Playstation Soccer: Featuring Shoe Commercials!

As I post this, the World Cup is just wrapping up and wow, what a wonderful event if you have absolutely no expectations. The United States’ coach said they couldn’t win and he was correct. But every little victory was celebrated.

We beat Ghana, the West African nation of 25 million that knocked the United States out of two consecutive World Cups! Woo!

We nearly beat Portugal! Yeah!

We lost to Germany but escaped the group of death anyway! YEAH!

Our goalkeeper is considerably better than the rest of our team! FUCK YEAH!

But if you go into the event with expectations, you’ll likely be disappointed. I can’t imagine what Brazil fans might feel – the host country, favorites to win it all, and they’re knocked out 7-1. They were dominated.

This was written before the third-place match but’ll go up after, so who knows? Brazil may pull out something there. But still.

In the following soccer games, I am Brazil and the computer is Germany.

Adidas Power Soccer

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Playstation Review Number
Psygnosis	Pysgnosis	6/96 (Europe) 8/31/96 (North America)	Europe (Platinum)	#47

This may be the first game I’ve ever played to include a commercial break.

Yes, every half time there’s an ad for Adidas shoes.

Adidas’ sponsorship of Adidas Power Soccer doesn’t end with the name on the cover or ads in the stadium. Every other goal is a PREDATOR GOAL; the German company’s shoe flashes up on-screen with the celebrations.

Adidas Power Soccer is the only one of today’s games to try to feature knock-off leagues instead of a knock-off international cup. It features German and French teams, as well as British teams – including Sheffield…Sunday and “Manchester”.

A fast game, Adidas Power Soccer’s arcade mode adds sparking tackles, fiery shots and cuckoo birds over injured players. And since I’m bad at this, being down 3-0 at halftime was the norm. Once my goalkeeper was left defenseless after making several saves – unassisted by one of my players, who was just standing in the goal itself. However, I did actually manage to score goals.

Thankfully, Adidas Power Soccer doesn’t really try for realism. It has the kind of simple, colorful look that worked well on the Playstation in a way pure realism just couldn’t.

Realism is demanded in sports games, but they can’t be too realistic. I was watching a video of Football Manager 2014 and the player complained about a dumb move by one player, calling it a glitch. It may be. But soccer players, even good ones, often do stupid things. They score own goals, they give up the ball to the other team, they regularly bite people. But that’s not the kind of realism people want.

I think I might have killed someone, but I wasn’t even given a yellow card. You can set the referee rate to “blind”, but they seem pretty blind even on default. 

Originally I was going to go the NBA Action route and simulate a whole season. However, several games in I was heading for relegation, so I just gave up.

But how are the goal celebrations?: The world GOAL flashes up pretty dramatically, but that’s it.

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VR Soccer 96

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also Known As…	Also On…	Playstation Review Number
Gremlin	Interplay	3/96 (Europe) 7/19/96 (Japan) 10/31/96 (North America)	Europe (Platinum)	Actua Soccer, Ran Soccer	Saturn, PC	#48

VR Soccer ‘96 is a trying existential nightmare with a soccer game attached.

When starting the cup competition one page of results after another popped up. Advancing through them, witnessing the failures of those who came before, until your number is up.

I couldn’t triumph as the US. I couldn’t as Ghana. The cup was eventually won by Portugal, with runner-up Germany.

Other features include: unnervingly stiff players!

But how are the goal celebrations?: We see the team pumping fists while a big GOAL is displayed on a huge TV.

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Sega Worldwide Soccer ’97

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Saturn Review Number
Sega	Sega	10/31/96 (NA) 11/29/96 (Japan)	#44

The best of the games, one that reminds me of Decathlete: a nice-looking arcade (or sim?) sport experience. Also simulates a competition between national teams, allowing you to set up a whole multi-team tournament (VR Soccer just allows you to pick what teams are competing). I remember multiple things about this game, such as: Graphics. Controls. Menus. Goals?

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Thirty-two bits on a screen,

Polygons still jutting,

Thirty minutes of in-game time,

Pretty much stopped me dreaming

Playstation Racing on Highways and in Formula 1

Today: I play an early street racing game and fail at Formula 1.

32 Bits is a series where I play and review the most popular console games of the past – the games that sold well in their day, not what we look back on fondly now. Why were they popular, what did their success mean, and do they hold up today? Some remain loved, others loathed, while many more are now forgotten. 

Current time: September 1996. The Playstation’s run of weak games continues, despite runaway successes like Crash Bandicoot and Resident Evil making it the number 1 console. The Saturn’s last grab for survival has seen several creative games draw critical acclaim – and commercial indifference. And the Nintendo 64 is about to make its debut…

Information on what games will be reviewed can be found here; my reviews of 1995′s games are archived on this page, while links to reviews from the current season can be found here.

New posts are made every Sunday, while Sega Saturn reviews are posted on some Saturdays.

Tokyo Highway Battle

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also Known As	Also On	Playstation Review Number
Genki	Jaleco	5/3/96 (Japan) 9/30/96 (North America) 6/97 (Europe)	Japan (the Best)	Shutokō Battle: Drift King	Saturn	#45

The History:

A sequel to the game Shutokō Battle ‘94 for the SNES, which never left Japan, Tokyo Highway Battle found worldwide release but only saw success in its native Japan.

The Game:

“INCOMPATIBLE PART”

Tokyo Highway Battle offers admirable customization for its day: the Speed Shop features dozens of parts in a dozen categories. And when you try to buy them, you’re liable to get told that part doesn’t go with your car.

You aren’t told what car it does work with, or why it’s incompatible. You’re just told…well, that it doesn’t work with your car.

Such is life in Tokyo Highway Battle.

(3)2-EXTREME BITS

Today in 32 Bits: I play a game so screamingly 90s that even its menu screens are extreme; a sequel to a Playstation launch title, it proved the last success in a short-lived franchise. Also, pinball.

32 Bits is a series where I play and review the most popular games of the past – the games that sold well in their day, not what we look back on fondly now. Why were they popular, what did their success mean, and do they hold up today? Some are loved, others loathed, and many more forgotten. 

Information on what games will be reviewed can be found here; my reviews of 1995′s games are archived on this page, while links to reviews from the current season – and a list of those to come – can be found here.

New posts are made every Sunday, while Sega Saturn reviews are posted on some Saturdays.

2Xtreme

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Playstation Review Number
Sony Interactive Studios America	SCEA	10/31/96 (North America) 4/11/97 (Japan) 3/6/97 (Europe)	North America (Greatest Hits)	#43

Previously: I played ESPN Extreme Games, a Playstation launch title that tried to give an extreme sports veneer to the Road Rash formula. I didn’t like it.

