Star-Struck



Sega really only ever marketed one video game console successfully; the Sega Genesis here in the states or The Mega Drive as it is known most everywhere else. Every other console they’ve launched has either lived in the shadow of a more successful machine or it has just flat tanked without really giving the competition much of a fight.

Sega's machines have been good, with really good games available. I don’t have much experience with the Master System or the Game Gear, but the Saturn and the Dreamcast have seen many MANY hours of play time in my house. Many games on Sega consoles were exclusives or were the best versions to own. But Sega made serious errors in marketing, timing, or the direction for their products.
I was definitely a Sega adherent at one point. Probably not up to the level of fanboy by today’s definition of the term, because while I definitely kept track of who had what advantage when Sega participated in the so-called console wars, I didn’t actually diss any other machines. I didn’t own a Super Nes or a TurboGrafx-16 during the Genesis era, and I didn’t own a PS1 during the Saturn era because I simply couldn’t afford multiple consoles and still buy as many games as I wanted to. But I thought the console-bashing was pointless since it was the games that mattered. My only negative feelings about any other system or fanbase was the little spurt of envy whenever a game I really wanted came out exclusively for a machine I didn’t own.

Since then I’ve picked up a PS1 and downloaded SNES and TG16 games on the Wii Virtual Console. Sega got out of the hardware business when they pulled the plug on the Dreamcast, but they are still a software powerhouse, releasing games for every system currently sold, which would, of course, include former rivals.

Amongst the parade of failures from Sega, sits one machine that seems particularly derided. The SegaCD (or Mega-CD as it is known in Europe and Japan). This console… console add-on really since you have to have a Genesis/Mega Drive to make it work… embodied everything that could be wrong with a video game console all in one shot. It was expensive. Its major marketing push was a new-ish gimmicky game tech (like Kinect, but in this case full-motion video or FMV). It promised hitherto unseen graphic and aural heights that weren’t actually new or were not frequently accessed by developers. Etc etc. You can read all about the system’s tragic history online, no need for me to reiterate that shit in detail. Ironically, with the SegaCD and the 32X (a plug-in for the Genesis) Sega essentially demonstrated that add-ons designed to boost your system specs really don’t work. Since this time, hardware companies don’t usually try to extend the life of dying consoles with upgrades, they simply come out with an all-new machine.

Looking past all the hype of the time, what the SegaCD offered was really an opportunity for bigger, more expansive Genesis games. The TurboGrafx-16 already had a CD-based edition, but not much was done with that beyond upgraded audio… real instrument based soundtracks instead of the bleepy-bloop music of rival consoles. So at the very least you’d get ‘bigger’ sound. The SuperNES had more colors on display than the Genesis (though it was slower to move the graphics) and hardware-based scaling, so Sega fans were expecting ‘bigger’ visuals to rival that console while maintaining the Genesis characteristic play speed. The storage capacity of a CD meant that you could have massive numbers of levels or huge casts of characters.

But in reality, this was rarely ever accomplished. The SegaCD WAS capable of many of the claims, but exploiting it was beyond the capabilities, desires, or budgets of many game companies. The idea of having an orchestral score in your game sounds all well and good but who is going to pay for that? Where’s the money coming from when formerly you were paying a small-time musician for some chiptunes? That's not to say there were no good games. There were quite a few. Some, like Sonic CD, delivered the goods in graphics, sounds, and size/variety. Others, like Android Assault, are great games, but could’ve just as easily been Genesis cartridge games apart from the soundtrack.

I actually own a number of the better SegaCD games, and really the whole point of this post is to draw some attention to a particularly good one that I’ve gotten back into. Recently I bought a Genesis with a hardware modification to allow it to output S-video and stereo sound. Hooking my old Genesis up to my current hi-definition TV setup was an exercise in disappointment and eyestrain. Every other old console had had cables upgraded to look good. Even Genesis Virtual Console games running from the Wii looked fine. Never mind trying to get my kids to understand why the Genesis was so great, when they couldn’t get past the fuzzy ghosting visuals. So the mod made a huge change and since the SegaCD outputs through the Genesis, its graphics carried right along in the same improvement.

This sudden leap up in fidelity caused something of a Genesis renaissance between my kids and myself. Suddenly Mickey Castle of Illusion and all the old Sonic games were wondrous displays of hand drawn animation goodness. And on the SegaCD, Earthworm Jim, Robo Aleste, and that kid and dog from Panic! live again. Totally badass. And the game I wanted most to get back to was Core Design’s Soul Star.

