An explanation of what I'm doing here can be found in my introduction post.
Last time we looked at the last part of November '95 with High Velocity: Mountain Racing Challenge, V.R. Virtua Racing, Solar Eclipse, Galactic Attack, and Virtua Fighter 2.
This time we will take a swing at the games released for the Saturn in December 1995: Bases Loaded '96: Double Header, Center Ring Boxing, Gex, Valora Valley Golf, Hi-Octane, FIFA 96, Mystaria: The Realms of Lore, and Thunderstrike 2.
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Bases Loaded '96: Double Header
Release Date: 12/1/1995
Developer: Jaleco
Publisher: Jaleco
Time to Striking Out: 31 Minutes
We start off this week of multi-platform releases with a game that shouldn't have even been released on one system, much less two. The Saturn version of Bases Loaded is functionally identical to the contemporaneous Playstation version. Yet, maybe due to a trick of the mind, I think this version looks and plays slightly better.
Also, I delved a bit deeper into the options menu this time around, which probably counts for a lot. Doing so allowed me to see the what passes for control mapping and, most importantly, set the running and outfield to auto. That saved me from the infuriating outfield and base-running mechanics that screwed me over so badly last time. With that done, I started the season mode, picked the same team as before, and became confused by the team management screens even though I knew to expect them. When I finally got into a game, I was pitted against Philly again, meaning it was time to get done dirty by Curt Schilling like I was the state of Rhode Island.
I got a better sense of the batting and pitching controls this time, though these never felt as coherent or usable as in World Series Baseball. With my increased skills, I was able to score 8 whole entire points in that match. But the AI is still monstrous, and the fuckers scored 11 runs. I had the same singles issue as in World Series, but I at least a got a home run one time here. Even though it was a closer game, the AI still batted something like a .900 average and the pitching is still rotten ass. The sound design is still trash, though the sprites seem to animate better here than on the PS1. Overall, it's the same garbage experience and I can't feel any sentimentality about the whole series dropping dead after this entry.
Here are some screenshots, because why not:
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Center Ring Boxing
Release Date: 12/8/1995
Developer: Victor Entertainment
Publisher: Victor Entertainment
Time to What A Stinging Right Hook: 24 Minutes
There isn't a ton of information floating around about this game, to such an extent that there isn't even a Wikipedia page for the thing. All I can tell is that this was a product of JVC's short-lived video game division, and that it's the predecessor to the Contender series of boxing games on the Playstation. These games and some random port work seem to be the most notable things done by JVC in the games industry during its roughly 15-year involvement. That's not a lot, and it becomes even less when you consider that Center Ring Boxing is a big 'ole hunk of crap.
Things don't start well with a basic CG opening cutscene that is both lifeless and uninspiring. Despite this, my hopes picked up when the game forces you into a character creator before you can do anything else. There's more going on here than I would have thought, with sliders for physical characteristics and some basic stats that can be initialized. The created fighter can go into one of several weight classes, and it looks like you can have multiple saved fighters at a time. This is the best part of the game.
There are a few game modes, with the main one being a fight ladder where you have to work your way up from 31st to the top of the weight class. You can challenge fighters ranging from one to five or so ranks above yours, and there is stat training between every fight. That training seems a bit generous, and it's easy to see maxing out all the stats before ever reaching the top. This is all fine enough, but the whole experience collapses once the fighting starts.
The gameplay is shown from an isometric perspective that zooms in and out as the fighters get closer or further from each other. This would be nicely dynamic if the camera wasn't fixed. The stationary camera means that you can and will get yourself into odd placements where you can't see what's going on. This is a slow-motion disaster because the movement is amazingly sluggish. Think how sluggish a boxing game can feel, and now imagine something worse than that. This is exacerbated by the fact that the player’s movement is oriented in relation to the opponent. Imagine the opposing boxer as the center of a circle, you shrink and widen the circle using up and down on the d-pad, and you use the left button to move the character towards their left-hand side and the right button to do it to the right. If you're able to decipher what that would look like, you can see how the basic movement is a disorienting chore. The actual boxing isn't any better, having only the options to jab, hook, and uppercut. There's supposed to be a guard button, but I was never able to get it to guard my character’s face.
The point of the fights is to wear down the opponent's top stamina bar. I think the other two bars are for punching and guarding stamina, but that's just a guess. The bars only partially refill after being depleted, which seems standard for boxing games; after knocking each other down enough, one fighter will eventually not get back up and that's the match. The game continues like this until you win the championship, I guess. I can't imagine someone doing that, as the gameplay is a terrible chore without interruption. It doesn't look particularly great either and, while the announcer has some fun lines, they're repeated way too often. Maybe someone who's really into the Boxing genre could gleam something important from this; yet there was no reason for anyone to give this game the time of day when it came out, and there's no reason to do so now.
