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Last Topic's Ratings:
Chase HQ Plus SCI - GGAG - 88% (4)
Mechwarrior 2 - AA - 50% (2)
Shippuu Mahou Daisakusen: Kingdom Grandprix - GG - 100% (2)
Super Casino Special - GG - 100% (2)
Waialae no Kiseki: Extra 36 Holes - BB - 0% (2)
X-Men vs Street Fighter - GGGGGG - 100% (6)
A very highly rated topic, but I was kind of surprised no SRs were given out. We're more than halfway through the library now, you should be starting to think about spending those things.
Games for this topic:
Asuka 120% Limited: Burning Fest Limited
Gunblaze S
Legend of Oasis, The
Saturn Bomberman
Space Jam
Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 SS
A pretty interesting set of games this time. Obviously Saturn Bomberman is popular, but I'm also interested to check out the Saturn versions of Asuka and Space Jam.
Asuka 120% Limited: Burning Fest Limited - A
ReplyDeleteGunblaze S - B
Legend of Oasis, The - A
Saturn Bomberman - G (SR)
Space Jam - G
Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 SS - G
I initially thought that Saturn only had the first of the Asuka games, but it turns out they actually have a completely unique game that isn't quite the same as any of the 3 games on PS1. Burning Fest Limited is actually kind of like a "special edition" of the first PS1 game, which plays somewhat similarly to it but has a number of changes. The biggest change is to the visuals, all of the characters have been completely redrawn with new, much higher resolution sprites that look great. These sprites also appear in the final PS1 game, though that game plays very differently from the ones before it, while this game generally plays mostly like the first game, though with some tuning changes. By far the biggest change to the Saturn version is to the 120% mechanic. As you might remember from PS1, the way meter works in Asuka 120 is that you can use your super once your meter gets to 100%, but if you charge it up to 120% you enter a state where you can use supers infinitely for a short time. Well, I say "short", because it's short on PS1, but in the Saturn version 120% mode lasts WAY longer. On PS1, it generally only lasts about 2-3 seconds (I think it lasts slightly longer if you're losing), which is typically enough time to do 2 or maybe 3 supers if you did it at the absolute first possible instant. On Saturn, its duration is more like 8-10 seconds, which is easily enough to spam at least 5 supers, sometimes as many as 7 depending on the situation. Considering that supers in this game do a ton of chip damage and are frequently plus on block, this is kind of obnoxious, you essentially just have to hold a ton of pressure and chip and there's not much you can really do about it, except that blocking it gives you your own 120% mode so you can return the favor. The most insane thing is that if the round ends while you're in 120% mode, the timer on it completely resets, so you get like 8 more seconds of it at the start of the next round. As you might imagine, this tends to make the game way more spammy than the PS1 version, as someone will be in 120% mode almost half the time you play the game. To prevent people from just being instantly deleted by all the supers that are flying around, overall damage is lower than on PS1 and juggle potential is reduced, in particular you can rarely combo supers into other supers anymore, but I'm not a huge fan of this change either as this removes a lot of the coolest combos from the PS1 version. It's still a decent game, but I feel it's quickly apparently upon playing both back to back that the PS1 version is quite a bit more fun.
Gunblaze reminds me a lot of Cobra Mission, though it's drastically worse in every way imaginable. Like Cobra Mission, it's a pervy RPG set in a modern setting where you play as a detective who fights using a gun and has to save hot babes from an evil organization. Guns have ammo, so you are periodically required to buy bullets, though you can also buy some melee weapons as well like knives. Like Cobra Mission, this was originally a PC game, but this version is a Saturn remake of the original. The Saturn version has a few significant changes. For starters, the most significant change is that it's now fully voiced. This is actually kind of impressive, as not only is all of the "cutscene" text voiced, literally every single line of dialogue in the entire game is voiced, including every single optional conversation with NPCs, which I don't think I've ever seen in any other game outside of the modern era. The graphics are also redone, though they're still very mediocre and the character graphics actually have less detail compared to the original. The original game has a world map showing a map of London, which is actually kind of cool, but that is axed completely in the remake for a menu, which is less interesting but I suppose at least it is quicker to get to the various locations. The last change is that the game has been censored. The original PC version of this game is a porn game, but the Saturn version has all of these scenes redone to avoid showing any actual nudity. This probably wouldn't matter if the game was fun, but it's an extremely bland, poorly-polished affair that has pretty much nothing to offer apart from the sexual content. The story is boring and generic, the visuals outside of the scenes with the girls are bland, the music mostly sucks, and the gameplay is even worse. What made Cobra Mission a very solid game is that it had an interesting, action-based battle system, but Gunblaze instead just has the driest turn-based setup imaginable, where you simply attack and use items and that's it. Enemies have quite a lot of health so battles are long, and if you're forced to reload your gun that wastes a turn, which drags battles out even longer. It gets repetitive almost instantly and I can't imagine anyone putting up with it for anything other than the sexual content, but even then it's such a long and boring game that it obviously wouldn't be worth it. There's also a fair number of polish issues, too, for example doors frequently don't work as you can walk past the door trigger, often making me think certain doors can't be open when they do, which isn't even an issue in the original version of the game. It's too bad they didn't redo the gameplay to any degree for the remake, as that might have actually made it something worth caring about.
