The House of the Dead 2 Review

Original release:

Japan: March 25th, 1999

North America: September 9th, 1999

Europe: Unknown, 1999?

Game details:

1-2 Players

VMU Compatible

Jump Pack compatible

Standard controller

Arcade stick

Light gun

VGA box

Gameplay

The House of the Dead 2 is a light gun game meaning this section is somewhat irrelevant, so I'll discuss how well the game flows. Some light gun games have a problem with throwing several enemies at you and absolutely swarming you, probably in the interest of getting your hard earned quarters. The House of the Dead 2 never resorts to that cheapness thankfully, and it's a very consistent game. The difficulty has a nice curve to it, gradually increasing every level and sort of holding your hand through it all. It lets anyone pick the game up and make a real run at finishing it. Towards the end it gets to be a very hard game, even with two people playing, but it is entirely possible to finish. If you're of the variety that doesn't have a light gun, this is still a fun game. The b-movie nature of it all and a rather decent control set up for a regular controller make it worth playing.

Storyline

The House of the Dead series has a rather robust storyline for a lightgun game. Two years after the mansion incident from the first House of the Dead an agent of the AMS goes missing in Venice. You arrive on the scene to find him and find a full on zombie attack. Your ultimate goal is to reach the headquarters of the company that funded the project that resulted in the mansion incident. Stop thinking Resident Evil. As mentioned earlier, the game has a great b-movie feel to it. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the awkward voice acting makes the game great fun. Whoever developed House of the Dead: Overkill needs to go back and study this game instead of just watching Grindhouse.

Graphics

House of the Dead 2 has some of the best graphics on Dreamcast and especially impressive for a launch game. There are definitely some low quality textures around, but for the most part everything is sharp and detailed. This especially shows over a VGA box. Games like this used to be the reason to go to the arcade when all you had was a blurry N64 or a grainy PSX.

Sound

The music is pretty good in this game, if a bit hard to explain. You'll have to hear it for yourself because I really don't know how to.

Conclusion

The House of the Dead 2 is an excellent game and has long been one of my favorites. Highly recommended.

9.5/10

Aero Fighters 3 (NEO4ALL) Review

Original release:

1995

Game details:

1-2 Players

Standard controller

VGA box

The following game was not officially released for Sega Dreamcast. It is emulated using NEO4ALL RC-4 developed by chui. This is an evaluation of the emulation of the game as well as the game itself.

Using Team RDC's release you can play this game as though it is a commercial game with only a brief loading screen.

Emulation

Smooth as butter, I encountered no issues.

Gameplay

Aero Fighters 3 thankfully recognizes everything that the second game in the series does well and improves on it slightly. Each plane has its own unique bomb attack (this might have been in two, I don't know since I only played as the dolphin) which is a nice twist since different play styles can use a different plane. Speaking of the dolphin, he's back but this time I decided I'd try a few other characters as well. Aero Fighters 3 is good at being a casual shmup. It's never too hard that you'll want to give up in frustration and it's just frantic enough that you'll want to continue playing.

Graphics

The graphics are pretty similar to the second game. They're not majorly impressive but they're not bad either. Bullets stand out against the background, which is important.

Sound

For some reason the music budget was apparently kicked up to 10 for Aero Fighters 3. This game has a great soundtrack. It's this great break beat electronic soundtrack. It's disappointing that it's not in a higher quality to take advantage of the CDDA audio, but I can't imagine sinking that much budget to re-do a soundtrack for a Neo Geo CD game was entirely advisable.

Conclusion

Aero Fighters is an excellent franchise, and the third entry is no different. A definite play.

8.5/10

Silver (Review)

Original release:

Europe: June 23, 2000

North America: June 29, 2000

Game details:

1 Player

VMU Compatible

Jump Pack compatible

Standard controller

VGA box

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to do a complete playthrough of Silver for this review. I did play the game to near completion several years ago (before I reached a point that the disc was too damaged to play) however, and am using my memory of that for this review. Since I would be unable to comment on the length of the game, other reviews have put the time at around 20 hours.

Gameplay

Silver is an RPG of the action variety, meaning all attacking takes place in real time instead of being turn based. How the attacking takes place can be somewhat awkward, though. The a button is your basic attack, but holding down the right trigger and moving the analog stick will allow you to do different slashes with your sword as well as bring up your shield. This can sometimes be problematic. I'm not sure why, but occasionally the game seemed to do the opposite attack of what I wanted. I would normally say this is due to me not being accurate enough with the Dreamcast's analog stick, but there are only 4 additional sword attacks when you hold down the right trigger, each being up, down, left and right so there's not a whole lot of error room there. It never doomed me to my death because this isn't that difficult of a game, but it was distracting when it happened. It's also nice to note that this game is generous with the save points. Whenever you move on to a new area or accomplish a task, you'll usually be greeted with one.

