Official Sega Saturn Thread
Been reading a lot about the Saturn recently, which prompted me to pick one up; never actually owned one before. I got a crazy deal where I got the system, 40 games and an analogue controller for the equivalent of $59. Of course, several of those games are atrocious and were just in a big bundle the store was trying to get rid of. Like I'm talking awesome-bad, many of them turned out to be 18+ anime pr0n games. I also dropped another $80 on 20 more games I actually wanted to play.
Two problems though, for one, the battery is dead and I always have to enter the date. IS that a pain to replace? But the bigger problem is that it won't read my RAM carts (the KoF 95 & 96 carts). Is this a common problem with known fixes, or do I need a new system?
Anyway, haven't been able to spend a lot of time with all these games, and there's a whole stack I haven't touched yet, but here are some mini reviews of the stuff I've been able to play so far:
All Japan Pro Wrestling FEATURING VIRTUA I guess if you want a 32-bit mid-90s Japanese wrestling game with two Virtua Fighter characters, this isn't a bad one. But since I'm sure Jeremy already has this game, I've probably just wasted valuable seconds of all our lives. Let's move on.
Chaos Control This looks like some shitty Infogrames Independence Day knockoff, but I don't really know because it freezes when I press start at the title screen.
Christmas NiGHTS Okay, I should hate this game, I really should. I have incredibly limited tolerance for teh kiddie, and I think Phantasy Star Online was the only thing I've ever really liked from Sonic Team. But man, I see why people raved about this game so much over the years, it really is wonderful - the sound, the feeling of trying to get the tightest line through the courses, it's all great. I don't get the point of being the kids though, they suck and those parts can only serve to traumatize children into fearing a world that is out to stalk and kill their slow, helpless selves. I don't have the full game, I'll try and track that down.
Clockwork Knight This game is pretty well done, but suffers from there's-so-much-animation-it-moves-kind-of-slow-syndrome, known to science as TSMAIMKOSS. If I cared about platformers more I might like it better, but it's not bad or anything.
Daytona USA Newsflash to everyone who says this has magical properties that make it better than the Dreamcast version: YOU'RE INSANE THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE. Seriously, you can tweak the DC version's controls to feel exactly like this, except that game doesn't feature one new frame for every 30 meters you drive. Worst of all, this wasn't a pack-in in Japan, so it still has some value as a separate game so I paid $8 to get it. You all owe me, and I WILL collect. Okay, no I won't. You're still sooooo incredibly, horribly wrong, though.
Fighters Megamix So after a while these Sega 3D fighters start to all run together; I'm pretty sure they were sharing an engine, or at least several engine elements. This game's okay; I haven't learned all the ins & outs of its gameplay systems, but I might still rather play VF2 in some alternate universe where I want to spent significant time playing either. Special note: the cover is LOL.
Fighting Vipers "Okay, we're making a fighting game where you can knock people's armour off. What kind of characters should we have? Schoolgirl? Sure, goes without saying. Any other ideas? What's that Sakamoto? The guy from Def Leppard? Uh, alright... Nakamura? 'black chick on rollerblades'? Okay, but only if we can see her underwear. Alright, next, Asai? 'Fat guy wearing handicapped kid safety equipment'? Look I...hold on, Moriyama, you really think we need 'some random kid on a skateboard named Picky?' People, hold on a second, I'm not sure we're all on the same page here, I...sorry Tanaka, what did you say? A can of Pepsi in human form with his own awesome theme song? Okay, I guess one out of ten's not bad."
Grandia Ah, the fabled Saturn version of Grandia, the Saturn fan's Blazing Sword of console wars gone by. I'd only played the PS1 version, and I hated it. So I was really surprised when I found myself enjoying this one, it really is better. And am I tripping out, or is the animated cinema that plays at the beginning totally different? Anyway, I might actually play through this one some time.
