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Last Topic's Ratings:
DecAthlete - GGAGAA - 75% (6)
Fighter's History Dynamite - AAB - 33% (3)
Motteke Tamago with Ganbare Kamonohasi - AA - 50% (2)
Pro Pinball: The Web - AGA - 67% (3)
Ronde - GG - 100% (2)
Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 - AGGG - 88% (4)
I'm pretty sure we're going to be blacklisted from the SMT fandom for rating Ronde at 100%. It'll be really interesting when Soul Hackers comes up.
Games for this topic:
All-Star Baseball 97 Featuring Frank Thomas
Jungle Park: Saturn Island
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns
Sega Ages: Galaxy Force 2
Shellshock
Virtua Fighter 2
We've got a pretty big name among Saturn games this week, Jungle Park. From what little I've been able to gleam it seems like maybe this version is more playable than the PS1 version, but there's almost no information about either version online. Oh, and Virtua Fighter 2 is here too.
All-Star Baseball 97 Featuring Frank Thomas - A
ReplyDeleteJungle Park: Saturn Island - B
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns - G
Sega Ages: Galaxy Force 2 - A
Shellshock - G
Virtua Fighter 2 - A
I have pretty much the same thoughts on All-Star Baseball 97 on Saturn as I did on PS1. It is almost exactly the same game as Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball, which was a decent early title, but as time went on other Baseball games stepped up their game a lot and this one didn't. I feel that a particular weakness of this game is its pitching control, which I feel has actually gotten worse compared to Big Hurt Baseball, you can no longer throw a proper slider, it's now kind of a backwards curve that just feels wrong. The game is otherwise mostly okay, but it doesn't feel as tight to play as some other games, something like Greatest Nine is clearly better than it. It's not a bad game or anything but there are a lot of classic-style baseball games so you have to be pretty much perfect in order to stand out.
I had been lead to believe that the Saturn version of Jungle Park was a different game, but it's not, it's the same complete disaster that it was on PS1. Actually, this is unfair, because the Saturn version is actually WORSE than the PS1 version, it's the same nonsensical garbage game, but with tons of added load time. I think the animation in this version is probably a little smoother compared to PS1, but it's still atrocious to play and the added loading after every action makes it even more painful. This actually might be the worst game of all time.
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns is also pretty much the same as the PS1 version. I applaud the choice to make the graphics super zoomed out, this type of game does not need a lot of graphical detail and it allows for very large and complex maps. At a time when many games were making the characters larger and larger, often to their detriment, it's refreshing to see this kind of gameplay-first approach. That's not to say the game's presentation is bad, I actually kind of like the scenery and ambiance of this one. It's just a solid game all around. My only beef is that it's another puzzle game with a lives system, but at least it's pretty generous with them.
Galaxy Force 2 is a hard one to rate. It's a depth shmup that plays a lot like SNES Starfox, except running at 60fps. By far the most impressive thing about this game is that it came out in 1988. The space battles aren't super impressive, but the inside sections would have been a technical marvel for their time. The problem is that this port came out in 1998, by which time many other games had caught up. While it's nice to finally see a proper version of this game on home consoles (Master System and Genesis both have ports, but are not accurate at all to the original game), it feels like a little too late. One of the biggest issues is that the gameplay of the game isn't that fantastic, the main gimmick is that you have an energy meter that constantly counts down, and when it runs out, you die. In order to stave off death, you have to shoot enemies for energy bonuses, which grant bonus energy at the end of each stage (energy is also lost if you get hit). The problem is, if you go into a stage with inadequate energy, you're just doomed, there's no way to refill energy mid-stage, which is really lame. The shooting action is also extremely basic, you just spend most of your time mashing missiles, which automatically lock on to everything around you, about the most involved the game ever gets is when you have to make turns in the indoor areas. The closest comparison to this game is probably Night Striker S, which just blows it away in every regard, it has way more levels, it has much cooler boss fights, it looks and plays way better, etc. It also has to compete against the likes of Panzer Dragoon and Starfox 64, which are both much more nuanced games that also look a lot better. It doesn't help that this is also another super barebones port with no real enhancements, the only extra is a prerecorded playthrough that you can watch. Even if they weren't going to give any kind of graphical facelift (which it would later receive on PS2) and option to play the game in a more console style with a standard healthbar instead of the energy meter would have been nice. Overall, I think this is just another title that illustrates Sega's overreliance on barebones arcade ports this gen, they simply didn't figure out how to optimize games for console until it was too late.
