Life on Saturn

Thoughts from someone who, until recently, had never owned or played a Saturn.

I love racing games. It's one of those genres, along with tower defence, which I just keep coming back to. I get a buzz from starting a race and then realising that I know the track from a completely different game (or indeed system.)

It's one of my gaming regrets that my family do not really enjoy racing games. There's no one who will go head to head with me in anything other than Mario Kart. And whilst MK has its place and is huge fun, races which aren't decided by a well placed banana hold more appeal to me.

Which brings me onto...

The only other Daytona game I've played is a Dreamcast one which I remember being extremely twitchy. So I was interested to see how its predecessor played.

The first thing that hit me about the game was the music. I'm sure there's been loads written about it so I'm not going to say much other than: it seems incredibly positive. The sort of thing which might be played at a funeral as people are leaving. So musically, it's a big thumbs up.

The other aspect about the sound which I found interesting was the voice. It's everywhere! I wondered if SEGA (or AM2?) were trying to prove a point back in the day. My favourite instance was when I inputted my initials. Especially when it said all 3 back to me like it was trying to read.

As I started the game my 14 year old daughter glanced up from her book, "Why does it say 'Gentlemen start your engines?"

Just in case you didn't hear it.

Erm.

Whilst racing, my 16 year old son wanders in to ask if I'd like a go at Tetris 99. He looks at the tv and adds, "but I can see you're playing this graphical masterpiece!"
Honestly, the youth of today.

But, in truth, I didn't really try to defend the graphics. I found them difficult to enjoy. I prefer the handling to the Dreamcast version but I find the game as a whole rather headache inducing.

As with all driving games, I'm not very good when I first start. It is easy to overtake a few cars but then I started to bump into the walls and lose a lot of speed. I liked the skid animation and the crashes were impressive. There's always something satisfying about smashing cars up. I liked the way the car took damage and the suspension started to rapidly rock up and down as if there were a couple of bunnies inside doing what bunnies do best.

The ultimate test of whether a driving game is enjoyable in our house is how long it takes someone to start driving backwards round the course. I knew the game was not going to be a winner when my 9 year old, who wanted a turn, began to do this after just a few laps.

I enjoyed Daytona but, sadly, I won't be coming back to it very often. The graphics and frame rate just hold it back for me.

Now, where's that banana?

Life on Saturn

Thoughts from someone who, until very recently, had never owned or played a Saturn. 

 There it lay: The ntsc-j Saturn. 

 When was it made? Not sure. 

 When was it popular? No idea. 

 What games does it play? Not a clue. 

For me though, it was all intensely exciting. I’d rarely seen Saturns in the wild. In fact, I think I’d only ever seen one. But now I could study it in detail.

Straight away the buttons on the front had me intrigued: POWER. Ok, no problems. OPEN. Yes, fine. And… ACCESS? My teenage son laughed and told me it was in case I wanted to ‘hack’ into it. But he too was curious. And it had both a CD tray and a cartridge slot. Surely it must be capable of truly great things? In terms of aesthetic it seemed to resemble a slab of clay and was heavier than I expected. 
Time to boot it up… 

The first game I played was International Victory Goal, which surely must count as one of the catchiest football titles ever. You may think this is a strange choice but I currently only own three games and my eight year old was very keen to see this one. As the intro played, with huge people doing various kicks -presumably to score the victory goal, I found myself wondering if the images were state of the art back in the day. The copyright on the box was 1995. About the time of the Playstation? My gaming history is so dodgy. Just before n64? If those console dates are right then the graphics were indeed not bad. The n64 still gets a lot of love in my house from all ages and the Saturn produced better graphics. Certainly, I rather enjoyed them. 

I didn’t get too much chance to test the gameplay because the eight year old (who's a big fan of ISS64 and FIFA16) quickly took the pad and began experimenting. I’ll be honest, we all giggled at the running animation. The players seemed nothing if not enthusiastic. The angle of the camera (from behind the goal) took a bit of getting used to but there was something strangely captivating about the whole experience. When he scored his first goal he celebrated as energetically as ever -all criticisms forgotten. Moments later, Italy equalized and everything was unfair. In that sense, it was a typical football game. The fact that we played it for a considerable amount of time suggested that the gameplay was fairly decent. 

I have no idea if it is the best football game on the system. Perhaps there’s Cosmopolitan Triumph Goal, waiting to be uncovered. But one thing is certain: This first, brief, foray into the world of Saturn is worth following up.

Maybe next time I'll even press the ACCESS button...