A Black Falcon
02-12-2009, 03:34 AM
So, I was back at home yesterday and today (had to go down there, unfortunately), and as expected, I picked up my Sega Saturn, which arrived a few weeks ago but I hadn't been able to get yet. So yes, I have one now, with both a 3d controller and a standard (model 2) controller.
Games -- (2p multiplayer) NiGHTS into dreams..., Galactic Attack (RayForce), Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition, Astal, Cyber Speedway, (1p only) Tomb Raider, Midway Presents Atari's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1, Bug!, Panzer Dragoon, MechWarrior 2: Arcade Combat Edition
... However, in addition to getting that a few weeks before I thought I would be able to, while there I looked in the stores that sell used games, as usual... and found an amazing opportunity that I simply could not ignore as a classic games collector: A TurboGrafx-16! Now, in the five years or so I've been looking at older games around here, I haven't seen one single TG-16 anything in any local stores, not one game, controller, anything, much less system. I heard that evidently one local place had one four or five years ago which I didn't see at the time, but that sold quickly and for a lot of money, and there's been nothing else since...
But there it was in the store (one of my favorites, for sure... ), guaranteed to work, for $50, with the system, power supply and RFU, TurboTap multitap (required for multiplayer, as the system only has one controller port), two controllers, and seven games, six complete with cases and the seventh with its slipcover and manual. So yeah, I bought it.
I don['t really have any great multiplayer games for it, and it came with no shmups, which are the platform's best genre, but it's amazing to have... and there are a few good games, if single player.
(multiplayer titles) Takin' it to the Hoop (2 player) (no slipcover), World Class Baseball (2 player, this is the one without the case but with manual and slipcover), Battle Royale (fighting/wrestling game, 5 player if I had three more controllers) (no slipcover), (single player titles) Bonk's Adventure, Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, China Warrior (no slipcover), Victory Run (no slipcover)
So yeah, the last two days were great, despite the travel (note: I hate travel). Finding that TG-16 made up for everything.
Some thoughts... I've only played saturn for like an hour (I will more tonight!), but I like the 3d controller already, for NiGHTS at least. The analog stick on it is very unique and different -- it was obviously designed for NiGHTS... and the game, on first impression, is perfect with it. I don't know if it'll work quite as well with other games, but I'll try it on my other games with analog support (Mechwarrior, Panzer Dragoon, Cyber Speedway) and see how well it works. The controller design is great, though. Haven't really used the standard controller yet. The Saturn has an interesting window on top, so you can look in and see the disc spinning...
Now all I need is a memory cart for it. The internal save will do for now, particularly given how several games I have don't have saving (Panzer Dragoon, Bug, Astal...), but I need a memory card soon; the internal storage is very small, and is battery-backed (by a user-replaceable CR2032, which I just replaced), so I'd definitely rather have files backed up on one of the flash-based memory carts.
I also need a way to play Japanese games, of course. I know the Action Replay 4M Plus is by far the best way, but for some reason I want an import system... that's much more expensive, though. I'll probably just get an action replay at some point. It's obviously important to be able to play Japanese games to get the most out of a Saturn. But even if I get one, I do also want an official memory cart too, for direct saves and such...
As for the TG16, I don't know what to think... I had no expectations of owning one of these anytime soon, so actually having one is weird, somehow... very cool, though. It's amazing that I do! The controllers are essentially blatant ripoffs of model 1 NES controllers, but with turbo switches on them. They work, but more buttons would have been good (indeed, several of the games I have use select as an action button...). Oh well... There was a 6-button controller late in the system's life, but only a few games (fighting games like Street Fighter II') support it.
Anyway, the major negative? The controller cords are about three feet long. When using it you virtually need to have the system at your feet, even with the multitap that adds another foot... very annoying. At least the power and RF cords for the system are long...
On the other hand, the middle-of-the-cord power brick is fantastic. It's so much easier to work with than the plug-end transformers of the NES, SNES, and Genesis/Sega CD/32X!
