Dreamcast Retrospective Day 8: Soulcalibur

Despite the fact that I recently spent an ungodly sum of money on the best arcade stick on the market, I haven’t always liked fighting games.

In fact, I used to hate them.

Until quite recently, my relationship with them was very casual.  Street Fighter IV marked only the second fighting game I’ve spent any notable amount of time with, and BlazBlue only the third.  These two might have been enough to spur me into buying the aforementioned hulking arcade stick, but they don’t give me a lot of history with the genre.

There has been one fighting game series, however, that I’ve always adored.  One series that has always stood above all the rest for me.  One series that has kept calling me back and provided countless hours of entertainment over the years, playing against friends and the computer alike.  One series that has challenged me to learn its every nuance when other fighting games simply bored me, frustrated me, or turned me away.

That series, of course, is the Soulcalibur series, and the first game launched along with the Dreamcast on 9/9/99.

I didn’t even like fighting games at the time.  To this day I’m still not entirely sure what convinced me that trying out this particular fighting game was such a good idea.  I hadn’t played it at anybody else’s house or tried a demo.  

I had simply read a review in my beloved Electronic Gaming Monthly calling it, and I’m paraphrasing here, I freaking awesome game and I decided to give it a shot.  

One thing that hasn’t changed about my gaming habits over the years is that I’ve never been much for spur-of-the-moment purchases.  I do my research before handing over my money.  I might have read reviews and seen screenshots beforehand with Soulcalibur, but this was about as close as I ever come to buying a game on a whim.

Boy am I glad I did.

Right away I realized that this game was somehow different from other fighting games.  Or at least it felt that way to me.

I could pick up the controller and with amazingly little effort be doing really cool moves.  In a short amount of time I felt like I actually had a hang of the fighting system; I felt like I actually sort of knew what I was doing.  The default difficulty was even reasonable enough that I didn’t have to drastically dial it down just to survive.

It was my kind of fighting game.

I’ve never liked gaming experiences that are “realistic”.  To this day I don’t like to play Madden as I’d rather be playing Mario Tennis.  I don’t like to play Gran Turismo as I’d rather be playing Burnout.  And I don’t like to play Virtua Fighter because I’d rather be playing Soulcalibur.

Something about the fantastical weapons-based fighting system managed to grab my attention where detail-oriented fighters with a realistic bent, such as Virtua Fighter, could never grab me for any length of time.

The original Soulcalibur is still one of the best entries in the series.  The graphics have since been surpassed, but it’s hard to believe how good they still look.  I don’t think any other game since has instilled in me quite the same amount of awe in me that seeing Soulcalibur running on the Dreamcast for the first time did.  As much of a last stand as the Dreamcast was for traditional arcade titles in many ways (see Crazy Taxi, Daytona USA, Ooga Booga, and many others), it also signaled the beginning of the switch to console dominance.  The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur looked much better than the already highly-acclaimed arcade version and had a better feature set to boot.

Soulcalibur’s experience as a single player game was only rivaled by that of Soulcalibur II, but the original was definitely more memorable.  The series has yet to do better than the Weapon Master mode for single player fun and the first game nailed the balance between difficulty and fun, while still throwing in a crazy amount of unlockable items.  

The character creation mode of the newer games is great and I applaud their willingness to try new things with the single player experience, but the original game’s feature set is still, in some ways at least, the best.  It may lack some of the bells and whistles and newer characters I’ve come to love, but it’s still damn fun.

Unimportant little extras abound and really add to the overall experience.  There was tons of cool artwork to unlock.  There was a mode where you could rearrange the characters in the opening sequence, a totally pointless but fantastic addition.  There were modes that have since disappeared from the more recent installments for no explicable reason, like some of the team battle modes.  It was a truly astounding package.

The newer games may have improved upon it in many ways, but no Soulcalibur game since has brought as much wonder to the table at once as the original.  

I have this terrific game, this game I picked up from out of nowhere, this game that launched right along with the Dreamcast on day one, this game that has spawned a love of the series and fighting games in general to thank for many happy memories playing this game by myself and in countless heated matches with my friends.

…

Oh, and no announcer in any other Soulcalibur game can ever top the performance given by the guy in the first game.  I don’t know why.  It’s just the honest truth.  Live with it.

