“
Sega brings the arcade hits home. And now, Sega brings them all to you... in a single game!”
-the intro to the
Fighters Megamix TV commercial
“
Fighters Megamix was the culmination of all the arcade fighting games we'd been able to have on the Saturn. It was a celebration of the fighting game craze that had swept the arcade world for the past six years and we were hoping it would be the hit of the year.”
-
Fighters Megamix director Hiroshi Kataoka
“
Starseekers Of Exion, with its three discs and enough cutscenes to make an anime movie, was a truly epic adventure and the last of the great fourth-generation JRPGs. It was the end of the Golden Age of JRPGs, with Final Fantasy VII set to kick off the Silver Age just a few months later.”
-from a 2013 article on IGN.com detailing the history of console JRPGs in North America
“
I didn't ask for you to come with us! You came on your own! This isn't the time to get homesick or to start crying, it's the time to fight and if you're not ready to fight, then get back on the ship and don't even move until we're all done!”
-Serai,
Starseekers Of Exion
-
Blast Corps
Dan: 8.0
Shoe: 7.0 (quote: “A really ambitious game, but somewhat limited by the SNES-CD's capabilities. We can't wait to see Rare try this one again on the Ultra.”)
Crispin: 8.0
Sushi-X: 7.0
Independence Day
Dan: 4.5
Shoe: 2.0
Crispin: 5.0
Sushi-X: 5.0 (quote: “For such an epic movie, the game itself is mediocre at best.”)
International Superstar Soccer '98
Dan: 8.0
Shoe: 8.0
Crispin: 8.5 (quote: “An excellent soccer title featuring great graphics and a huge roster of teams.”)
Sushi-X: 8.5
NBA Hangtime
Dan: 6.0
Shoe: 6.0
Crispin: 7.0
Sushi-X: 5.5 (quote: “It's a decently fun game, but it doesn't run nearly as smoothly as the excellent NBA Jam.”)
Nobunaga's Ambition: The Star Lords
Dan: 7.5 (quote: “This is a really fun and tricky strategy game that builds on what the last game achieved.”)
Shoe: 6.5
Crispin: 6.5
Sushi-X: 6.5
Norse By Norsewest
Dan: 8.0
Shoe: 9.0 (quote: “One of the best platformers I've ever played and a perfect sequel to the original Lost Vikings.”)
Crispin: 9.0
Sushi-X: 8.0
Super Bomberman 4
Dan: 7.0
Shoe: 8.5
Crispin: 7.5 (quote: “It's not a very original game but Bomberman is always fun regardless.”)
Sushi-X: 7.0
Annie Oakley In London
Dan: 6.0
Shoe: 8.0
Crispin: 6.0
Sushi-X: 6.0 (quote: “A really wild, really steampunky game that has a lot of fun moments but isn't very innovative in terms of gameplay.”)
Starseekers Of Exion
Dan: 9.0
Shoe: 9.0
Crispin: 8.5 (quote: “This is an outstanding RPG with great characters and over 50 hours of fun gameplay.”)
Sushi-X: 8.0
-reviews of June 1997's SNES-CD games in the July and August 1997 issues of
Electronic Gaming Monthly
-
“
Starseekers Of Exion was a much bigger project than either of the Lunar games. It was a game we created to really push ourselves to our limits in terms of what we could do with a CD-based system, and in a way was a sort of intermediate step between those original Lunar games and the remakes we would do later on. A lot of the lessons we learned with Exion, we applied toward those remakes.”
