Player Two Start: An SNES-CD Timeline
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You really should. He gives a really detailed and in depth critique. They have been helpful for me in seeing the difference between OTL and TTL. He only has reviews for the Mario, Zelda, MGS, and Souls series so far. So they could be useful for the sequels of TTL. I highly recommend you make time to watch them, as long as it does not affect updatesI've not had a chance to watch them
.I've not had a chance to watch them
You really should. He gives a really detailed and in depth critique. They have been helpful for me in seeing the difference between OTL and TTL. He only has reviews for the Mario, Zelda, MGS, and Souls series so far. So they could be useful for the sequels of TTL. I highly recommend you make time to watch them, as long as it does not affect updates
For my side, first time hear about him but seems pretty studied and wel thought comment, still depend, in the future.
Yeah I'm sorry I should have told you as well. I had recommended them to Ry for Super Mario Dimensions when I discovered matthewmatosis excellent SM64 review while researching. I suppose everyone should check them out after reading the awesome new update from Ry and Nivek first of course.
So Activision ends up with the Prince of Persia rights? What happened to Brøderbund and The Learning Company? What of Jordan Mechner?
I see Metal Gear Solid will still have the Patriots plot in the future. Is Kojima gonna use MGS2 to make statements on memes and how sequels rehash the original story's plot?
And Nintendo loses out on getting video game rights on someone else's IP. Will Nintendo get another chance to do games on someone's IP or will they just concentrate on their own?
I see Metal Gear Solid will still have the Patriots plot in the future. Is Kojima gonna use MGS2 to make statements on memes and how sequels rehash the original story's plot?
And Nintendo loses out on getting video game rights on someone else's IP. Will Nintendo get another chance to do games on someone's IP or will they just concentrate on their own?
If the Metal Gear Solid series has become what it is now, it's because the relationship between Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear Solid is the same that exists between Akira Toriyama and Dragon Ball: he was basically forced to keep working on his cash cow franchise even though he'd gotten sick and tired of it by the time Metal Gear Solid 2 came out. In this TL, Kojima's other games (Snatcher and Policenauts) are far better known than in OTL - Snatcher is in fact considered one of the best games ever made for the SNES-CD - so maybe they'll let him end Metal Gear Solid before it becomes enough of a mind fuck that not even Kojima himself can keep track of the plot, in order to focus on his other projects; a better, even more well received Zone of the Enders, maybe?
PS: I've been giving Secret of Mana a try, since this TL kind of made me want to play it and, well. Even though it came out one year after I was born, it's good enough that (cheesy plot aside) it puts several action RPGs for the Nintendo DS (or deliberately retro indie games for the PC) to shame. Now I know why Secret of Mana became the SNES-CD's equivalent of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, a better and more advertised version of it could've become a killer app for any console system in the early 1990s.
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Activision bought The Learning Company. As for Mechner, he may or may not show up again down the road.
The future of the Metal Gear Solid series is a big spoiler but let's just say that TTL's Metal Gear Solid sequel won't be exactly a "sequel"....
Their own, at least for now.
Yeah, it's a fantastic game even though it's basically two-thirds of a game. I don't know why Square never tried to complete it for a modern system instead of just remaking the original incomplete game.
So I've been playing through Link Between Worlds and it's in the same continuity as Link to the Past. Would TTL's Ocarina of Dreams have had a lot of plot similarity between it and OTL's LBTW?
Been meaning to ask but why have some of the EA sports titles not came to the Ultra... NBA Live, PGA Tour, MVP Baseball, etc.
I actually did mention NBA Live 99 for the Ultra (it got a review).
A lot of the annualized sports titles from OTL, the ones that aren't worth mentioning, I don't even give them a review, but you can assume they came out for both consoles. For those I only really mention the notable ones.
Oh I did not catch NBA Live my bad. Are there any other random games for the Ultra that won't get a mention?
Just shovelware, really bad licensed crap, and tremendously obscure games.
This thought came to me a while ago, then I lost it, then it came back, then I lost it...ANYWAY! With coming of Sega's sixth-gen console and with "Race n' Chase" series being a staple of the Saturn. I wonder if we will see TTL's version of GTA III, which I would argue was one of the most influential games of its time OTL.
Speaking of sports titles, now that Gran Turismo has been openly praised by AYRTON SENNA of all people, will Polyphony Digital return the favor and include some of his Formula One and/or NASCAR cars in Gran Turismo 2? They'd be game breakers on the level of OTL's Pikes' Peak Escudo.
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March 1999 - Ape Escape
“The job's easy when 99 percent of it is already done for me. Rare makes great games, and it's not a challenge getting people to buy great games.”
-Reggie Fils-Aime, discussing his work as the VP of sales and marketing at Rareware in the June 1999 issue of Next Generation magazine
“We were determined not to let Ape Escape become 'just another platformer', and I'm pretty sure we succeeded.”
-Masamichi Seki, director of Ape Escape
“Crash Bandicoot had always been kind of our third wheel, so we hoped that this spring release would give him a chance to shine. The problem was, of course, that our hearts laid with our other franchises, and so Crash was never going to be a marquee mascot.”
-Mark Cerny
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Ultra Nintendo:
Ape Escape
EGM: 9.0 (quote: “A unique platformer filled with so many great mechanics that it really distinguishes itself from the Marios of the world.”)
Gamespot: 9.1 (quote: “A colorful, unique game with some of the best play controls we've ever seen.”)
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes
EGM: 7.0 (quote: “It's a decently fun shooter, but it doesn't do anything groundbreaking.”)
Gamespot: 5.4 (quote: “These army men aren't even close to being the next great game heroes.”)
Carmageddon
EGM: 4.5 (quote: “The violence is the only thing that really stands out about this car combat game.”)
Gamespot: 4.1 (quote: “Running people over gets old really fast.”)
Crash Bandicoot 2
EGM: 7.5 (quote: “Builds on the previous game but doesn't really do anything new.”)
Gamespot: 7.2 (quote: “The tight platforming of the last game returns, and Crash 2 is decent but doesn't stand out.”)
R-Type Delta
EGM: 6.8 (quote: “Old-school shooters haven't gone out of style, but R-Type isn't always a blast.”)
Gamespot: 8.8 (quote: “Superb graphics and some brand new power-ups make this a brilliant update of a shooter classic.”)
Snowboard Kids 2
EGM: 8.5 (quote: “Still a really fun game, the new tracks and power-ups are a welcome update.”)
Gamespot: 7.8 (quote: “This cutesy title might be the best extreme sports franchise around.”)
Ultra Shadowgate
EGM: 6.3 (quote: “It has some strong points, but it's very clunky at times and doesn't take full advantage of the Ultra's capabilities.”)
Gamespot: 7.0 (quote: “A capable old-school adventure game, but is weighed down by the awkward controls.")
WCW Nitro
EGM: 4.0 (quote: “The controls are atrocious and this is actually inferior to WCW/NWO Revenge by quite a bit.”)
Gamespot: 6.0 (quote: “A decent enough roster update but it definitely could've used more updated gameplay.”)
Boom Island 2
EGM: 5.8 (quote: “While the original game was cheesy fun, this game is merely cheesy and not very much fun.”)
Gamespot: 5.4 (quote: “Clearly the makers learned nothing from the excellent platformers of the last couple years.”)
Ultra Klepto
EGM: 8.3 (quote: “This puzzle stealth title is still a ton of fun and the brand new multiplayer mode is hilarious.”)
Gamespot: 8.7 (quote: “Another series to make a successful Ultra transition, the new Klepto is superb in its simplicity.”)
Cyringe
EGM: 8.2 (quote: “If you can look past all the weird fanservice moments, there's a really fun platformer here.”)
Gamespot: 7.7 (quote: “The main character is quite lovely and you'll have a lot of fun sticking enemies with her giant syringe.”)
Goat Gruff Bluff
EGM: 6.0 (quote: “Are we ready for a goat game mascot? Probably not, but there's nothing really terrible about this platformer.”)
Gamespot: 6.5 (quote: “It's decent enough, but the controls could be a lot less frustrating.”)
Rock
EGM: 5.5 (quote: “As generic a shooter as they come.”)
Gamespot: 2.6 (quote: “The plot is a complete ripoff of the movie Cliffhanger, which wasn't the best plot to begin with.”)
Saturn:
Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3: Siren's Sorrow
EGM: 7.5 (quote: “Yuna returns in a fun little title that adds some interesting mini-games.”)
