See if Duke and his special guest from the present, Chris Roberts can repair the biggest time fragment yet. Can Duke recall one of the most significant memories from his childhood? Watch and find out!
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Star Wars in our modern age if such a strange thing. It's hard to believe that once upon a time, most of the Star Wars games we had to play were either ports of existing arcade games or rehashes of the movies into action and platforming games. At least on consoles, which is all I had access to during those days. But over in PC Land the good times were a little different. But over in PC Land, something else was brewing, something that combined a newly recognized genre popularized by DOOM, with our beloved Star Wars universe. And it had a new story featuring new characters. Of course, I am talking about Star Wars: Dark Forces for MS-DOS.
Continue reading Star Wars: Dark Forces for PC
Over the years, MANY games based on the Star Wars franchise have been released. Some to great acclaim, like the Rogue Squadron series on the N64 and GameCube, or the original Star Wars Battlefront games during the 6th generation. Others haven't fared so well. Many SW universe games have been lost to time, like the Jedi archives. Where does Star Wars on the Game Boy rank among the list? You'll have to watch to find out!
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Image shamelessly linked from GameFaqs.
It's Star Wars, and it's a "Million Seller" - how bad can it be?
I am a fan of Star Wars. I'm a big fan of the original trilogy of movies, I don't completely hate the prequel films, and even got some level of enjoyment (as a kid, anyway) out of the two "Ewok Adventure" films, and the short-lived Droids cartoon. Though I didn't get to go see it right away, I did go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and enjoyed it very much. I plan to go see it again, if I have the opportunity before it's out of theaters, and will be purchasing the BluRay once it's available. I own at least 3 Star Wars-themed t-shirts and a zipper hoodie, and as of this writing, I own 2-dozen video games set within the Star Wars universe. I have the final VHS release of the original trilogy (before George Lucas began changing subsequent releases with his revisionist history), I own the "special" edition DVD set, and at some point, I hope to own the original trilogy on LaserDisc. I'm holding out for a BluRay release, hoping that, at some point, Disney will decide it's worth putting out something equivalent to the original theatrical release (or at least the final VHS/LaserDisc version), though that could be a sticky Wicket (see what I did there?), if Lucas made that a stipulation of his $4 billion sale of Lucasfilm to the Disney corporation. After all, those of us "in the know" won't settle for a cut of the original film where Han Solo didn't shoot Greedo first, right? Needless to say, I'm a big fan of the Star Wars universe, characters, and mythos.
Continue reading Star Wars, 1990
We have dissected a number of console launches thus far in the Transitions Blog, but thus far each one has been for what could probably be considered a "successful" console. For the first time then, in this entry, we will be examining a console that, by most measures, was considered a failure: the Sega 32X.
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The 32X, of course, is not even a "proper" console in the traditional sense as it is technically an add-on like the Sega CD before it or like other peripherals before and since which have been tied to a primary system (the Atari Supercharger, Nintendo 64DD, etc.). Nonetheless, it has its own library of games, was marketed and sold much like a system, and has a distinct set of features that distinguish it from other pieces of gaming hardware.
The 32X, to many, represents the first tragic misstep in the long-running decline of Sega. Confusingly marketed as something of a stop-gap enhancement for the Sega Genesis prior to the release of the Sega Saturn, the console was seen by many to be over priced and under-powered. Released in November of 1994, a little less than a month after the release of the Sega Saturn in Japan and a little less than a year from that system's U.S. launch, it was almost destined to have a short life from the start.
The sordid tale of the 32X has been covered many times on many other gaming websites, so this entry will attempt to do something a little different and specifically examine the official build-up and launch of the console. Even if gamers and analysts were skeptical of the systems prospects from the start, it is still interesting to think about how Sega tried to market and launch the 32X in and against this context.
The Launch Buildup
Like other consoles of its era, much of the buildup and hyping for the console occurred in the pages of gaming magazines. If you could sell the product well to readers in the pages of EGM or GamePro, you had a real shot to get them into the store on launch day. Sega of America had the most control of this message in the pages of Sega Visions, which they used to promote the 32X for several issues before its debut. Here's how they did that:
April/May 1994 Issue
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Poor NBA Jam gets booted off the front page for a "Late Breaking News Blast!" about what the article would refer to as the "Genesis Super 32X." The article itself, despite its prominence on the cover, is a mere single page in the issue. On that page, readers learn interesting tidbits like "Sega has over 30 games in development and expects 60 will be released in the first year" and that the system, despite using "2x32-bit chips" that allow an arcade experience, will cost less than $150. Sega Visions promised its readers a "complete rundown" on the system and a "sneak peak" at its games in the next issue.
