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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Blast Wind - GBAA - 50% {4}
Casper - ABA - 33% (3)
Golden Axe: The Duel - GGAGAB - 67% (6)
Olympic Soccer: Atlanta 1996 - BBA - 17% (3)
Sega Ages: Rouka ni Ichidant-R - AAA - 50% (3)
Suikoden - GAGGAG - 83% (6)
Well, despite my comments that there wasn't a ton of interest in a Saturn version of Suikoden, it still managed to pull down the highest rating and the most results. Too bad it came out so late, with an earlier release it probably would have been localized.
Games for this topic:
Assault Rigs
Atlantis: The Lost Tales
Batman Forever: The Arcade Game
Daitoride
Druid: Yami e no Tsuisekisha
Kyuukyoku Tiger 2 Plus
You might know Kyuukyoku Tiger as "Twin Cobra" in the US, though this version was only released in Japan. I'm also kind of interested to try out Druid.
Assault Rigs - A
ReplyDeleteAtlantis: The Lost Tales - A
Batman Forever: The Arcade Game - A
Daitoride - G
Druid: Yami e no Tsuisekisha - A
Kyuukyoku Tiger 2 Plus - B
Assault Rigs is an interesting game in some ways but it lacks polish. It's a tank game, but doesn't particularly play like one, your tank is extremely mobile and can also strafe, so it really plays more like a traditional shooter. The goal on each stage is to collect a certain number of gems and then reach the exit, while shooting various enemies that get in your way. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of Faceball 2000, being an early sort of shooter that takes place in a polygonal maze, though unlike Faceball it also implements verticality to the maps. Though the design of some of the maps are kind of cool, the game's physics engine really struggles with it. The tanks are somewhat overly floaty and flip over extremely easily (there's a button to flip yourself right-side up), and they also kind of snap to walls in a way that makes aiming at targets annoying sometimes. The problems are fairly forgivable at first, but as the maps get longer and more complex the issues get more troublesome, and the framerate also starts to have issues.
Atlantis: The Lost Tales is actually very different from the PS1 version. As before, this is a game that somewhat resembles Myst and other first person puzzle games. Its biggest innovation is that unlike Myst, you can look around the area in full 3D, using a fish-eye effect, which gives you a much better feel for the surroundings and helps significantly with immersion. Something that is found in most of these games (such as D, which we covered a while back) is that when you move from one scene to another, you see a short CGI scene of the character moving. The PS1 version of Atlantis does not have this, the screen simply fades for a second or two and loads the next area, but surprisingly these movement scenes are present in the Saturn version. It's not without a tradeoff, though, as the resolution during the standard scenes is significantly cut, probably by about half compared to the PS1 version. The transition between the movement scenes and the gameplay is also not particularly smooth, there's a noticeable pause when movement stops that slows the game down a fair bit, though it's not any slower than it is on PS1. Overall, I think this version of the game is probably marginally better, though if you want the best experience the PC version combines the best points of both versions and also runs more smoothly than they do, so you should probably play that one.
Batman Forever: The Arcade Game is kind of a janky game in a lot of ways, but I also sort of like it. The first thing to note about it is that it's very fast-paced. Most enemies die in 1-2 hits, especially when you have power-ups, and super moves can quickly wipe out entire rooms. This also applies to you, however. If an enemy gets a single hit on you, it's very common for you to be comboed to death immediately (you can only take a few hits at the best of times), so generally the key is to stay mobile and make sure you wipe out the enemies before they can lay a finger on you. In a certain sense I feel like this actually kind of makes sense given the license (Batman is a relatively normal guy after all) though I doubt this is really intentional. It's also a very simple game, being only a two-button game (jump and attack) with a third button occasionally used to activate power-ups, but given the game's aforementioned extremely quick pacing and high-intensity action this is fine. The speed of the game helps alleviate many common problems that sometimes plague the genre, like sure, you do fight the same enemies over and over, but when you can wipe a whole room of them in about 4 seconds it doesn't get repetitive nearly as quickly. Another interesting idea is that by performing certain tricks on a stage, you can select a free powerup for the next stage, which helps give a little bit more strategy to the chaos. It's still not a terribly well-polished game, but it's still kind of enjoyable in a certain sense.
DeleteDaitoride is pretty cool. At first glance, it looks like just another version of Mahjong Solitaire, but it's not quite the same game, even though it is heavily related to it. Daitoride features the same rules for choosing "free" pieces from the board, but the way the tiles are cleared is quite different. Instead of having to match 2 free pieces, you can instead take any free piece you want, which is added to your hand. Your hand can hold 7 tiles, and if you take an 8th, you lose the game, so the key is that you have to remove the tiles from your hand before this happens. This is done by arranging the tiles into 3-tile sets, which allows you to get rid of them. Many tiles can be part of multiple possible sets. For example, with any tile, you can clear it by simply collecting 3 identical tiles, but many tiles have numbers on them, and you can also clear them by collecting 3 successive numbers, for example 4-5-6 would also be a set. It might sound simple, but it gets complicated real fast, and most stages seem to have only a couple viable paths to complete them. Things get even more difficult when the special pieces start to appear, particularly the HELP piece, which sounds like it would be useful but actually makes things much harder. Help will instantly match a piece from your hand with the matching pieces from the board, even if they're not free, which sounds great. The problem is, the typically use the help piece as an excuse to make boards that are "impossible", and you have to determine which set blocks your progress and use the help piece to remove it, which is very tough. Thankfully, the game does allow you to continue as many times as you want, and it plays quite fast so redoing your earlier moves doesn't take very long. It's very challenging, but it's also quite an interesting game and I like its soundtrack, it's definitely a neat little time-killer.
Druid is another one of those strange Japan-only console ports of western PC games. It's an adventure-style game with some very simple RPG elements. Most of the game involves doing adventure-style stuff, talking to people, picking up, combining, and using items, but there's also some combat. Combat in the game somewhat resembles The Immortal on NES, it takes place in real time and you can press buttons to attack or dodge, though it's much more sensible than the Immortal. The basic gist of it is that B does a block, so you generally just wait for the opponent to attack, block on reaction, then smack them a few times with A or C before they recover and attack again. I'm not really clear what the difference between the A and C attacks is other than that sometimes one or the other doesn't work too well against a given enemy, so you should use the other one. You do gradually level up from defeating enemies but the RPG elements are very minor, and your health gradually recovers when not in combat. You can also cast spells, though this aspect of the game feels underused. The spells are cast by inputting elements in a certain order in a pendant you get early in the game. You can find the commands for the spells in various locations, but they're basically just damage or healing effects that you can choose a target for, and as far as I can tell you can only cast them out of battle, so they feel kind of inconsequential. In general, a lot of things in the game feel kind of lackluster, the plot and characters are also razor thin and the areas are quite small and basic. It's functional and it's not difficult to play using a guide, but I feel like it doesn't have a lot of appeal.
DeleteKyuukyoku Tiger 2 Plus, or "Twin Cobra 2" as it's known domestically, is a very basic shmup. It's a vertical shmup with 3 weapons and only one craft, similar to something like Raiden, and it feels about a generation out of date on Saturn. About the game's only real innovation is that sometimes the camera shifts during gameplay, generally to zoom in or out, but this is actually very detrimental to the game as it occurs during gameplay and drastically changes the amount of screen space available to the player. The game generally feels extremely claustrophobic when zoomed in and generally I think they easily could have ditched this mechanic and no one would have missed it. Movement in the game also generally feels sluggish and your weapon also feels like it does little damage even when powered up, making bombs about the only way to deal with tanky minibosses and stage bosses (luckily they are common). The Saturn version is a pretty standard arcade port, there's a mode available with added cutscenes, but the cutscenes are extremely basic, featuring only talking heads and no real animation, so this doesn't do much for the game other than slowing it down even more (load times are already pretty long). Overall, this definitely feels like one of the weakest shmups of the era.