On a lot of Monday nights, we at Hinge Problems and our friends have been gathering over on the Hinge Problems Discord as Rudie makes me play the Megadrive games that nobody really talks about .
The thing with the Megadrive is that there is a core library that everyone knows, even if like me, you didn’t have one as a kid. You got your Sonics, your Streets of Rage, probably at least one of the Phantasy Stars, etc. But aside from STG nerds, who talks about Gaiares? And who the hell would talk about the Traveler’s Tales awful piece of garbage Puggsy? Nobody, never talk about Puggsy (do not, in any way, take this as an endorsement or even a suggestion that you should even open the Puggsy ROM; you’ve been warned).
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Friends don’t let friends play Puggsy.
Once I got into digging around the Megadrive, I thirsted for more. At the same time, I was keeping a minor eye on the EGGConsole Switch releases for any of them that might be playable by me, a dude who still doesn’t know much Japanese. I noticed that Hydlide 3 The Space Memories was, somehow, in English. At the same time, during Monday Megadrive Club, I noticed Super Hydlide and wouldn’t you know that is just a port of Hydlide 3, so one non-Monday, I booted it up.
If you know the name Hydlide, you probably know it sucks. This is a well established Internet opinion, due largely to shit like the AVGN clowning on the NES port of the first Hydlide, a bump combat game that was hugely influential on a lot of later games (Ys, Zelda) but was also from 1984 and not released in the US until 1989, after many of the games it inspired. Super Hydlide was brought to the US the less than a year later, so that had to seem like quite the jump. Chronologically, Hydlide 3 The Space Memories was originally released in 1987 for the MSX and PC-88 (this is the version on the EGGConsole), and is definitely a big evolution over the first game.
Sidenote: Playing Hydlide in 2024
Getting access to Hydlide is easy (the first one has an English NES game, Super Hydlide is a Megadrive game with an English release) and hard (the second one was an untranslated PC-88 game until like 2006, when a Dutch team released a localization, though I haven’t dug that up on the internet yet). Here’s a quick overview of how you can play these:
Hydlide: There’s a fully translated NES version that adds a magic system to try to get people who played the original version to buy it again. There is an EGGConsole release of the PC-88 version on Switch, and it’s perfectly playable by English speakers. The game rules and you can probably beat it in an afternoon.
Hydlide 2: For English speakers, there is a Dutch-translated version out there on the internet. Getting it working is kinda a pain, because if you don’t have the MSX emulator perfectly configured, it won’t save your character when you create it, which means you can’t start the game. If you can read Japanese, the EGGConsole version of the PC-88 version is on the US eShop. The game is more text heavy than 1, so you are gonna want some language knowledge.
Hydlide 3 The Space Memories: Available as the Megadrive game Super Hydlide in any of the convenient places you’d find those, but also fully in (some kind of) English in its original PC-88 form on the Switch eShop.
Virtual Hydlide: The Saturn remake of the first game in a golf engine. Available wherever you find Saturn games, in English.
tl;dr version: Hydlide 3 The Space Memories fucking rules.
Which version you should play? Super Hydlide has an amazing Megadrive soundtrack, improved graphics, and a smoother EXP curve. Also some rearranged locations that make the game a bit easier, and a bank that actually works. Hydlide 3 The Space Memories has a pretty good soundtrack of its own, a lot of early PC game charm, some incredible difficulty spikes, and maybe the funniest translation possible. So in the end, you can ask yourself how much of a sicko you are. I’m just playing both.
The most important stat for your character turns out to be weight, which limits how much stuff you can carry, though it goes up with level. Your load capacity is also related to your class, with the Thief having the highest, the Cleric the lowest. Everything has a weight. Money has weight. You need to eat twice a day and food has weight. You will spend a lot of time trying to maximize your armor/weapon loadout for whatever your limit is. The weight of food makes leaving town every in-game day feel like going on a journey. There is a day/night cycle, and your little character gets sleepy (which means they lose strength, plus nighttime enemies hit harder, so you will be crashing at the inn, getting up, and leaving town each day (sleeping is also how you save). It turns into a pleasant ritual, and a nice way to divide up cycles in the game in a way that feels proto-portable game design.
Sidenote: Classes
Hydlide 3 has four base classes, each with their own perks and development that will significantly impact how the game goes for you.
Warrior: Just about average in everything. Can get the first six spells, and even has enough MP to use them by the end of the game.
Thief: Has a ridiculously high HP and Weight stat, but starts with a really low (as in none) MF, meaning that early on, things are gonna cost a ton in the stores. Can learn the first six spells, but barely ever gets any MP growth, so.
Cleric: Can get all the spells, has a high starting MF, but low strength/weight.
Monk: Can get all the spells, and has slightly above average other stats EXCEPT HP, which is non-existent.
