Hang On GP (Saturn)

 There's a couple of things I need to say to start this review off. The first is that you'll probably notice from the screenshots that the emulation for it is far from perfect, and there's a fair bit of graphical glitching. However, it does seem to run at full speed, and plays totally fine, as far as I can tell. The other thing is that it's also known as Hang On GP 95 and Hang On GP 96. Yes, they are all the same game.

 

When I remembered recently that there was a 3D Hang On game for the Saturn that I'd never played, I was excited. I'm a big fan of Hang On, Super Hang On, and even the minor oddity Hang On Jr., a port of the original to lower-powered hardware, presumably for arcade operators on a tight budget, and Was interested to see a version with some nice mid-90s low poly graphics. I was pretty disappointed, then, when I loaded up Hang On GP and rather than the old formula of racing against the clock to reach checkpoints on long, linear road tracks, you are instead in a more standard racing scenario, racing laps around looped tracks against other riders.

 

It's not a bad game, though. It's fast and it plays fine (though considering that it's a Saturn original rather than an arcade port, you'd think they would have made it control a little better with a D-pad), and it looks great, especially considering how early a release it is. There's a lot of pop-up, especially on the city stage, but that's forgivable. The aesthetics are really nice: it takes the stereotypse of "SEGA blue skies" and really runs with it. The stages take place on a tropical island (complete with a row of moai heads!), the Great Wall of China, and a generic modern city, and they all look great, and like places you'd really want to go to.

 

Hang On GP isn't a great game, and I'd even go as far as to say it was a disappointment. But it's not a bad game, either. I do vaguely remember it being universally panned in magazines at the time, but that's definitely understandable: the early days of the Saturn had a lot of similar racing games, a lot of which were first party like this one, and almost all of them were not only better than Hang On GP, but they also had the allure of being arcade ports in their favour.

TAMA: Adventurous Ball in Giddy Labyrinth (Playstation)

 I had originally planned to review the Saturn version of this game, since on that console it was a launch title, and I thought it'd be interesting to see a Saturn launch title that wasn't a port of one of SEGA's arcade hits. But that version doesn't really emulate very well, so I settled for the Playstation version instead. As far as I know, they're pretty much the same game though, and it was a launch game for both systems, so it's not too big a compromise.

 

In the early days of the 32-bit consoles, there were a lot of games that saw developers trying to figure out how classic genres would work in 3D: what changes would need to be made for practical reasons, and what innovations would be birthed from the newly discovered Z-axis. 3D Lemmings and the Bug games being two high profile (at the time) failed experiments. TAMA is another experiment, essentially taking the old Taito ball-in-a-rotating-maze arcade game Cameltry and putting it in 3D. There aren't really any compromises that need to be made to make the concept work, and there are two main innovations brought in.

 

Before I describe them, I should explain the game, for those who aren't familiar with Cameltry. ach stage is a maze with a ball in it. You've got to get the ball to the goal before time runs out. In Cameltry, you could only rotate the maze left and right, while being in 3D allows TAMA to also offer the ability to tilt the maze in any direction, giving the player a lot more potential precision in controlling the ball's speed and direction. The other big hange is simpler and more obvious: the stages are multi-layered and see you going up and down ramps, riding moving platforms across gaps, and so on.

 

As for how the game itself is: it's pretty good. I love the way it looks, the very low-poly models and simple textures really work for the toy-like setting, and the physics never feel weird, which is crucial in a game like this. It's not going to blow your mind, but it's a mildly amusing distraction, executed as well as it could have been. The only real negative point I have to make is that Stage 2-2, very early into the game, has a point near the end that's completely unforgiving and needs perfect execution. It took me something like half an hour and many attempts to get past this stage, and then it was plain sailing for the next twenty or so stages, so it's a weird little difficulty spike.

 

TAMA is a nice little game, and the fact that it was a launch title for two competing consoles released only a few weeks apart makes it an interesting historical footnote, too. It even managed to get reviewed in a few US and UK magazines as a result of this, though they weren't particularly impressed (though to be fair, I definitely wouldn't be recommending anyone play it if mid90s import prices were the barrier to doing so).

