and the headquarter is labelled
Fujii
.
This is your partner in the original Cobra Mission, Midori. Unlike Faythe in the translation, she seems to have no relationship to the hero (named Satoru in the original) beyond being an assistant and sidekick. Those who have played Megatech's Cobra Mission to the end will probably recognise the graphic, which was used for a small but important side quest in South Cobra.
Faythe, by the way, was obviously modelled after the blonde, red clad woman featured so prominently in the logo. I don't know if she's just decorative or if she's one of the girls you are supposed to rescue.
The setting of the original is definitely Japanese. This is how the houses that you can enter look like, complete with genkan, chabudai, and zabutons:
green.
