A thing that made Virtual-On in the arcades eye-catching was its setup of two sticks. This setup, named Twin Stick, is what defined Virtual-On‘s uniqueness even among arcade games. On the home front, you’ve most often had the option of using whatever standard control pad you had, or buying a Twin Stick controller. The difference between the two can not be overstated. A gamepad, even with the two thumbsticks, is not comparable to the intuitive and direct control the Twin Stick gives you. It’s extremely intuitive and easy on the surface how you control your Virtuaroid, as using Twin Stick resembles your standard tank controls. However, the moment the controls’ depth clicks and how much direct control you have, the tank-ness of things vanishes and you find yourself with one of the fastest and most furious of games in your hands. The skill ceiling is staggeringly high, as Virtual-On games have tons of techniques a beginner can only grasp. From how to approach your opponent to all the weapons firing differently depending on how you are moving and what position the sticks are in, the games offer nearly endless depth. Oratorio Tangram, the second game in the series, is still the most played and most popular, as it also happens to be the fastest game in the series.
The controls require some explanation, despite the basics being easy to grasp after a minute or two. Talking about the Twin Sticks themselves makes little sense if you don’t know why they are so integral.
The basic controls are as follows;
Pushing either lever in a direction while the other lever is at neutral, your Virtuaroid will walk in that direction
Pushing both levers in a direction, your Virtuaroid will run in that direction
Pushing the levers in opposite forwards/backward, your Virtuaroid will turn clockwise or counter-clockwise
Pushing the levers at opposite left/right outwards, your Virtuaroid will jump
Pushing the levers towards each other will make your Virtuaroid Guard
Attacking and Dashing are done by the buttons on the sticks;
Right Weapon is fired with the Right lever’s trigger. By standard, it is a kind of projectile
Left Weapon is by the Right lever’s trigger. By standard, it is some kind of explosive or a bomb
The Center weapon is fired when the triggers are pressed together. It is usually a strong, but a slow weapon.
When at a close range, Long-range weapons are changed to close-combat weapons
The Thumb button with a Lever direction will make your Virtuaroid dash in that direction.
In the original game, both Thumb buttons are required to be pressed down for the dash. Oratorio Tangram requires only one. FORCE requires the other thumb stick to be used in changing targets, as the game is 2 versus 2
Here’s an edited version of Oratorio Tangram‘s attract mode, with only the How To Play segments present
As mentioned, each of the three weapons has multiple modes of fire depending on what action you are in and in what direction. This changes the weapons’ properties and strengths. For example, one direction makes your Virtuaroid shoot out five smaller shots, while the opposite shoots three larger, more powerful shots. Furthermore, some Virtuaroids have secret attacks they can enact and require special input. Numerous attacks can be canceled or half-canceled into other actions, while Dashing attacks can’t. Movement options are also far more abundant than they first appear. For example, you can increase your Virtuaroid’s falling speed by making them Guard. Quickstep is another useful move, which includes releasing the Dash the very moment you input a direction. The Dash is canceled and your Virtuaroid has taken a fast step instead.
There are numerous systems that aren’t clear at first and most players won’t notice. These include things like how movement speed is relative to the distance between the Virtuaroids, and speed decreases the closer they are together. This can be tracked as the game has a distance counter in the lock-on reticle. Certain attacks gain more power as they travel across the stage, while others effectively lose all of their hitting power. The damage dealt over time also increases and carries over to subsequent rounds. The damage maxes out at +10% at one minute mark.
There is no traditional lock-in in Virtual-On, which throws numerous people off. Virtual-On has an unorthodox automatic lock-on when Jumping or Dashing, which rotates the screen and the Virtuaroid towards the opponent as well. Advanced players tend to use Air Dash Cancel and Quickstep instead, as both of these require Jump and Dashing respectively, but are much faster. This system is cumbersome at first, but at the same time, it promotes the discovery and learning of tons of techniques and methods when and how to cancel movements and options. Being aware of your surroundings becomes important as well for the sake of your own positioning in the stage geometry. Mizuumi Wiki has a page with a rather complete breakdown of the controls for Oratorio Tangram, and I would recommend giving it a look if you find yourself interested. It’s not completely applicable to the other games in the series, but the core basics are the same. There is an exhaustive Japanese wiki for Oratorio Tangram,Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Unofficial Anniversary Site, if that scratches your interest.
That is a long and infodump way to say that Virtual-On‘s Twin Sticks are very much the heart and soul of how the game plays out. The series is often counted as a Fighting game due to similarities in generic strategies of pressuring the opponent with neutral and low commitment attacks while closing in and punishing mistakes the opponent may make. The only games that are similar in direct comparison are Senko no Ronde and Acceleration of Suguri, which are best described as Virtual-On in 2D plane. Nevertheless, because the controls require much skill and dedication to be fully taken advantage of, the standard control pads don’t cut it. There is certain immediacy that Twin Stick offers and there are no extra buttons or even shapes to deal with. The game has been purpose-built with these two levers, and anything else comes short. When A Certain Magical Virtual-On changes its controls to fully accommodate the gamepad, large amounts of intricacies and techniques were lost. It is the best Virtual-On for a gamepad, but after spending some with a Twin Stick with other entries in the series, it becomes a much hollower game. You could always dish out money for a limited-run Twin Stick, but that option is out of reach for many.
Let’s take a look at what kind of Twin Sticks the series has been using throughout the years. While we will touch on some of the arcade controls, this is in no fashion and exhaustive look due to all the manufacturing and repair variations there are.
From left to right; Japanese cabinet, US P1 and US P2
There are a few types of cabinets the Twin Sticks first appeared in. The original Japanese cabinet from 1995 has more visual flavour to it and could be found as a twin unit. The European and American releases had the same, less flourished designed to them, but were often a set. A divider would be between the player’s views, with the American having a different design to the Japanese cabinet. There was also a Versus City cabinet, which was two Astro City units merged into back-to-back. Versus City cabinets were extensively used by Capcom as well and were used in fighting game tournaments. Each cabinet could be revised with a new game and hardware, and some titles would support game-specific messages at the top digital display too.Marvel VS Capcom was one of the games that used a Versus City cabinet, and from personal experience, I can attest Street Fighter IV did too. The two cabinet styles had different sticks, probably because a lot of used Virtual-On control panels that are found in the wild are sold as broken. Sega would revise these sticks. While images for the Virtual-On Versus City cabinets are rare, we do have images of the control panels for the first game and Oratorio Tangram. Sega made sure the cabinets were universal by designing a modular control panel, where operators could quickly switch the top out if a new game needed different controls.
There are some control panels sold on eBay, from which we can see that these are either European or American controls. The left one, Master Site, was often colored blue and was effectively Player One. Player Two was pink and got the name Slave Site. They are, however, more or less the same. There are only a few visual key differences, like the panel to the right, but otherwise even the control explanations are the same. The Operation decal is extremely to the point and showcases how deceptively easy the controls seem a first. These sticks were also very robustly built, partially why the Versus City cabinets probably used Sanwa parts rather than what we see below.
On the left, we have what was found in the Japanese Virtual-On cabinet, and on the right, we have what’s in a European cabinet. The difference is that the Japanese use Sanwa parts and have a square gate, while the European sticks have much more heft to them and have a round gate. There’s really no reason to assume the American market didn’t share the same build as the European stick.
These robust sticks were made to withstand thousands of clicks, though the switches themselves are more or less the same stock as you’d find in any contemporary arcade stick. The arcade cabinet is using a square gate form here, meaning you’d feel a round shape when twirling the levers around. These sticks would have stickers on the black steel housing, with some being labeled as Model 2B. This is a reference to the hardware revision used, as Virtual-On ran on Sega 2B CRX. These sticks would get tons of abuse, from people hitting them in anger, and food and drink being spilled on top of them. Looking at used sticks sold at auction sites, you often find them rusty.
The joystick itself is probably the least interesting in the whole build, as it is a two-halve plastic housing with a standard trigger and a thumb push button. The parts of the course are of “arcade quality,” meaning the components used are standard for the industry and should withstand tens of thousands of activations. In principle, making your very own Twin Stick is stupidly easy nowadays, as long as you don’t cinch on the components. It might look a bit like an old Quickshot joystick, but far sturdier and it has a better feel to it. Note that while all the Thumb buttons shown in this post are round, the original Virtual-On cabinet in the US used square buttons, often seen in Happ-styled flight sticks. Also note that before Sega unified the sticks themselves, the original sticks were far thicker. If these hardware differences interest you, you might want to check out what Oratorio Tangram‘s arcade Twin Sticks look like when disassembled.
The original Virtual-On could be converted to function like an Oratorio Tangram cabinet, and there have been Oratorio Tangram cabinets that were converted to play FORCE. The levers have changed slightly throughout the years, with Sega at some point apparently abandoning this original hefty built in favor of the lighter models used in Versus City cabinets. Arcade.Tokyo has a short post about his experience with one of these slimmer candy cabinets, where the aesthetics are very much on the lighter side.
All this means that after Sega decided to use these shorter build sticks for Versus City, the Twin Sticks would be built based on Sanwa arcade stick parts over the original unbranded ones. As Oratorio Tangram could be converted into FORCE cabinets, there weren’t any changes to the sticks themselves. As per Sega’s standardization, these control panels could be switched in and out from their generic cabinets. This would also mean that outside the original Virtual-On cabinet, the controls would make a square shape when moved around, not a circle, as that’s the standard restrictor plate found in generic arcade machines. It is the most commonly used restrictor plate to this day.
All in all, the hardware for the Twin Stick is not exactly groundbreaking. It’s very much in line with existing parts and products that were put to good use. Much like how arcade games always had to be downsized for the home market, so were numerous control methods and even controllers themselves. It took some time for common accessories like steering wheels and pedals to step up their game and match the quality of their arcade counterparts. That is not to say that all these are uniform. For whatever reason, there are tons of variations in how the arcade Twin Stick controls were built. Very few of these appear on the surface, but things like some controls have fewer structural support parts, and some sticks inside are squared off instead of being round rods. Without a doubt, some of these variations are results of operators fixing the controls, while some probably are just manufacturing changes for numerous reasons, like easier assembly with fewer components or finding cost-friendlier parts. This is why it would be effectively impossible to do an exhaustive and complete view on all the variations on Twin Stick controls in the arcades, hence this overall glance at them and their insides has to suffice.
The first home release of Cyber Trooper Virtual-On also delivered us the first Twin Stick controller for the Sega Saturn. This was slated to be released in the US at some point but never did. In the end, no Twin Stick controller would ever be released in the US or Europe, leaving arcades the only place where you could play the game with Twin Stick, or import one from Japan.
Released Dec. 03rd, 1996
The HSS-0154 SEGA SATURN TWIN-STICK controller promises to recreate the excitement of the arcade experience, but in reality, it really doesn’t. The Saturn Twin Stick uses the same overall housing as the Saturn HSS-0136 Virtua Stick, an Astro City arcade cabinet-themed arcade stick. The only difference is the top plate, which houses the graphics and the levers themselves, and the lack of multiple switches at the top front. While the Virtua Stick has two versions, one with ASCII switches and one with Seimitsu’s parts. The difference between these two is that Seimitsu is of higher quality and should last longer. With the Twin Stick being a later controller model, all variants seem to use the same ASCII parts as the levers’ actuators. However, the weak spot of the Saturn Twin Stick comes with its use of ASCII’s parts. While ASCII did manufacture decent controllers and parts in the mid-1990s, they are very much of lower quality compared to Sanwa or Seimitsu’s parts. Its sticks also have a tendency to rotate slightly, something that’s up to opinion whether or not that’s a good thing. Some find the twisting more comfortable, as the hands then to find a more natural position and angle, while others want stiff sticks like in the arcades.
Released in 1999 (9th of Dec.), the DC Twin Stick is still a popular version of the controller
While ASCII parts may not be arcade-quality per se, they are nevertheless acceptable for home use and do rank well into the medium-consumer grade. Arcade-quality is a more or less commonly used marketing tactic, something loads of enthusiasts like to mimic. While you will find some of these sticks in a bad overall shape, even mediocre condition sticks work remarkably well. A stock purchase from eBay can yield a controller that plays almost as well when it was new. ASCII parts may be maligned when it comes to the Saturn Virtua Stick, which has a healthy modding community behind it due to its aesthetics, the Saturn Twin Stick doesn’t suffer the same bad rep. In fact, between this and the more desired Dreamcast Twin Stick, the Saturn version has been reported to withstand more abuse and longer sessions than the Dreamcast version. Oratan.com offers a view on a modified Dreamcast Twin Stick, but sadly it does not list who manufactured what. Sega has recycled the sticks themselves from the Saturn version of the controller, so the overall feeling might be similar, and the orange/greys aesthetics might fit some better, but longevity is not the Dreamcast’s side.
The issue with Dreamcast Twin Stick lies in the initial run use of a worse quality spring, which returns a lever to its neutral position. This yellow-colored spring would apparently simply break. The later production run of the controller would change this to a sturdier green spring. While there are no true indicators of what parts were used to make the sticks, they are very close to Seimitsu’s LS-56-01 stick, though the stock spring from Seimitsu is a few millimeters shorter than what Sega put inside the Dreamcast Twin Stick. It’s a crapshoot what parts you get in the secondhand market if the seller is not willing to open their controller.