Gamespot: 7.1 (quote: “A bit light on content, but the characters are extremely lovable.”)
Time Stalkers
EGM: 6.0 (quote: “A difficult RPG that has some fun moments but is mostly pretty plain.”)
Gamespot: 3.8 (quote: “A deeply flawed game with atrocious graphics and frustrating battle mechanics.”)
Duelists: Swift Strike
EGM: 7.7 (quote: “As far as fighting games go, this one is pretty nifty.”)
Gamespot: 8.2 (quote: “You'll love the cast of characters and the really polished controls.”)
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If there's one thing Reggie Fils-Aime has, it's great timing. Having joined Rare in March 1998, just as Goldeneye 007 was being released worldwide, he didn't have anything to do with the success of that game, but was immediately put to work on the promotional effort ramping up for that fall's Killer Instinct Ultra, which would go on to become the biggest console fighting game hit of the year.
“Rare had told me how disappointed they were with the sales of the previous game and asked me how to make the sequel a huge success. I just told them, 'let's show everybody what the Ultra Nintendo can do. Let's show them how gorgeous this game looks and how fun it is to play.'”
The ad campaign began early and ramped up over the summer in preparation for the game's September release. Fils-Aime directed Rare to emphasize the game's revamped combo system and to show off the game's impressive visuals in advertising material. Nearly every video preview for the game was showing off the furious combo moves. The impressive promos got the games media interested and from there, Killer Instinct Ultra was positioned as a major hit.
“By the end of it all, I wasn't surprised at the sales numbers we were pulling in.”
Fils-Aime is himself a fan of video games, having played many of the classic Nintendo arcade titles in his youth, and once he became an adult, he continued to play games as an occasional distraction from the demands of his career in marketing and sales.
“I've started playing again a lot more since taking the job with Rare,” says Fils-Aime, who previously worked at Procter&Gamble and Pizza Hut. He'd been working for Pizza Hut when he got the job offer from Rareware, who had impressed him with their sales pitch and by showing him the work they'd done on Goldeneye. “When I saw what Rare was doing with the James Bond license, I knew this was a company that was extremely serious about video games.”
Fils-Aime's marketing push for Killer Instinct Ultra was a success, and now he's working on the company's next big push. In addition to a brand new Donkey Kong Country title scheduled for later this year, Rare is also working on a sequel to their SNES-CD game Blast Corps. There's also another shooter. While Rare turned down the opportunity to make a game based on Tomorrow Never Dies, the company instead elected to create a sort of spiritual successor to Goldeneye, a game based on an original storyline conceived by Rare, rather than adapting an existing property. When we asked Reggie about the new game, titled Velvet Dark, Reggie was excited but fairly cryptic.
“A lot of people are waiting for news on Velvet Dark, and we're excited to see that, but I've been instructed not to give away too much about it until E3,” said Reggie, referring to the big annual video game trade show taking place in May. “All I can say is that it's going to make Goldeneye look like a tech demo!”
Reggie was also fairly quiet about Rare's next platformer project, Conker: Twelve Tales, which is scheduled for release sometime next year.
“On the one hand, with all these big projects I'm going to be pretty busy, but on the other hand, these games of Rare's really do promote themselves.”
Rareware's been on quite a roll, and Fils-Aime seems more than happy to be along for the ride.
-excerpted from an article in the April 1999 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly
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Sony's Ape Escape was released on the Ultra Nintendo in March 1999, accompanied by quite a bit of hype at being quite possibly the best original Ultra Nintendo platformer title since Super Mario Dimensions. While Sony was initially reluctant to make a monkey-based game (due to the success of the Donkey Kong Country series), they eventually proceeded and were even able to release the game sooner than initially anticipated due to their experience working with the game Ballistic Limit 2 (which shares an engine with Ape Escape, believe it or not). The Donkey Kong Country similarities encouraged Sony to differentiate their title from the game somewhat, they added a bit more stealth and also more gadgets, both of which were things that the DKC series lacked for the most part. The plot of the game involves a boy named Spike who is given the task of hunting down dozens of monkeys after they're set free by an evil villainess named Queen Saranya, her pet monkey Specter is the boss of the runaway monkeys in the game and serves as Saranya's right hand pet, so to speak. Saranya has dispatched the monkeys, altering their minds with her Pipo Helmets so that they can change history to make her arch queen throughout the ages, Spike must capture the monkeys and free them from Saranya's control. With its emphasis on capturing and by giving the monkeys a variety of different temperaments and personalities, Ape Escape was able to set itself apart from being just a typical platformer and was nearly as successful for the Ultra Nintendo as Zodiac World had been for the Sega Saturn. While the Ape Escape characters weren't quite memorable enough to become mascots for Nintendo, the game itself became one of the more highly regarded franchises put out by Sony, and at least one sequel would follow.
-excerpted from an article on Gamesovermatter.com
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Crash Bandicoot 2 had some stiff competition in the platformer department, with Ape Escape being released for the Ultra Nintendo that very same month. Still, the first game had been one of the better selling launch titles for the system, and it was hoped that Crash 2, with its larger world and more compelling villain, would surpass the first and would establish the series as one of the Ultra Nintendo's top franchises. It ultimately fell short of those goals, despite being a quality game. The problem with Crash 2 is that unlike Ape Escape, which it was inescapably compared to upon its release, Crash 2 didn't innovate in its genre at all. It stuck to the same basic platforming gameplay of the original, with only a few relatively minor graphical improvements. Instead of rehashing Dr. Cortex as the main villain, Crash 2 instead introduced Crazy Wing, a maniacal giant bird who commanded an army of evil anthropomorphic animals to conquer Crash's world. While the boss fights were fairly fun, the levels themselves were fairly lacking in innovative gimmicks, and the game itself was largely seen as a rehash of the original. Ultimately, while Crash 2 sold relatively well, the game's sales paled compared to Naughty Dog's other highly successful franchises, and ultimately the game was the last in the series to be released for the Ultra Nintendo, as Naughty Dog largely moved on from the character after that. The rights to Crash Bandicoot would be sold later on, leading to a revival of the character on future consoles, but the promise that Crash Bandicoot held as being one of the Ultra Nintendo's great mascots went up in smoke with the mediocre performance of the second game.
-from an article on Gamesovermatter.com
Crash Bandicoot 2 And Beyond: Naughty Dog's Impressive Lineup
As Naughty Dog celebrates the release of the second game in the Crash Bandicoot series, the company now looks forward to the summer and its big upcoming release: Dog Dash 3. The game sees friends Clark, Woofle, and Selkie entering a fully 3-D world to rescue their friends from the evil General Catsmeow and his feline army. Boasting some of the year's most impressive visuals, with gameplay that looks like a perfect transition to 3-D, Dog Dash 3 is sure to be a major hit. Of course, Naughty Dog is also working on a pair of games for the year 2000, one of them being the third title in the acclaimed Tales Of The Seven Seas series.
The third Tales Of The Seven Seas is said to be significantly more storyline-heavy than the two titles that came before it, and just as the first game focused on Erick and the second game on Dona, this third game has already been stated to focus heavily on Victoria, the noble girl-turned-pirate, who, according to the game's director Mark Cerny, must “make a major decision” in the upcoming game. While Victoria will be the main focus of the game's plot, Cerny assures fans that you'll still be able to play as all seven of the beloved main characters in the new title, and that there will still be lots of freedom to perform a variety of different tasks and jobs. Naughty Dog's other upcoming game of 2000 hasn't been revealed yet but is said to be a “war” game that will be a bit more mature than their previous titles. We'll see if there's any announcement at E3 concerning this unannounced game.
-excerpted from an article on Gamespot.com, posted on March 22, 1999
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“One of the year's most successful arcade titles, Duelists has been a surprise hit for Sega, which initially viewed the game as somewhat of an afterthought. Featuring ten fighters ranging in age from 14 to 19, the game's heavy basis on the character's backstories and difficult single player AI has forced players to deposit many, many quarters to see how each character's story plays out, and fights have broken out at arcades when human challengers have interrupted players' quests by putting in their own coins.”
