/vr/ - Retro Games

Tokio, space colony sim for PC-98
(didn't see you said "for PS2" until i already uploaded the pic, and it seems like a neat game so oh well)

>>6529046
I just keep playing Artdink's stuff. They're great.

トキオ 東京都第24区
Needs a proper GOG Release

Okay, let's get started with some juicy Artdink. Tokio was their simulation game most akin to SimCity, giving you the role of mayor running an orbital Island Three-style space colony. This PC-98 city-building title diverges from the company's flagship series A-Train by ditching mass transit as the means of expansion and city growth; you can do things much like in a Maxis game, albeit with more economic and political customization/options than usual. You have three panes of the colony to build your city on, all the while running as incumbent and trying to profit from space shuttle fares despite the upkeep. You can even chat with residents via randomly-generated phone calls, probably the hardest feature to translate if and when someone does a patch for this game.

Here you can see great hand-drawn pixel art courtesy of Artdink's house designers from 1992. I'm not sure if Tokio and its sequel use the same engine as A-Train III/IV, as it supports greater detail for objects while sacrificing animations the other series is known for.

Artdink's Tokio series of space-colony city-builders, released first for NEC's PC-98 computers and later on Windows.

The least translation Tokio 1 & 2 would need is English menu text, then followed by hacking the phone-call text generation algorithm to work with English phrases. Otherwise, it's SimCity (zoning, city politics) in space + some of DOS A-Train's economic systems (managing shuttle traffic, running the generators/colony engineering, &c.).

>>1746506
Not any official version, no. If there are any DOS emulators available on mobile or for handhelds, use those and give the Maxis localization a shot (or SheepShaver for the Mac version, and so forth with Amiga). Otherwise, A-Train 3DS came out recently, not sure if anyone's going to translate it though...

So here's Tokio. It's much, much closer to SimCity than A-Train, but Artdink has a unique premise: you're the mayor of Tokyo's latest district, located in an O'Neill cylinder orbiting Earth. As such, you manage both this disconnected portion of Tokyo (which seems to have home rule, rather than simply being governed from mainland) and the colony backend. So it's direct city management, unlike A-Train, but there's more focus on utilities than in the original SimCity (this came out in late 1992, a year or so before SimCity 2K). Some elements from A-Train are retained, like being able to schedule transit in and out of the colony (spaceport!) and needing to manage materials for building, rather than just money. The game view's a complicated isometric perspective that lets you shift between each of the three building planes at any time.

From what little documentation's online and vaguely readable, Tokio's got some cool political dynamics, largely based around having to trade between Tokio and Tokyo for resources like food. You also have to exert a political stronghold in order to remain the elected incumbent for office...good luck with that, we're talking Japanese politics here! One feature that'll be difficult to localize for English text is being able to locate a citizen's address and phone them for a randomly-generated comment on just about anything. There's a really silly, late-'80s-bubble-economy atmosphere to the whole game that somehow channels contemporary TV, space opera anime, and previous Artdink games (worker robots are cameos from How Many Robot?) all in one go.

Dumping screens.

Based /vr/ once again. We should do this for old Artdink games.

>>820936
I can't find very many screenshots or anything


apparently, it was for PC-98 and FMtowns, and they made a heavy remake for the PC...

I really really want to play this game now..