Panzer Dragoon Saga Video Project + Game Appreciation

[roushimsx]

About the Game
From The Will of the Ancients:

Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG - or Panzer Dragoon Saga, as it's known over here - was released in the twilight of the Sega Saturn's lifespan, and it showed what the console was really capable of when handled by such an able developer as Team Andromeda. While Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon II Zwei were action-packed rollercoaster rides that led the player through a unique fantasy world, Panzer Dragoon Saga let players explore that world in depth for the first time. Combining exploration-based gameplay (both on dragon-back and on foot) with an innovative battle system, Panzer Dragoon Saga faithfully took the series into a whole new genre; its immersive storyline, memorable characters, unique artistic style and excellent soundtrack quickly brought the game critical acclaim.

Personal Backstory
So last year I decided to break down and buy another copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga to replace the copy I lent out to a friend years ago. I felt a little bummed about spending ~$150 on it, but I felt it was worth it (to me) and I really wanted to play it again. However, I realize that to most people, no one game is worth $150-$200. I totally understand and that's a-ok and cool and whatnot.

I decided that since Panzer Dragoon Saga's multiple print runs only left the US with about 45,000 copies of this absolute gem (which was overshadowed by Squaresoft's Xenogears, released the same year), I thought it'd be nice to video capture the key elements of the game so that at the very least, anyone can see the story and battle system, hear the music, and generally get a feel for the beautiful little world that Team Andromeda built.

Also, with the rise of emulators actually capable of playing Panzer Dragoon Saga (the hacked GiriGiri runs it with various stability problems, but SSF seems to run it just dandy), I thought it'd be nice to provide a reference for people to check the emulation against.

Videos
In total, I ended up grabbing about 6 hours of footage out of the 12 1/2 hours it took me to play through the game, and I freely admit that I probably didn't need to include the entire end segement (all of 65-70) among other things, but I just didn't have the heart to cut anything else out. I also left in lenghtly conversations to expand on the universe and tutorials such as the battle system tutorial which you don't really need if you just want the story.

Hopefully some people find the videos useful and hopefully someone with decent video editing skills is able to edit them into a single coherant movie. If you think you're that special someone, please get with me so I can cordinate things (in case there's multiple people interested). If you need any additional footage of any point, I can always go back and replay through the game (I'm getting another hard drive in the future just in case, even though a complete runthrough in good quality mpeg2 wouldn't take up more than 50gigs or so).

These videos were also captured with composite cables because I haven't got a saturn s-video cable. Hope that doesn't piss too many of you off.

Screenshots
High Resolution Screenshots From GiriGiri


Shots From My Saturn



Downloads
My Page, which has the videos in order and broken up by disc
Fileshack (which is where the files are hosted), which doesn't have them in order but you can still tell which ones you need by the filenames.

More Information
PanzerDragoon.Net (the single best Panzer Dragoon resource on the net and where I got the GiriGiri shots and CD scans from)
The Art of Panzer Dragoon (for some beautiful Panzer Dragoon artwork from the whole series)

Closing
So with all of that out of the way, let's talk about Panzer Dragoon Saga and how much it rocks the house (or fails to rock the house if that's how you feel).

If you have any questions about my little project that are not covered in the FAQ (on the page), I'd be more than happy to answer them here (and update the FAQ, if needed). Also, if you want to tell me how much I suck at playing the game and how I should have used a walkthrough, feel free to tell me here, too!

(this is essentially the same post I made on another forum, so some of ya'll might have seen this already)

[ClassicGameTrader]

I own PDS, bought it brand new from TRU for $50, I have never played it from start to finish but it is a GREAT game and one of these days its going to happen.

Damn, I didn't know Saturn Emulation has gotten to this point, it might be time to finally check it out. Those shots look really nice, I am wondering what this emu could do for a few other of my favorite games.

[DonMarco]

I bought Panzer Dragoon Saga at an EB for $50 back when new Saturn games cost that much and Virtual On could be found at mall arcades. I've played it through maybe five times, and will hate my brother until the day he dies for losing one of the black disc sleeves.

Is a torrent option available? FileShack is about as much fun as nailing your right hand to a wall.

[roushimsx]

Damn, I didn't know Saturn Emulation has gotten to this point, it might be time to finally check it out. Those shots look really nice, I am wondering what this emu could do for a few other of my favorite games.

GiriGiri is pretty finicky and unstable, but it's understandable since it was just ment for a small handful of games (such as the first Panzer Dragoon) and people just dicked with it a bit to get it to run with any game (you know, like Bleemcast!).

Compatibility is ok, but it does have a lot of bugs that'll never be fixed since the venture was a failure (probably because of the pirates?) and Sega quit development. You're best off with SSF, honestly...though that doesn't support hardware accelleration (yet?). It does have the nice side effect of being extremely compatible (assuming you have a cpu with SSE2).

Is a torrent option available? FileShack is about as much fun as nailing your right hand to a wall.

If you've got a torrent tracker that doesn't doesn't have 0-day \\'ar3z and M0v13z then I could torrent 'em up. I was going to use Filerush, but they turned off their tracker a little while ago and it was the last real good fully legal one that I knew of.

[rjohnson]

Thanks for sharing with use here!

Kudos!

[Zadoc]

Wow... that is completely awesome. I've always wanted to have videos of all of the cut scenes.