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 7: Ooga Booga

Despite the Dreamcast’s relative obscurity in the gaming world, there are a good number of its titles that have become fairly well known, many of which have already been featured in this retrospective.

This is not one of them.

Ooga Booga may not have the popularity of Crazy Taxi or Space Channel 5 or Jet Grind Radio, but it definitely has the fun to compete with the best of its better-known peers.

It belongs on that special list of games, and every true gamer possesses such a list, that I can claim to have heard of and adore but nobody else has any idea what I’m talking about. 

Ooga Booga is a simple title and, as the name subtly hints, is not a serious one.  It is a relatively straightforward action game that, because of its simplicity, still manages to retain its charm and fun factor to this day.

You played as the Kahuna, or witch doctor, of one of four charming tribes: Hottie, Hoodoo, Fatty, or Twitchy.  The goal was to compete on mysterious island arenas for the favor of the Volcano Goddess by battling the other tribes.  Each tribe has their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as a special ability.  Other weapons at your disposal include shrunken heads, which can be collected from all around the levels and thrown at your opponents, and spell tokens, which you can pick up to use spells such as mines, fireballs, lightening, tornadoes, and meteors, among others.  You can also catch one of the creatures of the island, either a boar or a bird, and run around on it and attack other players.  Finally, you can claim Tikis using shrunken heads as payment and they will act as automatic turrets, attacking enemy tribes whenever they come near.

It is simple, arcade-style fun, and incredibly addictive.  There are even multiple match types to change things up.  Most time will be spent in Smakahuna, which is a free-for-all match type where each tribe competes for points earned by attacking other players.  In Rodeo mode you can only score points by attacking enemies while riding an animal, and in the wonderful Boar Polo mode, you ride on boars and play what is essentially a very bizarre game of soccer, using the boars to push a giant ball down the arena, around obstacles, and into the opponent’s goal. 

By playing the single player Tribal Trial mode you could unlock not only expected game content like spells and creatures, but also new Kahunas, stages, and other wacky fun things.  Or you could just use the cheat codes, which were awesome and numerous.  The unlockable characters were simply awesome.  You could play as Death, Disco Dude, a Leprechaun, a Pirate, and more, all of which had plenty of charm and personality.  There were also multiple decorative masks you could unlock for each character.

Like so many titles on the Dreamcast and so many aspects of the hardware itself, Ooga Booga was ahead of its time.  It came too late in the Dreamcast’s life cycle to catch on with anything even approaching a large audience and, let’s face it, the game is a little too weird to be tremendously popular anyway.

But the game is a great example of a terrifically addictive party game that is a blast when you get a bunch of friends together to play it.  It would be a truly perfect fit in the modern gaming landscape as a downloadable title on Xbox Live Marketplace or PlayStation Network, or even on the Wii, complete with a few modern conveniences and online play with a nice broadband connection.  I doubt there’s anywhere close to enough demand for such a remake to actually happen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep the dream alive.

The game did include online play that was a lot of fun in its day.  It wouldn’t exactly have given Xbox Live a run for its money, but but it was still fun, and better than anything else at the time.

As it stands, it might feel a little dated, but I can almost guarantee that if you get a group of people together to play this game and go into it with an open mind, then you’ll still end up having a blast. 

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 6: The Internet Experience

A recurring theme of this Dreamcast retrospective is that Sega’s ill-fated console was, in more ways than one, ahead of its time.

Nothing demonstrates this more aptly than the console’s attempts at Internet integration.

Yes, the Dreamcast connected to the Internet, a fact that is easy to forget when online connections are taken for granted among today’s hardware.  Hell, even portable hardware can go online now.

But back in 1999 things were quite different.

No other console had really tried to make the Internet a vital part of its strategy before.  There were perhaps nibbles at it here or there, but nothing significant.  With the Dreamcast, Sega saw the future of gaming and attempted to be the one to start the revolution.

Given what they had to work with, I’d say they did an admirable job.

There’s only so much you can expect out of a console that only comes equipped with a 56k modem.  How quaint that now seems.  Still, Sega made good on its inclusion.  Slow as dialup access may be, it was still a bold move to pack a modem of any sort in with the console at the time.