-Toshiyuki Kabooka, art director at Game Arts
Starseekers Of Exion: The Basics
Starseekers Of Exion is a three-disc RPG for the Super Nintendo CD. Developed by Game Arts and published in North America by Working Designs, it's an action RPG, with a combat system that has elements from both
Secret Of Mana and
Tale Phantasia. The player explores areas, including towns, dungeons, and the pathways between them, and when enemies are encountered, gameplay remains on the same screen but the player shifts into combat mode, where health and magic bars of the four current party members appear on screen as you fight the enemy with weapons and magic. Once the current combat is completed, experience points and money are gained and sometimes items are dropped. The game also contains puzzle elements with different action items to use outside of battle, as new items are gained, new areas are opened up. The game's graphics are highly detailed, comparable to the graphics that appear in games like
Tale Phantasia, and the game has a huge musical soundtrack with over 60 songs, along with over 90 minutes of anime cutscenes in by far the most cutscene time of any SNES-CD game (which is the reason for requiring three discs). There are eight playable characters in total: the main character Orlan, a boy who gets caught up in the adventure, a girl named Melina with mysterious magical powers, the no-nonsense captain of the mission Serai, a woman who has a very painful past, Zakki, a wild former space pirate who bonds with Orlan, Luke, a nerdy boy who serves as the ship's bomb maker, Trina, a sharp-shooter who's also somewhat of a joker, Nashua, an older gentleman who's the most experienced crewmember on the ship, and Eileen, the ship's doctor and somewhat of a mad scientist. These eight characters each have distinct roles in battle and part of the strategy of the game is finding the best combination of them to use in a fight. Orlan, Serai, Zakki, and Trina are the more physical characters, while Melina, Luke, Nashua, and Eileen rely more on magic and techniques.
The plot of the game begins more than 3,000 years earlier. The ancient planet of Exion is the galaxy's peak civilization, but a great evil has taken root on the planet. While those few who realize what is going on are trying to preserve nine ancient artifacts to keep them out of the hands of evil, the planet comes apart, with the artifacts being launched into space just in time. In the present day, Serai leads a crew of treasure hunters that includes Melina, Zakki, Luke, Trina, Nashua, and Eileen on a mission to find these artifacts. While on a planet to search for the first one, the planet is attacked by an army from the tyrannical Prism Empire, leaving many dead, including the family of a teenage boy named Orlan, who ends up stowing away on Serai's ship as it leaves the planet with the first artifact in hand. Serai wants to kick Orlan off the ship, but Zakki and Trina want to keep him around, much to the objections of Melina, who doesn't trust him at first. Initially, only Orlan, Melina, and Zakki are playable as party members but as events in the game continue to unfold, others become playable as well, eventually all eight of the ship's crewmembers are available to you (though sometimes events during the game prevent certain party members from joining you, people get separated, etc.). As the game goes on, Serai comes to trust a woman named Clarion, a member of the Prism royal family who wants to try and prevent the artifacts from falling into the wrong hands. Melina has her doubts about Clarion but Serai believes she is the key to stopping the Prism Empire. Eventually, however, at the end of the first disk, Clarion betrays the party and also betrays the Prism higher ups, becoming the queen of the Prism Empire and the main villain of the game. She seeks the dark power of Xadin, the evil wizard whose corruption destroyed Exion 3,000 years ago, and by bringing the artifacts together, she can achieve the power he never did. Clarion's betrayal leaves Serai in a near catatonic state and for a brief time, Melina becomes the leader of the crew. During the second disc of the game, Melina and Orlan become increasingly close, and eventually, at the end of the second disc, Melina realizes she's in love with Orlan. It's too late, however, as she is abducted by Clarion's dark forces, leading to a huge rescue mission at the start of the third disc that also co-incides with the search for the ninth and final artifact. Eventually, Melina is rescued after two or three dungeons' worth of adventuring, but Clarion manages to seize all of the artifacts and begins to impose her dark will on the galaxy. After a bit more adventuring, the final dungeon is reached. The final boss battle consists of three stages: the first is a fight against Clarion (a very powerful magic user) herself, the second is a fight against Clarion after assuming the power of the artifacts, and the third and final battle is a fight against a monstrous Xadin, who has absorbed Clarion and the artifacts and takes the form of a hideous eidritch beast. In the end, evil is defeated, peace is restored, and Orlan and Melina resume their adventures together, now as a couple, accompanied by Serai and their other friends as they continue to search the galaxy for new quests.
In North America, the game launched with an optional special edition similar to the one for
Tale Phantasia, making the game a 5-disc set when the bonus music CD and making-of video CD were factored in. Though this special edition didn't include the Official Nintendo Power Player's Guide (which could be purchased separately), it did come with a hardcover 96-page instruction booklet that included a short mini-guide that covered the first few hours of the game. It also included a special oversized poster/map showing all the planets that the team visits over the course of the game.The game itself, though hyped up quite a bit by
Nintendo Power and other publications, and achieving excellent reviews, doesn't quite reach the sales heights of games like
Terranigma or the major RPG hits of 1996. It sells a modest but still decent 200,000 copies in North America, not as many as it does in Japan but still enough to make the game a reasonable success and a beloved SNES-CD RPG, perhaps the last great RPG of the fourth generation.
