0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Alice in Cyberland
Alice in Cyberland ( ありす イン サイバーランド) is a 3rd person Sci-fi anime style
adventure game developed and published by Glams, Inc. The game was released
exclusively in Japan on the 20th of December 1996, the game was
exclusively on the Playstation 1
Alice in Cyberland is a traditional Japanese style adventure
game divided up into a total of 5 chapters, each chapter begins with Alice and
her friends in Tokyo, the player is free to move about the city and talk to
people, finding out information of events that are happing, eventually she will
need to dive into Cyberland, which is also represented by a city.
When in Cyberland you will again be free to move around,
doing so you will be able to investigate various systems in Cyberland, and
looking and collecting information as you do so. Eventually you will come
across enemies in the form of guard programs which must be fought, the battle
system is fairly simplistic with the player having the option to either attack,
defend, or change character, once the guard program is defeated the story
continues.
The main part of the game is played through a dialogue
screen where the player chooses from the available conversation options, like
most interactive games the player usually has between two and four dialogue
options to choose from. The correct answer will continue the dialogue and
interaction, while the wrong answer won’t necessarily kill you it will lead you
wayward and down a route of chance against your opponents.
In Tokyo in the 21st century the Internet has
grown to be an enormously important part of life, and a digital world called
Cyberland has come into existence. The digital world is made up of 8 levels,
with more important and confidential information granted a higher level, with the
highest levels only accessible for those in the highest levels of government
(or until someone leaves a laptop open on a train).
You play as a young junior high school student called Alice
Minazuki voice by Yoko Asada, she is the daughter of one of the developers of
Cyberland, her father gave her a special tool called Dive System, which allows
Alice to access the deepest and darkest parts of Cyberland.
Along with her friends Reina Ohtori and Juri Yagami voice by
Kae Araki and Yūko Miyamura they form the Alice-3 a team tasked with
maintaining peace and order in Cyberland.
This is a very early Playstation 1 title and a Japanese only
release as well, as a result critic review for this game a non existent, so we
head off to GameFAQs for their user data. A total of 15 users have rated this
game, with the games rating averaging out at a 3.57/5.
A big spread of users rating for this game with a majority
rating the game as a very good 4/5, a few users were even more generous with
their score giving the game a 4.5/5. A couple of users gave the game a 3/5 and
a 3.5/5, there were a couple of lows scores which did bring the average rating
down. With one user scoring the game a 2/5, while the other user scored the
game a dismal 1/5.
On to the games difficulty where a total of 14 users rated
this category, with over half rating the game as having just the right
difficulty level, a decent chunk of users found the game easy, while a small
fraction found the game on the tough side.
For the games lifespan we have a decent number of users
rating this section with 12 in total, and with a wide range of playtimes as
well the majority spending between 12 and 20 hours with the game. A small
number spent up to 60 hours with game while a few had wrapped things up in
around 8 hours, with an average lifespan for the game standing at 18 hours.
This is the part of 0 to Z where
is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is,
and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the
sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com,
retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific,
but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older
games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well
So lets get down to business with Gamedude,
along with Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com don’t stock this title no
surprise really with this being a early Playstation 1 release and a Japanese
only title. We now head over to Amazon.com, where the Japanese Import of the
game is abundantly available, with a very good used copy of the game available
from $8.97 and comes with free shipping. This converts to £6.99 in the UK, in
the Euro zone countries it will cost you €7.63, while in Mexico it will
set you back 158.65 Mexican Peso.
New copies of the game a quite
reasonably priced with the cheapest new copy on the market for $14.56, this
like many of the new copies on sale comes with free shipping. Please be aware
however this game only released in Japan so you will need a Japanese
Playstation 1 console to play the game.
Again Ebay.com is more expensive
than Amazon, a used good quality copy of the game which comes with free
international shipping as well, however it is priced at $18.70 and is over $9
more than a very good copy of the game from Amazon. While some copies are
priced up cheaper once you add in the shipping costs the price quite often
rockets over the $20 mark for a used copy.
Written by
P J Gibbon
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