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Retro-Review: Die Hard Arcade [Saturn]

Die Hard Arcade
Sega Saturn

Developer: Sega Technical Institute, Sega AM1 R&D
Publisher: Sega
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 1997
Completed: 07 February 2016

Reviewing Die Hard Arcade is difficult.  Through the powerful lens of nostalgia, my affection for the game has remained steadfast since the first time I saw the arcade cabinet at a local movie theater.  As a home console game, Die Hard Arcade represents a solid port, but a terrible investment.  It can easily be completed in 15 minutes, and there's practically no reason to ever come back, yet there I sat this afternoon, putting it into my Saturn for the umpteenth time. 

Originally called Dynamite Cop in Japan (which saw a sequel on the Dreamcast), Die Hard Arcade makes only the most tenuous of connections with its license.  The guy on the cover kinda-sorta looks like Bruce Willis, I guess, though that's probably more due to the white tank top and slightly receding hairline than his facial features.  In the game, he looks even less like John McClane, the everyman hero of three great films (and two I would prefer to forget existed). 

The basic plot is somewhat similar to the film.  A group of terrorists have taken control of a skyscraper in an attempt to rob the corporation, and only you and your partner can stop them.  Wait, what?  Partner?

Yes, since this was an arcade brawler designed to relieve you of quarters weighing down your pockets, it supports two player cooperative play.  In fairness, it's a lot of fun, but it's certainly not in line with the license.  Oddly, your female counterpart appears in the game's opening cinematic where she and the McClane-alike are dropped off via helicopter on the roof of the building, but in a single player game she promptly disappears after that.  Thanks for the help, lady!

To further veer away from the Die Hard name, the leader of the terrorists is a semi-balding white man with a bushy white beard, and there's some weird subplot about them kidnapping the president's daughter that isn't really relevant to their heist.  It's never explicitly mention whether she's the president of the company's daughter, or the President of the United States' daughter, but she manages to elude her captors by hiding in the her father's desk, right next to the leader of the terrorists. 

It's all so ludicrous, but it is an arcade game, after all.  Judging it as such, the core gameplay of Die Hard Arcade is loads of fun.  Not-McClane has a bevy of moves at his disposal, though you'll likely spend more time button mashing than trying to input specific commands.  There's standard punches and kicks, as well as more advanced moves like grabs, holds, throws, and specials.  As with all good beat 'em ups, enemies will often drop weapons, and even scenery can be tossed around.  The most useful are easily the guns, which also allow you to arrest bad guys for a small health boost if you can manage to get behind them.

In between fights, you'll often participate in quicktime events.  Should you fail, you'll have to play an additional fight sequence, so I guess there's some replay value if you decide to intentionally fail these sequences and see the branching paths, but they all eventually lead to the same exact place. 

In an attempt to be more cinematic, the game frequently breaks up the action with in-engine cutscenes.  Not only do these look terrible, thanks to the horribly dated polygonal graphics, but the voice acting is some of the worst you are ever likely to hear.  At least it's so bad it's funny.  The downside is these scenes are usually only two or three seconds long and then it cuts to a black screen while the Saturn loads the next cutscene or gameplay segment.  It really disrupts the flow of the action, and the story isn't worth paying attention to in the first place.

The best part of the presentation is the music, which isn't bad, but only consists of a handful of themes that are repeated in each segment.  The graphics, as stated, have aged incredibly poorly, and the Saturn port is already a step down from the arcade original, which ran on the similar but slightly more powerful STV hardware.  I'll give the voice acting a pass because I can't reasonably expect any developer to spend money on quality talent for a game this short, and with so little dialogue.

The Saturn port does a fine job replicating the arcade experience overall, and it does have one small bonus.  The 1979 classic arcade game Deep Scan is also included on the disc.  Like the main attraction and its licensed name, it has little to do with the other, but you can earn extra credits for every 200 points you score.  You'll likely need them because Die Hard Arcade's coin-op roots mean you're bound to use up the stingy three credits you get by default.  It's not absurdly difficult, but it's no cakewalk either.  Boss enemies can take huge chunks of your life bar away if you're not careful.

For all of its flaws, Die Hard Arcade keeps me coming back time and time again for reasons I'm not even sure of.  All I can say is that nostalgia must blind me, because there's so little content here that there's no logical reason to play it again.  The same could be said of just about any classic beat 'em up, most of which follow similarly linear paths, but even Streets of Rage and the even older Double Dragon last longer than this.  Yet every time I pop the disc in my Saturn, I get a little bite-sized piece of entertainment and a chance to relive my teenage years.

