gdement, on Sun Mar 14, 2010 3:16 AM, said:
Sonic CD - At the time I was disappointed by comparison with Sonic 2, which came out a month earlier. This game felt more based on Sonic 1 than Sonic 2, like it was developed by a different/weaker team who weren't involved with Sonic 2. They didn't include major features from Sonic 2 like Tails (great for 2 players), the 2 player racing mode, or even a *good* bonus game. Although I still liked the game, at the time it gave an impression the CD was getting 2nd rate treatment. Nowadays I like it better.
That's because it was developed by a different team (portions of the developers of Sonic 1, most notably lacking Yuji Naka) and did predate sonic 2, it had most of the team who developed Sonic 1 with the aforementioned exception of Naka, who left for Sega Technical Institute in the US to develop sonic the Hedgehog 2 with a mixed US and JP staff. So Sonic CD is a direct sequel to Sonic 1 and an older development than Sonic 2 and had a development team much closer to Sonic 1 than Sonic 2 did. (albeit it was in development a good bit longer)
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After Burner III - Disappointing. Probably a real effort at improving the game, but the cart version was more fun.
A very lame game considering that it's less fun and has worse scaling effects than the Genesis version of AB II (I'd argue the SMS even). It's really too bad they didn't just try for a straight Afterburner or AB II ports that took advantage of the Sega CD's scaling hardware. Alas, very few JP developers much used that hardware, F-1 Beyond th eLimit probably being the best example, but sever western developers did, like CORE and Malibu. It's not just After Burner either, but nice ports of Out Run, Space Harrier, Thunder Blade, perhaps even Galaxy Force (2) could have been done. A real shame that never happened.
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Silpheed - There was a lot of hype for this game, but it sucked. A bland shooter with scripted animations/FMV in the background (or at least it seems that way). The supposed "3D" environment does the exact same thing every single time, so I called bullshit on it. I was expecting something like Starfox, or some minimal maneuvering in 3D, but all I got was a bad rail shooter. The actual gameplay sprites are pale, dull and hard to look at. One of the least fun shooters I've ever played, and probably most overrated game on the system.
I really like Silpheed, that and the old PC version to (a port from the Japanese 8-bit home computers), it's not 3D for sure, just sprites and prerendered streaming backgrounds (must be compressed too given the framerate and resolution). None of it's realtime 3D of course, nice way to pull it off though. Fun game, a bit hard, but fun, and great synthesized music. (all hardware, none is CD-Audio, just like the past levels in Sonic CD)
Totally different game from star fox, but a really interesting perspective with the tapered, slanted view and scaling objects (that is hardware generated, mind you) Too bad it's close to unique in that respect. (vertical scrolling shooters are close in some respect, but no the same, it's kind of 1/2 way between a railshooter and vertical shmup)
I do think I like Star Fox more, but probably because I'm better at it. (an easier game) If you're looking for a real 3D (polygon based) game on the Sega CD, look no further than Stellar Fire.
And if you're looking for a proper 3D style railshooter, Soul Star has a lot of stages like that (using scaled sprites and mode-7 type scaling/rotating planes), but it's a really tough game. NovaStorm is a proper 3D perspective rail shooter, but it's got an FMV background too and a lot of color loss and music is so so -not CD based and nowhere near Silpheed's quality. (ported to PC, 3DO, and PSX as well, though I think the Sega CD version plays best -different premise, intro and gameplay mechanics on the Sega CD version for some reason)
I think it's a bit of a shame that SoulStar has such a crushing difficulty, it's an awesome game, great graphics and music, good level design, it's just too damn hard for a lot of people to enjoy (it really could have benefited from an easy mode, moreso than silpheed -even though there are hard/medium/easy paths in-game, even the easy paths are pretty hard, compared to Star Fox for example). I suck mostly at the non-railshooter portions (which are frequent). The upside is there are infinite continues, the downside is you loose your powerups after dying and there's no saving in spite of it being a fairly long game due to the sharp difficulty curve inducing frequent deaths. (a bit better with the 2-player mode though, with P2 controlling 2ndary weapons -aiming and launching missiles and bombs and such)
That seems to be the case with CORE's Battlecorps as well, sleek graphics, good game, but overly difficult.
wood_jl, on Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:14 AM, said:
malducci, on Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:48 PM, said:
I'll say one thing, at least the SegaCD had some gems. 32x had nothing for me. Nothing. It's a laugh to even consider it a 32bit system. Kinda of a shame. They're should have been more 2D arcade ports for it (yeah, I know 3D was the in thing at the time - but I don't/didn't give a crap about "crappy" 3D).
"In your opinion" it had some gems, and 32x had nothing for you. Other people like VF VR, etc.
Who cares "how many bits" it's considered to have. I can't remember if mine was $10 or maybe less, and that number is more significant than bit count.
"In my opinion" the Sega CD had nothing for me, as I don't care for RPGs, FMV games or Ecco the Dolphin. Sonic cart. games were better than Sonic CD. Still think the device is a cool collectable, and wouldn't call it crap.
To each their own, so why "laugh" and call 32x crap (at $10 not $150). Worth it for Virtua Racing alone (@ $10)
There were some nice 2D arcade ports too, especially sega classics like Space Harrier and After Burner. Shadow Squadron is hardly crappy 3D either... (better than most space sims on PSX, Saturn, or N64 -closer to Some PC ones -falls far short of BattleSphere though -from what I've heard; that game is so damn rare and expensive)
But the $10 point is kind of moot, buying something from the bargain bin (or used) after it's failed commercially and been dumped at heavy losses isn't really a good comparison. Had it been reasonably successful (and relied on as Sega's main console -hypothetically), I doubt it would have ever dropped below $50 new, and probably not less than $75 during its main lifetime. (like the Sega CD selling for under $100, or saturn for under $150; dumped hardware sold at a hefty loss) So price really shouldn't come into it, given that plenty of other systems with more worth bying for were available very cheaply (at least for a time) used.
Still, I agree the console has a number of good titles, enough that some did consider the $150 launch price valid -and I know of a few people who were perfectly satisfied with the library they got for their 32x and paid full price -though they were disgruntled by the system being canceled early -and some hesitated with buying the Saturn because of that. (honestly, I think $400 for a saturn was a worse deal than a $150 32x, though $100 w.out pack in would be more reasonable, or $150 with a pack-in game)
Edited by kool kitty89, Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:34 AM.
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SH and AB were "OK", BITD - but I didn't even play them on the Genesis when they were new. Not even when they there were in the $5 bins and I was bin hunting in the late day of the Genesis.