-
(A special thanks to Starwarsfan for contributing the roster for TTL's
Fighters Megamix!)
“
Fighters Megamix combines all the big Saturn arcade hits into one epic battle royale. It's the most strategically deep fighting game yet and we'll help you pick which character you should take into your next arcade showdown.”
-from the June 1997 issue of
Official Saturn Magazine
“
So people were saying, well, Super Smash Bros. was obviously a ripoff of Fighters Megamix. And that's not really true. Fighters Megamix, for all its characters and stages, was still essentially a 2-D, Street Fighter-style fighting game, while Smash Bros. is a four-way multiplayer rumble with items and gimmicks and the like. They're two totally different games. Hell, if you really want to get into this conversation, you could just say that Fighters Megamix ripped off X-Men vs. Street Fighter, but you don't hear anybody saying that.”
-James Rolfe, in a blog video recorded on January 10, 2014 comparing the fighting games of the Saturn and the Ultra Nintendo
“
What I remember about the summer of 1997 is sitting around with friends and playing a ton of Fighters Megamix. We all had it and we'd go around to each other's houses and play until we couldn't stay awake any longer. Each of us had our favorite characters to use. We'd make fun of each other for playing with crappy characters, we'd make fun of B.M. for his name, we'd have a hell of a time. That was the game I have a ton of nostalgia for from that year and I'm sure a lot of Saturn players will concur with me.”
-from a comment posted on a subroot at Rootalk.com in 2014
*scenes play from the various Fox Kids action cartoons of the time, with different lines dubbed in*
Wolverine: You wanna throw down, bub?
Buttercup: Bring it on!
Sailor Jupiter: I'm gonna take you down!
Red Ranger: You want a piece of me?
*Images of more than a dozen Fox Kids characters come together on the screen, followed by a cloud of smoke and fighting sounds, symbolizing a massive Fox Kids cartoon melee*
Announcer: Fox Kids' greatest heroes are mixing it up! And that can only mean one thing...it's time for the Fox Kids Megamix Contest! Sega's
Fighters Megamix is the biggest game of the summer, an all out brawl between some of your favorite Sega characters! And now, you can bring all the action of
Fighters Megamix right into your living room! How? Just send a 3x5 postcard with your name, address, and phone number to Fox Kids Megamix Contest! *gives the Fox Kids contest address* You can win one of thousands of prizes! Ten grand prize winners will win a brand new Sega Saturn Arcade Set, with copies of
Virtua Fighter 2,
Virtua Racing,
Virtua Cop 2, and a brand new copy of the hit fighting game
Fighters Megamix! Fifty first prize winners will win a copy of
Fighters Megamix for their Sega Saturn! One hundred second prize winners will win this awesome
Fighters Megamix t-shirt, and one thousand third prize winners will get a Fox Kids prize bag with some cool
Fighters Megamix stuff! So join the rumble and enter the Fox Kids Megamix Contest!
Bubbles: *flies out of the scrum* I'm gonna get HARDCORE! *flies back in*
Sailor Moon: In the name of the Moon, I'm gonna kick all your butts!
Announcer: Guys, you can stop fighting now! Guys, the commercial's over!
*The rumble continues, rolling around the screen and overtaking the announcer, who lets out a dismayed yell.*
-from an advertisement that aired on Fox Kids in June 1997
Fighters Megamix: The Basics
Fighters Megamix is a 2-D fighting game with 3-D graphics, released in arcades in late 1996 and for the Sega Saturn in North America on June 12, 1997. It contains characters from a large number of Sega and Namco franchises, including
Virtua Fighter,
Fighting Vipers, Soul,
Tekken,
Virtua Cop,
Sonic, and others. The game was a major arcade success (IOTL, it was never released to arcades) and received a huge amount of pre-release hype accompanying its Saturn release, both in Japan (in spring 1997) and in North America (in June).
