Fighters Megamix - Bosses and Bears and Cars, oh my!

 

When Fighting Vipers and the Virtua Fighter series just aren’t enough to quench your thirst for combat, you just smash them both together and get your fight on! Fighters Megamix is one of the Saturn exclusives that was a real draw for a lot of people. It was a fighter with a lot of variety. With just over thirty characters to choose from, you can keep yourself nice and busy unlocking twelve of them through their challenge modes. It features maps from both of its parent games, as well as a few you’ve never seen in a fighting game

What’s great about this game is that you can play with characters that you can’t in other iterations; that includes boss characters. While the framerate can drop in some arenas rather easily, it’s still a lot of fun to play through all of the game modes. The very idea that they included characters like Janet from Virtua Cop 2 or a completely original character like Bean The Dynamite (which is just a bean with a hat) just goes to show you how much fun they had making this game in order for you to play it.

Is this game perfect? No, it’s not. There is something of a real problem with these mechanics. It comes in the form of some of the Fighting Vipers characters. Fighting Vipers not only have an armor mechanic that makes them tougher than usual, but some of them have a fighting style that is entirely too fast for other characters. This becomes very apparent in the Boss Battle challenge. They can get very hard to deal with and their cheap combos will be anger inducing. The best way to handle them is to answer them in kind. Just get yourself a boss Fighting Viper character and go crazy on them.

This also means that balance can be an issue with some of the Fighting Viper characters as opposed to Virtua Fighter’s line up. So, when you’re playing a two player game, just be sure you understand which characters can be played with whom. Either way, this is a perfect game to play with friends for retro parties.

If you’re a lover of 3D fighting games, this is definitely your go to. The fact that you can fight as a car (very poorly, I might add, his controls are atrocious) only adds to how tongue-in-cheek this game is. If nothing else, it’s worth unlocking all of the characters you can and having some fun with friends. Out of all of the fighting games you can find on the Saturn, this one is more than worth your time.

Battle Arena Toshinden URA - Ultimate Rancid Anus

What do you get when you take an already made sequel to a mediocre (at best) game and jackhammer it into a completely different system than intended? You get a product that looks like it was hastily put together by lego knockoffs. Battle Arena Toshinden URA was meant to be a Sega Saturn release that veered away from the ongoing plot of the main series. Why? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s well known that the Saturn has a completely different operating system than the Playstation, so it’s obvious that they would need to take a different route in its creation.

But, for real, Takara, Sega… WHY!? Why would you do this? It's like they took a look at Virtua Fighter and said, "I bet I can do that BACKWARDS!" Where Virtua Fighter 2 came out looking smooth with much more crisp (if not moon-jumpy) controls, this one came out much choppier. One single look at this game and your heart will sink. The character models lack any real detail. The smoothness of the background is gone. Even if you don’t care all that much about the first one, you still made an effort to get this game in some capacity. Whether it be by money or whatever else, you still spent time to make this game playable and now you look at THIS! The character select screen is enough to cause you to scowl. It is ugly. I know graphics don’t mean everything, but this looks like vomit of the blockiest quality!                                 

That’s not even talking about the gameplay. Oh, no. Those two paragraphs were just about the look and the history of this “game.” As soon as you get to your first match, everything gets much, much worse! The controls are floaty to a degree that it doesn't even feel like you are in control at all. Aiming attacks at enemies is a ridiculous feat as turning and third dimensional movements do nothing but JOLT around!                 

You have to try to be this lazy with a game. Remix was already a crappy enough port, but now, you don’t even have a story mode. Not that the first game pulled that off at all. Oh, no no no, no story what-so-ever is ever really shown, though that could be a good thing. There is a story somewhere in here, and it’s about as nonsensical as you’d expect. You get 5 to 10 second cut scenes that show off their hot new bad guys. I get that Gaia had on a strange fantasy set of armor, but who thought to put in a Gargoyles knockoff? This game was set more in a pseudo realistic special move Street Fighter-esque world with concepts that leaned toward Japanese folklore, though, not by much. The anime had some clones, and other small elements, but this was just too much.                                  