Core Design, famous for inventing Tomb Raider, seemed to be one of the few companies willing and able to realize the potential in the Sega CD. Battlecorps, Thunderstrike, and Soul Star are all fast-scrolling 3D showcases for the console. I like all of them, but Soul Star is a particular favorite, and in all the years I’ve owned it, I never completed the damn thing.

Consider THAT particular goal accomplished. Now that I have played it several times, and finished it on all difficulty settings I’m appreciating this game all over again. Soul Star is a third person 3D shooter. You move your ship up, down, left and right in the foreground while firing at targets coming at you or moving across the background. How your ship moves and controls varies with the stages, but you generally have the same powerups; several different types of weapons including a screen-clearing 'bomb' and replenishments for your shield.

Core Design was an English developer, and with most of their games a British aesthetic is very apparent. Soul Star is different. It is a speedy sprite scaling game that looks, at times like Sega’s old coin-op Space Harrier or the lesser-known Taito game Night Striker. But look closer and you’ll see that far from the ground stages having simple checkerboard or roadway patterns for terrain, many locations have sophisticated ‘skins’… like a texture map laid down on the flat surface. From that terrain artwork various sprite obstacles, rocks, buildings, or turrets, stand up appropriately from the surface. It is really quite impressive to see it in action. Check a Youtube video. Also many of the enemies have a decidedly 80s anime, that is to say Japanese, look to them… particularly referencing artists like Masamune Shiro of Appleseed fame. Almost every level has some glistening humanoid mech as a mid-sized enemy to comes skating along the ground towards your ship firing the whole time. The use of color also goes quite a bit beyond the ‘gritty’ colors schemes that try to be grounded in reality in western games. Much of the game has an almost painterly approach to the skies and starfield backgrounds.

In fact, there are tons of little aesthetic touches that seem commonplace now, but were just awesome to me back in the day. The huge tractor beam animated in the sky of the water planet. Debris falling from the ceiling of a hovercraft level as a self-destruct timer counts down. Flying over the surface of the sand planet, after you’ve passed through the initial wave of popcorn enemies and ground installations, a giant carrier appears in the sky and starts dropping shit. First these mechanical ground worms that try to collide with you, then mines, then shooty robots. Periodically the carrier itself has a big lens iris open on its hull to shoot little needle bursts of light at you from a mile away. Then it takes off and you enter another field of turrets and rocks. All the levels have distinct ‘sections’ like this that flow from one to the other. In the space levels you might have to pass through an asteroid field, and then a large orbital construct, before eventually descending to a planet… and it all comes at you in one contiguous action with small almost unnoticeable blips of load time from the disc.

And then there’s the soundtrack. Almost any mention of this game is going to include the awesome soundtrack. The sound effects are okay… but the music is outstanding, really setting the mood. In any other game, music this fine might push an okay game up to the realm of good, but this game doesn’t even need the help, it is just the icing on an already delicious cake.

If there’s anything to actually complain about (for me) in the game it is probably that the system gets overwhelmed by all the shit going on, very common complaint about 3D games that can be heard even today about recent releases. It doesn’t make the game unplayable but the stuttering frame rate can cause a bit of confusion when it comes to dodging enemy bullets. Also your ‘hit box’ is big. Really big. In fact you can be hit by stuff that just comes really close, not always seeming to need to hit your sprite. Your ship is fairly speedy so it isn’t too hard to put extra margin for error when you move out of the way… but in some levels where you are slower—as a hovercraft or walker—this can get pretty annoying. When piloting the slow free-roaming levels I frequently adopted a strategy of clearing out most or all of the enemies from long distance before moving in to accomplish the level’s goal. Some reveiwers have complained about the controls, particularly for the hovercraft form, but I didn't have a problem. Once I got use to them I found myself making pretty intricate maneuvers in the thing.

It may just be me that thinks this game is the cat’s ass. It seems to get pretty good reviews, frequently classed as equal or better than Starfox. But it also seems, most of the time, if I get hyped up on a game, it’s gonna be really expensive to acquire… owing to lots of other people thinking it’s the cat’s ass too. But from what I can tell Soul Star can be had pretty cheaply.

It’d probably take more than one good game to make tracking down and buying a SegaCD really worth it, but Soul Star is really good first choice. Maybe so good it is almost misleading. As I said, most games didn’t come close to pushing the hardware or taking advantage of its capabilities. This game is so spectacular it might make most everything else you’d buy something of a let-down.

(pic stolen from Sega-16)

Vanquished At the Sales Counter

Gosh damn Vanquish is an awesome game.

