This comes from Revengers of Vengeance:
I’m trying to figure out the right adjectives to describe this. Self-referential, certainly. Not quite in the realm of absurd. ‘Kitsch’ might come close, but I don’t think it’s quite the right word.
A game geek has to love the picture nonetheless.
I went off the deep end with Sega CD games tonight. This is due to the fact that I got around to writing a Python utility that rips entire Sega CDs in a format suitable to play from the hard disk using the Gens emulator. You can find the Sega CD ripping script on my more technical blog. So I spent a bunch of time ripping games to the hard drive and concentrating on collecting screenshots for Sega CD games that are already in the database.
As best that I could, anyway. In the most ambitious evening yet of this project, I tried 7 different games. Only 3 worked. Among the ones that didn’t work:
Now it’s time to cover the games that actually did work. The first 2 are cut from the same cloth: Mad Dog McCree and Ground Zero Texas. While produced by different companies, they are both interactive movie-based shooters. McCree happens to be a little more straightforward in concept than Texas, but they’re both phenomenally obnoxious in their own ways. When I tried playing the DOS version of Who Shot Johnny Rock? with a mouse, I noted how difficult and tedious that was and I predicted how much harder it would be to play the same game with a control pad. I was right. McCree is from American Laser Games, same people behind Johnny (also for the Sega CD). What a chore! It’s less a game of skill than a game of memorization. You had better remember exactly where each goon emerges or be doomed to repeat the same level:
Actually, scratch that. It doesn’t matter if you know the precise coordinates of each crony. If you don’t hit precisely the right hot spot, your bullets have no effect. I routinely emptied my revolver squarely on the bad guy only to get plugged when my chamber was empty. I just played long enough to collect a diverse sample of screenshots and I was out. I often hear that this game was a huge hit in its day. I would like to hear more than second-hand testimonials to that effect.
Ground Zero Texas was a little more promising. The premise is that there is a covert alien invasion occurring in Podunkville, Texas, U.S.A. The military has sent out a minor military detachment to deal with this pressing end-of-the-world-type scenario and you are the new tactical ops specialist brought in. Your 3 predecessors mysteriously disappeared and the brass has thrown up its hands in frustration and declared, “If you can’t handle this, we’re nuking this Texan hamlet”. So there’s a sense of urgency. Your task is to sit at a console that is connected to four camera/gun combos in 4 locations in this tiny town. Watch for suspicious humans who are probably inhabited by alien invaders– they will spring up and shoot at the heavily armored gun.
Sci-fi fans will of course recognize the alien-host-inhabiting-human-bodies theme as a convenient plot device for avoiding having to create expensive alien costumes or effects. Anyway, the game was mildly promising until I found I was unable to switch to any other camera when I was done with a particular area. The A button was supposed to enable me to switch but that didn’t work. The A button responds fine in other games played in this emulator. So I got just enough screenshots to make this play time worthwhile.
Finally, it’s on to Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective which represents the rarest of rarities: a halfway decent interactive movie! It even has the distinction of being one of the very first I-movies. Checking my master list of Sega CD titles, I would also have to qualify it as the best Sega CD game I’ve experienced thus far (admittedly, the competition is not especially stiff). The game boasts something like 90 minutes of FMV, and it’s reasonably well done (even if it’s necessarily tiny and grainy).
The aspect of this early genre game that struck me the most during my brief gameplay is the level of extraneous detail. For example, there is an extensive newspaper archive to which Holmes may refer. Each newspaper has marriages, deaths, classified ads, all in addition to actual news. There is a sizable directory of London citizens that Holmes may opt to visit. Granted, not all of them have corresponding FMV clips, rather just Watson informing Holmes that the person didn’t have anything to say. Still, the game is not on rails as you would expect from an interactive movie. This is truly just an adventure/mystery game supplemented with competent use of FMV.
See Also:
At MobyGames:
I was IM’ing with a friend who has traditionally been a bigger gamer than me:
[friend]: I just realized that I haven't purchased a game in over 10 months
[me]: I ordered 9 games over the weekend
[me]: they should be arriving in the next day or 2
[friend]: which ones?
[me]: which games? shoot, I couldn't tell you... :) things you and I have never heard of
[me]: wait, I remember Sabrina the Teenage Witch being one
[me]: they're cheap and they look completely stupid and they're not in MobyGames yet
[me]: that's really all I care about
That pretty much sums up my purchasing habits these days. The things you can find in those eBay stores.
I’m opting out of playing a new game today because I worked so hard getting through my backlog of gaming credits. Many of these credit sets come from instruction manuals that I dug out of a storage box recently. At the current moment, I have credits for 15 games pending in MobyGames’ queue. Not all of these game are created with equal amounts of resources, of course. One game of the 15 (Trax) has a whole 3 credits while another (Disney’s Hades Challenge) goes on for pages. Plus, I am still catching up on a number of new game entries. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to play a new game tonight, but I need to keep up with the bookkeeping.
2 new games in MobyGames: Astro Assembler (with all its cover artwork from various releases) and Trax: The Robot Wars.
At long last, I’m working Sega CD games into this mix. I have at least 1/2 dozen Sega CD games in my pile that aren’t yet in the MobyGames database and a whole bunch more that are missing screenshots. I guess I have been a little hesitant to go to work on this matter since I know it can be a bit tedious to set up the Gens emulator for Sega CD emulation at first. You need to install ASPI drivers for CD reading, which I did, but still no luck. However, I went the other route which is to rip an ISO + series of MP3 files for the game to play from the HD. That worked splendidly and I can now cover my collection of Sega CD titles for this experiment.