DeleteShellshock is pretty cool. It's a tank game, not unlike Super Battletank or what not, but it's fully 3D and plays much faster than most older tank games, which helps enormously. Something that gives the game a good level of nuance is that you can control the tank and the turret independently. Obviously, tanks cannot strafe while the cannon is pointing forwards, so if you want to strafe an opponent you have to swing the turret to the side, thereby turning your forward movement into lateral movement. There's no question that keeping track of which way your treads are going while you try to aim at some guy with the turret is a little bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach, but it's satisfying when done well. You'll have to get good at it, too, as you can't take too many hits and missions have a lot of enemies. Thankfully, the game's radar is pretty good and between the radar and the compass getting lost should never be a major threat. Something else I appreciate is that the game also has a good sense of style. It starts right from the menus, which take place inside the barracks. You can wander around the barracks and talk to people, as well as doing things like changing the options at the tank, saving the game at the lockers, and buying upgrades for the tank at the armory, which feels a lot cooler than just doing this from a menu. The voice acting and music are pretty solid too, the game has a nice jazzy hip-hop soundtrack that goes well with the action, and all of the briefings are fully voiced. Speaking of tank upgrades, you can use money earned on missions to improve the tank, and you can find hidden pickups on stages as well by blowing things up, which gives it a decent sense of progression, coupled with pretty decent variety to the missions it helps keep it from getting repetitive. Compared to the PS1 version, the two versions of the game seem to be almost identical. PS1 has a new powerslide move that you can do, but it doesn't seem especially useful (I would imagine it's intended to allow you to play without controlling the turret too much, but it's not nearly as effective as controlling the turret manually), so you can easily pick up the game for either platform.
DeleteVirtua Fighter 2 is a lot like Virtua Fighter 1, but some substantial improvements have been made. By far the biggest one is that the game now runs at 60fps. This is an absolutely massive improvement over the choppy original, and allows the game's reaction-based gameplay to actually work on a basic level. The game looks drastically better than the original as well, which sort of makes you wonder why they even bothered releasing the original on Saturn when you consider how early the sequel came out. Gameplay-wise, it's still similar to VF1 in most ways. This is still an extremely simple game where most characters have extremely limited movesets and creativity in terms of offense is virtually nonexistent. The game mostly revolves around 2-3 hit strings and downed attacks, and damage is extremely high, with a single poke often doing about a quarter of the opponent's healthbar. Throws also continue to be ridiculous, coming out near instantly and doing a ton of damage, but at least they're more reliable to perform now, unlike in the first game where they were super finnicky. Jumps are still uselessly floaty, as in the first game, so you certainly won't be making any significant use of jumps as part of your offense. I guess you could view this as a very fundamentals-heavy game, as most of the game involves footsies and hit confirms (the last hit of combo strings is usually unsafe), but I feel that the game is so simple and limited that I don't find it stays interesting for more than a few matches. In terms of characters and options, it's still a bit lacking here, there's only 2 more characters than VF1 (in particular, the bonus character from VF2.1 is not present in this port) and still no training mode or any kind of artwork for the loading screens. It kind of baffles me that this game has near universal acclaim and many people consider this to be one of the best fighters of the era when I would say that basically every Capcom and SNK fighter is significantly superior to this one (as well as good one-offs like Dark Legend or Fighter's Destiny), though it could be due to how simple it is to play, as long as you can do Punch Kick up Punch you can do all right, so people who can't even do a basic fireball motion might get a lot more out of it than something like Alpha 2 or Darkstalkers. It's a big step above the original, but it certainly wouldn't be high on my list of fighters to play on Saturn.
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