An explanation of what I'm doing here can be found in my introduction post.
Last week we looked at the launch lineup of Clockwork Knight, Daytona USA, Panzer Dragoon, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Virtua Fighter, and Worldwide Soccer: Sega International Victory Goal Edition.
This week we will look at the few games released for the Saturn in July and August 1995: Bug!, Myst, Astal, Robotica, and Street Fighter: The Movie.
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Bug!
Release Date: 7/28/1995
Developer: Realtime Associates
Publisher: Sega
Time to This Sucks: 30 Minutes
I have in the past referred to Jumping Flash! as the first entry in the 3D Platforming genre. That is a fairly common claim that gets made; but Sega would contend that there was a 3D platformer released before Jumping Flash!, the equally exclamatory Bug!. Friends, anyone making that counterclaim is a liar. Also, this is the first Saturn release since launch day, a full two and a half months earlier. That's roughly 10 weeks where a brand-new console had jack-all going on, which is insane, but that's a story for a different time. Sadly, we’re here instead to talk about Bug!, a "3D" platformer that plays almost exactly like a 2D platformer.
Starting with the premise: the titular Bug is a movie star for some reason, who is shooting a movie when his family gets abducted by some kind of spider queen. I wasn't sure if that was part of the movie plot or if there was something else going on. It really doesn't matter, though, because Bug immediately hops into the first level and off we go. The idea behind the gameplay here is that while Bug walks on narrow linear pathways, those pathways can extend off, turn, and branch in any of the three dimensions. This is more for the visuals than anything else, as the platforming and combat happen along two dimensions and are wholly standard by 2D action-platforming conventions. You walk casually down the paths, jump across gaps, and hop on enemies. It works exactly the way you're imagining it.
This all would be fine if it was executed at any level of competence. This game can achieve the feat of making the most well-worn type of controls on consoles feel imprecise and wonky. I never quite trusted the main jump, the character acceleration feels off somehow, and the hitboxes for everything feel wrong. Because of the ambling character speed, the levels end up taking way longer than they should. In my 30 minutes, I got to only halfway through the second level. This is exacerbated by the paucity of checkpoints, one per level. Dying to combat is rare, what with the five hit life bar and ample healing items but dying to weird and poorly timed jumps is frequent. Having a three-to-five-minute walk back from the start or mid-level checkpoint gets very old very quickly. The camera isn't helpful either, it's fixed close-in positioning accentuates the polygons and textures, but it also causes the occasional blind jump and surprise enemy. This is all to say that the game is miserable to play.
This wouldn't be a dealbreaker if there was anything compelling going on around the gameplay. The graphics are done well enough to earn a golf clap, with future sections of the level discernably visible in the background and the enemies being decently detailed. That technical accomplishment is used to show off an art style that is decidedly 'meh'. In addition, the sound design doesn't help anything. The sound effects are cartoony, but not in an endearing way, the voice of Bug is reminiscent of Bubsy, and the music consists of what seems like the same 30-second sample looping continuously. That's made worse by the fact that the one music sample in question sounds like ass. The only positive is the non-sequitur voice clip that proclaims, "BUUUUG JUUUICE" when you pick up a full-heal item. That clip is absolutely going on my hypothetical soundboard.
The truly crazy thing about this wet fart of a game is that Bug was originally intended to be the platform mascot for the Saturn. There's probably a whole story behind this, but in short someone had the bright idea to retire Sonic and start over with mascot branding. That's why we don't have any kind of Sonic release on the Saturn in 1995. Bug! was supposed to be the next Sonic the Hedgehog, and by those standards this middling game is an unmitigated catastrophe. It is mind-boggling that anyone thought this should be the marquee Saturn exclusive to have ready to counter the PS1 launch. What a mess.
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Myst
Release Date: 8/9/1995
Developer: SunSoft
Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment
Time to Feeling Sleepy: 65 Minutes
Finally, a game that naturally caters to the Saturn's preferred framerate! *ba dum tish*
Anyway, Myst is a difficult game to write about. It's one of the most famous and seminal games ever made, and its gameplay mechanics have sublimated tropedom and become part of the bedrock of adventure game design. It was originally released in 1993 for the PC and helped popularize multimedia fuckery into the mainstream. I've played it at least a couple of times over the years and I've ended up with three or four versions of the damn thing. Nothing about this should be a new experience, but the Saturn version of this game finds a way to stand out in one major respect: it's trash.
For the five people who are unfamiliar, Myst is an old school graphical adventure game that utilized the multimedia power of newfangled CD-ROMs to have environments made from pre-rendered polygonal images and to also sprinkle in some FMV acting. It's played essentially as a first-person slideshow where you transition between hundreds of 3D images to approximate walking around an environment. The visuals, sound design, and writing do a fantastic job of establishing the otherworldly tone and atmosphere of its small mechanical fantasy world. There's a hub zone and branching zones (called "Ages" for reasons) where you solve puzzles to collect book pages. There aren't really any NPCs to talk to or dialogue options. The game eschewed the Adventure game standards of verb-noun interface and inventory system in favor of complex environmental puzzles and pattern memorization/notetaking. The puzzles are also infamously abstruse, so no one will believe you if you claim to have finished it without a guide. It's worth playing in either the original or modern version just for the sake of seeing it.
