Gulliver Boy on PC Engine: The Magazine-Built RPG That Played Cel Animation, and Why It Stopped at One

Gulliver Boy — 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ, “Imagination Science World Gulliver Boy” — is a role-playing game Hudson released in Japan on 26 May 1995 for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM², product code HCD5076, at 7,800円 before tax. It is an RPG in which you make your money by trading, and it plays cel animation off the disc.

It is also not really a game adaptation. The game and the television series were one project from the start: a media mix set up by Shueisha’s magazine V Jump together with Hudson and Red Company, created by Oji Hiroi and Toyoo Ashida. The anime ran fifty episodes on Fuji TV through 1995, the game came out in the middle of that run, and then the whole thing ended. There are ports to the Saturn and the Super Famicom, but no second Gulliver Boy game of any kind. This guide covers what the disc is, what HuVIDEO actually did, which of the four Gulliver Boy games is which, and why searching the Japanese title is a bad idea.

• Japanese title: 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ, published by Hudson (ハドソン)
• PC Engine (Super CD-ROM²): 26 May 1995 · product code HCD5076 · 7,800円 before tax — a figure the Media Arts Database does not carry for this row, but Suruga-ya and the catalogue site Picopico Daihyakka agree on it
• Where it came from: the “G Project” launched with V Jump — Shueisha, Hudson and Red Company together, from Oji Hiroi (Tengai Makyo, Mashin Hero Wataru) and Toyoo Ashida, with music by Kohei Tanaka
• HuVIDEO: a video compression system Hudson built for this game so the PC Engine could play the animation; the footage was animated for the game before the TV series, and some of it was reused on television
• The money system: you do not get paid for killing things — you buy and sell goods around the Mediterranean
• Ports, not sequels: Sega Saturn (Hudson, 22 March 1996, T-14303G) and Super Famicom (Bandai, 28 June 1996) are the same RPG; the Game Boy Pritto Pon (Bandai, 28 April 1995) is a puzzle game

Why was a games magazine running an anime?

Because the project started there. The Japanese Wikipedia article describes Gulliver Boy as one of the “G Project” plans drawn up when Shueisha launched its video game magazine V Jump, and as a media mix run jointly by three companies: Shueisha, Hudson and Red Company. It was Shueisha’s attempt at the kind of cross-media franchise Kadokawa and Shogakukan were known for. The names attached say the same thing: the concept came from Red Company’s Oji Hiroi, who had already done Mashin Hero Wataru and Hudson’s Tengai Makyo; the character designs came from Toyoo Ashida, who had designed Wataru; the music came from Kohei Tanaka; and some of the main mecha designs came from Akira Toriyama, who was about as close to Shueisha as an artist can be.

You can read the arrangement straight off the game’s own packaging. The copyright line recorded for this disc in the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Database is ©1995 HUDSON SOFT／ワイワイカンパニー ©広井王子・芦田豊雄／集英社 ©フジテレビ・東映動画 — Hudson and Wai Wai Company for the game, Hiroi and Ashida with Shueisha for the work, Fuji TV and Toei Animation for the series. Four sets of rights on one CD, which is part of why nothing has been reissued since.

Because the game and the series were made side by side rather than one after the other, they do not quite match. The Japanese article notes that character designs, most of the supporting voice cast and details of the story differ between them, and that the game’s Gulliver kept the straight-haired boyish look from the original proposal while the television Gulliver became a sharper-eyed young man. The game also came out while the series was still airing, so players reached the later parts of the story months before the broadcast did.

What did HuVIDEO actually do?

It let a 1987 console play cartoons. HuVIDEO (ヒュービデオ) is a video compression system Hudson developed for this game, and the Japanese Wikipedia article is specific about the order of work: the animation used in the game was produced before the television version, for the game, and some of those scenes were later reused in the TV series. So the cel animation on this disc is not captured video of the broadcast; in places the broadcast is the reuse.

Hudson also sold the technique as a technique. Among the items Suruga-ya catalogues under this product code is a separate disc called 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ Huビデオ体験版 — a HuVIDEO demo. If you are buying and a listing looks unusually cheap for a Super CD-ROM² game, check whether it is the demo rather than the game.

An RPG where you make money by trading

The unusual part of the design is the economy. As the Japanese Wikipedia article puts it, the big feature of this game is that money in it does not come from defeating enemies but from 貿易 — trade. You buy goods in one port and sell them in another, and that is how you fund the adventure. The setting supports it: the map is mainly the Mediterranean, with parts of the Black Sea and the Atlantic, and the town you start in is in what was then Yugoslavia. The Japanese catalogue site Picopico Daihyakka adds the combat details — symbol encounters rather than random ones, turn-based commands — and the packaging list in the Media Arts Database includes a folded twelve-page map of the whole Mediterranean, which is the sort of insert a trading game needs.