[img width=480 height=640]http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq17/dsheinem/2-1.jpg[/img] June/July 1994 Issue
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Far from the "complete rundown" that the previous issue promised, readers were greeted with two whole pages of information on the 32X in the June/July issue of Sega Visions. There's actually less information here on the whole, though some games are listed and the $149 price point is reiterated as well as the promise of "30 games" in development by Sega. In terms of buildup, there's not much new here to see other than the picture of the console.
August/September 1994 Issue
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Four months out from launch, this is the first issue to really provide any kind of detail on the console. 20+ third-party publishers are listed as working on games for the system and screenshots and blurbs appear for several titles. In addition to the sub-$150 price point, interesting promises include "you're gonna have a large selection of hot titles to choose from" and "by the end of the year you could be playing arcade-perfect versions of mind-blowing games like Virtua Racing Deluxe, Star Wars Arcade, or Cyberbrawl. Or any one of the other totally sensational Genesis 32X games available at launch." Most impressive is the claim that "As a matter of fact, 60 new games will ship by the first of next year." Here the hype train is starting to leave the station and go off the rails...
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October/November 1994 Issue
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Doom takes front and center here, and in the issue published before the 32X's release, Sega Visions offers some substantial information on the cover game, an ample amount of screen shots of the 32X in action, and pictures of 36 Great Holes, Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing Deluxe, Metal Head, and Super Motocross. Perhaps the overload of images was meant to take away from this little detail: the system would now cost $159, not $149 as prominently suggested previously.
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The boast of "an estimated 60 titles" to be released in the first year is a bit of a retraction of the earlier claim, and the five games previewed are listed as games that "should be ready when the system ships in November." Anyone paying close attention to the shifting language in the coverage from issue to issue should have noticed that things were starting to look shaky for the viability of the system even before launch.
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December 1994/January 1995 Issue
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Hitting the holiday season, the 32X launched in November 1994 in the US and Europe and in December in Japan (a few weeks after the Saturn's launch there). Instead of highlighting the system in the issue that likely would have been arriving in Visions subscribers' mailboxes around the time of the 32X's release, the staff of the magazine relegated 32X coverage to sneak peaks of four games, two of which were already released. Importantly, the 32X was the only Sega system to not feature any reviews, so subscribers were left with only hopeful previews to give them impressions of the quality of the games that had already been talked up in the previous issue. Gone entirely from this issue are boasts of the system's price or upcoming library. It seems, at the most crucial moment for promoting the system, Sega Visions itself pulled back to focus on late-era Genesis and Sega CD titles. With the already-out-in-Japan Saturn hanging over Sega of America, Visions' 32X coverage would continue to be sporadic in subsequent issues of the magazine throughout the system's short life.
[img width=640 height=480]http://i429.photobucket.com/albums/qq17/dsheinem/6.jpg[/img] At least it had the benefit of the vintage Sega adcopy.
The Launch
When the 32X hit stores in the US in mid-November 1994, here's a sense of how it looked
It was cheaper than the CD-I, 3DO, or Saturn but it was more expensive than the Genesis or the Super Nintendo. This is a best guess. Taking a look at this old Canadian Sears Wishbook from 1994 (where the 32X isn't even listed) and knowing that Canadian prices were usually a few more dollars than their US equivalents, you can see that the Genesis and SNES were selling for $150 and $160 CAD, respectively. Given that the US price for the 32X was $160, it stands to reason that the Canadian price would have been closer to $175 or so, making it no small investment at launch. Perhaps to compensate, the 32X did offer $10 rebate coupons towards future game purchases.
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It was up against some tough competition. The 32X launched in the same month as the critical and commercial success Donkey Kong Country and NBA Jam: Tournament Edition and a month after Sonic and Knuckles, Super Punch Out, and Final Fantasy III. It launched a week before the Atari Jaguar and, as mentioned, a month after the Saturn had already been released in Japan. It was selling Doom after Doom II had already been released for PCs. It was a confusing system, with a small library, released in an overly-crowded video game market.
