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Games for this topic:
Bases Loaded '96: Double Header
Bug
Mansion of Hidden Souls, The
TAMA
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1
Virtua Fighter
Saturn throws me a curve ball right off the bat with Virtua Fighter. Two of Saturn's key launch titles both have a later-released definitive edition which is mostly the same game but contains small improvements. For Virtua Fighter at least, the games are so similar from a gameplay perspective that I feel it only makes sense to cover it once. Since I think the original is likely what people are more familiar with I'm going to put it down under that name, but feel free to include your experience with Virtua Fighter Remix if it affects your vote. Beyond this, we have a few other early titles for the system to round out the first topic.
Bases Loaded '96: Double Header - B
ReplyDeleteBug - B
Mansion of Hidden Souls, The - A
TAMA - A
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 - A
Virtua Fighter - B
Just like when we played it on PS1, Bases Loaded 96 is still terrible, probably one of the worst Baseball games I've ever played. I've often said that you can tell instantly whether or not a Baseball game is good by the fielding control, and this game's fielding control is maybe the worst of all time. It's extremely bad about selecting which player to give you control of, and it will switch players constantly when trying to run down a ball, which further compounds the fact that the fielders are slow as molasses and have only marginally more throwing power. This makes it almost impossible to make any plays that aren't hit directly to the fielders and it gives the game an utterly absurd bias towards offense which is only somewhat balanced out by it's almost equally terrible hitting control. The game requires you to swing super early compared to most other games, and also doesn't allow to take any practice swings during the pitcher's windup, which makes it extremely hard to guage proper swing timing. The entire game just feels extremely slow and stiff and wouldn't even be one of the better baseball games on NES, let alone in this era, when most Baseball games not only have drastically better controls but have interesting new mechanics like manual swings or more dynamic pitch control. The music is kind of cool at least but this is one that's better off forgotten by history.
Bug is pretty bad. It's a 3D Platformer only in the loosest possible sense, the game is essentially made out of cubes on a grid, and you can only move in the four cardinal directions, and only along the path the game wants you to (for example, if you're walking on one path, and there's another path a bit behind you, it won't let you try to jump over to it). This essentially means that the game basically doesn't benefit at all from its 3D perspective, it plays almost exactly like a 2D platformer, the only thing it takes from 3D platformers is that the camera sucks. It's far too zoomed in, which creates blind jumps almost everywhere and even prevents you from seeing nearby enemies. The game is also extremely slow and basic, being just a hop-and-bop platformer with only a couple basic and infrequent powerups, and you can't even run, likely because this would be impractical with how zoomed in it is. The game is clearly trying to compare itself to Gex, as Bug also likes to spout annoying catch-phrases, but the game really doesn't want to invite that comparison as Gex is a drastically better game. Gex's dynamic wall-climbing ability from Gex 1 and the resulting interesting level design that brought about is a far cry from this snoozefest, which becomes dull and repetitive within the first couple of levels.
The Mansion of Hidden Souls is an interesting game but it also has some shortcomings. It's one of those first-person graphic adventure games, like D and Juggernaut, though it's quite short and easy compared to most of them. By far the game's most impressive achievement is a technical one. The engine that this game runs on is fantastic, in pretty much all similar games whenever you turn or move there's a bit of a delay, but this game is lightning quick, and the improved responsiveness makes the game vastly more fun to play. Exploring the mansion is actually fairly enjoyable, though unfortunately there's really not a lot to explore. The game doesn't have any real puzzles and there's almost nothing to interact with, pretty much the entire game involves going around and talking to people, and occasionally making a dialogue choice or using an item. This is actually not so bad on its own, the voice acting is fine and the the concept behind the story is actually fairly interesting, but ultimately I feel like it doesn't really pay off. The core idea behind the game is actually quite intriguing, the mansion is a place where people can achieve a kind of immortality in exchange for their humanity, and I feel like an examination of the kinds of circumstances that would drive someone to make this kind of decision could be quite interesting, but the game never explores it in any significant depth, and the game itself is so short that we barely get to learn anything about many of its characters. I feel like one thing that would have improved the game a lot is if there was a bit more flavour text. For example, there are many items in each room you can examine, but it just zooms in on them with no dialogue. If your helper instead chimed in with some interesting backstory about some of those objects, it might help flesh out the world more (particularly with the revelation that the rooms represent the soul of the owner, which you actually have to get a bad ending to hear about!). For much of the game it felt like it was kind of building to something and I was actually considering G as I did somewhat enjoy it, but the ending is so completely nonsensical and leaves so many questions answered that I think it has to be A. An interesting concept for sure, but I feel it needed slightly better writing to really shine.
DeleteTAMA is virtually identical to the PS1 version. For those who weren't there for that topic, it's essentially a computerized version of the marble-rolling game Labyrinth. It's very frustrating to play, but authentically so as the physical game is a maddening experience as well. One thing that's nice to see about the game is it actually controls and runs really well for such an early title, while its graphics are unlikely to really wow anyone, it does get the point across and plays well enough. Probably not the kind of game you'd rush out to buy to show off your new system, but a serviceable early title for both platforms.
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 is a port of the Genesis versions of Thunder Force 2 and 3 to Saturn. Thunder Force 2 is kind of a weird game that mixes two types of gameplay. There are overhead sections in which you can fly in any of the four cardinal directions and have to hunt down enemy bases, and regular side-scrolling sections that play like a typical shmup. The top down sections are fairly bad IMO, being stuck in the center of the screen drastically reduces your ability to see and react to things coming at you, and the inability to "strafe" makes aiming at things annoying. The side scrolling sections are vastly better, but comprise less than half the game. Thunder Force 3 just plays it safe and sticks to only side-scrolling shmup action and is a great game. There's not too much else to say about this collection besides this, there aren't really many extras to speak of. I could see the argument for G because Thunder Force 3 is a great game, but the one thing that drags this collection down is that Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 exists, which contains the arcade version of Thunder Force 3 and the incredible Lightening Force. I think the Genesis version of Thunder Force 3 is a little better than the Arcade, but they're at least fairly comparable and Ligbtening Force is a drastically better game than Thunder Force 2, which probably makes that collection the one you want to track down.
DeleteI know this isn't going to endear me to Saturn fans but the original Virtua Fighter is kind of bad. Its biggest problem is that it's overly slow and floaty, much like Tekken 1. Even short jumps are way too slow to ever be useful, so the game mostly comes down to pokes and throws. Throws are extremely strong in this game, I think they're active frame 1 and have no throw whiff animation, but they are also extremely unreliable, requiring extremely precise distance and having very picky input detection that causes them to frequently fail to come out. That mostly just leaves pokes, which work okay, though you don't have many, the game has only two main attack buttons and there's no cancelling, so you actually have very few pokes and strings at your disposal. Apart from occasional juggle combos offense is very basic and it doesn't feel like there's a lot to learn. It doesn't help that this is also a very barebones port, there's only Arcade and Vs modes, there's not even a training option. They couldn't even bother to put in load screens, instead there's just a simple black screen with a message on it between fights. The AI is also really primitive, having inordinately fast reactions but very little concept of how to play neutral, so they're not particularly fun to fight against. Unfortunately, none of these problems are improved to any degree with the Remix version, it's pretty close to the exact same game, it just looks a fair bit better. There's clearly some potential here, but as with most other early 3D fighters it still needs a bit more seasoning at this point.