Anyone looking at my sidebar here or my backloggery listing might see I've shown this as 'currently playing' a pretty long time. This game is not a 50 to 100 hour slog-a-thon. To play through the entire campaign mode only takes six to ten hours. And Vanquish has taken knocks from players online for the brevity of its play time, especially as there is no multiplayer component to make up for it.

That naysaying is all asshattery as far as I'm concerned. It has been an off-and-on bitch fest for me about how so many games today just take too long to play through. I'm a working parent that makes time to play games, but I don't really enjoy becoming super-invested in the same narrative for hours and hours. That's what I have books for.

Games have been padded out the ass to increase their so-called value for money. This smacks of catering to the same cheapskate whining I used to hear working for Games Workshop. People (usually older players and fans) would complain about how the models used to be a dollar apiece and now it was just unaffordable now. Wanting to convince rather than turn off long-time customers we'd explain that the models were better sculpted, had more expensive metal in them (to make them lead-free), and that marketing and production needed to be bigger and better because we were now competing with flashy comics, big budget movies and video games for every entertainment dollar a customer might have to spend. These reasons were all true. But it really boils down to this:

Even today, with GW having brought down the price of basic plastic regiments the Warhammer hobby is still expensive. But y'know, the days of fucking selling dull grey fishing weights with rules to be found in shoddily printed one-color pamphlets are long the fuck over. Even when I was working there, there was no way you were going to lure a teenager away from their goshdamned Playstation 2 unless you could smack them in the head with serious cool factor. That means big art, big production, big marketing. And that shit costs money. The irony of course is that the old guard of miniature companies have almost all died away with only GW/Citadel really surviving unscathed. There are tons of new-ish miniature wargame companies that have come along more recently... and guess what they all do. Have expensive figures and really expensive rulebooks and modules. I'm not saying their price point stuff is exactly like Workshop's but one would have to be complete mongoloid not to see the enormous impact GW's marketing and pricing strategy has had in showing wargame companies how to survive.

I used to 'use' how much video games cost as a counter point to GW's investment expense. You'd pay 200 bucks for a console and then thirty or forty dollars for each new game. Never mind any oddball controllers, chairs or TVs a serious video gamer might buy. So a few hundred dollars for rules and a decent sized army seemed, to me, right in line with that. But it was really hard to convince some people. Not young kids so much. You just had to let them get them into a game to show them that it was like video gaming only with more imagination and more of yourself put into the characters. They were inured to paying out the ass for their colorful pastimes. That's just how it was (and is). But adults just didn't get it. Paying three bucks for each comic read in 15 minutes or less-- okay. 25 dollars paid for each movie (with concession snacks) that you experience for two hours-- okay. 15 to 20 bucks a pop for a DVD that you'll watch two times maybe-- okay! What the hell!

NOW apparently there's this perception (with the increase in new game price over the years from thirty-forty dollars on average, to sixty-plus for PS3 and Xbox 360 games) that video games are perhaps too expensive. So the game companies' answer (sort of echoing the refusal to drop prices that killed CDs) is to increase the content, including the length of the basic game. This in the face of the knowledge that only a tiny fraction of game players complete the games that they buy. Most game purchases are played part of the way through, with a lot of time spent on multiplayer aspects or getting the easiest achievements.

So padding the shit out of the one-player modes would SEEM like a wasteful answer. Why do that if most of the players (and whiners) will not stick with a game long enough to see that distant ending you've just made even more distant. And yet... here we have a game like Vanquish which is a veritable case study in distilling the fun down to a short but extremely intense experience for single players only... and people bitch. So I guess the suits have some point after all.

Here's why I've spent so much time (probably thirty hours at this point) on such a supposedly short game. It is REALLY fun. It requires a crapload of skill. It is very intense. You will die a lot. It isn't like Halo or a lot of these other modern murder simulators where you can kind of fake your way through the lower difficulty levels with your reflexes and time-honored shooter methodologies. You are going to have to learn how to control your guy really well. You are going to have to learn every enemies vulnerabilities. You are going to have learn the timing of your own 'superpowers'. And not just to be better, but to simply survive. The action is intricate and explosive. If you approach it casually like you've done it all before (it resembles Gears of War at first) you will have your ass handed to you on a kebab. The game is also score based. You are supposed to replay levels ever increasing the difficulty and refining your technique. Getting faster and cooler. Maybe I like it for much the same reason I like STGs. Short intense burst-gaming that rewards practice.