However, modifying these two controllers is rather easy, as all you really need to do is change actuators and use the longer shaft. You might not want to lose the decal that’s on the Saturn stick, as the screws holding the sticks in place are under it, but using denatured alcohol to loosen the adhesive’s bond is an easy to way to remove it. Alternatively, simply remove the decal and buy a new one from the Internet by using some printing service.
Certainly, the Saturn Twin Stick is a budget release in many ways. Objectively speaking, it has the lowest cost parts out of all the Twin Sticks and was designed for children’s hands. For example, the distance between the sticks is shorter in the Saturn Twin Stick than in any other. That’s probably partially because of budget and partially because it is using the same plastic housing as the Virtua Stick. Realistically speaking, the Saturn would be the last console children would play Virtual-On on.
With the slow death of the arcades, Virtual-On moved to the PlayStation 2 with MARS. For this fourth game, Sega did not manufacture a Twin Stick for the game. Instead, the player could choose between a standard controller-specific setup, or using the two thumb sticks to emulate Twin Stick controls. Using the thumb sticks takes time to learn, as you’re expected to use the shoulder buttons for the rest of the controls. The Trigger and thumb buttons are relegated to the Dualshock’s shoulder buttons, which get rather awkward, but will ultimately offer superior controls.
With the Xbox 360 getting Virtual-On MARS and Oratorio Tangram, and PlayStation 3 seeing a direct port of the first game to the PlayStation 3, HORI would step up and manufacture extremely limited amounts of Twin Sticks for the consoles for 2010. The two controllers are exactly the same, just with console-specific bells and whistles attached. There was even a version specifically made for FORCE, which amounts to having an extra decal on the controller.
The issue with either of these controllers for the customers has been their price. HORI fetched a premium sum for these controllers, about 30 000 yen, and aftermarket sellers often ask for even higher prices. Aesthetically they are the most mature, but the least fitting for the franchise. These replicate the original arcade setup with the Start button in the middle, but for the first time, all the face action buttons on the standard controller have been added at the top front. Previously console Twin Sticks have managed to achieve the controls by using combinations of buttons to initiate an action, but with these HORI controllers, the levers are effectively the thumb sticks with shoulder buttons on them. These Twin Sticks had a small surge in demand after it was confirmed they’d work with the Masterpiece collection on the PlayStation 4. These controllers have been reported to be solid, and if HORI’s track record with their controllers since the 1980s is anything to go by, they probably are worth the money. It’s probable they were built on HORI’s expertise from their arcade stick side of the business and decided to use the more high-end consumer range parts.
A Twitter user, apply named VOTwinstick, posted a fully disassembled view of the lever assembly, which should be more or less the same as what the games have been using ever since Versus City cabinets adopted the Sanwa parts. The photo may be lacking the main PCB itself with the switches, but the parts that make up the rest of the stick are easily visible. Japanese blog Haphazard Blog (the author uses a temporary name of Alan Smithee) also contains a post about modifying HORI’s EX Twin Stick with Semitsu LSX-57 lever. The photos are tiny, but the overall setup hasn’t changed since the first consumer Twin Stick for the Saturn.
The Masterpiece collection hitting the PlayStation 4 was a piece of massive news for the fans. A Certain Magical Virtual-On had resorted to completely redesigning the controls for the DualShock, and with that tons of intricacies and tactics were lost. This is due to the revised controls themselves being a modern interpretation of the Twin Stick controls and everything that comes with assisted controlling. Tons of tactics and methods were simply locked out. Hori didn’t produce Twin Sticks for this round, but a lesser-known gaming peripheral company named Tanita did. They’ve promoted themselves as a company for healthier gaming, and their first big project was the Tanita Twin Stick.
Rather than track the original home controllers’ designs, Tanita chose to invoke the wider design of the arcade panels
The VDC-18-c 18 Type Control Device “Twin Stick” was first revealed at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. The prototype controller wasn’t all that attractive and its levers were of lower stock quality. However, the finalized limited production controller rolled out in 2020 (that you could order through Sanwadenshi official shop for60 500 yen) ditches the previous iterations’ aesthetics and conventions. Now much wider and wholly made out of metal, the Tanita Twin Stick has made waves among the fans on how good the controller has been. It’s a Sanwa product at heart, using Sanwa sticks and buttons. Tanita could afford to manufacture two editions of this stick. The first was a crowdfunded version, which was sent to initial backers first. The second edition was a limited mass-production version, in which Tanita had managed to streamline some of the processes. However, it still ended up costing more than the crowdfunded version, hence the 60k yen price tag. This stick is currently the only way to play A Certain Magical Virtual-On under a Twin Stick setup, unless you want to use the thumb sticks as the Twin Sticks. This 440€ controller is currently the most expensive Twin Stick, and most likely one of the last iterations Twin Stick will see commercially.
The Twin Stick makes and breaks Virtual-On. However, due to all the variations in how Twin Sticks have been built throughout the years, be it in the arcades or at home, there is no one true setup. Some of these have been built light and moving the levers happens quickly and responds well to twitchy movements. At the opposite end, you have the European/American arcade controls, which are built like tank controls. To many whatever the arcades provide is the best, the only option. For others, they can make do with whatever they find more preferable for a variety of reasons, and we can always build better than what has been in the arcades. There still is a healthy albeit small scene of people enthusiastically building their own Twin Stick controllers by using whatever applicable flight yokes they might find to their liking and hacking the controller together from various cheap gamepads and whatnot. Nowadays, it’s become ever easier to make yourself one with little to no knowledge of things like soldering or electronics in general, and thus having yourself a relatively cheap but equally functional Twin Stick, with some caveats, is well within your grasp.
Next; A guide to making a PS4 and PC compatible Twin Stick
When I wrote how the Sakura Wars had hard time landing in the Western world, I wasn’t sure if the series would still hit the Western shores with its soft reboot title. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love didn’t exactly perform well and had the usual NISA quality bug filtering. Wii version lacked the original language option altogether. Outside SEGA fans and importers, the series was mostly known for its animated entries. Interestingly, for a long time American and European Sakura Wars fans were overtaken by the people who were familiar with the franchise from these animations, not from their source material. I recommend reading how much an uphill battle Cherry Blossom Wars has in the West from the post linked earlier, I’d rather not repeat myself too much.
Well, at least it is hitting America on April 28th at a first glance. Despite this being cited as a world wide release date, none of my usual European sellers, not even local ones, are even listing it. At least the official SEGA of Europe is listing it for 28.04.2020 release. Though nothing can be pre-ordered yet, and the pre-order edition is very lacklustre; reversible box sleeve and a sticker set. For a high calibre game, one of SEGA’s most prestige titles, this seems rather lacklustre try. Where’s the music CD and other bells and whistles something like Yakuza gets? SEGA knows the game has an uphill battle. Old-school mecha fans will probably pick this up for it being a Sakura Wars game, franchise’s fans probably already imported the title from Japan and are buying it just to support the title, and the rest of the audience has to be convinced by the game’s play and visuals. It’s a tough battle for the PR department.
SEGA’s websites somehow never look all that exciting.
Sakura Wars has high production values, that much can be said. The models look decent enough, though they don’t exactly convey Tite Kubo’s character designs as well as they could, but there’s spirit in there. They’re as animated as you could expect from team that said they’ve taken lessons from the Yakuza games. From what we could see from the demo and numerous game play videos, many elements are very similar in execution, from how camera moves and characters interact. There are lots of interactive elements and small mini-game events that play out throughout the game. The game’s, the franchise’s, main delivery however is in its Dramatic storytelling. That’s where all the interactive mini-games are spread around, as the player is expected to decide via the LIPS system how to talk or act. Sometimes it’s to choose a simple answer, sometimes you have to limit how much you you want to peak on someone. The Yakuza series is very contemporary and managed to break some cultural walls, but in all earnest, it is an easier series to approach just from visual point of view.
Usual LIPS scene. You could think options as Right, Wrong and Joke, all resulting in a different reaction. Which option is which is never in the same place for different interactions. You could let let the timer run out too.
The demo’s emphasize is on the adventure and interaction portion of the game. You’re expected to be invested into the story and the characters enough for multiple playthroughs in order to see all the different outcomes. This is is effectively the dating simulation aspect of the game, but rather than the game waiting for you to give an answer, waiting around is an answer in itself. Whether or not this is to your liking, it is essentially the main course of the game. Sakura Wars’ action stages look nice, but sadly have the same floaty and weightless feeling to them as the Sonic games the engine was lifted from. Attacks carry no real impact and camera positioning is not exactly user-friendly. A game like this, especially from an experienced team and big name franchise, should have far more polish and engaging action. The American and European audiences have been less enthusiastic about relationship simulation games than the Japanese, and while they’ve gained more audience as the time has gone by, the action would still be the more attractive element for the general audiences.
Famitsu’s 33/40 might be a spot on review for the game in Japan, with French Jeuxvideos scoring it at 13/20. If these are anything to go by, with the addition that the game’s sales dropped from second place to fifteenth after one week (latest Pokémon held the top spot), the gut feeling I have is that this game will be relegated to a very niche audience, which is partially already built into the fandom. Minimising costs is sensible, albeit always gives off a feeling that the publishing company doesn’t exactly trust the product. No English voice acting is mostly a cost-cutting method, as recording all the needed voices would add a lot to the end total production costs. However, it would have expanded the possible audience in the English speaking countries. We can carefully assume that the review scores will reflect the the aforementioned all the while giving it a respectful effort marking.
Maybe SEGA hopes to replicate success of Yakuza by slowly introducing this new action oriented Sakura Wars to the rest of the world and polishing it with each entry. However, the franchise’s relaunch in Japan first has to be a success in itself and we’re far from the point where we can safely say anything concrete. The reason I wanted to draw attention to sellers not listing the game, and me even wondering if the game was coming out on the stated date, is because the PR has been lacklustre. My small inquiry to a store stated that they wouldn’t know if they’d stock it, that a new and untested franchise like this probably won’t sell too much at full price. It’s not all doom and gloom. The word on the street is pushing the game forwards and positive word of mouth is the best thing this game could have going for it. I hope that this won’t be one-time game, that SGEA will put effort to expand from the niche by not only introducing new elements to the play, perhaps expanding the action portions by re-introducing series’ tactical aspects back. A niche and cult audience is a great a place to start, especially you already have a basis to stand on, but all those have to made to be worth something. SEGA needs that general audience to make Sakura Wars a success, but whether or not they’ll keep striking the iron while it’s still hot has to be left open. Well, if all else fails, they always could do a series compilation and re-release the previous games that way.
So Sega and Forever Entertainment are doing Panzer Dragoon: Remake. No, I haven’t heard of this Polish developer either, but apparently they’ve made some Teddy Floppy Ear games and that’s pretty great. Teddy’s pretty good children’s franchise. As usual, doesn’t really matter who makes what as long as the end result is fine and dandy, but reading the official announcement for the remake, I’m not entirely convinced. Their claim that The entire Panzer Dragoon series has been repeatedly remade and released on many platforms is dubious at best and completely incorrect at worst. The original Panzer Dragoon has been released and remade few times around, mostly based on its PC port, because Sega has lost all Saturn source codes. No, not just theirs, all of them. They wanted to house all of them and then lost them all when their company was moving offices, meaning no Saturn game can ever get a port without reverse engineering the machine and getting the data out from the published discs. This means all Saturn games’ ports that are around, like Princess Crown‘s PSP port, is running on emulation, and considering emulating the Saturn accurately is one helluva task that’s still a far cry form the original, they’re pretty bad ports. Xbox One being backwards compatible with Panzer Dragoon Orta is not it being re-released or should be considered as a franchise relaunch either. When your initial announcement for a remake is incorrect about the nature of the series like this, it makes you question whether or not they’re familiar with the series, or whether or not they have their priorities right. I asked Forever Entertainment about that lil’ detail just to see what they’d respond, but seeing I’m just a gnatshit small blogger among an ocean of others, I doubt I’ll get a response. [edit] They did respond, replying that they meant the series overall is available on multiple platforms with remakes because the first game has ports and that Sega Ages version. I always forget that single entry in a series makes the whole series available on a platform when it comes to things like this, rather than a single entry.
The new version of the game will be characterized by a completely new graphics compatible with today’s standards and several modifications of the game, making it more attractive to modern players, while remaining faithful to the original in terms of story. This is more than expected. As said, the original Saturn sourcecode are lost, so the PlayStation 2 Sega Ages release is most likely based on the PC version, with Orta having the PC version as one of its unlockables. Any sensible company would just do a straight up remake rather than try to being reverse engineering the original games, but this is where we hit the snag with that sentence, making it more attractive to modern players, while remaining faithful to the original in terms of story. Forever aren’t elaborating what modifications they’re making to the core gameplay. Considering Panzer Dragoon as a series stands on its own in regards of gameplay, the only true modification needed to make would be polishing the first game’s mechanics to match that of Zwei’s and Orta‘s. Panzer Dragoon games have an arcade heart at their core, which is a major factor in their charm and success. Certainly, Panzer Dragoon Saga is a role playing game, but it was devised as one from the get go rather than modifying an existing title. It’s useless to try and guess what this means at this point, but seeing most remakes of this kind and with this sentencing don’t have the best track record out there, it does raise some worries.