It’s even worse than I could have expected, and I was expecting some bad stuff. Remix was no masterpiece, by any means, but it had merit in the ways of dumb fun. This has none of that. The voice clips during the fight sound far worse, and there isn’t even a story mode as a vehicle to show off the cheesy voice acting between characters. Playing the main game is equivalent to an arcade mode. So, with the new characters, you get no character at all, just new fighters. Trust me when I say it’s not worth it. This is definitely a front runner for the worst fighting game on the Sega Saturn!

D and D2 - Nonsense Transformations

 

Just to quickly recap, I love the first D, even though the title is Dreadful. See what I did there? ... I'll see myself out. But no, I really hate the title. Trying to look this game up on a search engine is an experience all its own. Still, the gameplay, the atmosphere, and the slow, creepy pace that you go at, it all comes up as a heartpounding experience with the lights out and the house empty. It's a short game, usually around an hour and a half if you know what you're doing. 

D2, on the other hand is a complicated matter in itself. The real problem is that there was almost no attempt to pin it with the first game and what attempt there is is lost in an entire barrage of cringeworthy plant transformations and... uhhh zombie... things. It really seems like they didn't make any attempt toward setting the same unsettling atmosphere. They seemed more intetested in adding combat and item pickups for health and stats.

It's obvious from the get go that they wanted a Resident Evil clone to piggyback on the success. The problem is that D already had its own strengths to draw upon and its own lore to expand upon. Instead of visiting a nightmarish world of haunted interiors, we get a snowy thundra and random encounters while wielding a semiautomatic weapon. In and of itself, this wouldn't be a problem, but this is D we're talking about.

What once was a puzzle solver is now a knockoff game that tries at the very least. Some of the mechanics are okay but most of the time, they end up adding nothing and taking away from the solid identity it started with.

You could have gone so much more in depth with the character study aspect of the first game. The idea of going into the mind of a psychotic killer had all of the potential and they drew upon that so well in the first game. They could have built upon that way better with a bigger budget but decided to mine gold where everyone else was already mining and some were doing it better.

Think about another two characters. They could have been family members or one could have been a victim of the maniacal other and something similar could have happened. Think about going through a larger mind palace with different themes and different horrors to face with your wits and quick reflexes. D2 did none of this.

What the sequel did was less than stellar. It was not an outright bad game, but it also did very little with its own concept. The part where you shoot the gun at the creatures was clunky, despite the fact that it was implemented in a more experimental way. It shows that they were trying and it was admittedly better than trying to shoot with tank controls.

There was some potential here that seems flat out untapped and that's a real shame. It would have been nice to have a sequel that delved into the idea that the first D had. While D2 wasn't a total failure (it does have its fans), I can't help but feel an overlying sense of disappointment. I never played the third or fourth game but I've heard I'm not missing a lot. If you're a fan of D2, believe me when I say that I don't hate it. I just wished for a bit less Resident Evil and a lot more Dread.

Battle Arena Toshinden Remix - Crack that Whip!

It’s no secret that the Sega Saturn’s collection is ripe with fighting games. Anywhere from mainstream to more obscure titles can be seen. Not all of them are perfect, but Battle Arena Toshinden Remix is definitely no slouch when it comes to two siblings competing for who can perform the most special flashy moves. A far cry different than Virtua Fighter, you not only use a vast array of weapons, but you also have very fast moving and powerful energy projectiles. This game is nothing if not somewhat pretty to look at.

It's interesting to note that this was originally going to be a Playstation exclusive. Why it was later ported onto the Saturn as "Remix", it's not exactly clear. However, ported it was and it stood up on its own legs, sporting new features in the game. This made its original intent of derailing Virtua Fighter  completely null and void, and created quite the puzzling turn of events.

Though the graphics have not aged well, they're still better than that swampfest of an anime movie compliments of 90’s cliches (Not kidding, do not watch the movie). It still works just fine with its controls, and the glitches are somewhat few and far in between so long as you don’t whip the camera around too fast too many times. The Sega Saturn’s framerates can get somewhat testy, especially with games that show this amount of scenery along with their polygon figures known as characters.

The characters of Battle Arena Toshinden are quite diverse, and their fighting styles are fun to play around with, however if you play with one such as Gaia, do not expect a fair challenge. Once you unlock the big brute in the appendaged armor, your chances of winning increase around ten fold. He was definitely not meant to appeal to the competitive nature within us all. Beyond him, there are the normal chaps. We have our Ryu and Ken clones that do have an impressively broad backstory to them. The game pinpointed every fighting game archetype and it’s fun to meet them all and see what they can do.

