Sega Saturn Peripherals

Like every console, the Sega Saturn had a number of extra bits and bobs that you could buy to enhance your gaming experience.  So for those that didn't own a Saturn, I thought I'd give a bit of a mention to the ones that stood out.

Well the first one I never actually owned back when you could still buy Saturn games in the store.  It was known as the 3D controller, and as far as I know its main purpose was for playing Nights: Into Dreams.  The differences between this pad and the regular pad as the addition of an analogue stick and some changes to the shoulder buttons.  The reason it was made is because if you've ever played Nights on a regular pad, it can wear on the palms after a while, so it was made to make playing that game more comfortable.

The next peripheral I want to talk about is the Super Cobra light gun.  Light Guns are not exactly uncommon for consoles, even the NES had a light gun, but this thing was an absolute beast of a weapon.  It was heavier than any other light gun I had used up to that point, and constantly shooting outside of the screen in House of the Dead felt more like lifting weights than playing an arcade rail shooter.   Also it was cool as fuck, whenever you pulled the trigger, the lights down the side would light up, back when I was a kid, that was the coolest shit.  Also it was compatible with the Sony Playstation so I think you could play Resident Evil: Gun Survivor with it.

The final thing I'll be talking about is another peripheral that I didn't own at the time, and this little thing is known as the Sega NetLink.  A lot of people give credit to the Dreamcast for being the first console with online features, but they would be really wrong.  If we're just talking about Sega, the Mega Drive had an online feature that didn't really take off, and then the Saturn the the NetLink, and while it only worked for a few games at ran at a whopping 28.8kb/s, it still worked to get you playing games online before the Dreamcast and its fancy 56k turned up.  It also came with a browser and auto connected you to an IRC channel as far as I understand the information I found on the internet.  After giving the wikipedia entry a quick read as well, the reason I probably never owned the damn thing is because it cost a massive $200, something I or my family would not have been willing to buy at the time.

The Saturn had some other cool bits of kit, but these are the ones that stood out in my memory, a quick google search can get you a complete list of all the peripherals available if you care that much.

Free Game Saturday: Dracula's Riddle

Due to Saturn month, I've once again not been playing all that much free stuff, but I want to share with you a "game" that took me and a group of about 4 friends over a month of solidly playing it to beat.

It's quite old so I imagine there are already a lot of people who know what the deal is, but for those who don't Dracula's Riddle is a series of stupidly hard puzzles that you must solve in order to banish Dracula.  These puzzles are fucking hard hard as well, you may find that you will breeze through the first few only to hit a massive block as one puzzle stumps you for days on end. 

That said, none of the puzzles are unfair or have bullshit solutions, they just require you to use every ounce of brainpower that you have and when you do eventually figure out one of the super hard puzzles, the feeling of satisfaction from seeing the browser load the next riddle is unmatched.

So the way you play this game is simple.  Every riddle contains a picture, a bit of flavour text that sometimes contains a hint, and the page source which will almost always contain a hint.  When you solve the riddle, you replace the last part of the URL with your answer, and if it is correct, it'll load the next one.  If you are wrong, it'll come up with a little message saying "YOU ARE LOST!"

So if you're into puzzle games and you think that all the currently puzzlers are too easy for you, give this one a shot, you'll be scratching that noggin for weeks.

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo

Think of this post as a sort of "set up" post for the next Saturn month video I'll be doing.  So next on the list is a game that is not only one of my favourite puzzle games ever, but my mothers favourite game of all time.

This game was brought over to the Sony Playstation and was fairly recently put into HD on the Xbox Live Arcade with online multiplayer (which is pretty much dead last time I tried)  For anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's a block matching puzzle game where you have to line up matching colours and then smash them with a circular gem.  What made the game different from any other puzzle game I played at the time, was the fact that you could select one of about 10 Street Fighter or Darkstalker characters to fight in the middle.

Each character had a unique "drop" pattern, so when you smashed blocks, you would send solid blocks to your opponent that would take a number of drops to turn into normal gems.  The more blocks you smashed, the flashier the move would be.  A few blocks would cause your character to taunt, a good amount would make them do a special, and smashing a shit ton of blocks made them do an ultra.

The game is fast paced, fun as shit and really flashy.  What people who only bought the XBLA version may not know, was something called the "Street Battle Mode" which was a series of challenges that you had to clear against stupidly hard opponents.  Still, in place of that, we got online mode, where I was getting my ass kicked every time by stupidly hard opponents, so it was quite similar really.

