The Best Marketing Campaign In All Of Gaming

 

I'm not one, personally, to get too swept up in hype and marketing.  Usually what will happen is that I will find out that a game exists, maybe watch a short trailer and then file it away in my mind and not look at anything to do with it ever again until it launches and I get a chance to play it.  I have to admit though, if I was a young Japanse boy in the 90s then there's a good chance that this advertising campaign for the Sega Saturn would have swept me right up into a hype train.

Segata Sanshiro, a play on the Japanese セガサターンしろ (meaning, "play the sega saturn!" said in a sort of aggressive way) arranged so that it sounds like a dudes name was a series of advertisements played on Japanese TV to, obviously, promote the Sega Saturn.  The first few snippits of these adverts depict our man, Segata Sanshiro, a bloke in a karate gi, approaching groups of youths who are not playing Sega Saturn and then beating them up and demanding that they go and do so.  Later adverts depict him doing absolutely insane super-human feats that relate to the theme of whatever individual game they are trying to sell.  For example, one of my favorite versions of this is where Segata is acting as goalkeeper in a football match and instead of just blocking the oncoming ball, he proceeds to flip the entire goal net over his shoulder so TECHNICALLY the ball didn't go in.  After some clips of the game, World Cup 98 ~Road to Win~, the ad ends with Segata being red-carded by the referee while shouting "OH NO!" in an overexaggerated katakana-English accept.

The absolutely insane thing about this series of adverts is that when it came for the release of the Dreamcast, the ad involves a bunch of business folks celebrating the launch when a missle is launched at Sega HQ.  Segata, who just happens to be standing on the roof of the building, proceeds to catch the missle in mid-air, rides it into space where it then explodes and kills him off.  Honestly, a truly hilarious way to give the mascot a sendoff for the next piece of hardware.

Segata Sanshiro seemed to be such a well-liked figure within Japan that he even got his own game on the Saturn but I've heard its an extremely lackluster mini-game collection where your reward for beating the games is the ability to watch the adverts which, honestly, seems trash but having not played it at time of writing this article I'll withhold judgement.  More well liked that the mascot though is the man himself Hiroshi Fujioka who is a bit of a legend here in Japan.  Known chiefly for being in Kamen Rider he's a sort of cultural icon that even my wife, who knows barely anything of video games and even less about Tokusatsu, knows who he is.  Hell, when I looked him up on Wikipedia before writing this blog I found out he even has a fucking planet named after him.  

I wouldn't be surprised if this ad campaign is the reason that the Saturn is remembered quite a bit more fondly in Japan than it is in the west.  Back in England I barely knew anyone who even knew what the Sega Saturn was, let alone had played one.  It was one of those systems that only weirdos like me owned alongside things like the Neo Geo and even today its only really hardcore enthusiasts willing to dig into gamings history that give enough of a shit to look at its libarary.  In Japan though it's a little bit more well remembered.  I've met plenty of folks who have at least got some memories of having fiddled with a game or two on the system in their childhoods.  I even met one guy in a bar once who spent the better part of 2 hours trying to convince me to play Wachenroder which, while it looks cool, I still haven't done yet.  Sorry.

There's a lot of weird, gross and shitty video game advertising out there, especially from the 90s and early 2000s, but Sega really knocked it out of the park with this one.  It's a shame it wouldn't last and Sega would bow out of the hardware biz after the Dreamcast but at the very least their efforts gave us some truly hilarious bits of old advertising to look back on fondly

I Miss Quirky Peripherals

My post yesterday evening about rail shooters got me thinking about video game console peripherals and just how boring they have become in the modern age.  We have stuff like the Kinect, the PS4s pad thing but I only seem to ever come across people complaining about those.

I mean what the fuck happened to every console having a gun.  Back in the day, every motherfucker and it's dog had a goddamn gun in order to play all those arcade rail shooter ports.  The Wii kinda had a gun thing going on but that was nothing more than slotting your remote into a hunk of plastic.  I want shit like the Sega Saturn Predator back.  It was fucking heavy as shit, lit up when you fired it and it was fucking big.  You knew that when you got that motherfucker out the draw, shit was going to go down.

Back then, developers were always trying to do interesting shit with their systems and giving you interesting ways to play.  NiGHTS on the Saturn saw the release of a "3D" controller which looked kind of like an arcade stick and was designed to make playing that game a bit easier or something.  The Dreamcast had a fishing rod for use with Sega Bass Fishing but also worked with Soul Calibre so you could swing it around like a sword.  This resulted in getting smashed by someone with a controller but it was fun nonetheless.  Nintendo were famous for their weird fucking peripherals such as ROB the Robot for the NES and the Game Boy Transfer Pack back when Pokemon Stadium came out which blew peoples fucking minds back then

Sure, they were gimmicky and the number of compatible games was kind of low but the point is that a lot of the time they were fun to use.  I spent HOURS playing ports of rail shooters and HOURS with the fucking DC fishing rod just because it was a novel way to play.

