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Last Topic's Ratings:
Capcom Generation 2 - BGGGGAG - 79% (7)
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos - AABAGA - 50% (6)
Funky Head Boxers - GAGG - 88% (4)
Need for Speed - AAA - 50% (3)
NFL 97 - BBB - 0% (3)
Night Striker S - GGGGG - 100% (5)
A pretty good topic overall, I'm always encouraged when obscure import games get a lot of votes, though if you'd told me that NFS was going to get the least votes I wouldn't have believed it.
Games for this topic:
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands
Fatal Fury 3
Japan Super Bass Classic '96
Krazy Ivan
Road Rash
Shanghai: Triple-Threat
I feel like it wasn't very long since we rated the PS1 version of Road Rash, but apparently it's been well over 2 years. A lot of the other games in this topic are multiplatform as well.
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands - A
ReplyDeleteFatal Fury 3 - B
Japan Super Bass Classic '96 - A
Krazy Ivan - B
Road Rash - A
Shanghai: Triple-Threat - G
As its name implies, Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands is a compilation title of those two games. There's also an enhanced version of Rainbow Islands that features slightly upgraded graphics but otherwise plays the same. Compared to some of the other compilations we've seen, there's no extra features here, but you can't complain about the quality level of the games here to any degree, Bobble Bobble is one of the best arcade games of all time and Rainbow Islands is also well above average. The two main downsides to this collection is that one generation later, Taito Legends on PS2 will contain these two games, plus 27 others, with significantly better presentation and extras, and that these games already received fantastic NES ports, so you may have played them already. In particular, I feel the NES version of Rainbow Islands is actually significantly better than the arcade version, as it features rebalanced difficulty, longer stages, and expanded power-ups. It's not a bad collection by any means, but not one I'd be rushing out to buy.
When it comes to SNK's other fighting games that aren't King of Fighters, my opinion is pretty much always "they're okay, but KOF is way better", and this is particularly the case for the Fatal Fury games. Fatal Fury plays a lot like the King of Fighters games, with many of the same characters, as well as a host of wacky oddballs that everyone loves (when will Duck King finally be in KOF?) but with one major unique mechanic, which is that fighters can dip to the side to avoid attacks and launch a side attack. Unfortunately, just like in most 3D fighters that feature a similar sidestep mechanic, this simply isn't fun and just interrupts the pacing of matches. Even if you like sidestepping, a huge issue with Fatal Fury is that the sidestep attacks aren't cancellable into anything, making them vastly less rewarding or interesting compared to normal footsies. Fatal Fury 3 leans even heavier into this mechanic than previous games, now featuring a third plane, but this makes things even worse as attacks from side planes now frequently knock opponents into the other side plane, making sure that almost none of the game takes place on the standard plane and thus that there are almost no opportunities to perform combos or use special moves. It's a good example of how unique isn't always better as the franchise becomes drastically better after this mechanic is finally removed, though Saturn doesn't have either of those games. This is also a super barebones port with a lot of load time and no modes added to the console version (there's not even a training mode). If you're a fan of the Fatal Fury games, the next few games in the series are better, having more characters and being better home console ports, and if you're not, you can play the King of Fighters games instead, which are still a lot better than this.
Japan Super Bass Classic '96 gets some things right, but also has a few issues. For starters, the fishing gameplay is pretty solid. This game makes a couple nice innovations that I like, most notably, the game informs you of areas where there's lots of fish to catch. When driving the boat, there will be audio cues and icons for good fishing spots, and when you pick a place to cast your line, there's a radar showing nearby fish, so you can get an idea of roughly how far to cast, and know immediately when your fishing spot dries up. This does a pretty good job of speeding up the process of finding fish, and generally I feel like this game does pretty well at not having too much downtime between catches. In terms of hooking and fighting the fish, that works pretty well too. Fish fighting is not too complex, it's basically a fairly standard line-tension system, where you want to reel when the fish isn't doing much and give it slack when it's fighting back, but obviously River King has long shown that this system can work and it works decently here as well. I do notice that some fish put up almost no fight at all, but I have had decent battles against stronger fish where they come very close to wearing out the line. The core gameplay actually comes pretty close to G, but it suffers from one of the major problems that many fishing games suffer from, which is that this is another one of those fighting games where only Bass matter, and there's no way to identify the type of fish before you catch it. I've always said that this is a very unfun mechanic, if only Bass matter, only Bass should be in the game. Thankfully, the fact that you can hook and catch fish so fast keeps this from being game-ruining, but it's still a bad mechanic in every game it appears in. It also suffers from a fairly slow gameplay loop where tournaments take a long time to complete and can feel repetitive, and there's also a lot of load time in the game. Overall, it's not terrible, but I feel like the River King series continues to be untouchable this gen.
DeleteThe Saturn version of Krazy Ivan is absolute garbage. It's a mech shooter, similar to Gungage and Mobile Suit Gundam, but the Saturn version is one of the worst ports to the console. It runs extremely slow on Saturn and has almost no draw distance whatsoever, making it nearly impossible to play. On PS1, this is actually a somewhat decent game, having probably double the draw distance and framerate, but the Saturn port loses anything about the game that might have been enjoyable. This is probably one of the most drastic variations I've seen between a title on the two consoles (compare Road Rash, which is very similar between the two) and there is absolutely a clear winner here, avoid this version.
It's hard to know what to do with Road Rash. Many aspects of the game are fun, but there are also aspects of it that are flawed and it's easy to see how it could have been improved. Looking back on my review of the PS1 version, I kind of feel like it was too harsh, but at the same time, I also don't disagree with any of what I said about it. Generally speaking, the game's biggest problem is that it gets repetitive. Races are long and not tremendously varied or memorable, and there's also not a lot of nuance to the game either. Despite this, the core gameplay is fun and it has a cool sense of style to it as well. Compared to the PS1 version, the Saturn version seems to look a little better, in particular the PS1 version is kind of too sharp graphically, but the PS1 version also features a slightly more stable framerate. In general though they're very comparable. I do think the Saturn version benefits from the fact that it's generally a bit weaker for racing games compared to PS1, so it faces lesser competition in that department, though as I noted when we covered the PS1 version, Road Rash 64 is drastically better in pretty much every way. I really wish they had made even a few small improvements to this game, such as playing the pretty sweet licensed soundtrack during races, because I feel it's super close to G, I'm just not quite sure it gets there.
DeleteI never really know what to say about a game like Shanghai. Like with Picross games, it's sort of obvious that the underlying concept is fun, its enduring popularity is well-established by now. As such, it feels like I can really only perform a comparison between this game and similar titles in terms of features, in which this title does fairly well. The main feature of Shanghai: Triple Threat is its arcade mode, which tasks you with solving many different board layouts under a time limit. The game uses an interesting time bar which drains fairly quickly but refills a little when you make a match, which helps the game feel intense since it makes you want to make quick matches, but of course this can also cause you to make mistakes. Something I like is that if you lose a game, you can continue and keep the same piece layout, so if you remember which tile screwed you over you can remember to save a matching tile next time. There's not a ton more to say about it beyond this other than that the music is pretty decent and matches the pace of the game well. Even though this is easily the most simplistic game in the set, it's also the one I spent by far the longest playing, and probably the only one I'd go back to.