2Xtreme is undoubtedly the most 90’s video game name ever conceived, a name that makes one run to the nearest source of Mountain Dew and Doritos. And the game is extreme. It’s extremely lazy, extremely poor, and you could make an extremely good case it killed off its series – despite its success. But more on that later.

2Xtreme begins with the typical mid-90s EXTREME TO THE MAX intro where athletes jump, ski and do tricks over a computer-generated mountain. Hilariously, even the game’s menu is extreme: not only is every option accompanied with a blaring explosion noise, each choice brings on a short, first-person cinematic of a skateboarder going down a half-pipe. At the end? You jump up to the other menu you chose. Amazing. Watch it above.

ESPN Extreme Games, this game’s predecessor (renamed 1Xtreme when it came out as one of Sony’s Greatest Hits) posited the existence of a race that sent skateboarders, mountain bikers, rollerbladers and street lugers careening through jungle temples and city streets. The shoulder buttons allowed the player to punch and kick their fellow racers. If the tracks didn’t go on forever, it might have made for some quick, zany fun. Unfortunately, it was just tedious.

2Xtreme plays similarly to the original: you race down courses, you go through gates to get money and power-ups (I honestly can’t remember if these were in the original).

But street luge’s out and snowboarding is in (and get used to snowboarding, folks, because I have Cool Boarders coming up at the end of the season and I don’t doubt that eventually every other game I review will feature snowboarding). Each race only allows for one type of vehicle: Japan for snowboarding, LA for skateboarding, Las Vegas for rollerblading and “Africa” for mountain bikes. The four vehicles mean four courses – less than the original – but each has three stages.

Los Angeles, night.

Los Angeles: a city strewn with barrels in the street. You play this stage on skateboards. Features a night stage that’s, amazingly, just the same level but dark. No streetlights or anything…even though, you know, they’re right there.

Las Vegas: rollerblade down the strip – or a generic city with occasional casinos you see in passing. Casinos with a suspicious lack of neon.

Africa: Where in Africa? The place with elephants, zebras, huts in the middle of the street, and that one tree that’s on the cover of every book set in Africa, of course. Probably the most fun track – to look at, not to play. Just like the South American track in 1Xtreme, jungles resemble every other indoor area, painted green.

Japan: A snowboarding track in Japan. Lots of snow.

Nothing else is different: the game still plays the same in every respect except, hey, you have snowboards now. You still pass through gates. You still face a large pack of racers – though I believe it’s less than the original.

Courses wind on and are largely identical in terms of actual challenges; the 2D sprites used for the characters are still jerky and indistinguishable from one another; the Road Rash-esque mechanics just don’t fit, and the “XTREME” trapping make navigating the game’s menus an incredibly tedious experience.

I didn’t think it could be possible, but 2Xtreme is somehow worse than the original, and the original was awful. The mind-numbing extreme elements, the lack of content, the graphics (which aren’t just bad by modern standards like most Playstation games, but bad by the standards of the 1996), the lack of any change…

The top-selling Playstation games of all time allegedly include Gran Turismo (10 million copies), Final Fantasy VII (9), Gran Turismo 2 (9), Tekken 3 (8.5) and Final Fantasy VIII (8). On the list from 1996: of games I’ve played already, Crash Bandicoot (6.8), Resident Evil (5), Tekken 2 (3), Mortal Kombat Trilogy (2). Games I’ll play soon: Tomb Raider (7), Twisted Metal 2 (1.7), Jet Moto (1.2).

And 2Xtreme sold over a million copies.

I can almost understand why. 2Xtreme’s extreme! Arguably extreme to the max. And people enjoyed the first game. But just like Battle Arena Toshinden, people would reject the game’s third installment. After all, the standards for a launch title are lower and many

1999’s 3Xtreme reinvented itself as a fully 3D game, but kept the same gameplay. Letting the series lay dormant for three years probably wasn’t wise, since the resulting the game was hardly a masterpiece. Unlike its predecessors, I’ve played it before.

I only had a Playstation at the tail end of the system’s life. So in 1999 I popped in a demo disc. There was awkward, failing 3Xtreme. And next to it? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. One promised dull racing, the other speed and freedom. In 1999, this series was on the way out. The other was just about to spawn arguably the system’s greatest game.

It’s not even extremely bad.

WHO MADE IT?
In 1998 developers Sony Interactive Studios America were renamed 989 Studios, remaining Sony’s internal development division. They developed mainly sports games, but they also made games people like, such as 1997’s Rally Cross. But they also made Spawn: The Eternal, one of the system’s worst games. They also handled the post-SingleTrac Twisted Metal games – neither of which were exactly loved.

Their 1998 game Blasto was a comedic third-person action game starring Phil Hartman, and was released a short time before his death.

They’re also credited with publishing 1999’s Syphon Filter, a popular series in the Playstation’s last years, and the Cool Boarders games, as well as 1998’s animal racer Running Wild and NFL Blitz-esque NFL Xtreme (sigh).

A division of the company developing online games such as 1997’s Tanarus was spun-off into a new division that developed EverQuest, one of the first big MMOs. Now named Sony Online Entertainment, they continue to develop games like Planetside 2.

TRUE PINBALL

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On	Playstation Review Number
Digital Illusions	Acclaim	May 96 (Europe) 5/31/96 (Japan) September 96 (NA)	Europe (Platinum)	Saturn	#44

There’s something ghoulish about playing a pinball video game. You’re experiencing pinball on the platform that killed it. Walls of video games crowded pinball machines out of arcades in the ‘70s.

The decline of pinball wasn’t due to creative sloth. Pinball designers responded to video games by merging the two forms. Pinball machines gained voices, LED screens, and new mechanics. This wild innovation sparked a brief pinball resurgence in the 1990s – ironically as arcade video games were themselves dying.

True Pinball’s surprisingly slick presentation offers up several different pinball tables, all emphasizing the kind of multimedia gimmicks you’d find in a contemporaneous pinball game. On the Viking table a fight begun on the screen above the table between two knights; I don’t quite know what happened, but I did acquire a grail, so there’s that.

The square button controls the right flipper, while the left arrow controls the left. Tilting is accomplished by the X button, R1 and L1. It’s an interesting layout since it spaces out the movements in a way that largely makes sense.

I need to confess: I’ve never even played a pinball machine. Except maybe one in the corner of a movie theater. The arcade age passed me by. I discovered them now and then: in a bowling alley, or scattered across hotels in a chintzy vacation town (my favorite: a hotel with a single Crazy Taxi machine in a random hallway). You find a good one occasionally, but it’s fleeting: most will be gone the next year.

In 1996, you’d have been better off playing a real pinball table – if you could find one.

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Next Time: I try to dethrone the 95-96 Bulls with an unlikely team in a review of the Saturn’s NBA Action; I look at Tokyo Highway Battle and Formula 1.