-from the June 1998 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly
Following its console release in Japan last November, the arcade hit Duelists has come to the Sega Saturn as Duelists: Swift Strike. While the game's combat is fierce and smooth, the game's main draw is its cast of young fighters. Sega's arcade hit Raigeki was fairly wild in terms of its character backstories, but Duelists takes itself a lot more seriously, with some of the stories being quite dramatic and the characters largely grounded in realism. The most popular character in Japan is 14-year-old Lily, a schoolgirl who begins fighting in order to teach her rival, Maitreya, leader of the school's powerful student council, a lesson. Maitreya herself is another playable character and she fights in order to uphold her family's honor, while keeping her dark secrets hidden from Lily in the guise of domineering bullying. Each of the game's player characters has a rival, and with ten characters in all, that adds up to five rivalries (though one of those, the rivalry between Veil and Kraig, is also probably the game's most enduring romantic couple). Every battle has meaning in Duelists, every character has some sort of relationship with every other character in the game. There's no defined “final boss”, the final battle is with your character's rival, and the result of the battle determines the ending your character gets (yes, if you lose, there's no “game over” or “continue”, you get your character's “bad ending” and must start over if you want another try at their “good” one). This “story based” approach to fighting games has become somewhat of a trend on both major consoles, we just saw Killer Instinct Ultra take that approach somewhat with its adventure mode, and Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter both have a ton of story-related tie-ins outside the main games. With the main draw behind fighting games still largely their competitive multiplayer nature, such story modes seem fairly extraneous, but if companies are trying to sell fighting games to players who have few real life friends or are unwilling to put in the time needed to become good at such games, these single-player story modes might indeed raise sales, and there's a good chance we'll see them expand in the future. Whether or not Duelists is the beginning of a trend is at this time uncertain.
-excerpted from an article in the April 1999 issue of GameInformer
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(Authors' Note: All the info on Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3 was given to us by the user Cataquack Warrior, who's done some excellent work for us so far!)
Woman: Hey! I'm Stacy Grenna and it's time for today's Here and Now segment! As always, Here and Now is where I take a look at a game I've played in the past, and I have somebody else who's never played it before spend some time playing it for the first time, and then we compare notes! Today's Here and Now game is Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3: Siren's Sorrow, a fun little title from a few years back on the Sega Saturn. I'm a big fan of the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna games, and I enjoyed this one a lot, so I asked our own Mindy Kaling from G4 Weekly News to play it this week!
*Mindy joins Stacy on the screen.*
Stacy: So Mindy, you played Yuna 3, what did you think?
Mindy: Well, it's one of those weird anime games...
Stacy: I know, isn't it fun?
Mindy: For a game, there's not a lot of actual...game, is there?
Stacy: Ah, there's plenty of game!
Mindy: Like the slot machine where you get to choose what ultra-revealing outfit Yuna's gonna wear this time? *as the slot machine shows on screen* “Come on, Daddy needs a new pair of high-heeled shoes!”
Stacy: Did you like the game where you got to save the puppy?
Mindy: I never understood how saving a puppy could be so hard. I don't see why Yuna can't just jump in the river and save it. With the kind of game this is, you'd think a wet outfit would be the least of her problems!
Stacy: Well, the river WAS moving really fast.
Mindy: Isn't she supposed to be some kind of hero or something? Anyway, with everything in this game that didn't make sense, I liked the trial sequence and how every decision you make plays into the outcome of the trial. It kind of reminded me of the trial from Chrono Trigger, but even more complex than that. So that was a part of the game I liked.
Stacy: For me, I just love all the great characters. I think Yuna is really funny and really inspiring, and her little dialogues with Elner throughout the game are a nice treat. I thought Yuna 3 was better than either one of the first two games, the plot was a lot better and the fact that they actually had a lot of animation instead of just a bunch of still screens was also really nice.
Mindy: Wait a minute, the last games only had still screens? How lazy is that?
Stacy: Well, the technology wasn't there for animation just yet.
Mindy: Imagine if this game just had slides showing off what was happening in the game. It'd be like visiting your relatives, only if they were weird anime characters. *screenshot of Yuna's mech digging in the ground for ingredients* And here's where we hunted for buried treasure on the beach. I just wanted to use a metal detector, but my husband insisted on breaking out the giant robot. *screenshot of Yuna being spied on in the locker room* Here's where we visited Pervert Canyon and experienced the thrill of voyeurism for the first time! *Yuna watches the puppy drown after failing to rescue it* Here's where Spot went swimming in the river, all the way to a nice old couple's farm! At least that's what we told the kids. *Yuna is shown chained up in a prison cell* Here's what happened when we got caught stealing from the souvenir shop at Disney World. They take that sort of thing very seriously.
Stacy: So did you like the game at all?
Mindy: It wasn't bad. I don't think I like it as much as you did, but as far as weird anime character games go, it was decent enough.
Stacy: Well, Yuna's kind of an acquired taste. It's not the most popular series out there.
Mindy: How'd it end up doing?
Stacy: Believe it or not, it actually sold a decent number of copies! Even more than the Yuna Anthology, which itself sold better than expectations.
Mindy: Anthology? They made a boxed set of these things?
Stacy: Well, technically it was only the first two games.
Mindy: That's not an anthology. That's like...two games. That's like Wrigley calling Doublemint Gum a “gum anthology”. Super Mario All-Stars, that's an anthology. The Final Fantasy Collection, that's an anthology. Two games...is two games. Call it a double pack or something.
Stacy: Anthology sounds fancier!
Mindy: Put it in a little tuxedo! Don't call it something it's not, that's false advertising.
-a segment from an episode of the show “Focus” on G4, originally aired on December 3, 2003
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“And the release of WCW Nitro for the Ultra Nintendo and the Sega Saturn coincides with this Sunday's pay-per-view, Uncensored, which will see Goldberg defending his title and his nearly 200 match unbeaten streak against the Nature Boy, Ric Flair. Uncensored marks the final day of Flair's 90-day control over WCW that he won last December, and has used this power to challenge Goldberg for the belt, despite supposedly being Goldberg's friend in the weeks leading up to the pay-per-view. Uncensored will also see Booker T face off against Hollywood Hogan for the first time, though Booker T now has Bret 'The Hitman' Hart in his corner, making for an interesting match dynamic, as Hogan will have to keep both eyes open during the match, especially since both Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are to be escorted from the arena after the conclusion of their tag team championship match against Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, and won't be able to help Hogan in his match against Booker T.”
-excerpted from an online news report on WCW Uncensored 1999, posted on March 10, 1999
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Saving Private Ryan dominated the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Director for Steven Spielberg, and Best Actor for Tom Hanks, his third such award in six years. That was the big story of this year's Oscar ceremony that proved to be a largely “by the numbers” night, with no major upsets to speak of. Though Shakespeare in Love was speculated to be a dark horse Oscar pick, and did several Oscars of its own (including Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars for Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench), it was unable to take down Saving Private Ryan for the big award of the night, despite a fierce pre-Oscar campaign by Harvey Weinstein to promote the film. Deep Impact, which was nominated for several major awards (including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman), failed to win any of the big prizes, but did manage to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Celine Dion won another posthumous award to go with her Grammy when her song “The Prayer” from Quest for Camelot took home the award for Best Song, beating out “When You Believe” from The Prince Of Egypt among others. It was, once again, Spielberg's night, though the director did give a bit of time during his Best Director Oscar speech to send well wishes to his friend and colleague Stanley Kubrick, who's currently recovering from the heart attack he suffered several weeks back.
-excerpted from a Yahoo News! report posted on March 22, 1999
“The games have been getting better and better, especially lately. I was very impressed with the most recent Zelda game, and I got my hands on Metal Gear Solid, and that was extremely impressive as well. These games, they're definitely becoming a lot more movie-like, and so with Medal of Honor, I'm hoping to give the player the same type of experience they might've had when they were watching Saving Private Ryan, only now they've got a controller in their hands and they can storm Omaha Beach. It wasn't easy in real life and it's certainly not going to be easy in the game.
Something I'm growing to appreciate about the world of games is that the games that win the big industry awards and the games that win with the fans are usually one and the same. You'd be hard pressed to ever see the Oscars and the MTV Movie Awards pick the same movie as their Best Picture, but that's what happened with the Interactive Arts and Sciences Awards and the MTV Video Game Awards, both of you picked The Legend of Zelda. I think in the world of video games, the best games are oftentimes appreciated more than the best movies necessarily are in the cinematic world. And that's an encouraging thing for video games going forward.”
-Steven Spielberg, in an interview in the June 20, 1999 issue of Parade magazine
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Brittany Saldita: Ultra Klepto's single-player mode was really solid, but...Ted, I gotta say, I got REALLY into the multiplayer!
Ted Crosley: Yeah, it was a ton of fun for me.