The game's roster includes the following characters: From
Virtua Fighter: Akira Yuki, Pai Chan, Lau Chan, Wolf Hawkfield, Jeffry McWild, Kage-Maru, Sarah Bryant, Jack Bryant, Shun Di, Lion Rafale, and Dural. From
Fighting Vipers: Grace, Bahn, Raxel, Tokio, Sanman, Jane, Candy, Picky, Mahler, B.M., and Kuma-chan. From
Sonic: Sonic, Amy, Dr. Robotnik, Bark, and Bean. From
Tekken: Heihachi, Jin, Kazuya, and Jack. From
Soul: Siegfried and Nightmare. From
Last Bronx: Yusaku Kudo, NagiHojo, Joe Inagaki, and Hiroshi Tomiie. Other characters included Janet (from
Virtua Cop), Pac-Man, among several others. Most of the game's characters were unlockable after performing certain tasks within the game, though everything could be unlocked via the use of a wildly distributed cheat code. The game receives good but not great reviews upon release, with
Tekken 2 largely considered the superior game, but its huge roster and mix of characters from many Sega and Namco franchises is the main attraction of the game and it becomes the fastest selling Saturn game since
Turok, making it the biggest video game hit of the summer.
-
NBA Hangtime, which releases on the Super Nintendo CD, the Game Boy Color, and the Sega Saturn later this month is just the latest arcade hit to make the transition to home consoles. Games such as
Tekken 3,
Mortal Kombat 4, and
NFL Blitz are all slated to release on consoles sometime next year, with
Tekken 3 already signed as a Saturn exclusive, and
Mortal Kombat 4 having just been announced as an exclusive to the new Ultra Nintendo system. Though arcade attendance is down overall, the arcade is still heavily influencing the new generation games, with the biggest arcade hits also among the biggest console successes. Partnerships like the one between Sega and Namco have bolstered the profile of arcades and may have been a major influence in the development of the new arcade franchise Sega GameVerse, which is set to open several locations around the country over the next 18 months. Meanwhile, Nintendo's
Killer Instinct 2 is still one of the most popular arcade titles, and the upcoming Ultra Nintendo port is one of that console's most anticipated games.
The success of the games on Sega's Model 3, which, at 266 Mhz is one of the most powerful gaming machines ever created, is going to be a big driver of the Saturn's success going forward.
Tekken 3 is the most popular arcade game in the world, and though that title won't look quite as good on the Saturn as it does in the arcades, should still be a major step forward in home console technology when it launches early next year, and could very easily slow some of the post-launch momentum of Nintendo's Ultra machine. The Model 3 is also seeing the launch in August of a new arcade title,
Kogura Kings, a fighting game with action platformer elements, said to be inspired by Sega's work with the game company Treasure.
Kogura Kings is said to alternate between fighting segments and competitive platforming, with the players' performance in the action segments said to directly influence how they'll then perform once the game returns to the fight. It's an innovative and somewhat risky title and will be receiving a Saturn port sometime in 1998.
While Nintendo's modern arcade profile is so far limited to the
Killer Instinct series, the company is pondering a version of
Mario Kart for the arcades, said to be an enhanced version of their
Ultra Mario Kart game which will launch with the Ultra Nintendo in Japan later this month.
Ultra Mario Kart features only eight playable characters, but Nintendo's arcade version of the game could feature several more, and graphics that surpass even the powerful co-processors of the Ultra system. With
Super Mario Kart being the third best selling Super Nintendo CD game worldwide, expanding the series to arcades seems like a logical step, and if the transition goes smoothly, it could lead to a wave of arcade hits from the company to rival its days in the early 1980s, where hits like
Mario Bros. and of course
Donkey Kong laid the groundwork for the company's entry into the home console business.
-excerpted from an article in the June 1997 issue of
GameInformer
-
Enix's updates to these games, which were quite primitive when released on the original NES, are small but meaningful. The graphics have been given a significant overhaul, though they still resemble Super Nintendo games and not the games we're used to seeing on the Sega Saturn. The difficulty remains, which will please classic RPG fans but will definitely turn off others. Overall, we're definitely glad to see the first three
Dragon Warrior games on the Sega Saturn and we hope that IV-VI will be making their way here in the future. They're not the best RPGs, but they're some of the first, and RPG fanatics owe it to themselves to play the games that made later RPG hits possible.