Especially when their main concern seems to be staying true to the story. Sure, Panzer Dragoon‘s post-apocalyptic setting with dragons as biological weapons and lost-world technology is pretty neat in all, but saying you want to stay true to the story is is like buying chocolate for wrapper rather than for the taste. Just like Virtual-On, the story’s incidental at best, an overall framing device for the great gameplay which still stands today. Staying true to the story is easy, but staying true to the gameplay and mechanics, especially considering the first one is sparser compared to Zwei and Orta, is far more challenging. With the lack of sourcecode the results can become very much a different beast, as we saw with the Crash Bandicoot remake collection, where applying the third game’s physics across the board made the first two games very different kind of games to play thanks to the stage geometry still being accurate to the originals. Jumps you used to be able to make easily now are now more challenging due to this, and can lead into easy deaths. Not that making extra lives in the game is hard or anything, but shows how little concern the developers ultimately had this these little things that majorly affect the games’ play.
All fans of the series, and long time players alike, are probably asking the same thing in their heads; please stay true to the game’s play. The concern of remakes mangling and dumbing down the games’ play for modern players is relevant. It shows the lack of trust towards the customers, especially towards their ‘modern’ audience. Consumer born in this millennium were born and raised during a retro game boom and are far more than capable at handling games of their nature. Hell, despite so many of us who have been playing games for three decades or more, we’re still part of that modern player group. What is even the division between a modern and older player? Age certainly does not define it. This is a start of poor customer service experience I tell you.
Maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic. The announcement naturally can’t expand on anything because they’ve got jackshit to showcase. The announcement is standard PR speech aiming to appease different sections, but it seems wholly amateurish. These are the same concerns everyone has towards every remake that has been coming out, and truth to be told, remakes overall don’t tend to have all that great track record, especially when there are explicit changes to the game’s play. Granted, we don’t know what modifications there are going to be in Panzer Dragoon: Remake, but all we can hope is that they amount polishing the originals further without much additions or removals. A better name for the remake compilation would be nice as well, but I’m sure the current one is just a placeholder and they’ll come up something far more impressive that suits the series’ nature.
All we really can do is sit tight and wait for proper information to come forth. No use to speculate too much on nothing.
So after couple of decades of failed starts, concepts thrown around and DMCA’d fan titles, Streets of Rage 4 is a thing that’s coming out. Finally, might I add. Sega and Streets of Rage fans, rejoice.
I have to say, these redesigns are pretty damn nice
There are three companies involved with the game, outside Sega as the licensee; Lizardcube, who were in charge of the recent Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap; Guard Crush Games who have a history with beat-em-ups (or belt-scrolling action games if you’re Japanese) like Streets of Fury; Dotemu, who function as a publisher. Lizardcube is in charge of graphics, while Guard Crush Games handles the programming, though Dotemu has the handle on game design. This is pretty nice package, as Lizardcube has a pretty nice, French comics style that fits so many of these older titles’ revival, and Guard Crush Games seems to have a handle on programming just fine. Y’know, the hardest part of making a game.
I’m probably going to make a comparative post regarding the character designs, because both Axel and Blaze got a real nice new lick of paint.
There is exactly two things this game needs to do in order to be accepted by long time fans and be at least a relative hit with the general audience; faithfully replicate the Streets of Rage formula, and expand on it. This is effectively what Sonic Mania did, and it has been hailed as the best Sonic the Hedhehog game to date, which isn’t too hard to accept.
Which raises the question; did Sonic Mania‘s success kick this title off the ground? Both it and the new Wonder Boy were well received and raised new interest in certain section of older titles. Both of them function as data to further the idea putting the money and effort to realise a Streets of Rage title in its proper 2D mould rather than take the Final Fight route with Streetwise. After all, game genres don’t just die because new technology makes new genres possible with extra dimensions or additional gimmicks like VR. Despite how 90’s marketing wants you to believe, 2D hasn’t gone anywhere at any point. Sure, you the newfangled thing always gets pushed, but you can’t deny the customers the things they want. Just look at how well 2D Mario sells over 3D titles. That’s another dead horse I need to stop kicking.
All this data of revival games doing at least decently well is most probable reason Streets of Rage 4 got greenlit. Add Mega Man 11‘s upcoming release to the mix and we’re entering an interesting era, where old franchises are getting new releases in more budget range, but with none of the lacking elements. Hopefully more companies realise this; you don’t need AAA budget to make great damn games. Pretty much all of these classic franchises could be revived and developed at a fraction of the cost with modern tools. Easier to make profits. The only real problem is to deliver a wanted product, which didn’t really happen with the New SMB series after the first few entries. Once a franchise is revived, it needs to move forwards. Mega Man 10 failed in this term by simply being same thing again. We now have three Mega Man 2 games and that’s two too much.
Sega of course wouldn’t develop this themselves. They don’t care about the IP. Sega hasn’t given two shits about Streets of Rage since the mid-90’s, when they essentially gave the middle finger to the Western consumers. Eternal Champions used to be a big thing, but then Sega just neutered it. You can’t treat Japanese, American and European markets the same. Hell, you have to treat Europe as multiple market zones if you want to do it right. This was clear how Sega’s tactics with the Genesis in the US region only kicked off after the US branch pushed through their tactics of including a game with the console and marketing Sonic the Hedgehog their own way. If most of the data is to be believed, Sonic‘s been the most popular in the US. Sadly, Sega of Japan’s management killed all the motion their American and European sections had going on, effectively beginning their own downfall from grace. Westerners do classic Sega better than Sega themselves.
Streets of Rage 4 probably won’t be as large a success as Sonic Mania. If the game gets a physical release afterwards its initial digital showcase, we can deem it successful enough. If it gets a physical release from the very beginning, even if it was a Limited Run title, then the developers and publisher have boatloads of trust towards their targeted consumers. There are enough Sega fans that would purchase this title in an instant.
While Sonic Mania was clearly an international title, a game that didn’t have any specific region in mind, the same can’t be said about Streets of Rage 4. Both Guard Crush Games and Lizardcube are European companies, and that flavours oozes through in a very positive manner. Hell, even Dotemu is based on France. I hope they shower more than the average French. However, that probably will rub some people off, as Streets of Rage originally had a very American atmosphere to it, especially considering it was inspired partially by Streets of Fire. Hell, Blaze’s design is essentially Ellen Aim with more streetwise to her. The bits about Sega not giving a damn about the IP still stands, and their actions towards Western markets have been changing only during the last years. The Yakuza franchise is a good line to follow modern Sega in this. English dubbing usually drives sales, but there are titles where this isn’t case. Yakuza dropped this in favour of cheaper releases and simply because the fans didn’t like it. Despite Sega censoring and removing elements from some of the games, the audience kept growing. Despite this, none of the spin-offs outside the zombie romp got localised. Now that the Western audience has grown far greater, Sega’s taken the series’ position in the market into notion with better releases, and now is even considering publishing further remasters and spin-offs in the Overseas regions. Sega of Japan is slowly but surely taking a notion of Western markets.
If we’re going to go down this path, it’s relatively easy to see Sega considering the wants and needs of the Western markets to some extent. The IPs they’ve been giving up and ignoring still have a strong consumer base with nothing to fill that niche. A high quality title here and there goes long way in making profits and keeping your fans happy. I would say Altered Beast and Golden Axe could be next on the list of revivals, but seeing how terrible their last titles were, there’d be a lot of work to fix those damages in the eyes of Sega themselves.
Yakuza 6 is out and its After Hours Premium Edition came with whisky glasses. The Internet’s full of reviews of the box already and what’s inside, most of which is a disappointment, I tell you. The book was absolutely terrible in quality, bound too early, causing the papers to be wrinkled and even glued together due to wet ink. Not worth your time or money. Unless if you want whisky glasses, maybe.
This review will go through all three aspects of the set; the coasters, the rocks and the glasses.
The coasters are pretty terrible. They may have a cork bottom, but each layer that goes to the top has low-quality adhesive, which means they’ll peel off pretty soon if they’re in-use. It’d be almost better to allow them to peel off, then re-layer them back with some proper adhesive. You get what you see above, which is jack shit. With that done, let’s move unto the rocks.
The rocks are honestly the most interesting bit of this set, mostly because it allows me to go on a tangent a bit later on. Anyway, each facet is 20.25 mm in width and length (that’s 0.797 inches). These are, of course, quick measurements with a caliper, and you’d probably get slightly different results with your pieces due to tolerances.
The set comes with two pieces, one for each glass. The material is black soap stone, meaning the hardness is around Mohs 2 and up. Depending how soapstone is treated, it can go up to 6.5 at best, but without knowing what soapstone this is and from where, it’s impossible to say what’s the exact hardness. Nevertheless, these will scratch rather easy, so treat them right and with a careful touch. Hardness does not equal toughness, which is why we get laughable stuff like Mohs 15 shield in Destroyer Classes in Muv-Luv Alternative, which just means they’re really, really hard to scratch, but that does not mean they’re tough. Generally, the harder something is, the more fragile it is.
Before taking them into use, I’d recommend washing them with a neutral soap and rinsing them in as hot water as possible, then quickly wrap in a towel. Due to amount of talc and the structure of soapstone, the hot water will evaporate due to the stone’s hotness and its own heat, drying the soapstone in a second. Works with any soapstone item out there, give it a go.
Anyway, the stones don’t really work. They’re too small to actually make a proper difference. Soapstone is great at keeping temperature, which is why they generally make good heat or cold plates. They do keep chilled whisky chilled slightly longer than usual, but against room temperature whisky the stones do jack shit. Waste of stone. Even the sandblasting is just skin deep. Considering how large the glasses are, the stones should’ve been at least twice as large with twice as deep sandblasting. Surely the glasses will be the set saver, right?
Oh for fuck’s sake
The thing I expect from a box that says Premium on the label is premium. What I’m getting is two-dollar custom prints on a mid-grade glass with a printed surface instead of sandblasted. Kiryu’s dragon should have been laser printed unto to the surface at least, but a print? That’s just lazy, and just like with the coasters, the print will wear off in use. In time for sure, but this is really a bad first impression.
Well, it doesn’t help that the two glasses are not of same quality. You’d expect these glasses to be relatively straight, but one of the two have slightly collapsed surface and has a slight wave-like pattern towards the bottom, meaning it’ll screw with the flow of spirit. Not much mind you, but at this point Sega’s quality control and whoever was in lead with this package has completely lost me. There’s nothing premium in this package. Deli, whatever company you are, you should’ve convinced Sega to put more effort in this.
That said, Yakuza 6‘s glasses can at least hold more spirit than the one I bought from Scotland years back, or the Monster Hunter one I got from the Netherlands. I’m not saying I’ve been drinking before writing this post, but I have before writing. Gotta test the glasses with more than one spirit, y’know. It’s pretty good size for a milk glass as well, and it’s not too fragile. Its still cheap glass, can’t get around that.
As you probably surmised, the whole After Hours edition of Yakuza 6 is not up to the usual premium standards. The game’s damn solid and worth your time, but going above the standard edition is not worth it.
In the early 2000’s, Sega’s plan was to deliver cheaper and more effective arcade hardware for the Japanese market, which of few would see worldwide releases. NAOMI 2 was given the emphasize over the Hikaru, which was phased out in 2002. NAOMI 2 would last to 2008, with Atomiswave, a Sammy developed NAOMI derivative, running by its side. Around the same time in 2001 Sega developed the Triforce with Nintendo and Namco, based on Nintendo’s GameCube. Two years later, Sega would release Chihiro to the arcades, based on Microsoft’s Xbox. All these arcade machines ran different games that Sega was directly involved and developed, like NAOMI 2’s Virtua Fighter 4 series, Triforce running AM2 developed F-Zero AX, Atomiswave running many fishing and fighting games Sega was part developer and publisher, and Chihiro most known for OutRun 2 and House of the Dead III due to their Xbox ports. Later in the 2000’s, Sega’s arcade hardware would be more or less completely home media derivative, based on normal PC architecture, making some of the modern games running on a modified Windows. However, there was no Virtual-On, on any of these systems.
With Virtual-On FORCE generally receiving lukewarm acceptance from the overall audience, regarding Oratorio Tangram the superior game, Hitmaker would develop a console-only sequel for the PlayStation 2; Virtual-On MARZ.
Virtual-On was a relative success for its time. It saw most of its popularity in Japan due to larger availability of arcades and the Saturn doing better there than anywhere else. For America however, the success was much more limited. Less arcade machines to go around and Saturn’s lukewarm success were the main reasons. The PC version, much like other Sega’s PC releases, was less emphasized over their own console’s port. This lesser success seemed to convince Sega’s European section not to release the Twin Stick controller in the region. Despite how the game is considered a sort of landmark for Sega and mecha games overall among fans, that’s all mostly in retrospect. Its impact didn’t exactly topple any towers, and ultimately met similar niche status as Sega’s other Saturn seller title, Panzer Dragoon.
The decline of arcades, and Sega’s mismanagement of their hardware side (especially during Mega Drive’s later years and Saturn overall) limited Sega’s business success overall, with Sony taking their place as Nintendo’s main rival with the PlayStation. That is not to say that Virtual-On ended up being some sort of sales catastrophe, as Japanese arcade goers took the series close to their hearts. This being Sega, they gave more emphasis on this fact rather than considering the franchise’s world wide success.
Despite Sega Model 2 being a success on its own rights, Sega was always pushing their arcade hardware further. If Nintendo has an obsession to introduce 3D to home hardware, then Sega had an obsession to push the 3D hardware at arcades. Hang-On, OutRun and Space Harrier are all examples of 80’s Sega finding ways around to introduce 3D-like effect to their games, and you could even argue that Sega’s teams became master of sprite scaling in this fashion.
