The Playstation’s First Year

When it comes to the Playstation I play, for lack of a better term, nothing but the hits: games that proved successful in America, Europe or Japan – with success being defined by membership in the Greatest Hits, Platinum or Playstation the Best lines of game re-releases. These games sold at least 150,000 copies – the number later grew and now, for the Playstation 3, the threshold for inclusion is 500,000 copies sold.

Initially this just seemed like a nice, gimmicky framework for a retro gaming series but as time went by I began to notice and think about why the games I play sold well in their day.

Obviously, different regions preferred different games: RPGs did well in Japan, high-profile action games in America, and Europeans enjoyed whatever the Americans liked, plus whimsical oddities. Of course this also reveals an odd trend where Americans will buy Japanese games in droves, but American games rarely do well in Japan: American consoles like the Xbox 360 will, in the future, also fail miserably in Japan. There are some notable exceptions to this trend we’ll see in the future.

All regions loved innovative games – and, as I expected, many of these games were innovative in one aspect but otherwise unremarkable or even outright awful.

It’s also interesting to consider who bought these games. It wasn’t just what we today would identify as “hardcore” gamers – absolutely no one in 1995 would have owned all the games I covered: it would be impossible, in fact, since not all of them came out worldwide.

Some were bought by people who got the Playstation on launch day, who read magazines and browsed the nascent internet presence of gaming news, who followed gaming eagerly. Yet other consumers were bored 12 year olds, or their relatives, who couldn’t tell apart a Playstation from a Nintendo; people who bought only Madden; those who could only afford a couple of new games a year and spent their money on high-profile releases they knew would last. It is harder to pigeonhole gaming’s past than I would have assumed.

Over the course of the Playstation’s first few months (all the games I wrote about thus far came out from September to December 1995) I’ve charted out a sketchy history of where it would go. We can already see a large variety of games; several games also created or redefined genres to work in three dimensions. We can see a sense of necessary invention that is characteristic of the period.

What we haven’t seen is any games with a focus placed on storytelling, and relatively few 3D action or platform games that didn’t take place in vehicles or in the first-person. These trends will arrive with the games of 1996.

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When a system has over a thousand games some notable titles slip through the cracks. Here I will go over the other games on the Playstation – ones that may not have been popular, but left an impact. And it should again be noted: I did not play the games mentioned below in this general history, so take my words with a grain of salt.

There were, in comparison to later years, relatively few games to cover here: of course, the Playstation was only around for four months in ’95. And unlike the Saturn or Nintendo’s system, most made their way to the United States.

Rapid Reload [dev. Media.Vision] was a shooter very similar to Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes; a Japanese-exclusive 2D platformer was Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic [dev. Yuke’s], which featured 3D bonus stages. And speaking of platformers, in 1995 the 3DO’s mascot – Gex [dev. Crystal Dynamics; ported by Beam Software], a gecko who bounced through mediocre platform levels making not especially funny quips – made its way onto the Playstation, and I did play this one.

Why? No idea. As I’ve mentioned before I had a Playstation – but I got it around 1999, and quickly moved on to the Playstation 2. It’s part of why I chose to focus on this period: I have relatively few preexisting assumptions or nostalgic feelings towards these games.

In 1999-2000 I owned every Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and Final Fantasy; the typical games every Playstation owner played. Yet for some reason I also was obsessed with the exceptionally unremarkable Gex. I owned all of them, and I even went back and bought a copy of the original Gex, a game so old that it came in one of those strange longboxes Sony toyed with before jumping to standard jewel cases. Why? I couldn’t possibly say.

Another game I have played, yet one I can explain: first-person platformer Jumping Flash! [dev. Exact]. Jumping Flash! is the type of game whose faults you are willing to forgive because you know you will never see its like again: Jumping Flash! takes the player to dizzying heights yet manages to still be fun, providing creative twists on each level’s formula.  Alas, certain levels remove the high jumping and replace it with tedious action that’s entirely indoors.

Anyway: 3D fighters failed to make an impression thanks to the hyped yet poorly received Criticom [dev. Kronos] and robot fighter Zero Divide [dev. Zoom]; Namco’s Cyber Sled, essentially a 32-bit Combat, let you pick between the original arcade mode and a slower “textured” mode; Geom Cube [dev. Technos] tried to bring Tetris into three dimensions; and strategy title X-COM: UFO Defense [dev. Microprose] was ported to consoles.

