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Last Topic's Ratings:
Asuka 120% Limited: Burning Fest Limited - AGAA - 63% (4)
Gunblaze S - ABB - 17% (3)
Legend of Oasis, The - AGA - 67% (3)
Saturn Bomberman - GGGGGGG - 100% (7) (2 SR)
Space Jam - BGA - 50% {3}
Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 SS - GGA - 83% (3)
An interesting duel between Syphon Filter 2 and Saturn Bomberman in the previous topic. I was actually a bit surprised that Syphon Filter 2 got more votes, but I guess the PS1 board just gets a little bit more traffic.
Games for this topic:
Capcom Generation 4
Maximum Force
NASCAR 98
Ogre Battle
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru
WWF In Your House
I kind of wish I had a troll game for April Fools day, but Saturn doesn't have many and I never plan these things out well enough. Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru does look like an interesting game, though.
Capcom Generation 4 - A
ReplyDeleteMaximum Force - A
NASCAR 98 - A
Ogre Battle - G
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru - A
WWF In Your House - A
Capcom Generation 4 is a collection of Commando, Mercs, and Gunsmoke, in the same vein as most of the other Capcom collections. As per usual, Capcom has tossed in a ton of extras like developmental materials and artwork, which is always welcome, and I like that this set of games has a clear theme. However, the issue with this set, like some of the others, is that all of these games already had home console ports, and in the case of Mercs and Gunsmoke, they're better than the arcade versions. I feel like this is particularly true for Gunsmoke, the arcade version of Mercs is at least still pretty fun even if the Genesis version has extra stuff, but the NES version of Gunsmoke is hugely expanded in terms of scope and mechanics and feels vastly more fun compared to the arcade version. For Commando, this is indeed the best version of it, but the game is still kinda lame, which makes this collection feel a bit weak, you're mostly just buying it for Mercs IMO and there are other collections that include it. It's still a nice package and I appreciate the extras but I really wish they would have tossed NES Gunsmoke in here as well.
Maximum Force is basically Area 51 2, it runs on exactly the same engine and effectively has the exact same gameplay. The main thing that has changed is the theme, rather than stopping aliens at Area 51, you're now a special forces agent who has to stop terrorists, which I think is a little less fun. Just like Area 51, the game generally plays pretty well, it uses the same "invisible health bar" system where you take damage when enemies are firing at you, but you don't actually lose health until this occurs for a certain amount of time, though compared to Area 51, the enemy placements feel significantly more cheesy. It definitely feels like this game was balanced around 2 players, as it's very common for two enemies to pop up on opposite sides of the screen at once, effectively making damage impossible to avoid if you're alone (it's especially bad when melee enemies appear in pairs, which they do frequently, you can only feasibly shoot 1 before you get hit). I do like some of the stages here, for example the second stage features an underwater approach to a base where you have to fend off missiles, which is neat, but overall this game generally feels a little weaker than Area 51 and it also came out much later, by which time these sorts of games had innovated quite a lot. It particularly doesn't compare well at all against The House of the Dead, which it released quite close to.
NASCAR 98 is mostly the same game as on PS1. The biggest change I noticed is that the Saturn version has significantly longer and more frequent load times, as well as better texture work but probably slightly less draw distance. It's mostly the same game, though, which means that it's a decent racer but still significantly outdone by NASCAR 99. The biggest difference here is that on Saturn, this is your only option as far as NASCAR is concerned, but I don't think this matters enough to change my recommendation, particularly as I feel the PS1 version of this game is slightly better.
DeleteOgre Battle is another one of those reasons that I always make sure to play every version of every game, though it also presents its own unique challenges to rate. Going in, I expected this to basically be a copy of the PS1 version and for the fan translation to just be a re-insertion of the PS1 script, as has been done with a couple other Saturn fan translations of games that were localized on Saturn but not PS1, but neither is the case. For starters, the Saturn version of Ogre Battle is kind of a director's cut version that has some extras. Most notably, it has 5 additional battle maps and some extra characters, and the game also now has voice acting for various story scenes. The game also features slightly improved visuals and runs more smoothly than it does on PS1, and it has some small but useful QOL features like showing the impact to your alignment and charisma when you defeat enemies. The fan translation is also not a simple port of the script from the PS1, it is a complete retranslation of the game from the original Japanese script and it reads much better. They even went the extra mile and added some new QOL features to the Saturn version, and they even added a new hard mode that helps make the game feel more fresh if you're familiar with the series. I think it's fairly clear that the new stuff elevates the game to being G, but the difficult question here is whether or not the features added in the translation should count towards the total. I've wrestled with this question in some capacity before, such as when it comes to games that play significantly better on emulator than they do on original hardware, but this game takes it to a new level. I feel like if we include only the changes that are present in the Japanese version, it's more borderline between A and G, but that's also not likely to be the experience most people reading GAB would have with the game, so I feel it's fine to lean towards G. The game is clearly best played on Saturn in any case.
