32 Bits #3 and 4: ESPN Extreme Games and Battle Arena Toshinden

32 Bits is a series about how the popular games of the past influenced gaming today. We’re currently in September 1995, and the Playstation has just launched in North America…

Last time, I looked at two launch titles – the slick but shallow Ridge Racer, and the retro Raiden Project. Today, I continue my exploration of the Playstation’s launch with two more of its early hits.  Both started major franchises. And both franchises would be dead before the end of the generation.

Playstation #3: ESPN Extreme Games [aka “1Xtreme”]

 

Developed and published by Sony

Released at US Playstation launch (September 9, 1995)

Best-Seller in: America (Greatest Hits)

Let me tell you a story.

It’s 1999. I’m a boy, it’s summer, I’m home from school. I need something to do. I run around the strip mall next to my home – I browse the library for the newest installment of some awful young adult franchise, I go to the video store and look around for games or VHS tapes to rent. Then I run back home – fleeing the sun in favor of playing video games in the dark. I’m playing one of the demo disks my mother brought home from her job at a toy store.

The demo disk includes the usual options. An odd tops game imported from Japan; tips for Tomb Raider 3; demos for Bloody Roar, Elmo, Xena. There’s also two games with similar subject matter, but wildly different approaches to it: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and 3Xtreme. Yes, this is the story of how I first encountered today’s game. Why just get to the point when you can add a pointless anecdote?

3Xtreme was the last game in the series, and it’s easy to see why the franchise died. The game is a shabby-looking, awkward racer that happens to take place on skateboards. Swap them in for bikes or roller skates or motorcycles and the “hitting walls” gameplay is identical. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, meanwhile, isn’t a game about skateboarding – it’s a game about freedom. You have two minutes to do whatever you like. Beat your high score, complete an objective, just dick around – all are valid options in the playgrounds the game gives you.

I play 3Xtreme, trying to win. I run into yet another gate. I give up, move on to Tetris and Tony Hawk. And I forget it, until now.

Now I don’t want to talk too much about Tony Hawk, as I will be playing it eventually. But I led with the story of how 3Xtreme died so we recognize the flaws in how the series was born.

The progenitor of 3Xtreme was originally named “ESPN Extreme Games” – a license hardly used. When Sony lost rights to the ESPN name, they redubbed it 1Xtreme, a generic title tapping into the stereotypical 90s obsession with the “extreme”. Saying a name like 1Xtreme without chugging a Mountain Dew afterwards just feels wrong.

1Xtreme lets you ride bikes, skateboards, roller blades and the very out-of-place luge. These are not separate competitions, but all opponents in one race on a handful of tracks. All were events in 1995’s inaugural X-Games. Each plays differently, to an extent. The main difference? How you knock your opponent of their board. You can’t punch someone on a luge, after all.

Yes, 1Xtreme gives you a healthy dose of unnecessary violence. Not only do you have to contend with obstacles and just ranking first, you’re also tasked with punching other racers in the face to knock them off their ride. It’s a puzzling addition – I don’t recall ESPN ever hosting multi-sport races based around fist fights – until you realize 1Xtreme’s only ambition is to be Road Rash.

Road Rash was a then-popular series of games about bikers, and it plays near-identically to 1Xtreme. In Road Rash, violence made sense. Of course bikers would smash chains into their rivals. Why would skateboarders be so eager to kick each other off their boards? 1Xtreme copies other elements, too. I’m playing Road Rash later in 1995 and the first level is similar in both – a ride through similar-looking city streets. Only in Road Rash, the obstacles made sense. You dodge incoming cars. Here, the streets are littered not only with oncoming cars but also barrels and walls. You have to jump over these obstacles; of course, your jump never quite high enough.

A scene from Road Rash.

Road Rash also was fast. The games may look similar but Road Rash has a speed and brutality 1Xtreme lacks. There are honest thrills in dodging oncoming cars and running over pedestrians, and though they may play similarly there is no excitement in jumping through gates precisely and ramming into barrels.

Ah yes, the other goal in 1Xtreme: Passing through gates. These gates seem to be more important than actually winning, as they give you money to buy more vehicles and go down the same five tracks for yet more money.

1Xtreme’s few tracks go on far too long. The Italy track goes through farmland to a city; South America goes from jungle, to bridges and finally into ancient ruins full of moving pillars. These scene transitions could be interesting if they in any way changed the experience. Instead, the generic obstacles you avoid turn into a different type of generic obstacle. The San Fransisco level goes from streets to different kinds of streets. The developers couldn’t make a creative game, so they compensated by throwing a lot of game at the player.

Like many early (and even late) Playstation games, 1Xtreme’s graphics are grainy and ugly to modern eyes. But other games made up for technical limits with creative artistic design. Road Rash certainly had a unique visual style. Not so with 1Xtreme. You can choose many characters, all their features indistinguishable from one another. The jungle canopy in the South American level looks like a roof painted green. The game cannot sell you on a single one of its locations as a place that’s nice to look at, or a world that feels real. South America has a ancient temple, full of moving pillars, that feels more at home in Crash Bandicoot than in a sports game with a real license.

Why was 1Xtreme successful? It capitalized on two trends: it has the veneer of extreme sports, and is a copy of a more popular game that hadn’t yet made its way to the Playstation. Those are the game’s two merits. They were enough then. When there’s only nine games on that $300 system you just bought, it doesn’t take much to win people over. In 1995, GamePro praised 1Xtreme: “Besides, where else can you crank your skateboard up to 60 mph?” The game’s only selling point was the subject matter. But the skateboards were just a generic vehicle. There was no experience of riding one. No tricks, no freedom. The skateboard was the same as a motorcycle in terms of play. Even Cool Boarders – a game similar to 1Xtreme in several ways – brought more of the experience of snowboarding to players.