Die Hard Arcade was completed on a real Sega Saturn with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Magic Knight Rayearth [Saturn]

Magic Knight Rayearth
Sega Saturn

Developer: Sega AM7 R&D
Publisher: Working Designs
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 1998
Completed: 07 February 2016

I'm not sure any console has a higher ratio of good but rare games than the Sega Saturn.  As the last game released for Sega's penultimate system in North America, Magic Knight Rayearth is understandably in demand, but it's also a fitting swan song for a system that never got the love it deserved.

Based on a Japanese manga and anime, Rayearth tells the story of three high school students who have been whisked away to the magical kingdom of Cephiro to fulfill their destinies and take the mantle of the legendary Magic Knights.  Only they can save the mystical world from falling into darkness at the hands of the evil Zagat, who has kidnapped Princess Emerald, and presumably will ruin the world by giving bad restaurants good reviews to poison its people.  OK, so I made that last bit up, but the rest is true. 

By the time it was released in the US, Magic Knight Rayearth was already several years old in Japan, but that doesn't stop it from being another in the long line of excellent Saturn games most people have never played.  Though the packaging prominently proclaims it an action RPG, the game has far more in common with The Legend of Zelda, or the PlayStation gem Alundra, than Final Fantasy. 

You control all three girls at once and can switch between them on the fly to take advantage of their unique abilities.  Hikaru uses fire magic, Umi water magic, and Fuu wind magic, but there are only a total of nine spells (three for each) in the game and some of them are used more to solve puzzles than to combat monsters.  Hikaru and Umi both wield bladed weapons, while Fuu uses a bow and arrow whose charged shot homes in on enemies.  Coupled with her healing magic, Fuu is arguably the most important of the three girls, and will likely be the recipient of the majority of stat boosting items you find throughout the game.

Unlike traditional RPGs, the Magic Knights don't level up by defeating monsters.  At specific points in the story, their power will automatically increase, granting them longer life bars, more magic power, and stronger weapons.  You'll also find heart and magic gems that will increase each respective bar by 1 point.  Combat is a single-button affair, with the only real strategy found in deciding which girl to use.  Out of reach enemies are easily defeated by a few shots from Fuu's charged bow, but close encounters are often better handled by Umi's charged rapier, which does tremendous damage and has a long reach of its own.  You can use your spells to damage enemies, but apart from the game's bosses, there's little reason to - and even most of the bosses are absolute pushovers.

Rayearth is an extremely easy game.  It's rather linear, taking you through its locations as simply the next stop in your journey to save Cephiro.  You can technically revisit them, but there's almost no reason to unless you want find all of the hidden amulets that can be used to buy special rare items or outtakes of the game's voice actors recording their dialogue.  This brings us to the only real gripe I had with the game - its terrible map system.

In order to reach new locations, you exit your current one from a specific direction.  The game then loads the map screen, automatically moves your party to the next stop, then loads that locale.  The loading time is a little long, though bearable, but the major issue is that you cannot freely select your destination on the map.  You can only go in the direction the game wants you to based on where you exited the previous screen.  This means you have to memorize where each exit takes you to should you want or need to revisit a particular place, and sometimes you'll have to pass through several towns just to figure out the correct path.  Backtracking is kept to a minimum, but if you're really desperate to find those amulets, some of which are hidden in nigh impossible to guess places, the load times can suddenly seem unbearable as you switch from place to place and hope you remembered the right order to get where you wanted to go.

That's a pretty small nitpick in the face of all the enjoyment the game provides.  It may rely on simple mechanics, but Rayearth really is a joy to play from start to finish.  The dungeons are fun to explore, platforming is handled remarkably well for a top-down action game, and the localization has all the usual Working Designs wit and charm.  There's some pretty strong innuendo here, including a reference to tossing salad, and there's even another shot at Scientology, which seemed to be a favorite target for the publisher, but it's a great and highly entertaining translation.  The story even has a few nice twists thrown in.

Graphically, Rayearth isn't going to blow you away, but that's not to say it's unattractive.  Colors are very vibrant and the pseudo-3D look of the sprites looks nice.  Each town and dungeon has its own distinct feel.  There is some slowdown when there are a lot of effects on screen, but overall the presentation is solid, if unspectacular. 

The in-game visuals are complimented by some nice anime cutscenes.  There are compression artifacts thanks to the limits of CD-ROM technology, but they still look very decent and there's a fair amount to watch.