Can't really complain about weapon effectiveness either. Unlike a lot of FPS or TPS games, most of the enemies cannot take dozens of shots from the basic weapons. If you target weak spots then every gun in the game is useful and kills. And the slo-mo mechanic enables this. I can't remember the last game I played like this where I didn't feel like there was no way I could get past some group of enemies or a boss without better guns. In Vanquish, I could almost always make do. In fact, even though ammo is counted in the game, I frequently found myself well stocked on my most powerful weapons (that have the smallest magazines) because I just didn't need to use them. That isn't because the game is easy. It is because the game trains you to be good with everything. It gets its challenge from the fact that enemies have good guns too and that there are a lot of them.

The achievements in the game are all pretty fun and mostly tied in with normal goals in the game. I hate online based achievements because I really don't do multiplayer, but thankfully Vanquish has no online mode. I've heard people complain about that too. But Vanquish wouldn't work in multiplayer. One of the key aspects to the game is a slow motion or 'bullet time' mode. It is critical to the game. How would you represent this to an online opponet in real-time. If you are in slo-mo and they aren't... how do you reconcile that? You can't both go into slo-mo at the same time every time... the player controls it for him or herself to get an advantage over the enemy. If you say 'take it out of multiplayer' then you've just chopped one of the two major aspects that makes Vanquish unique. I applaud Platinum Games for not shoehorning in some broken multiplayer just to shut those people up.

But it cost Platinum at the cash register. I find the game great, and while it may not be my game of the year, it will probably be the first game I've tried to get all the achievements for. I should have done that with Bayonetta (Platinum's previous release) but I put it down with the intention of coming back to it. And of course, never really did. I'm sticking with Vanquish 'til I've done everything I want to do... which isn't far away now. My love notwithstanding, lack of marketing on the part of publisher Sega, the word on the 'net that it was short, and releasing it at the same time huge juggernaut franchises got new releases spelled mediocrity in the sales department. I don't think it flat-out tanked... it has a big budget look and polish, but was made on a fraction of the money of Halo or Modern Warfare titles. So it can show a profit with a lot less sales, but it certainly wasn't a hit. Platinum Games is kinda becoming known for making critically acclaimed games (Bayonetta and Vanquish are pretty much universally loved by commenters) that don't do so well commercially. And based on interviews I've read they seem okay with that.

So I paid my sixty bucks for Vanquish and have MORE than gotten my money's worth out of it. I've played through the campaign completely twice, once on normal, once on hard. I've used a guide to poke through each level on its own to find all the hidden statues. I've gone back to some individual levels to get the combat-based achievements. Now I'm working on the 'tactical challenges'; individual new levels set in some of the arenas from the campaign game but with many more and different enemies. These are pretty hard, but they will definitely make you work every technique and ability in your arsenal. I haven't found the game to be repetitive at all. You can do things in so many different ways. When you get some new technique down it is really cool to have a go at 'an old level' to see if you can get through it faster and easier with what you've learned.

Despite some fairly graphic violence and a lot of inappropriate language, I've offered to let my son try this game. He is fascinated by its look... the speed and the firepower. But he won't touch it. He says he absolutely would not be able to handle it.

I'm going to apply that sentiment to a lot of the bitchy boys online. They just can't handle it. Playing through the campaign in six hours on casual is for pussies.

(image cribbed from cinedork)

Wow.

No, not WoW as in World of Warcraft. 'Wow' as in the exclamation.

I haven't been doing much new gaming that's worth writing (ploughing through the very long Okami) so there hasn't been much in the way of updates. I could post articles about other nerdly things, but apart from reacquainting myself with GW products I'm not doing much new there either. I probably will talk Warhammer, etc at some point but I ain't there yet.

I got this awesome new 'wave lounger' that is a semi-portable chair/pad that is just perfect for plonking right in front of a plasma screen and having a joystick set in your lap. I gave Ketsui a go with this setup and it is the cat's ass.

The MAIN reason I'm posting though is this link:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html

I haven't played this game and have no intention, but this is one of the greatest game-related articles I've read all year and maybe ever. I think the concept of 'game journalism' is a crock... BUT. If there was ever a piece written that was not about the business/financial aspect of videogames that could be called actual journalism, this might be it. I have some exposure to the Yakuza through film... particularly those of Takeshi Kitano so a lot of what is talked about in the article really dovetailed with my continued fascination with Japanese culture.

Thanks to Sketcz at HG101 for pointing this article out.

The Skies are Endless

The 'Currently Playing' list on the side looks like it might be stuck for a while, because Skies of Arcadia is taking forever.

I know I've spent a lot of time looking for Discoveries in the game, and the game's encounter frequency just makes this an exercise in frustration and tedium. A game about exploring and yet you can't walk or fly longer than fifteen or twenty seconds before you're halted by another fight.

