Hub42tube gaming - Zombies were people too

What made the Saturn great INSERT RING PUN HERE.

After last week’s Saturn celebration/commiseration I broke the old beast out of storage and went through my Saturn games to check out what it was about the system that made it stand out for me.

The first thing I notice is the game boxes.  Playstation games come in plastic CD style jewel cases, the N64 have cardboard boxes like the SNES, the Saturn however is a little different from the norm, they resemble the cardboard cases the first DVD’s came in, you know the ones- they had the tear out proof of purchase tabs- (what the help were they for?? why were there loads of them in each DVD???).   The card sleeve was glued to a plastic lining that has a CD/DVD shaped recess that allowed you to click the game disc in safely- this gave a really nice bespoke feel to the games and set them apart from the cheap boxes of the N64 and generic CD style of playstastion.

Having dung through the box and realised the AV lead was missing i spent 20 mins looking through draws full of cables trying to find the sega one withe the odd S video style connection for the console.

Ive written at length about the different styles and models of the saturn so im not going to go on about this, suffices to say that it looks great, keeping black megadrive looks and feel.

But its the games that set it apart, Nights, Sega rally and datona are all gold in my eyes and theres enough exclusive titles to keep up with the likes of Playstation.

At the end of the day it was a rushed launch, lack of games and Sony's master stroke of embracing the 20 somthing post pub/club crowd that where the real nails in the saturns coffin, the console its self was pretty damn fine.

Happy saturversary.....birthdaturn....oh forget it! The saturns 20...

Its 20 years since SEGA launched the Saturn on the world. As you know I’m a bit of a SEGA fan, seeing as I believe the Dreamcast to be the best games console ever released, and as such I thought i would post my own personal experiences with the doomed playstation rival.

The media is focusing on the negative side of the launch- Sony’s petty $299 one word price point announcement, the panicked early release and the subsequent supply problems.

I’m going to tell a different story, one of joy and 90’s retail displays, of packaging and the mistaken belief that a certain blue hedgehog would turn up late to the party and save the day.

The year was 1995, Brit pop was king, baggy jeans were worn with pride, unaware of their hideous skinny future and the world (well my world) waited with baited breath for the 32bit gen to start.

Having read all about the up and coming consoles in both Edge and Mean machines magazines I was over the moon to find out the Saturn would be released early.

Back in the 90’s Virgin megastore was still a big deal in the UK; in Brighton it took up 5 floors of a building on what was then the main shopping street. Most of the floors were taken up with music, video and band posters and t-shirts; however the 3rd floor had an entire corner taken up with video games. This was when specialist game shops were not as common as today, you had to go to HMV or V store to be able to play the latest games consoles to release- and they looked great! The machines were encased in Perspex bubbles, game pad cables hidden in flexible tubes with the pads screwed to the ends to stop little toe-rags from stealing them. The attached monitors were hidden in neon and plastic to give the look of futuristic portals to other words- the whole thing looked like future zone from the crystal maze crossed with the Nostromo from Alien. 

Each screen ran demos for the respective consoles, Playstation had wipeout and Toshinden, 3DO had Jurassic park (oh dear, oh dear L ) but the cream of the crop was the Saturn with Panzer Dragoon, an on-rails shooter that had dragons, castles and huge flying gunships, all beautifully rendered in 3D.

This is how I will always remember the Saturn, not as Sega’s next misstep or as a failure, but as a great console that dared to hold onto smooth and crisp 2D sprites in a world of jaggy and low textured 3D, as a great alternative to Sony’s rave loving, lad mag reading zeitgeist snatching monster.

Don’t get me wrong, the PS was an amazing machine and I still own my first one, it’s just that i also still have my original Saturn as well, and in hindsight there is not allot to hate about it- okay it had more graphics chips than a 3DFX landfill, and was a bugger to program for- but when it was done right, it was just soo right.

Well happy birthday Saturn fans.

Head for Saturn!  

Zombie Revenge or a dish best served cold...and dead...braaaaains.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig a shit load of graves.

After moving some of my collection from my attic to my newly decorated man cave (or the second bedroom if you speak to my wife), I stumbled upon a crate of dreamcast discs that i bought off eBay but never got round to unpacking.

Among the usual street racers and chu chu rockets was a game i had only ever played in the arcade before, Zombie revenge.

Quite what the title means I have no clue- can zombies get revenge? Are the zombies having revenge reaped on them? Is someone using them a tool for revenge? We may never know however here is what we do know.

Released in 1999 in the arcades and at the same time on Dreamcast, ZR was a spin off from the house of the dead light gun series. As such it features allot of the same characters and themes as thotd games.

Having played the first 3 hotd games and several spin off games (pinball of the dead on the GBA being a surprise fav of mine) im used to the francise trying new and bizarre directions (im looking at you typing of the dead),  however this one is somthing really different.

Gone are the on rails shooting range levels, instead we get a free roaming beat em up in a 3d streets of rage style. You can punch, kick and shoot your way through the hoards of the dead that jump, run and even operate fire arms (yes there are shotgun toting zombies in this one).

The cut scenes (they use the ingame engine) feel very hotd, with hamy, stilted and just plain weirded dialogue "Here, take this. A man with golden eyes told me to give it to you!".

The game plays allot like dynamite cop, you move to a new area, punch, kick or shoot enemies till they dont get up again and then move on. After several areas are clear you move onto a boss fight, this is where zr really shines, the battles are fraught and the giant undead freaks
are well designed with a good level of challenge without being to irritating.

If only the controls weren’t so bloody fiddly! Actually aiming is automatic with your character locking onto the nearest enemy, but the camera angles make it very hard to see where you are shooting, this is not helped by the fact you shoot the creature you’re locked onto and so others can sneek up off camera and hit you before you know they are there.

Picking up items and weapons is also a drag, you have stand right on them and press the right button to pick them up, easy enough you say! Well it would be if you could see if you are actualy standing on them, the camera pans to such odd angles that your not sure where exactly the right place to stand is, this is also an issue when level hazards like lasers and fire balls that reqiure you to stand in particular spots to avoid them, you end up guessing and half the time you get killed for not having a clue where to stand.

As per usual in hotd games, you have to rescue innocents who are trapped in the now zombie infested city. These bits are quite good, they usualy take place in a store room of locked off area with little room to manoeuvre and as such add a nice degree of tention while you defend the hapless fool whose got themselves trapped with the dead (if there is not a zombie film called trapped with the dead then someone  needs to make one!).

This is an out dated beatem up for a dead system, hotd has long since been rebooted as hotd overkill, a game that openly parridies itself and the francise.  However it is great fun as a 2 played romp and some of the boss designs are awsome. So if you fancy an early 2000's arcade perfect zombie blast you could do allot worse...now all i need is a sequel - Zombie 2-the re-revengeaning anyone?