Original Release: Macadamia Soft, 1986, PC-88
Other Releases: PC-98 / Sharp X1 (1986)
Japan’s first really controversial eroge, and you can probably see why from the title screen.
177 (PC-98, Macadamia, 1986)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: Master-B
Let me preface this review by saying that this game is pretty fucked up even by this site’s standards. “177” is Japan’s police code for you-know-what, and if that doesn’t make things clear, if ya don’t stop and do it to an undercover cop you’ll probably be in as much or more trouble as 187.
Anyway, the title screen makes pretty clear what the deal is. We creep with this baka hentai loser as he crawls through the park … maniac, lunatic, call him Rapin’ Eastwood. We play games here where monsters get down to this sort of business all the time, but there are usually narrative layers that soften it like magic or silliness and the girl is actually into it and etc … yeah none of that in this one. It’s a complete horror tone (at least until the Happy End) and is very explicit about what’s happening. Well we did Custer’s Revenge and a bunch of Rance games already so in for a penny in for a pound I guess.
The gameplay itself is a simple run-and-jump typical of 1980s computers, other than that it scrolls left rather than right. Yon duder must jump over random animals and obstacles like tree stumps, and also tap the left arrow to continue gaining on the girl. The only other feature is the ability to lob some sort of smoke bomb that appears to wipe out animals (after they’re already past you) and seems to have little effect if any on the girl. If you get hit too much, you lose a life. The game is also divided into “Acts” in which you must catch up to the girl a few times, stripping a piece of clothing off each time. If you don’t catch her the requisite number of times during the act, she escapes and you start over with the next act. Mongle up all the acts and she makes it home safely.
I think the difference with the acts is that the girl is in a different position when you catch her in each one. But in all cases, you enter a confusing sex mini-game in which your dude takes mount and boogies his butt around as you press the arrow keys. There’s some symbolic flower in the upper left that I think ties into what you’re supposed to be pressing but I guess I am not versed enough in the Japanese erotic arts to understand. You have to make the girl’s “Desire” meter rise before your “Power” runs out or it’s game over, there’s a long text scroll that’s in Japanese but presumably it isn’t good news. The funny thing is, if you win it seems the girl gets the ultimate revenge as she ropes you into the bonds of matrimony. I’ll just pretend this was a common pre-1990 Japanese courtship custom, complete with taiko drums pounding as the happy couple runs through the park.
The back cover seems to indicate that there are four different girls, but neither gameplay experimentation or web research led to a way to make any but the first one appear. Regardless, there’s no need for debate over merits vs morals or whatever for this one because the game has no gameplay value to it. It just sucks to play (and will beat up your arrow keys), the erotic content is weird and not good and it’s nothing more than a historical / cultural curiosity piece. 177 is actually of historical note in this sense as it was the first eroge game to raise a substantial public furor in Japan, with it being submitted to the National Diet (basically the Japan equivalent of US Congress) several months after release as a “harmful game” that should have sales restrictions put on it. However, the government ultimately came down on the side of industry self-regulation.
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