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Gex
Release Date: 12/15/1995
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Crystal Dynamics
Time to A Boomer Wife Joke: 18 Minutes
Being back in December '95, we now get to look at Gex again. What joy. This is basically identical to the PS1 version. The only thing I noticed is that the opening movie runs poorly on the Saturn. You still play as Gex, still get sucked into a TV, and still must listen to low-effort Dana Gould jokes. I still don't know who Ed is or what happened with his birthday keg, and at this point I no longer care.
It's hard to think of more to say that I didn't say about the PS1 release. I can see value in the core idea of making a platformer where the character can climb on walls and ceilings. It's possible to do interesting multi-pathed levels with that concept and make a neat thing. Though, having the premise where that character is a TV-poisoned chucklefuck is what erases any merit this game could have had. I mean, no one involved in this production would have heard the audio or seen the enemy design and gone, "This is a great idea, and I feel good as an artist." The most generous thing I can imagine is that they would look at what they were making and go, "Anyone dumb enough to own a 3DO is going to love this shit." As a creative, you're shoveling slop when you get to that point. Did anyone who worked on this game feel good about themselves? I guess the level designer could claim to have done a good job, but no one else can do so. This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
Anyway, here's a few screenshots:
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Valora Valley Golf
Release Date: 12/15/1995
Developer: T&E Soft
Publisher: T&E Soft
Time to Bouncing Off A Cliff: 32 Minutes
Due to my inattentiveness, I thought that I was done with T&E Soft after the horrors of Virtual Hydlide. It wasn't until I started this batch of games that I realized this obscure golf game is actually a True Golf spin-off. I have since double-checked my list and can confirm that this is the final T&E Soft game released for the Saturn in North America. So, how does this thing compare to Pebble Beach Golf Links? Better…I think.
This is apparently a sneakily renamed port of the 3DO remake of True Golf Classics: Wicked 18, which came out for the SNES in '93. Playing this developer’s reheated leftovers doesn't seem appetizing, yet this manages to be slightly less miserable than their other offerings. Starting at the beginning, this is only kind of in the True Golf series, because even though it feels like it uses the same engine as the other 3DO games in this series, it is based on an entirely fictional golf course called the DEVIL'S OPEN. That makes this the Warriors Orochi of the True Golf franchise. There are, of course, only 18 holes in the game, but some of them are kinda wacky. The golf course features some lava pits instead of water hazards, a few floating islands, an occasional ziggurat, and some mildly impossible terrain. It's certainly unrealistic, but nowhere near as fanciful as you would expect from a fantasy golf game.
Being on the same engine as Pebble Beach, this game also features poorly compressed FMV golfers and caddies, uses the same basic shot controls, and features the True Golf patented texture pop-out. It's the opposite of pop-in, with environment textures loading-in but then disappearing when you move to the camera to look at them. Think of it as the opposite of Unreal Engine 3. The hole introductions are also different from Pebble Beach, replacing the delightfully meme-able golf man with this bullshit:
The last thing I want to goof on are the caddies. They don't seem to unnervingly stand off to the side of the player like in the other games, but instead will show up in the corner of the screen to provide words of encouragement or someothernonsense. This startled me the first time, but it's easy to get used to this feature for how bizarre it is. Note: The YouTube account I'm using for those clips is a treasure trove.
Getting serious about it for a little bit, there are a couple of gameplay things to touch on. There is a slight quality of life improvement in the golfing itself compared to the previous entry. This game will show you on the mini map where you're aiming the ball. It's comforting that T&E Soft was gradually advancing towards the design standards of NES golf games. That said, every other aspect of the gameplay is just as fucked as in Pebble Beach. Even more so in some ways, since the weird shit the game does with the greens turns the already terrible putting into something completely unmanageable. Even though this isn't the worst golf game on the Saturn, it still isn't fun or good by any metric. I only lasted a few holes into the DEVIL'S OPEN before having to quit out of sheer misery.
Now that we've made it through the two True Golf games on the Saturn, do we have anything to take away from the experience? No, not really. Nothing is learned, nothing is gained. The mistakes of the past are the mistakes of the future. The only solace we can take is that Tiger Woods and Mario eventually tag-teamed this franchise into oblivion, which is where it belongs.
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Hi-Octane
Release Date: 12/22/1995
Developer: Bullfrog Productions
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Time to Killed By MAD: 20 Minutes
Speaking of games that I would love to never play again, it's now time to return to Hi-Octane. All my complaints from the PS1 version still stand, with some new ones thrown in for added potency. One of the issues with the PS1 version was that it moved too fast for the draw distance to adequately keep up with. This turned every corner into a blind corner and led to oodles of surprises in each race. That problem has been turned on its head for the Saturn. Here, the framerate is throttled to what feels like 1/2 or 2/3rds speed, with it dipping into a slideshow when there's a lot going on. This eliminates my reaction time issue and creates a whole host of new problems.