Score: 7/10
-excerpted from the review of
Dragon Warrior I-III in the June 1997 issue of
Official Saturn Magazine
Was the transition from working with Nintendo to working with Sega a smooth one, or were there some problems?
At that time, Tom Kalinske wanted to get a lot of the big Japanese games to North America, and he put plenty of pressure on us to get that done. There were some of us, myself included, who worried about the profitability potential of RPGs on the Saturn, considering that aside from
Phantasy Star, role-playing games had never been a huge thing on the Genesis. But with the success of RPGs on the Super Nintendo CD, Kalinske felt like Saturn fans would embrace RPGs on the Saturn as well, and there was the plus of not having to compete with Squaresoft. It was a challenge, but one that we were willing to embrace.
That first year was a big one. Remaking the first three Dragon Quest games, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and then of course there was Planetary Probe which was the big title Enix was doing that year.
Enix REALLY put pressure on us to get
Planetary Probe out ahead of
Final Fantasy VII, since it was Enix's first big 3-D role playing game and they wanted to be able to say that we had a 3-D RPG before Squaresoft did. The quality of the game, thankfully, didn't suffer, but it was a hell of a crunch for the localization team. Compared to
Planetary Probe, doing the
Dragon Quest remakes was easy. There wasn't much more text in them than the original ones on the NES, so there wasn't much work to be done on that front. There was less text in those three games than there was in
Final Fantasy VI. And don't forget about
Krystalshade, the other big Saturn RPG that we were localizing that year. Actually,
Krystalshade was probably my favorite game I've done for Enix up to that point. The team that had to work on
Planetary Probe was jealous of the
Krystalshade guys, absolutely.
-excerpted from a Gaming.moe interview with Robert Jerauld, former Enix USA producer, November 24, 2014 (OOC: inspired by this OTL interview from November 15 http://gaming.moe/?p=331 )
-
“
Not too many people played that original Blast Corps, but I was proud of it. We pushed the SNES-CD pretty far and I thought it was just as fun as the sequel. Maybe it didn't look as good as what we did on the Ultra, but it was still a hell of a good game.”
-Chris Stamper
June 17, 1997
Chris Stamper sat in his Atlanta hotel room, laptop in his lap, looking over the details of what Rare was going to be showing off at that year's E3. It would be the biggest E3 yet for the company, which was finally going to be revealing its big plans for Nintendo's upcoming Ultra, with games like
Goldeneye 007 and the formal unveiling of what the company had been referring to internally as “Project DREAM”.
Yesterday, the company had released
Blast Corps, a demolition-based action title for the Super Nintendo CD. Though much of what Rare had wanted to do was limited by the technological capabilities of the SNES-CD, the game still received decent reviews, and though nothing had been announced, everyone at Rare, Stamper included, knew they wanted to do a sequel for the Ultra, where technological limitations wouldn't be a problem.
The company was also going to be announcing its final SNES-CD game at the show, a game that, while many in the company thought it was redundant, was ultimately considered necessary due to how many people had played the previous three titles in the series. This time, however, they were going to mix things up. This game was going to be a step up from the last three. Rare was going to go out of the fourth generation with a bang, making the best damn game they possibly could and showing everyone that the company would be a force to be reckoned with once the Ultra Nintendo was released.
Though the company would be revealing many titles for the Ultra Nintendo, Chris Stamper doubted that any of them, even
Goldeneye 007, would get the kind of reception that they'd get when they announced
Donkey Kong Country 4 for the SNES-CD.
-
Brittany Saldita:
Starseekers Of Exion is a beautiful game, with endearing characters and a ton of awesome anime cutscenes.
Alex Stansfield: Maybe too many anime cutscenes, to be quite honest. You can't skip them and I counted, I think there are more than 50 of them in the game. They pop up all over the place.
Brittany: I think they added a lot to the game. The voice acting was fine, and they looked beautiful. Game Arts has come a long way from the Lunar games on the SNES-CD, these cutscenes looked smooth like real anime. They put a LOT of work into them.
Alex: Here's the thing though. Some of them, some of the longer cutscenes are right before bosses, HARD bosses, and after the boss kicks your ass you gotta watch the whole thing again!
Brittany: You could...NOT get your ass kicked.
Alex: That's not the damn point.
