Pleasure Hearts is sick as hell and you should play it

22 June 2024

Note: I originally posted this on the now-defunct Cohost, I've archived it here and tried my best to keep the formatting the same, but if there's any bugs now you know why

A few weeks back I saw some friends talking about the original La Mulana vs the remake, and the topic of the original's aim to replicate/parody the look and feel of the MSX came up, of course. Mind you, I have not played either La Mulana, but it did get me thinking:
What the fuck IS an MSX?
I've of course heard of it, one of those weird, probably japan-only systems. I had scrolled past it on the list of systems to potentially, but likely never, emulate, but I never really looked into it. So I casually went to youtube to get a sense for what the MSX was about. I found a nice video about the technical limits and the way they shaped how the system (or rather, the computers that fit the standard) was perceived, which also served as a bit of a historical lesson on it and the various upgrades it went through. Some interesting games to be sure, but the system was clearly primitive, even as the video lists the homebrew games that pushed it to its limits-

Pleasure Hearts' title screen, showing the title and a black and white drawing of a cute anime girl winking
In game screenshot, showing 51637500 Pts. in a big font splayed out over the screen

WAIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT HOLY SHIT THAT LOOKS SICK

And as it turns out, it IS sick, so fucking cool, oh my god. If at any point this catches your fancy, just go play it, its super accessible IMO, and I go over ways to emulate it at the end.

Pixel Perfect Pleasure

Pleasure Hearts is a horizontal shmup for the MSX2 (with an option for improved performance on Turbo R CPUs), developed by M-Kai (essentially one person) as homebrew in 1999, years after the MSX was discontinued. It sells itself as an "RPG-like" shooter, stylistically combining fantasy with early industrial. I'm not going to go over the technical aspects too much, since I literally just learned about this system, but needless to say it is absolutely a feat of engineering. The scrolling, movement and shooting is as smooth as it gets, and if it weren't for the rolling sprites on the side you wouldn't know about the system's limitations. The screen is bombarded with enemies, bullets and explosions, flickering as they compete for sprite real estate. While there is slow-down on Z80 systems when the density is too high, it lends it a bit of a Cave-like vibe that I can't help but feel was intentionally designed for, even if R800 mode doesn't suffer from it (they have separate leaderboards for a reason).

In-game screenshot, showing a grassy field, mountains in the background, and various bee-like enemies getting shot at

But who cares about nerd shit? What really matters is that the game itself, regardless of its technical prowess, looks really good in an artistic sense, its good to look at and play, these pixels give me Pleasure. Of course, what first caught my eye was the anime girl on the title screen, but also the ridiculously stylish score display that crashes into frame when a boss is defeated, each unit of the absurdly big number settling in with its own momentum at a slanted angle, before smoothly being carried off screen. This kind of stylization bleeds into every aspect of the game, how it presents its story, the world, and its various threats. Big, chunky pixels dance around the screen, primitive sprites that are often monochrome and duochrome at best, reminiscent of the expressionist scribbles on the Atari, if they were good. It manages to pack so much emotion in so little, far more evocative than many games on the NES, even at its peak. Even with its later release date in mind, it feels so incredibly modern in its aesthetic sensibilities. You could easily be mistaken for thinking, at first glance, that this is some kind of recent faux-retro indie game that merely gestures are pixel limitations while doing its own thing, but its real and runs on real, ancient hardware.

In-game screenshot, a big ship rises from under a layer of clouds against a pitch black sky

I go on about "presentation" a lot, and I'm not sure if anyone but me knows what I mean by it, I'm not sure I do. Its like, art, graphics, visuals, animation, but bigger. I struggle to encompass the whole of what makes a game experience good, much can be said about individual elements, mechanics, technical feats, art assets, but I care about when it all comes together, when seemingly superfluous screen elements and game mechanics serve to tell a sensory story. I don't mean a plot, that story could be, and often is, as simple as "That was fucking COOOOL". Its an experience, a well framed moment, a building of tension, a playful surprise, raw, visceral emotion you can't put into words or systematize. Show, DO, can't tell. [1]