YIPPEE KI YAY MISTER FALCON: A pair of Trilogies starring Bruce Willis and Mortal Kombatants

32 Bits is a series where I play and review the most popular games of the past – the games that sold well in their day, not what we look back on fondly now. Why were they popular, what did their success mean, and do they hold up today? Some are loved, others loathed, and many more forgotten. 

Information on what games will be reviewed can be found here; my reviews of 1995’s games are archived on this page, while links to reviews from the current season – and a list of those to come – can be found here.

New posts are made every Sunday, while Sega Saturn reviews are posted on some Saturdays.

Playstation Review #41:
Mortal Kombat Trilogy

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
Avalanche Software	Williams	9/1/96 (North America) 12/6/96 (Europe) 4/2/98 (Japan)	North America (Greatest Hits) Europe (Platinum)	Sega Saturn Nintendo 64 Windows R-Zone Game.com

Mortal Kombat, I must confess, is one of my gaming blindspots. I just don’t get it and never have. With ugly digitized sprites and cookie cutter characters, I can’t get why anyone in the early 90s would play it over the likes of Street Fighter – were they that starved for blood?

Yes! As someone whose introduction to gaming was the post-GTA III era of games where gory violence was the norm and often ultra-violence was used to compensate for poor quality, it’s hard for me to grasp an era so sensitive that not just violence, but even references to alcohol were banned. Anything potentially contentious, such as religious or political references, was nowhere to be found in gaming in the days of Mortal Kombat. Whether it was a church in a RPG or a game based on Bill Clinton’s cat, Nintendo’s seal of quality didn’t come without limitations. In a time that innocent, ripping out a spine was groundbreaking.

The gaming culture of the time prized the Sega Genesis for not censoring Mortal Kombat’s blood; they also gathered in arcades to witness mythical fatalities.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the second Playstation game in the series after 1995’s Mortal Kombat 3, contains an expansive set of characters: gods of thunder, centaurs, movie stars, cyborgs and a rainbow of ninjas. Characters and arenas from across the series return here in this collection.

The famed fatalities return and are joined by the strangely dull “brutality”. In a brutality, rapid attacks make the character…explode, their bones scattering around.

Aggressor bars.

Also added: an “aggressor” bar. Filling with attacks, a full aggressor bar makes your character stronger temporarily. I don’t think I ever filled it while playing.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy marked the end of the original Mortal Kombat craze. One last hurrah, combining elements from across the game’s most prized installments into one package. I’ll be playing 1998’s Mortal Kombat 4, which brought the series into 3D. Over the rest of the Playstation era the series would be diluted with awful spin-offs that tried to build action games around the characters of Jax and Sub-Zero. The PS2-era Mortal Kombats are liked but weren’t a phenomenon; 2011’s Mortal Kombat truly revived the series.

The culture that fostered Mortal Kombat’s rise to popularity was on its way out in 1996. A kid-driven audience base, only encouraged by parental worries about violence, gave way to adult gamers. Arcades, which thrived on displays of Mortal Kombat’s gore, were dying. No one was censoring violent games; indeed, the newly founded ESRB’s M-rated became a selling point. When critics attacked video game violence their new targets were Doom and Resident Evil. Mortal Kombat outlived its infamy as a source of moral outrage and playground prowess and just became another video game series, albeit a famous one.

If you’re someone who likes classic Mortal Kombat, well, this has all of it. If you aren’t, then there’s nothing here for you but a look back into a once-infamous game. 

(DON’T) PLAY THIS

One game that tried to replicate the infamy of Mortal Kombat: Thrill Kill for the Playstation. A four-player fighting game, the Paradox (not the grand strategy one) developed game was to be published by Virgin – only to be cancelled when Virgin Interactive was bought by Electronic Arts.

A great loss? Not at all. The engine was used for 1999’s Wu-Tang : Shaolin Style and the reaction was mixed. The cancelled game later leaked to the internet; now that people can play it…they found it just wasn’t very good. I haven’t played it personally but I’ve never seen anything positive said about it.

Playstation Review #42:
Die Hard Trilogy

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
Probe	Fox Interactive	8/31/96 (North America) 11/96 (Europe) 12/13/1996 (Japan)	North America (Greatest Hits) Europe (Platinum)	Saturn PC

“THREE GAMES IN ONE”

Earlier this season I played Alien Trilogy, a game that turns the three Alien films into one tedious first person shooter. Today: Die Hard Trilogy, an adaptation of three films turned into three very different games.

Turns out Alien Trilogy and Die Hard Trilogy hail from the same developer: Probe Entertainment, later re-named Acclaim Studios London. A developer whose work spanned from 1986’s The Adventures of Bond…Basildon Bond for the Commodore 64 to 2000’s Dreamcast racing title Re-Volt. Their parent company went bankrupt in 2004.

Die Hard Trilogy turns three films into three different games.

Die Hard

“Die Hard” is a behind-the-back third person shooter.

Die Harder

“Die Harder” is a on-rails light gun shooter.

Die Hard with a Vengeance.

“Die Hard with a Vengeance” is a driving game, of a kind.

You can play any of them whenever you choose.

The “Die Hard” levels received the most praise in 1996. So, naturally, it’s my last favorite now. In “Die Hard” John McClane shoots (fake) terrorists screaming “YOU’RE DEAD YANKEE” and rescues hostages in the office complex of the film; he can sidestep and throw grenades. Though admirably difficult, looking back the Playstation was awash with this type of game, so this is the least unique now. But in 1996, it’s more remarkable.

“Die Harder” represents a type of game rarely seen on the Playstation and does it well. It’s a typical light gun game with plenty of power-ups, some minor side-routes and special grenade & rocket weapons. Nothing too innovative but nothing weak either.

In “Die Hard with a Vengeance”, you’re told to go left. In environments such as a park, city and sewers you race to find bombs in time to disarm them. Occasionally you must ram into a “bomb car” to destroy it. Yes, it’s easy to make up and take a wrong turn – at least then you can see a giant explosion.

Die Hard Trilogy deserves praise for its presentation. The high score entry screen gives each letter to one of your enemies; spelling out your name means accruing a line of terrorists and even people on fire as you run around the circle of villains. The pause menu gives you the option to “think over” quitting, and taunts you for choosing it. McClane can mistakenly mow down screaming pedestrians in “Die Hard with a Vengeance”. It strikes a playful, and completely nuts, tone that works with the frantic arcade gameplay.

Why was Die Hard Trilogy a success? Not just because of its license but also because of the supposed value. Three different games for the price of one, all decently long, all pushing into genres not usually found on the Playstation at the time? It’s a good sign of the diversity that was to come over the system’s life span.

In 2014 I found that I enjoy this kind of uncomplicated arcade experience, precisely because it’s simple. The “Die Hard” section is less compelling due to its necessarily awkward movement and slow gameplay but this game wasn’t meant to be perfect or particularly innovative. And that uncomplicated nature makes it the most enduring tie-in game I’ve played yet. 

