Every few years, a new generation of games consoles comes out and they then become
the must have items for that Christmas.
I didn't want to miss out on all the excitement.
So this year I've gone and got myself, a new games console too.
Here it is, the Densha de Go!
Plug & Play.
For anyone who doesn't know Densha de Go!
which means go by train, is a train driver simulator,
although very much arcade based.
In fact, it started off in the arcades in Japan, but it was
ported to pretty much every console that was around over the years.
PlayStation, PlayStation two, three, four, Wonderswan, Gameboy Color,
Nintendo 64, Saturn, Dreamcast, Neo Geo Pocket Color, PSP, Wii, DS.
This however, is a plug and play edition.
I believe the version that's in here is Densha de Go!
Final and I think this is based on the PlayStation 2 edition,
but I'm not entirely sure.
But all I have to do with this one is just plug it into the HDMI port on the TV.
I haven't played Densha de Go!
properly.
I played a couple of little games of it over the years on I think the PSP
and perhaps on the Nintendo DS, but for some reason, I just saw this and
thought, I've got to try that out.
I'm intrigued about the controller on here, especially.
So this was imported from Amazon in Japan.
I think this edition is a reissue.
I think it came out a year or so ago, sold out and now they reissued
it for round about Christmas, 2020.
So this is my Christmas present to myself.
I'm not even all that into trains, but I just found this one a kind of a novelty.
So, let's get it out of the box and, uh, give it a go and see if
I can figure out how to play the game without losing miserably.
I should mention that inside the box from Amazon was this CD, limited edition.
I assumed that this was just going to be the soundtrack from the game,
but at the bottom here, it says 1997 live at Shibyua On Air East.
So that sounds like there's a group playing some of the tracks from the game.
It was a very popular game.
We'll perhaps have a listen to that later on.
But yeah, the Japanese relationship with their trains certainly seems to
be different from mine here in the UK, at least in the part of the UK, where
I live, where I commuted every day for 30 years on an awful train, that very
rarely turned up, was packed when it did and often broke down and I'd be
stood outside in the rain, waiting for the next one or a rail replacement bus.
Yeah.
A horrible, horrible, miserable experience for 30 years, which is one of the
reasons I ended up doing this for a job.
I just couldn't do it anymore, but it certainly seems that they enjoy them
a little bit more in Japan, or at least are prouder of them than I am.
Okay so let's take a look around here.
First off, we've got the power switch at the front left there with a light
above that to show when it's on.
It's powered via micro USB and the output for the video is over HDMI.
Neither of those two cables are provided inside the box, which
is a little bit of a surprise.
It's certainly not just plug and play.
It's only plug and play if you've got the right leads in your
house, I've got plenty of course.
Now we've got a kind of four way, D-pad type thing, no doubt
to select things in the menu.
Select, Start.
That doesn't seem to be a button.
It seems to be a light to indicate something.
We've got A, B, C, and D and on the top here, we've got the accelerator
or whatever it's called on a train.
It's probably not called accelerator and the brake lever over here as well.
That's got certain positions there and then it goes into
a kind of slide over there.
All feels quite plasticy, because it is plastic.
Anything that looks like metal is just silver painted plastic.
It's quite lightweight, but it's got rubber feet on the bottom, so
it shouldn't move around too much.
I mean, it's going to do the job I think.
Well, I hope so.
Let's power it up, I'll find the right leads, plug it into
a TV and have a look at it.
Densha de Go!
Plug & Play.
I've shortened that video intro section down there, because I just
wanted to get on and try the game.
A bit of a tall order though, because there's a lot of Japanese in here
and that includes the tutorial.
So initially I was just finding my way around.
Look for this signal up here I think because that should light this at the
same time on the controller down here.
I don't know if you can see that.
Let's see if those two things lights up at the same time.
Ah, there we go, lit up there.
So take the brakes off, put the power on.
I think I'm getting the hang of this now.
Fortunately, there are plenty of helpful guides on YouTube that
explain how to play this game.
and I found those to be invaluable.
Take the power off , brakes are on, a hundred meters, 90
to 80, oh come on, 60, 50.
I think I've...
I've got it wrong again.
no stop.
Stop, stop, stop.
Keep it going.
Roll, roll, roll, you bugger.
15,14, 13, 12, 11, 10, nine oh we're doing the centimeters now.
Come on.
46 centimeters.
Great.
That's the first great I've got.
Okay, seasoned Densha de Go!
players will know that was not all that impressive, but things
get better from there on, so let me explain how this works.
First off, you've got to choose.
Do you want to be a driver or a conductor.
Driver is the main one, really.
Then you've got things like the museum and the options.
So let's go into the driver one at the top here, and then by going left and right we
can choose between four different lines.
Now, starting at the top of each of those pages, that's a tutorial.
And then the next one down is the first proper level.
And then the further ones down, you unlock when you've got more credits.
They get more difficult, of course, as you go down, but you have to earn
credits from the lower levels to be able to unlock the more difficult ones.
Right, so if we go into this one here, we've then got a choice between
playing in normal mode or enjoy mode.
Enjoy mode is easier.