Oh, and the other negative is that only one HuCard (TG16 cartridge games are on thin cards called HuCards; think a credit card size, but two or three credit cards thick) has oncart saving; for all others that save, you need to either use passwords or the internal save... but the base TG16 doesn't have internal save support. The only way to get it is ify ou get a Turbo CD drive or Turbo Booster Plus addon, which adds backup support and A/V jacks in addition to the built-in RF. (The standard Turbo Booster adds just the AV jacks; you need the Plus for backup too). None of the games I have yet support saving (well, the baseball game has passwords), but still, it's annoying. It does go into the other drawback of the TG16, though -- a LOT of the best games are on CD, and the Turbo CD or TurboDuo are very expensive now. The cart systems aren't too bad (this $50 here is a good price, below the average Ebay price for such a package I'm sure (particularly including shipping!), but is a reasonable price for the system. A Turbo CD, though? That'd be $150, minimum, and very likely more. Turbografx CD games are region-free, though (the cards aren't, they're region-locked, though you can get around it with (expensive!) card adapters or a mod), which is really nice, and opens the option to instead get a PC Engine CD or Duo, or preferably a Duo R or RX, which fix the dying-sound (bad capacitor) problem of standard Duo models.
Of course, those systems are very costly as well. So yeah, I won't have Turbo CD support anytime soon I imagine, sadly... but hey, I have the base system now, which is a lot more than I thought I'd have two days ago!
Oh yeah, and Victory Run, Bonk, and Keith Courage are pretty good, I'd say. Not so much the rest (though World Class Baseball is decent, and Battle Royale might be fun in multiplayer, I'll have to try it), but I wasn't expecting as much from the rest of them... but yeah, I need to get some shmups. :)
Oh yeah, and NiGHTS is, of course, simply amazing. Being able to play that game on the proper system with the right controller (the Saturn 3D Controller) was really a big part of why I got the system, and it was so worth it... sure, it's obviously short, which seems to be a problem with many Saturn games (when they're not annoyingly long games with no saving like Bug...), but when a game is this good, that doesn't matter much, that's for sure.
Games -- (2p multiplayer) NiGHTS into dreams..., Galactic Attack (RayForce), Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition, Astal, Cyber Speedway, (1p only) Tomb Raider, Midway Presents Atari's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1, Bug!, Panzer Dragoon, MechWarrior 2: Arcade Combat Edition
... However, in addition to getting that a few weeks before I thought I would be able to, while there I looked in the stores that sell used games, as usual... and found an amazing opportunity that I simply could not ignore as a classic games collector: A TurboGrafx-16! Now, in the five years or so I've been looking at older games around here, I haven't seen one single TG-16 anything in any local stores, not one game, controller, anything, much less system. I heard that evidently one local place had one four or five years ago which I didn't see at the time, but that sold quickly and for a lot of money, and there's been nothing else since...
But there it was in the store (one of my favorites, for sure... ), guaranteed to work, for $50, with the system, power supply and RFU, TurboTap multitap (required for multiplayer, as the system only has one controller port), two controllers, and seven games, six complete with cases and the seventh with its slipcover and manual. So yeah, I bought it.
I don['t really have any great multiplayer games for it, and it came with no shmups, which are the platform's best genre, but it's amazing to have... and there are a few good games, if single player.
(multiplayer titles) Takin' it to the Hoop (2 player) (no slipcover), World Class Baseball (2 player, this is the one without the case but with manual and slipcover), Battle Royale (fighting/wrestling game, 5 player if I had three more controllers) (no slipcover), (single player titles) Bonk's Adventure, Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, China Warrior (no slipcover), Victory Run (no slipcover)
So yeah, the last two days were great, despite the travel (note: I hate travel). Finding that TG-16 made up for everything.