Brittany: Okay, so in the multiplayer, there are several different modes. My favorite mode was the competitive mode because in this mode, basically, one or more players is the thief, and they're going up against one or more players being the security guards.
Ted: And basically, if you're the guards, you get a nightstick and a flashlight, and if you're the thieves, you gotta try and sneak past the guards.
Brittany: Because if you're the guards, you can just...whack the crap outta people! Look at this!
*A video from the game's multiplayer mode shows a comically over-exaggerated animation of a security guard pummeling the crap out of a thief with his nightstick*
Brittany: He's getting beat on, and his eyes pop out of his head and go bouncing around the room before he disappears from the screen!
Ted: How the HELL did this game get an E rating? Yeah, there's no blood or anything, but look at the bouncing eyeballs!
Brittany: So if you manage to sneak past and get the treasure, and get it back in time, the security guards...
Ted: They start crying like little babies!
Brittany: The animations in this game are pure gold, and the SNES-CD games never really got this silly with the animations.
Ted: The multiplayer modes are so much fun. Not just the competitive mode, but the co-op mode, which basically is “cooperative until it becomes funnier to mess with your teammates”.
Brittany: Right, you can screw your friends over so badly in this game.
Ted: I loved finding all the myriad little ways I could mess with Brittany when we were trying out the co-op mode together.
Brittany: You spent more time laying traps for me than actually playing the game!
Ted: *snickering*
*A brief video is shown of Brittany's character getting caught in one of Ted's traps for the fourth time while they're playing the game together*
Brittany: You did that on purpose!
Ted: ...no I didn't.
Brittany: That was four times in a row! Ted!
Ted: I swear, that was an accident. *he's laying another trap for Brittany while he's “apologizing”* I am so sorry.
Brittany: *steps in another trap* (bleep)! You (bleep)hole!
Ted: *laughing hysterically*
*the video ends*
Ted: So yeah, Ultra Klepto mixes a really fun and challenging single player mode with a fantastic and hilarious multiplayer mode for plenty of long-lasting fun. It's the best game in the series and I'm giving it a perfect 5.
Brittany: Wow, you liked it that much? I'm giving Ultra Klepto a 4.5, the single-player mode could use a bit of work but that multiplayer mode is one of the best on the Ultra and I agree with Ted, this is the best game thus far in what's overall a pretty quality series. Nice work.
-excerpted from the March 2, 1999 episode of GameTV
(...)
Alex Stansfield: Ape Escape combines some really unique gameplay with cutesy characters and visuals for one really solid platforming experience.
Ted: Right, it's just a really fun game. The plot's a bit silly but I can forgive that, catching apes is a lot of fun.
Alex: Who came up with the idea of putting siren hats on those little monkeys' heads?
Ted: Not me but damn if it's not adorable.
Alex: You add monkeys to anything, it makes it better. True or false?
Ted: Well, I'm not sure if Saving Private Ryan would've been better with a little chimp soldier going around...it might've been a lot less depressing.
Alex: Oh yeah. Seeing them walking around bombed out towns, and then they cut to this monkey sitting against a tree, maybe smoking a cigarette? Instant laugh.
Ted: Or at the somber graveyard scene, he starts crying but then we see a monkey just sitting on one of the tombstones?
Alex: Well, video games are definitely better with monkeys. Donkey Kong and now Ape Escape. Some of the levels DO get a bit repetitive, even when the apes get new gadgets to help themselves out, that was my big complaint about the game. Is it a valid one?
Ted: I think it's reasonably valid, I mean, you can only catch so many of those apes before they all start to kind of blur together. So it's not the best platformer in the world but I think it deserves a 4.
Alex: Yeah, I agree, I'm giving Ape Escape a 4. Some parts are a bit of a slog but for the most part it's a unique and really fun game.
-excerpted from the March 16, 1999 review of Ape Escape
(…)
Lyssa Fielding: Oh my god this game was crap.
Adrian Fry: I have no idea why you hated it so much!
Lyssa Fielding: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes is the most unimaginative, derivative, uninspired and boring shooter I've ever played! If not for the fact that you're controlling plastic army men, there'd be NOTHING special about the game!
Adrian: The graphics are good, the gameplay is solid, why don't you like it?
Lyssa: The level design is the most basic a game can possibly be. The voice acting is terrible. The plot is so cliched. It's like, “okay, here are the green army guys, and you're fighting the tan army guys!” Literally a three year old could come up with that. Literally, that's what a three year old does when he plays with his army men.
Adrian: It doesn't need a great plot, it's just a fun shooting game where you run around killing the other army. Look, I thought Army Men was refreshing. It is a bit simple, but you know where to go and what to do, it's easy to pick up, you have a decent variety of weapons...
Lyssa: None of which do anything special, it's as basic as it can possibly be.
Adrian: There's destructable environments. They put a lot of thought into the visuals of the game.
Lyssa: And yet when your army man gets hit he just falls over. The trees can be damaged, the buildings can be damaged, but army men are either knocked down or they disappear. There's no army man limb injuries or anything like that. For an Ultra Nintendo game, the graphical detail is lousy. I'm giving Army Men a 0.5 out of 5.
Adrian: Oh man, that's a really low score. I'm giving it a 3.5. You didn't even like the multiplayer mode?
Lyssa: Not at all. Just not a fan of these Army Men games, and this was the worst of the bunch.
-excerpted from the March 23, 1999 episode of GameTV
(…)
Brittany: So while I appreciated Time Stalkers' difficulty and what it was trying to do, this game didn't really work for me from an overall standpoint.
Ted: As far as RPGs go, Time Stalkers is definitely different, but I felt like it could've done a lot of things better.
Brittany: You REALLY have to manage your items closely in this game, and while it's not the first RPG to make you start leveling all over again in every dungeon, that was still an aspect of the game that I felt really slowed it down.
Ted: It did have some nice Easter eggs from previous obscure Sega titles. If you played Shining in the Darkness, Pyra from there is in here.
Brittany: You played that back in the day?
Ted: I did! Have you ever played it?
Brittany: No, but I did play Sword of Vermillion and Phantasy Star back in the day. This game, while looking a heck of a lot prettier, is not nearly as good as those.
Ted: I think I'm gonna be a bit less harsh on Time Stalkers than you're being, I thought it had its moments and the graphics aren't so bad. For the Saturn, they're decent, if a little bit blocky looking.
Brittany: The pacing is really bad. This RPG slows to a crawl at times and without a compelling plot to keep you going, what's the point? I'm giving it a 2 out of 5.
Ted: I'm giving it a 3.
-excerpted from the March 30, 1999 episode of GameTV
-
Ultra Nintendo Power Charts: March 1999
1. The Legend Of Zelda: Temple Of Time
2. Parasite Eve
3. Final Fantasy VII
4. Street Fighter III
5. Super Mario Dimensions
6. Killer Instinct Ultra
7. Daikatana
8. Shadows Of The Moon
9. Ballistic Limit 2
10. Fallout
The Official Saturn Magazine Buzz Chart: March 1999
1. Tomb Raider III
2. Virtua Fighter 3
3. Shenmue
4. Mortal Kombat 4
5. Sonic The Hedgehog 4
6. Zodiac World
7. Duelists: Swift Strike
8. Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil
9. Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver
10. WCW Nitro
-
March 31, 1999
Polly Klaas looked out the passenger side window of her friend Caitlyn's car as the two headed back to Caitlyn's house after school that day.
“I'm gonna miss high school,” said Caitlyn, smiling wistfully at her friend. “But it's gonna be a lot of fun rooming together at Stanford, right? God, I was so nervous waiting to see if I got in. I mean, I knew you'd make it, but I was biting my nails the whole two months since I applied!”
“They don't look like it,” Polly replied, smirking as she glanced back at her friend Caitlyn's flawlessly groomed nails. “Unless those are falsies?”
“Pfffffftt....” Caitlyn snorted, slapping the steering wheel. “But yeah, I mean... have fun learning psychology. Maybe after you graduate you can figure out what's wrong with Eric?”
Polly's friend Eric had become further and further withdrawn, though the two had continued to speak even as Eric withdrew further into himself over the last few weeks. He'd stopped having Polly over at his house, and his comments about others and about himself had gotten increasingly dark and disturbing. He'd gone to see Polly's therapist...once, and never again.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Polly asked Caitlyn.
“Nothing,” Caitlyn replied, shaking her head. “He's said...nothing to me since we broke up. When we pass in the halls, he doesn't even look at me. Is he still hanging out with Dylan?”