Sega didn’t cut much corners with their arcade hardware, and Sega Model 3 supports this approach, as it was the most powerful arcade system board of its era. As Sega’s last piece produced by their partnership with Lockheed Martin, it contained graphical hardware designed by Real3D and Mitsubishi, which was a spin-off company from Lockheed Martin. However, Real3D only saw success with Sega, and their partnership with Intel and SGI ended up as market failure, and in the end was sold completely to Intel in 1999 due to changed arcade markets.
The reason why Mitsubishi was brought into the partnership was Real3D had a series of delays with their GPU. Originally, the Model 3 was supposed to be released in 1995, but had to be pushed back to 1996, with Yu Suzuki claiming it would deliver the best 3D graphics thus far.
This post is first in a series of five. You can access all posts in Robot Related Section linked above, or move between sequential post at their beginning and end
Virtual-On is one of Sega’s hallmark game franchises, developed by Sega’s AM3 department. It had everything the arcades required in 1996; 3D graphics that you wouldn’t see at home, unique controls, flashy graphics and fast paced gameplay. When most of the 3D mecha combat games on the market aimed for slow and emphasized on realistic simulation, like Shattered Metal or Mech Warrior 2,Virtual-On hit the arcades with sharp, colourful 3D models in fast paced third-person action with (relatively) easy controls. This is perhaps the best example of East VS. West mentality when it comes to giant robots. Even in arcades, among other blooming 3D games, Virtual-On stood apart with its excellent presentation and unrelenting game play.
I’m sure some of you are already completely tired of hearing people telling you how good Sonic Mania is. Despite all its faults and recycled content from Mega Drive Sonic games, it still ends up being the best game in the franchise. It’s a sort of The Best of Sonic, if you will. It’s essentially a game the fans, and people at large, have been waiting for since Sonic 3 and Knuckles came out.
There have been pretty good 2D Sonic games since then. Sonic Advance games were overall enjoyable games to play, although their stage design and some of the physics were off. Sonic Rush games on the other hand nothing but the speed, and this was evident in rather lacklustre stage design again with the speed Boost gimmick being the main culprit. Nevertheless, still pretty good time. Just not as good as the Mega Drive games. That’s where we always go back, because those three (or four, depends how you want to count) games were in many ways the pinnacle of the series in the eyes of fans, sales and cultural impact. Sonic made its name on the Mega Drive.
Sadly, the Sonic titles are one of the worst sufferers of creators wanting something new and grand, something that doesn’t meet the expectations of the paying consumer. Sonic Adventure had a heavy emphasize on the story, something that peaked with Sonic ’06. I’ll tell you how to weed out the bad Sonic games from the good ones; the bad ones put the story to the front of things. Sonic‘s gameplay is hard, if not impossible, to transfer to 3D. They’ve been trying to do it for some two decades now, and even Sonic Generations, a game that was hailed as the first good Sonic game in a long time, felt off with everything done in 3D. Sonic 4 was just terrible.
The franchise really is a case study of creators losing sight what made their product wanted and revered. One could even go far enough to say that Sonic Team and Sega as a whole can’t do classic Sonic anymore, and have had no intention of replicating the Mega Drive games in any fashion. Sonic Generations could’ve been one, but physics clearly weren’t replicated accurately.
It’s not much of a surprise to see Sega hiring fans to create a 25th anniversary game then. Fans, who have showcased themselves as capable in replicated the mould that made the Sonic franchise what it used to be. To say that the fans knew better than Sega would not be exaggeration. However, Sega did screw up the game by not giving it a proper physical release, and even the limited edition package comes with a digital download code only. I’m guessing they’re banking on Sonic Forces, which will probably end up lesser of the two games. The simple fact that its colour palette is dry and consists of black, red and beige is a harsh contrast to Sonic Mania‘s bright blue red and yellow.
Sonic the Hedgehog as a brand suffers from Sega overusing nostalgia mixed with whatever hell they’re trying to do in their latest games. Much like how Super Mario can exist in two different iterations at the same time, modern 3D Sonic could exist with classic 2D games. The biggest misstep of Sonic Mania is that it adhered to old stages, albeit remixing them with new areas and secrets. Sega’s no stranger to this, as their obsession of pushing out the Western teams at the end of Mega Drive’s era.
Nintendo is a stark contrast to this. While Nintendo has given some of their most significant IPs to outside companies to work with, like Retro Studios’ Metroid Prime, their attitude towards them and their fans is cold at best. Metroid Other M supposedly removed the Prime series from the canon, though why that should matter isn’t the point. The point is that Sakamoto himself didn’t deem the Prime series good enough. Other M and the upcoming Metroid II remake are the worst entries in the series and all that is on Sakamoto.
Nintendo is also infamous for their Cease and Desist letters to fans, like with the Another Metroid 2 Remake. Nintendo has had hard time celebrating their fans works or even allowed legally sound fan-products to be made. While they are required to protect their intellectual properties, this has never been good PR for them. Of course, you don’t want to have the same situation Paramount/CBS had with Star Trek Axanar, though it’s no secret Axanar challenged the official Trek stuff, and the team behind Axanar essentially broke the rules by making money off of their piece. There’s always the question why wouldn’t you want to make something original and new if you’re able to design and code a whole new game.
Sonic Mania is essentially the New Super Mario Bros. of the franchise. Much like with 2D Mario, classic Sonic is something people have been wanting for ages. However, whether or not this is just a one-hit-wonder or if Sega sees some sense and continues on developing and releasing more of these classic games is still open. However, they should learn from the failures of NSMB series and improve upon the concept and allow the games to stand up more and give them full fledged release status. Nostalgia is a delicate thing, and as said, Sega’s been overusing it already. Pushing the stage designs and sprite graphics to Saturn level next while still keeping with the style of Sonic Mania might be a natural step. Sonic Mania, as an anniversary game, does things right and manages to squeeze in twists that you’d never see in an equivalent Nintendo game.
A game of Puyo Po– I mean Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine as a Boss Battle in Chemical Plant Zone? This is the right stuff right there
Sega could do right with the rest of their franchises and seek out the right people to work on them in a similar manner. There are development houses that would love to give, for example, Streets of Rage a similar best-of treatment. The iron is now red hot, it’s time for Sega to hammer it.
Much like with other modern technology, we’ve managed to squeeze more into smaller space. The laptops or pads we have nowadays are engineered to a point that barely anyone can open up their cases and fix them without further studying on the subject. Game consoles aren’t any different, though the PlayStation 4 is almost as big as the original Xbox. It wasn’t until we began to have consoles that began to show easily damaged sections in the mainline consoles. While the PlayStation could take some hefty damage (personal experience tells me it can survive a trip in a lake), the PlayStation 2 could be damaged by having enough weight at the wrong spot. This was the time when PCBs started to become thinner and more packed up with components downsizing with almost each year. You could lob a NES or SNES outside a window have it working with a cracked case, and the same really for the PlayStation as well. Personal experience, don’t ask. PlayStation 2 however was the first truly delicate piece of hardware that in the end begun to have issues with reading the discs. Sometimes from the very beginning.
Goddamn, this video came out sometime early 2000’s. Takes me back
Nintendo’s consoles usually have been durable, especially their handheld consoles. There has even been discussion how Iwata drove the DS’ tech team mad by demanding the console to be able to withstand multiple drops from a standard height.
However, the more we pack delicate technology in a smaller place, the more easy it is to break it. While most people fellate companies over the hardware, it’s uncommon to see anyone appreciate the design and intentions of the design. The PSP was applauded for its higher raw power over the DS, and while it was snazzy to have in your hands, it was a delicate piece of hardware that could break down very easily. The console wasn’t meant for everybody, and much like how SEGA used to sell Mega Drive for more mature gamers, SONY’s western branches clearly had the more adult audience in mind. The PSP really couldn’t take much damage, I’ve had to fix a few. The same applies to the Vita to some extent, thought the Vita seems to be able to take a beating or two more than its elder sibling.
The Switch has been out only for a while, but it’s already showcasing very erratic behaviour. Some have it going completely mad in sound department, some consoles refuse to launch games, connection issues with the controllers, and the screen’s been scratched by the dock itself. I saw the dock scratching issue the very moment the whole thing was revealed (it had no guiding rails to keep the screen clear), but having a plastic screen is a necessity. Why wouldn’t you want to have a glass screen? They’re so much better! The reason for this is safety and durability design. See, when you have a plastic screen, the console can dissipate a fall impact by wobbling around rather move the energy directly into rigid parts, destroying them. The very reason your phone’s screen shatters so easily is because it can’t bent, and the energy from the is released by shattering. It’s a design decision between durability and looks.
To sidetrack a bit, this really applies to Muv-Luv‘s BETA as well. The Destoyer-Class has a shield hardness of Mohs-15, but because that’s hardness topping that of a diamond, their shields should shatter when shot at. They don’t flex when hit due to their hardness. Mohs scale is for mineral hardness after all and should never be applied outside jewellery.
Newly borked devices is nothing new, either. The 360 had firmware issues since day one, and the infamous Red Ring of Death haunted machines every which way. Hell, the 360 may be a good example overall how to fuck your console from time to time, as some of my friends have told me their 360 crapped out because of an update. For better or worse, my 360 hasn’t crapped out yet.
No modern console is truly finished at launch. Firmware and software issues are relevant and will be patched out at a later date. This is largely due to modern technology. A Mega Drive never needed firmware patches, because it was less a computer than the modern machines. Whatever problems with the firmware Switch has now will be patched at a later date. However, the hardware and design problems are harder to fix, and if Nintendo is anything to go by, they may revise some of the designs in later production versions.
Though there really isn’t any good excuses to use paint coating that peels off with stickers. That’s just terrible. Who puts stickers on their consoles any more? You’d be surprised.
The first wave of adopters will always have to go through the same pains with modern technology. New smart phones and tablets suffer from firmware issues to the point of most common consumers willingly buying last year’s model in order to get a properly functioning device. The price has already dropped at that point too. Apple has been infamous with some of their smart devices’ firmware problems, and sometimes they were removing basic utilities from the hardware alone. Nobody really expected iPhone 7 not to have a headphone jack.
The question some have asked whether or not it’s worth buying a game console, or any modern smart device or computer component for the matter, if they require multiple updates months later down the line? We can’t see into the future, and it’s hard to say what device will go through a harsh update cycle. Essentially, you’ll need to look into history of a company and make a decision based on that. Just trusting that a company will update broken parts is strongly not recommended.
I guess releasing things partially unfinished and patching them up is an industry standard practice. Games get patched to hell and back, and while this isn’t much new for PC side of business, it’s one of those things that show how little of classic console business is in modern consoles. Not all games get patched though, even when they have console destroying bugs in them. NIS America’s track record with localised games that supposedly lock permanently and prevent you from finishing the game, break your console or generally have terrible translation would a perfect chance to use these patches to fix these issues. However, unlike with consoles and other devices, game developers can ignore these problems as the purchase has already been made and they probably are banking on hardcore fans.
Not that any product is final when it’s released. All products are good enough when released, but that good enough has seen a serious inflation with time.
In the wake of good news from the good ol’s Sega, they seems to be intending to further promote Yakuza in the US by doing a reprint run of the first four games. Reruns are good and bad news to collectors. Those who misses the original run can pick up these sort of games and enjoy them good as new. Then there are those who would hoard them for future sales who buy them amass. Scalpers, if you were to use the bad tongue.
The game aftermarket is bloody battle, and certain fields are largely controlled by a group of individuals. There are those who collect games in mint condition to use in the future as the basis for higher priced sales. It’s not an unknown tactic to buy the market empty of loose cartridges to eliminate competition, thus causing a shortage of supply to already supply diminished market.
Not that there isn’t anything wrong in that in itself. It’s the buyer who is stupid enough to pay extraordinary prices.
You’re asking how much now?
I picked up Battle Mania Daiginjou for some 200€ some years ago, and that was a stupidly high price. A reprint of the game would in place, but a reprint to a dead console like this is less than likely. But Aalt, why would you repress PS2 games then? Because pressing DVD is so much cheaper than mass producing plastic shells and PCBs to run a cartridge based games. As a side note, we’ll get back to this series on a later date in form of a review, and I’ll be revising Daiginjou‘s old review.
Some people were guessing that digital redistribution of games would bring down old games’ prices. Either it had no effect on the aftermarket or raised prices further. In principle, there are more games available now than ever before in digital format for consumers. However, the core collectors who want the real deal, so to speak, are more or less willing to dish out the dosh for whatever. That’s pretty unhealthy, but such is the nature of a collector.
This is one of the reasons I don’t personally believe that physical distribution will die out any time soon, if you allow me to step outside my own rules here. As long as their collectors and people who wish to gain control over what they put money into, or value an item enough to wish to have total control over it. Not all people are comfortable with the idea of allowing another to have total control over their purchased goods. However, it is undeniable that digital distribution does cut down multiple factors in inconvenience, through the pricing overall is still overt, often meeting with physical releases’ prices. I’ve been told I’m wrong when it comes digital distribution for good decade now, and I’ve yet to see digital distribution killing the physical goods market. Diminishing it perhaps and taking its slot in there, but not killing the market overall. Of course, not all games have seen official digital redistribution, something that is extremely unfortunate. However, it is something we have to live with, especially with so many titles having their source code missing.
