Atari7800
10-14-2003, 04:05 PM
I've noticed a couple of instances (not quite a trend) where an older Japanese PSone shooter is repackaged for the American market with cover art that trys to make it look like something else. Do shooters attract such a small audience that they need to be disguised to be sold? I'm glad they are making it to our shores, but I wonder if the unsuspecting souls who buy these games are disappointed with what they get with their $9.99.
Sol Divide: The cover depicts a female warrior-type welding a sword on a beastie. The back of the CD case describes a game that is more RPG than shooter, with tiny screen shots that seem to be trying to hide that fact that this is a straight horizontal shooter (and not a very good one at that.) At least they kept the original name. Imagine a cheap gamer expecting some sort of Dungeons & Dragons side-scroller or even an action RPG popping in the CD and getting a second-rate 2-D shooter with rendered graphics and slow gameplay?
Mobile Light Force: This is the worse of the two... the cover depicts three Charlie's Anegls-type girls running with guns in their arms. First of all, the picture isn't very professional and the girls aren't even attractive... I thought videogame vixens were supposed to have huge breasts? Again, the back cover gives puny screen shots and bad descriptions. The title screen is the same bad artwork with the three badly-drawn Charlie's Angels rejects, then the game switches/blinks over to the oh-so-Japanese character select screen. None of the available characters look REMOTELY like the chicks on the box... very anime, very whimsical, very Japanese. The game is actually GUNBIRD, a cute little vertical shooter that had a sequel for the Dreamcast under its correct name, Gunbird 2. I'm confused now. Imagine the confusion of a cheap gamer expecting an overhead action game (perhaps like the PSone Contra games) or even a Tomb Raider clone like Danger Girl (bad!) and instead getting a pretty good but totally Japanese vertical shooter with cute characters and the original Japanese voices.
At least Gekioh: Shooting King (called Shienryu in its original Sega Saturn guise) featured cool artwork on the cover that hinted as to what the game was all about (shooting the crap out of stuff.)
I miss the old days... x_x
Sol Divide: The cover depicts a female warrior-type welding a sword on a beastie. The back of the CD case describes a game that is more RPG than shooter, with tiny screen shots that seem to be trying to hide that fact that this is a straight horizontal shooter (and not a very good one at that.) At least they kept the original name. Imagine a cheap gamer expecting some sort of Dungeons & Dragons side-scroller or even an action RPG popping in the CD and getting a second-rate 2-D shooter with rendered graphics and slow gameplay?
Mobile Light Force: This is the worse of the two... the cover depicts three Charlie's Anegls-type girls running with guns in their arms. First of all, the picture isn't very professional and the girls aren't even attractive... I thought videogame vixens were supposed to have huge breasts? Again, the back cover gives puny screen shots and bad descriptions. The title screen is the same bad artwork with the three badly-drawn Charlie's Angels rejects, then the game switches/blinks over to the oh-so-Japanese character select screen. None of the available characters look REMOTELY like the chicks on the box... very anime, very whimsical, very Japanese. The game is actually GUNBIRD, a cute little vertical shooter that had a sequel for the Dreamcast under its correct name, Gunbird 2. I'm confused now. Imagine the confusion of a cheap gamer expecting an overhead action game (perhaps like the PSone Contra games) or even a Tomb Raider clone like Danger Girl (bad!) and instead getting a pretty good but totally Japanese vertical shooter with cute characters and the original Japanese voices.
At least Gekioh: Shooting King (called Shienryu in its original Sega Saturn guise) featured cool artwork on the cover that hinted as to what the game was all about (shooting the crap out of stuff.)
I miss the old days... x_x