The Simple 2000 Series

[satoshi_matrix]

Over the past year or so, I've come to totally love what is apparently popular in Japan and called the Simple 2000 Series.

For those who don't know, heres the wiki explanation:

The Simple series are a number of series of budget-priced console games, published by Japanese company D3 Publisher and developed by a variety of companies, covering many systems. [including PS1, PS2, GBA, DS, and Wii]. The price of the games in yen (new) is included in the title of the series - for example Simple 2000 is about 2000¥. Used, the games are even cheaper!

Two games most noteworthy are THE Chikyū Bōeigun 1 & 2. (THE地球防衛軍 1+2). They're both third person shooters where the object is to kill aliens invading Tokyo and sometimes, London. What makes the game interesting is that the aliens are all stables of 1950's era sci-fi horror flicks. You'll face giant ants, spiders, centipedes, robots, dinosaurs and UFOs!

These games have shaky names in the rest of the world. literally, I believe the translation is Earth Defense Force (same as the classic SNES shooter but completely unrelated). Maybe manuel can back me up with that.

The PS2 versions were never released in North America, but instead got European releases. The first Chikyu Boeigun was translated in Europe as Monster Attack, the second was Global Defense Force, and the Chikyū Bōeigun 3 was released in both Europe and North America as Earth Defense Force 2017. Like most, I was first attracted to the series by the third game for xbox 360. I just thought it was so cool. Actually, it seems that the third game is more or a remake of the first than it is a sequel to the second game, Global Defense Force, and as a result, the second game is better than the third, even being on a less powerful system.

Anyway, The point of this thread is to discuss the Chikyū Bōeigun series as well as the Simple 2000 Series. There are TONS of games in the Simple 2000 series; I'm curious if anyone has played any of them, has advice for which ones to pick up and which to avoid, and can maybe point out some places you can buy them online.

Cheers!

[manuel]

BTW, with tax, the 2000 series games cost 2100 Yen. 

[mobiusclimber]

I have the Love Mahjong game, I believe that's a Simple 2000 release for the PS2. Have not played it though, owing to the lack of nudity. Why bother playing mahjong if no one's going to get nekkid? There's a few ... what look to be horror titles... for this series tho that I'm definitely interested in. Also, wasn't there a bunch of SNES remakes on the PS1 in this series (like Marchen Adventure Cotton) or is that a different series entirely?

[satoshi_matrix]

Yeah, those weren't part of the Simple 2000 Series. The Simple 2000 Series consists of weird stuff like Zombie Ambulance, The Onechanbara series, Earth Defense Force, and Demolition Girl. The more I discover about the series, the more I'm interested. Manuel, are these games common? I of course have no idea how easy/difficult getting most PS2 games is in Japan, but if local shops are any indication, budget title PS2 games are sorta hard to come by.

[Flash1087]

I played Earth Defense Force on the 360 and had an AMAZING time with it, really. It's incredibly fun in a really old-school Contra sort of way and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

[satoshi_matrix]

As I've said, Earth Defense Force 2017 is actually Earth Defense Force 3. Both 1 & 2 are for PS2 and were released in Japan and Europe with no North American release.

Earth Defense Force 1 was localized in Europe as Monster Attack, and is extremely similar to Earth Defense Force 2017. So much so in fact, that I would call 2017 more of a remake of this game than it is a new game in the series. Monster Attack is the first game released several years before 2017, so don't expect the world from it. It has far fewer missions, enemy types, weapons and verity as 2017 does, but its the exact same gameplay and formula. The controls are nearly identical to 2017. You can carry two different weapons at a time, the entire game can be played in co-op splitscreen and Inferno difficulty is still neigh-impossible.

Earth Defense Force 2 was localized in Europe as Global Defense Force. Global Defense Force is overall different from Monster Attack and 2017. In this game, you can play as the standard soldier you're fermillier with from 2017 and also Monster Attack, but you can also play as another character called the Pale Wing. The Pale Wing is a female soldier who has weaker armor, but she also has a rocketpack on her back, allowing her to fly.
The rocketpack changes everything as you are no longer restricted to the ground. The Pale Wing can advance/retreat from the enemies as the player sees fit, and her arsenal is almost completely different from the regular soldier, with most of her weapons being extremely close range super powerful attacks, particle cannons, lasers, energy weapons, sniper rifles, energy bazookas and rockets. Her special weapons harness the very elements themselves allowing you to rain thunder down on the aliens.