It's more forgiving the normal mode, but we'll stick to it.
Normal mode for the moment.
And then on the right, we can choose which section of this track we want to play.
We can do the whole thing if we want, but I'm just going to pick a section here.
Okay, let me try and explain what's going on.
So I've got an accelerator and I've got a break and I've also got a
button for a horn that I can press at Trackside workers to get extra points.
So looking at the top left, when that goes yellow, I move my
accelerator into its maximum position.
There we go.
So I'm off now and I get a score in the middle.
I think that's based on reaction times or something.
So at the top, right you'll notice I've got a load of little people.
Those are really my lives.
That's like a life bar.
Every time I do something wrong, some number of people
will be removed from there.
It might just be like one or two people.
It could be like four or five.
If you do something silly, like over-running a station or something.
Now on the left, we've got the accelerator.
So it's just building up its power here.
I've got my accelerator it's position number five, you
can see on the left there.
So it's accelerating at its maximum at the moment.
You've got a countdown at the bottom there in meters.
That's telling me, well, it could be a couple of things.
It could be saying where there's like a speed trap to make sure
I'm doing the right speed.
Or it could be where the next station is.
In this case it's the next station.
You can see on the right, that red signal that's coming into that window there,
that shows there's a station there.
So I've took my accelerator off and now I've got the brake on, I've got the
brake into position number five, and you can see the speed is coming down.
And the whole idea with this game is, well, I say the whole idea,
the majority of it is stopping in the right place at the right time.
You can see at the top, right we've got arrival time is
scheduled for 11:07 and 35 seconds.
Currently it's 11:07 and 19 seconds.
So I need to arrive at this spot, which is 60 odd meters ahead.
At exactly the right time to get the maximum number of points.
It gives you a bit of leeway, but if you go too far wrong in
any direction you get penalized.
So what I'm trying to do now is cruise to a halt.
You can't just slam on.
Everyone will fall over in the cabin and you'll get in
trouble for that one as well.
So you've just got to, in the carriage I should say, so we're slowing it down now.
Centimeters and right we're 21 centimeters away.
We see the time at the top, right?
It was, I think, 10 seconds out.
I wasn't sure it'll tell me here you get a replay.
Yes.
This tells me I was 10 seconds late in coming to a complete stop and I
was 21 centimeters short, but those things are all within tolerances.
So I get some points.
I don't lose any lives off the top.
And so on it continues to the next station.
Now you notice I got a star on the map here.
They must have thought that section was particularly well done.
Look at this next one, this is where it goes a little bit wrong.
If we look towards the top, right.
Well, first off, you'll see, I'm kind of overshooting here.
So I ended up slamming on a little bit, but just look at the number of
people at the top right, the indicator of how many lives I've got supposedly.
One's gone there, I've overshot, and then I slam on and I'll lose some more, get a
little animation of a guy falling over.
So yeah, that, wasn't a good one and of course you do a few
of those and it's game over.
But it's not all about stopping a train at the right point at the right time
at a station on the way to the stations there's things you have to do as well.
Obey the speed limit for example.
At the moment, this is one of the faster routes I'm currently doing 105
kilometers an hour, but all of a sudden it tells me that I'm now in a 60 zone.
So I have to put the brakes on, not too hard though.
You don't want adjust those passengers again, but you want to get the
speed down before this number counts down at the bottom of the screen.
So I need to get to 60 before that reaches zero.
If I do I get some points or something.
Not exactly sure how it all works.
There's chains as well, which I think are kind of a number of things that you've
done right in a row, but it all adds up to your points, which then allow you
to unlock those more difficult levels.
Now the four different routes are quite varied.
There's inner city loops where there's loads of closely packed stations.
So no sooner have you accelerated away from one than you're
slowing down for the next one.
And then you've got more countryside routes, where there's a lot
of speed variations on them.
You'll see with this one that I didn't spot the station coming up.
I missed it and because I was going so fast on this faster route that
I'm completely overshooting it and
there's no chance of me stopping in time.
So you'll see what happens with this.
With the number of lives that I lose at the top right there,
for just completely missing it.
There's the train going past it the animation there.
It stops you at a certain point.
It doesn't let you carry on, and you get your lives taken off you
and no doubt you get told off when you get back to the depot.
Now I've got to say I really bought this whole thing as a bit of a joke.
I was looking for something on Amazon Japan.
I saw it up for pre-order.
I thought well they don't sell those over here, I'll get one of those in to have
a go with, but I really didn't expect that it would win me over like this.
I'm not at all into trains.
I don't go around riding on old steam trains or taking pictures of them, writing
down numbers, any of that business.
In fact, if I can avoid going on a train, I probably would do.
But, yeah, I'm really enjoying this, this whole riding around Japan.
It's a very Zen, chilled-out kind of game.
I was trying to think, what is it that appeals?
And one part of it is this gliding to a halt at the station and that
satisfaction where you managed to stop at the right point.
To me, that feels a little bit like the winter Olympic sport of Curling must feel.
Where you get your stone and you slide it down the ice and it just stops in
the middle of the target at the end.