The combat is simple enough that it doesn't warrant spending a lot of time breaking own, it works well for the game. Real issues come in with the general design of the game. There's nothing blatantly obvious to point out who you can talk to or what you're supposed to do. Backgrounds are pre-rendered and there's no cue that you can talk to a character when you walk up to them. Holding down the L-trigger will instead show icons over people as well as where you can exit the screen. This is an annoyance because it doesn't seem to show all of the things you can do any one time you hold down the L-trigger. Each time you do this it seems to reveal new things. It's stupidly time consuming to have to do this. Game design has changed a lot since this was released, but it seems like something that could've been resolved with something as simple as a star over a character's head or a button prompt that appears when you're near something you can interact with. Speaking of interaction, this is a largely non-interactive world. There will be signs and other objects, but you usually can't read them. They're just part of the background.

Storyline

Silver doesn't have a lot going for it in the story department. It breaks down like this; the evil lord Silver has taken all of the women in the land to choose himself a wife. He took your girlfriend and now you're out to get her back. This is supported with the standard cast of background characters who you'll meet along your way. The voice acting is worth noting. There's a lot of it and it's pretty damn good for the most part. There's some bad of course, but that's to be expected for games around this time period. The player character in particular is bad.

Graphics

Get the image of that badass looking warrior on the cover of the game out of your head now. Silver has anime inspired graphics that are very simple. Simple to the point that characters sort of look like a few bubbles put together and colored differently. They're not really bad graphics though, it seems like it was a conscious design choice. The pre-rendered backgrounds on the other hand, are excellent. A lot of work has been put into them, and even though they are well detailed, the characters never look silly over them.

Sound

This isn't anything remarkable. Think of medieval times and what kind of music you would put in a game that takes place around those times and there you have it. It's probably exactly what you heard in your head. Unless you went to an epic scale and thought about some big budget movie.

Conclusion

I like Silver quite a bit. It's another forgotten game in the Dreamcast lineup. Every one is so busy with the big hitter games that they overlook the other games of the time, which were very much in the spirit of some of the first party titles.

8.0/10

King of the Monsters 2 (NEO4ALL) Review

Original release:

1992

Game details:

1-2 Players

Standard controller

VGA box

The following game was not officially released for Sega Dreamcast. It is emulated using NEO4ALL RC-4 developed by chui. This is an evaluation of the emulation of the game as well as the game itself.

Using Team RDC's release you can play this game as though it is a commercial game with only a brief loading screen.

Emulation

No complaints here. The game may as well have been natively developed for Dreamcast.

Gameplay

King of the Monsters 2 is a fun game at times. Other times you're wondering why you couldn't have developed this game so you could've shared the mountain of quarters that they surely raked in. This game is probably the worst example of being overly hard or having situations where you have no choice but to die so you would be forced to put in more quarters. This is the favorite game of a friend of mine, he's loved it since he was a kid and played it a lot and he spent just as much time dying as I did. Typically when you've had a favorite game for over 10 years, you'll be distinguishable from the guy who just heard about the game 20 minutes ago. There's another game mechanic that I've never gotten used to and never will that is also designed to drain quarters. When you're knocked down, your monster won't immediately get back up. He stays down and you have to tap a button repeatedly until he gets back up. It's not intuitive at all, and I've taken a lot of damage I'm sitting there staring at the screen wondering what's wrong with my monster.

That aside, this game is basically a boss rush. During the "levels" you probably won't sustain any damage; you can actually take out enemies by simply running into them. Your enemies will be all manner of jets and tanks, just think any giant monster movie since that's what this is. You'll fight other giant monsters at the end of levels who have a very cheap move set and will punish you hard. Having a friend around doesn't do a lot to help the myriad of deaths you will experience. The game does offer a versus mode however, which can be very fun. It makes for a good cool down after you've continued approximately 200 times against the last boss.

Graphics

The graphics are about what you'd expect from a 1992 arcade game. They're colorful and have a decent level of detail. There's a fair amount of variety in the buildings you'll be stepping on, so you'll never stop to wonder if one architect did the entire city. Pleasantly surprised was a good word to describe my reaction.

Sound

The sound is sort of up and down like the gameplay. There's a few great tracks, the third level's music in particular is excellent, but other times it's forgettable. Music in general seems to be an area where video games could step it up a notch, from the early days to the present.

Conclusion

You'll like it, you'll hate it. You're probably not going to swing the the like side enough to reach love it. I'd say don't go it alone, it's just going to frustrate you. This is a good game to tackle with a friend.