The Dreamcast was no Xbox Live, but it outdid Sony’s console until perhaps the PS2’s later years and blew Nintendo’s GameCube out of the water, plain and simple.

Not bad for an “outdated” console that launched in the dark ages of the 1900s. 

The list of games that featured online play is pretty impressive.  All number of genres are covered.

NFL and NBA 2K1 and 2K2.

Bomberman Online.

Chu Chu Rocket.

Phantasy Star Online.

Worms World Party.

Alien Front Online.

Ooga Booga.

Quake III Arena.

Daytona USA.

And a number of others.

You have sports, multiplayer RPGs, racing games, action games, puzzle games and more all covered. 

Ok, so it was a little clunky, it was dialup, there was lag, etc., etc. 

This was 1999!  Cut them a little slack.

Ok, so the Internet thing started to reek a bit of desperation when Sega started giving their consoles away for free when you subscribed to their online service, SegaNet, but it’s hard to blame Sega for doing whatever they could to get their consoles into people’s hands by that point.

I would not particularly look forward to going back to the Dreamcast’s online services today, but at the time they were revolutionary.  It was also yet another sign that Sega was simply too far ahead of the curve for its own good.  You couldn’t accuse them of that for their other consoles, part of their reoccurring problems with hardware, but with the Dreamcast they finally did really get it right.

Sadly, it just wasn’t enough.

People didn’t trust Sega enough by that point.  Their game was over.

It didn’t help that the PS2 loomed on the horizon, adding yet another bullet point to the long list of areas where Sega missed its timing.  Its graphics were revolutionary for the brief period they held the spotlight until the PS2 came out, but with Sony’s box on the horizon, they couldn’t generate the sales necessary to support the console.

I love my PS2, don’t get me wrong.  It was a true gem of a console in its own way.  But the PS2 wasn’t the console that I went online with for the first time. 

I remember it well.  First I had to fish through the piles of demo discs I had looking for the latest version of the Dreamcast web browser.  Then I’d pop it in and wait for it to load.  The soothing sounds of the screeching modem soon followed and, shortly thereafter, I was surfing the Internet on my television through my Dreamcast.

Yes it was slow.  Yes it was awkward.  Yes it was quaint.

But damnit, it was cool at the time!  It made my Dreamcast seem more important than just a lousy game console, even if I didn’t use the feature much.  In another example of Sega hinting at being ahead of the curve, it gave me a glimpse into the future of gaming, where consoles really are more like little computers and media machines than the dedicated game players they used to be.

I suppose it’s yet another example of a great memory I have of my wonderful days with the Dreamcast of an experience that wouldn’t really hold up today. 

But that’s what makes the Dreamcast even more special to me and the many other fans it has to this day.  It was a period in history that cannot be replicated.  It gave us memories that, for one reason or another, will never quite be matched.  Even if it may seem quaint today, it was glorious then and it shall forever remain glorious in our minds. 

I certainly wouldn’t want to have to go through it again, but some part of me still misses that special screeching noise of the Dreamcast’s little modem hogging my phone line. 

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 5: Shenmue

Ah, Shenmue.  Dear Shenmue.

It is a game that simultaneously represents the Dreamcast’s highest highs, its greatest dreams, and its most significant achievements, but also its lowest lows and most obvious, most disappointing failings.

Shenmue was indescribably ambitious.

Its tale was epic.  Its scope was vast.  It featured detail and immersion the likes of which never before had been seen in gaming.

Shenmue, unfortunately, also came before the period in game development history where it had quite been figured out how to make such large, open worlds consistently interesting. 

Shenmue’s was, quite simply, ahead of its time.  This is to be admired, to a point.

The game still provides an experience unlike any other.  It is more or less an RPG, with a large world to freely explore, an epic quest to delve into, tons of people to talk to, and numerous side activities to keep you occupied.  You could actually go to an arcade within the game world, play arcade games on the virtual arcade machines, spend your virtual time doing this as the clock would continually advance all the while, and spend your virtual money that you had earned in your virtual job in order to play.

How much more immersion do you want?

Say what you will about the kind of activities that are actually fun inside of a video game world, Shenmue was nothing if not comprehensive. 

Shenmue was even the originator of many trends that are still present in gaming today.  It could be argued that the notorious quick time event, for one, was brought into popularity by Shenmue, for better or worse.  Dragon’s Lair was of course the true originator of the quick time event, but Shenmue brought it into the modern age. 