That’s not to say the story is all that interesting, though. Once you’ve passed through the story mode, you get the idea that these people honestly don’t want to be there for the most part. Those who do want to be there are on the wrong side of crazy. However, further down the line for this franchise, after a bit of reading, you’ll find that to be par for the course. After the installments wrap up storylines, the producers kept wanting them to further it more, and it was clear that their writers ran out of ideas. It more or less ends up going nowhere.

The ending drives this point home pretty hard. There is no ending, this is what we nerds call the “Empire Strikes Back” of Toshinden games, as we are left on a very poorly planned cliffhanger. I say poorly planned in that the Sega Saturn’s version of the sequel took a very very bad turn. While Playstation got one version of the sequel that met with critical acclaim, the Saturn got Battle Arena Toshinden URA, which was dragged through the mud before being drooled onto a CD.

If you would like a happy ending to this story, there is one. We not only got URA, but there was also Fighters Megamix, which beats the hell out of all of these games anyway. Megamix is immensely better and exclusive to the Sega Saturn. Total win.

The gameplay is not greatly balanced, and the fighting is not especially deep, as you would find in the Virtua Fighters 1 and 2. It’s far more reliant on the aspect of having pretty moves that do brunt force damage or standing still and letting the laser light show take control. If you were looking for a solid fighting game, this one is hit or miss with people. It’s quirky and fun for all of its entertainment value. However, when you start talking official sanctions with competitions, that may be a bit of a stretch. Characters can do endless strings of cheap moves that made you want to turn around and punch the other player in the arm. With no real challenge when it comes to skill, and no real complicated move system, it’s fun to look at.

As said, the graphics ain’t great, but the voice acting is a far cry worse. Despite there being a good number of decent voice actors in the anime, the English dub for the game sounded like they found the janitor, his three cousins along with a couple of their other roommates and had them talk into a mic to say words in funny accents. If there was a proper accent within it, it’s almost impossible to tell with the cartoonish way they talk, it’s honestly hilarious. Surprisingly, though, from footage I've seen from the MS-DOS version, it was surprisingly ported well by the devs at Digital Dialect.

Pop it in and beat the story mode within about ten minutes, and feel good about unlocking a few character. Beyond that, it’s just fun to wail on some friends and make fun of the squeaky voices they make when they fall. This title is another one that should never be taken seriously. Nor should you ever look into the later sequels. The Playstation port game after this one was a superior game, as well as the Saturn’s Megamix. Trek that far with it, and then move on to Soul Calibur. Virtua Slice!

The Crow: City of Angels (Saturn) - Crow for Help!

 

Even if you have never seen the Brandon Lee movie, even if you have never heard of the comic series or anything even remotely related to the Crow; it is universally believed that you will still hate this game. Game? Did I say game? I meant void. This is devoid of any quality, fun, coherence, story, or pleasure of any sort. Calling this a trainwreck would be giving it entirely too much credit. How could Acclaim look at this and just say “Wow, this is something we can release! For sure!”

Whatever their reason, they released it, and this is what we have. The first thing we see when we put this into our Sega Saturn (as a means to punish it, borderline abusing it) is the background. The background is literally the only slightly endearing quality about this whole game. That’s right, it’s got a pretty good gothic quality about it, and would have been suited for a much BETTER game. That’s it, that’s all of the good nature I have right now. Time to take off the gloves and put on the CHAINSAW RRRRUUUMMMRUUMMRUMMRUMM!!!!

The very first scene is nice to look at for three seconds, then you realize that your character does not move the camera. It’s a fixed position camera, much like Resident Evil, only very poorly done (if that had not been obvious already). Your character will be at the most awkward angles imaginable, and you will be expected to fight random deadbeats. These guys have the worst sound clips with some of the most repetitive dialogue that will cause you to regret having eardrums!

Not only can you usually not see the action as it’s happening because of the camera, you also have to be in the most perfect spot in order to have any sort of hit detection. Sometimes you’ll hit them, but most of the time, you’ll get pummeled. The graphics do not help in the very least. Your character looks blocky as hell (moreso than normal) so measuring his arm’s length like a normal human being is useless. Your arm can punch straight through your enemy, but it’ll be read as a glitch 99.9% of the time. The enemy will be unharmed and then beat you senseless, making you die.