I was never amazing at this game, and I'm not nearly as good as I used to be, but there will be a video on this game fairly soon.  I have plans for the next few days, so I'll release the video about around Sunday or Monday, so keep an eye out.  If you like puzzle games and street fighter, you'll LOVE this

I lose all man points with Slender

Slender is a game that I discovered through one of my buddies when they were trying to prove that properly scary games do still exist.  Well last night I decided to download it and give it a go thinking "well it can't be THAT scary" but oh, how wrong I was.

I have never played a game that has made me panic this hard.  The sound design is amazing and the big sprawling forest is unnerving to.  Also the way Slender "attacks" you is genius, he doesn't run at you or shoot stuff, he just hides, then pops up to fuck with you a few time, and then when he gets bored he offs you.

So a few friends of mine asked me to record a run so they could hear me scream like a little bitch.  They are probably going to get a kick out of it and I hope you do too.

HERE'S THE VIDEO GODDAMN

Also, I caught my FFSplit screen right at the end, but I was too panicked to care.

Do we really need more Metal Gear?

I love Metal Gear, it's up there with some of my favourite franchises ever.  I started with the Metal Gear Solid demo on my playstation, ended up buying the full thing and being hooked ever since and as much as some people like to rag on it's outlandish, insane plot which could arguably use some editing, I still love that stuff.

So on the horizon we have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, but do we really need these games at all?  Now I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, these games do not look bad by any stretch, in fact they look awesome, but they worry me. 

The story for Metal Gear was done, finito, over with MGS4 and while I'm not going to turn my nose up at more Metal Gear goodness, I'm worried that one day, if they keep making these games, that they are going to end up sucking.

We have seen it happen to Silent Hill and Sonic just to name a couple of franchises that aren't anywhere near as good as they used to be and I really don't want to see Metal Gear get the same treatment.

I'm pretty hyped for these games, and they'll probably be good, but please....let it die and be remembered as a great series before you ruin it with spin off crap.

Three Dirty Dwarves with commentary!

Well it's done! 6 videos of me playing Three Dirty Dwarves to completion with me talking in the background!

Now I am aware that I need to do some stuff in the future to make these videos a little better.  The big one is that I just flat out need a better computer, so I guess I gotta start saving those paychecks.  The second thing is that I need a better microphone, my current one sucks and it's pretty obvious that it sucks, so I'll be popping down to the nearest electronics store in the near future.  The final thing is that I need to adjust the game volume, it was a little loud but I think it turned out just fine here.

Also, as much as I enjoyed putting this thing together, I didn't realise it would make me so nervous.  While I'm talking, my brain is going "everyone hates you and you're ugly" and it really throws me off.  Maybe if it turns out that people do enjoy this stuff that will become less of an issue.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos, like em, share em, and maybe donate if you're in the mood for that.

VIDEOS!

Three Dirty Dwarves (and more technical issues)

Well I WAS hoping to have a play through of this game to show you, but the technical bullshit behind this recording stuff is driving me insane.

The way I'm recording this stuff is by using an emulator because I don't have any way to lift footage off a console here in Japan, all my stuff for that kind of thing is in Sweden.   However, the software I am using to record the game play (FFSplit) makes the emulator look like complete ass and the whole thing is unwatchable.

So while I'm working on the issue, take a gander at the opening cinematic so you can get a feel for the game's story while I'm ironing out more problems.  The sad thing is that this 5 minute cartoon for this games opening is way better than most of the crap kids cartoons put out on TV today.  What a sad age we live in.

Thanks to whoever uploaded this video, getting any information on this game is actually turning out to be quite hard!

UPDATE:  Pretty much 10 minutes after making this post, I fixed the problem, the resolution is a little on the low side but the quality is alrite and the frame rate is good!  To be honest, considering I don't own a desktop due to travelling about so much, I'm glad I could get it to look the way it does.

I would record the play through now, but in my video testing sessions I'm playing like a man who has just had his thumbs cut off.  It's been a long day at work and I don't think I could do a good job of playing the game OR making the commentary interesting, so I'll do it in the morning when I'm nice and fresh!

That said I have a day off work and lots of time to make content, so maybe I'll do a little bonus something depending on how I feel to make up for lost time