The already floaty controls are less responsive at the lower framerate. The slower pace also let me notice just how bad everything looks. Also, I think it fucks with the rate of replenishment at the refill stations, which really turns this into a bad time. Finally, and this might just be in my head, I think this allows the AI to play better and become more dangerous. This was significantly harder than the PS1 version to the point of feeling unfair. The nature of the combat means that it's possible to get dropped from 1st to 7th right before the finish line, and thus being forced to restart the whole championship. This is a Mario Kart level of horse-fuckery, but at least in those games the AI is more likely to spread out and you can keep playing after getting screwed over. This is the worst version of an already marginal game. I don't even have enough fun screenshots to fill out this section. All I must show you is this visual summary of the holistic gameplay experience:
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FIFA '96
Release Date: 12/23/1995
Developer: Probe Entertainment
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Time to Hating Soccer: 17 Minutes
This is functionally the same game as the PS1 version that we previously saw. Same game modes, same Virtual Stadium branding everywhere, same sport. There were a few differences in the experience, however.
First, this game is a good use case for examining the graphical differences between the Saturn and PS1. As a note, I checked the settings for the cores I use for emulation (Beetle PSX and Beetle Saturn) and the visual smoothing options were turned off, so I must take these graphics at face value. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's look at a comparison:
It's a trade-off, really. The aliasing on the Saturn is traded for the blurriness of the Playstation, the stadium in the PS1 screen has more depth, and it's a toss-up which one has a better-looking crowds. We can see it as a stylistic difference, though people at the time might have preferred smooth polygons, what with jaggy edges being associated with old-fashioned sprites. The larger issue is with the gameplay. It felt like this version runs slightly worse than on the PS1, and the control set-up somehow felt inexplicable for the supposed simplicity. I remember FIFA 96 feeling better than this, and the Sega word salad soccer game from launch feels so much better than this.
Whatever is happening here, the result is that it was absolutely miserable to play. Player switching felt off, the shooting and passing only sometimes worked as expected, and stealing/defending the ball didn't make much sense. I had such a bad time that I think I have decisively turned against the general concept of Soccer. This is going to be a problem going forward, as there are going to be a metric gazillion footie games in the future. I'll figure out what to do with them. Probably.
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Mystaria: The Realms of Lore
Release Date: 12/27/1995
Developer: Microcabin
Publisher: Sega
Time to Stuck On A Bridge: 2.5 Hours
I was a bit concerned about starting this game, though maybe not for the reason you're thinking. I've burned through just about all the time buffer I've had for this blog series, and I was worried that if I liked this 30-hour long RPG too much that it would throw a wrench into my intended schedule. Fortunately, this game is kinda bad, and not even in a compelling way.
Mystaria: The Realms of Lore, alternately known as either Blazing Heroes or Riglord Saga which are both far better names, is a Japanese Tactical RPG. My experience with this genre is limited outside of the Fire Emblem franchise, but I'm always willing to give these kinds of games a shot. It's also the first turn-based RPG of any kind that we've dealt with on these platforms, so congratulations to Microcabin.
The story and style of gameplay feel heavily inspired by the Fire Emblem games, but that impression could be due to my limited knowledge of this genre. Mystaria could very well be ripping-off something else. The story follows the prince of an invaded kingdom and his battle-hardened entourage as they go on a magical adventure to defeat the big bad and restore justice to the world, or whatever. This is accomplished via tactical battles where you take turns with the AI to move units around a gridded level and whack your opponents over the head with whatever you have available. Each of your units has a name and backstory, there's dialogue, an overworld with some less-linear narrative paths, there's equipment, a somewhat unique skill system, and experience levelling. Have you ever come within smelling distance of Final Fantasy Tactics? Well, this game beat Squaresoft to market by a few years.
As naturally inclined as I am towards this thing, there are a multitude of issues that eventually pushed me away. The most immediately obvious one is that this game looks like ass. From what little I've been able to look up, the polygonal units are somehow pre-rendered, which I suppose can explain why I get Mario RPG vibes from the graphics. Going with full polygons for everything was certainly a brave choice, but it really doesn't pay off. The environments aren't much better, with some lackluster textures papering over primitive environmental features. This game is fundamentally unpleasant to look at for extended periods of time.
It's also impossible for me to be charitable about the writing. It's unmitigated trash. The dialogue isn't even that funny, which would have been a saving grace. It's also badly translated, with some sloppy spelling errors thrown in for flavor. The plot, which gets manhandled by the writing, is itself barely worth discussion. The characters are all a bunch of C-tier Fire Emblem rejects and the world they exist in is as rote as it gets. Some examples, the kingdom you need to liberate is called Queensland, which is ruled by a Queen. The main villain is called Lord Bane and the furry tribal guy is called Ferral. The default name for the deposed prince is Aragon, and the starting mage is named Saura. I'll give you one chance to guess what kind of people are in the Dragoon Kingdom. If I had played further, I would probably have another thousand words of examples to air out. What I'm trying to get at is that the stuff outside the gameplay isn't worth anything.
