and it's an interesting time capsule of the period.
I never addressed the gameplay mechanics that make this game unique, probably because I didn't even notice them. That's a testament to the game, that it can still be accessible and engaging even if you barely know how to play it, as I apparently did (familiars have a special attack? What???).
The Saturn Junkyard was a lot smaller and more intimate, as you can see from my last message to our old friend elend. Father K had a bad habit. Underground Gamer was still around (god, I miss that site).
I mentioned how "The web obviously can't make it justice, with small images and blurry videos", which might seem weirdnowadays but that was the reality of the time. Youtube was only 2 years old, and only supported videos in 240p. Even images weren't usually up to the resolutions that we're accustomed to nowadays. Back then I still had a 4:3 monitor with a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. And depending on where you lived broadband speeds could be...lethargic...
You can see why we've since taken to video production so strongly. For 10 years I wanted to do that, but I had neither the equipment, the internet speed or even, in the early days, the adequate streaming platforms to do it. The result of all that pent up passion is the video at the start of this article. Compare that to my first written review and tell me what you think.
Wasn't it like yesterday, that the Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager has been released by the Satakore.com staff around Christmas? Damn, as time goes by. It's actually 1 year by now and I wasn't even able to finish some "projects" regarding Dezaemon, which I had in the pipeline. But don't worry, soon they'll be finished and be posted here.
But the more important news today is, that the Satakore.com staff wasn't lazy and actually released the Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager Volume 2! Oh my, what a feast. This thing opens - once again - the world of Dezaemon 2 user made shmups to you and your Saturn. On the CD are approx. 70 games and I think there are once again quite some pearls amongst them. The "Urban" series for example, which consists of "Urban Assault" (horizontal) and "Urban Uprising" (vertical).
(click for bigger versions)
Check out those great and moody graphics! Don't tell me, you wouldn't love to play all this. So, go head to Satakore.com and download the ISO of the Dezaemon 2 Save Game Manager Volume 2 and be sure to cancel all apointments, since you'll need weeks to go through all those games.
Now this is a game I really liked (despite being impossibly hard at times), mainly because it's so similar to one of my favourite shmups ever, DoDonpachi (which I'm also going to talk about in a future post), both in the way that your weapons get ridiculously powerful and the way that sometimes you can see more enemies an bullets in the sky than clear background, which is never a good sign...
The game doesn't start like this, though. At first there's only 2 or 3 enemies at a time on the screen and few more bullets (or "glowing shit that kills ya", as I like to call them), fair enough since you start with what looks like a pea-shooter, but fear not, for soon enough things will heat up, too much in my humble opinion. See, after Psikyo's shooter, I started to get used to beating these kind of games, and then comes Battle Garegga and Batsugun to crush my dreams into the ground...
Yup, I couldn't finish the god-damn game. The first time I played it I died as early as stage 3, I think, but during my 2nd try I was really motivated, since I was able to reach the stage 5 boss without using even one credit! Then the guy took away my last life and made me use one... "No big deal", I though, "I still have 6 credits, it should be enough to end this game". Oh, how I was wrong... I was able to reach stage 7 and that was it... But I'd seen this coming, since in the options menu there's only 4 difficulty levels. Anyway, here I am rambling about it's difficulty without even talking of other important things, like the level ups, for example!
You see, in this game you don't just pick up power-ups to upgrade your weapon, you also level up by destroying enemies, and you level up to the point of, whenever you fire your weapon, half of the screen gets filled with your shots! It looks like the end of the world as come and you're one of the 4 horsemen! But don't get too confident, for these level-ups don't make your ship more resistant to enemy fire, and although you're able to finish them off more quickly, they usually still have time to shoot all kinds of "bright balls of death" towards you.
On the extras department, there's not much here. You can choose between the arcade version of the game or a "special version" (can't remember what it was called exactly), but the only difference I noted was some minor graphical changes on the backgrounds. I can be wrong, though, so maybe there's more to it than that. Talking about the backgrounds, most people complain about the game's graphics, but I got to be honest, they look really good to me, not so much from a technical point of view, but more from an artistic one. There are beautiful and pretty original stages, like the first one, set underwater, or the (if I remember correctly), 2nd one, set on a beach. Also, the enemy ships explode kind of nice, and the boats even slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.
Overall this was a pretty good experience that I would recommend to anyone, so don't get turned off by the high difficulty level or the, as other people say, "average graphics". Try it out if you're a fan of the Donpachi series.
