61 Frames Per Second : Saturn

Vandal Hearts Resurrected, Has Terrible Character Art

John Constantine — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

You’d never suspect that, once upon a time, strategy RPGs were a rare and beautiful beast. Twelve years ago, you wouldn’t open a magazine and think, “Ah, yes, I see. This month there are thirteen different Game Boy games coming out from Namco, Square, Inis, Nippon Icchi, and Atlus that will allow me to train tiny warriors to walk across a colorful grid to slaughter evil beasts. Oh, look, there’s six more on Sony’s Playstation and nine more on Sega’s Saturn. Can’t wait to see next month’s haul. I’ll be moving across those grids and having fun until the sun goes out, by gum!” It just didn’t work like that. There were only a few of them. There was Tactic’s Ogre, which was made by Yasumi Matsuno. Then there was Final Fantasy Tactics which was, um, made by Yasumi Matsuno. But then there was Vandal Hearts, a dead ringer for Matsuno’s SRPGs that was, in fact, not made by Matsuno. It was one of Konami’s early Playstation/Saturn RPGs that, like its cousin Suikoden, could have easily been mistaken for a Super Nintendo game. It had its fans, but after one sequel it disappeared into videogame history. That’s why Konami’s announcement of a Xbox Live Arcade/Playstation Network prequel, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, is such a surprise. They showed off some of the game at their Gamer’s Night 2009 event and Vandal Hearts is looking pretty different ten years after its last installment. First, the game’s entirely polygonal now, with a much darker color palette than it had back in the day. Its character art also looks less like this:

And more like this:

Bleh.

Word is Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment is out on XBLA in August and PSN shortly thereafter. More snide commentary on the art style as we see it.

(Link: Siliconera)

Related links:

The 61FPS Review: Suikoden Tierkreis
PSOne on PSN: Somehow, it’s Suikoden
Beating the Dead Horse Who Has It Coming: Playstation Releases on PSN

Namco, Why You Gotta Make Me Hit You: Sonic Co-Creator’s Unnecessary Pac-Man “Comeback”

John Constantine — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Namco has hired Hirokazu Yasuhara to create a new Pac-Man to celebrate the little yellow glutton’s 30th anniversary in 2010. Namco chief of operations Makoto Iwai told Gamasutra that they’re making the game as a comeback vehicle for Pac-Man, to try and make him a relevant icon in today’s game market. When it comes to making great character-based games, you can’t do much better than Yasuhara. Yuji Naka’s gotten most of the glory, but Yasuhara was the real brains behind Sonic the Hedgehog’s glory days. He acted as director for the original Sonic trilogy on Genesis, was lead designer for Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, and headed up Sonic’s unfinished Saturn debut, Sonic Extreme. After leaving Sega, he joined Naughty Dog and acted as a designer for Jak 2 and 3 as well as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. That right there is a flawless pedigree, a veritable trail of excellence blazed across a decade and a half.

Why in the hell has this man been hired to make Pac-Man relevant again when Pac-Man’s creator already did just that two years ago? Someone please tell me how it makes sense to hire one of the best platformer designers of all time to make a freaking Pac-Man game? History has shown that a Pac-Man platformer is a terrible, terrible idea. Did Namco somehow forget Pac-Land? How about Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures or the Pac-Man World games? Is this selective memory or just idiocy? To quote one Tycho Brahe, which is it Namco? Assholes or retards? You don’t commemorate a game’s anniversary by making a game that is fundamentally different than the source material. I’m happy to hear Yasuhara’s getting more work, but this is a silly waste of a valuable resource.

Truth is I’m only angry about this is because of what a fantastic game Toru Iwatani’s Pac-Man Championship Edition is. It is the definitive version, and it perfectly modernized the 1980 classic in both presentation and play. You want to celebrate the 30th anniversary? Make an updated version of CE. You want to do something worthwhile with a talent like Yasuhara, Namco, you let him make you a brand new game.

God damn Pac-Land. Just listen to that music. That’s what hell sounds like.

