dark wizard

Wednesdays with Andrew Gaiden – Sega CD

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Prior entries in this series: Introduction | NiGHTS into Dreams | Virtua Racing and more | Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona USA

Long before Andrew came to me, tears in his eyes, confessing his immense regret for not buying and exclusively playing the Saturn – which resulted in the world famous Wednesday’s with Andrew series (everyone on Neptune has read it) – we spent significant time (upwards of 3 hours) playing Sega CD games. Or more like he would come over and have an adult conversation with my wife while I would force the controller into his hands and demand he play whatever new disc I had just popped in. Whatever the case, we played a fair number of Sega CD games and even enjoyed some of them even if I deliberately focused on inflicting pain with most of my choices – as any good friend would. What follows is the chronicling of our time spent playing together, or at least some random observations and jokes. →  I’d buy that for a dollar.

Bad Design 1

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This column looks at design flaws in popular games. Nearly all of the examples of poor design are from games that are either good or great, so don’t assume we are picking on these games solely because they suck and it’s fun to make fun of crap. Perhaps it is the games’ quality that makes identifying one specific design flaw so easy. The flaws are also not unique the only these games; hopefully each specific game we examine will hold a flaw that is common in many other games, some sort of universal design flaw. This will ultimately make the column much more valuable than if it were just a place to piss on a game for a specific and unique quirk.

That being said, welcome to the first installment of this potentially never ending series. Today I’ll be looking at Civilization III (yes, I know IV just came out), Jade Empire, and an old cult classic for the Sega CD called Dark Wizard. →  Sly 3: Honor Among Reads