Saturn Junkyard Halloween 2019

🎵"It's the most wonderful time, of the year..."🎶 as the song goes. It just gets the season wrong, for of course, the most wonderful time of year for us gamers, is Halloween. "Why FK?" I (don't) hear you ask... I'll tell you why, dear Junky. For the games of course, for the games! Today, I'm going to offer you five seasonal Saturn delights, which to a certain extent, are off the beaten tracks... Now usually, when we think of horror themed games for Saturn, we think of a few old favourites: Casper, House Of The Dead, Resident Evil, Vampire Savior and Exhumed for example, all with their very obvious tropes - haunted houses, creepy mansions, ghosts, zombies, monsters and mummies - but there are of course some less known offerings which will scratch your Halloween horror itch... Let's take a shallow dive into the world of Saturn Horror in time for this years bewitching holiday...

So where do we start? Well let's start with something with something whose difficulty alone is enough to give you nightmares... for we begin with...

Mr. Bones:

 This title was brought to the Saturn by developers Zono and published by Sega. The game is something of a multi media affair, with blistering soundtrack supplied by gnarled old rocker Ronnie Montrose, who's band's first album, was heralded as "America's  answer to Led Zeppelin". The game certainly rocks out... The game also has some impressive cut scenes, developed sperately for the game by Angel Studios. The game commences with a rather impressive cut scene, which lays out the back story for  the titular Mr. Bone's post-death adventure.

 The rather convoluted story, perfect for Halloween, tells us of the mad philosopher DaGoulian, who has come to the unlikely conclusion, that the only way he can ensure the world is suffused with "goodness", is by creating and spreading pure evil. This twisted goal, he hopes to acheive, with the help of an army of the undead, in skeletal form. To animate these bony soldiers, DaGoulian plays a rhythm which unlocks their "skeletal magnetism". This compels them to act under his command. Still with me? Good! Back to the plot. Our own Mr. Bones is not affected by DaGoulian's spell, however and now Now he must escape the skeletal horde, whilst attempting to unlock the secret of DaGoulian's power!

Thus ensues a side scrolling platformer, which must be traversed at high pace, through a graveyard and out into the night. And that, my dear reader, is as much as I can tell you about the game, because it is so ball-breakingly hard, that I've never made it past the first level.

You have to run away through the cemetery, leaping graves from which the undead occasionally rise, or conversely you can fall into the grave itself. At the same time, the undead army pursuing you are firing bolts of skeleton-fuelled energy at you. Both the grave grabbing and energy bolts, cause you to slow down and more annoyingly, lose bones. Yes, that's correct, you can lose so many bones, you end up as a skull, lamely and largely unsuccessfully attempting to hop your way to freedom. That's where we'll have to leave this bony odyssey to progress to something altogether more achievable and full of Halloween monster themed fun...

Monster Slider:

Here we have a rather creepy themed puzzle game, that I secured at the 2018 Play Expo Retro Fare in Blackpool in  2018. As well as meeting up with Mike Phelan, Kev Mason and Tom Charnock of the Dreamcast Junkyard, I did a little shopping for cheap Japanese Saturn games, and in the blink of an eye, I had a game that would change my life, for about half an hour. Monster Slider is your typical "join three coloured blocks and they will disappear" type game, so beloved of mobile phone gamers right now, in 2019! But the gimmick for Monster Slider, is that you can use the shoulder buttons on your controller to shunt the gaming board onto an angle to the left or right. This in turn allows you to slide your tiles (Geddit? Monster Slider) and cause them to link up in different ways.

 Creepy cartoon-like characters include a vampire girl, a Frankenstein's monster, a wolf-man, a medusa, a skeleton, a witch, a creature from the black lagoon and a couple of uniquely Japanese looking monsters, one of whom I've just decided, could be a yeti. To be honest, this is not a game that will make you shit yourself, and might be better enjoyed at the early part of Halloween when the kids are still up eating monkey nuts and bobbing for apples, and you haven't cracked your Halloween beers yet... (Surely not just me?) Onto something a little more likely to induce those Halloween skid marks... (Surely not just me?)

Castlevania Symphony Of The Night: 

Where next on our whistle stop tour? A very apt Halloween setting... Dracula's Castle!
This game, will be forever (blood)stained with the curse of being a far inferior port than it's Playstation cousin, but so what? As a stand alone Saturn title, it's a damn fine game! Don't let hyper-critical YouTube commentaries put you off playing this fantastic adventure on your favourite 32 bit powerhouse. In this epic quest, you control Alucard, Dracula's son. (It has only just occurred to me that his name is Dracula backwards, and I've been playing the game for about a year and a half...) You have to traverse the candle lit halls and torch-lit dungeons, fighting and fending off hordes of ghoulish and gory adversaries.

Using your trusty whip and jumping ability, you travel from room to room, dispatching enemies and demons whilst lightening flashes and thunder roars. As you collect various power ups and abilities, such as shape shifting into a werewolf, avenues that were once blocked become open. Brought to us by Konami in 1997, the game was not initially met with any sort of fanfare, but has subsequently been lauded as one of the best video-game of all time. So if that doesn't get you crapping yourself, maybe it's time to move on once again... Maybe it's time to go to one of the most terrifying video games of all time...

Corpse Killer:

Some say it's the scariest video game of all time. Others say it is an absolute pile of steaming dog shit. But I wanted to know which was true. So I bought a copy. Now I wish I'd bought a steaming pile of dog shit. For it is indeed... rubbish. Published by Sega and developed by Digital Pictures, it starts off optimistically enough, with a great FMV showing you the back story of your mission - basically to rid a tropical island of it's many voodoo animated zombies. Whilst there are some great, cheesily delivered lines and impressive cameos (Vincent Schiavelli anyone?) the game is terrible. Schiavelli plays Hellman, an evil protagonist who wants to turn the natives of the island (and evidently some of your army comrades) into zombies. You meet a saucy reporter and a terribly accented Rasta on your mission, which is basically shooting the fuck out of a load of comically flying zombies and not much else.

The story, is okay I suppose.  Originally, the game was developed as a Sega CD/32X title, which might explain why it's FMV heavy. It was also intended as a light gun game, although for some bizarre reason the Saturn port never got light gun compatibility. If you have ever played a light gun game with a game pad, you will understand how difficult it is to get your 'gun sight' from one target to the next. Which, basically makes the game a little more "Cack Killer" than "Corpse Killer". Shall we take this Halloween journey somewhere a little darker than the sunny Caribean? Perhaps to a windswept abbey, where a sage-like monk shows us into the deep recesses of his reliquary, to present us with ...

Necronomicon Pinball:

One of the best looking video pinball games of all time, Kaze's Necromnicon Pinball is a dark and eerie presentation of the genre, with a stunning metal soundtrack by John Petrucci of Dream Theatre. Now this really would be a great Halloween soundtrack fora spooky party, and the atmosphere of the FMV sequence is doom laden and shrouded in mystery. You get to choose from three pinball tables, entitled Arkham Asylum, The Cult Of The Bloody Tongue and Dreamlands. The first table, is the best, but all are crafted with skill and technical aplomb and the tables are all equally challenging, yet keep the player coming back for more.

Features such as  a manic multiball make the tables fun and huge scores can be racked up if you play with skill. For me, this game is is one of the best looking Saturn games and I defy anyone to critique the graphics or ball physics for this game - both are immaculate. Plus the great things about this game is that the score you rack up, becomes what you aspire to beat, In other words you want to beat yourself. So lets leave our Halloween journey there, with me all alone, in the dark beating myself furiously...

Happy Halloween 2019 folks!