Things are looking good.
The Saturn scene is alive at the moment with top games like Virtua Cop 2,
Virtual On, the mythical Christmas NiGHTS, and the mildy-disappointing-but-still-quite-good Daytona CCE all
helping to pack those Saturn shelves with quality games, and giving the magazines a few reasons
to put in the odd page of Sega news amidst the Nintendo and Sony avalanche.
Still, we all know they are out to get us. Here are our current "most wanted" games:
Just a small mistake by a minor diplomat at the Ministry of Defence could quite possibly trigger the
accidental launch of a Nuclear warhead, which would cause a massive retaliatory strike to be launched against us, almost certainly destroying the
entire planet.
Hopefully this will not happen until after the release of Fighters Megamix, so we
can all enjoy pitching our favourite 3D fighters against each other. How I laughed when people
started speculating that even the car from Daytona would be a selectable character, tears of
laughter swiftly evaporated when it was revealed to be true.
Megamix really looks to be a class game, combining VF style with Vipers' punch, all given a shiny
new coat of mad Japanese action-paint. Should be out by April in the UK.
If a meteorite containing an Alien virus crashed into earth, distributing the deadly
virus into the atmosphere and food chain, Human life would almost certainly be wiped out.
This would be a shame, especially as Street Fighter versus X-Men is going to be released
exclusively on the Saturn sometime next year. Capcom have defied the critics by constantly
upgrading and inproving on their untouchable 2D gameplay, and hopefully the classic SF characters
combined with raw X-Men power, should make this yet another Capcom classic. Pity those people who
dismiss 2D games these days.
Barely a day passes without me worrying about the perils of Plate Tectonics. A large Earthquake along a major plate
boundary could easily cause a wholesale shift in the Earth's lower strata, and trigger volcanoes
and quakes that could tear the planet apart.
But then we'd miss out on Saturn Quake. I can still remember the
day I innocently looked through the release dates on Sega Europe's site, and saw Quake on
the list. It's still an unknown quantity on the Saturn at the moment, no Saturn pictures have been released yet, the team responsible
for the conversion is a mystery, but judging by what Exhumed
looks like, a well coded version of Quake could surely be up to the quality of the PC original.
Whether the Netlink will be supported, allowing us to kill Americans over the Internet,
is a matter of debate at the moment, but if Sega want to sell Netlinks...........
Read the above paragraph, and substitute the words Duke Nuke 'em 3D for Quake.
I've never been a fan of RPG's, but one that looks like actually being interesting is Grandia from Gamearts. We've all heard the details of who/what/how long/many people have been putting it together, but it seems that every new set of pictures released is prettier than the last. Those surroundings are all supposed to be real-time as well, so you can zoom and rotate as much as you like. Looks better than FF7 if you ask me.
But we're not interested in RPG's are we? Violence is what we want, and the Saturn conversion of Die Hard Arcade should allow us to dispense plenty of rough justice. This is one of those games that always seems to be "nearly" complete, but hopefully it should be ready early next year, and it will be the first of many 3D Streets of Rage style games.
More of a curiousity than a "must have" will be the conversion of Manx TT. Being put together by the people that knocked Saturn Wipeout together in a few months, this could be a contender. Persistent rumours circulate that this will be the first 60fps home racer. Some extra tracks would be better though.
Amazingly, Sega have some games already pencilled-in for release Christmas 1997. Assuming we survive the Nuclear winter and the Alien virus, we should have a stunning line up of games next year, including Last Bronx, Sega Touring Car, Gunblade NY, Sonic X-Treme, and, wait for it, Virtua Fighter 3 next Christmas. I'm not going to start listing the endless streams of gossip about VF3.
If we're all destroyed after all, look on the bright side, we avoid Digital Dance Mix.
ukr:gary