To this day, Shenmue remains one of the few examples where it really worked during gameplay.  It allowed the game to immerse the player in action sequences and combat sequences that otherwise would not have been possible within the mechanical framework of the game.

Understandably, as well-worn as this mechanic is these days, it doesn’t hold up quite as stunningly when you play it today.  But at the time this was a fairly interesting concept that worked in the game’s favor.

The game was also one of the earliest examples of the sprawling, hyper-detailed, realistic, open-world settings that are pretty much everywhere in gaming today.  Everything from Grand Theft Auto to Burnout Paradise must consider Shenmue as one of its forefathers. 

I still look back fondly on the world of Shenmue, for I feel it provides an experience unique in gaming even to this day.  Shenmue is essentially an RPG.  This is a game built primarily around talking to other people and living out the story of the main character. 

And an interesting story it was.

But unlike most RPGs, combat was not the primary focus.  It was far from neglected, but it was also not the reason the game exists.  Story, puzzles, and dialog were the primary things the game focused on.  What you got was a fairly, dare I say, realistic RPG.

Shenmue told a tale that was actually, at least to a point, believable.  I could believe that this character was out there, somewhere, doing these things to find the killer and avenge his father’s death.  Ryo didn’t do anything out of character or so over the top that it was clearly in the realm of fantasy.

Ryo felt like a real, human character, doing whatever was in his power to do what he thought needed to be done. 

Sure it wasn’t the most action-packed game.  Sure the pace plodded at points.  But the realistic tinge given to the proceedings by those very “faults” gave it an entirely separate attraction. 

Wandering around this highly realistic Japanese, and later Chinese, city, talking to people, solving puzzles, and advancing the plot in a realistic manner at a realistic pace is something you really don’t get to do in games all that often. 

The fantastical nature of video gaming sometimes has a tendency to sap away some of the potential base-level human connection with the characters that Ryo, with all of his faults and relationship issues and self-doubts, offers in spades. 

It has long been said that games can’t do emotion.  They are all essentially in the same realm as action movies and are incapable of drama or provoking sadness, so the saying goes.  I’m not about to claim that Shenmue actually did break this barrier and achieve this impossible status, but I do think that it’s one of the better examples out there of a game that has come rather close. 

Sadly, the ambition that made the game so memorable also brought its downfall.

It was truly a game before its time and gamers just did not see the appeal.  Only the first game ever made it to U.S. shores on the Dreamcast (which did not stop me from acquiring a European copy that I am quite proud of at great expense, one of my only endeavors in importing).

The project was too ambitious, too expensive, and unfortunately not nearly popular enough to justify continuing. 

There should be no claims that the original Shenmue was perfect.  Clearly it was not.

Review scores of the day indicated that the game was highly divisive even at the time.  Some thought it was the highly-detailed second coming of the RPG genre, others thought it was a gorgeous but incredibly boring waste of time.

Frankly I can see both sides of the argument.

To me there still remains something special about Shenmue, despite its faults.  I haven’t touched the original Shenmue in seven to eight years, but despite the time that has passed, I can still recall areas of the game vividly in my mind.  I can still see and hear the characters I spoke to during the course of my adventure. 

For some reason, this game managed to stick with me in a way that a lot of other games don’t.  Perhaps it was the wonderful system it played on, perhaps it was the detailed graphics, or perhaps it was the gripping, realistic  tale it told.

But the bottom line is, in the many years since its release, with the shelves jammed full of more realistic open world games than you can count, I still haven’t played anything quite like Shenmue.  I guess this isn’t all that surprising considering how poorly it sold, but it truly is a shame. 

I really do think there was something special about Shenmue.  Clearly it wasn’t something for everyone.  Its sales numbers should tell you that.  But the tone and the relative realism of the whole affair is something I would have liked to have seen capitalized on and brought into the modern age. 

Most importantly, I just wanted to see the story told to completion, but alas, it appears poor Ryo will forever be trapped in an eternal cliffhanger, never to find the vengeance he so desperately seeks.

Like the Dreamcast itself, Shenmue was terrifically ambitious and ahead of its time, yet sadly cut down prematurely due to these very qualities.  Neither would get to display their true potential. 