To get back on the subject, reprinting Yakuza is a rather clear sign from Sega what consumer market group they are targeting. It’s not the general public, but the collectors, red ocean gamers and Japanophiles. Let’s not forget the people who got into the series during PS3 games, who never managed to get their hands and play the first titles. The Yakuza games weren’t exactly hot sellers and ended up warming the shelves long enough to cut the price at least 80% in rather short time. The supply was rather large in comparison to the demand, but it seems that part of them were moved away from the circulation. In Japan the series is far more popular than in the West, and banking current fans and niche audiences is Sega’s best bet to have the series be successful.
Furthermore, the Yakuza series has not been through the best of localisations. Whatever you think of the first game’s dub, it was a fair attempt at making the game more open for the general public. The second game wasn’t tampered with, but pretty much all the rest of the games saw removal of minigames and missions to some degree, up until the latest titles. Whether or not we believe Sega’s statements why content was cut from the games, they didn’t really give them any positive press and seemed to affect the sales to some extent, considering these same niche audience that are their main target audience currently tends to prefer their games in more untouched form, head petting games intact and all. I can’t fault them, I share their sentiments for my own reasons.
The question that rises from here whether or not it would be worth to run reprints on more games, even when the price might be higher. It’s not exactly an easy question from the consumer point of view. On one hand we do have collectors and retro collectors that would gladly purchase a new print of some high-calibre NES game like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Castlevania III, both games that tend to run at a higher price. The price would need to be gauged beforehand and probably be handled through a sort of pre-order similar to Kickstarter to meet up the costs of running a new production run. That is if we assume that we would replicate the original NES carts. As we’ve seen with 8bi Music Power and Kira Kira Star Night DX, there are more cost-effective alternatives. However, if we assume SMB3 would get this sort of reprint through modern technology, there would be split between the consumers; those who would like to have the “original” release and those would be “satisfied” with the reprint. In reality, both would be Nintendo produced official version of the game on NES. The semantic of what’s original and what’s not is strong with collectors, and these tend to drive up sales. NES is a prime example of a system to which people want to collect, and its partially because of its large library of games.
The retro game market may be skewered to hell and back, but that seems to be natural progression of valued old products market. It’ll take few decades before video games would be appreciated as proper antiques.
Sega never really recovered after Nintendo beat them with Super Nintendo. No matter how much we want to discuss how good 2D machine the Saturn was or how accurate ports the Dreamcast got, the truth is both consoles were mismanaged to hell and back. Sega’s consoles weren’t the only thing they mismanaged, but their Western front as a whole saw a dump. Franchises that went strong and could’ve continued strongly were dropped dead as Sega of Japan wanted to concentrate their side of the business. As with Xbox, the hardcore Japanese media doesn’t really find all that great success here in the West outside the niche audience. Streets of Rage, for example, is inherently Western in its styling as was Eternal Champions. Neither survived the paradigm shift Sega went through in the mid-1990’s.
However, with the Mega Drive Sega pushed the idea of them being the more mature console over its contemporaries. It worked for a time, and things like allowing blood in Mortal Kombat showed that they’ll be willing to give more exploitative products room to breathe. It really worked, giving the Mega Drive (or Genesis in Ameriland) that games-for-adults fame. Sports games helped by the boatloads, never underestimate sports games even if you don’t like them. PlayStation would inherit Mega Drive’s status. Not Sony themselves, but the brand itself. Sony’s fame has gone poof in the last few decades, and nobody really knows what the hell they’re up to now. Their movies suck and don’t make money, their electronics aren’t top-notch any more and the only thing that they seem to make a buck on is games.
The Sega we used to know is long gone. Not just because I should be talking about Sega Sammy all this time, but because of the changes the company went through. They went from one of the top arcade game manufacturers to top-notch console and game corporation, and then just failed miserably only to step down and become a rather lousy third-party publisher. I’m willing to argue that Japan didn’t really get why they were popular in the West. After they went third-party, it’s like they don’t care any more.
This is reflected in their Flash report. This consolidated financial statement from the last nine months of 2016 show a rather nice result for Sega, putting them squarely in the black and getting some extra while they were at it.
The games that special mentions come in set of three; Football Manager 2017, Ryu Ga Gotoku 6 and Phantasy Star Online 2. Outside Football Manager 2017, the two other titles are inherently related to how Sega sees their model; Japan first, the rest of the world later. Neither Ryu ga Gotoku 6 or PSO2 are available in the west, and while the western release of Ryu ga Gotoku 6 will be out under its Western title Yakuza 6 next year, PSO2 is still officially Japanese-only despite being released originally in 2012. Whether or not PSO2 would be a success in the West is an open question, but it would be a venture worth considering for Sega. Phantasy Star name is one of the few franchises that Sega kept alive ever since the Master System days, and still calls up some positive reactions from the high-end gaming consumers.
Yakuza has always had a limited audience in the West, and probably will continue to have. However, it’s perhaps a core example of Sega willing to go all out to put the money down into a game development they truly believe in. Another is that Yakuza series is outright maybe the most mature franchise in under their belt, and it’s easy to see why they would like tone down some of the elements in these. Luckily, they’ve manned up and begun listening to their core consumers on the matter. However, it is highly understandable why they never localised the two samurai spin-offs. Not because of themes like child prostitution, but because samurai games don’t sell in the West.
Soccer manager games will keep selling, there’s a good market place for them that seems to be relatively healthy and not too saturated with low-end releases to jumble the market up.
But as said, Sega doesn’t really care how things go in the West. Their Kantai Collection arcade game seems to rake in the dough just fine, something a similar product wouldn’t make its localisation money back. Yes, I’m talking shit about your waifu battle ship. Similarly, their smart device sales indicate a thing that most consumers don’t seem to realize; in order for a smart phone game to keep you with it, it requires constant content updates and events, at least in Japan. Once you miss something or start game later than others, you’ve already missed a chunk of its contents. This works Japan rather well, as their keitai culture grew to this in many ways (there’s a post up about Japan’s keitai somewhere on this blog, look it up) but for a Westerner who wants more wholesome package in one go it doesn’t really do the trick. A niche audience would keep it up for sure.
Their non-game related products seem to have done rather well and their plans for future releases seem to be solid and revolve around Japan mainly. Valkyrie: Azure Revolution most likely will hit Western shores at some point, whereas Initial D Arcade Stage most likely won’t due to the series being pretty much forgotten outside its meme status.
Talking about Sega is really dry and boring, because the company is like that. There’s no sazz or sparkle with them any more. It’s business as usual and that’s all there really is to them nowadays, but that’s not exactly a bad thing either. Them making some dough does warm up my shattered heart a big, because it also means once-loved company could possibly try to up itself at some point. (No they won’t.) The difference between Nintendo and Sega was always very pronounced, but how they work nowadays is like night and day. Still, I’m happy I managed to shove in a positive entry about Sega for once.
This really turned into a Monthly Three, but this one will be shorter than the two previous. By continuing the theme, who were the ones talking about casual games before it entered the consumer lexicon? The industry, and a bit later, the press. Gaming press never had the best reputation out there and by each year it went from bad to worse and still struggles to be a creditable field. Back in 2015 Reuters had a laughable result when it came to finding journalists with integrity in video game press. While I wouldn’t use Tumblr as any sort of valid source, this one was supported by the recent consumer movement.
This isn’t a discussion about either of those really. Nintendo Power was seen as Number Uno source for Nintendo news, and it really was. It was sponsored by Nintendo and was an excellent tool for them to advertise their products. The same applied to television and other stuff like cereals, the usual stuff. Nintendo’s death has been prophesied each generation since the NES hit the shelves, but Nintendo hitting the lower markets with wider consumer base and building up from there has always been a disrupting model. PCs at the time saw the advent of a new console generation and berated them for their backwards technology, but PC in the end you started to see console-like games on PC because of their success.
During the third generation you saw Nintendo making the market place as we know it nowadays, and when competition pushed their harder edged console aiming for the high-end users with the Mega Drive and PC-Engine, Nintendo pushed out slew of games that again hit the lower market and build their library towards the higher end market throughout the years. However, Nintendo did not repeat this cycle of disrupting the market with the N64 or GameCube. It would be Sony’s PlayStation and PlayStation 2 that would gain the favour of the lower market due to its insanely large library.
The industry hates when Nintendo is successful, because it pleases the low-end market. Their low-end products usually end up being on the same level, in cases if not better, than the higher end market’s. Either the competing companies fight or flee the marketplace, and usually when you see companies fighting Nintendo they fail because they have some of their low-end team working on a visual copy of a Nintendo game, but not the heart of function. Sonic the Hedgehog was a competition done right when it first came out and kicked Nintendo into fighting mode.
If the industry doesn’t like when Nintendo goes against their wishes, so does the press more often than not. The modern casual-hardcore division is most likely because of Nintendo’s success in disrupting the market over and over again. However, Nintendo doesn’t seem like their history because disruption requires work and effort. It seems whenever they decide to forego disrupting the market, they end up with turkey of a system in their hands.
The current state of gaming is nothing new. PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio are just another round of Atari 5200 against newcoming titans IntelliVision, ColecoVision and Odyssey 2. However, the differences between Sony’s and Microsoft’s consoles are rather miniscule and their library are largely the same. The only competition between the two platforms really is about brand loyalty and the few handful of exclusive games. They have the possibility to make them stand apart, but seeing how MS is absorbing Xbox as a brand back to PC and Sony’s pretty much at a loss what how to proceed in the future, it would seem that Nintendo’s NX will stand as a unique piece. If Nintendo aims to disrupt the market, expect the same old songs to be heard, just tweaked for the modern audience.
In the end, gaming is all about consumers’ choices. Kevin Cook put it well in Playboy’s January issue in 1983: The choice you finally make from among all of these games will depend largely on your personality and on what gets you off. Some of that decision will boil down to whether or not you want action or good looks – every former high school boy can identify with that.
The gaming press will tell us what the industry wants us to hear. After all, they are dependant on each other. The other brings them news, while the other is essentially their PR outlet. It’s not the normies or casuals that want to take your games away, that’s what hypersensitive parents and puritanical movements or such are for. Practising common sense and training your media literacy with an industry like this is a must, and that should be applied to elsewhere as well, like on this blog.
There’s a Kickstarter up called Linked to the Wall, which aims to create game cartridge wall mounts. The driving idea they have is that games are made into similar form as paintings, framed to the wall. The idea seems to be solid in principle, but there’s few problems, one logistic, that they are either side-stepping or haven’t thought about.
Looking at the prototypes they have, I have to question why do they need to create separate wall mounts to different cartridges. They want to streamline and eliminate all possible manufacturing problems by creating a solid piece of plastic, which is understandable and admirable to a point, but also tells me they want to produce these as cheaply and fast as possible. Designing a wall mount that would be adjustable according to a cartridge’s width isn’t terribly hard. Designing it well is somewhat challenging. Smaller cartridges, like the Game Boy, Game Gear and GB Advance carts would require a smaller solution, one they are also offering, but again with a different mounts for each cartridge. Their design is also lacking Famicom cart design.
Let’s take a look at the depth of the cartridge connectors’ grooves between a Famicom, NES, Mega Drive, Super NES and N64 game carts. To measure the depth, I am using metal ruler that starts from 0mm at its end and a caliper to measure the width of the connector groove.
The depth of a Famicom connector groove is just shy of 12mmThe width of a Famicom cart is 85mm
Let’s put the NES images up before we compare the two.
19mm, perhaps just slightly over10.5mm
The Famicom cart is shallower than its Western counterpart on either direction. The width is not a problem with either of these in the design they are currently using. The depth is a minor inconvenience, but 10mm is more than enough build a prong that holds NES cart in place. The plastic thickness is not a problem either, as long as the prongs are not made of too rigid material, which is a given. An adjustable arm could allocate both FC and NES carts just fine, as their design currently places the cartridge on two prongs that supports both front and back with one additional support column going into the groove. This additional piece is what keeps the cart straight, whereas the main prongs take the carts’ weight.
Their prototypes have been 3D printed and it shows. All the larger cartridges they have are slightly slanted forwards. This means they don’t only need to invest into material research than just create injection moulds.
The Mega Drive carts’ groove is different shape between Western and Japanese versions. However, their backs are the same width.9mmJust a shy of 91mm
The Mega Drive carts’ groove depth is a bit shallower than either FC or NES carts’, but the width is between NES’ and FC’s. Because the MD cart is shallower, the support column would need to be 1mm shorter, but at this scale and weight that’s not an issue with the right material.
11mm in depth97mm, I most likely jammed the instrument a bit too hard in
Super NES/Famicom cartridges have the same width and depth across the board despite their different outer appearance between US and EUR/JPN region. The NES still has the widest groove, meaning SNES carts shouldn’t pose a problem with an adjustable arm.
11mm in depth71.5mm in width
The N64 has similar depth to the FC carts, but a Mega Drive cartridge still beats it. It’s width is the smallest, which means the adjustable hand should be at that size, minimum.
Let’s say that the adjustable arm is a design where there’s basically two tubes inside each other and you pull them out. If the minimum width is 70mm, it’s has enough room to spread at least 40mm either direction, adding a whopping extra 80mm to the total width, making the arm at 150mm at maximum, an unneeded amount. The needed width could be marked down with slots a peg slides into or with a small screw, both low in profile if done right. Another option is to position the adjuster the point where the mount is secured to the wall. Just have two slaps of plastic that you screw together at whatever distance from each you want. They wouldn’t even need to make large change in their current design to accommodate this.
If you have an access to a 3D printer, you could actually just use these measurements and do your own mounts if you wanted.
