Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first stretch of UltraBox 4-gō is defined by whiplash. This is a CD-ROM magazine compilation, not a unified adventure with a single system to master, so the pleasure comes from sampling its wildly different ideas. Cusuto continues its sparse Japanese-style adventure format, while Fone moves into a familiar quest structure: lead a three-person party, gain levels automatically, buy equipment, endure random encounters, and fight in first-person turn-based battles. It is a modest RPG framework, but its directness gives the disc one of its clearest game-like anchors.

Elsewhere, the collection is much more disposable, though not always in a bad way. Nobunaga no Yarō asks you to jump soldiers diagonally over one another on a checkers-like field to push an army forward. That is the kind of rule set that can click quickly: you see the board, recognize the required chain of movement, and start looking for the move that opens space. Romansu wa Sagashite, meanwhile, expands on the dating-game side with location and conversation choices in an Edo-period setting, all in service of raising a woman’s love meter.

The weaker material is hard to separate from its dated sexual framing. Doki Doki Nawatobi Rando turns timing and directional movement into a jump-rope challenge, with a bird’s falling droppings increasing the required skips if they hit; successful stages remove the girl’s clothing. Anata mo Kiyota-kun similarly uses a stationary first-person shooting setup in which shooting a woman causes her to undress, while shooting animals leads toward failure. These are not clever enough mechanically to overcome the premise. They make the compilation feel more like a grab bag of juvenile CD-ROM-era provocation than a consistently enjoyable set of games.

Graphics

The disc jumps between minimalist adventure scenes, top-down RPG exploration, first-person battle views, a checkers-like soldier board, and a stationary jungle shooting screen. That variety is more striking than any individual visual flourish. Fone has the clearest spatial contrast, switching from its top-down view to first-person combat, while the soldier puzzle benefits from a field where the diagonal jumps are easy to parse.

The jump-rope and shooter games make their undressing gimmicks a central on-screen reward, which is precisely why they feel so dated. The oddest character image belongs to Fone: its protagonist wears an Ayrton Senna racing helmet, a visual joke that fits this compilation’s determinedly off-kilter tone.

Story

Cusuto supplies the closest thing here to a continuing narrative reason to return. Royce E. Grant, his daughter Celia, and Gilbert are searching for a mystical alien heritage while evading hostile military forces. Its retro sci-fi setup has more pull than the collection’s broad comedy because it implies an ongoing journey rather than a one-screen gag.

Fone is much plainer: a king sends a three-person group to defeat the reborn evil god Baresto through the titular magic power. The setup is standard quest material, but its bizarre Portuguese voice-over—described through ungrammatical intro text—along with the helmeted hero gives it a peculiar personality that a straightforward fantasy plot otherwise lacks.

Romansu wa Sagashite trades fantasy stakes for courtship in Edo-period Japan. Its goal remains the incremental raising of a romance meter, but the added location and conversation choices make it feel more involved than a bare dating-game sketch. None of these strands combines into a larger anthology theme; they are separate experiments, and the continuing Cusuto chapter is the one with the strongest narrative reason to care.

Overall Experience

This is a fascinating artifact before it is a recommendation. The compilation format makes every few minutes unpredictable, and the included PC Engine game database, upcoming-release previews, digital comics, pictures, and miscellaneous information reinforce the feeling that you are paging through an interactive magazine from 1991 rather than sitting down with a conventional release.

That historical messiness can be fun if you enjoy poking through old Japanese CD-ROM software. There is a real charm in finding a tiny tactical puzzle beside an RPG with a racing-helmeted hero, then stumbling into an adventure serial about alien heritage. You should be ready for uneven depth, though: most entries are small diversions, and the novelty does not always turn into staying power.

The payoff depends on what you want from the archive. Give it a chance if the idea of an eccentric, multi-genre PC Engine time capsule sounds more exciting than a focused game, and spend your time with Cusuto, Fone, and the soldier puzzle. Skip it if you want a polished compilation or if its repeated undressing gags will sour the experience immediately. There are worthwhile curiosities here, but they sit inside a package that is as awkward as it is distinctive.

Retro Replay Score

5.5/10