However, the rocketpack has an energy meter that depletes the more it is used. When not in use, it recharges. If you completely deplete the energy, it will overheat and need to be recharged for about 10 seconds, leaving you vulnerable on the ground. It's also worth mentioning that unlike the soldier, the Pale Wing cannot preform a barrel roll to quickly get out of harms way. Instead she must rely on her rocketpack to dodge. This means that you cannot fly constantly and you must reserve power in case you need to make a sudden get-away from your enemies. Compounding this problem is unlike the solider, most of the Pale Wing's weapons draw energy straight from the rocketpack energy reserve. If you overheat, you cannot dodge and you cannot fire. Because of this, you should carry one weapon that has its own energy source in case of emergencies. These kinds of weapons only drain rocketpack reserves when their ammo is depleted as opposed to every shot they fire.   
 
Overall, this keeps both the pale wing and the soldier balanced and effective in different circumstances. The other thing I should mention is that this game has a greater verity of enemies than Monster Attack or even 2017. Yes, you'll still face off against black and red ants, spiders, robots and UFOs, but there many other enemy types as well exclusive to this game. If you like 2017, I highly recommend Global Defense Force.

However, if your like me and live in North America, then you won't be able to play PAL games very easily. Don't let the fact that they're European only games stop you from importing. If you live in Europe, you're already good to go, but if  you live in an NTSC country, its still rather easy to get these games running.

As long as you've got a standard run of the mill CD burner, a few blank CD-Rs and a chipped PS2 (and really, with all the disc problems the PS2 can give, there's no reason why you shouldn't) you can play these games completely fine with an NTSC setup.

Here's what you do:

1. Go to amazon or ebay or some other source for PAL games and find yourself cheap copies of both Monster Attack and Global Defense Force. Don't buy Global Defense Force Tactics unless you're really really interested. Its TBS like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem.

2. When the games arrive, test them on your setup. The point of this step is to determine if the games will already work for you or not. Chances are they won't, as most PS2 modchips do not automatically compensates for PAL, nor do most NTSC TVs. If you do get them to work greatt, but if not you'll either get a rolling screen or just absolutely nothing (as was the case for my 50" plasma).

3, Go to your PC. you need two free shareware programs: imgburn and PS2 PAL2NTSC Yfix. They can both be found through simple googling. imgburn can rip the data off the PS2 disc into a bin/cue file or iso that you'll need, and PAL2NTSC Yfix will force the PAL games into a pseudo  NTSC mode that will not dance around on an NTSC display.

4. Insert the MA/GDF disc into your CD drive and open imgburn. Choose create image file from Disc. Select your CD drive directory and if you want a bin & cue or simple an iso file. Either work. Choose a name for the file(s) and then choose a directory to save it to and let imgburn do the rest. These games are only a couple hundred MB so don't worry about them taking up vast harddrive space.

5. Once you have the resulting bin/cue or iso file, remove the original disc and store them somewhere safe. You won't need it for anything more than backing up the games if you should scratch them. If you can afford the harddrive space, backup a second copy of the bin/cue or iso files incase you make a mistaken in the next step.

6. Open PAL2NTSC. The y-fix offset should be set to 48, but I think that this value is determined by your specific tv, so don't shoot me if it isn't exactly correct. If its not, you'll see that the game will play with a blank black area at the bottom of the screen. If that should happen, open PAL2NTSC and lower the y-fix offset until you get results that conform to your tv's needs. For this reason I recommend using CD-RWs if you don't have a million CD-Rs to burn through.

7. Once you've patched the game(s), close PAL2NTSC and reopen imgburn. Now select write image file to disc. Insert a blank CD-R/RW into your drive tray and find the directory for your Y-axis corrected Monster Attack or Global Defense Force. Burn at 8x or lower to protect against write errors. Most burners should only need a few minutes to burn Monster Attack and maybe six or seven to burn Global Defense Force.

8. Try them out! If you followed the steps correctly, both games should now work near flawlessly on your NTSC setup! Note that there will occasionally be minor graphical glitches with the refresh rate, but by and large both will work as if they were NTSC released titles! They are as fast, fluid and smooth as you would expect from any other NTSC title. To me, the very fact that there are homebrew programs like this is the miracle of internet technology at its finest.

[mobiusclimber]

Yeah, those weren't part of the Simple 2000 Series. The Simple 2000 Series consists of weird stuff like Zombie Ambulance, The Onechanbara series, Earth Defense Force, and Demolition Girl. The more I discover about the series, the more I'm interested. Manuel, are these games common? I of course have no idea how easy/difficult getting most PS2 games is in Japan, but if local shops are any indication, budget title PS2 games are sorta hard to come by.

Yeah the Cotton games were part of the SuperLite 1500 series. However, there's a ton of Simple 1500 Series games on the PS1, and many of them look really good. I'm interested in the RPGs, and there's some horror titles as well.

[manuel]

I don't see many budget titles in stores.