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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bubble Symphony - GAGG - 88% (4)
Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon - GA - 75% (2)
Grand Slam - BB - 0% (2)
Monster Slider - BA - 25% (2)
Shockwave Assault - AAG - 67% (3)
Skull Fang - AB - 25% (2)
Not many ratings this time. Beyond a handful of the top names, it's hard for me to know which Saturn games are well-known since I'm relatively new to the system.
Games for this topic:
Irem Arcade Classics
Off-World Interceptor Extreme
Stellar Assault SS
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Vatlva
VR Golf '97
Vatlva looks like an interesting title. We also have a few games here we've already covered on PS1, but significant differences between ports are not uncommon in this gen.
Irem Arcade Classics - B
ReplyDeleteOff-World Interceptor Extreme - G
Stellar Assault SS - G
Street Fighter Alpha 2 - G
Vatlva - G
VR Golf '97 - A
I feel like Irem Arcade Classics has slightly better sound quality on Saturn compared to PS1, but it's still the same collection of low-tier NES games that it was before. It's probably somewhat telling that Irem as a company is generally known for shmups and not sports or racing games. Kung Fu is still kind of decent, but it's no really upgrade over the NES version, and the other two games are so mediocre that no one liked them even on NES.
Off-World Interceptor Extreme is actually a pretty decent upgrade to the PS1 version. For starters, the game runs better on Saturn than it did on PS1. The resolution is better (on PS1, the image is slightly letterboxed) and it also feels smoother to play. I don't know if this is because the game speed has been slightly adjusted or maybe it's that the PS1 has some frameskipping or something, but it feels a lot "cleaner" compared to the PS1 version, and I think the draw distance is also slightly better. The Saturn version also has upgraded sounds and some new visual effects, particularly obvious on 2-1. The myriad of upgrades does pay off, the improved controllability helps to give the game just a bit more depth, which helps it stay fun significantly longer compared to the PS1 version. It's still kind of mindless, but in kind of an entertaining way. Still not something I'd consider spectacular but it's probably been upgraded to low G range. Interesting to see how far this game came when looking at all 3 versions (the 3DO version runs at like 5FPS). A good example of why I always make sure to try every version of a game separately.
Stellar Assault SS is pretty cool. It's a space dogfighter, not unlike Colony Wars or the All-Range mode stages in Starfox 64. Though it's purely in Japanese, it's quite easy to understand thanks to a good (and simple) UI. The Red targets on the screen are things you have to destroy to win the mission, the yellow targets are hostile, but not essential to the mission, and the blue targets are your allies. Something that's pretty cool about the game is that a number of your enemies are big ships, satellites, and other large entities, and they have multiple destructable parts. Wearing down a big cruiser by progressively blowing off its engines feels cool and gives the space battles a neat sense of scale. The game is generally not too difficult, your ship has a nearly endless supply of missiles that it can fire en masse, and you're also quite durable, but it's an entertaining game nonetheless. It's also quite story heavy, and apparently a translation group is working on dubbing it, as there's a lot of ally chatter going on throughout missions, though it's not essential to enjoy the game. It'll be interesting to check it out when it's finished, though.
I mentioned this when we covered Alpha 2 on PS1, but I think Alpha 2 is actually the best game in the Alpha series. It's got pretty much everything you would typically associate with Alpha with the introduction of the custom combos, without all of the really broken stuff that's in Alpha 3. Like the PS1 version, this is a really solid port of the game that looks and runs great on Saturn. There's not too much to say about this other than that this is a classic game which is still played to this day.
DeleteVatlva is an interesting game. It's essentially a video game version of the TV Show Battlebots (though apparently it predates it), where you control a vehicle armed to the teeth with various weapons and have to destroy your opponents, in a top-down arena filled with various traps and obstacles. The vehicles do not steer super well, but this is a key part of the game, much of the strategy involves getting the opponent from the sides or back so you can lay into them with your weapons while they struggle to retaliate (though some of the bots can actually fight back decently well from this situation so you need to know what the enemy is capable of). Just like in the show, there's something viscerally satisfying about laying into someone's machine with a giant sawblade or a flamethrower, especially after you've depleted their barrier and pinned them down so they can't do anything about it while you melt their healthbar. Of course, it wouldn't be the Battlebots experience if you couldn't make your own vehicle, and thankfully this is available and is pretty well fleshed out. You can pick any of the existing vehicles to customize, altering its stats and giving it various weapons, subject to a certain cost limit, which is fun to play around with, though even if you stick to the default vehicles there's a good variety. Oh, and the game also supports 6-player multiplayer, which is pretty nuts. A pretty cool game overall, if you ever wanted a good game based on Battlebots check it out.
I wasn't sure if we had covered VR Golf '97 before, but after I finished playing it I went back and looked at the archives and my thoughts on the PS1 version were pretty much the exact same. As I mentioned on PS1, this is an early 3D Golf game. This is a big step up from the PGA Tour games and such that aren't properly 3D, but it's still nowhere near as good as later games will be. For example, the camera, while serviceable, isn't nearly as convenient as you'll see in later games. You can kinda get a landing point camera by cycling through the camera options, but it's awkward. Still, the camera is far from the game's biggest issue, which is the swing meter and general swing physics. It basically seems like the ball has a mind of its own, sometimes it just goes way off course even if you hit the swing meter pretty close to dead on, making approaching the green basically just feel like a crapshoot in most cases. This could be related to the wind, which annoyingly changes direction constantly as you're lining up your shot, but otherwise it just feels like there's a lot of RNG involved. Putting is tolerable, the green lines feature works well enough, though it's annoying that you have to toggle it on every time. Overall, not something I would really bother playing but it is a step up from many other golf games of the era.