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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bases Loaded '96: Double Header - BBB - 0% (3)
Bug - BAAABAAG - 44% (8)
Mansion of Hidden Souls, The - GBBBAA - 33% (6)
TAMA - AAA - 50% (3)
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 - AAG - 67% (3)
Virtua Fighter - GAAABGBAA - 50% {9}
I was a bit worried for a second there with regards to the turnout, but actually it ended up being pretty good. If you're wondering why Virtua Fighter has a squiggly bracket, that indicates that the ratings were significantly mixed (the rule is that each rating has to be at least 20% of the total). This separates it from a game like TAMA which has the same score but there was far more consensus about it.
Games for this topic:
Capcom Generation 1
Clockwork Knight
Daytona USA
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Butouden
Magical Drop
Worldwide Soccer
An important note, the version of Daytona USA covered here ISN'T the Circuit Edition. After playing both fairly extensively, I think they're different enough that they need to be treated as separate games. Not too much else to say about this group, other than that I'm interested in going back to Clockwork Knight, which was the first Saturn game I ever played (and one of the only ones I played back in the day).
Capcom Generation 1 - G
ReplyDeleteClockwork Knight - G
Daytona USA - A
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Butouden - A
Magical Drop - G
Worldwide Soccer - A
Capcom Generation 1 is a compilation of 1942, 1943, and 1943 Kai, a trio of vertical shmup games. The first thing I note is that compared to Thunder Force Gold Pack 1, a fair bit more effort has gone into the production here. The game features some nice galleries as well as secrets and tips for all 3 games, as well as a pretty slick interface that allows you to jump between games easily and set the options for each title. In terms of the games themselves, 1942 has not aged that gracefully (I never even though it was that great on NES), but 1943 is a great game that still holds up surprisingly well even today. I particularly like the energy tank mechanic, which lets you take a couple hits, but you have to choose between refilling your energy tank and getting special weapons, which gives the game a decent amount of depth. It's a bit regrettable that this compilation doesn't include the NES version of 1943, which is very different from the arcade version, but 1943 Kai's inclusion is still appreciated even if it is very similar to 1943 in a number of ways. All three games are pretty much arcade perfect and run great on Saturn. About the only thing you might complain about is that the Playstation got a combo pack of Capcom Generation 1-4 and Saturn didn't, but this set is still solid enough that I can't hold that against it too much.
Clockwork Knight was my first exposure to the Saturn, way back in a store kiosk in 1995. I remember being very impressed by it at the time, though something had convinced me at some point that it wasn't as good as I remembered it. Going back to it, though, it actually is still a very cool game and I can see why I liked it. At its core, Clockwork Knight is a fairly simple 2D platformer, with its main standout feature being that the game has fully 3D backgrounds, which sometimes factor into gameplay (for example, enemies or traps sometimes come from the background layer). This is not a new concept even for its time, but it does look very good even now, it helps that the "toys to life" theme has a lot of charm, and the simplistic designs of the toys have helped the cutscenes age a lot more gracefully than many works of similar vintage. The most important aspect of this game, though, is that the quality of the gameplay has not been sacrificed for the visuals. When we compare this to Bug, for example, Bug is way too zoomed in, and the gameplay feels sluggish and limited, but Clockwork Knight simply feels good to play. The camera is pulled back to a suitable distance so that judging the terrain is basically never an issue and movement and control feels good. The level design is also well done, with each level feeling very distinct and having a number of memorable set pieces, for example I particularly liked the train stage and the sink stage, and the bosses are cool too. The game does have one major flaw, though, which is its length and replay value. Clockwork Knight is an extremely short game, in fact I beat it on my first try in about an hour. It has only 8 regular stages and 5 bosses, which would be quite short even on SNES, let alone for a game from this era, and it's also fully linear, although there is a world map you can't go back and replay stages to find secrets (not that there are many in the first place), which really limits its playtime. I feel like adding an extra world or a third stage to each of the game's 4 worlds would have helped tremendously in this regard, though even as it is, it's still a fun time, just one that's over a bit too soon. Still, there's quite a lot to like here and it feels memorable, I particularly like the somewhat bizarre but charming final credits sequence. Worth a playthrough for sure.