If the game was just 'straight lines' between towns or dungeons, then the encounter rate wouldn't be all that bad. BUT. They want you to find stuff. Not just secret stuff scattered around the map, but you often have to search out your next location based on the plot or dialogue. It isn't usually super far away or hidden to any real degree... but any looking around you have to do AT ALL will be utterly plagued with random encounters.

Actually, the word 'random' is kinda stupid in this case, because the frequency of them is all too predictable. Choose one; a) as soon as you think you're going the right way, b) if you are impatient to advance the plot, c) right now. Any one of those criteria filled seemingly triggers another battle. I'll tell you one thing. I have yet to enter a single boss fight where I didn't feel completely comfortable with my items, spells, and levels. Y'know why? Because the game basically makes you grind, grind, grind, just to get anywhere. You don't have to force yourself to do it to make sure you are powerful enough... it's going to happen to you anyway. You are going to fight and gain levels and gold whether you fucking well like it or not.

There are six major treasures (plot-crucial items) and therefore theoretically six chapters or stretches of the game. But that doesn't take into account a sort of 'prologue' stretch, a separation from your shipmates stretch, and a earn and crew your own ship stretch, that are each about as long as one of the basic six. So I've plunked in about 35 hours and I'm just getting to area of the third treasure, and I've had the second one for umpteen hours now.

The plot and cutscenes are fun and interesting. I really do want to see how this is going to go and have scrupulously avoided all references to the narrative or the battles coming up. I've used a FAQ once. When something I was navigating to find was just not appearing to me, and I got tired of all the fights while I tried to find it.

50 hours my ass. How would this game be 50 hours long (DC version) if you actually hunted out all the discoveries? Honestly.

I still like the game, but this sure as shit reminds me why I've long since gotten stuck on the idea that I 'don't have time' for RPGs.

And I want to play Baroque at some point in the future. I must be insane.

Past Blast Froth Fest pt1

Some oldie-games cracked open for the first time in years. For a lot of these modern, spoon-fed, shovel-ware gamers need not bother. They can be harder than an angry black cock.

In The Hunt

In The Hunt- Sega Saturn. Graphically incredible 2D (sprite graphics) submarine shooter from Irem. Development team formed Nazca and made Metal Slug for the Neo Geo. So if you are familiar with that game you should have some idea what this looks like. In fact, Metal Slug in a submarine is probably an apt description. Mostly a shooter, it has the player controlling the scrolling like the run 'n' gun that Metal Slug is. The pacing may be off-putting for gamers expecting the forced scrolling of a typical horizontal STG, but I think the game's other details more than make up for it. Unbelievable animation and detail. Gobs of destructible scenery which is atypical for any 2D game, let alone a shooter. A game that shows all the Saturn's strengths. Only five levels long with the last two-thirds of the fifth level (the fucking volcanoes and beyond) really putting the stones to you. There's probably some trick to getting past all the lava chunks without losing a bunch of subs, but I haven't figured it out yet.


Assault Suit Leynos 2- Sega Saturn. Sprite-based sequel to Target Earth on the Genesis and Assault Suits Valken (Cybernator) on the SNES. A run'n'gun with platforming elements like those games. Unlike the other two games, the production values surrounding the game look shite. The FMV intro and the manual art look totally second rate. Check out the man-breasts on the protagonist! The game even feels truncated with only seven pretty short levels, which for a shooter would be typical, but for a run'n'gun is pretty weak. If you're going to have so few, they need to be longer to make it your money's worth, ie the aforementioned Metal Slug, which has levels that might be too long. Leynos 2, the game itself mostly makes up for all these shortcomings. You pilot a mech-suit with abilities lifted straight from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam (plots and scenarios largely lifted too, in all the games in the series). The graphics are pretty decent (sprites) with occasional huge bosses (like Gundam mobile armors), and a really neat weapon and suit customisation menu. It is an import only game, so plot details and conversations will be lost on the non-Japanese speaker, but the controls, though complex, are not difficult to figure out since the menus are in English. I could recommend this to Gundam fans or people who enjoyed the other Assault Suits games. It is easier than the earlier games because I think the idea is to play through it multiple times, getting better grades each time because you've earned better weapons and suits. There may be some additional level or ending when you earn everything, but I'm not that good at it yet. Internet info on this thing is bloody scarce, especially since it is a robot action game and not an effing dating sim.