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru is a great-looking game but it doesn't quite live up to it gameplay-wise. Visually, this game is quite reminiscent of Hissatsu, being another ancient Japan-styled Ninja game, but it plays very differently. It uses a mixture of highly detailed spritework along with some 3D background tricks that actually looks very good, and the music is also pretty decent. The gameplay, on the other hand, is at best serviceable. The game is a 2D platformer but with a very unusual mechanic. Rather than attacking with a sword or shurikens or anything like that, you instead attack your foes using a kind of auto-targeting magic. There is a symbol in front of the character that will lock on to something, and you can press the button to rapidly spam little bolts on it to do damage. You also have a charge attack, though it does less DPS than the spam unless charged out of combat, and you have a shield like move that deflects attacks but doesn't do much damage. The big issue here is with your primary attack, which simply doesn't feel that good to use. For starters, you can only lock-on to one enemy at a time and you have no control over which one it picks. If you want to attack someone in front of you but the game decides to target the enemy above you, tough. This makes prioritizing high threat enemies completely impossible and makes some fights much more annoying than they would be otherwise. There's also the fact that pretty much everything takes a ton of hits, which forces you to move really slow, since if you get close to enemies your options to retreat are very limited as attacking locks you in place and you can almost never kill the enemy with a jump attack before you'll hit the ground, probably on top of them. The shield move can help, and can be used in the air, but not from a running jump, so you'll never want to run, even though it's satisfying to move fast. You also have an alternate attack that can convert an enemy into an ally for a while, but it also feels kind of unsatisfying, the ally doesn't really do much, they attack slowly and do little damage, particularly compared to your character's insane DPS, and they don't draw attacks either, so it kind of feels like a throwaway feature. Overall, it's certainly playable, but it's nowhere near as fast and satisfying as most action games of this type, it's a very slow and methodical game which also feels pretty repetitive due to the simplicity of your attacking options.
DeleteI didn't actually know that WWF In Your House was a sequel to WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game until I booted it up, which is interesting because I've always been kind of a fan of that game. It definitely sticks very close to the original, the engine is almost completely the same, it just has some new characters and a couple new mechanics. Probably the most significant new thing that has been added is that various little powerups now spawn throughout the ring, which you can touch for various effects, such as gaining or losing health, gaining or losing combo bar, or becoming stunned. These icons are color-coded, with the grey ones having a bad effect, and the blue ones having a good effect, though the grey ones tend to be more common and obviously you'd never go for them, so it sort of feels like an irrelevant mechanic a lot of the time. The core gameplay is otherwise mostly unchanged from the original, it plays more like a fighting game than a wrestling game with motion moves and combos. Grabs still exist, but are somewhat flawed because grabs can be blocked (though there is a window to do it, you can't just hold block), and the AI is extremely good at instant blocking them. Speaking of, I've come to the conclusion that almost all of the game's problems stem from the AI, the AI generally is just cheap in the way that old games often were, with them having 1 frame reactions with counter throws and such, which discourages offense and makes the game less fun to play, you can actually generally win pretty easily by being very defensive (a lot of moves in this game are very unsafe on block) but it's not a very fun way to play the game. On the plus side, at least you no longer have to do any 2 on 1 matches in the first arcade ladder, so if you found those annoying that's an option. Overall, it's still a fun game but I feel like it has a fair number of issues that kind of weren't addressed from the first game and probably should have been. Incidentally, the PS1 version is almost a completely different game, it has a ton of balance and move changes and redone AI. I think that version is generally a bit better, but we'll talk more about that when we come to it.
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