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Last Topic's Ratings:
Capcom Generation 1 - AGGGGG - 92% (6)
Clockwork Knight - AAAGAAG - 64% (7)
Daytona USA - AGAAAAAAA - 56% (9)
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Butouden - GAAAG - 70% (5)
Magical Drop - AGGAGG - 83% (6)
Worldwide Soccer - AAA - 50% (3)
Pretty good turnout here, I was particularly pleased to see the large number of ratings for the import titles. Without giving too much away, there's going to be quite a lot of them in the Saturn list since only a small percentage of its total library was released in the US.
Games for this topic:
GunGriffon
Hyper Duel
King of Fighters 95
Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend
Race Drivin
Star Bowling, The
I'm kind of curious to see how King of Fighters will run on Saturn, it's a cool series but PS1 kind of struggles with it. Also, a couple of ports of Genesis games this time in Minnesota Fats and Race Drivin that I wasn't really expecting to see again (though this isn't the last we'll see of Race Drivin, there's also a PS1 version).
GunGriffon - A
ReplyDeleteHyper Duel - G (SR)
King of Fighters 95 - A
Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend - G
Race Drivin - B
Star Bowling, The - G
GunGriffon is basically a very simplified version of Mechwarrior. You pilot a mech, and have to destroy everything in sight. This is always a fairly fun concept and the game has its moments where it shines, but it also has a number of problems. The biggest issue is with the visuals. The game's draw distance is very short, so you will spend most of your time simply aiming at yellow boxes rather than actually being able to see what you're shooting at. This is further compounded by the fact that a number of missions have poor visibility, such as the nighttime and snow missions, which make it almost impossible to see what you're doing, not helped by the fact that there's a ton of visual clutter on the screen that you can't get rid of. Even when you can see what you're shooting at, your weapon arsenal is also fairly limited. You have your main gun, which you'll be using 95% of the time, a short range rocket that is very powerful but requires you to be absurdly close to use, a missile that doesn't home worth a darn and is thus useless against anything you'd want to use it on, and a machinegun that you'd only use for emergencies. None of the weapons are hitscan, so this makes hitting moving targets an absolute nightmare, especially helicopters. The controls are also at best tolerable, this game really needed either a second set of shoulder buttons or a second analog stick, as strafing completely locks you out of being able to aim, which leads to you simply face tanking shots and trying to kill things ASAP most of the time. Despite this, it's not all bad, it runs at a pretty decent framerate and the fact that you can jump and fly for a bit is cool, the difficulty balance is not bad, and there's something undeniably satisfying about being a walking death machine, but later games will do this concept much better.
Hyper Duel is a shmup made by Technosoft so obviously it rocks, review over. Okay, I guess I should probably go into a little more detail than that, but really, it barely feels necessary. Hyper Duel's most notable feature is that you control a transforming mecha that can transform between a plane mode and a mech mode. In the mech mode you're more powerful and can aim in more directions but are slower and easier to hit. If this sounds familiar, it's because Edge Of Skyhigh from the PS1 topic has the exact same mechanic (I didn't plan this, but it's an interesting comparison), and also like in that game, you also have access to a special power attack that you can perform, which does something different in each mode. This is where the similarities end, though, as this game is vastly better in pretty much every way. New to the Saturn port of this game (I can't believe the arcade version came out in 1993!) is the ability to hold down a button to strafe with the mech that would have been my biggest complaint about the arcade version, but with that issue resolved there's pretty much nothing not to like here. The controls are great, the game looks fantastic, it runs at a rock solid framerate, it gives you a warning if something is coming at you from the edge of the screen, there's 3 playable characters, and there's even co-op available. I think this game even outdoes Lightening Force, and we all know how good that game is. Definitely get this one. Easily one of the best shmups I've played from this era and we're only just getting started with Saturn's library.
When we rated the King of Fighters games on PS1, I noted that they were pretty accurate ports but had an annoying issue where the game would load every time a fighter was knocked out because the PS1 can't hold all 3 fighters in RAM at once. I was hopeful that this issue would not be present on Saturn since it has more RAM, but unfortunately it still does, though the load time is much shorter than on PS1. Beyond that, the game is still KOF95, it's a little weird in terms of mechanics compared to later games, but it's still a pretty solid game, especially for its time, with a ton of characters with diverse movesets to use. Still, on Saturn I'd probably wait for KOF 97, which is a much better game, but annoyingly they still didn't fix the loading issue even for that game. I guess actually, the better option is just to wait for Dreamcast or play the more modern PC versions of these games.
