Prior entries in this series: Introduction | NiGHTS into Dreams
Another arbitrary amount of time, another entry in the ‘guy makes another guy play Saturn games’ series. This time we played a little of a promising shmupper (this term is useful as it pleases neither the ‘shump’ nor ‘shooter’ crowds), and a little more of two absolute classics by Sega.
Layering Attack Rays in Sections of Galactic Force
Should Galactic Attack have music? Does Attack Galac have a second stage? Why is there so much audible rattling under the hood of my minivan while I drive? Until these questions are answered satisfactorily, we decided to put aside Galactic Attacktic for a future date. In the meantime I will find a new bin/cue file and not speak to a mechanic. We did play enough to realize the game is good and for Andrew to compose his requisite haiku, luckily for you. Only time will tell if I demand he write another after we play more of the game.
Galactic Attack
Intriguing painting
Approachable bullet hell
Where is the music
Everybody’s Super Virtua Racing
The first 3D driving game I played was a Genesis port of the arcade game Hard Drivin (there is no apostrophe to make up for the missing ‘g,’ that’s how relaxed they were about their hard driving). My memories of that game are of driving about 4 miles an hour towards a vertical loop in the track, which I don’t think are very common in real life, and then inevitably failing to make it up the loop but instead hard crashin. Maybe it was a real video game in arcades but the Genesis version was at best a tech demo. The internet says that Namco released a 3D racing arcade game called Winning Run but I am unfamiliar with it. (Mental note – write something about how Sega routinely bested Namco at the arcade even when ripping them off ala Rolling Thunder -> Shinobi.) Sega’s Virtua Racing came out after these games but is better remembered because Sega made it.
Virtua Racing was designed by my mortal enemy Yakuza Nagoshi under the brilliant tutelage of my immortal inspiration Shenmue Suzuki. This complex situation fills me with many emotions that ultimately cancel out, leaving me with nothing but perfect objectivity. Wikipedia says the game is credited with being one of the most influential of all time, which provides a good (car)doorway into an ongoing issue with playing old games.
Historical context is impossible to fully integrate into the modern experience of playing a game. Intellectual understanding is difficult enough to convey – Andrew seems unnecessarily bored as I read him Moby Games credits pages for everything we play and he could stand to have more patience as I speak each Japanese name repeatedly until I feel like I’ve done justice to the glorious language of Nippon. But even when you understand what a game is, where it came from, and how a Japanese ‘F’ isn’t really quite an ‘F’ because they figured out how to create a superior sound, you can’t convey this stuff to your emotion glands in real time as you play. And so ultimately, Virtua Racing was less than we expected, and not just because Andrew kept calling it Virtual Racing, which makes it one letter longer but somehow worlds less cool.
Virtua Racing on Saturn appeared to push about 200 polygons a second. And there seemed to be a fundamental problem that would’ve existed on release, but maybe the troglodytes living in the 1990s didn’t notice – to really see what you’re doing you need to zoom all the way out but that diminishes the graphicality. I suppose Sega’s response to this issue was the ability to change camera views – technically marvelous at the time of release – but it doesn’t quite alleviate the issue.
Andrew surprisingly enjoyed Virtua Racing more than I did, which isn’t surprising because I prefer car games with more explosions and surprises. Braking is mandatory in Virtua Racing so it plays more like a sim than an arcade game which may be bad news for Sega since the game came out in arcades. We both warmed to the title upon repeated failures, though we were confused by the music and its insistence on playing only in short bursts. The crux of the experience seems to be learning how to turn, which consists of slowing down then speeding up but in just the right amounts at the right time. Also turning the car.
Andrew’s son, Constantinople, was there and played a round. He plays Forza and other modern games for children. When it was his turn he was immediately better than us despite Andrew and me each making three attempts to get through the first, easiest track. So we suck but we discovered racing games seem to have a fundamental je ne sais quoi to them regardless of console generation – perhaps it’s cars.
Virtua Racing
Surprisingly fast
Brakes are needed but touchy
Unforgiving turn
Everybody’s Super Panzer Flying
Step inside everyone’s favorite character’s shoes and become Keil Fluge in this landmark rail shooter that (possibly) launched with the Saturn. I first saw this game at a demo kiosk in the Staten Island Funco Land by the mall. You know the one, it’s where I bought Elemental Gimmick Gear with videolamer’s editor Pat. In a similar experience to seeing NiGHTS in Toys R Us, I was filled with a jealous wonder because I had already decided I was getting a PlayStation that generation. It looked really fucking cool but I was certain it wasn’t any good because I enjoy only the sourest of grapes.
The background of Panzer Dragoon’s development is as interesting as the game. The director, Futatsugi, was 23 when development started and was in his first year at Sega. It was inspired by some anime nerd bullshit that also inspired Miyazaki (the talented one, not the hack who can’t stop remaking Demons Souls). The team created an original language consisting of a blend of Greek, Latin, and Russian for the game, yet it’s still all Greek to me. Game inspirations were Space Harrier (by Yu Suzuki, see above), Star Fox, and, completely accidentally because I only read this on Wikipedia after I arbitrarily chose this batch of games to be played in the same sitting, Galactic Attack. The enemy “painting” mechanic was taken from that game, and also you attack in both.
There is a spartan nature about Panzer Dragoon. When I was stupider, I was less sure of why some games seemed sparse. You’ll find people on the interweb claiming Fallout 1 and 2 lacked the graphical fidelity to litter every inch of their environments with broken garbage. You’ll find more correct people saying that was a design choice, as it makes sense that people would clean up their towns to a degree, even after a war. Sometimes minimalism is a choice in itself, and sometimes, like in the King’s Field games, the choice stems from limitations but then becomes embraced on an artistic level. Then there are the games by worse designers who don’t mean to make barren worlds, they’re just bad at their jobs (or, more likely, grappling with time, budget, or personnel constraints). Team Andromeda, who aren’t a group of aliens from another galaxy but were actually humans from Earth who made the Saturn Panzer Dragoon trilogy and were then discarded by a perpetually inept Sega management, were largely a team of artists. In America when you get an art degree you starve, in Japan you get hired to make video games and then get old and starve because there are no children to help you. Anyway, being artists it is clear that they knew the game they were making was sparse due to technical limitations and then leaned into that aesthetic deliberately.
Once the immediate shouting and general chaos from up and down being inverted, the excellence of Panzer Dragoon was clear even to my barely literate host. Unfortunately, the game was too difficult for Andrew so I, a professional amateur gamer, had to take over. I played for a few stages and let Andrew and son soak in the atmosphere. The music was admired and it was said that, “if you ignore the choppiness, the game is kind of beautiful.” I’m not sure why Andrew thinks video games should run at more than 20 frames a second, perhaps he is a professional amateur technology critic. We didn’t have time to play for very long as I had to drive home and still had four beers to drink, but I suspected that, on some future date, after I took the controller from his fumbling hands, Andrew would also appreciate the greatness of Panzer Dragoon Zwei when its time came.
Panzer Dragoon
A flowing dragoon
Weaving through a storm of lights
Graceful violence