Thursday 27 December 2007

Dezaemon 2 Shmup Galore

(Dezaemon 2 - Click for biggy!)

Lock up your wife and kids, dust off your Saturn and get ready for hours of gaming action. No, I am not talking about browsing your old library of Saturn games. Satakore.com staff recently and quietly released what might be one of the biggest gaming releases for the Saturn since its decline. The Dezaemon 2 Game Save Manager. If you are asking yourself, what I am talking about; Dezaemon 2 is a great little program released around 1997 by Athena. With it you can create shoot'em up games from scratch, without actually having to learn a programming language. Some may remember the infamous "Shoot'em Up Construction Kit" which was released for the C-64 and Amiga. Dezaemon 2 wasn't of much use for the ordinary Saturn user not only because of the language barrier, but also because you have to actually put quite some effort into making a game, before you can actually play. That is... until now!

(Devil Blade 2)

With the Game Save Manager, which comes with a whopping 118 games already on the CD, you can transfer already made games to a Saturn memorycard and load them up in Dezaemon 2 to actually play them. And rest assured, there are plenty of them! Over the years hardcore japanese Shoot'em Up fans have created many great games. Satakore.com also has a list of nearly every known usermade "shmup" for the Saturn version of Dezaemon 2 along with plenty of screenshots, as well as videos. Hell, some games are actually from 2006! Whilst browsing that list I was quite amazed how incredible the quality of some of those games is. Some might think, that usermade games are of a mediocre quality at best, but just have a look at "Devil Blade 2"! It might as well be a commercially released game. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous and with the Dezaemon 2 Engine behind it, you can be sure that it's also very playable.

(Devil Blade 2)

So the only thing you probably need now is a copy of that Dezaemon 2 as well as a memory card to store the games on. I am currently bidding on one as we speak and hope I can try all those great games as soon as possible. You should do so, too and hopefully this is encouraging those great japanese individuals to produce more games. Now that more people than ever before can play them.

6 comments:

  1. WOW! New Saturn games! From as recently as 2006!!! I'm so excited dear elend! And now (pray tell...) How do us mere mortals procure such exciting items? Can you post a link??!

    Yours in anticipation... FK!

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  2. Which Item do you mean? The Dezaemon 2 Saturn game? Well, you gotta browse ebay for it. There is one on ebay.de for 34 EUR, which is too expensive, imho. Gotta wait, until it turns up a bit cheaper. The Dezaemon 2 Game Save Manager can be found on Satakore's Site and a memory card is freely available on ebay, too. :D

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  3. Unfortunately it only works with a "real" memory card, Action Replay wont work since it doesn't allow direct access to the memory card function.

    Anyway, this sure is a great release, not only for shmup fans but also for Saturn enthusiasts in general. It proves our favourite console is far from being dead.

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  4. @nebachadnezzar couldn't you put it on the Action Replay and transfer it over to the Saturn?

    This sounds amazing, I love shmups. I just got Under Defeat for my Dreamcast for christmas too. :D

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  5. I'm not the biggest fan of shmups, but I do own a few. R-Type Final on the PS2 is a pretty swell title if you like these types of games...

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    ReplyDelete