Weapons are, like the game itself, useless. The camera angles constantly hide these improvised street fighting weapons from sight. Even if you pick them up, you will soon drop them when your opponent knocks you on your ass for the millionth time. It doesn’t matter if you are close to the camera, or a single blocky pixel in the background, your hit detection is nonexistent. Your movement speed and direction are literally all over the place.

Hit detection is awful, but the bad guys’ detection is A-Okay! Their hits smack you in the face and some of them have guns! Yeah! They have guns and throwing knives. So while you’re getting pummeled up front, some guy in the background will blast your ass and make you die. Don’t bother getting the gun, you will only shoot air.

Alright, so if you’re not convinced this is one of the worst games on the Sega Saturn, then by all means, find a worse one. Then don’t play the worse one and play something with Spawn in it instead. This has been on more than one "Worst Saturn Games" lists, and even some worst games of all time lists. There is literally no excuse for this. Much like all of the movies with lazy directors that should never have been made, one QA expert should have looked at this from one single angle and put a stamp of “not ready” or “dump at Chernobyl” directly on it. As said in the Saturn’s 10 Least Favorite Virtua Insanity, this game is literally unplayable. It is not worth getting use to the delayed, clunky controls and any effort to get good at the game is effort better spent playing E.T. on the Atari 2600. Yeah, I said it. Virtua Fight me.

WWF In Your House (Saturn) - WTF Raw!

That’s right, you heard me! This ain’t no WWE crap! This is raw, unbridled wrestling back when WCW and WWF were competing for the top spot in the cable charts. Back when Hulk Hogan was a bad guy in NWO and McMahan didn’t talk like he had a bottle brush shoved down his throat. This point in time had many legendary match-ups happening within months of each other and the internet was just starting to give away all of the secrets before they happened. Wrestling was at a great peak in popularity.

Now the real question this review asks: Why in the hell would you make something like this? Not only were there better wrestling titles out at the time, but there were better titles out for past consoles. It really made no sense. There was some charm to the idea, having them use super human powers that went along with their wrestling personas. The execution, however, was less than stellar. Acclaim shows off their usual real person avatars, but they are without polish. They didn’t blend in with the background and to see random stuff bouncing out of their mouths when they’re slammed was off-putting to say the least.

The roster, while actually somewhat good, is still a problem. Some of these guys are WWF legends and now this game is more or less making them into a joke! Their moves are cartoony, their catchphrases rake against the ear and the worst part about it is none of their signature moves are on display as they were in games past. 

So, now you have real life people spitting up bizarre things and blasting each other with comic book superhero abilities. Not, in itself, a deal breaker because you seem to get use to it over time. Then you start with the actual gameplay and there’s where this game goes off the sidelines once again. You have wrestling moves, yes, but the action is just run and gun beat’em up. Again, not terrible by itself, but then it sinks in.

It’s a fighting game, mindless and fast paced, then the pinning system is literally nonexistent. You pin them as they run out of hitpoints and they cannot get back up. There is no endurance meter and beyond that, there is no gameplay system. It’s a non-gory Mortal Kombat where you pin someone at the end. The fighting system is about as shallow as it can get. The combos are not worth learning as the game is laughably easy.

These alone make the game somewhat below average in the grand scope, but then it has to speak. Yes, the technology of sound cards in live action videos and speech were somewhat new, but this was just awful. PS1 did not get the wrestler catch phrases, the Sega Saturn did. You get these awkward, terribly misplaced sound clips of the wrestlers (especially Golddust) saying some trivial nonsense at the end of every fight. Then there’s the announcers. They’re there to make the game seem more like a wrestling game, but they only succeed in saying pointless phrases such as “This is insanity!” or “That’s not a good idea!” or something to that effect. They make playing every match a minor annoyance that only builds in severity as you keep playing.

As a wrestling fan of the time, this was a sore misuse of the WWF property. The gameplay is uninspired, the Saturn graphics are better than the PS1 but that’s not saying much, and it just gets repetitive to the point of monotony very quickly. This game is far from horrific, though. The hit detection is up to par, the action can be fun in small doses, and now we have the nostalgia goggles on because not all of these wrestlers are still alive today, and many of them have since retired. If you’re a fan of these characters, you could do worse. It can be fun if you dull your senses down to its level. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to you. VIRTUA SLAM!!!!