Related links:

WAKA, WAKA: Pac-Man Championship Made Old School-er
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Pac-Man Championship Edition
Burn Your Skin for Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Champion

Life Without Playstation

Bob Mackey — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The future is a funny thing. If you had told me back in the fall of 2005 (what I regard as the height of the PS2) that Sony would be a money-bleeding mess three short years later, I probably would have slapped you out of pure contempt. It wasn't that I was a Sony fanboy, you see; it's just that the thought of a powerful company taking such a fall from grace was something once regarded as sheer lunacy--hell, even when Nintendo was sucking with the N64, they at least had the Pokemon brand to pump billions of dollars into their coffers. Sony? ...Not so much.

Things have gotten so bad that a London Times article from a few days ago slyly pointed to some major changes in the Playstation brand as a possible solution for Sony's problems. Changes in this case meaning massive upheavals:

Despite the promise of reform inherent in the appointment of Sony's first non-Japanese head, sources close to Sir Howard describe three years of frustration as the company's British-born chief has tried to impose changes on an unwilling entrenched management. Those frustrations - and a clear internal cultural clash between Japanese Sony and its US and European operations - have finally begun to be noticed by Japanese analysts. Several have started to call for Sir Howard to be free to take a “gloves-off” approach to running Sony, even if that means that the axe falls most heavily on the group's Japanese operations.

This wouldn't be the first time a cultural clash between East and West led to the death of a console; the Sega Saturn died mainly because of the miscommunication, separatism, and, at times, antagonism between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Sonic X-treme, what would have been the system's killer ap, wasn't really helped by the fact that legendary dickhead Yuji Naka threw a hissy fit when he learned the team had co-opted some of his NiGHTS code for their own purposes. And really, the little petty East v. West problems with the Saturn are endless--though they are fascinating. But interesting stories don't exactly make for a profitable business; Sony's sleek little overpriced panther of a console is looking more and more like a Jaguar as the days roll on.

Related Links:

Sony’s New Year’s Resolution
New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 1
New Year's PS3 Wish List: part 2

Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions

John Constantine — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Mule [myool] – noun – an individual, male or female, who exhibits qualities of sweetness, silliness, generosity, enthusiasm, exuberance, exaggerated sexuality and adventurousness simultaneously.

Some things just pass you by. Sometimes you turn on the radio and hear a song that makes you perk up and when you find out who it was, turns out it’s your all-time favorite band. You never heard that song before and it baffles you that something like that could escape your attention. I felt that way after checking out the unedited Kenji Eno interview put together by Shane Bettenhausen and James Mielke over at 1up. Not only have I never played a single game by the maverick designer, but up until today I didn’t even know who he was. Which, I have to admit, is frustrating the ever loving hell out of me. Eno is responsible for some of gaming’s most infamous cult creations (shooter/point-and-click adventures D, D2, and Enemy Zero) and other oddities that I have trouble believing are even real (off-the-wall minigame collection Short Warp came packed with a condom. It was for the 3DO. I shit you not.) The man is downright fascinating, his powerful creativity coming through in every one of his answers in the interview. I just wish I knew about him earlier, especially last week when I was writing Easy Access. As one of our esteemed commenters mentioned, Eno created a Saturn game called Real Sound that was actually a mystery game free of visuals. Even more interesting is that he actually made it specifically for blind players.

1UP: After D, you surprised Warp's fans by creating an offbeat Sega Saturn adventure game, Real Sound.

KE: Oh, that's a funky game.

1UP: Yeah, not only was it funky, it was also a game without any visuals. What inspired it, and how did you get Sega to publish it?

KE: After I released D, people were always expecting more CG graphics from me, and I got tired of that. I didn't want people to think that they could predict what Warp would do next. Also, I had a chance to visit people who are visually disabled, and I learned that there are blind people who play action games. Of course, they're not able to have the full experience, and they're kind of trying to force themselves to be able to play, but they're making the effort. So I thought that if you turn off the monitor, both of you are just hearing the game. So after you finish the game, you can have an equal conversation about it with a blind person. That's an inspiration behind this game as well.

The man is an absolute, total mule.

Head over to 1up and read the whole thing. If anyone out there is a Kenji Eno fan, please point me in the right direction for what to play.

Related links:

Easy Access
Raised on the Stuff
Far Out, Man