Daytona USA is an interesting title. It has a tremendous amount of spirit and energy to its presentation that I can't help but appreciate, but mechanically it's only kind of average, which in a way, kind of reminds me of Sega itself. Daytona USA is, of course, a port of an Arcade Racer, and like Virtua Fighter, this still very much feels like an Arcade game, not too much has been done to adapt this title for home consoles. This is probably one of the biggest issues with the game, though the home console version adds a few secrets, this game still doesn't have a ton of content, having only 3 tracks and pretty much no progression, similar to the original Ridge Racer on PS1. The original release of the game is often maligned for technical issues, most particularly frame rate and draw distance / pop in, but these didn't bother me particularly much, I don't feel its technical performance is that much worse than other games from its time. In fact, I would say presentation is actually this game's strongest point. The music in this game is very lively and unique, with a lot of high-energy vocals, and the game is generally very bright and colourful, with interesting track and car designs. I particularly like how your car gets mangled up if you crash, which looks far cooler in this version than it does in Championship Circuit Edition, but I'm getting ahead of myself. My biggest issue with the game is control. Controlling the car isn't atrocious, but it just never quite feels right. It's simultaneously too twitchy and yet when cornering it also sometimes feels too loose. If you know the arcade version, it's sort of obvious why this is the case - this is a game that was built for analog control, and it simply doesn't make the transition to a digital pad well. It really makes you question Sega's choice to launch the Saturn with no analog stick when Daytona USA was going to be their flagship title, but they realized their mistake and eventually released both a controller with an analog stick and a version of this game that supports it, but that's a story for another time.
DeleteDragon Ball Z Shin Butouden is an interesting title. It's no secret that many Dragon Ball Z games are kind of slapdash affairs that don't have a lot of effort put into them, but this game definitely bucks that trend. For starters, the game's visual presentation is great. There's a ton of characters, they're all animated really well, there's a ton of voice acting, and the battle backgrounds look great. This really is a pretty fantastic-looking game for its time. There's also quite a wealth of modes available too, which helps it feel like a pretty well-fleshed out game, and I love that they put the character movelists on the load screen, this is such a great QOL feature. Unfortunately, there are some issues with gameplay. Each character has very few normals (there's only 2 normal buttons, for punches and kicks), and nothing is cancellable, so apart from "jump in into special move", there are basically no combos. Instead, the game relies almost entirely on specials and wakeup pressure (wakeups are very unsafe, but you have multiple wakeup options), which actually doesn't work too badly, but unfortunately this game's motion detection is pretty bad. It's certainly still playable but it's not as polished as it could be. On the plus side, if you prefer not to deal with somewhat clumsy motion detection, there's also the hilarious Mr Satan mode, where rather than fighting in matches yourself, you instead bet on the outcome of the Z Fighter's matches, while also rigging them in your favour by throwing items like banana peels and potions into the arena. Of course, since you have no control over what the AI does, it's still very RNG heavy, but it's still a fun diversion and its presence is greatly appreciated. It needs to be mentioned that although this game is a Saturn exclusive, its content was somewhat repackaged as the PS1 game Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22, but virtually everything that made this game unique was lost in the port to PS1. The pre-battle voice clips and moveset listings are gone, Mr Satan mode is gone, the great-looking backgrounds are gone, most supers no longer trigger cutscene animations, and so on. The motion detection on the PS1 version is a lot better, so at least they improved that part, but I'd definitely prefer this version over the PS1 game.
DeleteMagical Drop is fun. It's pretty much the same as the Playstation version, so this rating should come as little surprise, but I'll go over the basics again here for newcomers. Magical Drop is a puzzle game where the goal is to match 3 marbles of the same colour vertically, which causes them to clear and also wipe out any adjacent marbles of the same colour. This then causes other marbles to fall, potentially creating combos, and you can continue making matches while a combo clears to extend the combo. It's a slightly weird combo system because everything has to be vertical to start, and sometimes my brain just breaks and I forget how to build combos, but it's a fast-paced and fun game. Compared to other puzzle games, I feel like this is one of the most accessible puzzle games out there, even small chains do a ton of damage and special pieces have tremendous comeback potential, which is appreciated because many puzzle games are extremely unforgiving to newcomers (compare Puyo Puyo, for example), so it's nice to have a game that you can play with friends and generally have a good time even if you're not perfectly matched against each other. Well-deserving of a spot in any puzzle fan's library.
DeleteWorldwide Soccer is a basic but decent Soccer game. Compared to many other Soccer games of the era, it's very simple, predominantly using a 3-button control scheme that would feel right at home in the previous generation, where one button passes, one button shoots, and one button does the cross, and that's about it. There's definitely not nearly as much nuance here as in games like ISS 64 and This is Football, and I do think that Soccer games significantly benefit from having more options when it comes to offense, but nevertheless this game still has a good offensive flow and there's a lot of small touches that I appreciate. Another area where the game is relatively simple is its approach to sound design. This game has no announcer whatsoever, but instead it features a surprisingly rockin' soundtrack which I instantly recognized as having the same composer as the Sonic Adventure games, and it helps inject a lot of energy into the experience. Another simple but highly appreciated option in the game is that you can change the camera angle, so if you prefer to have a vertical or horizontal view of the field, both options are supported, which I'm surprised how few games offer, and although the game only supports 2 players, you can choose to play on a team against the AI, which is cool. Overall, it's a decent early sports title for the system, it doesn't quite measure up to some of the titans of the genre, but it's a solid alternative if you prefer a more simplistic soccer experience.