Another happy day today, except for the BenQ stuff…
A nice package containing more stuff for my Saturn arrived today. It contained Virtua Cop, Sega Rally Championship, Robotica and a lightgun.
Virtua Cop
Virtua Cop is an on-rails shooter. In case of the Saturn version as well as the original Sega Model 2 arcade version the player uses a lightgun to control the action. Allthough you can’t really speak of control… You just shoot the enemies on the screen with the gun in your hands.
The graphics are quite good for the Saturn, but ofcourse they are no match for the graphics of the original arcade version. But even with the Saturn having inferior specs when compared to the arcade machine, this game runs really smooth and looks really nice and it is tough, very tough.
Sega Rally Championship
Another Model 2 arcade game ported to the Saturn with cut down graphics. It suffers from quite a lot of pop-up, but it still looks very acceptable and this game runs far better on the Saturn than Daytona USA. I also think the controls of this game are better than the controls in Daytona USA and the car handling seems more responsive and the cars don’t tend to slide away at every slight turn. But even then, this game is very hard in the beginning.
Another plus is that this one has a 2 player option, something I really missed in Daytona USA and even while the graphics are cut down compared to the arcade version, this game looks better than Daytona USA. Easy choice on which one to play I guess 
Robotica
Now here is a different story. This is NOT a Model 2 conversion, but a Saturn original which I haven’t found on any other system as of yet. It’s a first person shooter game with nice graphics, pretty bad sound effects, lot’s of slowdown issues, a crappy storyline, repeatative level design, but yet a good atmosphere to back it up and despite all it’s flaws it’s actually a very enjoyable game.
The worst thing about this game is that it doesn’t have a save option. Just like with oldies like Super Mario Bros. you can’t save and have to start all over every time you play, which brings me back to it’s repeatative level design. The levels of the this game all look the same. Square room after square room, the same enemies over and over again and every few levels they switched texturesets. Not too brilliant, but some gameplay features make up to this.
You can’t only walk around and shoot stuff, your vehicle (yes, you play from within a vehicle called the Laocorn) can hover, speed up, activate plasma shields, fire special lasers and heal itself with the use of reactor energy which isn’t quite endless. Saying that it’s scarce is a better description, you’ll have to be carefull with using your reactor energy. And besides that this game (ofcourse) offers several different weapons for you to use. Weapons like a Vulcan cannon, laser gun and rockets are amoung the arsenal and they all prove to be very effective against both single enemies and groups.
Allthough this game suffers from severe slowdown almost all of the time, this game is still better playable than for instance Doom and Alien Trilogy. Both Doom and Alien Trilogy suffer from slowdown issues, allthough Alien Trilogy isn’t as bad as Doom when it comes to that, these games require to be running smooth because of the gameplay speed. Robotica’s gameplay doesn’t seem to suffer that much from it’s graphical slowdown as you won’t very often face more than 3 enemies at once and the movement speed is relatively slow and so are the enemies.
Now, if this was a PC shooter I wouldn’t have the ability to enjoy this game at all. A PC shooter should be fast moving, fast action. On a game console it’s different. The controller simply isn’t very suitable for such fast first person action, so the games have to be adapted to that, Robotica is, it’s slow enough to be able to control is very good and it’s not too slow, so it stays interesting to play.
I think Robotica will be a game that I’m going to play every once in a while to kill some time, for, let’s say, 30 minutes in a row max.
Pics
Here are a few pics of the games’ covers.
The lightgun
Virtua Cop came with a lightgun. The ad said that the gun wasn’t in a very good condition; the trigger wasn’t good, but I haven’t yet noticed anything apart from the trigger being pulled backward a little far and that you have to pull it back even further to fire, but it does work and it’s nothing you notice during use.
Something that did surprise me was it’s size, this thing is frickin’ huge! I thought the G-Con for the good old Playstation was big, untill I saw this one, holy crap.
Anyway, it’s very lightweight and easy to hold, but when using it for an extended period of time you will notice how heavy your arms actually are.
Here are 2 shots of it, one including myself.
Duck Hunt!
I did mention something about Duck Hunt, didn’t I? Well, a little while ago I took my NES, the Zapper and Duck Hunt with me to my new weekend job. I work as a clerk at a bikeshop at the trainstation in Weert (Limburg, the Netherlands). Here I have to give people tickets to safely put their bike inside, have them pay when they leave and take back their tickets, rent out bikes to people who would want that and tell people that I don’t repair bikes myself.
In other words, I don’t have enough to do to keep me busy all day, so I bring something to keep me busy, the NES it is. A few friends came over and joined in, allthough only Tim and I actually played (and Mark, but that session doesn’t count). Here are a few pictures that were taken that day.
…End of line.