“No...I don't think they're friends anymore,” Polly replied. “Has Dylan told you anything?”
“Dylan doesn't even mention Eric anymore. Actually...the last time I did mention Eric to him, he looked kind of...scared.”
“I know they used to be so close,” said Polly, shaking her head. She wondered if she was the only friend Eric had left...if Eric even saw the two of them as friends anymore. Even when other students reached out to him, he seemed to pull back or lash out, as if he didn't want anybody around. Sometimes Polly wondered if Eric just...hated everybody. But that couldn't be true, because she knew he didn't hate her. “I told him if he ever feels like he might hurt himself to call me, that I'd be there for him.”
“And if he feels like hurting other people?”
Polly just stared straight ahead.
“Polly, if he shows any signs of that-”
“Once I do that...he'll...he'd never forgive me if I got him in trouble.”
“This isn't about you, or him. Polly, if you think he'll do something to hurt anyone, himself or anyone else...you have to tell the school counselor, or something. I mean...I know you can't go to the cops just if you think he's gonna do something bad, but...”
“I know...I know, I....”
Polly sighed and bowed her head. As much as she felt a need to help Eric, now she was regretting ever meeting him in the first place. She'd gotten a weird feeling from him from the moment they first met, and now...now every time Caitlyn brought up the possibility that Eric might hurt someone, she got a shiver through her spine.
“...I'm sorry,” said Caitlyn. The car was pulling into their neighborhood now, and she could tell just how distressed this was making Polly. “I didn't mean to bring that up, now you're.... let's talk about college again, okay?”
“Yeah...I'd rather talk about that,” said Polly, a smile returning to her face. “So you're definitely thinking about law school?”
“Maybe. Like, I REALLY want to do entertainment law, but I'm trying to figure out if it's something I actually want to do or if it's just so I can meet celebrities.”
-
Across town, Eric Harris was sitting in his room, flipping through a magazine. He saw an ad for next month's Doom: Inferno for the Ultra Nintendo, and his eyes lit up.
“That looks fucking sweet,” he thought, eyeing the advertisement which was filled with detailed screenshots from the game and emblazoned with artwork of the game's demonic monsters.
Then his eyes glanced at the release date, and he let out a long sigh.
“Too bad I'll never get to play it.”
The game's release date? April 20, 1999.
-Reggie Fils-Aime, discussing his work as the VP of sales and marketing at Rareware in the June 1999 issue of Next Generation magazine
“We were determined not to let Ape Escape become 'just another platformer', and I'm pretty sure we succeeded.”
-Masamichi Seki, director of Ape Escape
“Crash Bandicoot had always been kind of our third wheel, so we hoped that this spring release would give him a chance to shine. The problem was, of course, that our hearts laid with our other franchises, and so Crash was never going to be a marquee mascot.”
-Mark Cerny
-
Ultra Nintendo:
Ape Escape
EGM: 9.0 (quote: “A unique platformer filled with so many great mechanics that it really distinguishes itself from the Marios of the world.”)
Gamespot: 9.1 (quote: “A colorful, unique game with some of the best play controls we've ever seen.”)
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes
EGM: 7.0 (quote: “It's a decently fun shooter, but it doesn't do anything groundbreaking.”)
Gamespot: 5.4 (quote: “These army men aren't even close to being the next great game heroes.”)
Carmageddon
EGM: 4.5 (quote: “The violence is the only thing that really stands out about this car combat game.”)
Gamespot: 4.1 (quote: “Running people over gets old really fast.”)
Crash Bandicoot 2
EGM: 7.5 (quote: “Builds on the previous game but doesn't really do anything new.”)
Gamespot: 7.2 (quote: “The tight platforming of the last game returns, and Crash 2 is decent but doesn't stand out.”)
R-Type Delta
EGM: 6.8 (quote: “Old-school shooters haven't gone out of style, but R-Type isn't always a blast.”)
Gamespot: 8.8 (quote: “Superb graphics and some brand new power-ups make this a brilliant update of a shooter classic.”)
Snowboard Kids 2
EGM: 8.5 (quote: “Still a really fun game, the new tracks and power-ups are a welcome update.”)
Gamespot: 7.8 (quote: “This cutesy title might be the best extreme sports franchise around.”)
Ultra Shadowgate
EGM: 6.3 (quote: “It has some strong points, but it's very clunky at times and doesn't take full advantage of the Ultra's capabilities.”)
Gamespot: 7.0 (quote: “A capable old-school adventure game, but is weighed down by the awkward controls.")
WCW Nitro
EGM: 4.0 (quote: “The controls are atrocious and this is actually inferior to WCW/NWO Revenge by quite a bit.”)
Gamespot: 6.0 (quote: “A decent enough roster update but it definitely could've used more updated gameplay.”)
Boom Island 2
EGM: 5.8 (quote: “While the original game was cheesy fun, this game is merely cheesy and not very much fun.”)
Gamespot: 5.4 (quote: “Clearly the makers learned nothing from the excellent platformers of the last couple years.”)
Ultra Klepto
EGM: 8.3 (quote: “This puzzle stealth title is still a ton of fun and the brand new multiplayer mode is hilarious.”)
Gamespot: 8.7 (quote: “Another series to make a successful Ultra transition, the new Klepto is superb in its simplicity.”)
Cyringe
EGM: 8.2 (quote: “If you can look past all the weird fanservice moments, there's a really fun platformer here.”)
Gamespot: 7.7 (quote: “The main character is quite lovely and you'll have a lot of fun sticking enemies with her giant syringe.”)
Goat Gruff Bluff
EGM: 6.0 (quote: “Are we ready for a goat game mascot? Probably not, but there's nothing really terrible about this platformer.”)
Gamespot: 6.5 (quote: “It's decent enough, but the controls could be a lot less frustrating.”)
Rock
EGM: 5.5 (quote: “As generic a shooter as they come.”)
Gamespot: 2.6 (quote: “The plot is a complete ripoff of the movie Cliffhanger, which wasn't the best plot to begin with.”)
Saturn:
Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3: Siren's Sorrow
EGM: 7.5 (quote: “Yuna returns in a fun little title that adds some interesting mini-games.”)
Gamespot: 7.1 (quote: “A bit light on content, but the characters are extremely lovable.”)
Time Stalkers
EGM: 6.0 (quote: “A difficult RPG that has some fun moments but is mostly pretty plain.”)
Gamespot: 3.8 (quote: “A deeply flawed game with atrocious graphics and frustrating battle mechanics.”)
Duelists: Swift Strike
EGM: 7.7 (quote: “As far as fighting games go, this one is pretty nifty.”)
Gamespot: 8.2 (quote: “You'll love the cast of characters and the really polished controls.”)
-
If there's one thing Reggie Fils-Aime has, it's great timing. Having joined Rare in March 1998, just as Goldeneye 007 was being released worldwide, he didn't have anything to do with the success of that game, but was immediately put to work on the promotional effort ramping up for that fall's Killer Instinct Ultra, which would go on to become the biggest console fighting game hit of the year.
“Rare had told me how disappointed they were with the sales of the previous game and asked me how to make the sequel a huge success. I just told them, 'let's show everybody what the Ultra Nintendo can do. Let's show them how gorgeous this game looks and how fun it is to play.'”
The ad campaign began early and ramped up over the summer in preparation for the game's September release. Fils-Aime directed Rare to emphasize the game's revamped combo system and to show off the game's impressive visuals in advertising material. Nearly every video preview for the game was showing off the furious combo moves. The impressive promos got the games media interested and from there, Killer Instinct Ultra was positioned as a major hit.
“By the end of it all, I wasn't surprised at the sales numbers we were pulling in.”
Fils-Aime is himself a fan of video games, having played many of the classic Nintendo arcade titles in his youth, and once he became an adult, he continued to play games as an occasional distraction from the demands of his career in marketing and sales.
“I've started playing again a lot more since taking the job with Rare,” says Fils-Aime, who previously worked at Procter&Gamble and Pizza Hut. He'd been working for Pizza Hut when he got the job offer from Rareware, who had impressed him with their sales pitch and by showing him the work they'd done on Goldeneye. “When I saw what Rare was doing with the James Bond license, I knew this was a company that was extremely serious about video games.”