Street Fighter: The Movie (Saturn) - The Crap

Literally the very first game I ever bought in order to do a review of it. That’s right, I found this game for a decent price and decided that the novelty of having it was definitely worth it. This was put on my worst Saturn Games list based on my memory of playing it as a child. Now the memory of this game is fresh in memory and I will never escape it. This was… painful.

First, of course, let’s play the story mode. The newly fresh impression? Yeah, everything is ugly as hell. The character designs look so fake and real at the same time that they’re hard to look at. Movements make the limbs and the extremities of our characters look like they’re Barbie and Ken dolls. The backgrounds lack any real color and decide, instead, on dull and uninteresting greens, grays and browns. Even Guile’s “blue” camouflage looks drained of life. It sure was innovative to use a 32-bit system in something that has already been done, far better, on a 16-bit console. Tell me again, how was this better than Street Fighter II?

I get it, Mortal Kombat was the hot snot back in the day and Capcom wanted to try something different. However, the real problem with it was that the story mode was just that: a story mode. The story mode loosely followed the movie… very, very poorly. First and foremost, you start off as Guile vs M. Biso--wait, what?! Seriously, they start us off with the main protagonist against the main antagonist. The story continues whether you beat him or not. So, not only are we fighting with ugly as hell characters in terrible backgrounds, but we also have to fight against a time limi--wait, what?!

Oh, yeah! There’s a time limit because the hostages will be killed in about an hour and you need to wade through a “choose your own adventure” plot that mimics scenes from the movie. They are… stretching the limits of reasoning here. The first thing that comes to mind is one minute Balrog is holding a news camera, the next minute, he wants to fight you for literally no reason. Yeah, they shoe-in a fight with him and then you choose what you want to do next. It never gets any better. The movie screen shots are off-putting and every fight makes you want to play the Street Fighter II… or III… or even V! Hell, even the original Street Fighter arcade game is looking good by comparison!

The fighting is horrendous! Not only is it ugly to look at, but it’s about as basic and generic as you can imagine. The moves are your normal Street Fighter fare, only they look ridiculously terrible in this context. Why? Because they don’t match with the designs, like everything else. The sad part is that the actual fighting is the best part of the game itself (unless you enjoy making fun of terrible stuff, then this is definitely a game for your library). Yes, as awkward and stupid as it looks, the fighting controls are still responsive… enough. They feel floaty and you do random moves without trying. However, it still works well enough that you can play it. That’s more than you can say for a lot of fighting games.

The real problem with this game is, visually, it is very hard to look at for just about every reason. The story mode is worse than Mortal Kombat 9 in the ways it makes excuses for fight segments. It’s long, drawn out and very hard to play unless you want to make fun of it. The Street Fight Mode makes you fight ridiculous amounts of enemies without the ability to get back to the main menu without restarting the game. Outside of relishing in its awfulness, there is literally no reason to play this turd. Flush your Virtua Toilet!

3 Dirty Dwarves - Healthy Punches

When you want a unique title for the Saturn and just want to wail on something with improvised weapons, look no further than Three Dirty Dwarves. This is one of the stranger games on the Sega Saturn for many reasons. For one, it’s a Sega Saturn exclusive for no discernable reason. In fact, Segasoft planned to port it to the Playstation, it simply never happened. Then comes the fact that it is a 2D beatem up with varied 3-Dimensional qualities scattered throughout. Then there comes the real kicker, it’s just plain bananas, crackers and nuts!

We follow three very strange dwarves as they travel the city, beating the snot out of random foes in a roleplaying game that comes to the real world. The roleplaying game is controlled by genius children and they use the dwarves to try and find them to rescue them but the monsters and enemies also come to the wor--look, it’s just a very strange setting and plot. Suffice to say that you’re beating things up. There are things from giant trolls covered in dogs to buildings with legs that jump high into the sky to try and land on you. It’s very strange in just about every way.