The story around it is the standard shape: Gulliver Toscanni’s father is killed by King Yudo of Hispania, Gulliver sets out for revenge and ends up saving the world, accompanied by Misty, the inventor Edison and the fairy Phoebe. The voice cast is why people remember the disc as well — Kappei Yamaguchi as Gulliver, Chisa Yokoyama as Misty, and a supporting list of names any anime viewer of the 1990s would recognise.

Four games, one of them different, none of them a sequel

The Media Arts Database has exactly four Gulliver Boy game rows, and it is worth knowing which is which before you buy:

• Game Boy, 28 April 1995, Bandai — 空想科学少年ガリバーボーイ 空想科学パズル プリッとポン, 3,980円 including tax. A puzzle game, not the RPG.
• PC Engine, 26 May 1995, Hudson — this disc, HCD5076. The original.
• Sega Saturn, 22 March 1996, Hudson — T-14303G, 6,800円 before tax, catalogued under the alternate name NOUVELLE FANPASIA Gulliver Boy. A port of the PC Engine game, and, as the Japanese article notes, Hudson’s first release on the Saturn.
• Super Famicom, 28 June 1996, Bandai — 9,800円 before tax, no product code on record. The same RPG on a cartridge, without the animation.

That is the whole list. No sequel was made; the story ended with the anime in December 1995, and the only thing that came back was a DVD box in 2012. Nor has the game been reissued digitally: the same database that carries a Wii Virtual Console row for other PC Engine titles has no download row for any Gulliver Boy game, and the TurboGrafx-16 Mini does not include it. With Hudson, Shueisha, Fuji TV and Toei all holding pieces of it, that is not surprising.

One oddity of the current market is worth flagging: the ports are not the cheap option. On 17 September 2026 Suruga-ya’s own copies ran ¥1,800 for this PC Engine disc, ¥1,160 to ¥2,320 for the Saturn version, ¥7,020 for the Game Boy puzzle game — and ¥115,000 for the Super Famicom cartridge, which was by far the most expensive of the four that day.

Where can you buy the PC Engine disc today?

Suruga-ya: search the code, without the hyphen. On 30 September 2026 HCD5076 showed results in the default view: 2 (this game: 2), and with sold-out items shown as well: 6. The sold-out view is the shop’s catalogue for the code, and it holds copies missing the manual or the map, a disc on its own, and the HuVIDEO demo. Prices as of 17 September 2026: the disc ¥1,800 in the shop’s own stock, with a marketplace line from ¥820 across 41 used copies. Do not add the hyphen. HCD-5076 also returns a completely different Hudson game, 銀河婦警伝説サファイア (¥170,000 as of 17 September 2026) — an expensive thing to click by accident.

Buyee: search the Japanese title with the platform name. On 30 September 2026 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ PCエンジン showed results: 23 (this game: 14). The rest are the things a media mix leaves behind, such as shop flyers and soundtrack CDs, so read the listing names before you bid. The code is too thin a search on Buyee: HCD5076 found one listing on 17 September 2026 and none on 30 September 2026. So we link the title search.

Never search the katakana title alone. ガリバーボーイ on its own showed results: 198, and the first page is mostly the media mix: animation cels, the complete DVD box, colouring books, Bandai’s Machine Sea Lion toy, anime CDs, and the Saturn, Super Famicom and Game Boy versions. This is a title where the franchise is much bigger than the object you want.

Why search Kataban for this one?

Because the catalog separates the four games and the code picks out one of them. Checked in a desktop browser on 30 September 2026: HCD5076 returns one result, the 1995 PC Engine disc. 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ returns three — PC Engine, Saturn, Super Famicom. ガリバーボーイ returns four, adding the Game Boy puzzle game, whose Japanese title uses 少年 rather than 世界. Gulliver Boy returns three.

The card for the disc gives the platform, the 1995 release year, the publisher Hudson Soft, the code HCD5076 and the kana to look under on a Japanese shop shelf (ク, for クウソウ — not カ and not ガ, which is where you would look for a game filed under Gulliver).

Gulliver Boy · 空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ · PC Engine Super CD-ROM², 26 May 1995 (HCD5076) · Hudson (ハドソン)

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code (HCD5076) · Buyee — title (空想科学世界ガリバーボーイ PCエンジン)
See the disc on Kataban →

A project built by a magazine, a publisher, a games company and a television network at the same time can make one very ambitious disc, and then it is finished: there is no one left whose series it is. What is left is a 1995 Super CD-ROM² that plays cartoons, a folded map of the Mediterranean, and three other games with the same name that are not sequels.