POLYGONAL BRUCE WILLIS HISTORY

Bruce Willis starred in an original Playstation game, Apocalypse. The first example of an actor starring in a non-licensed game like it were a movie, he was originally due to appear as a non-playable sidekick. A character you could actually see and hear talk. But he was changed to the game’s hero, a solo type seen from behind who rarely speaks. So Activision paid handsomely to show off Bruce Willis’ ass and have him spout the occasional one-liner in an alright shooter.

Most notable for being cancelled midway through development and restarted, and due to its engine being used for the far superior Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and 2000’s Spider-Man.

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NEXT SATURDAY: Soccer.

NEXT SUNDAY: Myst and pinball.

When Crash Bandicoot ruled the world

32 Bits is a series where I play and review the most popular games of the past – the games that sold well in their day, not what we look back on fondly now. Why were they popular, what did their success mean, and do they hold up today? Some are loved, others loathed, and many more forgotten. 

Information on what games will be reviewed can be found here; my reviews of 1995’s games are archived on this page, while links to reviews from the current season – and a list of those to come – can be found here.

New posts are made every Sunday, while Sega Saturn reviews are posted on some Saturdays.

Playstation Review #40:

Crash Bandicoot

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in
Naughty Dog	SCEA	August 31 1996 (North America) November 1996 (Japan) December 6 1996 (Europe)	North America (Greatest Hits) Japan (the Best for Family/PSOne Books) Europe (Platinum)

6 million copies sold. Pizza Hut ad campaigns and sitcom jokes. The mascot of the era’s most popular console. For a time, a goofy bandicoot was the face of gaming.

Western gamers love Japanese games, but the Japanese rarely play Western games. Crash Bandicoot is one of the few games to cross over – with the help of some retooling to Crash’s appearance and the addition of tutorials.

A global phenomenon, from 1996 to 2000 each year saw a new Crash game. Three platformers, a kart racer, a minigame collection: everywhere Nintendo took Mario, Crash Bandicoot soon followed.

Fame’s fleeting. After the departure of original developer Naughty Dog (who were acquired by Sony in 2001), Crash Bandicoot went multiplatform – and faltered on all of them. Did you know there’s a Crash game on the Xbox 360? Did you know it still, after all these years, apes the basic formula? Do you care?

As Naughty Dog rose in prominence as one of the premiere Playstation 3 developers their original creation faded away in the hands of others.

Last week in my review of Nights I said I hadn’t played any of these games before. Eighty games in and I finally hit one I’ve played before. I owned four Crash games; they’re one of a handful of Playstation games I played before this series. Around 1999-2000, when I briefly owned a Playstation before moving on to its successor. I enjoyed them when I was nine, especially the third and Crash Team Racing.

While some of the games I played when I was young baffle me – why the hell was I so into Gex? – I can understand Crash Bandicoot. Among the most graphically accomplished games of their day, they’re constructed perfectly and are kid-friendly.

But replaying Crash’s debut I discovered, not fond memories, but instead a game that’s deathly dull and profoundly uninspired.

A level where you ride on a hog – animal stages are a common level in the series.

A contemporary of Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot takes inspiration from gaming past. It’s not a radical reinvention of the platformer, just a transposition of 2D platformer standards to a 3D era. The game alternates between purely 2D sidescrolling segments, 3D sections that follow behind the player character and a few gimmick stages.

Crash himself is a typical animal with attitude, though thankfully a voiceless one. He rescues the obligatory damsel in distress captured by a mad scientist. The damsel is Tawna, who disappeared from the series afterward – probably due to being a sexualized female anthropomorphic bandicoot. I’d ask why someone would conceive of such a thing, but searching for the character on Google autocompletes with “Tawna Bandicoot hot”, so Naughty Dog must have reached some kind of audience.

He hops through tropical locales. Unique among the Crash games and fifth-generation platformers in general, the first Crash game features – not a central hub warping you around – but a linear map that takes the player from a beach, across jungles and temples, and up a mountain dotted with labs and castles.

Crash games recycle level themes. A lot. This isn’t a problem usually, as palette swaps and reused assets are endemic and understandable. Except the levels are hardly distinguishable from one another: once you’ve seen one river level, you’ve seen ‘em all.

You won’t find any bizarre one-offs like Yoshi’s Island’s classic “Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy” or Spyro the Dragon’s unexpectedly difficult “Tree Tops”, or Super Mario Bros. 3’s World 5-3, with its unique Kuribo’s Shoe. If a level type is hard, well, at least you’ll have skills for when you have to cross that invisible bridge again.

Temporary invincibility after finding three masks.

Crash Bandicoot can jump and he can spin. One hit kills him, unless he has an Aku mask. Three Aku Masks makes Crash temporarily invulnerable. Collect every fruit you see – 100 fruit confers an extra life. The mechanics of Crash Bandicoot stick rigidly to platformer standards.

Crash’s only true diversion from convention is crates. Added to fill in empty space, they became oddly vital. Crates contain fruit, lives, checkpoints, bonus round symbols and deadly TNT. Jumping on them doesn’t just give you items, but acts as a method of jumping across gaps crate to crate. The bonus rounds especially pivot around complex assortments of crates the player must jump over carefully.

Sidescrolling segments hold up well, though they’re unremarkable. You always know what’s going to kill you, you’re never left confused. You know what you did wrong and know that next time you leap over those pillars, you’ll wait for the lizard to pass.

Sidescrolling levels make use of vertical space: sections involve platforms Crash must spin to create, and take the player up high. Others bounce the player high into the sky to catch fruit or lives on the way down.

The game’s strongest levels, the machine-themed levels late in the game, are wholly decent 2D platforming that uses vertical space in the form of certain bouncing metal pads that shoot Crash up high.

Other sidescrolling levels just go on and on and on. A pair of levels on the outside of a temple throw an endless array of obstacles at you: lizards, bats, pushing walls, fire, long falls. Facing the same challenges again and again makes a game challenging, but it also makes it a slog.

Abetting this feeling: timing. You always have to wait for a flame to go out or an enemy to jump away. Unlike many 2D platformers, there’s no time limit in Crash Bandicoot – and no incentive to build up any momentum or not just take your time.

Behind-scrolling segments work best the less platforming they have. Early stages where the player must jump past giant rolling stones work well with 3D space and perspective, as you have to judge the distance.

My favorite behind scrolling stages are a pair of dark levels, where the only light is provided by Aku masks. The goal is to reach the next one before it goes out and you’re left platforming in the dark. These stages have a momentum to them lacking in the rest of the game.

Levels with precision platforming, like a series of temple levels with fields of quickly collapsing pillars, don’t work in 3D. Possibly because, well, they’re precision platforming in 3D: Nintendo and others largely abandoned precision platforming in a 3D era. But Crash attempts 2D gameplay in a 3D world to varying results.