I adore Kirby games (work with me, its important), I have for as long as I can remember, often completely uncritically. At 3 years old, Kirby 64 was my first exposure to video games, maybe art in general. As I grew up, developed critical skills and listened in on debate and conversation, the series and games I so unconditionally loved always sat at the back of my mind. So much discourse revolved around quantifiable "qualities", how challenging is your game? How DEEP is its story? Are the systems COMPLEX? What does that complexity serve? How many hours do you get out of it? As far as Kirby games went, I had my preferences and critiques, but in the face of these large discussions I couldn't help but feel I had a hard time justifying what made these games so compelling to me through the years, not in a "turn your brain off" or "remember your childhood" way, they are genuinely engaging and exciting to me. They are easy, and short. They don't ask much of the player, you have to bring yourself in, I could see how it could lose a certain, "mature", gamer. It led to insecurity and bargaining: "look, the post game is real hard, the lore is deep and the themes secretly dark. Despite the look, its not just for little girls, and I'm totally a manly man"

It should go without saying, I know a bit better now, these conversations were often very limited, with massive blindspots. I'll spare the most of it for some other time, but Kirby games thrive on presentation and experience. Its about the joy of getting through a creative level, of freely playing around with a toybox of abilities. The rising tension and excitement at the end of the journey, boss fights as emotional and sensory climaxes. The closest I can describe the feeling of watching Kirby clash with Nightmare against the full moon for the first time is (forgive me) orgasmic. Mechanically speaking, falling down the atmosphere mid boss battle is just a timer, but emotionally? I already nutted, but she keeps on sucking. (sorry sorry sorry)

Pleasure Hearts is, like many of the best games, a fantastic lover. Pleasure Hearts doesn't just look good, it fucks good. (What the hell happened here, let me get back on track..) It creates investment, it makes me care, someone made this. There's so many big, loud games begging for my attention all around. Billions of dollars and countless hours spent on the most graphics, the most systems, the most lore, the biggest worlds, the longest playtimes, the most mass appeal, the biggest checklists, the most addicting gambling. Actual human lives sacrificed to a machine by the hundreds, all so I can not give a single shit. Instead, I crank my hog to a 16 pixel tall dragon and the sounds of tin cans rattling inside a clothes dryer. The way the first few minutes play out and how the prologue is presented instantly made me fall in love. I don't even want to describe it, just pull up a video if you want, its less than a minute and ridiculously simple, both visually and story-wise, but it does SO much with so little. Its Video Games.

In-game screenshot, a massive pixelated dragon roars, a text box reads "...DO IT"
So fucking cool, goddamn

I love how it uses empty space, these stark swaths of oppressive black.
I love when it expands a sprite to cover the screen with some huge, blocky pixels.
I love the fast scrolling backgrounds, with just enough detail and nothing more.
I love the appropriately RPG-like transitions that warp the hole screen and suspend the battle in time even though the playing field hasn't changed at all.
I love what it does with its small number of text boxes.
I love the shapes of the various bullets, particularity the point ones.
I love the enemy and boss variety, so many unique arrangements painting their own bullet art on screen, which often only come into play for one or two sections in an already short game.
I love the full screen explosion after letting off a bomb.
I love the score gems that litter the bottom of the screen.
I love how fucking HUGE the score numbers are and how high they go from start to finish.
I love to look at this game.

Its a Pleasure to listen to, too

I don't have as much to say here, but I'd feel bad if I also didn't shoutout the music and SFX, which, much like the visuals, contribute to the overall presentation, and carry many of the same qualities. Chunky, low fidelity, often looping very shortly, but jam-packed with punch.(The music, too, arouses me) Same as the stark blacks, the game also knows when pure silence is appropriate.

Learning to Love Shmups

Okay, but does it play good? Yes. Or well, I think so anyways, in my limited shmup experience. Its fun to move around, shoot, and weave in and out of fire. There's even a cute little HP system, which gives you room to graze bullets or touch enemies without instantly dying. Its a very simple setup, but simple is good, the mechanics fit perfectly for what its going for, and its in that simplicity that it finds room to engage. But you see, this is the first time a shmup has really clicked for me! The first time I got it, the joys of chasing that 1 credit clear, and going for score. To explain my history with shmups, it was essentially zero, as I never really had arcades to experience them in for extended periods of time. I had tried out Touhou 6 a decade prior, and got nowhere with it.