Snail World (PC)

 Snail World is a cute little shooting game, and the developer's page for it on itchio states "This game is in Japanese, but if you know the Fantasy Zone, you should be able to play it without any problems", which is true, as this is very much a Fantasy Zone fangame, mechanically speaking, at least. Furthermore, even that polite warning is more that is really necessary, since the intro and ending scenes, as well as the item shop are all bilingual. 

 

It's interesting, after Near Fantasy Space, to see another Fantasy Zone fangame that takes a completely different approach to the source material. While Near Fantasy Space paid homage to various other shooting games from the history of the genre, re-imagining each of them as Fantasy Zone stages, Snail World is totally its own thing, aesthetically speaking. It uses only four colours throughout the entire game, and as a result, has a very clean, stylish look to it. 

 

Snail World is an excellent and lovingly-crafted game in every respect, and the only real criticism that can be levelled at it is that it's incredibly easy: I'm not even particuarly good at shooting games (as much as I love them), and I managed to get the one credit clear on my first time playing. However, I don't think this really is a criticism in this case, because I feel like Snail World was created as a kind of playable art piece, to showcase the creator's pixel art and music. 

 

A deliberate prioritisation of aesthetics, then. And judging the gme on its aesthetics can only honestly be done positively: it's clear the developer had a vision, and realised it perfectly, and it all looks and sounds great. There isn't really much more to say on this game, other than that it's free, so if it sounds interesting to you, go and get it. It's definitely made me curious about the developer's other works, so I'll be looking into those at some point, too!

Other Stuff Monthly #22!

 Though it was unfortunately short-lived, in my opinion, Raijin Comics was the second-best of all the English-language manga magazines (the best was Pulp, obviously). It was a magazine of extremes: some of the series it printed were super-popular, some were obscure works by new creators; some of the series were incredibly violent and masculine, some were very soft slice of life or romance stories. Even shorter-lived though, was its companion magazine, Raijin Games and Anime: a slender bimonthly publication that covered the current otaku culture in Japan at the time.

 

Before either of them came out, though, there was this preview issue with a front cover at both ends. From one side, you saw a preview of the first few manga series that would be running in Raijin Comics, and from the other side, a preview of the kinds of articles that would be running in the aforementioned companion magazine, which was at this point called Fujin Magazine, which is a better name than Raijin Games and Anime, in my opinion. Raijin and Fujin, they always go together, right?

 

So, what kind of stuff's in here? As the cover suggests, there's quite a bit of Sakura Wars coverage, as well as an article about the 2002 Tokyo Toy Show, and a few pages of very expensive-looking action figures. And it wouldn't be an early 00s publication aimed at anime nerds if there wasn't a mention of those overpriced lego minifig knock-offs, Kubricks (and their even worse spin-off Be@rbricks). There's also a look at upcoming games, and anime TV shows and movies. Most of these even got released in the west, eventually!

 

The most interesting article is the one covering the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara, detailing what kinds of items are sold on each floor. The building has since been demolished and rebuilt, but I'm told it's still full of shops selling nerd stuff. I wonder if it still keeps the same layout described here? Also on these pages are two cosplayers: eighteen-year-old Wakatsuki Sena, who is attending a voice actor school (a quick internet search for her name turns up an AV star, though I don't know if they're the same person), and nineteen-year-old Kikouden Misa, who is "a player of a New Japan catfight league", the meaning of which is a mystery, though again, searching her name brings up a JAV star whose date of birth would put her as being nineteen at the time of this publication.

 

I don't want to go into too much detail on the manga previewed in the other side of the magazine, except to point out that for a few of the lesser-known titles, the few chapters printed in Raijin Comics remain the only English translations they've ever received, without even any fan translations stepping in to finish the job. These include Bow Wow Wata, a charming slice of life/veteranarian story about a teenage boy who can talk to animals, Revenge of Mouflon, a gritty story about an anti-terrorist agent, and Encounter, a series about World Health Organisation agents investigating paranormal phenomena. Encounter was created by a duo working under the pseudonym Sakuya Konohana, one half of which was Nishino Tsugumi, creator of Hanamaru Angels!

 

I still don't have a scanner, so once again, I'll apologise for the low quality photos used in this article. But I hope it was interesting and informative for you. I don't recommend picking up this preview issue specifically, but I do definitely recommend picking up any issues of Raijin Comics that cross your path, and if you're interested in turn-of-the-century otaku culture, then you probably won't regret seeking out Rajin Games and Anime, either.