Of the “gimmick” stages, the most famous are the front-scrolling levels where you outrun a boulder while avoiding obstacles you can’t see. These Indiana Jones-inspired stages became a hallmark of the series. Their gameplay is simple memory: know which way to go or Crash will crash into an obstacle, slowing him just enough for the boulder to hit him. Trial and error. At least they’re quick.

Breaking every crate in a level gives the player a gem. Most gems are clear, but a few are colored. Color gems open up new paths in old levels. These range from a path in the clouds above one level to a crystalline cavern beneath another. My favorite: the last machine level’s gem path is right next to the start and whisks the player to a hallway of extra lives – right above the exit so the player can skip the whole level!

Later Crash games feature secret levels with entry points of the obscure “hit this sign in a motorcycle level to be warped to another world” variety. The original is light on secrets: two keys found via bonus stages unlock additional hog and dark stages.

Crash Bandicoot’s developers sought to create a 2D mascot platformer for the era of 3D. They succeeded at that goal. Was that a worthwhile goal?

3D demanded significant reinvention. Crash didn’t offer that. Nor should it have. There is room for a SNES-type platformer with 3D graphics. Indeed, there are many good, even great 2D platformers in the 32 bit era – 1998’s Klonoa, for example.

But Crash is generic. There’s nothing special about how the game plays beyond the crates; it just faithfully copies the conventions of the genre without doing anything special with them. It’s constructed well – I was never left confused, but I was also rarely engaged. After spinning away so many spiders and jumping over the same flame traps, I just turned my brain off and continued hopping and spinning. Some levels dragged on while others were over in a blink. None of them were particularly memorable. Though Naughty Dog worked around the system’s limitations and created some of the system’s best full-3D graphics, the tropical theme is colorful and appealing enough but nothing especially memorable compared to the art of sterling 2D contemporaries Rayman and Astal. Even the best 3D graphics on the Playstation can’t match up to the sophistication of that generation’s few 2D games.

I understand why people flocked to Crash Bandicoot in 1996. It was the best-looking Playstation game yet (and the environmental graphics at least don’t look too bad today), platformers were popular, it’s appealing to kids and was a Playstation rival to Super Mario 64. Consider also the time it was released: it’s hard to remember sometimes that my week-by-week reviews that I’ve covered eight months of 1996. And during that time there was a grand two major games everyone had to own in 1996 – Resident Evil and Tekken 2. Crash Bandicoot may not have been a great game, but it was the best game of its type on its system, and it marked the end of a fallow period and the entrance into the lucrative holiday season. A month before the launch of the Nintendo 64, Sony was making the case for owning a Playstation.

No one today cites it as a great game, except maybe for people who didn’t outgrow their childhood tastes. On lists of the best Playstation games the third game usually sneaks in, outpaced by the still-popular likes of Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. While Super Mario 64 is well-loved and Nights attracted a fervent cult, Crash Bandicoot is remembered simply as a game everyone played, back in the day.

This is not to say Crash Bandicoot is a bad game. It’s not. It’s just aggressively mediocre, good enough to catch on in its day but not particularly innovative or special. If you removed the 3D elements from Crash Bandicoot and released it on the SNES, you’d have a polished but unremarkable mascot platformer, lost among the crowd. But its status as the premiere platformer for the Playstation, as a competitor to Nintendo’s Mario games, and its association with the 3D revolution causes it to loom larger in the mind.

It should just be an object of nostalgia and a footnote in the history of its prestigious developer. A game that occasionally comes to life – ironically, in its most last-generation stages – Crash Bandicoot is no classic. 

notes

• I’ll be playing a Crash game every season from here on out: 1997’s Crash Bandicoot 2, 1998’s Crash Bandicoot: Warped, 1999’s Crash Team Racing and 2000’s Crash Bash. If I choose to go on and cover the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era, I’ll also play multiplatform debut Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Warped is the apex of the series but I remember Crash 2 being fairly weak.

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Next Time:

• On Saturday – Lemmings 3D, Virtua Fighter Kids, World Heroes Perfect.
• On Sunday – Die Hard Trilogy, Mortal Kombat Trilogy

King of Fighters ’95 and Tekken

 32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games of the recent past; from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360. Why?

• To chart the evolution of games.

• To destroy people’s nostalgic feelings by playing the “classics” they all know…alongside the detritus everyone played at the time, but no one remembers.

• To rediscover games unjustly forgotten by history.

The time is August 1996: eight months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is a month away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Playstation Review #38:

KING OF FIGHTERS ’95

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
SNK	SCEA	8/31/96 (North America) 6/28/96 (Japan) 7/1997 (Europe)	Japan (the Best)	Arcades Sega Saturn Neo Geo

SNK occupies a niche in gaming that was honestly unknown to me. A Japanese arcade game developer, they also created the Neo Geo console. Launching in 1990, the Neo Geo promised arcade perfect ports thanks to its basis in the Neo Geo arcade hardware. Of course, this accuracy came at a cost: the Neo Geo retailed at over $600 – but the niche audience it was pitched at were willing to pay.

My past experience with SNK is limited to scattered memories of playing their 2D weapon fighter, Samurai Shodown. I had vaguely heard of King of Fighters, a 2D fighter bringing together characters from different games of theirs – a fact completely lost on me when I started playing. New King of Fighters games were released yearly until 2003, and the latest is 2010’s King of Fighters XIII for PS3 and Xbox 360.

A 2D fighter, the key gimmick to King of Fighters are the team battles. The player assembles a team of three (while King of Fighters ‘94 made you choose from several pre-made teams, ‘95 allows the player to develop their own team from the whole slate of characters). Before each fight they decide which character goes first and second. Defeating one fighter sends out the next. Winning a round restores a small amount of health, but damage carries over from round to round. To win the player must defeat all three fighters on the other team.

Characters hail from SNK fighting games Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury and the developer’s non-fighting arcade games Psycho Soldier and Ikari Warriors. Others are original. The 2D sprites are entirely competent, though hampered by their traditional sprite style and the poor 2D animation of the Playstation. The characters are fairly generic, however, with the requisite martial artist types, national stereotypes and pop-culture knock-offs. The backgrounds are among the better 2D fighting game arenas I’ve seen and the game makes good use of the foreground.

Ironically, American gamers could not find this game on SNK’s own console. The American release was Sony-exclusive, confining the Saturn and Neo Geo versions to Japan. Unfortunately, the Playstation often had trouble with 2D games: I saw claims that animation frames are missing, but more glaring are the constant load times. Sony didn’t bring over anymore games in the series, and the only other King of Fighters game to make it to the Playstation in the US was King of Fighters ’99 – published by Agetec in 2001, in the wave of belated releases and shovelware after the debut of the Playstation 2. The same game’s Dreamcast version was released at the start of that system’s life in 1999 – and the international Playstation release lagged so far behind that the Dreamcast was nearly dead when it arrived.