Ultraman Fighting Evolution Rebirth- PS2. 2D fighting game with polygonal graphics. Bought this one mostly for my son, based mostly on Youtube videos since, again, internet info (in English at least) is really lacking on gameplay details. Fortunately this turned out to not only be better than a license like this has any right to be, I found it to be fun enough myself to see it all the way through to the end. Which was good because my son is totally intimidated by fighting games, primarily because he doesn't feel up to the task of managing command inputs like the so-called dragon punch from Street Fighter, and with my going through the game first, I was able to coach him through finishing the game himself. There are no command inputs for this game, but it was still a hurdle to overcome his reluctance, despite the subject matter which he loves. The game does a really good job fitting in the particulars of the various Ultraseries which is no small accomplishment. With episodes and characters spanning forty years of television, plots that change the characters powers and weaknesses at the writers' whims, and all kinds of abilities like firing beams, transformations, wrestling, and super-strength, it was herculean to make a game that was even playable and somewhat balanced. I won't say it IS super-balanced, it isn't a 'formal' tournament-ready fighting game, but it works surprising well. The controls are slower to respond than the Street Fighter-type games (I'd say its more 'tactical' like early Samurai Shodown) but it conveys the giant size and massive impacts of the characters... much like the recent Godzilla console games Atari distributed. The TV episodes almost always end with a huge finishing move, and they've worked those into the game, even giving finishers to all the monsters, because unlike the shows, HERE the monsters can win. To help ease things for younger players, and because the game IS rather tactical (with a detailed plot for a fighting game) the game saves after every fight in story mode. The battle mode is more like the conventional fighting game, shedding the plot pauses and the saves. The overall sheen of the game lets the older Ultraman characters fit right in with the new ones and its really fun (if you're a fan) to explore these sorts of 'crossovers' between the series. Many of the characters and backgrounds need to be unlocked, so there's a lot of replay incentive. I'm letting a huge bias cloud my opinion, I realize. People who have no interest in Ultraman will likely not see any draw to this game. But Ultrafans will find this much cooler than they would probably expect, and shows what the license could be like taken seriously... well, as seriously as it could be. The game is somewhat easy, and experienced gamers should have no trouble getting to final boss... but that's when black cock strikes, and you fight what might be the award winner for most frequently regenerated lifebars/most transformations in a game. The final chapter goes on for scadloads longer than any of the other chapters and unless you figure out a certain secret for one of the the boss's forms, it WILL go on forever until your character just wears down and dies.

Flink

Flink- Sega CD. 2D platformer, sprites. Another amazing graphic masterpiece. Games like this and In The Hunt were the real catalysts for my 'No Love...' post from several days back. This is a thoroughly European game, contrasted against the overwhelming majority of Japanese games and a smattering of American ones. The style of this game brings to mind the detailed, characterful artwork of Brian Froud, Arthur Suydam, or Patrick Woodruff. Every leaf, every blade of grass delineated in loving detail. An amazing soundtrack to go along with it, partly owing to the CD format of the game. The gameplay is pretty basic, jumping, bouncing on enemies, or throwing objects at them-- standard Mario-style-- but additionally, there is mildly RPG-like magic system involving finding and mixing ingredients. Some of the more involved precision jumping sections can get frustrating because Flink's jumps cannot be controlled quite as well as say Mario or Sonic. But the immersion factor is just huge because of all the care lavished on this game. The opening intro alone will tell you the designers poured everything they had into the details, and the intro doesn't use any FMV or anything... it is the same sort of graphic design used in the game itself! Awesome game if you are one of the few (or the insane) who actually own a Sega CD.


Soul Star- Sega CD. 3D shooter, sprite-based graphics. The Sega CD was supposed to be a huge leap in graphics and sound from the Sega Genesis, but apart from more elaborate FMV intros and CD soundtracks they didn't really live up to the hype. Especially when so many of the early games were 'cinema adventure' games that set new standards for suckage. Eventually some great games did come out, and they had the expected super music quality, but only a select few like Flink above, or this one, Soul Star actually LOOKED like a big step up from the Genesis. Again Soul Star's gameplay, like Flink's isn't revolutionary, but it does it what it does pretty well. You pilot three vehicles, a spaceship, a hovercraft, and towards the end, a walker. Each vehicle has a different type of playfield with the spacecraft a rail shooter (see Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon), and the other two working in more free-roaming areas. The graphics are pretty amazing. Smooth scaling, relatively high speeds, and cool enemy designs, particulary the mechs and bosses later in the game. Planets and ships in the distance gradually scroll forward as you play to become the site of the next level. The control scheme for the hovercraft takes a helluva lot of getting used to, but I enjoyed the game so much I stuck with it. The music is almost haunting in places. This is another game where the designers were obviously enamored with their idea and really went to town creating an immersive experience. I'm not a huge fan of films that are hung up on just their special effects, but occasionally a strong setting or artful cinematography can elevate a mundane story. The interactive nature of a video game means this sort of successful world-building can be even more successful.

