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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Battle Stations - BBB - 0% (3)
Gex - BAGABG - 50% {6}
Gunbird - AG - 75% (2)
Himekuri: Girls in Motion Puzzle Vol 1 - AG - 75% (2)
NBA Action 98 - BAAG - 50% {4}
Sega Ages: Memorial Collection Vol 1 - BB - 0% (2)
As noted in the PS1 topic, this was a very hotly contested one. Gex is one of the only games to get over 5 votes that got the squiggle bracket.
Games for this topic:
Black Fire
Congo the Movie: The Lost City of Zinj
Ninja Jajamaru-kun: Onigiri Ninpouchou Gold
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Virtual Hydlide
Zap Snowboarding Trix
I've been wanting to play the Saturn version of Ninja Jajamaru-Kun ever since we covered the PS1 version, because it apparently has a lot of additions. I'm also kind of morbidly curious about Virtual Hydlide.
Black Fire - B
ReplyDeleteCongo the Movie: The Lost City of Zinj - G
Ninja Jajamaru-kun: Onigiri Ninpouchou Gold - A
Real Bout Fatal Fury - G
Virtual Hydlide - B
Zap Snowboarding Trix - B
Black Fire is a mess. For starters, its controls are really bad. When I first started playing, I had to dig through the options and the tutorial to even figure out how to move. It turns out it's just up on the dpad, but since the movement control is so delayed I never thought it was doing anything. There's similar problems with the vertical control, which doesn't let you fly very high. On the first mission, you have to fly over a cliff, but you can't fly high enough to get over it, you sort of have to get very close to the side of the cliff and inch your way up it, which feels incredibly off. When it comes to combat, locking on and firing missiles is simple enough, but having super delayed movement control makes it almost impossible to evade incoming fire, which is bad because there's thousands of enemies in this game. That being said, the combat is the best part of the game, attempting to explore stages to find mission objectives is terrible due to the map looking incredibly generic and the game not having any kind of radar or map to guide you to your target. At first I was wondering whether or not this game could be given any kind of allowance due to its age, but the first Ace Combat is so much better than this and it's not much older that there's really no reason to put up with this one.
I'm clearly in the minority here, but I think Congo the Movie is actually pretty good. It's a first person shooter set in the Congo jungle where you're the lone survivor of a plane crash. The game's intro sets a pretty grim tone, with the main character being wounded, having almost no supplies, and being hunted down by mysterious enemies, and the game does a pretty great job of capturing this during gameplay. One of the game's most interesting mechanics is that it's set in a jungle, where you're only able to walk along the paths, but the enemies can move through the foliage, allowing them to ambush you from out of sight and then escape unseen. You do have a radar, but cleverly it's not THAT great, the enemies are a bit hard to make out, so do you really have time to be staring at the radar when they could be coming at you right now? It does a good job of making me paranoid, which is probably the intention. Luckily, the game's controls are up to the job, aiming and movement are quick and responsive and you even have a quick turn move, so even though the enemies have a big advantage it still doesn't feel unfair, and health and ammo are also fairly abundant. Each level also has a second objective to find hidden diamonds, and if you get them all on a level you can get an upgrade that lets you carry more ammo for your guns, which you really want, but if you get to the end of the level and you missed a diamond, are you really stupid enough to go back for it? Some of the enemies respawn, and your health and ammo doesn't. It's a fun risk / reward mechanic that works well with the tense feeling of the gameplay. Overall, it just feels really claustrophobic and hostile in a way that few other games do and I think it's an interesting experience to play. The only real issue is that the jungle stages are only half the game, after you get far enough you enter indoor levels, which don't feel as scary since enemies can't come at you through walls. There are traps and other nasties here but it starts to feel more traditional. I guess for the sake of the game's plot it was sort of unavoidable and maybe it's not bad to have the variety, but the jungle stages are clearly the highlight of the experience.
The Saturn version of Ninja Jajamaru-Kun is drastically different from the Playstation version, but I'm not sure the changes are for the better. When we covered the Playstation version, I noted it was a decent little game but its level design felt formulaic and it could get repetitive, and this has definitely been addressed to some degree, as the Saturn version features significantly more level variety than the Playstation version. While some of the stages are the same, there are also some new stages that are significantly more open, and the stage progression has been altered to fit into a bit more of a narrative, complete with a map screen before each stage showing Jajamaru's progress towards rescuing the princess. The issue is that, strangely, this feels like it disrupts the game's pacing to some degree. The PS1 version has a very arcadey feel, where you do a couple themed stages and then a boss, which fits well with the game's brisk pacing. On Saturn, where the game is trying to take more of a story approach, the extremely short levels feel like they lack impact, and the interludes where you play the original famicom game feel completely out of place. The boss battles are still terrible, too, it's a shame they didn't do anything to improve them as they're easily the worst part of the game. Overall, it's certainly interesting that the two versions are so different, but I think the Playstation version might be the better one.