Brittany: It's a fair criticism to make. Putting a three minute cutscene before arguably the hardest boss in the game does make it a pain in the ass to have to reload and watch all of it again. If that's not your bag then you might have a problem with this game. BUT... I didn't have any problems with it at all. I felt the cutscenes, the voice acting, everything really added to the epic feel of this game. It's not too terribly difficult, I mean there's nothing in this game like there was in Lunar 2...remember having to spend level up points to save?
Alex: *groans* Yeah.
Brittany: There's nothing like that in
Starseekers Of Exion. It's long, it's beautiful, you'll get REALLY attached to the characters by the end of it, I think it's the best RPG of the year and I give it a 5 out of 5.
Alex: That's...really generous, I think. I'm gonna go 4. I definitely recommend it but damn, just let us skip those anime movies!
Brittany: Maybe after the first time, yes, it could use a skip, but you don't want to skip them the first time! They're really beautiful!
(…)
Ted Crosley: So what was your opinion on the long-awaited
Lost Vikings sequel?
John Walden: Well,
Norse By Norsewest is a fun game, but I don't think it does enough to distinguish itself from the first game. The new abilities are nice, the new characters are nice-
Ted: I like the dragon.
John: But the graphics are pretty much the same as they were in 1993. Even on the Saturn version, I thought, this looks like a game from 1993.
Ted: Yeah, but graphics aren't everything and it's still nice to get more of
The Lost Vikings. I felt that the original game was one of the best of 1993. Now, is 1993's best gonna cut it now that it's 1997? I dunno.
John: I'll tell you: it's not.
Ted: But it's not a bad game.
John: No, no, absolutely not a BAD game. You know, that's the thing. A lot of companies, they think, “if it's not broke, don't fix it”. Rare's been doing that with the
Donkey Kong Country games now for three years and those are all great, but this series was never THAT good. Not
Donkey Kong Country good, anyway.
Ted: So what's the verdict?
John: It's a solid game. The puzzles are entertaining, the new abilities are fun to use, I just wish they'd done more to improve on the first game. 3.5 out of 5.
Ted: I agree with you, it's a 3.5.
-excerpted from the June 3, 1997 episode of
GameTV
Alex: I have a confession to make, I was NEVER a fan of the
Dragon Warrior games. I didn't really get into RPGs until
Final Fantasy. And these games, while they do LOOK nicer, a lot nicer than the originals, I still didn't have much fun playing them.
Gary Westhouse: Well, RPGs have come so far since
Dragon Warrior...
Alex: Right. Last week we reviewed
Starseekers Of Exion. And that game, blew me out of the water in terms of how good it looked. And then look at the preview footage for
Final Fantasy VII...
Gary: Astonishing!
Alex: And I'm NOT the kind of guy to bash a game because the graphics are primitive. But when the gameplay itself is primitive...
Gary: I feel like these games are on the Saturn because Enix wants to give people a chance to play all the old ones before they do
Dragon Warrior VII, whenever that game is gonna be, and so people will go back and play these and be like... “man, the old ones sucked”!
Alex: Well, I know the series sells huge in Japan. And even here in the States, a lot of people bought the originals. And V and VI were both great.
Gary: Right.
Alex: But even comparing these with like, the classic
Final Fantasy games...when Square did
Final Fantasy Origins, they improved those games. It was subtle but those games played more like modern
Final Fantasy games. And Enix did NOTHING to improve these original three. I give
Dragon Warrior I-III a 1 out of 5.
Gary: That is harsh. That's harsh as hell-
Alex: Why's it harsh?
Gary: They're faithful ports.
Alex: Of lousy games.
Gary: Here's the thing. Partly, I want to judge them on how well they hold up today. And that's...admittedly pretty bad. But this is a well put together remake. And on those merits, I'm giving this compilation a 2.5.
Alex: You just said they sucked!
Gary: If you liked the original three on the NES and you have a Saturn, they're worth picking up.
Alex: So if you're one of like two people who had an NES and has a Saturn now...
Gary: There's a LOT more than two people who have both.
Alex: Okay, okay, but still. If you want to know what REALLY old RPGs are like, then yes, pick this up. If you're like a normal person who realizes that games have moved on from those days, stay far, far away.