Fils-Aime's marketing push for Killer Instinct Ultra was a success, and now he's working on the company's next big push. In addition to a brand new Donkey Kong Country title scheduled for later this year, Rare is also working on a sequel to their SNES-CD game Blast Corps. There's also another shooter. While Rare turned down the opportunity to make a game based on Tomorrow Never Dies, the company instead elected to create a sort of spiritual successor to Goldeneye, a game based on an original storyline conceived by Rare, rather than adapting an existing property. When we asked Reggie about the new game, titled Velvet Dark, Reggie was excited but fairly cryptic.
“A lot of people are waiting for news on Velvet Dark, and we're excited to see that, but I've been instructed not to give away too much about it until E3,” said Reggie, referring to the big annual video game trade show taking place in May. “All I can say is that it's going to make Goldeneye look like a tech demo!”
Reggie was also fairly quiet about Rare's next platformer project, Conker: Twelve Tales, which is scheduled for release sometime next year.
“On the one hand, with all these big projects I'm going to be pretty busy, but on the other hand, these games of Rare's really do promote themselves.”
Rareware's been on quite a roll, and Fils-Aime seems more than happy to be along for the ride.
-excerpted from an article in the April 1999 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly
-
Sony's Ape Escape was released on the Ultra Nintendo in March 1999, accompanied by quite a bit of hype at being quite possibly the best original Ultra Nintendo platformer title since Super Mario Dimensions. While Sony was initially reluctant to make a monkey-based game (due to the success of the Donkey Kong Country series), they eventually proceeded and were even able to release the game sooner than initially anticipated due to their experience working with the game Ballistic Limit 2 (which shares an engine with Ape Escape, believe it or not). The Donkey Kong Country similarities encouraged Sony to differentiate their title from the game somewhat, they added a bit more stealth and also more gadgets, both of which were things that the DKC series lacked for the most part. The plot of the game involves a boy named Spike who is given the task of hunting down dozens of monkeys after they're set free by an evil villainess named Queen Saranya, her pet monkey Specter is the boss of the runaway monkeys in the game and serves as Saranya's right hand pet, so to speak. Saranya has dispatched the monkeys, altering their minds with her Pipo Helmets so that they can change history to make her arch queen throughout the ages, Spike must capture the monkeys and free them from Saranya's control. With its emphasis on capturing and by giving the monkeys a variety of different temperaments and personalities, Ape Escape was able to set itself apart from being just a typical platformer and was nearly as successful for the Ultra Nintendo as Zodiac World had been for the Sega Saturn. While the Ape Escape characters weren't quite memorable enough to become mascots for Nintendo, the game itself became one of the more highly regarded franchises put out by Sony, and at least one sequel would follow.
-excerpted from an article on Gamesovermatter.com
-
Crash Bandicoot 2 had some stiff competition in the platformer department, with Ape Escape being released for the Ultra Nintendo that very same month. Still, the first game had been one of the better selling launch titles for the system, and it was hoped that Crash 2, with its larger world and more compelling villain, would surpass the first and would establish the series as one of the Ultra Nintendo's top franchises. It ultimately fell short of those goals, despite being a quality game. The problem with Crash 2 is that unlike Ape Escape, which it was inescapably compared to upon its release, Crash 2 didn't innovate in its genre at all. It stuck to the same basic platforming gameplay of the original, with only a few relatively minor graphical improvements. Instead of rehashing Dr. Cortex as the main villain, Crash 2 instead introduced Crazy Wing, a maniacal giant bird who commanded an army of evil anthropomorphic animals to conquer Crash's world. While the boss fights were fairly fun, the levels themselves were fairly lacking in innovative gimmicks, and the game itself was largely seen as a rehash of the original. Ultimately, while Crash 2 sold relatively well, the game's sales paled compared to Naughty Dog's other highly successful franchises, and ultimately the game was the last in the series to be released for the Ultra Nintendo, as Naughty Dog largely moved on from the character after that. The rights to Crash Bandicoot would be sold later on, leading to a revival of the character on future consoles, but the promise that Crash Bandicoot held as being one of the Ultra Nintendo's great mascots went up in smoke with the mediocre performance of the second game.
-from an article on Gamesovermatter.com
Crash Bandicoot 2 And Beyond: Naughty Dog's Impressive Lineup
As Naughty Dog celebrates the release of the second game in the Crash Bandicoot series, the company now looks forward to the summer and its big upcoming release: Dog Dash 3. The game sees friends Clark, Woofle, and Selkie entering a fully 3-D world to rescue their friends from the evil General Catsmeow and his feline army. Boasting some of the year's most impressive visuals, with gameplay that looks like a perfect transition to 3-D, Dog Dash 3 is sure to be a major hit. Of course, Naughty Dog is also working on a pair of games for the year 2000, one of them being the third title in the acclaimed Tales Of The Seven Seas series.
The third Tales Of The Seven Seas is said to be significantly more storyline-heavy than the two titles that came before it, and just as the first game focused on Erick and the second game on Dona, this third game has already been stated to focus heavily on Victoria, the noble girl-turned-pirate, who, according to the game's director Mark Cerny, must “make a major decision” in the upcoming game. While Victoria will be the main focus of the game's plot, Cerny assures fans that you'll still be able to play as all seven of the beloved main characters in the new title, and that there will still be lots of freedom to perform a variety of different tasks and jobs. Naughty Dog's other upcoming game of 2000 hasn't been revealed yet but is said to be a “war” game that will be a bit more mature than their previous titles. We'll see if there's any announcement at E3 concerning this unannounced game.
-excerpted from an article on Gamespot.com, posted on March 22, 1999
-
“One of the year's most successful arcade titles, Duelists has been a surprise hit for Sega, which initially viewed the game as somewhat of an afterthought. Featuring ten fighters ranging in age from 14 to 19, the game's heavy basis on the character's backstories and difficult single player AI has forced players to deposit many, many quarters to see how each character's story plays out, and fights have broken out at arcades when human challengers have interrupted players' quests by putting in their own coins.”
-from the June 1998 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly
Following its console release in Japan last November, the arcade hit Duelists has come to the Sega Saturn as Duelists: Swift Strike. While the game's combat is fierce and smooth, the game's main draw is its cast of young fighters. Sega's arcade hit Raigeki was fairly wild in terms of its character backstories, but Duelists takes itself a lot more seriously, with some of the stories being quite dramatic and the characters largely grounded in realism. The most popular character in Japan is 14-year-old Lily, a schoolgirl who begins fighting in order to teach her rival, Maitreya, leader of the school's powerful student council, a lesson. Maitreya herself is another playable character and she fights in order to uphold her family's honor, while keeping her dark secrets hidden from Lily in the guise of domineering bullying. Each of the game's player characters has a rival, and with ten characters in all, that adds up to five rivalries (though one of those, the rivalry between Veil and Kraig, is also probably the game's most enduring romantic couple). Every battle has meaning in Duelists, every character has some sort of relationship with every other character in the game. There's no defined “final boss”, the final battle is with your character's rival, and the result of the battle determines the ending your character gets (yes, if you lose, there's no “game over” or “continue”, you get your character's “bad ending” and must start over if you want another try at their “good” one). This “story based” approach to fighting games has become somewhat of a trend on both major consoles, we just saw Killer Instinct Ultra take that approach somewhat with its adventure mode, and Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter both have a ton of story-related tie-ins outside the main games. With the main draw behind fighting games still largely their competitive multiplayer nature, such story modes seem fairly extraneous, but if companies are trying to sell fighting games to players who have few real life friends or are unwilling to put in the time needed to become good at such games, these single-player story modes might indeed raise sales, and there's a good chance we'll see them expand in the future. Whether or not Duelists is the beginning of a trend is at this time uncertain.
-excerpted from an article in the April 1999 issue of GameInformer
-
(Authors' Note: All the info on Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3 was given to us by the user Cataquack Warrior, who's done some excellent work for us so far!)
Woman: Hey! I'm Stacy Grenna and it's time for today's Here and Now segment! As always, Here and Now is where I take a look at a game I've played in the past, and I have somebody else who's never played it before spend some time playing it for the first time, and then we compare notes! Today's Here and Now game is Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 3: Siren's Sorrow, a fun little title from a few years back on the Sega Saturn. I'm a big fan of the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna games, and I enjoyed this one a lot, so I asked our own Mindy Kaling from G4 Weekly News to play it this week!
*Mindy joins Stacy on the screen.*
Stacy: So Mindy, you played Yuna 3, what did you think?
Mindy: Well, it's one of those weird anime games...
Stacy: I know, isn't it fun?
Mindy: For a game, there's not a lot of actual...game, is there?
