Lord Spencer's Gaming (and other stuff) Blog

One of the strangest things about Shinobi Legions is that, despite being the latest game in a core Sega franchise at the time, it was published in the West by a different company. Evidenced by that, and the fact that no other Shinobi game was released on the Saturn, suggests Sega had no idea what to do with the franchise. In hindsight, that was obvious with this game, as it is barely an improvement on the Genesis games. In fact, it is actually more of a step-down if we are being honest, even if the end product isn't bad in any way. R1: Shinobi Legions: Year: 1995 in Japan and NA. Genre: Action Platformer. Publisher: Sega, Vic Tokai. Developer: Sega.

Both at first appearance and deeper into the game, it is obvious that Albert Odyssey was developed for earlier hardware. It looks and plays like one of the late JRPGs of the 16-bit era, and that means the game still looks great today. It is one of the many games localized by Working Designs with their unique style, which allowed games that probably would never be ported west to be released. That was great for fans of the genre back in the day. Yet, besides that promising facade, the game falters in comparison to its JRPG peers, particularly due to its slow performance and some seriously misguided localization. 49: Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean Year: 1996 in Japan, 1997 in NA. Genre: JRPG. Publisher: Sunsoft, Working Designs. Developer: Sunsoft.

The Onimusha series was born out of an accident, and before you joke about how most of us are born that way, allow me to explain. When creating the 2D backgrounds for future Resident Evil games back in the PS1 era, Shinji Mikami (the director of the RE series) experimented with designing Japanese mansions as opposed to the Western Mansions featured in the game. The result was excellent, but the idea was scrapped because it didn't fit in with the series's lore. However, these 2D images inspired the creation of a Sengoku (Japan's warring states period, 1500-1615) Resident Evil by Yoshiki Okamoto. Seeing promise in the idea, Keiji Inafune OKed the development of the game for the PS1. Being in the Sengoku era, the game borrowed a lot from established Japanese mythology about the first conqueror of Japan, Nobunaga Oda, also known as the demon king. Based on that, Onimusha was designed as an alternate history take, where Oda really does command an army of demons (Oni in Japa...

Typical of the Saturn, the top 60-51 games on Retro Sanctuary are almost all Japanese exclusives that were never ported west, while some are inferior ports of PC or Arcade games. Besides a few of these games, the 2D games that showcase the Saturn's best qualities, this is not a very impressive collection. Of these games, Magic Knight Rayearth is the only one I played to completion, and only one with a complete in-depth review that you can check out.

Although one of the first games unveiled for the Saturn, Magic Knight Rayearth was actually the last official game released in North America. That was due to the extensive localization needed for a game that pushed the narrative boundaries of the time. Based on a well-known magical girl anime, this is actually an adaptation that successfully tells a story while being a good game in its own right. The rare anime adaptation that works. 59: Magic Knight Rayearth: Year: 1995 in Japan, 1998 in NA. Genre: Action Adventure. Publisher: Sega, Working Designs. Developer: Sega.

In the 70 to 61 places in Retro Sanctuary's 100 Saturn Games , the site once again selected 10 games from various genres, a few of which were actually Saturn exclusives. That doesn't matter really, as the games are starting to get marginally better from the last 30 games. At least, in Mega Man 8 , we have a seriously good game. As usual, the sports games are relics of the past (and that's fine), and there are several Japan-exclusive games. Note that Iron Storm looks like it is an excellent strategy game. However, I could not figure out exactly how to play it, since there were no tutorials at all. Based on that, the two games that I reviewed in detail are Mega Man 8 and Herc's Adventure .