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And now 1995’s best Playstation games.

Unlike the Saturn, I’m including some games I didn’t review. This won’t happen in future years; I just had a relatively thin slate to choose from. I have played Jumping Flash; however, I didn’t play one of the games up for a graphical award – but since it’s a cosmetic award, I don’t really need to play it. And, again: thin slate of games to choose from, and these awards are meaningless anyway.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The nominees are…

• Arc the Lad
• Jumping Flash (no review)
• Twisted Metal

The epic RPG score of Arc the Lad; the zany sounds of Jumping Flash; the ominous, Christmas-tinged themes of Twisted Metal.

And the winner is…Twisted Metal.

BEST LEVEL DESIGN

The nominees are…

• Jumping Flash
• Rayman (Part 2)
• Warhawk

Elegant 2D platforming; gravity-defying worlds in the sky; and the evolving worlds of Warhawk.

And the winner is…Warhawk.

Warhawk’s levels aren’t consistent, yet when they work, the twists they take are inventive.

BEST 3D GRAPHICS (TECHNICAL)

The nominees are…

• Ridge Racer
• Warhawk
• Wipeout

And the winner is…Wipeout.

No, I didn’t really care for Wipeout. Yet it’s the Playstation game from 1995 whose visuals have best withstood the test of time: the strongest technical achievement of its day.

BEST 2D GRAPHICS (TECHNICAL)

The nominees are…

• Arc the Lad
• Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic (no review)
• Rayman

And the winner is…Rayman.

Was there any competition? The large, colorful sprites of Rayman looked fantastic then, and still look fantastic today.

BEST ART DIRECTION

The nominees are…

• Jumping Flash
• King’s Field
• Rayman

A collection of quirky platformer levels; a foreboding maze; a fanciful 2D world.

And the winner is…Rayman.

The world of Rayman displays more thematic consistency than that the toybox feeling of Jumping Flash! And while King’s Field does fun things with its island maze…it’s still a maze and gets old fast.

BEST STORYTELLING/NARRATIVE

No Award.

Like with the Saturn, no Playstation game told a particularly memorable story this year. Besides the RPG Arc the Lad relatively few games told a story at all. This will change next year when more strongly narrative-focused games arrive.

PLAYSTATION GAME OF THE YEAR – 1995

And the nominees are…

• King’s Field
• Rayman
• Tekken
• Warhawk

A gorgeous 2D platformer; a new style of fighting game; a difficult dungeon-crawler; and an inventive flight game with a hilariously silly story.

And the winner is…Rayman.

FIFTH GENERATION GAME OF THE YEAR – 1995

• Astal – Saturn Game of the Year
• Rayman – Playstation Game of the Year

The overall best game of 1995 was…well, Chrono Trigger. But the best game from the then-newest console generation was Rayman.

At the dawn of 3D, the year’s two best next-generation games…were 2D platformers.

Astal is less traditional than Rayman and just as beautiful, yet Rayman is the more perfectly tuned experience. Difficulty may be inconsistent, but Rayman feels like a coherent whole.

Unsurprising, really: it takes time for developers to become skilled with any new system. But a system that completely revolutionizes the way they have to design games? Developers of 2D games could lend all their expertise to their projects, instead of being forced to both develop a game and relearn everything they know about game design.

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So that’s it for 1995: it took me way longer than I anticipated, but I’m already ready to proceed with the games of 1996.

Once I play them, of course. I need to leave time to play games before I can review them.

I can’t give a definite date for this series’ return but this blog will remain active in the interim. The first review when 32 Bits does resume will be of Hideo Kojima’s visual novel Policenauts and the simulator A-Train; both part of the Playstation the Best line of Japanese best-sellers. So is Warp’s real-time experiment D, which I’ll be playing alongside first-person shooter Alien Trilogy, popular in America and Europe.

And then the first truly high-profile game I’ll be playing for this series: Capcom’s Resident Evil, a massive hit basically everywhere.