A unique 2D fighting game and one of the better ones of its year, King of Fighters ‘95 may seem generic at first but is an admirable deviation from the Street Fighter norm at the tail-end of the 90s fighting game craze.

notes

• My research into this game’s cast was halted when I saw that the Wikipedia page for one (grotesque, overt fanservice) character contained no less than twenty-eight citations discussing her breasts. Not only are there people compiling lists of “the best side-boobs in gaming”, these articles’s readers collect their rankings. Ew, just…ew.

Playstation Review #39:

TEKKEN 2

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
Namco	Namco	8/25/96 (North America) 3/29/96 (Japan) 10/1996 (Europe)	North America (Greatest Hits) Japan (the Best) Europe (Platinum)	Arcades

PREVIOUSLY: Last season I played the original Tekken. I praised its character design and fluid fighting, contrasting it with Battle Arena Toshinden, a weak game over-praised in its day.

Not a radical reinvention of Tekken so much as a gradual improvement, Tekken 2’s not as groundbreaking as the original. Neither is it on the level of Tekken 3, the series’ finest hour. But a retool of a great game…is still a great game.

All characters from Tekken return in its sequel, though the towering Jack has been replaced by the more mechanical Jack-2. Joining them are newcomers Jun and Lei. All sub-bosses are unlockable, from sumo wrestler Ganryu to boxing kangaroo Roger. The new arrivals are capable but not as distinctive as the original cast or the newcomers in its successor.

Tekken 2 retains the fluid fighting of the original. Oddly the character models in Tekken 2 are more rough and polygonal than the originals, a point of some scorn at the time. The arenas, which mix an endless 3D plane with still 2D backgrounds, are generic.

One of the best fighting games of its year, Tekken 2 doesn’t change much. Neither did Battle Arena Toshinden 2, then Tekken’s fierce rival. The difference is Toshinden needed fixing and Tekken didn’t. Toshinden 3 was a marked improvement over its predecessor, but no one cared. The boilerplate sequel destroyed their faith in the series. But Tekken was strong enough that even a minute improvement could hold people’s attention – and they would be rewarded in 1998 with one of the best fighting games of all time.

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Next Sunday: Nights Into Dreams for the Saturn.

Namco Museum repackages retro hits for a retro era

Playstation Review #36 & 37:

Namco Museum Volume 1 & 2

Developed by Now Productions (Vol 1) & Tose (Vol 2), published by Namco

Release Date:

Volume 1: November 22nd 1995 & February 9th 1996 (Japan)

Volume 2: July 31st 1996 & September 30th 1996 (North America)

Best-Seller in:

Volume 1: North America (Greatest Hits), Japan (Playstation the Best)

Volume 2: Japan (Playstation the Best)

Films hail from the 1890s. The novel dates back to the 11th century. Music, ancient times.

Video games as a popular medium began in 1972. Modern console gaming arguably didn’t begin until the mid-80s.

Classic film channels rarely pass the late 1960s, but games are so recent, and evolve so quickly, that 2001 is a far-off vintage era. Hell, 2007 is now firmly in the distant past. No one would call Gladiator a retro film, but games from the same year? The Departed would never be called “old”, but a game released the same day, for a now-obsolete console like the Playstation 2?

So it’s a bit odd to see retro games in a retro era, throwbacks in an era that’s a throwback itself.

Namco Museum is a series collecting 80s arcade games by Namco; recent incarnations have been as downloadable games, but its debut was as six games on the original Playstation. Five were released internationally. The first and third Namco Museums feature games popular everywhere, while the rest are largely made up of Japanese titles obscure abroad.

The game’s virtual museum situates each game in its own unique chamber, at the end of hallways lined with bonus material related to the game. Alas, this material is sparse. Pamphlets, how to play guides, branded sweatshirts: the same kind of objects accompany each game. There’s nothing telling you about the game’s development and little historical context. All this bonus material shows you is that these games were advertised in Japan once. It’s the equivalent of DVDs whose only special features are a trailer.

Each collection features six games.

VOLUME ONE

BOSCONIAN: Free-roaming space action game where you destroy fortresses. The ability to fire behind and in front of you enlivens up this occasionally intense experience.

GALAGA: The sequel to Galaxian, which naturally is on Namco Museum Volume 3. Better than the more famous Space invaders.

PAC-MAN: A simple game, Pac-Man’s enduring fame comes from its primal drives – the nerves of fleeing ghosts in the maze, or the thrill of going from prey to predator.

POLE POSITION: Its pseudo-3D was once impressive – alas, Pole Position has dated in a way these other games haven’t.

RALLY-X/NEW RALLY-X: Another maze game, distinguished by the scrolling screen and smoke screen mechanic.

TOY POP: The only obscurity in volume 1, this co-op action game is a bit too busy.

VOLUME TWO

DRAGON BUSTER: A side-scrolling action game with branching paths, Dragon Buster is ambitious for an arcade game – pity that the combat is so flighty.

GAPLUS: A minute improvement on Galaga!

MAPPY: The centerpiece of volume two, Mappy stars a mouse cop who jumps around a multi-level area recovering stolen goods and evading cats. Doors are used to stun foes, and enemies can’t hurt you while jumping. But creativity alone can’t make a game as universally fun as Pac-Man.

SUPER PAC-MAN: The forgotten sequel to Pac-Man removes pellets in favor of fruit and gate-opening keys. Unnecessarily complicated compared to the original, but not the worst attempt at reinventing Pac-Man.

XEVIOUS: The original vertical shooter feels placid today, though the air-gun and land-bomb dichotomy is interesting.

GROBDA: A spin-off of Xevious, this tank game features colorful explosions and simple, if dull, “raise shields, fire back” gameplay.

The lightweight volume two featured a different line-up originally: Japan featured a game called Cutie Q instead of Super Pac-Man, and a hidden game, Bomb Bee, was removed in North America.

Presumably Super Pac-Man was added to volume two a title recognizable in the west. Otherwise it would be a unsellable collection of games popular only in Japan, though ironically the game added to give the disk broader appeal abroad is also the worst game on either disc.

What’s interesting about Namco Museum isn’t the games on either disk but the fact that this tribute to the relics of an earlier era is now a relic itself. In 1996 Namco wanted us to be dazzled by the 3D graphics of the museum, gaze at how far they had come since the rough days of minimalist 2D graphics. Yet Pac-Man’s look is timeless.

The 3D environments? Not so timeless. What was once a proud display of technology’s progress now looks primitive. The fog, the square patches of flowers, space represented as textures placed on flat walls, the faceless toy-block receptionist: this game looking back at an earlier era now serves itself as a look into an earlier era, a game showing us what the gamers of the past valued and enjoyed now shows us the values of another historical era of gamers.