Vampire Savior

Vampire Savior- Sega Saturn. 2D fighting game, sprite-based graphics. Third in the DarkStalkers series. It is not hard to find heaping piles of praise for this game on the internet, but its been a long time since I played it, so I'm adding my own droppings to the pile. Saturn version, arcade-perfect, playing to the Saturns strengths. Absolutely jaw-dropping art and animation especially when seen on today's flat-panel TVs. The gameplay is deep with an elaborate and satisfying system for the specials and supers. One of Capcom's best. Not as perfectionist-technical as Street Fighter or King of Fighters tend to be... its more for fun. But not as retardedly over-the-top as Marvel vs Capcom either. A good balance. With some of the greatest, but decidedly underappreciated characters in all of gaming. My son's lack of patience for games like this makes me want to sell him to the gypsies.


GigaWing 2- Sega Dreamcast. 2D shooter with polygonal graphics. Flashy, somewhat cute-seeming blast fest... until about thirty seconds in. Then it initiates you into the world of manic shooters (aka danmaku, 'curtain fire') with all the subtlety of a rigorous fisting. The manic shooter is a relatively modern variant on the old 2D STG, usually vertically-oriented. It is characterised by a small hitbox (collision area) for the ship (often just the cockpit), massive streams of firepower available to the player, and screen-filling amounts of neon-colored projectiles. I'll probably devote more 'blog space to specifics of manic shooters (or bullet hell shooters as they are often called) in the future. But suffice to say this one is right alongside the notorious difficulty level many manic shooters lay claim to. It has a shield/reflection system similar to Mars Matrix (another game by the same house, Takumi), but using it well enough to survive is an exercise in practice, practice, practice. Short, intense, difficult. It took me a long while to warm up to this game, so unlike the shooters I've been used to. Now I'm a manic shooter devotee. I'd say the biggest strike against the game is the unlimited continues. It doesn't matter how hard a game is, or how worthy of practice, if you can just 'credit feed' your way through it. I wish this had an option to limit the continues. There's no incentive to really work when the temptation to just hit continue (again) exists. I really like the method used by Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, and Border Down of 'earning continues' through play time. By the time you've earned enough continues to finish the game your need for them should have dropped. Gigawing 2 is not even close to being one of my favorite shooters, but its decent.

Cool Cool Toon

Cool Cool Toon- Sega Dreamcast. Rhythm game with polygonal graphics. I am definitely NOT a fan of rhythm games. The only one I even have near me is some chapter of DDR that I got for my kids (complete with dance pad). So I cannot claim to be any sort of fan or expert. This game, however, struck me as interesting when I first saw previews for it on import sites. It has a very quirky art and music style. The graphics are polygonal but in a very cartoony solid-color style, that sort of looks like a precursor to cel-shaded graphics. The music is equally offbeat, cover a lot of different musical styles. That could be plus or a minus for the game depending on how closed-minded you are about your music... all of it is sort of 'dancey' as you'd expect. No beat, no game y'know? Its a pretty cool as the title say. There's nothing else really like it. But the game incorporates analog stick movements in addition to button presses (no dance pad, its more akin to playing an instrument than placing dance steps), and therein lies the game's main problem. Control. Odd thing to say if you place it in context of most other rhythm (or music games like Guitar Hero) since control is the last thing you worry about with simple button presses. Cool Cool Toon requires precise exact movements of the Dreamcast's analog stick though, and this proves incredibly difficult and frustrating. There are no detents or 'clicks' as you guide the stick in the clockface directions during the game. So no aids to your the exact placement. You just slide around rather loosely. At first this is no problem, the pauses between beats allow some correction, but as speed and complexity ramp up, you'll wish abominable tortures down upon the designers' children. I guess like a lot of other activities it takes practice. But this control scheme seems needlessly difficult, literally problematic to the goals of the game. There are already grueling memorisation tasks in other parts. So this one gets a lot of points on style, but only people absolutely in love with that style, and so willing to tackle the incredible learning/practice curve should seek out this game. Note: the clearest screenshots of this game seemed to come from the Planet-SNK site, so that's where I filched this pic. The huge 'nexgam' logo is NOT in the actual game.