That takes us through March 1996. What’s next? My exploration of the rest of 1996 will feature Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider, Suikoden and Persona, Cool Boarders and Jet Moto – plus unknown games, popular in their day but forgotten completely by modern audiences.

In the first season of 32 Bits I played unknown games that turned out to be masterpieces – such as Astal – and unknowns that turned out to be unbearably awful – like Loaded. And yet others that proved justifiably forgotten.

What categories will the unknown games of 1996 fall into? There’s only one way to find out – and until then, enjoy this Namco promotional video where some guy gets far too excited about Ridge Racer:

Gaming in 1995: Nintendo and Elsewhere

Nintendo delayed their next-generation system, Nintendo 64, until 1996. In the intervening year the company saw some of its greatest successes – and its worst failure.

On the Super Nintendo scattered among the typical movie adaptions and sports games you could find some of the greatest games in the system’s history: platformer Yoshi’s Island [dev. Nintendo EAD] and RPGs Chrono Trigger [dev. Square] and Earthbound [dev. Ape, HAL Laboratory]. The latter two rank among the greatest games ever made.

Nintendo’s Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island for the SNES.

In 1995 many of the SNES’ more notable games never left Japan yet would find a dedicated American audience thanks to (unofficial) fan translations and Playstation sequels; many of these games came from famed Japanese developer Squaresoft (now Square Enix). The previous year’s Final Fantasy VI (dubbed Final Fantasy III in the United States) was a success, yet RPGs were still a relatively unimportant genre outside of Japan – at least until the runaway success of Final Fantasy VII in 1997.

Wolf Team’s Tales of Phantasia. The first game in the Tales series, it will later be remade for the Playstation using the engine of a later game, Tales of Destiny.

Among these Japan-only games: Mech strategy game Front Mission; RPG Romancing SaGa 3; action-RPG Seiken Densetsu 3. Front Mission’s sequel Front Mission 3 would make its way onto the Playstation worldwide; the SaGa series lived on as SaGa Frontier for the Playstation and Unlimited Saga for the Playstation 2; and Seiken Densetsu 3’s Mana series would see foreign shores on the Playstation. Enix’s Dragon Quest VI was the last installment in the series until 2001’s Dragon Quest VII on the Playstation; and Tales of Phantasia [dev. Wolf Team], one of the most graphically sophisticated 2D games on the SNES, would later find new life on the Playstation and Game Boy Advance. As you can see, RPG developers – once firmly in Nintendo’s corner – would soon abandon the system, thanks mainly to the storage limits and expense of Nintendo 64 cartridges.

Another RPG, but one that did make its way to the United States: Capcom’s Breath of Fire II, another SNES RPG whose sequel would make the jump to the Playstation. Quest’s Ogre Battle, a complex strategy game, also made its way abroad in 1995 – albeit in an extremely limited release. Meanwhile, Square’s Secret of Evermore recieved mixed reviews as the first, and only, Square game designed in and for the United States.

Nintendo franchises were also strong this year. 1995 was the year of Donkey Kong Country 2 [dev. Rare] and golf game Kirby’s Dream Course [dev. HAL Laboratory]. Mega Man 7 [dev. Capcom], the only “main” Mega Man game developed for a 16-bit console, failed to attract the same acclaim as the Mega Man X series – and on that note, 1995 was the year of Mega Man X2.

Meanwhile, fans of complete dreck would also find an abundance of “treasures”. Of note, notoriously ugly Olympic mascot Izzy starred in his own platformer.

Konami’s Castlevania: Dracula X for the SNES.

Adventure game Clock Tower [dev. Human] brought horror to the SNES by casting the player as a defenseless girl on the run from a maniac wielding giant scissors. And fantastic-looking action games Rendering Ranger [dev. Rainbow Arts], Super Turrican 2 [dev. Factor 5] and Konami’s Castlevania: Dracula X pushed the limits of the SNES.

Alas, the Virtual Boy merely tested the limits of the player’s patience.

Pushed out the door to cover for the prolonged development of the Nintendo 64, the Virtual Boy’s American début was in August 1995…and it was discontinued by March. A “3D” console that was in no sense portable, and which was by default a antisocial, solitary experience due to the system’s headset, the Virtual Boy was an idea that was in no way ready for primetime, pushed onto the public to focus more resources on Nintendo’s impending console.

