Ratalaika and Shinyuden are continuing to work through localizing the Kaizō Chōjin Shubibinman with Cyber Citizen Shockman 3: The Princess from Another World. This was released in 1992, exclusively in Japan and on the PC-Engine CD-ROM² (the Western equivalent would be the TurboGrafx-CD). It’s out on May 3, and has been fully translated.
The Kaizō Chōjin Shubibinman series only reached North America through its second game, which was localized as Shockman for the TurboGrafx-16. It remained a rather obscure title until it got a second chance on the Wii and Wii U’s Virtual Consoles. I guess it’s still obscure, but at least you didn’t need obscure hardware to run it.
Ratalaika and Shinyuden have been going through the series, re-localizing them. Previously, we got Cyber Citizen Shockman and Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace. To be real with you, they aren’t the best games. They’re far from the worst, but I’d be lying if I said these were some tragically buried gems. They’re at least all different from a design perspective, and Cyber Citizen Shockman 3 might be the best that we’ve seen re-released.
Not the best, just the best that have been re-released.
The one thing that these games rock is 2-player co-op which, in the action-platforming genre, is somewhat rare. Cyber Citizen Shockman 3 also has some pretty good level variety and CD-enabled anime cutscenes. The biggest downside here is that it’s a pretty short game. Still worth experiencing. I’m hoping that Ratalaika and Shinyuden keep going with the series and we see the SNES titles soon.
Cyber Citizen Shockman 3: The Princess from Another World will be available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch on May 3 for $5.99.
