sega saturn

A Cosmetic Conundrum

  • Reading time:13 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part seven of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation, under a different title; something like “The Problem With Game Consoles”. People seemed to take this article more seriously than I intended.

In May I finally saw a PlayStation 3 up-close – and dear lord. Whereas the Xbox 360 at least puts on a pretense of tenability, sucking in its gut like a real man, Sony’s system sets a new standard for girth. Maybe it was the rotating display, walled behind likely-bulletproof Plexiglass – yet I swear it must be the most outrageously massive game console that’s ever been designed. And that’s on top of looking like a space ship based on the template of a waffle iron. Whereas the Sega Genesis looked like you could top-load a CD into it, the PS3 looks like you could top-load a side of bacon.

Six years flew by from the excitement…

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Phew. Finally got KoF’96 working on my Saturn. For a while there I thought the gameshark’s RAM element wasn’t compatible with the game for whatever reason. I’ve heard that KoF’95 was one of the few cart-and-disc combo games which was put out for the system, and that would certainly be a nightmare to deal with. I was hoping that ’96 was a bit more standard, but the first couple of attempts led nowhere.

I guess persistence is the key. And the result? Not half bad. It’s nowhere up to the level of the Dreamcast ports in most respects, but aside from the (incredible amount of) load time, it’s pretty darned close to the original Neo-Geo version. Here are some observations:

  • MY GOD, the load times.
  • The sound quality is mixed. Many of the standard grunts are of a high enough quality, and yet the special move calls will sound like they were recorded through a pillow. Iori is a great example of this syndrome: “Hah! Huaah! Mrrfsobi uua Rroore da! Hwah! Hoh!”
  • As with Dream Match 1999 for the Dreamcast, the music stops and starts again between rounds. Unlike the DC game, there’s a reason for it: the ten-second load time between every two rounds. Also unlike DM1999, the music doesn’t just restart from the beginning. Rather, there’s a set point mid-theme for each tune to kick back in. This was pretty decent planning, I thought.
  • At least there’s interesting character art during all of the loading that’s going on. Amongst the more interesting shots is one of Ralf in his original Ikari Warriors garb.
  • Since the music is all in redbook (making for easy ripping), it’s of a very high quality. The full-vocal rendition of the Psycho Soldier theme is particularly impressive, as are Esaka Forever and the bit of Wagner that Krauser has going. However you also get the usual setbacks from direct-spooled music — particularly seek lag. There’s a lot of misalignment between the music and visual clues in instances such as the game introduction.
  • It might just be me, but I think the sound is in mono. Maybe I have my Saturn arranged peculiarly, though. I’ll have to check on this.
  • There isn’t as much flexibility as I’d like in rearranging the game controls.
  • Being from 1996, there is unfortunately no practice mode.
  • I haven’t seen any particular extras, but then neither did I expect any.

I’m now kind of curious about how ’97 fares on the system. I’m certainly not about to go out and look for it at the moment, but still.

All right. I’ve got other things to do right now.

Socking on the new day

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Last night I played Capcom vs SNK and Panzer Dragoon until nearly dawn. I suppose I could have been doing something more constructive, but I’ve got a lot of groove points in the former case, now — almost enough to purchase EX Iori. And it keeps me focused on something, at least.

Headhunter is out in Europe now, and I’ve only seen a single review for it so far — and I don’t believe I’ve seen a more generic, content-less, undescriptive review for a game in my life. Still, it does look interesting — and I think I trust a Scandinavian game developer much more than I would most Western ones. And Shenmue II should be out in Europe soon, meaning my order should be filled in a couple of weeks.

I only today noticed where Mai stores her endless supply of fans. Yes, it’s exactly where you’d imagine. I’ll have to check some other games with her in them, now, and see if that was just Capcom’s addition or not…

So much to find.

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All these fighting games I have, now. Recently I’ve been studying KoF98, and have noticed a bunch of details and subtleties that had gone completely passed me by. And then earlier today I decided to pull out Vampire Chronicle For Matching Service; something new I noticed — besides that I don’t seem to have actually played in arcade mode with a lot of the characters (any who aren’t amongst my favourites I guess I tend to just fiddle with in training) is that the details in the background vary considerably depending on which “mode” one chooses (Vampire, Hunter, Savior).

When I played the Saturn version of Savior I had wondered about a couple of the stages, particularly Brazil and the one on the side of the skyscraper. There seemed to be many more things going on in the background in the Saturn version than in my copy of the game, including a lizard being chomped on in the former and helicopters and coloured lights in the latter. Also, many levels of scrolling seemed to be missing in my version. I thought it was a little cheap that Capcom left some of these elements out of the game, as Chronicle was supposed to be a compilation and combination of all of the previous games, into one. As it ends up, though, it all relies on what one sets the game to emulate.

I suppose I’ve mostly been playing in “Vampire” mode, making it play the most like the first game in the series. I just earlier set it to “Savior”, and the backdrops were suddenly quite alive. Also, the music was different (and in places more appropriate).

This is very interesting…

The Sega Pushover

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I beat NiGHTS, after nearly a year — first Claris’s game, and then Elliot’s. I see now why the game was split up into two sections like this. Wizeman wasn’t at all difficult to fight, once I was given a chance to see what he did; previously I’d only ever made it to him once, and at that time I was a bit too rattled. But… gee. One can even get hit several times and still be able to beat him without a huge problem. Just getting to him is harder…

This, though, seems to be a typical sort of a Sega style. They make it very, very hard to get to the end — and then once one has gotten there they sort of reward her by making the final encounter pretty trivial. If one has made it that far, they let her enjoy her victory. Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, and Sonic Adventure are three other examples which pop immediately to mind here. Though — the last battle can often be tricky the first time one gets to it just because one doesn’t know how things work and one is expecting it to be much harder than it is, so one tends to be very jumpy.

Boy. I don’t think I need to use that pronoun again for another week or so.

Water effects

  • Reading time:1 mins read

This morning I had a notion to play Panzer Dragoon. Although I’ve never beaten round three, and only in fact ever gotten there twice, this time I managed to get all the way through chapter four! The fourth one is very, very impressive. Actually, it’s astounding how well this game has held up after six years. I mean, it’s obviously rough. Considering when it came out, though — as a launch title… yikes. I mean. This is pretty impressive now. How must it have seemed in 1995?