Let's Play Psychic World (SMS) Round 1

Let's Play Psychic World (SMS) Round 1 - Prairie

Kssshhhh

Vwhum... Deh-Dah!

In a science lab in the middle of nowhere, occupational health and safety standards were being neglected...

The ESP booster, unlike Dr. Knavik, will help you...

Lucia puts it on, and with a look of determination, enters...

The Psychic World

Welcome to Let's Play Psychic World!

Psychic World is a 1991 Sega Master System action game, as you can see. As a 1991 SMS release, it only came out in Europe (and Australia and Brazil), but there was a Game Gear version that released worldwide. Both are Sega made ports of the 1988 Japan-only MSX game Psycho World, made by Hertz. All going well I'll be taking a look at those other versions after I finish with the SMS game, so I won't go into them just yet.

You play as Lucia, a research assistant in a remote lab, whose twin sister Cecile (expect me to refer to Lucia as Lucille at some point in the LP) has been abducted by the monsters kept at the lab by their boss, Dr. Knavik. Dr. K volunteers to stay at the lab in case the monsters return, and gives Lucia the lab's ESP booster to allow her to fight the monsters and rescue Cecile.

Each stage has one of these neat little intros. Unfortunately, as in many later games, the abilities Lucia shows off in the cutscenes are not always the abilities she has in gameplay. Running into enemies will not knock them away. Fortunately the recoil animation from getting hit isn't as bad as in this animation, either.

As the game starts, an enemy appears immediately. Lucia ducks and fires her pea shooter (that is, the "Psy-cannon"), killing it. The "B" block (for bonus?) gives 1,000 points in addition to the 100 for killing the enemy. The game screen is broken into a play window at the top, the ESP window at the bottom left, and the status window at the bottom right. We can use ESP abilities so long as we have power left in the ESP Gauge. We'll keep living so long as there's life in the Hit Point Gauge. Then there's the score. I'm not someone who generally cares about high scores, but the point total has a direct effect on gameplay that I'll get to soon.

Between the ESP and status windows is the game's name and two pulsing green bars, which are there to let you know this was an '80s PC game and also to make it harder for me to make seamlessly looping .gifs.

Lucia's other abilities include jumping and running. Unfortunately there's no dedicated run button - you start moving faster automatically after walking briefly. This can be quite irritating in some of the platforming areas.

Carrying on we meet some flying enemies and take damage for the first time. These are an annoyance and a challenge at this point - our meagre offensive abilities make it hard to kill them, and the way their movement bounces off the edge of the screen means I can't just walk away from them.

Continuing on we get our first power-up. The cross block gives Lucia the Shield ability. Note that it's been added to the ESP window at the bottom left. Let's give it a shot!

By pressing down and jump together, we get access to the ESP window. So long as I hold jump, I can move the cursor. Wherever it's sitting when I release will be activated. That either allows me to select a different weapon (once we get one) or to activate an ESP ability, as I'm doing here. One nice touch is the way Lucia closes her eyes to do ESP, which is sort of stuffed up by me repeatedly jumping or ducking as I use this ability over and over. The first shot of Shield changes the colour of Lucia's clothing and makes her briefly impervious to damage. Activating it again while invincible will allow her to "Excharge", transferring ESP power to HP. As you might imagine, when you have a source of ESP refill this ability pretty much breaks the game.

Here's me deliberately taking a hit (I swear!) to demonstrate that some enemies damage your ESP rather than your HP. So far as I can see, neither the game nor the manual ever defines "ESP", which usually means ExtraSensory Perception, something that doesn't normally include Psy-cannons and Shields. I guess it's just a shorthand for psychic powers.

Carrying on we meet a few new enemy types, including a flying type that will go off screen, and a ground type that drops a health refill. These come in small and large sizes, the latter of which are full heals, and both of which are less of a hassle than excharging.

On the next screen there's another Shield block. Maybe for players who missed the first one?

I didn't get a good shot of the level one version of Shield, but the more of a power up you collect the stronger it gets. The invincibility is lasting longer now that I've got two Shield blocks.

Here are the big health and ESP refills.