With Game Boy and GB Advance games, you have the exact same width and depth with both cartridges and there’s no good reason why to have separate mounts for both of them. Have the support wedged slightly into the connector groove and it would keep either GB or GBA carts in place.
A thing that I haven’t mentioned at all is thickness. For the record, here are the measurements for the carts used:
FC – 17mm
NES – 16.5mm
MD – 17mm
SFC/EUR SNES – 19.8mm in the middle, 17mm at screw point
US SNES – 20mm in the middle section, 17mm in outer sections
N64 – 18.9mm before tapering out
Having the main supports elongating to 18mm should be just fine, keeping the mount low profile. With the adjustable design, you could have the support prongs holding the cartridge in place with similar level of low profile.
The design given in the Kickstarter also leaves the cartridges’ connectors all open for further oxidation. While this is supposed to be a solution to problem of having games in boxes, which is really a non-problem to begin with, at least in these boxes the games were sealed from excess moisture and other unwanted materials floating in the air.
The problem of connectors being exposed is not really all that easy to solve without additional design tweaking. To keep the production as low as possible, you really can’t have luxuriously separate pieces that would seal the grooves, as they have a different height. The height with Nintendo’s cartridges’ are pretty solid 10-12mm, with N64 having the largest height, but also the thickest wall. Mega Drive’s height is same as N64’s; 12mm. The wall thickness is not the same across the board either. An adjustable solution for this would not be too low profile. A solution would be to have the lower support be thin enough but strong enough to be adjusted according the width and height, but as mentioned that’d skyrocket the costs both in design and production.
They also have basically opened some of the game boxes in their examples. These cardboard boxes are hard to come by as it is, and opening them as such ruins them. I hope they used a scan copy from the Internet.
I also have to question their advertisement slogan “Turn your games into unique wall art!” seeing there are thousands of these games out there.
Of course, you could also do what I did to throw some of my games to the wall and save some room while you’re at it. Just pick some shelves from Ikea and put your games on it. You can put more games on the wall that way, save some money and protect them from dust. Plus, when you’re tired with them you can use the shelves for whatever else than just stash the frames and mounts away.
Not saying this is the best solution or the prettiest, but sometimes the simplest solution is the best on the long run
Looking at the home consoles we have now, there is little variety to them. Wii U doesn’t really have anything big to demand a purchase and most games on PS4 and Xbone are crossplatform titles. An argument that often stems from this is that this serves the consumer the best as he now has complete freedom to choose whatever platforms and get all the games he wants. While a valid argument, the selection nowadays seems to be more limited, more homogeneous than what it was in previous generations.
The competition between SEGA’s Mega Drive and Nintendo’s Super Nintendo illustrates well the difference two consoles can have in their library. When you add PC-Engine/ Turbografix-16 to the mix, you have consoles that have a distinctly different library to them. Games that crossed platforms at the time were relatively scarce. Some franchises did cross platforms from back and forth, like Castlevania. Mega Drive exclusive Vampire Killer/Bloodlines/New Generation does follow the usual classic Castlevania fare, yet a unique entry in the series. Similarly Rondo of Blood on PC-Engine had its own and Super Nintendo had the comparative Super Castlevania IV. This is a good example how three games in a same series offer similar experience, but are able to stand on their own. Not only all three are good games, but expanded the series as well.
Another way to bring similar yet totally unique games on a system was to create similar games. The Story of Thor/Beyond the Oasis on the Mega Drive is often compared to the 2D The Legend of Zelda games, thou the influences can be tracked to Hydlide and Ultima. Never underestimate the impact Ultima had on the game culture and industry alongside Wizardry. Anyway, nobody in their right mind would call The Story of Thor a simple Zelda clone. Sure, it offers top-down Action RPG gameplay, but that’s nothing too uncommon, especially for its era.
Nowadays you will not see companies making different games for different platforms like this. This is simply because the development for current generation of machines is expensive and time consuming. According to Masari Ijuin, it takes eight to ten times more work to develop for the current generation. Higher power also means higher needs for time, money and other resources. This is directly mirrored in game prices, which are on the rise.
To use Castlevania as a continuing example, developing both Lords of Shadow 1 and 2 took a lot of time and money. Mirror of Fate is a piece with smaller development budget simply because it was originally developed for a console that does not demand that insane development cycles modern Triple A games seem to automatically get. Mirror of Fate got ported to other platforms later down the line. The argument I’ve seen most thrown around is that pushing the same game on different platforms maximises the profit the company can gain from a game. While I do get called a corporate bitch from time to time, this isn’t something I would support, because that means we’ve lost variety. We don’t have three different Castlevanias on different platforms, we’re having the one and the same Castlevania.
To use Mega Drive and Super Nintendo as an example again, there was a reason to choose between the two, thou if you wanted to get Shooting games, you got the PC-Engine/Turbografix-16. Both consoles had their own variety of games to offer. When a company did one sort of game on one platform, you could be sure you would see a strike back on the other. The reason why Super Nintendo was named as the kiddy console was because it lacked the serious sports titles. The NES was filled with sports titles, and so was the Mega Drive. It gathered a different audience, and the games reflected it. There are so many legendary games on developed during the time when multiplatform titles were a universal standard. Even thou we are having more games developed than ever before, there is a distinct lack of that spark that made the best ones unique jewels.
I question if having an access to almost every game on one platform trumps over having variety in the library of games we are offered in the same manner I question the need for the higher power hardware for home gaming, especially during a harsh economic depression. It would be great if companies saw a game that becomes a huge hit on a system, and then proceed to aim to beat that game’s success on another. It’s true that the competition between developers is harsh, especially considering there are companies giving their games out for free and allowing Valve to devalue their products in Steam. Game industry has gotten too big for its own good, and games have become a common commodity with too little variety.
I’m far from being a person who enjoys racing games. On the contrary, I tend to stay away from racing games. All the ones I’ve enjoyed in the genre without any reservations and continue to return to them time after time can be count with one hand. These games are F-Zero GX, OutRun, Super Hang-On! Burnout 3 and Star Wars Episode I Racer.
While I was intending to do a review on Holy Diver on the Famicom, I decided to push it back due to the Star Wars The Force Awakens teaser (where the hell is the moniker Episode VII?) and review Episode I Racer now that I managed to fix my Dreamcast on its 16th anniversary. That, and I need to spend some more quality time with Holy Diver.
VOOB VOOB VOOB VOOB
First of all, for transparency I will say that playing Episode I Racer has been somewhat nostalgic experience, despite my first try at it being on the N64. It was a snowy day in sometime very early 2000’s, and I was visiting some family friends with my mother, and they had a spanking new N64, which of course we played. They didn’t have much on the game department, but I can vividly remember the sense of speed it gave me.
Forward some years later to mid-2000’s, and I found Star Wars Racer Arcade machine in an amusement park. The controls were rather insane, but something I would love to play again and again; you had two levers of control, just like from the movie and by moving them back and forth you controlled the craft on-screen. The one I played the game on was a single player cabinet with part of Skywalker’s pod as the seat, the Deluxe model. The game both looked, sounded and played extremely well, but alas I only the chance to play it for one whole day. Playing arcade games like this have certain excitement in there, a feeling and experience no home game could ever wish to replicate without special controls. My memories of it are rather strong. Later on I would learn that Racer Arcade was no a version of Episode I Racer, but a separate arcade game developed by SEGA with the Star Wars license.
At the time, it felt a lot bigger than what it looks like
Having experienced what was essentially the original version and the SEGA’s pumped arcade version, I initially went into the Dreamcast version of Episode I Racer in somewhat high hopes. See, I never played the Dreamcast version and for some form of mis/luck I completely had missed any sort of info on it.
So yes, I hate to admit it, but the Dreamcast version of Episode I Racer disappointed me. I had no real expectations for it, but somehow the game feels a bit hollow in the end.
Well, let’s get to the controls.
For all intents and purposes, the controls do their job just fine. A accelerates and X brakes, no surprises here. However, I can but shake the feeling that the Dremcast controller’s triggers could’ve been utilised in this a bit better, but that’s a moot point now. I automatically tend to use the triggers as I would in F-Zero GX due to muscle memory, but only the R Trigger is used to make the pod skid. B and Y are used to flip the repulsorlift engine upwards from either side, a thing barely has any use outside few key moments. However, while you’re skidding without acceleration, I do like how the pod just continues with its direction and how satisfying it is to feel the pull from the engines when you begin to accelerate again. It’s not an instant change where the pod is heading, but fast enough to make it feel more alive. This may be dependent on the pod’s acceleration, and if it is, then its implemented pretty damn well.
The game likes to abuse the thumb stick, as Boost Mode is entered by pressing it forwards, until the speed-o-meter hits max speed, which after releasing and quickly re-pressing the accelerator engages the mode. In this mode, the temperature of the engines keeps rising and the mode needs to be disengaged before they explode. Even without entering the Boost Mode, keeping the thumb stick forwards allows you to reach a bit higher max speed. Pressing the thumb stick back allows you to turn easier.
This is pretty involved method of controls, to be honest. It requires the player to think through where he wants to relinquish better steering in order to enter Boost Mode. However, despite this the Boost Mode is not the most intuitive method of super acceleration. Certainly its different from other games that often give you a button to do it, but being all too different is not necessarily a better option. There could have been a good compromise between more friendlier way of control and the risk/reward of keeping the thumb stick forwards in order to enter the mode. The thumb stick sees a lot of back and forth moving action in this game, and I’m afraid I may need to buy a separate, dedicated controller for this game just to be safe. I may be a bit paranoid, but you never know.
The pods don’t have too much difference in how they act and control, to a large extent. Their largest differences come from their repulorsolift engine sizes and different max speeds. Some of the pods in the game have incredibly high maximum speed compared e.g. Skywalker’s own junkyard built machine and I’m afraid sometimes that simply unbalances the game quite a bit. Then again, racing games and balance have rarely joined together in harmony.
The game does have an edge over the N64 in that I greatly prefer the Dreamcast controller over the N64’s spaceship one. It’s a subjective thing, and I simply find better comfort in control of the thumb stick on Dreamcast than I do on N64. This is in comparison to F-Zero X, mind you. Whether or not I will get N64 version for comparisons sake sometime in the future is an open question. Copies are cheap, especially the US ones.
From controls we get to track design, which more or less divides opinions. Generally speaking, they’re decent. Some are extremely good and have an excellent flow to it, rewarding both highly technical and bold racing, while others just are sort of bullshit turns that will make you crash unless you just learn the track first. I should say that I value flowing tracks in a racing game, and by that I mean the elements the track has have a some sort of logic behind them that allows a smooth, non-stop speed. Of course, after knowing any track by heart in any game will allow the player to have a constant flow in any of the racing games, but I digress.
The AI is decent, so to say. Episode I Racer doesn’t seem to be a rubberband AI, as you can go far in front of the pack or be left behind by the leader. However, the AI seems to be know the best possible lanes and will abuse them. This is balanced somewhat that the AI doesn’t use the Boost Mode all that often, or not that the player would see. Later races it’s not too uncommon to see you going in front of the pack, and with one slight loss of speed with some sort of collision, you AI will catch you outright and often pass you. Then it’s a fight to get to the pole position again, as the sizes of the vehicles can fill the whole track at times. At times it also feels like the AI knows which engine has gone to red and rams it to explode it. If so, then the computer is a cheating bastard. The player has no way of knowing at what level the computers’ engines are. Ramming in the game is awkward, awful and seems to only damage the player, thus not worth it at all. AI is also generic in that sense that no other pod racer is no more aggressive than the other, thou you’d expect Sebulba to use his flamethrowers and fellow racers as much as possible.
The tracks allow some variety of paths taken and I welcome this sort of additions every time. These changes may not be speedier in most cases, but it keeps the same track from becoming all too boring and sometimes they have elements that other players find more suitable to their play style than what the other route could’ve been. There’s some somewhat interesting bits thrown in there as well, like Oovo IV’s Vengeance, where a part of the track is done in zero G, but avoiding huge lumps of rocks floating in there is absolutely horrible. Some of the tracks are remixed in later races, and while this is just using the existing map with some routes locked and unlocked, it still makes it feel fresh.
There is a problem with the rehashed tracks that the multiple paths can’t really help, and that’s when the tracks are just lousy in the visual department. Malastare 100 comes right to my mind as a failure in terms of visuals with its bland as hell visuals, especially where there’s supposed to be something like a bog with green vapours rising from it. Nothing really stands out in a positive way, even thou the intent they had was somewhat nice. However, far too many planets suffers from having industrials as part of their theme somehow in form of vehicles or machines. It’s Star Wars racing, and you could create far more illustrious worlds with the same hardware than this.
That’s the crux in this game; it is painfully obvious how the Dreamcast version is a direct, fast port of the N64 version. There’s nothing to take use of the more powerful hardware, as the game is rather ugly even by 2000 Dreamcast standards. Every asset has been ported from the N64 version, which means textures and polygons are rather ugly in comparison other Dreamcast game of the time. The HUD simply looks awful. The PC version seems to have the edge over the Dreamcast version by a mile in this regard, as the games has vector graphics over whatever piece of garbage they ported from the N64 assets.
Now, despite all that, the game looks sharp via VGA, which I tend to use as a standard with my Dreamcast. As such, the game does look sharp and every positive and negative tidbit on the screen gets a boost. Comparing to PC version via Youtube, there’s not much difference between the two outside PC version having far sharper HUD and slight touches here and there. Music quality may be better, but you really want to put something more fitting in the background. It can be argued whether or not it’s good to make this game look sharp on either PC or Dreamcast, as it mainly shows the flaws one couldn’t really see on N64.