Basically, your first run through the game is intended to be the Warrior, who is just sorta the stock character and the game seems mostly balanced around. The next run through is anyone’s call though. I’ve messed around with the Thief (ability to carry more stuff quickly outpaces the amount of money you have to buy said stuff) and the Monk (the glass cannon effect is very real).
The Plot
This game has a plot! You wouldn’t guess it from the start of the game, though. The general gist at the beginning “hey there is bad stuff out there in Fairyland, so take care of it”. Pretty quickly, some people in the first town tell you about a tower up north and how there might be a village on top of there, so that’s the next place to go. This game is full of “here’s the next place to go” style questing, but it’s OK because those places are so regularly just batshit nuts. For instance, that tower is a 200 story tall skyscraper, and on floor 198, you can walk out on the clouds to find a whole village just chilling there.
After you explore the tower that the first townspeople hype up for you, and find the village in the sky, you get dropped down into a castle in the middle of a lake that you couldn’t get to before, whose king loves novelties (which is the only hint that you will get that you should bring him a dragon’s tooth from a cave that is hidden in a warehouse in the underground town that you can only get in by knowing the secret invisible wall or waiting until 8PM when the guard leaves). That’s one area where Super Hydlide is easier because someone actually tells you shit about the king wanting a dragon’s tooth.
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE
(Spoiler warning for a weird old game, I guess)
There are some beings who built a castle under the lake that the dragon loving king gives you a device to summon. When you go in that castle, it is full of robots, and space suits, and a SPACE COMPASS. If you grab that space suit, you can jump down the hole in the middle of the map, which someone has told you goes to outer space.
Or in the PC-88 version:
So for some reason or other, the beings went to outer space to get away from something bad in Fairyland (a reference to Hydlide). When you get to their spaceship in space using the SPACE COMPASS, you eventually find out they made a goddamn hidden alternate dimension in Fairyland, and hid there. Maybe. PC-88 version. And if you go there, you find out that in the starting town, there is a FORBIDDEN CAVE that you need to go to and fight THE BIG BAD.
The Forbidden Cave is some bullshit. Much like the first cave in the game, you are going to need a lamp and some Super Oil here. You are also going to need some Holy Water to get access to it, which there is only one guy in the hidden city that tells you will break seals, and you might not realize there is a sealed entrance in your starting town. But it is there. Of course all of these items, including the lamp, take up more weight from your limited space, but you should be used to that by now. Depending on what class you are, that couple thousand grams can be a big deal though.
You also are going to want to get that Moral Fiber rating way up. In the PC-88 version, you must get this up. In the other versions, it’s not necessary, technically, but it will make your life much easier. Like all the way up to 100, which if you are playing the game like a normal person, it just isn’t there yet. Sometimes a good-aligned slime gets in your way and you just off it, and the penalty for killing a good monster is way more than the bonus you get for killing bad ones. The good news is that there are a lot of bad monsters in the Lost Palace and Outer Space if you feel like grinding those for EXP and MF, or you can just grind the MF from the slimes and plants in the field.
The MF rating is important because you need to find 10 (in the PC-88 version, 5 everywhere else) secret hidden spots to get blessed with the holy light, which will prevent the boss of the dungeon, who is of course the end boss of Hydlide. In most versions, this is optional, and you can technically beat the boss without doing it, but in the PC-88 version, you can’t even get in the room without getting all 10. The PC-88 version also has a full extra floor of the cave, so be ready for that bullshit. Also you can’t even progress without finding some hidden walls.
(End spoilers for a weird old game)
It’s great bullshit. God, don’t even get me started on the last dungeon’s amazing bullshit. It ended up in me needing to restart the whole game.
There’s even some really funny differences between the versions. For instance, there is a bank in the first town in the game. In Super Hydlide, in the second town you get to, the one hidden under a tombstone in the cemetery (hell yeah), there is another bank that is open, and they give you a bank book, so now you can bank at the first town as well. This is nice, and a good little bonus for finding the town.
By the way, to find the town, you have to have an intelligence stat high enough to be able to read. I love this game.
In the PC-88 version, I have never been able to find a way to get it to actually open. It’s just always closed. And if you try to go to the second bank’s location in the MD game, it is now a Hostess club called Number13 that if you enter, you are forced to hang with one of the girls as she gets drunk and pissed at you for not buying more. And then the owner gets pissed at you and takes either 20000 gold from you (which you probably don’t have) or beats you up and yells at you.
Music
One final note here: the music in these games is so good, but special shout out toe the overworld theme in Super Hydlide.
This song goes way harder than it ever should. It’s like 3 minutes long. It has a guitar solo. I never get tired of it.
Hilariously, based on the title, it’s supposed to be for a way later part of the game, but whether by mistake or stroke of genius, it is here and it works so well.
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