The next year saw the début of the Nintendo 64, itself an oft-troubled system – albeit a more popular, and fondly remembered, one.

Also in 1995: the Game Boy continued its reign as one of the most popular gaming platforms of all time. However, I won’t really talk about it much as its library consisted mainly of console spin-offs and tie-ins. It wasn’t until Pokémon that the Gameboy had a franchise to call its own – and thus began the Nintendo handheld creativity renaissance that began with the Game Boy Advance and runs to this day.

ELSEWHERE

The 3DO and Jaguar, the first fifth-generation consoles, barely clung to life – with Atari releasing a new CD attachment for the latter system that only supported 11 games, mainly dated ports.

The Pippin, a justifiably forgotten console from – of all companies – Apple Computer and Bandai, debuted in Japan. Apple executives wanted to branch out into other markets; Bandai executives hoped the Japanese toy company could become as big as Disney worldwide. Both ambitions ended in disaster.

On the PC, adventure games remained big – LucasArt’s Full Throttle and The Dig were some of that company’s last high-profile adventure game releases; the founder of the genre, Roberta Williams, created the live-action FMV game Phantasmagoria, more notable for the controversy surrounding it than the game itself; the quirky, Edgar Allen Poe-influenced claymation game The Dark Eye [dev. Inscape], featuring the voice of William S Burroughs, came out; Texas company Cyberdreams released its final adventure games – the acclaimed Harlan Ellison adaption I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and the widely mocked murder mystery Dark Seed II.

Real-time strategy games Warcraft II [dev. Blizzard] and Command and Conquer [dev. Westwood Studios] brought a higher profile to that form, while 3D shooter Descent [dev. Parallax Software] and mech sim MechWarrior 2 [dev. Activision] also drew attention. 1995 just wasn’t a particularly interesting year for computer gaming, compared to developments on consoles.

And in other PC gaming history, September 1995 marked the début of Microsoft’s DirectX API – the creation was prompted by previous compatibility issues with Windows operating systems and general skepticism of Windows as a gaming platform over DOS.

Sega’s Comix Zone for the Genesis/Mega Drive.

Sega’s older consoles faded away after the Saturn’s début – the Genesis saw a handful of notable titles, however: stylish beat-em up Comix Zone [dev. Sega Technical Institute]; well-animated Zelda-like action game Beyond Oasis [dev. Ancient]; Treasure’s shooter Alien Soldier and action-RPG Light Crusader; and Sonic Team’s platformer Ristar. The Genesis attachments Sega CD and 32X – the latter released immediately before the Saturn’s launch – were basically dead in the water – though the Sega CD was, at least, home to a new Shining Force game.

Without a doubt the best game of 1995 was the time-travel RPG Chrono Trigger: if you were seeking a great game in 1995 you wouldn’t find it on the newest systems – but on obsolete software that developers had mastered.  Such is almost always true, for obvious reasons.

Yet what happens when they move on? Nintendo’s new console, the Nintendo 64, will eventually prove to be nothing like the SNES. The SNES was the system in its day: the one every developer flocked to, that featured every conceivable genre of game – and even rudimentary 3D, thanks to the Super FX chip.

The Nintendo 64 would become a system with limited third-party support, thanks to Nintendo’s stubborn decision to stick with cartridges in an era where games came on CDs with higher storage capacities; its library included a stellar collection of 3D platformers and first person shooters, yet little else; but that’s in the future. Let us now remember a time where the biggest war in gaming was Nintendo versus Sega, and where Nintendo was on the top of the world.

The Saturn’s First Year

32 Bits is an ongoing series charting gaming history by playing the games of the past and looking at how gaming evolved at the dawn of the modern, 3D era. This week, I’m considering selected titles from the Sega Saturn’s first year.

Today: We close out 1995 with brief thoughts on several other Saturn games, and the system’s year as a whole; plus I crown the Saturn’s game of the year for 1995.

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Saturn #14:

Dark Legend

Developed and published by Data East

Released: October 1995

Dark Legend is a 2D fighting game based on the Chinese novel Water Margin – also the inspiration for Suikoden. A weapons-based fighter, your weapons degrade every time you block – you can also throw your weapon away, dizzying your opponent. Sadly, this is the only real innovation in an otherwise forgettable game.