With modern systems, a lot of the shit is built in or has been done before a long time ago and it worked better (Kinect and Eye Toy for example).  Things like touch screens were novel back when the DS was new but in 2014, a touch screen on a modern device is fucking standard.  The closest thing we have to a proper interesting peripheral is the Occulus Rift or any other VR headset thing.  That thing is pushing boundaries and giving people a chance to experience games in a way they never have before which is awesome.

It also makes the console a bit more interesting I think.  I'm constantly finding weird bits and bobs in the retro stores around Japan and sometimes I have no idea what the fuck they would ever be used for.  40 years from now when people are going around retro stores for PS3s or whatever, there isn't going to be anything all that interesting to find in a junk box because aside from the standard console/controller/cables/games there wasn't really much else to fuck about with.

I know it's mainly a problem with technology being what it is and the need for all this quirky bullshit being reduced to basically zero but I'm sure the creative minds in the games industry could come up with SOMETHING that would make me want to play their game based on the method of input alone like they did back then. 

Maybe one day.

Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough Session #LostCount

Well, I finally got round to uploading some more parts of the Panzer Dragoon Saga playthrough, but this session is filled mainly with talky bits and getting lost in a forest.  That said there is a cool boss fight right at the end, so if you dont care about the story there is still something for you here.

VIDEOS!

Panzer Dragoon Session 10

Well, I filmed this about a week ago, so anything that I was going to say about it in this post, I've forgotten, so just kick back and enjoy the game! 

Going to Osaka! and some more Panzer Dragoon!

OK! So tomorrow morning I'm going to be getting up bright and early and fucking off to Osaka for a while.  While I'm gone, I don't think I'll have access to an internet connection so I won't be able to make posts for about 2 days, but when I get back you can probably expect pictures and stuff.

While I'm there I'll be hitting up Universal Studios where they are doing their super scary Resident Evil thing

This should be interesting, so even if you give zero fucks about Osaka, there is still going to be something gaming related upon my return!

Also, I have 3 new parts of my Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough but there is some audio syncing problems.  Basically,  FFSplit, the recording software, got an update and started recording in MP4 instead of FLV.  This, for some reason, caused everything to fuck up and now it's all out of sync.  I spent a while working on it to re sync it, but I couldn't get it perfect in the end, I'm just not good enough at editing yet.

Well, here they are anyway, it's not THAT bad.

Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough Session 8

More Panzer Dragoon!  Although this time there was some weird audio crackle that sort of just fixed itself after a while.  I test my recording stuff every time before I start, and it wasn't there, so I have no idea what caused it or how I fixed it.  Either way, it's not THAT bad, but I'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

VIDEOS

Panzer Dragoon Saga Session 2

Making good progress through this game, might even be able to polish off disc 1 by the end of the evening!

This session I went through the Garil Desert and fucked up an acient sleeping....thing, was pretty good

Check that shit out

Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough Session 1

Well it's done and uploaded, the first 2 parts of my Panzer Dragoon Saga playthrough are ready for viewing.

I'm aware that I cut myself off a little bit at the end of part 2, but all you missed was "bye guys" so nothing of value was lost there really.  I'll hopefully be shooting some more today and have them uploaded by tomorrow morning (Japan time) or this evening.

Here are the videos!

Saturn Month: Die Hard Arcade Showcase

Well it happened, my good friend finally came to Nagoya and we got to record ourselves playing Die Hard Arcade! 

Although things didn't go to well.....Not only were we dealing with semi-hangovers from the night before, but we had taken up the bottle again just before playing, so our skills probably weren't all there for this one.  On top of that, my friend has very few natural survival instincts so we ate through our credits quite quickly.

That said, it was a ton of fun to record and hopefully you'll get a kick out of watching it too.  We've promised ourselves to come back and record this when we're not being awful and show the world what the end of the game looks like!

VIDEO TIME!

Saturn Month: Preparation for Police Brutality

Time for another round of Saturn games and this time we'll be looking at Die Hard Arcade.  Die Hard Arcade was a fucking awesome coin-op beat 'em up game that got a Saturn exclusive port and is incidentally one of my personal favourite arcade games ever.

The story behind the game itself is fairly straightforward.  Some prick has taken the presidents daughter and you have to go smash the faces of many thugs to get her back.  Really simple premise, perfect for just kicking the shit out of people, which is all you really ask of a beat 'em up game, let's be honest.

That said, the story behind the games development is a bit more strange.  If you go look it up, or when I get round to shooting a video for it, you may notice that it actually has very little to do with Die Hard.  That's because it actually has NOTHING to do with Die Hard and I imagine the title was slapped on it so it would boost sales.  In Japan it was developed and released under the name Dynamite Deka, and after it was complete, they nabbed the Die Hard licence and slapped it on when the released it in the west.