-excerpted from the June 10, 1997 episode of
GameTV
Ted: Apart from its huge roster,
Fighters Megamix doesn't do much to distinguish itself from games like
Virtua Fighter 2. I feel like the big thing about this game is its roster. The actual gameplay... is fine, but...
Alex: The dodge feature is pretty innovative.
Ted: You know, that is. You don't have to block, you can sidestep moves and that does add a layer of strategy to the game. And you know what else is awesome?
Alex: What?
Ted: Getting to play as a giant chunk of meat!
*shows footage of Mr. Meat beating on people*
Alex: You're about to make a bunch of jokes about beating meat, aren't you?
Ted: NOBODY beats my meat.
Alex: You know, for what it is,
Fighters Megamix is a pretty fun game. For those of you who've wanted to see Sonic and Nightmare beat the hell out of each other, this is your game. For those of you who want a fighting game as good as
Tekken 2 or VF2, you might want to look elsewhere.
Ted: I agree, it's more of a gimmick game than something that's going to change the fighting game landscape, but it's still a really great gimmick and I'll go ahead and give it a 3.5 out of 5.
Alex: I'm gonna give it a 4. It's really fun to play, I think fighting game fans should pick it up, just know what you're getting into.
-excerpted from the June 17, 1997 episode of
GameTV
-
SNES-CD Power Charts: June 1997
1. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Dreams
2. Terranigma
3. Elements Of Mana
4. Tale Phantasia
5. Dragon Quest VI
6. Rage 2: The Rage Returns
7. Chrono Trigger
8. Sailor Moon
9. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble
10. Commander Keen: The Universe Is Toast
11. Super Mario RPG
12. Squad Four: Eclipse
13. Deadman Sam 3
14. Days Of The Hunt
15. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
16. Dog Dash
17. Super Mario World 2
18. Klepto: Thief In The Night
19. Command And Conquer
20. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
The Official Saturn Magazine Buzz Chart – June 1997
1. Fighters Megamix
2. Sonic The Hedgehog 4
3. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
4. Doom II
5. Sonic Jam
6. Tekken 2
7. Tomb Raider
8. NBA Hangtime
9. Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain
10. Resident Evil
-
Super Mario Dimensions – 40/40
Ultra Mario Kart – 35/40
Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night – 39/40
Wave Race – 33/40
Ultra International Superstar Soccer – 31/40
Ultra Adventurers – 24/40
Doraemon: Nobita to Mittsu no Seireiseki – 29/40
Gaso Hikari no Senshi – 29/40
-
Famitsu's reviews of the Ultra Nintendo's eight Japanese launch titles
June 22, 1997
The Ultra Nintendo is launched in Japan, with eight launch titles. The biggest seller among these launch titles is
Super Mario Dimensions, the long-awaited 3-D Mario platformer developed by Shigeru Miyamoto. Nearly 85 percent of the people who by the Ultra Nintendo on launch week purchase the game. The system is an immediate sales success in Japan, becoming one of the biggest product launches of all time. The week that the Ultra Nintendo is released in Japan, Saturn sales there drop nearly 40 percent from the previous week, while the Ultra Nintendo's 800,000 units sold easily dwarfs the launches of all previous Nintendo consoles there. Reviews for all of the launch games rank from mediocre (in the case of the Camelot-developed
Ultra Adventurers and the Japanese-only
Gaso Hikari no Senshi, a puzzle/2-D platforming game), to among the best reviewed games of all time (both
Super Mario Dimensions and
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are considered among the best games ever released, with a perfect and near-perfect score from
Famitsu respectively). Sales continue to remain strong after the first week, with shortages reported in many places. The console launches in Japan with a 44,000 yen price tag, at the time equivalent to around $335 in the States. With E3 having come and gone (and most of the Ultra Nintendo's Western launch details having been revealed), the Japanese launch only adds to the intense amount of hype among the gaming community for the Ultra Nintendo's international launch. Despite the Ultra Nintendo's region locking (albeit weak and easily circumvented), imports of the console from Japan become commonplace over the next few months, especially after Squaresoft launches the hotly anticipated
Final Fantasy VII in August. With an even more robust lineup of launch titles planned for the States, Nintendo anticipates selling one million Ultra Nintendo consoles in the first week after launch in North America. Production on the console ramps up in anticipation.