Most recently, I went on a failed Cave binge, starting Progear after seeing a video about it, then dipping into DonPachi and DonDonPachi. It all invariably went like this: Wow, this game is pretty, look at those bullets go! Look at me go, I'm dead! but oh well, its part of the learning curve, its the video game bit! Its too soon to try 1 credit, so lets load up another and keep going. Well..I made it this far, I need to practice and see the whole game, yea? I'm emulating, credits are free. An unspecified amount of them later, alongside tons of free bomb spam, I've made it to the end. Did I...beat this game?? Surely not, but I'm not really sure if I've even played any. I shot a lot of things, tried my best to dodge everything, but I also circumvented any and all stakes, with enough credits you always get through. I toured the whole game, but I haven't retained or internalized anything, I haven't even passed shmup strategy 101. Well now, I should just go back, and limit my credit usage, yea? But I'm not entirely sure how to even pace myself, nor do I have a grasp on the difficulty curve, or a personal incentive to see a limited credit run through. Despite not experiencing it fully, I have seen the game in its entirety, the temptation to continue is always there, and do I care? To come back for run after run to refine my play? How long will it take, I haven't even learned to love shmups yet. And go back to master these, I did not.

In-game screenshot, tons of shot power up items litter the screen

Pleasure hearts is on a home system, there are 3 credits at the start, with no way to insert more, if you want to see the game through, you have to get good. But, and this is key, the more you play and accrue scores, the more credits the game grants you. You make your way further and further each run, exhausting all your credits but experiencing more each time. You naturally familiarize yourself with the beginning, the middle, the end-game. You save your new credits for later and later stages, you optimize, you earn lives, you route, you're playing a shmup!! The game isn't a pushover, but its also pretty lenient, its doable, probably easy by shmup standards. I love easy games. I already loved this game visually, but now I love to play it. You want to pick it up again and again, you want to see further and further, to see what creative, wacky and unique things the next stages do, to get back at that tough boss, to see it through. You play with your full heart, you're in it to win. Play long enough and you'll have enough credits to push through the final section and see the ending, it will feel well earned and cathartic, you engaged with its design in full, you can stop now... but you'll be hard pressed to not have picked up the itch along the way. You notice now, the whole game is maybe, what, 25 minutes tops? Gosh, that's short, just pick it up and play whenever... Let's go for score! Just once, a victory lap, for fun :D See how long you can make it in one credit- Oh... you made it all the way to the final stage before continuing?? Oh no. This is dangerous, you can taste the 1cc.

Perfect, beautiful, magnificent. is this standard practice outside arcades? I don't know, but it worked wonders for me, even giving me a blueprint for how to approach real arcade games. In fact, as I type I've picked up Touhou, though that's also a home system limited credits game- but I think I'm starting to really appreciate the format! I tweeted about this recently, but there's honestly something really approachable about how short these games are in totality, the game that is there is finely crafted, full of surprises, and one you engage with deeply in over and over, instead of 10s of hours of disposable, stretched thin video game.

So thank you, Pleasure Hearts, for giving me yet another genre to love and dive into, as if I needed any more, haha

I Liked the Story (tags: NTR)

A world where guns, swords, and gears meet...
「Pleasure Hearts」
A shining jewel, said to give its owner control of everything...
Seeking the phantom jewel, two young heroes travel the skies on iron wings!
However, the story takes an unexpected turn...

Source

In-game screenshot, in a temple of some kind with a magical sigil on the wall. There is a notification for a pickup, reading "Pleasure ♥ (Heart)"

If you play Pleasure Hearts, I recommend you pick up the English Translation Patch because believe it or not, yea, this game has a story! Mostly expressed silently, but there's a few text boxes towards the end. Its, like I've said of many aspects of this game, very simple, but resonates because of its considered conciseness. There's not much to say without spoiling and that I haven't when going over the presentation, but I think the limited vignette we have to peer into the setting makes it come to life in a way that a more detailed expression wouldn't manage. How old are the characters? Why are they pilots? What did their lives look like before? How does the magic work? Who knows, who cares? They are abstract, allegorical entities, the lovestruck girl, the object of her affection, the treasure that might give her the courage she's been looking for, etc. An understated gravitas hangs over simple dynamics and mcguffins like this, when the world and our experience of it does revolve around them. You're free to read as little or as much as you want into any of it.