DeleteReal Bout Fatal Fury is a pretty big improvement over Fatal Fury 3. For starters, when it comes to Fatal Fury, the elephant in the room is always the Plane Switch mechanic, which is generally a terrible mechanic that makes the games a lot worse than they would be otherwise. While it is still present in RBFF, compared to Fatal Fury 3, it's been drastically toned down. The length of time it takes a character to sideswitch has been at least doubled, meaning that if you attempt to spam it in neutral you'll easily get hit for attempting it, which usually knocks you back into the center lane with a hard knockdown, allowing the opponent to get a free safejump. It's still not totally useless, you can still use it to avoid fireballs and certain very highly telegraphed actions, but it now feels like a situational mechanic rather than dominating the game the way it used to. Combos work better too, with characters having more target combos and more chaining capacity, making it feel a lot more fun to play. Two new mechanics have also been added, ring outs and a super meter, and they help to add a bit more nuance to the game. Compared to the PS1 version, this version is drastically better, PS1 is clearly missing a ton of animation frames, causing it to feel much more choppy on that platform, while the Saturn version is buttery smooth. Although I still think Real Bout Fatal Fury Special Dominated Mind is the best Fatal Fury game, this is probably the second best one (in particular, I like it better than Saturn RBFFS, but we'll discuss that another time).
Virtual Hydlide has a few interesting mechanics, but is bogged down by tons of problems. One of the most interesting things about the game is that its game world is randomized, when you start the game it can create a random world for you and it even gives you a seed value so that others can play the same world. Considering about the only way to enjoy the game is to speedrun it, this feels oddly prescient for a game that otherwise has a ton of flaws. Speaking of, most of the game's flaws also become evident immediately upon starting the game. For starters, the game's performance is atrocious. At best, the game runs at maybe 10FPS, and it doesn't get any better even in small rooms. I have no idea why the game runs as badly as it does give how simple its world design and graphics are, perhaps they intentionally limited the framerate to hide how few animation frames the game has. Either way, it looks terrible and plays just as bad. Combat in the game is absurdly basic, you just get close to things and swing over and over until one of you dies, even the simplistic combat of King's Field is a huge step up from this, though in general, the secret is just not to fight anything. This game does not having a standard levelling system, you only level at key points in the game, so fighting enemies is completely pointless. Sure, they do give you points, and points are technically money, but enemies give so few points that killing them is completely pointless, for example a slime gives 10 points, and a basic dagger (the worst weapon in the game) costs 50000, so obviously no amount of enemies is ever going to be worth enough to buy anything. You get a more substantial payout for completing quests, though you can just find most of the gear you'll need anyway. Enemies are also slow and you run super fast so you can easily avoid the vast majority of enemies in the game, save for the handful of bosses you're required to fight. Exploration is also very limited, though given how bad the world looks this is fine. You can press a button to call up a map that shows you exactly where to go, which is handy as the locations of the dungeons is otherwise randomized, though this tends to reduce the game to just "run to dungeon, grab items, run to next dungeon". I guess it does keep the game's pacing appreciably brisk and gives it some speedrunning potential, but overall the game just doesn't feel fun. If they had a better engine (or had even just stuck to 2D graphics) and included a regular levelling system where enemies gave sensible money there might be some play value here.
DeleteZap Snowboarding Trix is basically Saturn's answer to Cool Boarders 1, except that it's maybe even worse. It's an extremely barebones Snowboarding game, which doesn't even include "Trix", as it's a purely racing-focused game. The controls suck and it only has 3 courses, none of which are interesting. About the only thing you can say for it (like Cool Boarders 1) is that the music is decent, but it's certainly not worth playing the game for. I guess I can now see why people were blown away by 1080 Avalanche considering how awful most of the Snowboarding games that came before it were.
Virtual Hydlide has a few interesting mechanics, but is bogged down by tons of problems. One of the most interesting things about the game is that its game world is randomized, when you start the game it can create a random world for you and it even gives you a seed value so that others can play the same world. Considering about the only way to enjoy the game is to speedrun it, this feels oddly prescient for a game that otherwise has a ton of flaws. Speaking of, most of the game's flaws also become evident immediately upon starting the game. For starters, the game's performance is atrocious. At best, the game runs at maybe 10FPS, and it doesn't get any better even in small rooms. I have no idea why the game runs as badly as it does give how simple its world design and graphics are, perhaps they intentionally limited the framerate to hide how few animation frames the game has. Either way, it looks terrible and plays just as bad. Combat in the game is absurdly basic, you just get close to things and swing over and over until one of you dies, even the simplistic combat of King's Field is a huge step up from this, though in general, the secret is just not to fight anything. This game does not having a standard levelling system, you only level at key points in the game, so fighting enemies is completely pointless. Sure, they do give you points, and points are technically money, but enemies give so few points that killing them is completely pointless, for example a slime gives 10 points, and a basic dagger (the worst weapon in the game) costs 50000, so obviously no amount of enemies is ever going to be worth enough to buy anything. You get a more substantial payout for completing quests, though you can just find most of the gear you'll need anyway. Enemies are also slow and you run super fast so you can easily avoid the vast majority of enemies in the game, save for the handful of bosses you're required to fight. Exploration is also very limited, though given how bad the world looks this is fine. You can press a button to call up a map that shows you exactly where to go, which is handy as the locations of the dungeons is otherwise randomized, though this tends to reduce the game to just "run to dungeon, grab items, run to next dungeon". I guess it does keep the game's pacing appreciably brisk and gives it some speedrunning potential, but overall the game just doesn't feel fun. If they had a better engine (or had even just stuck to 2D graphics) and included a regular levelling system where enemies gave sensible money there might be some play value here.
DeleteZap Snowboarding Trix is basically Saturn's answer to Cool Boarders 1, except that it's maybe even worse. It's an extremely barebones Snowboarding game, which doesn't even include "Trix", as it's a purely racing-focused game. The controls suck and it only has 3 courses, none of which are interesting. About the only thing you can say for it (like Cool Boarders 1) is that the music is decent, but it's certainly not worth playing the game for. I guess I can now see why people were blown away by 1080 Avalanche considering how awful most of the Snowboarding games that came before it were.