DeleteThe Legend of Oasis is a weird game. It's very similar to Beyond Oasis, so clearly there's a good foundation here, but in many ways it feels somewhat more janky. The setup of the game and the core gameplay is almost identical to Beyond Oasis. You play as a warrior who has to collect the elemental spirits to save the world. It has the exact same top-down, action-based gameplay as the original, though somehow it feels slightly off this time. One area where the game has clearly been downgraded is the combat. The core combat controls are the same, you can perform a variety of standing and dashing attacks and pressing certain motions triggers other attacks, but it feels a bit less polished. For one thing, the sprites for both the character and the enemies are bigger than Beyond Oasis, which results in fewer enemies being on the screen most of the time. The enemies also have worse AI and are often overly passive, sometimes running away from the player or just standing around doing nothing, making battles feel much less intense compared to the original. In fact, the fight in the opening of Beyond Oasis is scarier than almost anything you'll see in Legend. Your fighting capabilities are generally better this time around, too, many of your moves multi-hit, whereas in Beyond Oasis those similar moves often knocked enemies down or back, resulting in you being able to spam enemies to death with repeated-hitting attacks. Even the bosses are in no way immune to this, you can melt most of the bosses in like 30 seconds by just getting close and spamming multihit moves, pulling off a jump kick that hits a boss ilke 6 times for a quarter of their health just feels wrong. But perhaps the reduced focus on combat is intentional because the game does have somewhat more puzzles. There are more spirits here than the Genesis game (6 compared to 4) and you need to call them frequently to solve puzzles and remove obstacles. There's also a new concept where you can jump on the heads of enemies and use them to reach other areas, which often allows for skips or grabbing items early, and every time I use this mechanic I'm never sure if these routes were intentional. This does have the caveat of sometimes allowing you to skip key items that you'll need later, forcing you to backtrack, which feels a bit unpolished. It's a very short game, too, dungeons have only a handful of rooms and most enemies can be safely avoided (there's a levelling system, but it's not tied to killing enemies), and even the overworld is fairly small, you can easily run from one dungeon to the next in a couple minutes or so. Even the game's music kind of feels like it doesn't suit the game. I think some of what's happening here is that the original game also had some of these issues, but because it looked and played really well for its time people were more forgiving of them. In any case, it's still playable and is decently fun at points, but it also feels like the developer was probably kind of struggling with the hardware and may not have been able to do all they wanted to do with the game.
DeleteSaturn Bomberman is a game where there's not a lot to say about it even though it's clearly one of the best Saturn games. This game is basically like a celebration of classic Bomberman, bringing together the best of the preceding games to create the definitive entry of the classic series. Easily the most notable thing about the game is that the battle mode supports far more players than we saw on SNES. Super Bomberman 5 allowed 5 players, but Saturn Bomberman allows a whopping 10! This probably sounds like it wouldn't fit on the standard map, and indeed it doesn't, to play with 10 players you play on an extra wide map that makes your bomber very tiny, but thanks to the higher resolution of this generation it's still possible to make it out, however if you prefer to play on the classic-sized maps you can still play with a very respectable 8 players. Of course, to play with 10 human players you'd have to be some kind of nutcase who owns 2 multitaps and a boatload of controllers (or the even more rare situation of knowing someone else who owns a Saturn and a multitap), but even with playing with only a few human players or even alone, playing with a ton of AI players is still loads of fun. If you got tired of playing 2 vs 3 battles against the AI on SNES, you can now do 2 vs 8 battles. Even 4 players against 6 AIs is still a reasonable challenge. Suffice it to say that the battle mode here is really solid and probably the main reason to get this version. It's not all there is to it, though. There's still the standard main game mode, which plays a lot like Super Bomberman 3 (it doesn't have the branching level structure of Super Bomberman 5), and there's also a new "Master Mode" that plays like a throwback to Bomberman 1, complete with high scores. Overall, it's a very solid product and one that I'd probably still recommend even if you have a lot of other Bomberman games already.
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