Guardian HeroesThis game's pretty good, but my mind is not as blown by it as the internet had led me to believe it would be. There's this weird graininess to the sprite outlines that drives me nuts, and I'm not feeling the 3 tier playfield thing that never worked in Fatal Fury. It's decent fun, kept my interest for a while and I'll finish it, but I don't think this is like 2D's grand swan song or anything like it's often portrayed as.
Hang On GP '95Not bad, although the turning's a little touchy. It's clear they were trying to make Daytona with bikes, but in the end it's still basically Hang On in 3D.
King of Fighters '95,'96,'97 I get a message saying "please insert the RAM pack" every time I try to play one of these games; trouble is it's already inserted. Help!
Victory Goal So because Wanpaku couldn't possibly get rid of this crap any other way than to throw it into my bundle, I am now the proud owner of not one, not two, but three mid-90s Japanese soccer league games. This is the best of the bunch, because it has these crazy translations and this awesome soaring J-rock soundtrack is pumping while you play and you start getting all like "ball get! I can soccer!! I CAN SKYYYYY!!!
Let's Make Pro Soccer Club! Sadly, the following year the official J-League game seems to have been this management-sim. You make your own team from the ground up. The best part about Japanese soccer is that they just took all these random European words to name their teams, so you have sides like the Yokohama Flugels and the Nagoya Grampus Eight. The game gives you a bunch of pre-made team names to choose from, so I named my team the Kyoto Gluck and wound up with the Shikoku Apes being my farm team. Then I spent my entire team budget on TV advertising so everybody would come to one preseason game. Then the game started, and since this is a management sim you don't really control it and I was watching my Saturn play Japanese soccer against itself in horrible, horrible 3D. Then I turned it off.
Let's Make Pro Soccer Club! 2! In this one you get to choose your secretary from 3 hot blocky chicks. I chose my team name to be the Kyoto Elfschritt this time because it sounded dirty. Then I turned it off.
Mobile Suit Gundam I, II & III These are basically three different versions of the exact same game. The only advancement in the series seems to be that you get an on-screen map in the 3rd one. They're 1st person mech sims, and they're actually not bad. There's a lot of story elements, but they all just amount to a girl screaming "there's a place with robots! Go there and shoot them!" between levels. Like i said they're alright, but in the end not good enough to keep me playing over other things.
Panzer Dragoon I'd already played a fair bit of this game after unlocking the PC version in Panzer Dragoon Orta, but it's still fantastic. The 3D has aged horribly, but the artistry behind this series shines through, and of course the music is some of the best ever. I couldn't find a copy of Zwei, I'll have to track one down.
Sakura Wars Hanagumi News - This cost me the equivalent of ten cents. It's basically a glorified commercial for the Sakura Taisen radio drama and other Sakura Wars obscura masquerading as one of those animated digital comic type adventure games. I spent about 5 minutes with it and turned it off.
Samurai Shodown RPG How this never got any kind of release outside Japan is beyond me. But if it ever happens somehow, I want them to keep the full Japanese title - Samurai Shodown: Bushido Violent Legend - because "violent legend" is like a generic term in Japanese and I think it needs to be introduced to the English language. I mean, Van Damme movies like Time Cop suck balls, but if you change the name to Time Cop: Violent Legend it immediately becomes kickass. This game is about various SS characters (Haohmaru, Ukyo, Naoruru, Galford the white ninja, Genjuro, Cham Cham, Kyoshiro, Charlotte & Rimururu) traveling around the world and jrpging the shit out of everything they see. You can choose who your main character is Ukyo4LyfeBitchz. The visuals are brilliant with some nice, well animated sprites for the enemies. Characters use their usual special attacks in the fights, and even have a rage gauge. The downsides are that the loading time sucks, you walk really slowly, and the fights are pretty slow so far, though maybe it gets better as you power up. Those are some pretty big downsides, but I'll probably stick with it just because it's the motherfucking Samurai Shodown rpg.