The audio is the real star of the show here.  Much of the game has voice-acting, which isn't half bad for a 90's action-RPG, but the music is universally fantastic. 

I was absolutely shocked by how much I ended up loving Magic Knight Rayearth.  Knowing nothing about the anime going in, other than that it existed, I didn't know what to expect from a Japanese game starring three fourteen-year-old girls.  It turns out, they're pretty kickass heroines in a solid action-adventure-RPG hybrid.  It may not appeal to everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised and I had a pretty hard time putting it down.

Magic Knight Rayearth was completed on a real Sega Saturn with no cheats.

Retro-Review: Astal [Sega Saturn]

Astal
Sega Saturn

Developer: SEGA Enterprises
Publisher: SEGA of America
Release Date: 1995
Completed 03 January 2015
Rated: K-A

When one thinks of classic SEGA characters, they immediately think of Sonic the Hedgehog, Vectorman, Ecco the Dolphin, and of course, Astal.

No?  Nobody remembers that last one?  Lucky you.

Astal is a game best left forgotten.  There are those who will tell you it's a hidden Saturn gem, though I would argue that most Saturn games are hidden gems as the whole console is underrated and overlooked.  Those people are morons.  I think the best way to epitomize it is to point out that the game's title wasn't even printed on the spine.  It's completely forgettable, often frustrating, and fun is at a premium.  At least it's blissfully short.

The game starts off with promise.  There's a pretty nice semi-animated intro, complete with typical 90s voiceovers (read: terrible).  The first thing you'll notice about the game is that it's quite attractive.  Backgrounds are lush, colors are vibrant, and there's nice sprite layers to give a three dimensional appearance.  The first few levels are even mildly enjoyable, if extremely simplistic.  Then, somewhere along the line, it just all goes off the rails.

The first problem stems from the utterly unlikable main character.  It was typical of 90s video game heroes to have 'tude, but Astal is so obnoxious you'll find yourself willingly jumping into the abyss just to see him die.  Early in the game you'll rescue a bird who can perform multiple functions, such as retrieving off-screen items like health restoring fruit and even extra lives.  It can also attack enemies and often perform special stage-specific functions.  Seems helpful, right? 

Being the ungrateful brat he is, Astal spends the majority of the game telling the "stupid bird" to stop following him.  That bird just saved your life by bringing you fruit, you little shit!  Show some gratitude!  He comes across like a petulant child who thinks he's a badass, and he anachronistically incorporates American attitude and Japanese phrases such as "yatta!" (translation: "I did it!").  He's like the original weeaboo! 

The game is functional enough.  Astal responds to your controls, but he moves likes he's mired in quicksand and jumps don't feel as precise as those of Mario or Sonic.  You can change direction mid-air, but they feel so floaty you'll often still miss whatever you were aiming at.  He has multiple attacks, including an over-the-shoulder throw, a ground pound that stuns enemies, a gust of air he can blow enemies away with, and even the standard head-hop, and the game gives you plenty of situations to make use of all your powers. 

It also gives you plenty of frustrating deaths because of its imprecise jumping and cheap enemy hits - most notably during boss battles.  Most of the latter are decent enough, and a few are even high points in an otherwise trash game, but in a later battle you'll take control of Astal's bird and, suddenly, you'll start to hate the thing as much as he does.  There are also numerous times when the bird simply does nothing.  You'll send him off to find a fruit, and he returns empty handed.  Then you die and have to restart the stage from the beginning.  Thanks for nothing, bird. 

There is a story, but I'll be damned if I remember it and I literally finished playing thirty minutes ago.  I assume it's the usual video game claptrap about rescuing a princess or something.  Given his attitude towards the bird, Astal seems like he would be a wife-beater.  Mario isn't an asshole to all his friends, and the rest of us may hate Tails, but Sonic seems to like him!

There is also music, I think.  I couldn't really tell you, because despite the BGM being turned all the way up in the options menu, I remember nothing of it.  The best thing I can say about it is it's there, but it was all white noise to me.  Admittedly, I may have missed in whilst shouting obscenities at my TV after dying twenty-five times during the stupid boss battle where you play as the bird.

Astal may look pretty, but as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.  Though it was a 2D powerhouse, the Saturn was not known for its platformers.  Astal looks beautiful at the bottom of the barrel where it resides.

Astal was completed on a real Sega Saturn using the 99 lives code.