Disc Station #11 [The Scorching Firelive] (PC-98), 1996
Tsuyoshi Matsushima, Super Kenta, Einosuke Nagao, Pro Sugar, Hokaichimei
Firelive is, I think, representative of what’s so great about Disc Station. At its core, it is “just” a simplistic poker game, but its strong personality, high production values, and the sheer amount of love that clearly went into making it adds up to a net positive that makes it a joy to play. At their best, these games never overstay their welcome. They’re satisfied to be charming, well-made diversions that might kill 30 minutes of your time.
The deck has six unsuited cards (1-5 x5 + two jokers). Players are dealt one card, and whoever wins a dice roll gets first pick of three community cards to add to their hand. Each player starts out with a life total. The better your hand, the higher your score (sum of the cards + hand bonus), and the more damage you do to the opponent (your score - their score). And don’t forget the joker: using the joker to make any hand other than a full house, four of a kind or Scorching Fire (five of a kind) gives the opponent a +50 point handicap. But it’s all very fast-paced and surprisingly fun for what it is. The stripped deck makes it a lot easier to play for specific hands strategically.
What’s so charming about it? It’s framed as a singer recruiting musicians to their band in some kind of musical poker-off. There are two possible musicians for every role, and the name of your band on the victory screen changes depending on who you recruited, with 32 possible. Adorable.
Dunno what they were trying to get away with with Max, but at best, that palette was obviously designed for only one complexion. The longer I look at it, the worse it gets. Though, I am in love with one of the bassists, Mio.
As for the music itself, it’s got a cutesy pop-punk flavor to it. I think the big sound of this later Disc Station music really speaks volumes about the skill of Compile’s sound team, because it’s all YM2203 (there’s really not all that much YM2608 support in the grand scheme of things, but it tends to show up more when people talk about PC-98 music since it sounds better). Marika and Yuji both have their own karaoke ending theme where you are expected to provide the vocals yourself. I was kind of stumped on the latter two pseudonyms, but I seriously lucked out and found a well-researched blog entry by netizen ragospi with a lot of credits for later Disc Station stuff. Pro Sugar is Kazuaki Nagai, Hokaichimei (他一名; I don’t know how to translate this, and it’s given as romaji in other issues of DS) is Makoto Mano. It also claims that IMAMI PON is Chie Ohya, but I’m not convinced, so maybe you should take that with a grain of salt.
You really get the sense that everyone at Compile poured all their heart into these games. It (mostly) wasn’t just some shovelware they rushed out to meet a deadline for the magazine. I hope some of you are intrigued enough to go and play them, yourself. Like Battle Gal Saori, Firelive is also available for free* on EGG.
As always, thanks to @fmtownsmarty for his assistance with Disc Station content.
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