Elend, I know that you have this one, so share your thoughts about it with us :)
After the pleasant experience I had with Strikers 1945, I couldn't help but play its sequel, appropriately called Strikers 1945 II, and it basically turned out to deliver everything I expected from it. Heck, what can you ask of a shmup sequel? New levels, ships (or planes, in this case), enemies and maybe a couple of graphical improvements. Strikers 1945 II has it all. And that's about it... Unfortunately it still has a blatant lack of game modes or other extras to keep you entertained, but at least this time around the bonus art gallery is extended to not only our planes but the enemy ships too. To make things simple, if you liked the first one, you got to play the sequel.
Now, moving away from the 2nd World War, there's another Psikyo game for the Saturn that I was curious to try out, specially after playing its rather great sequel on the Dreamcast, thanks to Uncle Tom's recommendation. I'm talking about Gunbird, this rather eccentric shooter where you control a cast of very odd characters in a struggle to fight...uhh...an evil corporation? Space pirates? I don't know...who cares about the story in a shooter, anyway?
To make a long story short, it's a Psikyo shooter. I'm quickly learning that these guys rarely reinvent the wheel, and if you've played one of their games, you've basically played them all. This is not bad, though, since the change in theme is enough to make Gunbird a whole different experience from Strikers 1945, for example. Like in it's sequel, the little cut-scenes are always full of humour (or so I suppose, everything's in Japanese) and the scenarios are pretty detailed, with little people down there who're either running for their lives or completely oblivious to all the shit blowing up in the skies.
Like every other shooter I've played recently, this one also ends pretty quickly, but unlike most of them it has a lot of extras, like videos about the characters, videos about other things (don't know what exactly, it's just a character speaking in Japanese, Segata knows about what...) and a pretty extensive artwork gallery featuring more than 400(!) drawings.
Once again, if for a chance you've played Gunbird 2 on the Dreamcast (or any other platform, for that matter) and liked it, this is basically more of the same, hence being a worthy addiction to the Saturn's prolific shooter library.
Right now I'm about to try yet another shooter, so expect another post soon, maybe even later today (I have to make the most out of my temporary "Saturn fever").
Finally! I was starting to get worried about my recent lack of posting. "Recent" is probably not the right word, it's been a long time since I was posting here regularly. You see, my problem is that, with so many systems, I can't dedicate myself to all of them at the same time. Instead I usually focus on just one for a couple of weeks or so and then move on, eventually repeating the cycle. Now, the time of the Saturn has come again.
Having sort of a renovated interest in shoot 'em ups, or shmups to facilitate, as you can see in my blog, I decided to try out what the Saturn has to offer. And apparently it has a lot! After the good experiences I had with Psikyo's games, I decided to start with the games they released for the Saturn, and so far I'm not disappointed.
This sort of spiritual sequel to Capcom's classic 1942 (which is about to get a really good-looking remake on Xbox Live Arcade) let's you control a plane in some pretty crazy aerial dog-fights set in an alternate WWII theme, complete with trips into the outer space later on (I shit you not, the last bosses are...oh, I don't want to spoil it for you). It basically plays like any other shooter, and unlike Zero Gunner for example, it has no special gimmicks. You shoot, dodge glowing shit that kills ya, and pick up power-ups that strangely have exactly the same icon as in a lot of other Psikyo's games. It's as direct and simple as shmups get.
Of course this is a lot of fun, but if you've already played a lot of other shmups and you're looking for something different, you most certainly won't find it here. It also ends pretty quickly and there's no unlockable goodies or extra game modes. There's just some sort of gallery mode as an extra that let's you gaze at 3D renderings of the planes while listening to some guy speaking in Japanese. Talking about Japanese, this is one of those games that never made it out of Japan, so if you're interested you'll have to import it.
On the plus side the graphics are particularly nice, and even thought they don't exactly push the limits of the Saturn, they're very enjoyable. Also, as with many Psikyo games (and this is why I love those guys) it has difficulty modes for virtually anyone, although they kind of make fun of you by calling the easiest setting "monkey"...
Anyway, overall I liked this game, but being a Japan-only release and such a short game, it's hard to recommend it unless you find it really cheap. At the time I'm writing this play-asia is offline so I can't check out their prices, but judging from ebay it gets quite expensive (the PSX version is a lot more cheaper, but we don't want to play 2D games on it, do we?). So, if you're an absolute shmup maniac or a collector, go for it. Otherwise, if you have a modded Saturn just burn it (it's definitely worth the CD-R) or, if you don't, just play it on MAME. See? You got plenty of options to try it out, so there's no excuses no to play this game.
I have another game to talk about but I think I'll do it in a separate post, don't want to overload you with a giant post. Stay tuned! :)