Some thoughts... I've only played saturn for like an hour (I will more tonight!), but I like the 3d controller already, for NiGHTS at least. The analog stick on it is very unique and different -- it was obviously designed for NiGHTS... and the game, on first impression, is perfect with it. I don't know if it'll work quite as well with other games, but I'll try it on my other games with analog support (Mechwarrior, Panzer Dragoon, Cyber Speedway) and see how well it works. The controller design is great, though. Haven't really used the standard controller yet. The Saturn has an interesting window on top, so you can look in and see the disc spinning...
Now all I need is a memory cart for it. The internal save will do for now, particularly given how several games I have don't have saving (Panzer Dragoon, Bug, Astal...), but I need a memory card soon; the internal storage is very small, and is battery-backed (by a user-replaceable CR2032, which I just replaced), so I'd definitely rather have files backed up on one of the flash-based memory carts.
I also need a way to play Japanese games, of course. I know the Action Replay 4M Plus is by far the best way, but for some reason I want an import system... that's much more expensive, though. I'll probably just get an action replay at some point. It's obviously important to be able to play Japanese games to get the most out of a Saturn. But even if I get one, I do also want an official memory cart too, for direct saves and such...
As for the TG16, I don't know what to think... I had no expectations of owning one of these anytime soon, so actually having one is weird, somehow... very cool, though. It's amazing that I do! The controllers are essentially blatant ripoffs of model 1 NES controllers, but with turbo switches on them. They work, but more buttons would have been good (indeed, several of the games I have use select as an action button...). Oh well... There was a 6-button controller late in the system's life, but only a few games (fighting games like Street Fighter II') support it.
Anyway, the major negative? The controller cords are about three feet long. When using it you virtually need to have the system at your feet, even with the multitap that adds another foot... very annoying. At least the power and RF cords for the system are long...
On the other hand, the middle-of-the-cord power brick is fantastic. It's so much easier to work with than the plug-end transformers of the NES, SNES, and Genesis/Sega CD/32X!
Oh, and the other negative is that only one HuCard (TG16 cartridge games are on thin cards called HuCards; think a credit card size, but two or three credit cards thick) has oncart saving; for all others that save, you need to either use passwords or the internal save... but the base TG16 doesn't have internal save support. The only way to get it is ify ou get a Turbo CD drive or Turbo Booster Plus addon, which adds backup support and A/V jacks in addition to the built-in RF. (The standard Turbo Booster adds just the AV jacks; you need the Plus for backup too). None of the games I have yet support saving (well, the baseball game has passwords), but still, it's annoying. It does go into the other drawback of the TG16, though -- a LOT of the best games are on CD, and the Turbo CD or TurboDuo are very expensive now. The cart systems aren't too bad (this $50 here is a good price, below the average Ebay price for such a package I'm sure (particularly including shipping!), but is a reasonable price for the system. A Turbo CD, though? That'd be $150, minimum, and very likely more. Turbografx CD games are region-free, though (the cards aren't, they're region-locked, though you can get around it with (expensive!) card adapters or a mod), which is really nice, and opens the option to instead get a PC Engine CD or Duo, or preferably a Duo R or RX, which fix the dying-sound (bad capacitor) problem of standard Duo models.
Of course, those systems are very costly as well. So yeah, I won't have Turbo CD support anytime soon I imagine, sadly... but hey, I have the base system now, which is a lot more than I thought I'd have two days ago!
Oh yeah, and Victory Run, Bonk, and Keith Courage are pretty good, I'd say. Not so much the rest (though World Class Baseball is decent, and Battle Royale might be fun in multiplayer, I'll have to try it), but I wasn't expecting as much from the rest of them... but yeah, I need to get some shmups. :)
Oh yeah, and NiGHTS is, of course, simply amazing. Being able to play that game on the proper system with the right controller (the Saturn 3D Controller) was really a big part of why I got the system, and it was so worth it... sure, it's obviously short, which seems to be a problem with many Saturn games (when they're not annoyingly long games with no saving like Bug...), but when a game is this good, that doesn't matter much, that's for sure.