Namco Museum is a time machine, but its destination isn’t 1980. It’s long ago 1996.

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Next Sunday: Tekken 2 and King of Fighters ’95.

Friendly Ghosts and Jet Fighters: Another Pair of Forgotten Playstation Games

32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games of the recent past; from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360. Why?

• To chart the evolution of games.

• To destroy people’s nostalgic feelings by playing the “classics” they all know…alongside the detritus everyone played at the time, but no one remembers.

• To rediscover games unjustly forgotten by history.

The time is August 1996: eight months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is three months away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Saturn Review #34:

Casper

Developed by FunCom, published by Interplay

Released: August 31st, 1996

Best-Seller in: North America (Greatest Hits)

Also available on the Saturn & 3DO

One of my goals for this series is that by playing games popular in their day instead of what we remember now, I’m looking at the detritus everyone forgot playing, the kind of mediocre-to-awful flotsam that everyone played but no remembers when boasting about how gaming was at its peak when they were eight years old. And if there’s one type of game that’s almost always forgettable detritus, it’s movie-based games.jus

No one boasting about how games were just so much better when they were eight years old remembers the dreary Alien shooters or Wrestlemania-themed Mortal Kombat knockoffs. This is a universal constant: even today movie games are infamously bad, disappointing even the people who made the films adapted. But these games sold well, so people were swayed by the property into buying subpar games- even if they rarely admit it.

Well, I’ll admit it. As I’ve said before, my first console was a Playstation but I only had it for about a year before moving on to the Playstation 2, making the 32-bit era something of a great unknown to me and also minimizing nostalgia. Among the handful of games I owned: the usual Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. And games based on Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. The former is a capable enough action/adventure that improves the less like the movie it is. The latter is just awful. But I bought both – or had my family buy them for me – because, hey, I liked the movies and that was enough for nine-year-old me.

Casper is the first time I’ve played a game created as merchandise for a new movie. I had no idea that there was a Casper movie in 1995. But it was a massive success and the eighth highest grossing movie of the year in the United States (number 1 was Die Hard with a Vengeance, and I’ll be playing that movie’s game later).

I’ve never seen Casper but it’s not necessary. Games based off movies often turn their inspiration’s stories into a montage of clips representing the most basic plot points – or worse, their approach to the source material is incomprehensible and fragmentary. Casper follows the first method: it skips the majority of the movie, turning it into just four scenes. The final boss doesn’t make her debut until the fight begins despite being the villain of the film.

I was prepared to scorn Casper, but it turned out to be a strange little game. Most movie-games are horrendously uncreative – they follow the leader and copy whatever’s popular. I was expecting the usual generic 3D action game or a 2D platformer. Instead I found a 2D adventure game that’s based all around exploration.

Fleeing a boss in Casper.

There are no enemies, only bosses. There’s no combat, as boss fights play out more like puzzles. The game focuses on puzzle solving. The puzzles revolve around switches, keys and doors. It’s all the keycard-finding excitement of Doom, with none of that boring demon-fighting!

I sound like I’m scorning Casper but I actually enjoy this unusual style of game. And it’s easy to see why they made it this way. Presumably there was a directive to make the game non-violent, as its target demographic was children.

Then again, this game isn’t exactly perfect for kids. Why?

• It’ll confuse them. The door and switch filled rooms all blend together after a while. The game helpfully suggests you draw your own map.

• Progress can be unintuitive. The 2D perspective lets the developers hide passages and objects behind the foreground wall – you have to either methodically explore every last corner or just know where the secrets are.

• Jump scares. Mild stuff for adults, but imagine a kid’s reaction when a ghost pops out of that chest they’ve just opened and attacks them, or when laughter echoes out from parts unknown.

• Also the only characterization-based scene the developers bothered to include is Casper discussing his death.

So Casper will confuse, baffle and scare children, and remind them of their mortality.

But despite this, it is an easy-going, relaxing game. You glide around, solving puzzles, exploring, not worrying about threats or killing legions of enemies. Even boss fights are usually just puzzles to solve.

A catchy score and convincing environments lend a well-realized atmosphere to the decaying mansion in Casper.

Casper adopts the “carrot dangling” style of game design so prevalent during this time. You can explore anywhere, but you’re always running into areas blocked off due to you lacking the right objects and abilities. Since you saw these impediments earlier, it feels like you’re really making progress when you do earn the right ability to pass.

As always with these games, the early abilities are indispensable and the last ones practically worthless. The first “morph” lets Casper turn into mist and pass through vents, which appear at every stage of the game. But the last abilities may be used just once, right after you find them.

Those who enjoy exploring would enjoy the many secrets of Casper, which include at least one terribly obscure puzzle. Solving a bonus puzzle gives you the “Casperman” morph; use it near a certain chair in the attic to reach a secret area. Then use the bonus “spring” morph on the spiral in the mansion’s lobby to enter a room with three walls of switches and gold spelling out 52-2-20.

The solution? All I’ll say is it involves binary. I neither found or solved this puzzle myself, and only learned of it on Youtube.

Casper can be repetitive due to the endless banks of switches and doors and keys, but it’s an unusually accomplished movie-based game. In 1996, this game was bought by parents for their kids. But in 2013 we can see how FunCom innovated within a usually uncreative, bandwagon-hopping genre. 

Saturn Review #35:

Bogey: Dead 6

Developed by Pegasus Japan, published by Sony Computer Entertainment America

Released: August 6th 1996

Best-Seller in: Japan (the Best)

There are a few interesting things about Bogey Dead 6.

It was one of the first games to support the Playstation’s analog joystick. First I mistook this for the analog controller, which is still sadly a year away. But this peripheral was a joystick for serious flight game fans. I didn’t have it so I felt the game’s control was frustratingly imprecise.

In its native Japan Bogey Dead 6 is known as Sidewinder. In Europe, it is named Raging Skies. The Playstation the Best rerelease renamed the game again to Sidewinder USA.

Personally, I know it as “second-rate Ace Combat that’s just too unremarkable to have strong opinions on, so it made me write the most half-assed review thus far”. 

____________________________________________________________________________

• Sunday February 9th: Namco Museum, Volumes 1 and 2 
• Sunday February 16th: Tekken 2 & King of Fighters 95 
• Sunday February 23rd: Nights Into Dreams 
• Sunday March 2nd: Crash Bandicoot 
• Saturday March 8th: Legends of Oasis, World Heroes Perfect, Virtua Fighter Kids, Discworld, Lemmings 3D 
• Sunday March 9th: Mortal Kombat Trilogy & Die Hard Trilogy 
• Saturday March 15th: Adidas Power Soccer, VR Soccer 96, Worldwide Soccer ’97, NBA Action 
• Sunday March 16th: Myst & True Pinball 
• Sunday March 23rd: Tokyo Highway Battle & Formula 1 
• Sunday March 30th: Ridge Racer Revolution & Wipeout XL 
• Saturday-Sunday April 5th-6th: Saturn round-up, lineup to be determined
• Sunday April 13th: Super Mario 64 

In 1996, Two PC Classics Made Their Way Onto the Playstation – How did they fare on consoles?