That boy, in 1999, didn’t know of Road Rash. That series was already on its way out. The other selling point – the extreme sports setting – was superseded by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, whose sequel is one of the Playstation’s finest games. By 1999, 1Xtreme’s main virtues were now invalid. The novelty disappeared.

Yet the cycle of originality, followed by copying, continued. Tony Hawk produced forgotten clones with names like “Grind Session” and “Thraser: Skate and Destroy”. And eventually Tony Hawk changed to something new, and then it became the dinosaur, left behind by gaming.

1Xtreme’s developers were not seeking to change gaming forever, but instead to make a quick buck out of copying another, more popular game and slapping on a buzzy license. This is a game that influenced nothing because it is entirely influence from other games and trends.

But gaming, and those trends, evolved as time moved on. 1Xtreme and its sequels stood still.

notes

• The Sony division that produced this game would later be renamed “989 Studios” – one of the more reviled developers of this generation. More on them when we reach Twisted Metal.
• I will be playing 2Xtreme in 1996; apparently, the sequel adds snowboarding and was widely hated, so that’s something to look forward to.

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Playstation #4: Battle Arena Toshinden

 

Developed by Tamsoft; published by Sony

Released in Japan in 1995; launch title in the US

Best-Seller in: America (Greatest Hits), Europe (Platinum)

Battle Arena Toshinden is a failed revolution, a game that sought to redefine its medium and fell short. Fighting games were a 2D affair in 1995 – while Virtua Fighter showcased 3D graphics, the movement was still not free. Battle Arena Toshinden wanted to bring true 3D motion to fighting games, and bring the weapon-based combat of 2D games like Samurai Shodown into three dimensions.

In 1995, Battle Arena Toshinden was enormously successful. It was packed in with the Playstation and accordingly sold well. The magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly declared it the best fighting game of 1995 – the year of Tekken and Virtua Fighter 2. All signs in 1995 pointed to Battle Arena Toshinden becoming a classic.

Yet in 2005, EGM made a list of the most overrated games of all time. The article is full of bold statements declaring Final Fantasy IX “the least essential” Final Fantasy, or vague declarations about games as art in relation to Ico. Numbers 10 through 2 are well-known. But what’s at number 1? They placed not a famous title, but…the forgotten Battle Arena Toshinden. Was it a good game still? Their response – “Oh God no”.

Why did the writers of EGM even remember this obscure game? Today no one remembers it, yet in 1995 it was seen as more important than Tekken or Virtua Fighter by critics and gamers overcome with the newness of its innovations. It seemed unique to gamers and critics getting used to a new generation of games, but they were misled.

The primary innovation of Battle Arena Toshinden is three-dimensional movement. You can’t quite move freely, but you can roll in any direction, adjusting the plane of combat. You can roll behind your foe to get in some hits, but you rarely need great strategy. I completed most fights by just jamming buttons and dodging every now and then. The standard combos aren’t needed, either. It’s a strategic innovation in a game devoid of strategy.

The characters are stock types, presented dully. We have two swordsmen, a knight, a monk, the big guy with an even bigger stick. In a good fighting game, the characters are all memorable because the games are about their characters. Here, they’re all just another guy with a sword.

One character garnered more attention than the others in 1995: Sofia, the dominatrix. Improbably, she was an early mascot for the Playstation, on the same level as Twisted Metal’s Sweet Tooth. Of course, the drive to find a mascot for the Playstation was idiotic. Why does a system, with a thousand games, need to represented by one character? It is a relic of an era where games were just children’s toys and had no place in 1995. In proving their console to be the adult alternative to Nintendo’s yet unreleased system, Sony decided to have their early ads be narrated by a fetishized stereotype – and boosted her as an equal to Mario or Sonic. The campaign’s success was predictably minimal.

There is one character I do admire in this game – the final boss, or the more commonly seen of the two. Gaia, an enormous armored fighter whom you face in a whirling maelström. The level is visually unique in a way nothing else in Toshinden is.

Battle Arena Toshinden tries for some interesting things, but it can’t follow through. A game that sought to redefine gaming, instead it didn’t change anything. It faded from memory. Its innovations would come through in future, superior games like Soul Calibur. In that way, it might have had influence.

But Toshinden itself – is it a good game?

Oh God no.

notes

• There are four Battle Arena Toshinden games; the last never left Japan. I will also be playing Battle Arena Toshinden 2, and the Saturn port of this game – a remixed special edition with a new character and cutscenes.
• Battle Arena Toshinden, like many fighting games (and Twisted Metal), revolves around a band of diverse fighters brought together for an ancient, underground tournament that will grant them a great reward. The storyline’s really non-existent. I only note it because the game begins with scrolling backstory, recited by a portentous narrator. “FIGHTERS BROUGHT TOGETHER BY A COMMON DESTINY…”
• Beating the game nets you a fairly ridiculous combo: a long string of buttons to input when you’re low-health for a strong combo. Because when you’re one hit away from death, you have the time to hit 20 buttons in succession.

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Next time we see the Playstation’s first truly great game – one in a outdated form, developed for the dying Atari Jaguar: the beautiful Rayman.

Apologies – again! – for a lack of screenshots, I had an unexpected failure on the computer holding the ones I’d taken.