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Last Topic's Ratings:
Breakthru - BBAB - 13% (4)
Contra: Legacy of War - BBAB - 13% (4)
Konami Antiques: MSX Collection Ultra Pack - GGG - 100% (3)
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue - GGGGGG - 100% (3)
Soukyuu Gurentai - GGGGG - 100% (3) (1 SR)
Winning Post - GBB - 33% (3)
I was definitely a bit surprised at the reception to Soukyuu Gurentai, the Japanese games sometimes don't get a lot of votes. I guess a lot of it is because shmups are very light on text, but I wish more people would try some of the other imports sometimes.
Games for this topic:
Discworld 2
FEDA Remake: Emblem of Justice
Hansha de Spark
NBA Jam Extreme
Robotica
Sega Ages: I Love Mickey Mouse
This looks like a pretty cool set of games. I remember FEDA seemed pretty decent when we covered it on SNES.
Discworld 2 - B
ReplyDeleteFEDA Remake: Emblem of Justice - G
Hansha de Spark - G (SR)
NBA Jam Extreme - B
Robotica - A
Sega Ages: I Love Mickey Mouse - A
When we covered Discworld 2 on PS1, I noted that it was clearly a good game underneath, but the port was mired with technical issues, which made the Saturn version a tantalizing prospect, but unfortunately the Saturn port is even worse. Not only does it have just as much stuttering if not more compared to the PS1 version, it also has very questionable audio balancing, where scenes alternate between being too quiet and too loud seemingly at random. I think it does maybe load just a touch faster than the PS1 version, but the audio issues ruin much of the game's humour and make this version almost impossible to recommend.
I'm not sure what it is with Saturn and getting surprisingly solid ports of SNES titles (as we saw with Chaos Seed), but we've got another one here with FEDA. Actually, this one is more of a full-on remake than a port, as this game has seen a ton of substantial enhancements since the SNES game. As on SNES, this is a strategy RPG that bares quite a bit of resemblance to Shining Force, albeit with a bit of a darker tone. The first thing I have to comment on is the presentation. This was already quite a nice-looking game on SNES, but it's seen a substantial improvement here. First, many of the field scenes in the game have been replaced by full cutscenes with voice acting. These vary somewhat in quality, the introduction is fantastic (it certainly sells the barabarism of the imperial army much better than on SNES), but some later scenes mostly just consist of stills with some lip-sync, but either way they still look pretty solid and contribute well to the game's sense of style. I also like the level of characterization, the characters generally have a fair bit of personality and I like that you can visit the camp at any time to talk to them and hear their opinion about what's going on in the story. The character designs themselves are also interesting, as many of the characters are beastmen, but they're definitely much more on the badass side compared to the cutesy side. In terms of the gameplay, it's somewhat more basic. The general gist of the combat system isn't really anything new, the most notable thing is probably that characters have special abilities that use MP, but other than that this is a pretty standard SRPG battle system. What is a bit unique is the progression, on most missions you have a certain objective to complete, but alternatively you could just kill everyone instead. However, your choice here actually matters, as the game has an alignment system which is affected by how many people you kill. Different characters will only join depending on your current alignment and may actually leave if you stray too far (though this is more generous on Saturn), so you'll have to pay some attention to it. I can see how some people might find this to be annoying, though it's not generally too hard to manage, it helps that the game shows the word "MISSION" in big red letters whenever the characters tell you how to beat a certain map so there's no way you can miss it. There are definitely some flaws, in particular it's not an especially hard game and battles can drag on a bit sometimes, but it's still a pretty cool game and I feel like this likely would have been popular if it was localized.
We've seen quite a few Bomberman clones over the years, and so far you could probably sum up all of them by saying "you might as well just play Bomberman instead" as none of them are anywhere near as fun as the original. I actually thought the game we have today, Hansha de Spark, was one we had played already (I was mixing it up with Taiketsu Rumi-Zu), but it quickly became apparent that this was not something we had played before and that it's also the first Bomberman clone that's actually really good. The gameplay in Hansha de Spark, as its name implies, revolves around sparks. Each character can shoot out a little sparkle of energy directly in front of them, though on its own it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't break blocks (well, it CAN, but it takes 5 hits, which is totally impractical unless you're trapped) and you can't kill anyone with it, it just pushes them back a tiny bit. To actually attack, you have to bounce your shot off one of the many angled mirrors that are around the stage, which will reflect it in a different direction and also power it up. After being bounced once, it can now defeat enemies and break blocks, though it can keep bouncing over and over, getting bigger each time, until it actually becomes big enough to even hit people on adjacent blocks. This is not too exciting on its own, but what really sells the game is that you can rotate the mirrors, which adds all kinds of neat strategy to the game. For example, if you're standing to the left of a mirror oriented vertically, you're fairly safe from attacks coming from the right, as it will deflect any incoming shots back the other way (though this also prevents you from attacking in that direction). However, if you move away from that mirror, someone might come along and rotate it 90 degrees, so shots now pass right through it, causing you to get hit. You can get powerups that allow you to shoot multiple sparks at a time or even place a mirror wherever you want, which can cause all sorts of chaos, but when you nail someone with a clever mirror setup you feel like a genius. There's also different characters who have slightly different abilities, similar to Bomberman Jetters, and this even carries over into the one-player mode, which helps add more replay value to it. Speaking of, the one-player mode is quite well fleshed out, there's both a fairly standard "stage clear" mode where you have to defeat all the enemies, similar to Bomberman, as well as a more puzzle-oriented mode where you have to figure out how to get to the goal in each stage. I like that both of these modes also lack the concept of lives (if you fail a stage you can just continue infinitely), though the fact that it has to load on a continue is a little annoying. Overall though, this is an extremely fun and chaotic multiplayer game that acts as a really solid alternative to Bomberman if you want something different, and a good use for your Saturn multitap if you have one.
DeleteWe haven't covered the PS1 version of NBA Jam Extreme yet, but this is another butchered Saturn port where the Saturn version of the game has like half the framerate of the PS1 version, though in this case I think it's actually a quarter of the framerate. On PS1, this game runs at at least 30fps (it might even be 60), but on Saturn it's instead more like 10fps, which makes the game completely unplayable. Following plays is almost impossible due to how choppy the action is and how fast the game moves, in particular turnovers and rebounding are pretty much impossible to deal with due to the low framerate, which is most of the game. I could talk about the core gameplay (it's basically the same as NBA Showtime but with the addition of the "Extreme Turbo" feature), but since you can't even really play the game at all here it's probably best to save that until we cover the PS1 version. It boggles my mind that a port like this was even released, you would think Sega would outright refuse to license games that run THIS poorly.
Robotica is a pretty interesting title. The game is essentially first person shooter version of Mystery Dungeon, you play as a mech that has to explore randomly generated floors to find the gate key and then the exit door to move on. Your mech is equipped with a bunch of weapons and gadgets, which either require ammunition or fuel to use. Ammunition is more straightforward, you have a pistol like weapon, a laser, and a rocket launcher, each of which has their own fuel supply, and you can also punch, though obviously this is riskier. You also have an energy meter, which can be used to heal, hover over traps, put up a shield, or use a huge laser that kills everything in the room, though all of these share the same energy bar so you have to choose judiciously which to use. Enemies also spawn randomly, and can appear even in rooms you previously cleared out, just like in Mystery Dungeon. It's a cool idea, and compared to something like Baroque, I feel like the core gameplay is a bit more engaging, but unfortunately the game's balancing is a bit off and that holds it back to some degree. The first thing you'll learn is that ammo is extremely abundant, but healing and fuel are extremely rare. This means the correct approach is always to just unload on enemies with your strongest weapons immediately, since you want them deleted as soon as possible before they can possibly damage you, as although you can take a decent number of hits, health pickups barely restore anything and energy is super rare. This also means that you'll pretty much never want to use energy for anything other than healing, as the resource is too valuable to waste. Another issue is that there's very little to find on the maps, besides the key. Enemies almost always just drop ammo, which is abundant, and there's rarely anything to pick up on the floor, certainly nothing of sufficient value that will make you want to explore. You also simply can't explore too much as there is an extremely tight time limit after which attack robots will spawn, and these can also degrade your weapons so you absolutely don't want to be around when they show up. As such, this means that pretty much every floor just involves running through as fast as possible to grab the key and get out, which kind of compromises the decision-making aspect of the mystery dungeon games that gives them much of their appeal. I think if there were more things to find on the floors, like perhaps upgrade, repair, or refueling stations, this would make you want to explore more, as it stands the computer is very helpful to find (it gives you the map, and in the second sector it turns the lights on) but it's not worth going out of your way for it. The game also has some technical issues, in particular its framerate is somewhat inconsistent, although not enough to really hurt the game, and the draw distance is very short, which is a bit more of a problem. It's still a decent title and it's fun for a bit, but it's definitely not quite as good as it could be, which is a shame because I do think the idea is really cool and it has a lot of potential.
DeleteSega Ages: I Love Mickey Mouse is a compilation of Castle of Illusion and Quackshot, and that's pretty much all you can say about it. Obviously, these are both excellent games, and the port quality is perfect, so you certainly can't fault it on those grounds, but it's a very barebones port besides this. There's no extras of any kind, but what's especially bizarre is the omission of World of Illusion. Compared to the Phantasy Star Collection and Sonic Jam, both of which have all of the games in their franchises, plus extras and some gameplay enhancements, this feels like a very low-effort collection, in fact, the Genesis already had this exact same collection in Europe, with Castle of Illusion and Quackshot on a single cart. These are undeniably still great games and you should definitely play them, but I wish this collection had gotten a little bit more love.