These guys are much less of a problem when you don't have to worry about getting hit.

At a run, you can pass over small gaps. At walking pace you'll fall through.

This circle is the first upgrade to Lucia's Psy-cannon. Let's see it in action:

It's hard to tell, but it's a bit bigger and more rounded than before.

I mentioned that the score would be important earlier. In this gif, when I kill the enemy my ESP refills. This happens every 10,000 points, which is pretty often, and means you can be fairly liberal with your ESP abilities.

Here's the first boss! A giant flower, it sends its roots out in a fixed pattern that can be avoided by getting up close, then shoots out smaller flowers that are a bit harder to dodge but don't do too much damage. It can't be harmed in the root phase, but mashing attack in the flower phase will see it off in short order. Lucia gets another Psy-cannon upgrade for her trouble, which doubles its firepower. Nice!

Here's a little quirk of the game: when you press into a wall Lucia will look backwards. If you look closely, the part in her hair remains on the same side or her head whichever way she's looking. That sort of thing makes me think someone involved in production cared about this game, and I love it. Unfortunately this little detail doesn't carry over to her normal walking and standing sprites, which are simple mirror images. I believe in the MSX version she has separate left and right facing sprites which preserve the position of the part.

Also in this gif you can see the seams of my production process. The water should be flowing smoothly, but it slows down at points. I'm not sure why this happens (I took some care to make sure that the first and last frames of the gif were at the right points in the water animation), because it's smooth in the game and in the source video I made the gif from. I have found a way to avoid the problem but it's a bit of work and relies on me noticing the slowdown, which I didn't for this gif initially, so there will be some imperfections in this LP. Sorry, gang!

The water carries Lucia along, but you can go faster with the D-pad. The enemies in this screen can be avoided by running, so I do.

On the next screen are some more power-ups, which I work my way back to. My new double shot isn't helping me hit enemies on lower levels, sadly. Also sadly, you can't drop down the waterfall in the top right image by ducking and letting the water carry you. Anyway, that infinity symbol is a new power up! What's it do?

Oh. This is teleportation, which returns you to the start of the stage with your health, ESP, score, and powers intact. It has its uses, but not many. It does allow you to grind, since power ups reappear and build up, but I don't intend to use it for that.

This gif, by the way, was where I figured out how to fix a gif with slowdown. The first version was a mess that I now wish I'd saved so I could link to it. Oh well.

Turns out those enemies I complained about at the start of the game can go off screen if you're running. Good to know.

With another power-up, Shield lasts even longer.

My Psy-cannon is now three large shots. The flower goes down even quicker.

I'm pretty happy with how this gif turned out. You can see the seam if you watch the green bars around the title, though.

Past the mountain is another grassy area, this time with pillars as well as rocks. There's nothing much we haven't already seen in it, so let's comment on how all the platforms in this level are either supported by the ground or else part of the mountain face, and move on:

This boss (you might recognise it from the cover art) has a pretty impressive entrance.

Again though you can just tank a few hits, rush up to it and kill it. Like a lot of huge bosses in 8-bit games, it's not very mobile. The rain of fire is pretty cool, though. Beating it gets Lucia her next ESP Attack Capability, Hydro-wave, and finishes the level.

Next time:

Volcanic Area

Wear this ESP booster. It'll help you see this bonus material:

Here's some concept art of that first boss:

I got it from this great interview (warning: spoilers) with Tsunetomo Sugawara, one of the creators of Psychic World (or rather, of Psycho World, the original MSX version). I have no idea what the text says, unfortunately.

Sensenic:
Some of it is hard to read due to the low res, but it seems to be your usual design document specs (weak point is here, this part looks like this and does that...), nothing special.

The boss is named "Grand Chimera" and, since you proceeded to beat the crap out of the poor thing without letting it showcase its abilities, the dragon head is supposed to fire breath, the goat head needles and the lion head water (for some reason?), which I guess it is why it gives you the Hydro-wave ESP.

Yimothy:
I took another shot at the Grand Chimera just now, this time not attacking it, and so far as I can see its only attack is the rain of fire from the sky.