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It only featured two launch games. Despite the boasts found in Sega Visions, when the system actually hit store shelves it did so only with two titles: Doom and Star Wars: Arcade. In terms of the IP selection, these are two solid launch games that made a lot of sense in 1994 when both Star Wars and Doom were still extremely popular franchises that were guaranteed to garner sales. Earlier that year, for example, the acclaimed Super Star Wars series on the SNES had concluded its run with the release of Return of the Jedi. Today, both Doom and Star Wars Arcade continue to be held in (relative) high regard as some of the stronger titles for the 32X, with especially the latter showing off its technical capabilities more than many other titles would ever do. Still, though launching with two games had happened before (e.g. the Master System) and would happen again (e.g. the Nintendo 64), it seemed an especially dangerous proposition for a console that was positioned as a stop gap measure and, in the buildup to launch, had promised much more from the start.
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Today, it seems obvious that Sega was promising more than they could deliver. We of course now know much more about the history of this era, the feuds between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, the botched Neptune, etc. but none of that was common knowledge to a consumer standing in the aisle of a video game department in November of 1994. Sega didn't do enough to convincingly promote the console in its own magazine, sent it out with a small set of games into a crowded market, and ultimately gave it a launch that set it up for the failure it would become.
In the end, retailers famously had to cut the system price to $19.99 to clear it out. Less than 40 games would ever be made for the system, many of which were only slightly enhanced ports of existing 16-bit titles. In a future installment we'll look at some of the end of console life 32X games, which saw its final release just 14 short months after its launch.
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When Star Wars: Dark Forces was announced as March's game of the month for the Together Retro game club at http://Racketboy.com, I wasn't quite sure how to feel. On the one hand, I was excited at the prospect of trying out a game I had never had any experience with. Certainly it had attained its Greatest Hits package because enough people liked it. Right? And plus, I was back into the swing of seriously collecting PS1 games again. So it was a great excuse to snatch this one up. But on the other hand, I'm really not a Star Wars fan. I mean, I saw the original trilogy growing up. I certainly was aware of the license. But I was never all that into it either. So I've always avoided games based on it.
Upon first firing it up, I felt a bit of relief. The truth is that I don't have all that much experience with first person shooters. I did enjoy Wolfenstein 3D and Doom during the golden age of freeware. I loved the GBA Duke Nukem sequel. But for the most part my experience with the genre was limited. So imagine my comfort when I realized that Dark Forces was cut from the same mold as Doom.
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It should certainly be distinguished that Dark Forces is not quite a Doom-clone either. I mean obviously it borrows at least something from such an influential game, but it also adds a lot as well. The most impressive addition being the ability to freely look up and down, thus adding an extra layer of importance to the 3D environment.
The first few levels impressed me immensely. Even without being a Star Wars fan, there was a lot to enjoy here. The absolute high point for me with this game was the level design. Each level was amazingly well thought out and featured various puzzles or gimmicks that made them stand out. Whether it was dealing with the absence of light until getting a power generator running, or navigating through multi-level platformed mazes in a sewer, the game offered incredible levels to explore and enjoy.
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Unfortunately there was one major drawback to the game that completely derailed my progress: the lack of ability to save anywhere. You see, in Dark Forces you can only save your game after you beat a level. This might be fine in a game like Doom where you can shoot your way through a level in no time. But whereas Dark Forces concentrated so heavily on mission-based levels with puzzles and mazes and other various objectives, this really hurt things. At least for me.
After spending about an hour and a half making my way through a maze-like level one evening, it got to a point where I simply had to go to bed. So that was it. I had to just hit the power switch and lose ninety minutes of progress. The slightest thought of powering up my console to replay that same ninety minutes over again just enraged me. Especially if I wasn't able to complete the level before having some other real world thing to deal with. There was no way, man. No way.
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So honestly much of the month was spent with that mindset. I'd pick up Dark Forces with the intention of making some more progress. But then I'd look at the clock and figure I best just play something else instead. I figured I just didn't have the time to devote to a single level like that. Considering many (probably more recent) games of this nature my let you save your progress as you go, I'd probably do better with them. Y'know making my way through a game in baby steps.
But that got me to thinking a bit about the whole concept. I mean, is it wrong to want your game to be so flexible? I couldn't help but think back to Resident Evil with its infuriating typerwriter ribbon save system. Now certainly I don't look back on Resident Evil with any disdain, but I will say that I was thrilled that saving was a far more easy and constant prospect by the time Resident Evil 4 was released. I'm also somewhat reminded of the save-state debate that's developed since the dawn of easily attainable ROM's via the internet. While we old timers might look down on the youngin's for "cheating" by using save-states, how many of us actually have time to handle all of our day-to-day adult responsibilities and keep replaying the same dungeon over and over again? (I'm looking at you Ice Palace).
