Neutopia

Neutopia was developed by Hudson Soft and released in 1989 for the PC Engine, the console Western markets knew as the TurboGrafx-16. The catalogue describes a single-player action role-playing game seen from above.

The PC Engine was a remarkable machine in 1989. It came out of a collaboration between Hudson Soft and NEC, was noticeably smaller than its competitors, and sat technically between 8 and 16 bits, which gave it more colours and larger sprites than players expected from 8-bit consoles. In Japan it held a strong position; in the West it remained a minority choice.

Top-down action RPGs were a clearly defined form by then: the player crosses a landscape divided into screens, fights in real time, collects equipment, unlocks new parts of the map and works through dungeons built as puzzles. The format joined exploration to a character growing steadily stronger and suited consoles far better than the text-heavy, statistics-driven RPGs of home computers.

Hudson Soft was closer to this hardware than any other studio, so its titles were among the best showcases the console had.

The record names Konami as publisher, which is worth checking for this entry. The PC Engine had different publishers in different regions, so the same game can appear in databases under several companies depending on where a particular copy came from. Without the original packaging such a detail is hard to confirm.

1989 also matters for what was happening elsewhere in the genre. Top-down action RPGs were appearing on several platforms at once, and individual games were distinguished mainly by the size of their world and by how well the dungeon puzzles were put together. The console form of the genre settled into shape in exactly these years.

You can switch this one on directly in your browser at OldGame.cz, where its release details and images sit beside it.