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Last Topic's Ratings:
Angel Paradise Vol 1 - A - 50% (1)
Initial D: Koudou Saisoku Densetsu - GG - 100% (2)
Langrisser 4 - AA - 50% (2)
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Kouhen) - GA - 75% (2)
Terra Phantastica - GAA - 67% (3)
Tetris-S - BBB - 0% (3)
Not many ratings for this one, which surprises me considering Langrisser 4 is there and it has a translation on PS1. Maybe people were busy this week.
Games for this topic:
Airs Adventure
Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster
Ippatsu Gyakuten Gambling King no Michi
Metal Slug
Quake
Tsuukai Slot Shooting
Even with two other very short games in the title I still couldn't fit all of Frankenstein's title. Oh well, at least we get Metal Slug and Quake.
Airs Adventure - B
ReplyDeleteFrankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster - B
Ippatsu Gyakuten Gambling King no Michi - A
Metal Slug - G
Quake - A
Tsuukai Slot Shooting - A
Airs Adventure is an extremely simple RPG with virtually nothing going for it. This is almost certainly the most simplistic RPG made since the 8-bit era, with its complexity being on par with the original Dragon Quest. There's basically nothing to the game beyond grinding, buying better items, and proceeding to the next story destination (the game is also totally linear). About the only thing you can say for the game is it has a lot of story sequences, though the story is also super basic, and probably the best thing about the game is that these cutscenes are skippable, which is uncommon in this era. You can eventually get a second character and she can cast spells, but that's as much complexity as the game will ever get. Of course, simplicity isn't always terrible, but the game is also slow as molasses and it also looks and sounds pretty terrible as well. It's crazy that this came out in 96.
Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster is another Myst clone, and not a particularly good one. The game's sole appeal is that they got Tim Curry to portray Dr. Frankenstein, and although his acting is great, there's not enough of it to really make the game worth playing for him alone. Like Myst, much of the game involves wandering around and trying to solve puzzles throughout Frankenstein's castle, but this is greatly complicated by the fact that navigating the castle is a nightmare. Even in the singular room in which you begin the game, finding all of the various screens is quite a pain, as sometimes you click the edges of the screen to move, whereas other times you click the middle of the screen, and exactly where each option will take you is never clear. This gets even worse when you get into circular rooms like the one with the cannonballs, which I can only navigate by clicking almost completely randomly. Speaking of, many of the game's puzzles make no sense. You usually can't take items with you beyond the screen in which you pick them up, but occasionally you can, but only if you go in one particular direction. For example, after you use the cannonballs to knock down the moose head, you can interact with it to pull a rope, but if you try to take it off the screen you're told that you must leave it here. Well, unless you go in a very specific direction where the game does allow you to take it to the next screen, which is where it actually needs to be used. You can eventually find a bag that lets you carry items, though of course only the ones the game decides you should be able to carry, which is just as arbitrary. I think what really sinks this game is how unlikely it is that you'd make any progress without a guide. The ability to completely miss things because you simply never figured out how to navigate to a particular string combined with the illogical nature of certain puzzles makes this one of the most unreasonable games to play of its type.
Ippatsu Gyakuten Gambling King no Michi is a pretty interesting game. It's essentially a better version of Gekiretsu Pachinkazu, where it's a cross between a dating sim / life simulator and a gambling game. The big edge this game has is that it simply has more gambling games available, your options here are horse racing, bike racing, boat racing (kyoutei, which we've actually seen quite a few games for), slots, and pachinko. You're given a year to strike it rich and woo various women for your ultimate goal of proving yourself to be the gambling king. What I think is interesting about this game is that there's been an effort to put some degree of skill into the game, for example, when it comes to bike races, you can watch a TV broadcast before the race where they introduce the riders. A piece of advice your dad gives you at the start is that riders who are local to the area have probably trained on the course already and thus have an edge. You can also pay a tiny amount of money to a tipster for a hint, and he'll almost always get either the first or the second-place rider correct, allowing you to make some pretty reliable money with "win" or "place" bets. It did take me a while to figure out how the betting works, but it's not that hard once you get the hang of it, the mode where you can specify first and second is the fourth option the first tab, and the third tab is how much you want to bet (you can choose all of the numbers to bet the most). You can also work various part time jobs, which earns a little reliable money, but more importantly it can raise your statistics which are important for dating later. In any case, there's quite a lot here and I think it's a pretty good set up for a gambling game. It's still a bit slow though, watching the races takes a long time (I can't imagine doing this without speedups) and slots and pachinko are still pretty boring. I still don't think this is quite as fun as something like Vegas Stakes (honestly, the casino games are just a little more fun than the games on offer here) but this is still a solid effort and easily one of the best games of this type from this gen.
DeleteSaturn once again proves its 2D prowess with Metal Slug. As you'd probably expect, this is basically an arcade perfect version of the original, and notably, it lacks the annoying mid-stage loading of the PS1 version. Something I didn't talk about when we covered the PS1 version is that the difficulty in this instalment is actually pretty reasonable. Metal Slug has a well-earned reputation for being kind of insane, but it's not nearly as nuts here, probably because this was the first game and if they made it hard as hell people might not have given the series a chance. In any case, if you like the series and are looking for a place to start, this is definitely the right way to go. These versions of the game also include an extra mode called the combat school that give the game a bit more replay value, but there's no question that replay value will be this game's biggest issue. It's still a cool game though.
It's pretty incredible to see Quake running on Saturn, but there's no question that this version is a pretty significant downgrade from the others. As Saturn would obviously not be able to handle the PC version of the game with its custom engine, it is instead rebuilt in Powerslave's engine, and it actually works reasonably well, it still mostly feels like Quake and the level designs are mostly intact. It's just a really poor version of Quake, as both the framerate and resolution are quite bad. This has significant effect on gameplay, for example when dealing with hitscanners, it's very hard to see them at range (and they can start shooting you immediately), which often makes the game feel harder than it was probably intended to, they likely should have dropped the aggro range on a lot of these enemies. It's also almost impossible to see when picking up anything that tints the screen like the biosuit or quad damage. It is still kinda fun, the core game is very good after all, this is probably just not the way you really want to be playing it. If you want to play this on console, the N64 version runs way better, even if this version does have a couple extra levels the difference in quality is drastic. If you just want a shooter on Saturn, the other two games by Lobotomy Software (Powerslave and Duke 3D) are both superior, and both come with free Death Tank to boot while this one doesn't. It's too bad the PS1 port of this game was never released or dumped as it apparently ran much better.
DeleteTsuukai Slot Shooting is a really weird game, but once you figure out what's actually going on it's actually almost too simple. The basic gist of the game is that it's a falling block game where you control a character that moves about the field, somewhat similar to Wario's Woods. Your character can move in all directions and fire lasers, but you die if you get squished by the falling blocks. Your lasers can destroy the blocks, so obviously you can protect yourself this way, but this earns very few points, the real goal is to line up the slots in the top middle of the screen by shooting 3 blocks of the same colour. This causes breaker blocks to start falling, and when shot, they eliminate all blocks of the same colour on the field, gaining a ton of points. This then causes the blocks above them to fall, which can then make matches (you can't make matches normally, only after clearing a breaker), potentially earning a lot more points. The goal on each stage is to reach a predetermined point threshold, which is basically achieved by letting the field fill up a bit, shooting three of the same colour to get a breaker, then detonating the breaker with whatever you have a lot of on the field to cash it in for points. It works, but it's very simple and I was generally getting somewhat bored before I could finish the stages. It's playable, but it's a low A IMO.