The sounds department suffers from the exact same problem as the visuals, so the same applies here. Everything sounds exactly like you’d expect the N64 sound like. It doesn’t help there’s no really any fitting music. Sure, it’s Star Wars and you have to have that John Williams styled orchestral score in there, but reusing essentially one and the same song in each race is jarring the moment you leave the training course on Tatooine. The yelling the characters have in the game add absolutely nothing of worth, and I’m afraid most of them just sound badly acted. Doing this would keep you from hearing the beeping of the engines, which would force you to keep an eye on the speed-o-meter due to the lack of audio cues.
In the end, because the Dreamcast version of Episode I Racer is a lazy port of the N64 game, there’s no really a reason to call it bad. Sure, the GD format adds standard lenght loading times in there, but a lazy port doesn’t mean this one is a bad port. On the contrary, the game does run well and I have met not a single problem while playing through the game during. If soundless Youtube comparison is to be believed, the Dreamcast versions seems to run smoother, but that should be of not surprise.
That’s from the hollow feeling comes from. It’s a game that’s by all means a good one, perhaps even great, and by license game standards even stellar, but knowing this is a port of a game released earlier on both N64, Windows PC and on the damn Macintosh and then finally released on the Dreamcast without any considerations of the better hardware, it just feels like the game is neglected. I assume the Windows, N64 and Mac versions were developed around the same time and Dreamcast was mostly an afterthought, but I’m not too eager to find this out.
If we were to take the Racer Arcade into notion, I can’t help but with that SEGA had the rights to port their own game to Dreamcast. From all of the versions that used Episode I as its basis, SEGA’s Racer Arcade is without a doubt the best one. This may be because SEGA has a long history as an arcade game provider, or because they just know how to handle racing games that well. I am in the crowd who regards F-Zero GX as the best in the series. Nevertheless, I implore you to give Racer Arcade a try. As it is an arcade only game, you may never be able to play it, and even if MAME would be able to perfectly emulate the Hikaru hardware, you would never have the true way of playing the game with the levers.
Oh the memories! I wish we had one of those still around here. And no, that’s not me.
In short, Episode I Racer is a fun game that is held back on the Dreamcast due to its roots on N64. It could have been so much more than its earlier versions.
The video game industry is fond of pushing devices and addons to the customer that they don’t really want. There are numerous borderline cases, but overall when a device is pushed to the customer, it often fails. Overall, only a handful of addon devices have become highly popular and hit through the market barrier. Some even managed to become a sort of cultural icon. Nintendo Zapper, for example, is an example of an addon that was not only desired but also sought after outside the hardcore gamers. ROB was rather popular for first for novelty reasons, but Nintendo dropped the support for it. There are exactly two games ROB supports, and neither of them are good. However, it is a great thing Nintendo didn’t continue to push ROB further. This was the NES era after all, Nintendo had very little room to mess with the customers at this point.
Just by looking SEGA’s and Nintendo’s success with addons, to some extent with their consoles, we can see that even the most successful addons seem to die out either due to lack of software or lack of overall support. SEGA promoted Mega Drive’s CD and 32X addons quite a lot, and while 32X was the Kinect of its time, both addons failed. The games for either weren’t all too good and in too small amounts to warrant a purchase. Then you got the Saturn, a console that was put on sale too soon, leaving little software at launch and was dropped outright soon after in favour of the Dreamcast. Saturn in itself was rather badly designed console, having two separate CPUs which were hard to utilise. Games it had were not all too great either, even if there are numerous gems on the system. Then again, so does pretty much any other system.
It’s worth noting that SEGA continued the Master System support in form of the Power Base Converter, a move that a lot of Master System owners liked. That meant that adding the Power Base Converter you could free space from the living room. There were some issues, like a handful of games not working properly, but overall it was a good addon. It had a very specific customer group, but it also allowed people with the Converter to collect Master System games despite not owning the original system.
That is also exactly why all the current consoles, from Steam to PlayStation 4, have extremely interesting competition going on; they’re competing against games from the whole history of the industry. I would dread the idea of competing with giants like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Castlevania III.
Nintendo had less direct console addons like SEGA, a decision that many regard a good move. Whether or not the Super Nintendo CD addon would have become a success would have depended on the games the system. However, the Super Scope was all sort of awful, even if it was pushed as the successor to the Zapper. Nintendo dropped its support just like that, and only very few games supported it. Interestingly, I remember the Hunt for Red October having a special stage that supported it. Then you have games that could have supported it, like Wild Guns, but opted for a better control scheme because the Super Scope is a shit product. I have one, bought it from sale years back.
GameBoy saw few well remembered addons, but we all know that both GameBoy Camera and Printer were released, and then effectively dropped. In about a year, the GameBoy Camera saw huge price drops. If my American friend is correct, some places sold new units for five damn dollars.
Nintendo also seemed to love the idea of connectivity between their handheld and home console systems, but only few games ever supported this. The Nintendo 64 has two games that come to people’s mind, one being sum of the Pokémon games and Perfect Dark. It’s a nice idea and could work, but goddamn this thing saw no support. You also need to remember that often the connectivity kept accessing some of the content from either portable or home console game, and this then kept the developers from including any significant connectivity. Pokémon was the only one that truly benefitted of this, but that’s simply because Pokémon Stadium games were built for the connectivity from the ground up.
It’s a similar tale with the GameBoy Advance and GameCube. I’m sure some people enjoyed playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles or Four Swords, but everybody I’ve known personally testify these games destroying friendships. Well, seriously speaking the connectivity with GBA and GC was plagued with the exact same causes the GB and N64 connectivity was, and ultimately Nintendo seems to have dropped pushing this with the Wii and WiiU, par Pokémon.
N64DD is another addon Nintendo just dropped. The 64DD effectively mirrored the fates of 32X and SEGA-CD, but Nintendo handled the games, the device, marketing and the whole deal so badly that pretty much all games that weren’t at the very end of the development cycle were dropped dead, or in Nintendo’s case, moved to the GameCube. The 64DD original games weren’t all too good, so perhaps it was for the best Nintendo not to push this ill fated addon.
There’s few special addons that can named, but they were doomed from the start because they simply had no other use outside one mechanic; the e-Reader for the GBA, the Kongas and Microphones for the GC.
With Wii Nintendo seemed to realize how to play the game again properly. Well, not exactly. Nintendo came with the Wii Speak, an addon that was support about three games; Animal Crossing City Folk, The Conduit and Monster Hunter Tri. There is one or two more games that had Wii Speak support, but it would be a total waste of time to even Google it up.
SONY has their own little addons, like the Move controller. Move was SONY’s way to counter the Wiimote, much like how Microsoft kept pushing the Kinect until as of late.
The reason why I am concentrating with Nintendo in this post, outside the fact they had the most addons and stinkers like Virtual Boy, is that the upcoming Super Smash Bros for a console won’t support the Circle Pad Pro, but will support the upcoming N3DS Flanders’ C-Nub. I would call this as cold business calculation if it wasn’t such a stupid move. Nintendo is dropping their support on an addon they’ve been trying to push to customers, even thou they’ve themselves or any of the devs have shown very little support for it. Now that they would be able to show some sense and add the support, they’d rather see the base 3DS and its addons dead. While on surface it makes sense to support the new device more, this isn’t the case. The Flanders is not a new device. Its status is comparable to Wii Mini or AV Famicom than to SNES or GameCube. While the Slide Pad Pro was done mainly for the Monster Hunter series, it had potential. However, much like all addons, that potential has been largely wasted. I feel bad for anyone who has the Slide Pad Pro and was expecting further amount of support.
The issue game industry doesn’t seem to realize that once you’ve released an addon you’re largely promoting, and then you essentially drop its support, the customer loses its trust. It’s no wonder there is a group of people refusing to purchase any of the 3DS iterations. At least not until the machines’ region lock is removed in a way or another.
It would great if the addons these companies keep making would be optional, but after production and release they would continue to see further support. It’s a waste of resources and time from both the companies’ and customers’ part. It appears that the companies only care for short term revenue rather than keeping up with longer plan that would also allow heightened profits.
A thing I keep repeating over and over again without much good examples is that modern video game developers need to learn from the past mistakes and not repeat them. Similarly, the developers need to learn from the past successes but not copy or repeat them but to see the inner workings of the customer mind.
Nintendo made an announcement of sorts that they will not abandon the Wii U. The game industry hated this. There is a recurring motif in the electronic gaming industry where Nintendo is absolutely hated, despised even, when they put out a product will sell like hotcakes. The NES was hated on many levels, but the customers loved it and it sold. The GameBoy, for what I can recall, is a surprising exception if you ignore how the competition barked at its performance power and computer side more or less hated it. The DS was hated when Nintendo changed it into a portable SNES and became a success. The Wii is still despised by the industry and the hardcore crowd despite almost everyone owning one.
The Wii U is a different thing, a console not really hated by the industry, but neither it is celebrated by the consumers like the Wii. At this moment, Wii U has gotten some steam, but it lacks uniqueness. Same goes for Xbone and PS4.
Why Nintendo shouldn’t abandon the Wii U, many have asked. The single most important reason for this is that it would be stupid.
Customer relations is hugely important, and losing customer trust is the worst thing a company can ever go through. SEGA will tell you that, as will any company who screwed up.
The SEGA Saturn was supposed to be a beast of a console. Technically speaking it is a very competent 2D machine for its time, especially with the RAM expansion carts, but the games did not attract customers. Well, most of the good games stayed in Japan because certain individuals pushing 3D games on the front. Actually, the whole console release was a disaster and SEGA ultimately just said that Saturn is not their future. That was a bitchslap to customers’ faces. Dropping promises and support for a product that demanded large amounts of money. Saturn was a disaster and one of the final nails on SEGA’s coffin.
Personally, I do like Saturn. It has some gems and the number of arcade games it has is nice. What I think of the Saturn doesn’t matter, only that it sucked, bombed and was buried.
If Nintendo were to abandon the Wii U now, they would repeat SEGA’s mistakes. Nobody wants that, except hardcore fanboys and people who would prefer one console with every game on it.
This would be a horrible model. A competition needs and demands a one-two beat. Another one needs to beat the first one, and another needs hit the second beat. It’s sort of dance, and there is need for disruption every now and then, if not in regular intervals. Everything different is not disruptive, but the keys that hit the points just right are. The NES, GameBoy, DS and Wii were all disruptive and allowed the competitive dance to hit the one-two beat.
Wii U can become a great console yet. All it needs products to hold it high. I doubt this, as Nintendo seems to fail to realize the full potential of their products. One thing everybody was thinking for the Wii was either a damn good Star Wars game, or a really good sword fighting game. It could not have been Zelda, because Aonuma hates fighting and masturbates over puzzles. The very moment we saw the Wiimote, we all knew what we wanted. That, and the light gun games, which could’ve worked slightly better. We never got any good sword fighting games, thou the Wii Sports Resort had a good basis, but it was far from being anything good and proper.
Another game customers thought when they saw the camera and tilt function in the 3DS was Pokémon Snap 2. It was a couple made in heaven, and nothing. Pokémon Snap is one of the most fondly remembered games on the N64 as well as one of them most well made camera based games, despite everything that went against the N64.
Often it is not all too good to give the customer what they want, but what they need. Sometimes it’s very recommendable to listen to your customers. This sounds stupid and may show hypocrisy to some extent, but in all reality it is about choosing the time when to put either choice into action. In reality, while market research follows very straightforward methods, but how, when and where changes with time and what were are researching as well as what we are researching for. Despite Nintendo promoting new ways of playing games, they haven’t pushed their new ways as far as they could have and without a proper example no company wanted to follow.
Actually, if we want to really talk about dropping system in the middle of their life, Nintendo did drop the DS and the Wii like a dead fly. Both systems saw very little supports from Nintendo in the last few years of their life. The Wii got software like Wii Music, which was hated practically everybody in and out of the industry. Those people who bought a Wii and experienced Nintendo taking their resources to 3DS, then to Wii U, never moved up a console. Why would anyone buy a console from a company that doesn’t even support it to the very end?
Nintendo wanted to have the Wii U as the console Wii users would move on to. Fat chance. The Wii U is not the Wii but in mere name similarity. It is a very opposite console. If I were to observe the current consoles from personal view, there’s very little games that catch my attention, and those which do are all multiplatform par few exceptions like Splatoon. While sequels are the things that seem to draw in most money, they cannot be repetitions.
First of all, head to byuu’s homepage to update your bsnes. Some time ago they finally cracked the last of the chips, and now bsnes is basically a virtual SNES for you. It also supports more consoles now, like the Famicom and GameBoy.
With every negative thing piracy does, there’s always that one thing that it excels at; archival. Without piracy most of the PC games of the 80’s and back would’ve been lost in the annals of time. For example, I believe part of Atari 520ST games have been physically lost, but thanks to the piracy rings we have bakcups of them. Originally in disk format, then later as data. Same goes for the Commodore 64 and all other computers. Partial reason most likely was that part of the 80’s computers used C-cassettes as their choice of media, like the ZX Spectrum. Some of them later gained cartridge add-ons or similar, but it still begs the question how many of these games have survived in their original form, and in what shape they are.
