Thursday, June 18, 2015

Nice Package! (The Adventures of Puppet Princess, PlayStation)

One of the byproducts of my most recent attempt to learn the Japanese language (don't worry, I'm still working on it, albeit slowly) has been a reignited interest in a certain world-conquering system made by a little company called Sony.

The system in question is the original PlayStation, naturally (OK, so I could've said it was the PS2, but to be honest I've always preferred Sony's first effort in this space to its second), and the focus of my renewed interest in this console has been on its amazingly diverse catalog of Japanese releases.

The game seen below, known outside of Japan as Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, is a good example. I mean, it's an RPG that stars a female protagonist and features all kinds of sing-songy cutscenes.



My original plan was to buy the North American version of this Nippon Ichi-made game, by the way, but I quickly changed course after I came across (while perusing eBay) the copy shown throughout this post.

Granted, it helped that this particular copy carried a surprisingly cheap price tag. (It was less than $5, to be exact.)



It also helped that I found The Adventures of Puppet Princess' cover art to be rather appealing in its Disney-esque simplicity.


The art produced for the front of this title's instruction manual (see above) is even nicer, if you ask me.



The inside of The Adventures of Puppet Princess' manual is stuffed with similarly adorable illustrations, with the ones shown above and below being but a fraction of what's made available to those who pick up copies of this PlayStation game.



Have any of you played some iteration or other of this lovely little RPG? If so, which version have you experienced, and what did you think of it?

See also: other recent 'Nice Package!' write-ups about Hyakumanton no Bara Bara (for the PSP), PoPoLoCrois Monogatari (for the PSone) and my new 'noble pink' Nintendo DS Lite

12 comments:

Hours Left said...

I love the Marl Kingdom games soooo much. I even imported the sequel Little Princess and the DS version of this game. It's too bad the English release of the DS version was botched so horribly. It could of been a good way to revitalize the series in the west, but it was handled so very poorly by NISA. :(

thegaygamer.com said...

Ah, I'm jealous, Hours Left! I've wanted to own Little Princess ever since I first read about it over on Hardcore Gaming 101. Not that it's horribly expensive or rare at this point (or at least it's not on North American eBay), but even then I've yet to pull the trigger and buy a copy. Maybe soon! And maybe I'll get a copy of the JP DS version of this game, too, as I believe it's not buggy like the NA localization, plus it features more content?

Hours Left said...

Yeah, the Japanese DS version of the first game has more content and (presumably) no bugs. I still can't believe that NISA said all the bonus content would be in the English version of the game and even advertized it on their website, but when the game came out it was all cut and had tons of bugs. Definitely one of my biggest videogame disappointments to date. (Thankfully NISA has improved greatly since then, though they never made amends for that release sadly.)

I still need to import the third game in the trilogy eventually (Angel's Present) and that PSP spin-off. I don't know a lick of Japanese though so they really just taunt me from the shelf, but I love the series so much I can't help it.

thegaygamer.com said...

Ah, I didn't know that NISA actually said the bonus content would be in the DS game. Yikes!


As for wanting to own Angel's Present, that's my wish, too! Really, all of these games look great--and, yes, that includes the PSP spin-off, too.


I'm learning Japanese ATM, but I def. don't know enough to be able to understand much of any of these games.


Thankfully, they seem to be aimed at younger gamers, so I doubt they're all that difficult to push your way through...

finchiekins said...

I was so excited for it when it was released on PS1! I remember being intrigued by the idea of a musical rpg. It didn't end up being quite as amazing as i thought it would be, but i still enjoyed it, and its brevity was kind of nice.

Hours Left said...

Good luck! I really miss this series a lot so this has given me wicked nostalgia for it. I just wish it had more of presence in the west.

thegaygamer.com said...

Me, too :(

thegaygamer.com said...

Yes, I have a feeling I'll enjoy its brevity, too, finchiekins :)

Franggio Hogland said...

See Bryan, when you do it like this I don't need to ask you to take a picture of page 8 of the manual ^^

thegaygamer.com said...

Yes, but there's still quite a bit left of this particular manual that you've yet to see, Franggio :)

Franggio Hogland said...

I reckon you're right ^^
And it's really tempting to go out and buy the games you have listed just for the beautiful manuals, hey I'm a sucker for those, but today I got my fill :)

thegaygamer.com said...

And there's nothing wrong with that, Franggio, especially since the option you're choosing is a lot cheaper! ;)