7.0/10

Power Stone Review

Original release:

Japan: February 25th, 1999

North America: September 9th, 1999

Europe: October 14th, 1999

Game details:

1-2 Players

VMU Compatible

Standard controller

Arcade stick

VGA box

Gameplay

Power Stone is the most fun you'll have on a Dreamcast with friends. Hands down, there's not a better party game. It's sort of like Super Smash Bros. in the fact that it can be competitive, but the game is just sort of too over the top and unbalanced (angry Smash Bros. fans can vent below where you'll immediately be ignored) for there to be any real bitterness over it. It's such a great party game because it's similar to SoulCalibur where it's basic enough that anyone can mash buttons and put up a fight (you guys can do the same as the Smash Bros. fans) but the atmosphere is a lot more lighthearted.

Power Stone becomes a very frantic game even when you're playing against the computer because of the pivotal power stones. Once a player has all three of them, they'll go into a powered up state and deal far too much damage for it to be considered fair. Two power stones appear immediately, with the third appearing later. Players can steal the stones from each other in order to get all three. As you can imagine, this leads to a mad dash for the stones every time one appears. There's a little gameplay flaw there that's very much worth mentioning; only the final hit of a sequence of moves can knock the stone out of the other player's possession. To explain a bit more, tapping the punches you'll get a combo of different punches. You could hit with every single punch except the last one and deal a lot of damage, but you wouldn't get the stone since the last one didn't hit. Likewise you could miss with every punch and hit with the last one and get the stone. It's a minor annoyance and it can lead to some frustrations.

Power Stone also features a lot of different items you can pick up and use, from swords to rocket launchers. The environment can be used as a weapon too, with the ability to kick tables and crates at your opponent or pick up said things and throw them. There's usually one or two locations in a level that you can climb and drop on your opponent from above as well. This interactivity does a lot to bring the game above the average 3D fighter and give it its own identity. Finally, some of you are probably questioning my party game logic since it only supports two players. Power Stone 2 does support four players, but it can get a bit too hectic and it just turns into sort of a mess. You're better off trading controllers and playing the winner. Somebody other than me should probably review Power Stone 2 when the time comes.

Graphics

Power Stone isn't a wildly impressive game graphically, but it is vibrant and has an interesting look. It's definitely far better than some of the unfortunate ports that the Dreamcast would suffer, but it's no Shenmue either. Characters are fluidly animated though, especially when hopping over chairs or tables. Even though the characters were animated fluently, they can't move their mouths. I suppose this wasn't terribly critical since the only spoken parts are win quotes, but it couldn't have been that hard to implement.

Sound

This game has the worst announcer EVER. You know you're in for something unique when he declares the game as "POWAAAAAH STOOOONE." I don't know what the hell Capcom was thinking. They probably could've paid their building's janitor $10 and had a better announcer. Character win quotes are in the original Japanese, but I'm going to go with a hunch and guess that they're awful even though I can't understand them. The music is ignorable, cutesy stereotypically ethnic tracks to go with the different locations around the world.

Conclusion

I love this game. I spent a lot of time playing it when I first bought my Dreamcast and I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time playing it now that I have the game again. Being so familiar with this game, this review basically picked out little niggling issues that are completely minor. Highly recommended.

9.2/10

ReviveDC Christmas Contest!

Additional info:
The ReviveDC team has the right to choose not to use the banner as the IP.BIN logo but will still give the prize to the best entry.

The contest will end on January 1st, 2012. The best entry will then be chosen by the ReviveDC team. The South Park game will be shipped to the winner and the Street Fighter game will be e-mailed.

Requirements:
The text "ReviveDC Project" (without quotation marks, of course)
The blog address: "rdcproject.blogspot.com" (same as above)
The banner can't be too big. An appropriate size would be 600x200 or smaller. E-mail your contribution to: revivedcproject@gmail.com


Good luck and Merry Christmas,
AGES and the ReviveDC team

Sturmwind delayed!

It has just been brought to me attention that Sturmwind will not be getting a release this year after all. This marks the first year we haven't gotten a new Dreamcast game since 1998. This is a sad day do be a Dreamcast gamer.

Here is what they posted on their site.

In spite of best planing, the release of Sturmwind has to be postponed: Our long-term CD-ROM manufacturer surprisingly had to declare bankruptcy after 19 years in business. From 40 employees only a few remained. Therefore this resulted in the situation that the scheduled delivery date for Sturmwind could not be met in the end.

The only possibility has been to relocate the production – to avoid further delays of the bankrupt facility. Nevertheless items like the spaceship models have been completely manufactured already. Our new partner is one of the largest videogame CD / DVD press plants in Europe with over 50 years of experience in medium production. In the meanwhile we already placed our production order for Sturmwind.

The release date is set to TBA (“to be announced”) consequently.

Details are currently clarified between redspotgames, Duranik and the new facility. Also we are arranging material for another announcement with more exact information within December, which will be after Christmas however. All orders in the redspotgames online shop will remain valid.

Source http://www.redspotgames.com/

Despite the delay, you can still order the game and they are still not sold out of their limited editions of the game which come complete with a mini spaceship model and some great packaging.



http://www.redspotgames.com/shop/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=34