Stacy: Ah, there's plenty of game!
Mindy: Like the slot machine where you get to choose what ultra-revealing outfit Yuna's gonna wear this time? *as the slot machine shows on screen* “Come on, Daddy needs a new pair of high-heeled shoes!”
Stacy: Did you like the game where you got to save the puppy?
Mindy: I never understood how saving a puppy could be so hard. I don't see why Yuna can't just jump in the river and save it. With the kind of game this is, you'd think a wet outfit would be the least of her problems!
Stacy: Well, the river WAS moving really fast.
Mindy: Isn't she supposed to be some kind of hero or something? Anyway, with everything in this game that didn't make sense, I liked the trial sequence and how every decision you make plays into the outcome of the trial. It kind of reminded me of the trial from Chrono Trigger, but even more complex than that. So that was a part of the game I liked.
Stacy: For me, I just love all the great characters. I think Yuna is really funny and really inspiring, and her little dialogues with Elner throughout the game are a nice treat. I thought Yuna 3 was better than either one of the first two games, the plot was a lot better and the fact that they actually had a lot of animation instead of just a bunch of still screens was also really nice.
Mindy: Wait a minute, the last games only had still screens? How lazy is that?
Stacy: Well, the technology wasn't there for animation just yet.
Mindy: Imagine if this game just had slides showing off what was happening in the game. It'd be like visiting your relatives, only if they were weird anime characters. *screenshot of Yuna's mech digging in the ground for ingredients* And here's where we hunted for buried treasure on the beach. I just wanted to use a metal detector, but my husband insisted on breaking out the giant robot. *screenshot of Yuna being spied on in the locker room* Here's where we visited Pervert Canyon and experienced the thrill of voyeurism for the first time! *Yuna watches the puppy drown after failing to rescue it* Here's where Spot went swimming in the river, all the way to a nice old couple's farm! At least that's what we told the kids. *Yuna is shown chained up in a prison cell* Here's what happened when we got caught stealing from the souvenir shop at Disney World. They take that sort of thing very seriously.
Stacy: So did you like the game at all?
Mindy: It wasn't bad. I don't think I like it as much as you did, but as far as weird anime character games go, it was decent enough.
Stacy: Well, Yuna's kind of an acquired taste. It's not the most popular series out there.
Mindy: How'd it end up doing?
Stacy: Believe it or not, it actually sold a decent number of copies! Even more than the Yuna Anthology, which itself sold better than expectations.
Mindy: Anthology? They made a boxed set of these things?
Stacy: Well, technically it was only the first two games.
Mindy: That's not an anthology. That's like...two games. That's like Wrigley calling Doublemint Gum a “gum anthology”. Super Mario All-Stars, that's an anthology. The Final Fantasy Collection, that's an anthology. Two games...is two games. Call it a double pack or something.
Stacy: Anthology sounds fancier!
Mindy: Put it in a little tuxedo! Don't call it something it's not, that's false advertising.
-a segment from an episode of the show “Focus” on G4, originally aired on December 3, 2003
-
“And the release of WCW Nitro for the Ultra Nintendo and the Sega Saturn coincides with this Sunday's pay-per-view, Uncensored, which will see Goldberg defending his title and his nearly 200 match unbeaten streak against the Nature Boy, Ric Flair. Uncensored marks the final day of Flair's 90-day control over WCW that he won last December, and has used this power to challenge Goldberg for the belt, despite supposedly being Goldberg's friend in the weeks leading up to the pay-per-view. Uncensored will also see Booker T face off against Hollywood Hogan for the first time, though Booker T now has Bret 'The Hitman' Hart in his corner, making for an interesting match dynamic, as Hogan will have to keep both eyes open during the match, especially since both Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are to be escorted from the arena after the conclusion of their tag team championship match against Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, and won't be able to help Hogan in his match against Booker T.”
-excerpted from an online news report on WCW Uncensored 1999, posted on March 10, 1999
-
Saving Private Ryan dominated the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Director for Steven Spielberg, and Best Actor for Tom Hanks, his third such award in six years. That was the big story of this year's Oscar ceremony that proved to be a largely “by the numbers” night, with no major upsets to speak of. Though Shakespeare in Love was speculated to be a dark horse Oscar pick, and did several Oscars of its own (including Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars for Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench), it was unable to take down Saving Private Ryan for the big award of the night, despite a fierce pre-Oscar campaign by Harvey Weinstein to promote the film. Deep Impact, which was nominated for several major awards (including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman), failed to win any of the big prizes, but did manage to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Celine Dion won another posthumous award to go with her Grammy when her song “The Prayer” from Quest for Camelot took home the award for Best Song, beating out “When You Believe” from The Prince Of Egypt among others. It was, once again, Spielberg's night, though the director did give a bit of time during his Best Director Oscar speech to send well wishes to his friend and colleague Stanley Kubrick, who's currently recovering from the heart attack he suffered several weeks back.
-excerpted from a Yahoo News! report posted on March 22, 1999
“The games have been getting better and better, especially lately. I was very impressed with the most recent Zelda game, and I got my hands on Metal Gear Solid, and that was extremely impressive as well. These games, they're definitely becoming a lot more movie-like, and so with Medal of Honor, I'm hoping to give the player the same type of experience they might've had when they were watching Saving Private Ryan, only now they've got a controller in their hands and they can storm Omaha Beach. It wasn't easy in real life and it's certainly not going to be easy in the game.
Something I'm growing to appreciate about the world of games is that the games that win the big industry awards and the games that win with the fans are usually one and the same. You'd be hard pressed to ever see the Oscars and the MTV Movie Awards pick the same movie as their Best Picture, but that's what happened with the Interactive Arts and Sciences Awards and the MTV Video Game Awards, both of you picked The Legend of Zelda. I think in the world of video games, the best games are oftentimes appreciated more than the best movies necessarily are in the cinematic world. And that's an encouraging thing for video games going forward.”
-Steven Spielberg, in an interview in the June 20, 1999 issue of Parade magazine
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Brittany Saldita: Ultra Klepto's single-player mode was really solid, but...Ted, I gotta say, I got REALLY into the multiplayer!
Ted Crosley: Yeah, it was a ton of fun for me.
Brittany: Okay, so in the multiplayer, there are several different modes. My favorite mode was the competitive mode because in this mode, basically, one or more players is the thief, and they're going up against one or more players being the security guards.
Ted: And basically, if you're the guards, you get a nightstick and a flashlight, and if you're the thieves, you gotta try and sneak past the guards.
Brittany: Because if you're the guards, you can just...whack the crap outta people! Look at this!
*A video from the game's multiplayer mode shows a comically over-exaggerated animation of a security guard pummeling the crap out of a thief with his nightstick*
Brittany: He's getting beat on, and his eyes pop out of his head and go bouncing around the room before he disappears from the screen!
Ted: How the HELL did this game get an E rating? Yeah, there's no blood or anything, but look at the bouncing eyeballs!
Brittany: So if you manage to sneak past and get the treasure, and get it back in time, the security guards...
Ted: They start crying like little babies!
Brittany: The animations in this game are pure gold, and the SNES-CD games never really got this silly with the animations.
Ted: The multiplayer modes are so much fun. Not just the competitive mode, but the co-op mode, which basically is “cooperative until it becomes funnier to mess with your teammates”.
Brittany: Right, you can screw your friends over so badly in this game.
Ted: I loved finding all the myriad little ways I could mess with Brittany when we were trying out the co-op mode together.
Brittany: You spent more time laying traps for me than actually playing the game!
Ted: *snickering*
*A brief video is shown of Brittany's character getting caught in one of Ted's traps for the fourth time while they're playing the game together*
Brittany: You did that on purpose!
Ted: ...no I didn't.
Brittany: That was four times in a row! Ted!
Ted: I swear, that was an accident. *he's laying another trap for Brittany while he's “apologizing”* I am so sorry.
Brittany: *steps in another trap* (bleep)! You (bleep)hole!
Ted: *laughing hysterically*
*the video ends*
Ted: So yeah, Ultra Klepto mixes a really fun and challenging single player mode with a fantastic and hilarious multiplayer mode for plenty of long-lasting fun. It's the best game in the series and I'm giving it a perfect 5.
Brittany: Wow, you liked it that much? I'm giving Ultra Klepto a 4.5, the single-player mode could use a bit of work but that multiplayer mode is one of the best on the Ultra and I agree with Ted, this is the best game thus far in what's overall a pretty quality series. Nice work.