The gameplay is standard beat 'em up stuff, but it's fucking awesome.  You can do normal shit like punching and kicking if you're boring, but if you're awesome you'll use the environment or one of the many weapons in order to make murdering your fellow man that much more efficient.  Kill all the dudes in a room to progress to the next room to kill more dudes.  Sometimes you'll get a quick time event between the rooms so you can have the game automatically kill a dude for you if you get it right.  Then right at the end, if you're on 2 player mode, you get to murder each other as a little nod to stuff like Double Dragon.

The upcoming video will be a little different for this one.  I have a friend coming up to Nagoya to visit me, so we're hoping to grab a copious amount of beer and scream at each other while we die miserably, so keep an eye out for that one.

Also before I finish, the game got a fucking awesome sequel on the Dreamcast called Dynamite Cop

Same game, different setting and much more refined gameplay, it was awesome!  If I ever get a chance to show you that one, I will, so I'll keep my eyes peeled for a Japanese copy of this thing too!

Saturn Month: Nights: Into Dreams showcase

Another video for Saturn Month has been uploaded!  I was having a lot of problems with this one, it really didn't want to behave when being run by my emulator while recording.  Still, I made it work in the end and here you go!

I'm hoping to do some games with a bit more depth to them in the future, I find the reason that these games are so hard to talk about is because despite being awesome, they are really quite simple, and considering I'm trying to be informative about these games, I need to play something that has more to say about it than "get the things and put them in the round thing"

Still, hope you enjoy the video!

Saturn Month: NiGHTS Into Dreams

Well here we are people, we are finally getting into the meat of Saturn month, the greats of the system, and we're starting out with NiGHTS Into Dreams!

If you're the kind of person who never played this one, but you played the one on the Wii, good lord you are missing out.  The Wii NiGHTS game isn't exactly awful but it's missing a lot of the original charm I think.

There is a plot that I bet most people don't give a shit about, but for those that do....there are two kids who are basically crap at life, and because they are crap at life they have nightmares.  There is also some evil prick who resides in the dream world, stealing dream energy to take it over.  He creates Nights who then decides "fuck this" and rebels.  The kids, who end up in the dream world hold dream energy that cannot be captured by the evil prick, so it is up to you as nights, to harness this and go ruin the evil pricks shit.....I think

It's been a LOOOONG time since I played NiGHTS, and even then the story isn't a big part of it.  It's more about acrobatics and showing off how good the Saturn was at pulling off busy, colourful 3D environments.  Aside from the awesome gameplay which I'll show you in the upcoming video, the game just oozes charm and personality.  The design, the music, the little details in each stage all come together to create something really unique, so I'm hoping to get the video out on this one ASAP.

If you have not seen this version, I think you're in for something special, watch this space!

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.

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

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!

Technical Difficulties!

Remember that I said for Saturn Month I was going to stream whenever I was playing Saturn games? well there is a problem

The problem is that my Internet is not good enough to produce a stream that is worth watching.  Either the frame rate is crap, the video/audio quality is crap or the stream just flat out dies.  There doesn't seem to be much I can do about it, so until further notice, streaming is OFF!

However! This does not mean that Saturn month will be stopping, instead, I'll be filming my runs of these Saturn games and doing some sort of commentary too.  Kind of like a "lets play" I guess, but I'm not going to be good at these games, I'm just kind of showcasing them because their awesome.

So hopefully over the next couple of days you'll be seeing stuff like Nights: Into Dreams, Die Hard Arcade, Three Dirty Dwarfs and Super Puzzle Fighter.  There will be more but those games will be filling up the next few days.

It sucks that the actual "game" part of Saturn Month is being so delayed, but everything is ready now, so lets DO THIS!

The Sega Saturn Bios!

Well this post is coming a little bit late for me.  I wanted to post this about 3 or 4 hours ago, but I was getting the run around from a phone company and got very delayed as well as very angry...more on that tomorrow, but for now, let's talk Saturn!

Since I've had quite a busy Saturday I've not really had much time to play any actual fucking games, so what I thought I'd talk about today is the BIOS screen that you get when you fire up the console with no disc in it.

This is a weird topic to blog about I know, but the Sega Saturn has one of the coolest, most bad ass BIOS screens of any console I've ever seen.  I'll post a video showing the screen but the whole thing is on this space backdrop with these cool looking controls and when I was a kid, this shit was amazing to see.  I had no idea what most of the buttons did at the time but I was flying through space and that was fucking cool!  Also if you put a music CD inside the Saturn then the 2 cubes on either side of your control panel would pulsate and change colour.

No console that I have played (which is most of 'em, I think) has had a BIOS screen this fucking awesome.  It may not seem like all that much now, but when I was a wee lad I loved fiddling with this damn thing!

Have a video!

I am very stupid

Well, this is kind of a semi update post I guess, I literally just realised that the e-mail listed on the side bar has been wrong all this time, the correct address is now listed so if you've sent me any mail, I didn't get it because I'm a massive wasteman, sorry, feel free to resend it though!

Also, tomorrow marks the start of Saturn Month! Prepare for awesome!