32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games of the recent past; from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360. Why?

• To chart the evolution of games.

• To destroy people’s nostalgic feelings by playing the “classics” they all know…alongside the detritus everyone played at the time, but no one remembers.

• To rediscover games unjustly forgotten by history.

The time is July 1996: seven months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is just over two months away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Playstation #32 |  Playstation #33:

Worms  | SimCity 2000

        Developed by Team 17, published by Ocean | Developed & published by Maxis

        Released: 1995 | Released: July 9th, 1996

        Best-Seller in: Europe (Platinum) |  North America (Greatest Hits), Japan (The Best)

        Originally developed for Amiga | Originally developed for Mac OS

In the Playstation era, computers and consoles existed in separate spheres. In the next decade it was de rigueur for games to make their way onto the Playstation 2, Xbox and usually the Gamecube; big and small games alike now routinely find homes on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, computers and even handhelds. But in the fifth generation, each console’s library consisted mainly of exclusives, with only token efforts at porting PC games to consoles and vice versa.

There are reasons for this, but let’s leave those for a later day. Today’s two games, SimCity 2000 and Worms, are PC classics with popular Playstation ports. One successfully translated to consoles. The other didn’t.

The quirky strategy game Worms fares well on a console. Controls are simple: move, jump, choose weapon, fire. It moves at a rapid clip, with each player’s turn lasting 60 seconds or until they fire. And to its benefit, Worms is a fantastic local multiplayer game. This game is so simple you could play it by just passing a single controller between players!

But just try navigating the many menus of SimCity with a controller. Yes, it can be done. But it’s never as intuitive as just using a mouse. Yes, there was a Playstation mouse – but how many people ever used it? Since the vast majority of players would use a controller, why not try to optimize the game for them? SimCity 2000 for the Playstation also runs somewhat slowly and graphically is inferior to the original, or even the Saturn port, which shows buildings evolving.

But people played SimCity anyway. Mainly because they had no other way. it’s hard to believe now, but once a game as simple as SimCity 2000 would be too advanced for some computers. And in 1996, at the dawn of the internet revolution, computers were far from ubiquitous.

You can slate SimCity for not being retooled for consoles; I just have, after all. But the goal of porting SimCity wasn’t to make a great Playstation game. It was to open up the game to new consumers on a new platform. These consumers just wanted to play SimCity; they didn’t care if the game wasn’t optimized for consoles, as they had no other option, or they just preferred their Playstation over their desktop.

Worms remains fun but has been superseded by later games; SimCity is frustratingly inaccessible due to the uncreative port. Both, however, opened up these games to new markets – and that’s all their developers wanted.

Worms: 

SimCity 2000: 

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NEXT TIME: Casper and Bogey Dead 6 and maybe some helicopters.

THEN: Namco Museum; Tekken and King of Fighters; Crash Bandicoot.

Konami and Sega bring the Track and Field game into the 32 Bit era

32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games in the past console generations, from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360.

The time is June 1996: six months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is three months away, while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

The only thing the Playstation games I play have in common: membership in Sony’s Greatest Hits line, or its European and Japanese equivalents. These games all sold at least 150,000 copies and are a guide to what everyone played then.

Some of these games are remembered fondly, some are despised and many are forgotten completely. Why were they popular then, and what can we learn from them today? Find out in 32 Bits.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Playstation #31 & Saturn #32:

International Track and Field & Decathlete

Developed and Published by Konami / Developed by Sega AM3, published by Sega

Released: June 28 / July 17 1996

Originally developed for arcades

International Track & Field: Best-seller in Europe

1996 was the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic games. So naturally, they were held in…Atlanta? In the realm of gaming the world played platformers based on the Atlanta Olympic’s bizarre blue mascot Izzy and the then two-year-old industry convention E3 left Los Angeles for a brief run in Atlanta in 1997 and 1998.

And also in 1996 a type of game dating back to the days of the NES saw new life on the Playstation and Saturn thanks to Konami’s International Track and Field and Sega’s Decathlete.

A sequel to a 1983 game called Track & Field, International Track and Field features eleven Olympic events that you navigate with frenzied button mashing. That’s not a complaint; it’s the point of the game. Up to four players jam the square button to run as fast as they can.

Events include a sprint, hammer and discus throwing, long jumps, pole vaults and more. In some you run as fast as you can and then press an action button at the right moment. In others you use the run buttons to spin as fast as possible before hitting the action button to toss an object.

A race in International Track and Field

Track and Field’s frenzied minigames seem simple but are hard to master; simple enough to play easily with friends, quick enough so no one gets bored, and easy to jump in and out of. Additionally, the character animation can have moments that are quite realistic for their day – such as the characters falling over if they spin too hard.

Sega’s Decathlete is essentially the same at first glance; you still jam on run and action buttons. But Decathlete places a stronger focus on a single campaign – which makes sense, as it only allows two players versus the four in Konami’s game.

You run an athlete through a Decathalon of every event, all in one go. Decathlete is relentlessly cheery. The graphics are quite colorful in comparison to the realism of Track and Field; when you win, a cheerful – and poorly translated – message pops up saying “LET’S GO NEXT GAME”. The end credits display your character’s triumphs – even if you failed an event and scored nothing, it’s shown as an moment of glory.

A race in DecAthlete.

Decathlete explains how to play every game; the games work similarly to those in Track & Field, with running and action buttons. In some races you are shown your character and rival’s strength so that you can pace yourself. One unique event is a 1500 meter race. This race, which is joined with unexpectedly majestic music, lets you maneuver around other racers. But since Decathlete only allows for two players, only one other racer is a “real” opponent and the rest are a horde of anonymous clones.

Games like this rely on pure muscle memory. Doing well requires coordinated repetition of the same movements. Players of International Track and Field created whole “methods”, guides to the best ways to hold the Playstation controller to achieve better times. It’s a shame that no matter what method you devised, you couldn’t easily share your time with the world back in ‘96.

Which one’s better? Decathlete has better presentation and some unique events; International Track & Field has four-player multiplayer. The latter would have the edge in 1996 due to the increased number of players. Does it matter today? These games provide a window into an era where slack-jawed Smurfs represented the United States to the world, and where people spent their days furiously mashing square buttons in the hope of a better time.

Decathlete:

International Track & Field: 

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Next Saturday: A look at three early shooters for the Saturn.

Next Sunday: PC classics Worms and Sim City make their way onto the Playstation.