It’s not an STG that does anything particularly unique, but you don’t need to be wholly original to be a good time, and Keio Flying Squadron manages the latter. If you’re into Parodius-style shoot-em-ups and the kind of very Japanese aesthetic you’d find in Pocky & Rocky, you’ll dig Keio Flying Squadron. Each also has their own kind of units that follow them into battle, as well: Sega CD games would often use the extra space that the CD-ROM format allowed to utilize additional animation and audio options, but here, you see Sega using that space to go the extra mile with the scope of the game itself. You have four different choices for ruler, all with their own personal backstory and reason to want to both lead and defeat evil outside of it just being the right thing to do, and the story will play out differently depending on which of the four-a prince, a horse girl, a sorceress, or a vampire-you select. In this case, the forces of the titular Dark Wizard. The basic story is that the king has died, and a new ruler must be selected, who will then lead their armies against your typical forces of darkness. But it’s not just the hexes that separate Dark Wizard from its fantasy brethren: it also utilized the extra space on the CD format of its platform to put in voiced, animated cutscenes, and an actual orchestral soundtrack at a time when the best you could get in that realm was whatever (admittedly brilliant) magic Yuzo Koshiro could pull off with a synthesizer.ĭark Wizard has more to offer than just some sound that was ahead of its time and hexes, however. Dark Wizard, on the other hand, is hex-based, like Hudson’s sci-fi strategy game, Military Madness. Strategy RPGs started to release left and right in the early ‘90s between the rise of Fire Emblem, Shining Force, and plenty of others, and they, for the most part, had battles that took place on square grids. For the rest of us, there is just the question of why Snatcher hasn’t seen a re-release in English in a post-Metal Gear Solid world. These changes (and expanded plot) were also in the PC Engine CD-ROM version-which is included in the Turbografx-16 Mini-but you need to be able to read and understand Japanese in order to play that one. Snatcher is Blade Runner meets Terminator in a noir-tinted graphic adventure form, and it’s an excellent slice of cyberpunk that deserves a better stateside reputation than it has.Įarlier releases of Snatcher were a bit more basic: the Sega CD iteration leaned on the CD-ROM for high-quality audio that the fantastic soundtrack deserved to be heard in, and for voice acting that didn’t appear in the original release. The humor, the connected worlds- Snatcher takes place in the same universe as Metal Gear, just far into its future-and the love for film are all present. It’s a shame, too, because it’s best described as the film school version of Kojima: he hadn’t fully developed into the game designer he would become just yet, but you could see all the little bits there, rough edges and all. The graphic adventure game-an early-career Hideo Kojima title-was released on the PC-8801, the MSX2, the PC Engine Super CD-ROM, Mega CD, Sony Playstation, and Sega Saturn in Japan between 19, but only the Sega CD edition ended up in North America. Only a few thousand English language copies of Snatcher ever existed. We always get Genesis Collections each gen, but where’s the Sega CD one? Don’t make us wait for a Sega Genesis Mini 3, either. Now, not all of that is necessarily on Sega, since rights have to be negotiated with various publishers, but regardless of the why, let’s talk about Sega CD games that should be re-released somewhere, whether it’s on the various modern consoles’ digital shops or as part of some compilation release. However, 30 years after its debut, it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t get enough credit for what it did do well: even as Sega releases a second version of the Sega Genesis Mini in late October 2022-this time with Sega CD games in the lineup-they’re missing some obvious titles that should have been included, ranging from good for the system to just flat-out great. It had some obvious problems-some self-inflicted-to contend with. Was the Sega CD a perfect peripheral? It was a Sega device made in the ‘90s, so no.
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