Beyond the plot narrative, I've also been thinking about what Sylvie recently said about video game worlds as narrative as of late. I've been getting at some of this with my own words, and this is maybe different given the linear nature of this game, but the moment to moment narrative beats of each stage and the way they build on each other are fantastic.

In-game screenshot, a trail of gems can be seen
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Loads of soul, charm, and heart

This game is full to the brim of little fun details, easter eggs, and just generally playful extraneous stuff, which plays off and enhances a lot of the presentation stuff I was talking about earlier. The points items are gems dropped by enemies and certain circumstances, but they're all assigned unique names as you pick them up. There's a whole item collection aspect, with some really silly and absurd stuff you can pick up along the way, serving no purpose but to fill out an inventory screen on the main menu. These secrets don't feel tacked in and are more often than not completely missable, it makes the game feel full of possibility just through empty slots on a list. Its not just the items, there's all sorts of level tricks, boss interactions, or just funny bits. The game even has a "good" ending many miss! Oh and the STATUS AILMENTS?? There's an RPG status ailment system!! that goes almost entirely underused, just a select few boss attacks and circumstances that can give you one, and its very easy to miss. I've been hit by two so far, and I have no way to know if those are all or if there's others I haven't seen.

Menu screenshot, "Items" menu lists a variety of mushrooms and vegetables
In-game screenshot, a boss is surrounded by red sigils as a text box reads "CAST: CONFUSE"

I'm not gonna spoil some of this stuff, but if you want to look, this page goes over the big ones. These are the kinds of things everyone always asks for and leave a lasting impression, but if you try to do as part of a "good game" checklist will always fall short, think "can you pet the dog?". Its not that I want games where you can sit still for the first stage and survive, I just really value and enjoy the kind of philosophy to game design that leads to such decisions.

Playing Pleasure Hearts

Okay, how do I recommend you play it?

You'll need a rom of the game, of course, in this case its in the form of a .dsk file. If English is your vibe, get it patched.

As far as emulator goes, I recommend using Retroarch with the blueMSX core. In short:

Retroarch can be a pain to work with a lot of the time, and while the standalone blueMSX and openMSX work fine, I still feel RA generally wins out for ease of set-up (getting the core files in, running as a TurboR) and flexibility of use. Its on a lot of platforms, has robust shader and scaling options and lots of customizeability, but even if you don't tinker with it its fairly plug and play, specially for a more complex PCish system like the MSX.

Fun options to tinker with:

For my part, I first played it on a PowKiddy RGB30. The topic of these portable emulation handhelds is a can of worms for another day, but I'm a big fan of this one's specs and specially its 720p, 1:1 aspect ratio screen which is ridiculously flexible and makes up for many of the device's quirks and QC issues, its also pretty cheap. With an Integer Overscale, not only does the game take up most of the vertical space on this screen, it also crops out horizontally exactly where the rolling background scrolling happens, making for a really clean experience. You could replicate cropping like this with RA on wider screens, but the funky scrolling limitations are part of the charm, so I don't think its necessary.

Photo of a handheld game machine with a square screen showing Pleasure Hearts' title screen
Seriously this thing rocks

I don't have a conclusion, thank you for reading, byeeeeee

(This was a big endeavor to write and I think it kinda got away from me but oh well, it was fun, and I hope more people play and love this game)

(Quick thank you to @Kayin for letting me steal her tooltip magic)

[1]: I don't know how much sense this'll make, but I'd like to link these Sakugablog articles, about the role of the *layout* in Anime, and about Revue Starlight: The Movie, easily my favorite movie. While this is anime, I think the layout speaks to a certain presentation cohesiveness I'm trying to get at here, and the discussion on Revue Starlight as an "experience-centric movie" anime is very relevant, an appeal to the senses can be just as meaningful, specially in the medium of video games.

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