I know I've gone off on a bit of tangent here. But I guess it's nice to know that even if I didn't get a chance to really get as much gameplay enjoyment out of Dark Forces as I may have wished, at least it caused me to do some thinking.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy located somewhere in the desolate universe named Cali-Forn I. A. a then, arguably, still talented George Lucas created what was originally supposed to be a Flash Gordan movie, but somehow, people felt that Lucas was too big of a hack, even then, to give him film rights to the franchise so told him to make his own setting. And create it he did. 4 years later, in 1977, came the franchise that made being a nerd more acceptable in the form of Star Wars, the sci fi space opera story of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress except with more implied incest and Harrison Ford shooting stupid fish men who everyone but me can understand. The nerd world rejoiced and Star Wars became a hit, a classic, and a source of milk money for Lucas.
Since then we've had Star Wars products like you wouldn't believe: lunch Boxes, costumes, toys, hell, my friend's keg was an R2-D2 replica. Crank his top and you get cheap watered down beer. Good times. Continuing this trend of getting money to support his habit of ruining my childhood, the products eventually sifted into video games and here I stand with the six hundredth title in the Star Wars video game lineup: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, or as it will be herein referred as: STFU.
STFU is a game that takes place in between episodes three and four of the movies, which in actual numbers is between the last star wars movie and the first star wars movie. The game attempts to fill in some of the gap between the two films, much to the ire of many fans. You take the role of Darth Vader's secret Jedi apprentice, Galen Marek, who is only known within the game under the moniker of Starkiller; a character who continues in the Lucas tradition of trying to make bad ass out of someone who looks like they'd been pampered all their life. Marek is essentially trained by Vader to be his assassin in eliminating the remaining Jedi until Vader feels fit to overthrow the Emperor and take his parking spot, because I guess the handicap area just isn't cutting it.
The plot sees some twists, which I thought were interesting, if not predictable. However, one thing I wish to say is that plot was actually one of the strongest elements in this game. While sometimes the plot feels a bit thin and experienced sudden inexplicable jumps within the story in cut scenes, I felt that the overall plot was better than any of the newer movies. Starkiller is a fairly likeable, if somewhat under played, character with poor dress sense and the supporting characters are all interesting, if again under played. In fact, that seems to be the first half of the problem with the plot in that while there are a lot of cool characters, but none of them seem really explored too much. For instance, the love interest between Starkiller and his pilot never seems to be explained as to how it develops outside of one cut scene. The two never really seem to spend any time together, but I can see that as understandable in that we're here to play a game, not watch a movie. Out of interest, Darth Vader's character finally comes back into being a good villain instead of anything Hayden Christiansen did with him. The biggest problem with the plot, however, is that it never really feels like you're able to change anything since the canon has already been established as to what's supposed to happen via episode four. There is an exception in that you're allowed to slightly alter the ending with a decision you're able to make within the game, but the end result is ultimately the same.
The game play consists of you taking Starkiller through a variety of very linear missions that essentially amount to: "Go from point A. to point B. through environment F. and kill subject D", while you engage enemies in hack and slash saber play with a slightly stiffer control than Devil May Cry. Controlling Star Killer is easy, and I will say that he is well enough animated and has a variety of moves to unlock, however part of the problem is that you'll never use 90% of these moves unless you just want to be fancy, as a single combo is enough to last you through the game. Infact, it's disadvantageous to use anything but this combo as the electricity benefit that goes along with it stuns your opponents preventing sudden reprisals while you recover. As such, a lot of what should be the awesome fight scenes that occur during the cut scenes boil down to you pressing square square triangle triangle until whatever you're killing is killed and killed good and trust me, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be killed out there as EVERYTHING is trying to kill you, but I'll get into that later.
To aid you in you single handedly combating an army of genetically enhanced super soldiers and fish men assholes who apparently just don't like you being on a planet they happen to be on is one of the tauted features for the game's creation; the ability to use the force in new and unprecedented ways that surely belong behind a bullet point. This amounts to you getting three abilities that can be used in a number of ways: moving objects through the force via force grip and force push and shooting lightning from your fingertips and your giant polish sausage that doubles for a light saber, since I guess a weapon that might actually cut stuff is too hard core for an assassin. So, you have all these new and revolutionary powers at your disposal! Surely these break open the flood games of creativity and give you limitless strategies and improve gaming kind for forever! Not really. Everything that is done here using the force has been done before in an under rated game called PSI-Ops and pretty much anything else that decided to be derivative of it. In fact, anything found in STFU, PSI-Ops did better and more creatively and with far fewer limits to how you could use your powers. Using the force in itself is a problem, mostly due to one of the most glaring flaws in the game. The targeting.