Street Fighter III: Third Strike- Sega Dreamcast. 2D fighting game with sprite graphics. As most people know this game is basically a clinic on how to do shit-hot 2D animation. The sprites are huge, move fluidly and are cool updates on the classic Street Fighter characters. Fans are split on whether this game or the concurrently available Street Fighter Alpha 3 game was better. I tend to fall in the Alpha camp. That game is just more fun. This one is much more restrained and technical, and I do think it is a great game, I just prefer the characters in Alpha and the greater number of options for your super bar and special moves. If you want a Street Fighter game that 'feels' realistic, this is your boy.

Okay, that's enough for now. More later.

Thunder Force VI

So I bought Thunder Force VI a few days ago. This is a game I was really psyched for. I played all the previous entries (apart from the original home PC first installment) on the Genesis/Mega Drive and Sega Saturn.

As of this writing, the game hasn't been out very long, but I couldn't help reading opinions and semi-reviews on various sites from players who had the game sooner than I did. And much (maybe not the majority) is pretty negative.

I have my own opinion, but I think most of the criticism comes from two places, unrealistic expectations and a misunderstanding of what the intentions of the game designers. That doesn't mean I think everyone should believe this is a great game, but I think a lot of players... at least the ones blabbing on the web... aren't looking at the context of this game's creation.

To get it out of the way, I like the game. I think it does exactly what it is designed to do... and what Sega designed it to do. Be a basic, accessible (re-)introduction to a classic series. It doesn't have fancy Cave-esque scoring systems. It doesn't have divinely-inspired visuals or Treasure's flair for clever gameplay mechanisms. It is not an attempt to reach the next plateau of awesomeness in the same way Gradius V was. It is bright, loud, simple, fun, fast and an homage to all the Thunder Force games that went before. While mostly having gameplay and polygons in common with the fifth installment, it has the bright colors, and atmosphere similar to the earlier episodes. I'm enjoying it. It's simple, but it rocks.

Addressing some of the criticisms now, I get why many players think the levels are too short. Even for an STG where five to seven relatively short levels are the norm, Thunder Force VI doesn't last long if you are watching the clock. But the levels are not all the same length. After you get through the first three, the order-selectable ones, the length of time spent in each area goes way up. In fact level five (which is not the last level) goes on longer than most shooters I can remember. No, I'm not including Radiant Silvergun. But this game isn't supposed to BE Radiant Silvergun.

I also get why many players think the game is too easy. But um, y'know, pump up the difficulty. It isn't like the menus are in Japanese so you can't figure out how. Or turn down your lives and continues. Cripes. Accessibility. They are introducing a whole, new potentially much less skilled or experienced generation to shmups. Not every person buying this is going to be a 1CC Dodonpachi player. In an interview in Edge magazine game director for Thunder Force Tez says shooters, like fighting games, have grown 'too manic'. I agree with him. I'm all for bullet hell shooters-- I like my Mars Matrix and Mushihimesama just plenty, but there has to be room for all different styles. The idea is a fun experience, and winkling around between curtains of bullets isn't everyone's cuppa. Every now and then even an experienced bullet hell master might want to relax relatively-speaking with something not quite so fucking fussy.

I have also seen the bizarre lament that the game is too derivative of the old Thunder Force games. Hm. It has been centuries (in video game terms) since the last Thunder Force game came out. I'm not sure I would've expected them to do anything BUT closely reference the previous games. I'm guessing they were going for a balance between old and new that would show new players what Thunder Force is about while instilling nostalgia in older players. Some of the bosses are updates of old ones. The weapons all have previous counterparts. The levels are mostly polygonal remakes of areas we've seen before. But in this PS2 incarnation it is newer, brighter, faster, and louder. It is the first game after a looooooong hiatus. It kinda HAS to have that 'in our last episode' thing going on-- the talky narrative box at the beginning of any comic or manga-- only this is dosed along the whole game.

I've seen the occasional mention of somewhat unsophisticated visuals, not a lot of extras, or slowdown. Well, they work just fine for me, especially considering this project was an experiment for Sega, and as such has a really pared-down budget. Shooters are a tough sell in this age of dwindling arcades and players ravenous for RPGs(Japan) or FPS games (USA).

As detailed recently in Edge magazine, Sega bought a famous but defunct license and used it as the start of what Tez Okano hopes will be a revival of interest in shooters in Japan. In order to make that viable it had to be done economically. That meant developing it on the PS2 and not having the most wiz-bang visuals or masturbatory extras.

Realistic expectations, and a simple enjoyment of this game should equal support for it. And support for this game may help bring along more STGs.... of all types.

So yeah, I like Thunder Force VI. A lot. Sure as shit beats Broken Thunder or no Thunder Force at all.