For everyone who already knows what Myst is, this is a direct port of the original version with the d-pad being used to control the mouse cursor. If that sounds nightmarish, it gets worse. The scene transitions are sluggish, and the cursor speed is automatically set to the slowest level. Playing this game is an obnoxious chore, even more so than the obnoxious chore that already is the experience of playing Myst. That's right, just because it’s a well-made classic doesn't mean it's any fun to play. I damn near fell asleep just from wandering around and reading the lore, I didn't even unlock Channelwood before I quit. Also, I didn't fully remember any of the puzzle solutions from the last time I played, so I wasn't exactly doing a speedrun. If I wanted to seriously play this game, I would pull up the newest version of RealMyst or that weird VR version. There is no reason for any sane person to play the Saturn version of this game. This is the worst version I've ever seen, though if anyone has put eyes on the 3DO or Jaguar ports let me know if those are somehow jankier.
Finally, as a consequence of my low-quality framerate joke at the beginning, I have accidentally invoked the spirit of Virtual Hydlide, which is also a low-quality framerate joke. This has caused an upgrade to our status in the Hydlide Alert System. We are now under a Hydlide Watch. Please identify your nearest Hydlide shelter and pay attention to official channels in case there's an evacuation for your area.
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Astal
Release Date: 8/15/1995
Developer: AM7
Publisher: Sega
Time to Fully Irritated: 30 Minutes
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this one. Astal is a side-scrolling action platformer that plays like it should be on the Genesis, but looks and sounds like it could be one of those retro-throwback games from the early 2010's.
The fairy tale premise is that a goddess creates two beings, a magic girl and a boy, the main character Astal, to guard her. The girl gets kidnapped by a bad guy, the boy rescues her but gets into trouble with the goddess and ends up imprisoned. The girl is kidnapped again so the boy busts out and goes after her, again. This is told through some barely animated anime scenes with unfortunate VO that borders on hilarious. There are some slightly off-kilter vibes going on there before the game even begins. Also, the title treatment is an absolute nightmare.
Going into the actual game, the experience doesn't get any less odd. The first world features the most straightforward side-scrolling gameplay imaginable. You walk to the right, attack enemies, and sometimes jump up on small ledges. After a few minutes, you get a bird friend that can do contextual stuff when a bar charges up. From there there's more walking and tossing before getting to a standard boss fight. I got hung up in the second world because there's actual platforming and the jumping is crap. There is a three hit health system combined with a whole load of damaging enemies, hazards, and wonky hitboxes. This leads to quick deaths with any and all suboptimal play, and every death causes a restart at the beginning of the level as if it were a NES game. There is no reason to recommend the gameplay in this thing; for action-platforming go play Ristar like a sane person.
Yet, the gameplay is not at all the point with this game. The main draw is in the look and feel. The sprites are big and detailed, the animation is nice and smooth, and listening to the music was somehow the first time I felt the difference from having CD QUALITY AUDIO. I'm not sure why the music hit me as much as it did. The composition is standard for this type of game in that it sounds the way it looks. Maybe because I know how these games should sound on a SNES or Genesis, hearing that same type of thing done at a much higher level of fidelity really made it click. On top of that, this thing looks to me like a really good GBA game. That should be an insult, but sense this is 1995 that is more of a complement than anything else. Heck, with some anti-aliasing this game could have dropped for $15 on Xbox Live in like 2013 and no one would have noticed that it wasn't new. I'm not sure why the whimsical art style here doesn't annoy me the way that the whimsy in Rayman pisses me off. Maybe this game is restrained enough to not turn into visual diarrhea.
The biggest problem with the otherwise good aesthetic is in the voice over. As mentioned above, the narration feels like the direction had the voice actress put the wrong emphasis into every line. It's almost funny, but it ends up being only just bad enough to be bad. The few voice lines from Astal are also pretty bad. Not the worst I've heard from 2D games on these consoles, but still not great. This becomes more bizarre when seeing in the credits that there was only one English language voice actress doing every voice in this game. I can't put much blame on her for the quality of the performance since she was having to differentiate literally all the dialogue in this game. Though, when she does the Astal voice, she sounds a whole lot like Ash Ketchum, which is off-putting.