-excerpted from the March 2, 1999 episode of GameTV
(...)
Alex Stansfield: Ape Escape combines some really unique gameplay with cutesy characters and visuals for one really solid platforming experience.
Ted: Right, it's just a really fun game. The plot's a bit silly but I can forgive that, catching apes is a lot of fun.
Alex: Who came up with the idea of putting siren hats on those little monkeys' heads?
Ted: Not me but damn if it's not adorable.
Alex: You add monkeys to anything, it makes it better. True or false?
Ted: Well, I'm not sure if Saving Private Ryan would've been better with a little chimp soldier going around...it might've been a lot less depressing.
Alex: Oh yeah. Seeing them walking around bombed out towns, and then they cut to this monkey sitting against a tree, maybe smoking a cigarette? Instant laugh.
Ted: Or at the somber graveyard scene, he starts crying but then we see a monkey just sitting on one of the tombstones?
Alex: Well, video games are definitely better with monkeys. Donkey Kong and now Ape Escape. Some of the levels DO get a bit repetitive, even when the apes get new gadgets to help themselves out, that was my big complaint about the game. Is it a valid one?
Ted: I think it's reasonably valid, I mean, you can only catch so many of those apes before they all start to kind of blur together. So it's not the best platformer in the world but I think it deserves a 4.
Alex: Yeah, I agree, I'm giving Ape Escape a 4. Some parts are a bit of a slog but for the most part it's a unique and really fun game.
-excerpted from the March 16, 1999 review of Ape Escape
(…)
Lyssa Fielding: Oh my god this game was crap.
Adrian Fry: I have no idea why you hated it so much!
Lyssa Fielding: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes is the most unimaginative, derivative, uninspired and boring shooter I've ever played! If not for the fact that you're controlling plastic army men, there'd be NOTHING special about the game!
Adrian: The graphics are good, the gameplay is solid, why don't you like it?
Lyssa: The level design is the most basic a game can possibly be. The voice acting is terrible. The plot is so cliched. It's like, “okay, here are the green army guys, and you're fighting the tan army guys!” Literally a three year old could come up with that. Literally, that's what a three year old does when he plays with his army men.
Adrian: It doesn't need a great plot, it's just a fun shooting game where you run around killing the other army. Look, I thought Army Men was refreshing. It is a bit simple, but you know where to go and what to do, it's easy to pick up, you have a decent variety of weapons...
Lyssa: None of which do anything special, it's as basic as it can possibly be.
Adrian: There's destructable environments. They put a lot of thought into the visuals of the game.
Lyssa: And yet when your army man gets hit he just falls over. The trees can be damaged, the buildings can be damaged, but army men are either knocked down or they disappear. There's no army man limb injuries or anything like that. For an Ultra Nintendo game, the graphical detail is lousy. I'm giving Army Men a 0.5 out of 5.
Adrian: Oh man, that's a really low score. I'm giving it a 3.5. You didn't even like the multiplayer mode?
Lyssa: Not at all. Just not a fan of these Army Men games, and this was the worst of the bunch.
-excerpted from the March 23, 1999 episode of GameTV
(…)
Brittany: So while I appreciated Time Stalkers' difficulty and what it was trying to do, this game didn't really work for me from an overall standpoint.
Ted: As far as RPGs go, Time Stalkers is definitely different, but I felt like it could've done a lot of things better.
Brittany: You REALLY have to manage your items closely in this game, and while it's not the first RPG to make you start leveling all over again in every dungeon, that was still an aspect of the game that I felt really slowed it down.
Ted: It did have some nice Easter eggs from previous obscure Sega titles. If you played Shining in the Darkness, Pyra from there is in here.
Brittany: You played that back in the day?
Ted: I did! Have you ever played it?
Brittany: No, but I did play Sword of Vermillion and Phantasy Star back in the day. This game, while looking a heck of a lot prettier, is not nearly as good as those.
Ted: I think I'm gonna be a bit less harsh on Time Stalkers than you're being, I thought it had its moments and the graphics aren't so bad. For the Saturn, they're decent, if a little bit blocky looking.
Brittany: The pacing is really bad. This RPG slows to a crawl at times and without a compelling plot to keep you going, what's the point? I'm giving it a 2 out of 5.
Ted: I'm giving it a 3.
-excerpted from the March 30, 1999 episode of GameTV
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Ultra Nintendo Power Charts: March 1999
1. The Legend Of Zelda: Temple Of Time
2. Parasite Eve
3. Final Fantasy VII
4. Street Fighter III
5. Super Mario Dimensions
6. Killer Instinct Ultra
7. Daikatana
8. Shadows Of The Moon
9. Ballistic Limit 2
10. Fallout
The Official Saturn Magazine Buzz Chart: March 1999
1. Tomb Raider III
2. Virtua Fighter 3
3. Shenmue
4. Mortal Kombat 4
5. Sonic The Hedgehog 4
6. Zodiac World
7. Duelists: Swift Strike
8. Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil
9. Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver
10. WCW Nitro
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March 31, 1999
Polly Klaas looked out the passenger side window of her friend Caitlyn's car as the two headed back to Caitlyn's house after school that day.
“I'm gonna miss high school,” said Caitlyn, smiling wistfully at her friend. “But it's gonna be a lot of fun rooming together at Stanford, right? God, I was so nervous waiting to see if I got in. I mean, I knew you'd make it, but I was biting my nails the whole two months since I applied!”
“They don't look like it,” Polly replied, smirking as she glanced back at her friend Caitlyn's flawlessly groomed nails. “Unless those are falsies?”
“Pfffffftt....” Caitlyn snorted, slapping the steering wheel. “But yeah, I mean... have fun learning psychology. Maybe after you graduate you can figure out what's wrong with Eric?”
Polly's friend Eric had become further and further withdrawn, though the two had continued to speak even as Eric withdrew further into himself over the last few weeks. He'd stopped having Polly over at his house, and his comments about others and about himself had gotten increasingly dark and disturbing. He'd gone to see Polly's therapist...once, and never again.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Polly asked Caitlyn.
“Nothing,” Caitlyn replied, shaking her head. “He's said...nothing to me since we broke up. When we pass in the halls, he doesn't even look at me. Is he still hanging out with Dylan?”
“No...I don't think they're friends anymore,” Polly replied. “Has Dylan told you anything?”
“Dylan doesn't even mention Eric anymore. Actually...the last time I did mention Eric to him, he looked kind of...scared.”
“I know they used to be so close,” said Polly, shaking her head. She wondered if she was the only friend Eric had left...if Eric even saw the two of them as friends anymore. Even when other students reached out to him, he seemed to pull back or lash out, as if he didn't want anybody around. Sometimes Polly wondered if Eric just...hated everybody. But that couldn't be true, because she knew he didn't hate her. “I told him if he ever feels like he might hurt himself to call me, that I'd be there for him.”
“And if he feels like hurting other people?”
Polly just stared straight ahead.
“Polly, if he shows any signs of that-”
“Once I do that...he'll...he'd never forgive me if I got him in trouble.”
“This isn't about you, or him. Polly, if you think he'll do something to hurt anyone, himself or anyone else...you have to tell the school counselor, or something. I mean...I know you can't go to the cops just if you think he's gonna do something bad, but...”
“I know...I know, I....”
Polly sighed and bowed her head. As much as she felt a need to help Eric, now she was regretting ever meeting him in the first place. She'd gotten a weird feeling from him from the moment they first met, and now...now every time Caitlyn brought up the possibility that Eric might hurt someone, she got a shiver through her spine.
“...I'm sorry,” said Caitlyn. The car was pulling into their neighborhood now, and she could tell just how distressed this was making Polly. “I didn't mean to bring that up, now you're.... let's talk about college again, okay?”
“Yeah...I'd rather talk about that,” said Polly, a smile returning to her face. “So you're definitely thinking about law school?”
“Maybe. Like, I REALLY want to do entertainment law, but I'm trying to figure out if it's something I actually want to do or if it's just so I can meet celebrities.”
-
Across town, Eric Harris was sitting in his room, flipping through a magazine. He saw an ad for next month's Doom: Inferno for the Ultra Nintendo, and his eyes lit up.
“That looks fucking sweet,” he thought, eyeing the advertisement which was filled with detailed screenshots from the game and emblazoned with artwork of the game's demonic monsters.
Then his eyes glanced at the release date, and he let out a long sigh.
“Too bad I'll never get to play it.”
The game's release date? April 20, 1999.
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