The gameplay is unique in that you only control one of the dwarves at a time. You have the ability to swap between the dwarves at will to use their various attack styles. Some are faster with less damage and slower with more, and so on and so forth. However, then there are the lives system, which is very strange all on its own. You gain lives and build them up across the level (the three-life pickup is a 20-sided dice for all of the rpg players out there) but if you run out of lives, your dwarves get knocked out on the first hit. Once they are knocked unconscious, though, all you have to do is hit them to revive them. As they get hit, you can just keep bringing them up, but once all three are knocked out, you restart the current level. 

The hit detection is probably one of the low points of the game, as you have a bit of a hard time lining up the ranged shots as well as getting a bead on the melee hits. This, of course, is easily overcome with practice and getting a feel for the overall gameplay. Your attacks get a bit tedious with the delay once you hit the button, and turning can also be delayed, which can be a problem when there are multiple enemies on the screen. Yeah, like any other beatem up, this is not new. Again, it’s easily overcome.

There has been a lot of talk about the graphics and the art style during the cutscenes, though. They are said to be too gritty and crude in their outlook, and yeah, they are. Well, folks, that was the point. The artwork is very reminiscent of early Nickelodeon or MTV cartoons in the 90’s and in that form, it pulls it off exceedingly well. I was never able to track down any real info on the artists, other than a few of their other works, but their style is dead-on to what it tried to emulate. 

The real problem with the game lies in its repetitive nature, much like any other beatem up. Yes, it has character for days and it also has a lot of its own qualities that sets it apart. However, it also reuses a lot of the same mechanics throughout each level just a few too many times in some cases. Some of the levels seem like they go on for just a bit too long. This, however, is definitely not a deal breaker.

The characters and the outlandish qualities are really what sell this title. The funny, absurd qualities do not let up throughout the whole thing and most importantly, it’s a lot of fun. If you love beatem ups and don’t feel like playing the usual gathering, give this one a second look. Just remember to hydrate your dwarves.

Rise 2: Resurrection (Saturn) - Lame - o - Tron

It comes as no surprise that the success of Mortal Kombat and the relative ease of creating fighting game would lead to a great deal of MK Klones coming out of the woodworks. Well, the Sega Saturn was no different in this regard. Although, it made up for this by porting a good deal of Mortal Kombat games itself. Well, unfortunately, this led a small development company called Mirage Media to create what is known as one of the worst games of the fifth generation. Rise 2: Resurrection was published by Acclaim (it’s no wonder they went belly up after publishing trash like this and The Crow).

This game is just eye gougingly horrid to look at in both its character designs, graphics, backgrounds and movement. Everything they do on the screen looks like it was made by low-grade claymation and their design makes it hard to follow what they’re doing in the first place. Even when they’re a humanoid form, you have to squint to see what is going on with the screen.

Speaking of the characters, how would you like to play as a robot named “Crusher” or “Loader”? There’s even a gorilla like character named “Prime-8”... Get it?! Seriously, whoever thought of these names must have taken the most generic machine-like things they could find and slap a generic label on them in a hurry. The mediocrity doesn’t stop there, it sloshes down into enhanced stupidity very quickly when you learn that the main bad guy’s name is “Supervisor”! I understand that your boss at your work may be kind of an ass, but to name their title as the antagonist of a video game is just not worth it.

What makes this game dip way below average is the fighting mechanics and the A.I. Both of which are criminally underplayed. The opponents you face seem to be button mashing right along with you and for good reason. The only real way to win without going deep into craptastic territory is to spam. Just spam and don’t worry about learning any of the moves, they are not worth the effort. The controls are beyond janky and awkward. You would be hard pressed to find any comfortable way of performing the special moves or combos.

Let’s not forget the “Finish Him” moments as well. It wouldn’t be a proper Mortal Kombat Klone without them. This is a real hoot. They’re called “Executions” and they happen within the span of two frame rates, then they’re done. Every single execution I saw performed were done in a flash, and ended up melting my robot down into a slurry. So, if there’s any execution moves that don’t make your character into a puddle, none were witnessed, and there were around five or six.

This game is an all around abysmal experience. If you really want to play the best version of a robot fighting game, just play as Cyrax, Smoke and Sector in MK and spam the rocket, spear and net attacks. I promise, you will have more fun with that than you will with the “Rise of the Robots 2”. They couldn’t even make the title remotely interesting. They even added the most generic subtitle since Endgame. That’s right, you heard what I said! Fight me… just not in this game.