Looking at this game in the context of the time, it's insane that Sega thought this was a good idea. When the Genesis came out in '89, one of the big selling points was the nice, big, detailed sprites in comparison to the NES. Kids at that time saw those screenshots of Golden Axe or whatever and went, "Golly-gee wilikers, those sprites sure are nifty!" or whatever kids said back then. Six years later, it feels like Sega made Astal to showcase the impressive sprite capabilities of the Saturn and garner that same reaction. They did not give enough consideration (with anything) to the fact that those impressionable kids were now shitty teenagers who would have taken one look at Astal and rolled their eyes. The mood of the times was for badly rendered polygons, and there was very little appetite for games like this anymore. That could be sad, but since I have no attachment to this genre, I can't get particularly worked up about it.
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Robotica
Release Date: 8/16/1995
Developer: Genki
Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment
Time to Fragged In The Dark: 35 Minutes
No 32-bit console could have a respectable line-up without a bad First Person Shooter. Not only does Robotica have that niche covered, but it also acts as a preemptive response to the soon-to-be-released Kileak: The DNA Imperative (remember, it's pronounced "kih-leek"). That Kileak comparison fits in more ways than one.
I'm not going to recount the breathless lore dump at the top of this game. Suffice it to say, you play as a futuristic mech, that looks real similar to the mech in Kileak, infiltrating an automated space station in order to do a thing. This is represented as a dark and ugly multi-level dungeon where you wander around shooting robots and tanks while looking for the level exits. This makes the basics of the gameplay extremely similar to Kileak to the point that it would be easier to list the differences between these games than to explain it in its own terms.
As such, going in order of importance, here are the differences between Robotica and Kileak:
- Robotica uses randomly generated floor layouts, which increases variety between playthroughs but gives less room for the levels to have any puzzles or personality.
- The enemy placement in Robotica is inherently unpredictable, which is an improvement over Kileak's habit of only spawning enemies right behind closed doors.
- The mech in Robotica moves a bit quicker and much more smoothly than the mech in Kileak.
- The music in Robotica sucks way worse than the music in Kileak.
- Robotica's energy system is used for powering secondary abilities as opposed to Kileak's usage of it as a constantly draining second lifebar.
- You don't seem to pick up new weapons in Robotica the way that you do in Kileak, instead you get randomly dropped upgrades for the three standard weapons.
- The writing in Kileak is way funnier than in Robotica.
That should give a full idea of what's going on here for anyone who remembers Kileak.
I made it most of the way through the fifth level before eating it. There seems to be unlimited continues that start you back at the beginning of the current level with a re-rolled layout. There wasn't anything going on to hold my interest in this thing, so I bounced after a second impatient attempt at that level. The lack of any substance makes it hard to find anything interesting to say about this one. So, I suppose in that respect Kileak is the superior bad FPS game at this point in the console war.
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Street Fighter: The Movie
Release Date: 8/23/1995
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment
Time to Beating Raul Julia: 35 Minutes
We've already looked at this game on the PS1 all the way back in Part 004 of that series. This is largely the same game, so there's only a few things to note before moving on.
First, now that I've seen the actual movie, this game is even more hilarious than it was the first time around. The branching paths in the Movie Fight mode are not only nonsensical in their own right, but usually neither available option reflects the actual plot points of the movie. That is enormously silly, and it has my full support. Also, I'm pretty sure Dee Jay never fights anyone in the movie, was that an oversight?
Anyway, the second thing to note is that for whatever reason this game runs a lot better on the Saturn than on the PS1. The character animations are smoother, and the controls are more responsive than what I remember of the PS1 release. I don't know the exact reason for this, but I'm going to chalk it up to the glorious and UNPARALLED sprite processing power of the Sega Saturn.
I'm going to credit the improved performance for the fact that I beat the Arcade Fight mode on my first try. Mind you, I set the difficulty to easy, but I also did that on the PS1 version and only got halfway up that ladder. Other than the performance, this might also be due to the fact that I played using the most God-Tier S-Rank OP Street Fighter character of all time: Sawada. I now realize why Capcom never rolled him into the main franchise, they were too afraid of his overwhelming power.
Much to my surprise, I legitimately had a better time with this one than any other game this week. That probably counts as damning with faint praise, but Sega should take what they can get at this point.
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Overall, this week wasn't particularly encouraging when compared to the PS1 launch line-up that's coming out only a couple weeks from the last game here. Coincidently, Sony will release as many games in one day as Sega was able to put out during their entire four-month lead time. Sony's approach was probably better than this one, as the PS1's bad games can get buried by simultaneously released good games instead of having to stand on their own merit as individual releases.
I've updated my Ranking of All Saturn Games with these releases. They have been slotted in at:
1. Panzer Dragoon
...
3. Street Fighter: The Movie
5. Astal
8. Myst
9. Bug!
10. Robotica
...
11. Pebble Beach Golf Links
Anyway, there were six games released for the Saturn in September 1995 that we will look at next time: Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend, Shinobi Legions, Cyber Speedway, Shanghai: Triple-Threat, Virtua Fighter Remix, and I'm going to Jim Cantore my way through our long awaited and feared disaster.
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