That gameplay is, I suppose, largely competent. The units fall into standard roles, such as Heavy, Archer, Healer, Flier, etc., and the tactical considerations around that are pretty normal. It seems easy enough to figure out how to play, given any prior experience with this genre. The one notable feature is the way that this game handles character skills. From what I was able to tell, the individual abilities have their own experience counters that tick up with usage. When an ability reaches a new level, it unlocks another ability. Each character seems to have a main and sub-class and can have up to nine skills assigned at any one time. Even though I didn't spend enough time with the game to go too deep into it, this feels like a good system that encourages the player to change their approach to fights in order to gain newer, better abilities.
Now, the reason I didn't spend too much time with this game relates to the encounter and enemy design. In 2.5 hours, I got through the first four combat sections and the accompanying story. That is a stolid pace, even for one of these games. One of the reasons is that the whole thing seems to be laboring under the weight of polygonal processing and chugging along accordingly. The other reason is that the combat feels entirely unbalanced. Some enemies go down in one hit from a front-line fighter, while other enemies need to get hit by every character for two turns. The heavy enemies are weak to magic, but at the start of the game there are two magic users and one of those is needed for healing. The game will also throw a dozen of these enemies at you in a single level, and there's only enough spare MP to deal with half of them. Then there's the bizarre difficulty spike at the point where the game opens up. After the first trip up the mountain, you seemingly get three paths to choose from. I tried two of them, which are both fucked, and didn't have enough left in me to go for the third. Everything about the encounters and difficulty curve feels haphazard. In a normal RPG, wacky difficulty curves can be smoothed out with grinding. But in games like this, which are structured in the same mold as old-school Fire Emblems, the balance needs to be tight in order for the whole thing to not fall apart.
I probably could have looked up a guide and gotten though more of the game, but it didn't give me any reason to care that much. There only seems to have been three Tactical RPGs released in North America during 1995, and I can confidently say this was one of them. There also weren't any contemporary Saturn games with as much going on as this one. No matter how mediocre this game is, it's still one of the best values for this system in the launch year, which is one of the most damning things I could say about the Saturn.
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Thunderstrike 2
Release Date: 12/27/1995
Developer: Core Design
Publisher: U.S. Gold
Time to Out Of Ammo: 25 Minutes
My memories of playing the PS1 version of this game have grown fonder with time. This has been helped along by playing Black Fire and having to confront just how bad this type of game can be. Playing Thunderstrike 2 again on the Saturn has highlighted two things for me. First, this is the best helicopter game of the year (on 32-bit consoles); and second, this game is kinda bad.
In just about every way, this game is better than Black Fire, and I would even go so far as calling it the second or third best Flight Combat game of the year. The controls make some amount of sense, the weapon loadout options are distinctive, the levels are designed, there's a useful map, and the music is ok. That may sound like faint praise because it is. There are still too few missiles for the kinds of objectives being asked of the player, the weapon lock-on is wonky, and none of the three camera views is fully useful. This version also carries the problem of the polygonal pop-in somehow being more disastrous than on the PlayStation. This still isn't an enjoyable game, even if it isn't the hottest garbage. I suppose we're lucky that Core Design would soon after this find their true calling: pointy chests.
Anyway, here's a few screenshots:
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That's it for the Saturn in 1995. These are all the games that the first wave of Saturn owners had to work with, the poor bastards. Maybe I'm being unfair with that, and this is all actually fine; or maybe I'm being overly fair and the whole catalog is a dumpster fire. I can't tell anymore. Ever since The Mansion of Hidden Souls I've become decreasingly convinced that video games exist. Maybe we're all just immortal butterflies posting through the ennui…eh, whatever. Here's where this batch of "video" "games" slot into the Ranking of All Saturn Games:
1. Panzer Dragoon
…
14. Mystaria: The Realms of Lore
23. Thunderstrike 2
28. FIFA 96
35. Center Ring Boxing
37. Valora Valley Golf
38. Hi-Octane
42. Bases Loaded '96: Double Header
43. Gex
…
48. The Mansion of Hidden Souls
Having now done a sprint through the 48 Saturn games of 1995, it's time to pause once more and consider what we've been through. Next week we'll do an overview of the Saturn's place in the world circa 1995. Additionally, we'll crunch some more numbers, hand out some facetious fictitious awards, plan out where this journey goes from here, and more! What more terrible ideas can I come up with? Time will tell!
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