And what a collection! Let’s kick it off with Revengers Of Vengeance. I’ll give you a few moments to re-read that title a few times. Revengers Of Vengeance. I found this in an eBay store while purchasing some other games. I had absolutely no idea what to expect as the CD-ROM surface (all I had to go on) doesn’t really give any clues. It bears an MA-13 rating from a system called V.R.C. which predates today’s omnipresent ESRB.
I think the game may bear the alternate title of Battle Fantasy; at least, that’s the title that Gens shows in the window title bar. The game is definitely fantasy in nature and kicks off with an awesome scene of griffons in the shadow of a castle:
From there, the game goes on to explain, rather generically and matter-of-factly, that the Devil King — who goes by the name of Venum — has gained the infinite power of evil. Despite that, it’s implied that you somehow have what it takes to bring this villain down. By what manner of gameplay will you achieve this feat? Well, that’s where things get tricky.
From what I can tell, this game represents a genre mashup of a 1-on-1 brawler game and a role playing game. So in addition to being the first Sega CD game in Gaming Pathology, it’s also the first RPG (or RPG-like game). Not that I have any aversion towards RPGs (although one brief evening of gameplay wouldn’t be enough time to do justice to the nominal RPG). But I suspect that the RPG genre as a whole tends to be quite popular with the type of hardcore gaming nerds that contribute heavily to MobyGames. Thus, the genre already has good coverage in the database.
But I digress. Aside from the options screen, there are 3 places to go from the main screen. The first is The Tournament. This allows you to select from among 10 unique fighters to battle it out with other characters against colorful, fantasy-themed backgrounds. It’s pretty tough, too, even on the easiest level:
Another route is the Arena Of Death which has the most curious logo of 2 Sega Genesis consoles fighting with each other. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what this mode is for. All I could do with it was create fighter characters with custom stats and the pit them against each other in an automated battle.
“The Quest To Destroy Venum” is where the RPG element comes into play. You begin in an RPG-style town:
You have a supply of gold and you can purchase dresses and perfume in shops, or coffee or cola at the village Starbucks franchise (serious about the coffee purchase, though at a nameless pub). When you leave town, you are shown this map of locations to warp to:
I head to the waterfall since that sounds like a pretty background. I get my mythological rear handed to me in the first battle. Even afterwards, I am awarded an amount of gold and experience points and sent back to the original town. Ostensibly, I need to spend some time leveling up and perhaps equipping myself before I can possibly hope to have a chance in this game. I also spy a fitness club in town.
During the Quest mode, each of the 10 characters appears to be following its own storyline with corresponding cutscenes. It occurs to me that a lot of beat-em-ups try to have storylines for each fighter, but that storyline is only fleshed out in the character’s brief ending sequence. This game has a full storyline from the get-go and tries to carry the concept even further. (Come to think of it, Criticom also had a storyline cutscene inaugurate each character’s quest, but… look, I’m sorry I even brought up that game again.) Some character backstories are more involved than others. One, though, for an absolutely enormous were-rhinoceros creature is quite simple: he simply wants someone — anyone — stronger to challenge in a fight. Maybe the infinite evil dude will fit the bill.
I have located cover art scans on other websites that evidence that this game must have been released in the U.S. Given that, it’s curious that the name entry box has a bunch of Japanese characters to choose from when writing one’s own name. I don’t know what any of them mean but I feel obligated to use a few since they’re on offer:
I see from this review at Sega-16 that a) I really suck at the fighting sequences, and b) I’m missing one genre– a vertical shooting type of game. I’ll need to devote some more time to this title some night.
Earlier today, I asked the MobyGames admins to completely obliterate an entry that I entered a long time ago when I was new to the database. I realized there were a bunch of things wrong with it and it was easier to perform a summary “do-over” than submit a series of corrections. The game was entitled Space Racers, or I thought it was. In-game, the title was Rocky Racers. This game is another one of those credit card form factor mini-CDs published by Selectsoft as “Pocketware”. Now that I realize that they like to gratuitously rename games, I need to change the title, the publisher, the description, the release date, everything.
I played Rocky Racers again tonight. And since that was quick enough, I picked out another random game from the pile: Kombat Kars. The company name on this one sounded familiar: Positech, same company that did Rocky Racers. Guess what? Kombat Kars is essentially the same game with slightly different art and music! In fact, the brief credits screens for each game are exactly the same (one guy doing programming and graphics, outsourced music, and 3 playtesters; I pity that trio, more on why in a moment).
Rocky Racers, a.k.a. Space Racers, involves 4 outer space ships racing around an asteroid-delimited 2D race course. Multiplayer is possible via TCP/IP or IPX, or the balance of ships is controlled, rather ruthlessly, by the computer. Any of the ships has the capacity to fire on other ships or activate a tractor beam in an effort to slow their progress. It’s also possible to work your way outside of the asteroid boundaries. However, there are a number of waypoints that you are expected to cross and if you miss any, the game will complain and presumably disqualify you from winning.
Not that I would know for sure. The controls are very difficult to use. Or maybe the ships are too quick, or the track is too confined. I found it all very difficult. The other ships fought ahead of me in short order and got way out ahead of me while I was still constantly bouncing off the game’s eponymous rocks. I didn’t get far. Those 3 playtesters must have been a patient bunch.
Kombat Kars has cars instead of spaceships and, while apparently published a bit later than Rocky Racers, isn’t quite as involved. There is one less track (8 vs. 9), no multiplayer support, and no tractor beam, though that last feature might not make as much sense in context. I found it just as frustrating to play. These 2 are such pretty games and should make for awesome casual distractions. I really wish they had joystick support as that probably would have made gameplay easier.
This is the person to blame for these 2 games. He still appears to be gainfully employed in the same field.
At MobyGames: