That's noteworthy because it's been many months since I last purchased a PC Engine game. In fact, I can't remember the last one I bought. Is it possible that it was Gokuraku! Chuka Taisen (read about it here), which I picked up last November? I think it is.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there, is it? Much more relevant to this particular discussion is the pair of PC Engine games I acquired a few weeks ago: Naxat Soft's Star Mobile and NEC Avenue's Splash Lake, both of which can be seen in the photos below.
Star Mobile, a CD-ROM2 game originally released in 1992, has intrigued me for ages thanks to the fact that it's a Zodiac-themed puzzle game that challenges players to stack stars of different weights on a gilded scale without dumping them into the intergalactic void.
Splash Lake, on the other hand, is an action-puzzler that puts players in the shoes of a legless ostrich (wait a second...) that's tasked with destroying various bridge planks--by pecking them--and sending each stage's baddies into the titular body of water.
I actually owned the North American version of this game, which hit the streets in Japan in 1991 and jumped the pond a year later, way back when, but I stupidly sold it along with the rest of my TurboGrafx-16 collection so I could buy a Japanese Sega Saturn at launch.
I really like the simple-but-cute label that's affixed to Splash Lake's CD, by the way. You can see it in the not-so-stellar photo above, or you can see an appealingly clear scan of it here.
Splash Lake's instruction manual is pretty nice, too--not to mention short--so look for a "Manual Stimulation" post devoted to it to be published sooner rather than later.
