Lord Spencer's Gaming (and other stuff) Blog

In reviewing the Top 40-31 of the Retro Sanctuary list, I began by reviewing the first three games in the list, but the rest were either genres out of my review list or Japan-only games. Many of these are Shumps, which the Saturn is known for, and there are two famous fighting games as well. However, most of these games were released in Japan only. The fact that so many good games were never released West has probably contributed to the release drought in the US and the consequent bad reputation of the console at a time when it was well-liked in Japan. Of the games that I reviewed, I really liked Dark Savior and The Legend of Oasis . Please enjoy:- 40- Dark Savior (1996): Genre: Action Adventure Publisher: Sega, Climax Entertainment; Developer: Climax Entertainment. Originally planned as a sequel to the well-regarded Landstalker Genesis game, Dark Savior became something that is much different. More of an Isometric Platformer than an action-adventure game, this is a truly unique exp...

“ Que sera, sera ” and “Don’t overdo it” were some of the most memorable lines in Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbors the Yamadas , even being used in much of the advertising. Knowing the studio’s reputation for perfection and excellence, it is clear that the entirety of this movie’s production is an elaborate rebellious message by the director, Isao Takahata, on both the culture of the studio and Japan as a whole. Of course, this short rebellion and “Encouragement of Unseriousness” was never fully embraced by either the studio or Takahata himself, even in this movie itself, which was as expensive to produce as the epic Princess Mononoke . Based on a newspaper comic strip by, not unlike Snoopy or Garfield , the movies focused on the everyday lives of the Yamada family. Consisting of a salaryman and his housewife, along with a son, an adorable daughter, and a live-in grandmother, this family represented the typical post-war living arrangement in Japan. Like the comic strip it was based on, the...

The Legend of Oasis , or The Story of Thor 2 , as it is known in Europe, is a prequel to a little-known but much-respected Genesis action adventure game, Beyond Oasis , which was especially lauded for its clear and crisp sprite work and animation in a previous era. Immediately after the release of that game, this prequel was planned to be released for the ill-fated 32X add-on to the Genesis. However, those plans were shelved and production moved to the Saturn. Most probably, this is the reason that the game retained the original vision of being a simple upgrade to its wonderful predecessor instead of becoming a bastardized early 3D abomination. For better or worse, The Legend of Oasis is a simple follow-up to a 16-bit Genesis game. 38: The Legend of Oasis: Year: 1996 in NA and Japan. Genre: Action Adventure. Publisher: Sega. Developer: Ancient.

With the major critical and commercial success of the first Resident Evil game, it was only a matter of time before other imitators started crowding the market. Among that crowd, Sega's Deep Fear was meant not only as a rival of Resident Evil but also as its answer in the Saturn's library. Unsurprisingly, the game failed at both counts, failing to both establish a series or make any uplift to Saturn's flagging sales. Eventually, the game was the last Saturn release in Europe and was not released in North America. In hindsight, I can see that the game isn't actually bad by the standards of its day, but that it does not have the qualities of Resident Evil and its better imitators, such that it becomes worth it to play it today. 39: Deep Fear: Year: 1998 in Japan and Europe. Genre: Action Horror. Publisher: Sega. Developer: Sega.

For any game to be remade or rereleased, there must be a desire for the game from fans and love for it by the developers. That Lunar: Silver Star was both remade and rereleased several times is a testament to that love and desire. Originally released as Lunar: The Silver Star in 1992 for the ill-fated Sega CD, it had an expanded remake released for the Sega Saturn and PS1 in 1996 and 1998 as Lunar: Silver Star Story . Thanks to the suspicion of 2D art and JRPGs at the time, there were no plans to release the game in the West. And that’s where Working Designs comes in, saving yet another Japanese JRPG from Western obscurity at the cost of an, ahem, unique localization effort. Regardless of what you think of the result, Working Designs release of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete is the reason the game found many admirers in the Western world. Thanks to this admiration, the game was released again, along with its sequel, Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete , as part of the Lunar Remastered C...

Early fans of Sega would recognize Climax Entertainment as the team responsible for many of the best games of the Genesis. They helped Camelot Software with the first two Shining games, and they made the critically and commercially successful Landstalker title. Taking a cue from that latter game, Climax Entertainment wanted to make another action-adventure game on the newer consoles, but they struggled with developing in 3D. Which is why they went back to what they knew best, and developed another isometric game that uses polygons only sparingly in the environment, but otherwise is mostly a sprite-based isometric game. The result is Dark Savior , which is thankfully still playable today because its graphics aged semi-gracefully, and that's good news because we would have otherwise missed a very good game. 40: Dark Savior: Year: 1996 in Japan and NA. Genre: Action Adventure. Publisher: Sega, Climax Entertainment. Developer: Climax Entertainment.

Unfortunately for my review, the top 50-41 games on Retro Sanctuary are mostly multiplayer-focused. With a regular fighting game, a tank fighting game (that's more like Worms than anything else), and two puzzlers. Other than that, there are two Shmups, a PC port of a simulator, and a Lightgun Rail Shooter. Of these games, I only extensively played and reviewed the JRPG, Albert Odyssey. As for the rest, I gave the games that were not Japan-exclusive a spin to check them out and wrote a brief report on each one. Please enjoy:-

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.