Of note: three of the characters are brothers – so the same general sprite is given a new head; Data East was a notable NES developer, who created such games as Bad Dudes and BurgerTime. Another Data East foray into fighting games was Fighter’s History  – a game so similar to Street Fighter II that Capcom sued Data East for copyright infringement.  Capcom lost the case – though Fighter’s History never shook the reputation of being a Street Fighter knockoff, the court found that the game mechanics cited by Capcom are ideas that cannot be copyrighted.
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Saturn #15:
SteamGear Mash

Developed by Tamsoft, published by Takara
Released: September 29 1995 (Japan only)

Steamgear Mash is a Japan-exclusive isometric action game. You play as a robot who must rescue the girl who…owns them? Befriended them? Raised them? Anyway, you can jump, shoot and discover new abilities in a colorful world.

Unfortunately Steamgear Mash falls prey to the perspective issues inherent in isometric graphics. Yet the jaunty score and charming art, plus special shooter stages, make Steamgear Mash appealing.

Of note: SteamGear Mash is from the same developers who made Battle Arena Toshinden.
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Saturn #16:
Tadaima Wakusei Kaitakuchuu!

Developed and published by Altron
Released: November 3 1995 (Japan only)

Tadaima Wakusei Kaitakuchu! is another Japan-exclusive that I played basically at random. I can’t review it, because I never figured out how to play it – there’s a dearth of information available, and other players seemed just as confused as I was.

Classic Sega on the Saturn: Shinobi, Hang-On, Virtua Cop and Sega Rally

32 Bits is an ongoing series charting gaming history by playing the games of the past and looking at how gaming evolved at the dawn of the modern, 3D era. This week, I’m considering selected titles from the Sega Saturn’s first year. Today: two classic Sega franchises, and two high-profile arcade ports, make their way onto the Saturn. How do they fare?

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Saturn #10:

Virtua Cop

Developed by Sega AM2, published by Sega

Released: December 1995

Light gun shooters are a curious genre given that they depend on an accessory to be any fun: you could play with a controller’s directional buttons but, come on, seriously? There is a barrier of entry that doesn’t exist with the majority of games, which is ironic, given how eminently accessible the games themselves are. They’re also perfect for arcades – but good luck finding a decent arcade in the United States, or really anywhere besides Japan.

32 Bits: Virtual Hydlide

Saturn #9:

VIRTUAL HYDLIDE

Developed by T&E Soft, published by Atlus

Released: 1995

“Digitized main character for the ultimate in realism!”

“Computer graphics and 3D backgrounds created on high-tech work stations!”

Virtual Hydlide promised cutting-edge realism. Even in 1995, this claim was laughable – and in 2013, it’s a sickeningly ugly cascade of poor decisions. And when I say sickening, I mean sickening: I couldn’t play more than 20 minutes of Virtual Hydlide before I realized I had a headache and was on the verge of throwing up. The main question I emerged with was: Why?

Why is the main character a digitized sprite in a 3D world? Why is he seen from behind, so we can appreciate every one of his jerky motions? Why does this perspective make it so hard to tell how far you are from enemies, or to navigate indoors?

Why are objects also 2D, with no back rendered? Sure, objects were like that in Doom – notably a first person game. In Virtual Hydlide you can compare your own movement to the constantly shifting grave stones around you; the effect is disorienting.

Why is it that the game’s objective is only evident when you check your map? You spawn in the middle of a field with no indication as to how to progress. Once you do check your map, you see a dot on the other side of the world from you – your goal. Run there, go inside, get a new dot. Repeat.

Why does the world consist exclusively of muddy greens and browns? Why are there so many gnarled trees and scrabbly little plants scattered around?

Why do you level up only when you complete an area? What’s the point of killing enemies?

And above all, why does Virtual Hydlide run at a consistent single-digit FPS? Even though the common tactic of fog is employed*, Virtual Hydlide is essentially a slideshow.

What makes Virtual Hydlide’s failure especially sad is that it plays around with some interesting ideas.