DeleteMinnesota Fats is another version of Side Pocket, which we've rated a few times before. I've always kind of liked it, but of course, it's also a pretty old game by this point, considering it originally appeared on NES. This version of the game has much more of a focus on actual pool rather than trick shots, though the trick shot mode is still present if that's what you're looking for. The biggest change in the Saturn version is that the game now has a storyline, complete with cutscenes with real actors. I've mentioned this before, but I kind of have a soft spot for these, and the cheesy storyline helps add a lot more character to what could otherwise be a fairly dry experience. The pool mechanics remain solid, of course, and there's a decent variety to the rulesets you can play, though there's some strangeness with the default 8-ball settings, sometimes it will accuse me of scratching on what seem to be completely legal shots according to any definition of the rules I've been able to find. Either way though this is an above-average pool game with some decent charm.
Race Drivin is a game we've encountered a number of times before. It's one of the earliest racing games to feature fully 3D graphics, and it was ported to a number of different systems. On SNES and Genesis, the game runs like absolute garbage, running at like 5fps and being effectively unplayable. On Saturn, it runs at 60fps, which is obviously a massive improvement and let's us see how the game was actually intended to play. Unfortunately, it still doesn't play very well. For starters, this is a ludicrously dated game. The arcade version came out in 1990 and time has not been kind to it, putting this up against Daytona USA or Ridge Racer just looks sad. The game's biggest technical issue is its controls, which are awful, the brake simply doesn't do nearly enough and there's no powerslide move of any kind, so most of the time you have little choice but to go off the track while cornering or bump walls and it just feels bad. There's also only 3 tracks, and the one feature that might have helped boost the game up a little, its track editor, is inexplicably not present in this version of the game. While it is kind of an interesting novelty to see a proper home console port of this game, it would have taken a lot more polishing up than this to turn it into a compelling product. Speaking of which, a slightly better version of this game exists on PS1, though it's still not great.
Star Bowling is actually a heck of a lot better than I expected. It's a strange cross between a dating sim and a bowling game, where you start by picking one of the girls to be your partner for the game, and then every handful of frames you have a dialogue sequence with her with some multiple choice questions. Thankfully, Google Translate did a pretty decent job of translating these so I was actually able to follow what was going on for the most part. The bowling itself is fairly typical, the three click system is maybe a bit more unforgiving than most, but the talk sequences help break up what can otherwise be a somewhat monotonous experience quite well. The game actually has a decent amount of charm to it, at the start of story mode you basically just end up dragged into a bowling night with a group of friends as they need another person to complete their 3 on 3 match. Somewhat hilariously, they're actually pretty bad (at least at first), they throw a lot of gutter balls and almost never pick up spares, which actually kind of sells their exaggerated reactions when they actually do throw a good shot. Initially, the game sticks to a fairly expected formula, where you and the girl of your choice just ask each other questions as you play, but after a couple games you instead wind up on a situation where you're on the opposite team from her, and can instead ask her friends questions to find out more about her, which is kind of an interesting twist. You're forced to weasel the gist out of her storyline from her compatriots (for the girl I chose, she's trying to learn how to bowl for an upcoming film role), and you have to answer this correctly the next time you talk to your bowling waifu or you'll have to load from the start of the match. After this point, things get fairly serious, with first a one on one against your girl and then a tournament that you participate in together, at which point there's much less chitter chatter and I kind of miss it, but by this time your partner has gotten significantly better than they were originally and it's kind of neat to see them gradually turn into a serious competitor over the course of the game. If this general setup sounds familiar, it's very similar to Wangan Trial, which we covered for PS1 somewhat recently, only with bowling instead of racing. The production values here aren't quite as strong as that game, but it's also not nearly as difficult either, so that's a plus. In any case, I was surprised at how fun the game is. There's a lot of funny answers you can give during the initial few matches, and I was impressed at how the questions that the girl asks you actually somewhat tie into her storyline. Overall, it's a unique concept and I appreciate games that think outside the box like this.
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