Sega Rally Championship To be honest I didn't put a ton of time into it because I've forgotten all the tracks and this is one of those old school arcade racers that's very memorization heavy. You just kind of crash into everything until you figure out where the game thinks you should start turning. But the visuals are pretty brutal and generally tough to take after a while, so I didn't last long with it. I'll give it another spin later on.
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Damn, this game is awesome! I can't believe it was in a bin for only 200 yen. My favourite rpg on the system so far. Great atmosphere, music, etc. I'd never played the old school SMTs before the past year, and I think they've really aged well; as console based 1st person rpgs they were probably ahead of their time (yes, I know every ancient PC rpg was 1st person). I like the main old SMT games a lot more than the Persona series. Check it out if you get a chance.
Street Fighter Collection February 4th, 2008 - the exact date I realized I was fucking sick to death of Street Fighter II.
Toge King The Spirits 2 Toge means 'mountain pass' which is Japanese slang for "make a huge pass on this game when you see it in the bargain bin." ....I apologize, that was pretty weak. But so's this game! Zing! Actually, it's just a generic mediocre 32-bit racing sim and I doubt anybody's written this much about it in half a decade. I'll stop now and let it rest in obscurity once more.
Virtua Fighter: Remix Back in the day I thought maybe there was something I was missing with this game, but I had this sneaking suspicion that the people who said it was better than the first Tekken were just Segaphiles defending their turf. Now I know they were. Damn this game is brutal, it's just shallow as hell. It gets a pass because it was basically the first real 3D fighter waits for Neozeed to name PC game that predated it but that's about as much credit as it gets from me unless you're really excited by the fact that you can press kick after you press punch.
Virtua Fighter 2This game was a big advancement from the first, I remember it being truly jaw dropping at the time. But still, this series didn't really hit its stride until it started using 3D movement with the 3rd game, imo. Pretty decent game, but not much reason to play it these days.
Virtual Hydlide This game moves so slow you can count the frames per second. And I'm not saying that to be zany and outrageous, you can actually count them. There are 6. The game plays okay, like a primitive Oblivion starring a chunky digitized guy wearing a burlap sack, but after 30 minutes I just couldn't take it anymore.
Virtual On I don't own a set of twin sticks, so this game is essentially unplayable. I gave it a decent shot, but it's just not happening.
Wipeout Wow. It's kind of staggering to see how little this series has really changed over the years. This might be my favourite racer on the system, but there's nothing to recommend it over newer games in the series aside from a different soundtrack.
X-Men: Children of the Atom I used to play this game a bit back when, and when Marvel Super Heroes came out and there was all this air juggling I was like "holy shit! I never noticed that in CotA!" That's because it wasn't there, which makes this game kind of meh these days.
X-Men VS. Street Fighter So does this game require the RAM pack? I can watch the opening cinema, and it says 'press start', but as soon as I do the screen just goes black and nothing happens.
Wing Arms WWII arcadey combat flight-sim thing. I suck at these games badly, which is why when WWIII comes I'm joining the air force because I know there's no way I get anywhere near the front lines. I guess this game is almost okay. Sort of. Maybe. But I'm sure you don't care and really, neither do I. I'd much rather talk about...
ZERO 4 CHAMP DOOZY J TYPE-R And with that, video game titles peaked in 1997; it was all down hill from there. There is a picture of cars racing on the back, but the actual game is just a digital comic date-sim thing from what I played. It's kind of awesome though, it's about this Japanese guy who goes to America to compete in a race in San Francisco. But he doesn't speak any English, so when he goes to the hotel (and I'm not making this up) he says the only words he knows, "Fakku yu! Yanki go homu!" Fortunately, through a bizarre plot twist the blonde bellboy only speaks Japanese so he's not offended. Anyway, I played it for 30 minutes then fell asleep, but I never got to do any racing, just lots of wandering around static screens meeting cute auto mechanic girls.