Every time you play, a new world map is generated. You can share your world’s code with others. You rarely saw such features in this era of gaming…and it isn’t executed skillfully here, since every world has the same goals.

The simplistic and story-light gameplay could have harkened back to NES modes of design, were it any good. Virtual Hydlide is both a sequel to and remake of a game ported to the original NES, after all. When I ran across the overworld, I was shocked when a tree came to life and tried to eat me. Tedium gave way to momentary surprise, and thrill of discovery. Yet this gave way to tedium as I stabbed and retreated, stabbed and retreated…

Moments that jar you from the doldrums of Virtual Hydlide are sadly rare. Possibly the worst game I’ve ever played, I went into Virtual Hydlide brimming with hope. I knew of its troubled reputation and that it had few defenders; yet I was hoping I could rediscover the game and claim it was a lost classic – or, at the very least, playable. I emerged from the experience full of disappointment and vomit.

Sad, really.

notes

• Besides the Hydlide series – which came to an end with this game – T&E Soft seems to have mainly developed golf sims.

• Once again, my screenshot program made this game appear even worse-looking than it actually is, and I have no idea what caused it to look that way. Virtual Hydlide in motion is not quite as dark as these screenshots show – but it is still pretty awful.
• ATLUS WHY DID YOU PUBLISH THIS IN AMERICA
• Speaking of Atlus…one of the unfortunate aspects of this series: a lot of the Saturn’s library is in Japanese. This isn’t too much of a problem when it comes to shooters, fighting games, platformers and other text-light genres. RPGs, though? Sega of America wasn’t too interested in importing RPGs. A sign of how far this policy went: the Saturn had one of the greatest RPGs of the fifth generation, Grandia, and they refused to publish it in America. It ended up on the Playstation instead. Another example: 1995’s Magic Knight Rayearth ended up reaching America in the Saturn’s final viable year, 1998, as one of the last Saturn games ever released. While systems like the SNES and even Playstation have had many Japan-only games translated by fans, the only fan translations avaliable for the Saturn are of the missing chapters of Shining Force III. And thus I can’t play some games I wanted to play, such as 1995’s Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner by Atlus. And so the first Megami Tensei game I play will be Persona for the Playstation, late in 1996.

• *Early 3D games had a limited draw distance. Many developers compensated by adding in a kind of mist that blocked out far-away objects – ones that didn’t need to be rendered immediately. Of note, Silent Hill’s famous fog began as a way to cope with technical limitations before becoming a standard element of the series. Back to top

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NEXT TIME: On a more positive note, tomorrow we consider several “classic” Saturn games.

Sega Without Sonic: Astal, Bug! and Clockwork Knight

When the Saturn launched by surprise in May 1995 there was one very conspicuous absence in its lineup – and the hole it left would never be filled.

The Genesis didn’t launch with Sonic the Hedgehog – instead, Sega pinned its early hopes on the uninspiring Altered Beast. Yet by the time the Saturn launched, Sonic was so iconic and connected to the Sega brand that it was surprising that the character was nowhere to be seen.

In 1995 even the ill-fated Genesis add-on 32X had a new Sonic-related game, Knuckle’s Chaotix. The Saturn, meanwhile, had just three games featuring Sonic over its entire life: isometric 2D Genesis port Sonic 3D Blast in 1996; and in 1997, kart racer Sonic R and Sonic Jam. The only one of these games to take Sonic into three dimensions, Sonic Jam was primarily a collection of the old Genesis Sonics – with a 3D segment called Sonic World. Those seeking a next-generation Sonic would have to wait for 1999’s Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast.

What filled the gap? Hype around the impending Sonic X-Treme, a 3D title cancelled in late 1996. And various other platformer series Sega created, in the hopes of crafting a new franchise for a new console.

Out of today’s three games, two of them were successful enough to spawn sequels; yet none of them would endure beyond the Saturn’s life cycle.

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Saturn #6:

BUG!

Developed by Realtime Associates, published by Sega

Released: May 11 1995 (launch day)

Bug! is a traditionally designed, and traditionally obnoxious, platformer. Uninspired gameplay combined with poor design choices, and a main character so annoying that the options menu includes an option to turn off his voice, Bug! is singularly disappointing…and was the most heavily advertised, and most popular in its day, of any of these games.