Piracy archives pretty much everything. The Internet has sources for some films’ VHS rips that no longer exist on the market in any form. You may find sixth or eight generation tapes that some obscure Hong Kong dealer may have, if you’re desperate for a physical copy. Physical media usually lasts long, unless it’s easy to damage. C-cassettes and floppy disks are rather easy to damage, and lower quality productions usually eroded far faster than their pricier counterparts. In comparison, a dog once ate parts of my NES cartridge away, chipping some of it off and all that, but the game survived mostly intact. It still works the same, even thou part of the lower PCB was literally chewed off.
I have no real trust on the DVD format and beyond. Piracy will archive these films and games as it has always done. I haven’t met any disc rot in my library as of now, but I suspect that in the next ten years part of my films and games will become unplayable because of it. With movies it’s not that big of a deal, as the experience doesn’t change on the format outside quality. However, experiencing games does change with a jump from consoles to emulators. This is why well coded emulators that emulate the hardware are needed.
Emulators’ first and foremost mission has always been to emulate the original platform. At some point most people lost this idea and emulators’ purpose was corrupted simply to play games. The notion “to emulate something” is a misnomer, as you don’t emulate the games, you emulate the platform they run on. This is why precise and accurate emulation is required by the core idea; to both preserve the functions of the original platform as closely as possible in digital form, and to provide as perfectly emulated platform the games run on as possible. bsnes and MAME are two emulators that still continue to follow the idea of historical archival, thou MAME has become exceedingly heavy at it’s core and partially is held together with hacks.
Hacks and plugins in emulators is not a good thing. This means that the emulator is not doing a good job at emulating the system. ZSNES still runs mostly on hacks that do not emulate the workings of a real SNES as it should, and ePSXe relies heavily on plugins and their workings. From gamers perspective anything that makes the games playable is enough, but when get over the initial excitement, you realize that lack of proper emulation affects the gameplay experience. Some emulators actually go beyond what the original system could’ve done and removes slowdowns and such. However, there are multiple games out there that use various systems’ limitations to create gameplay. For a simple example let’s use Space Invaders. The original hardware it ran on could barely run the game. Basically it ran too slow and couldn’t handle all the objects on the screen. As the player defeats the aliens one by one, the game gets faster as less and less objects appear on screen. If we take the approach ZSNES and similar emulators, Space Invaders should run on the speed that it runs when there’s only one alien on the screen. We all can agree that this isn’t how the game works, but this is what some of the emulators do; fixing what wasn’t broken via “over emulating.”
As playable emulation does not exclude accurate emulation or vice versa, the only reason people still want to use ZSNES is because they simply refuse to change their habits.
Even when games break down, the systems may survive. It’s rather easy to get games from the Internet and them to a disc. With a modded console, or in Dreamcast’s case modded disc image, you can run games on their original systems. What about cartridge systems the reader asks. To that I answer; there are flash carts like Everdrive. At some point in the future carts will erode and die. Custom cartridges like the Everdrive is then one of the answers how to play these games outside re-releases. While I applaud Nintendo and other companies on their older game re-releases with the new systems as downloadable games, we all can agree that playing Super Mario Bros. on the Wii is not the same thing as playing it on a real NES. Flash drive carts are in their infancy as there isn’t much people working on them, but I hope that at some point we will go over the threshold where the carts support all the games in a system’s library.
Ultimately, all physical systems will break down. Piracy will conserve the games in their ROM form. Emulators like bnses will conserve the platforms as closely as possible to their true counterparts. While piracy can’t be promoted, it is a necessary evil. As history has showed, companies tend to misplace and destroy source codes and protoypes. For example, Sega pretty much lost all source codes on their Saturn era games. This is why all Saturn games we see re-released, like Princess Crown, are emulated. Unless someone in Sega actually reverse engineers Saturn’s workings, we’re never going to see Saturn games on modern consoles as ports. Seeing how Saturn works, nobody really is interested even making proper emulators for it, let alone reverse engineer it.
I don’t like to recommend games to anyone. This is mostly because people have a ready schema in their head what they want to play, and getting a game to fit that schema is difficult. This post is kind of here to circumvent the schema, as this way I have no person to think about.
Every game on the list has its own value as a game. Some of them might not be the best game ever, but then again no game is really as good as people say. Believing hype is like having a rash; the more you scratch it the itchier it gets. You could always cut out the skin where the rash is, but then you’d be left with open wound.
To make it fair, I will only use games that I have in my own personal library, just so that the list has some validation to a direction or another.
NES Sword Master
Sword Master is your typical 2D action game. It’s a rather short game, but the difficulty is high at places, and music is pretty damn catchy. The games was developed by Athena, and could be thought as a spiritual sequel to Castle of Dragon, thou this game is vastly superior in every regard.
Sega MegaDrive Devil’s Crush MD
Devil’s Crush MD isn’t really an unknown game, but it is less known. You don’t really hear a lot about virtual pinball games, because majority of them are bad. NAXAT Soft was one of the best developers in the game industry, as their games had good production values and were coded with care. It also helps that their library of developed games were generally well regarded, and they still have a cult following.
Super Nintendo Makeruna! Makendo
Makeruna! Makendo, also known as Kendo Rage in the West, is your typical 2D action game and has everything that made the 90’s anime fun. It’s colourful, sounds good, has nice challenge and makes you wonder what kind of drugs the developers were smoking while making this game.
Sega Saturn Bulk Slash
Don’t let the name distract you… or the intro video. Bulk Slash is by far one of the best, if not the best, 3D Saturn game out there. Only released in Japan, this 3D mecha action game has nice visuals and music, and Saturn controller was well used. There’s two things that could make the game even better; slightly better draw distance, and more stages. HUDSON really knew what they were doing with this game. As it is a Saturn game, don’t expect to see it on any other platform. SEGA lost almost all source codes to the games at one point.
PlayStation The Misadventures of Tron Bonne
Mega Man Legends wasn’t that big of a bomb when it hit the shores. Misadventures of Tron Bonne is it’s spin-off game, and one of the testaments why 90’s CAPCOM was awesome. The way this game could be described would be that it is a collection of larger minigames. Don’t let that distract you, as every minigame has its own gameplay and at least three acts that use it. It has first person dungeon crawling, 3D action, puzzles, stealing animals from local farm and so on. It’s a pretty damn enjoyable game overall, from which you can see the love the developers had towards the Legends series.
Dreamcast Evolution: The World of Sacred Device
Ever wanted to play an alternative console RPG that has characters name after different weapons and gadgets? Evolution; The World of Sacred Device was the first RPG that the Dreamcast had, and it shows. It’s dungeons all are randomly generated, thus making it somewhat different every time you visit the game. The game had a sequel that expanded everything the first game had. Not a bad game by any standards, but due to the random nature of the dungeons, the visuals took a hit.
PlayStation 2 RAD; Robot Alchemic Drive
Cheezy 70’s super robot series plot; checked. Cheezy voice acting; checked. Awesome gameplay; checked. RAD is one of the hidden gems of the PS2, and was never released in Europe. I hate whoever decided that Europe shouldn’t get this game. There’s not really any other games that corresponds with RAD, but it’s not overly unique either. It’s difficult to describe RAD in any other way other than that it’s awesome.
GameCube Mobile Suit Gundam; Pilot’s Locus
While the GameCube had pretty small selection of actually good games, Mobile Suit Gundam Pilot’s Locus is one of the gems that never left Japan even when PS2 got its share of Gundam titles in the west. Pilot’s Locus, or Senshitachi no Kiseki, could be argued to be the best Gundam game of its generation. Even if it isn’t, it’s up there. The controls are arcady as they should be, but they allow a lot of control overall and the gameplay flows well. As with most GameCube games, you just need to get used to the controls.
XBOX Gungriffon Allied Strike
Gungriffon series is less known overall. Allied Strike is the last part of the series, and I doubt we’ll ever see another one. It’s not hard to see why; the muddy visuals, non-existant soundtrack and generic art design. Nevertheless, there’s quality in there. Gungriffon series might be a little dull, but somehow it has charm, and that charm comes from good gameplay. The closest thing it could be compared to could be that the game is a mix of both Western and Japanese takes on mecha.
Wii Fragile – Farewell ruins of the moon
Funny thing, most intro videos in Youtube got their soundtrack deleted. Nevertheless, Fragile isn’t really unknown, but overlooked after initial buzz. Basically, it’s one of the better adventure RPGs that the current generation has. Nintendo didn’t want to release it in the west, but got after some time got a release by another company. It has pretty creepy atmosphere around it. There’s few things here and there that might detract from the game’s overall value, but I can’t overlook that the developers succeeded to make a good post-apocalyptic RPG without resorting too much stupid clichés in the genre. They resorted to other clichés instead.
XBOX360 WarTech: Senko no Ronde
This game splits opinions. It has a lot of history behind it, in it’s story and all that, but what matters is that it has good and hard gameplay. After all, it’s an arcade title. The best way to describe it would be to call it as VIRTUAL-ON in two dimensions mixed with shooting game elements. The controls are pretty easy and complicated at the same time, but you can get into it fast. Wartech: Senko no Ronde has its cult following, but it flew under the radar here in West for a good reason. Nowadays you should find it cheap anywhere, and some consider it to be one of the definite 360 games out there. I agree that all who enjoy good arcade games should try it out, and everybody should at least give it a rental. Sadly, we never got the sequels, which are better overall.
PlayStation 3 Genji: The Day of Blade
Don’t expect too much from Genji. However, expect nice gameplay from Genji, but keep in mind that it’s a 3D action game with swords. That should say a lot. Nevertheless, Genji is does a lot of things right. It might be a little bit dull on the edges, but once you get into it all the game turns more interesting. The Day of Blade is a sequel to a PS2 title, which most people seem to like better. Keita Amemiya was the one in charge of the art direction in Genji series, and if that says anything to you, expect great things from this game.
GameBoy Penta Dragon
I’ve talked Penta Dragon previously. It’s still an unique game that has very little competition in what it does. It has it’s flaws, but it’s still an enjoyable title.
WonderSwan ROCKMAN.EXE WS
This is the only Mega Man Battle Network game that mostly bases itself in the TV-series. It’s a traditional 2D action game like most other Mega Man games, and has something in common with the Transmission game on the GameCube. The video above has bad quality overall. The actual game flows really well, has much better music quality and doesn’t this jerky. It’s also pretty damn hard after a while. While the fandom knows about this, it flew under the radar mostly because it’s on WonderSwan.
GameBoy Advance Riviera The Promised Land
Originally a WonderSwan game, and then later on a PSP game, Riviera is a good alternative RPG on the go. The mechanics are nicely unique and distances itself pretty well from the general RPG flock. Riviera is a quality title with a strange name, but it might fetch high prices nowadays as it has rather strong cult following.
Nintendo DS Umihara Kawase Shun Second Edition Kanzenban
I won’t lie to you; this game is expensive as hell and it’s one of the best physics puzzle games out there. It combines the SNES and PlayStation Umihara Kawase games into one package. It suffers a little bit from being on the DS, but that’s mostly only if your DS is worn down like mine. It’s easy to get into, and is as hard to master as it is to break an old Nokia phone.
Sony PSP The Legend of Heroes; Trails in the Sky
The Legends of Heroes is Falcom other big RPG series next to Ys. Known as Eiyuu Densetsu VI; Sora no Kiseki on the East, Trails in the Sky is one of the most vast RPGs there is. It’s divided into two parts, FC and SC (First and Second Chapter) and the second part actually continues the following morning after the first game. FALCOM is known for quality titles, and TitS shouldn’t be missed if you’re even slightly into RPGs. It also has an awesome vocal album.
Windows PC Söldner-X
While my PC game library doesn’t consist of any that unknown titles, it has Söldner-X, a shooting game that’s actually pretty damn impressive. Why it’s impressive is because it has good arcade quality gameplay and isn’t afraid to show it. It began it’s life as a indie game that was self-published on the PC, and as later ported to other platforms as well. I paid my piece then euros, and it came with a hardcover booklet and some extra stuff. It’s well worth the price on PSN as well.
All this means that after Sega decided to use these shorter build sticks for Versus City, the Twin Sticks would be built based on Sanwa arcade stick parts over the original unbranded ones. As Oratorio Tangram could be converted into FORCE cabinets, there weren’t any changes to the sticks themselves. As per Sega’s standardization, these control panels could be switched in and out from their generic cabinets. This would also mean that outside the original Virtual-On cabinet, the controls would make a square shape when moved around, not a circle, as that’s the standard restrictor plate found in generic arcade machines. It is the most commonly used restrictor plate to this day.
The HSS-0154 SEGA SATURN TWIN-STICK controller promises to recreate the excitement of the arcade experience, but in reality, it really doesn’t. The Saturn Twin Stick uses the same overall housing as the Saturn HSS-0136 Virtua Stick, an Astro City arcade cabinet-themed arcade stick. The only difference is the top plate, which houses the graphics and the levers themselves, and the lack of multiple switches at the top front. While the Virtua Stick has two versions, one with ASCII switches and one with Seimitsu’s parts. The difference between these two is that Seimitsu is of higher quality and should last longer. With the Twin Stick being a later controller model, all variants seem to use the same ASCII parts as the levers’ actuators. However, the weak spot of the Saturn Twin Stick comes with its use of ASCII’s parts. While ASCII did manufacture decent controllers and parts in the mid-1990s, they are very much of lower quality compared to Sanwa or Seimitsu’s parts. Its sticks also have a tendency to rotate slightly, something that’s up to opinion whether or not that’s a good thing. Some find the twisting more comfortable, as the hands then to find a more natural position and angle, while others want stiff sticks like in the arcades.
Aaltomies 