You will find in this game that there are MANY times you'll try and hit something or use something only to find that you're just standing there like a goon, throwing barrels into the wall instead of the giant tin man who is firing rockets into your face like it was going out of style or using your lightning ability on some part of the environment because Starkiller apparently is angry that he was rejected as Dynamo in the Imperial run version of The Running Man. Half the time even when you do have a target that is actually killable, it isn't the one you need to kill. I realize your character is supposed to be an apprentice novice assassin when you first take control of him, but logic dictates you try and kill the asshole putting fist sized holes into you with his flak cannon over the imperial officer that falls over and dies from one hit. Hitting and acquiring specific targets is almost impossible if there's a group of targets and you're just better off diving headfirst into battle and duct taping the left analog stick in the proper direction with hopes your character doesn't decide to try and attack guys that are 10 feet behind him.
Speaking of falling over, you'll find that's something the enemies like to do. They trip over a lot of stupid stuff. You'd think for elite soldiers who don't have shoe laces, they wouldn't fall all over themselves half as much as they do. "What causes this?" you may ask. Another bullet point called Euphoria AI. As advertised, they claim it makes the enemies smart by giving them sub routines that make them wish to preserve their lives and act more realistically. In reality? This makes the Empire's most deadly soldiers blundering morons who fall all over each other a third of the time, stare at walls another third of the time, and lastly pay attention to you and ONLY you for the remainder. You will find that you'll walk into an area that is a huge battle between storm troopers and the native alien species who are duking it out until they see an iota of your existence where everyone suddenly drops what they're doing and goes apeshit crazy in an attempt to club you with their rifles until you have detached retinas.
The AI also really knows how to take advantage of the flaws within the game and exploit them on the level of any fighting game tournament player. Granted, I played the game on hard to prove I'm hardcore like that because the demo was pretty easy, but there are points in the game where the computer takes advantage of things that make it very very frustrating. The third boss in this game will haunt my nightmares of hard bosses, not because he was especially difficult in terms of developing a strategy to defeat, but because of unavoidable cheap hits that because of the difficulty take off massive amounts of your life bar. For example, when you're knocked down on the ground, it takes Starkiller a few seconds to get back up at which point you're defenseless. You might as well just have a big sign on the seat of your pants that says "Insert wide load here", as you will be raped and there is nothing you can do about it. At one point during my attempts to fight this boss, he knocked me down due to an unavoidable counter that he performed. After which he used force push to blast my almost full life bar down to about 15%. There are many times in boss fights that characters have almost entirely unavoidable, unpredictable, or plain unblockable moves that take off half your life bar and if they happen, you might as well just toss your controller down and wait for your game to reload after you die. This isn't just bosses however because there's a number of segments where you are just bombarded with enemies whose families you must have murdered in their sleep as they strive to do nothing but piss you off through cheap unblockable hits, some of which come from off camera so you never knew in the first place to dodge. This is a problem considering your main means of attack is either standing still and throwing things from a distance with your force grip or moving just slightly while you whack people with your big red club to teach them they've been naughty children.
There's also a section of the game that causes some people unforeseen amounts of frustration and it's the section where you have to bring down a star cruiser with the force. The problem here isn't that the section is difficult in itself, it's that the displayed controls are misleading. Instead of indicating that you should be pushing the left analog stick to the left, it appears that you're supposed to be pushing it to 9 O'Clock, so for the first 10 or 15 minutes of doing this segment I was faced with a mystery as to what I was doing wrong exactly which leads to another problem. If you have no clue what you're supposed to be doing, this game is very unforgiving and gives very few clues as to what you're doing wrong.
Overall, the game is mediocre and causes a number of problems for a number of crowds I found. You think that this would be a dream game for die hard star wars fans, as even with all this criticism the game is still worth a play through if you're an action fan and have some patience, however they seem to take issue with the a few issues, such as the apprentice's lightsaber being a foam replica and never really doing much damage to anything in particular or just the overall idea of the plot. On the other hand, action fans may be put off with some of the unfair and bad mechanics within the game as well as the rather shallow fighting. There also isn't very much replayability to the game, because you never can really interact with any of the characters or change the fate of the apprentice. So if you're thinking of getting STFU, give it a rent first, you can probably beat it in a single sitting as it's only about 10 missions long and decide from there as it might just be best to wait till the price has been reduced.
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