Both, I suppose, like many beloved things, I cherish as much for their faults as for their successes.  It is the combination of both that made them the unique experience I so loved.  

Dreamcast Retrospective Day 3: Hydro Thunder

Now this is my kind of racing game.

Screw Gran Turismo.  Get Forza out of my face.  I want a bunch of stupidly fast boats speeding recklessly through totally insane courses that have no basis in reality whatsoever and are way, way cooler because of it.

Hydro Thunder may have been ported to other consoles later on, but I still strongly associate it with my beloved Dreamcast.  Not only were its graphics closer to the arcade version than any other port, but the release date for this little racing gem was none other than 9/9/99.  

This game was one of the cherished few that I brought home with me on launch day and played the crap out of, because that’s what you do with launch games on a new system.  

And this was a game deserving of my time.

Like Crazy Taxi, this is a game born out of a true arcade heritage.  In fact, the first time I played Hydro Thunder wasn’t even on the Dreamcast, it was on a true, honest-to-god arcade machine at a real, existing, miraculously-still-surviving arcade.  It had a big plastic seat that you sat down in, speakers placed right behind your ears for maximum immersion, a large grippy steering wheel, and a spiffy throttle thingy that was a lot of fun to use.

This is why I lament the loss of arcades.  Sure plastic peripherals seem to be all the rage nowadays, and I admit I’d rather play Guitar Hero than Guitar Freaks, but there’s nothing quite like experiencing a game like Hydro Thunder in a true arcade cabinet with the sound cranked up and a big ol’ piece of tape over one of the broken “Insert Coin” slots.

All the more impressive, then, that the Dreamcast version of Hydro Thunder so wonderfully captured the feeling of its bigger arcade counterpart.

This was a fairly no-frills game, but you don’t need any frills with a game like this.  There was no needless career mode to stretch out the game pointlessly.  There was no abundance of modes that are not actually any fun.

There’s just a bunch of tracks and a bunch of boats.  You race on the tracks and unlock more tracks and boats until it gets too hard and you have to keep trying over and over again until you finally do unlock everything but then you keep going back because it’s so damn fun.

Throw in a multiplayer mode and you’re set.  

There were some truly wild courses in this game.  Sure you had your typical tropical island and icy courses.  But what other racing game lets you race through the Greek Isles, plow through some Chinese city in mid-festival, speed through the canals of Venice, venture through a post-apocalyptic flooded New York, and navigate down the Nile and into an Egyptian tomb, all in the same game?

The graphics were absolutely stunning at the time and really helped justify my purchase of a Dreamcast.  It was a real showcase game for the system’s abilities.  Sure it doesn’t look all that stunning today, but what game of this era does?  I think it at least manages not to look like utter crap, which considering how some games from the era look these days is pretty impressive.

While the graphics may be a bit of a rough ride, the gameplay holds up just fine.  The sheer thrill of racing from checkpoint to checkpoint, always just on the verge of running out of time, finding elusive secret paths, and collecting boost meter extensions along the way to keep yourself going as insanely fast as possible by mashing that boost button at every possible opportunity just doesn’t get old.  

I’ve dabbled in Nintendo’s Wave Race series before and, while I usually enjoy them, they’ve never been more than a passing fancy.  Their highfalutin wave physics are fun and all, but, go figure, racing at high speeds on actual waves is really freakin’ hard.

Give me something like Hydro Thunder any day.  It remains one of my favorite arcade-style racing games. 

Sadly, this is a genre not seen in its pure form very often these days.  With even Burnout going open world and games everywhere, the racing genre included, getting more and more complex, the simple thrill of this genre is surprisingly hard to find.  Kart racing games are the only reliable source of this kind of fun anymore and, while they’re plenty fun in their own way, they’re just not the same.  

I actually haven’t played any of the other “Thunder” racing titles, but maybe I should seek them out just to see if they still hold up since there are so few modern equivalents.

It really is a shame Hydro Thunder hasn’t gotten a proper modern sequel.  It really could be fantastic.  

As it stands, though, Hydro Thunder remains a standout Dreamcast launch title that remains fun to this day.  I’m still glad that I chose it to go along with my Dreamcast on the Day of Nines all those years ago.