It illicits much the same feeling of accomplishment where you just slide very
slowly and just stop in the right point . As well as different types of routes
of courses there's different trains, you can see this, one's leaning over.
You've also got uphill and downhill sections where you've got to be very
careful about your speed limit and there's different weather conditions as well.
One thing that I found particularly impressive that I just didn't expect
was that when you go over sections of track that make noises like this,
you can actually feel it.
Being fed back through the controller.
There's a motor in there to feed a vibration through the accelerator.
I can just feeling it going over the rails.
Very clever.
Oh, and here's some of those trackside workers I mentioned.
If you press the C button to sound a horn, I think you get some points.
I'm not entirely sure.
I was little bit late there.
Well, there are some moments like that, and then ones like these, where I'm
getting Chains, rewards for things that I've done well and I'm not entirely
sure what it is that I've done and how I could do it again in the future.
So yeah, I'm missing out on some of the nuances here and it's purely down to
the language barrier and it's a bit of a shame because there's all those old chaps
that are really into trains that would love something like this I'm quite sure.
It doesn't matter that it's around Japan.
As long as you get the tutorial and the onscreen text explaining
what's going on in English.
I'm sure they'd be more than happy.
And there's quite a lot of audio in the game.
That's in English anyway.
The next station is ...., the doors on the left side will open.
. You can change here for the ....line
Please switch off your mobile phone when you
are near the priority seats.
In other areas please set it to silent mode and refwain from talking....
There is one part of the game that's really completely off limits though,
unless you understand Japanese and that's the Conductor's Mode because it seems
like the gameplay here is selecting appropriate actions at appropriate points.
But since all the text is in Japanese, I have no idea what's going on.
It's just lucky dip whether or not I've selected the right thing.
Now based on past experience I know this is a point where a lot of people want to
encourage me that I could learn Japanese.
There's only a certain number of characters in this simplified character
set that are based around the English language and once you've learned those,
you're able to understand the onscreen menus.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
It's not going to happen.
I'm not really that good at picking up stuff nowadays at my age.
It's one of those you can't teach an old dog new tricks type of
things, but yeah, if you can pick it up, well, that's great for you.
If you want to look at low polygon, 3d models of Japanese trains.
Well, that's something you can do within the museum section.
Yeah, form an orderly queue now.
Another part of that enables you to look at videos.
It looks like these have to be unlocked depending upon whether or not you've
completed that section of the game.
But these amuse me to no end, with the fast cuts, the dynamic funky
music, you'd really think there was something exciting going on.
But all is, is just a few commuter trains going about their business.
Oh, and I should mention, it's quite important this, the
game will save your progress.
There's an auto save function, or you can overwrite the saves manually.
Now can we just change gear for a moment or whatever the equivalent
is when it comes to trains and talk about the technology, the
graphical processing capabilities of this plug and play console.
Because the 3D models here,
well, to me, this all feels very much PlayStation 2.
If this thing isn't based around the same processing capability, at least of
a PlayStation 2, I'd be very surprised.
After all, this is what the game it looked like on a PlayStation One.
So clearly we're a step up from that.
And when I've looked at videos online, It very much seems like the Densha de Go!
Plug & Play is the same in quality as a PlayStation 2.
But if we look through the type of retro games consoles, the plug and play ones
that have come out so far, there's nothing that matches up to this plug and play
one as far as 3D processing capabilities.
The closest we get is the PlayStation One I think as far as 3D abilities go.
So, what I'm saying here is that the most powerful plug and play games console
on the market at the end of 2020, which actually came out in 2018, as far as
3D graphics go, is the Densha de Go!
Plug and Play.
It seems like a little bit of overkill in a way, because there's no
PlayStation 2 plug and play console out there yet, or a Dreamcast one.
I've heard talk of a Saturn one coming out, but even that probably
wouldn't be up to the graphical processing capabilities of this.
So just out of interest, I opened it up to see what was powering this thing.
Unfortunately, there's not an awful lot to see.
As suspected it's a small circuit board. MORE IN THE VID DESCRIPTION
But a lot of the important chips are hidden behind a metal cover so
I'm showing you some closeups of the various chips and parts of this that
are relevant, but it hasn't really given me any information at all.
But it's interesting to know that since 2018, there has existed a circuit board
that could be used in plug and play games consoles that's capable, in my
opinion of outputting the same graphical performance as a Sony PlayStation 2.
Oh, you didn't think I'd forget did you, it's that CD.
It turns out it's a two track CD.
Track 1 is a Densha de Go!
Song, which no doubt was a popular hit based upon the game.
and Track 2 is a live version of that.
And if you're sitting there now thinking, Oh, only the Japanese would have a
hit single based around a video game.
Well, just think back a bit.
So, there you go.
A look at what is probably the most powerful plug and play games console on
the market at the time of recording.
And what does it play?
One game.
A train driver simulator, which sounds ridiculous until you start playing
it and then it'll win you over.
Well, it did with me anyway,
But that's it for the moment,
As always, thanks for watching.
THERE'S MORE INFO IN THE VIDEO DESCRIPTION
Including a link to a full teardown that shows all the chips