Seventh Cross Evolution (Dreamcast)

Seventh Cross was one of the first games released for the Dreamcast, and it definitely shows. When i first played it, the simple landscapes and repeating textures reminded me of creations made in the Dreamcast's Japan-only adventure game creator "DreamStudio". The creatures in the game look a little nicer. You see animations repeated for similar-shaped enemies in different areas, but they do all have a nice low-poly charm

to them.
The game is an action RPG, in which you play as a lifeform who kills and eats other creatures to gain nutrients and experience points which allow it to become stronger and grow new body parts. Mechanically, it has a lot of similarites with the SNES and PC98 game EVO: The Search for Eden/46 Okunen Monogatari, though the atmosphere is totally different. While EVO had a fairly cute, cartoony atmosphere, Seventh Cross is much more sombre, with quiet music, and more realistic-looking enemies. Also like EVO, each stage is an era in time, millions of years after the last, and to complete an era, you must find, kill and eat the alpha predator of the time.
The problem is, it's not very good. The combat, which is the main meat of the game, is almost entirely about how high your stats are rather than skill. As a result, there is a lot of grinding, for the nutrients needed to grow stronger body parts, as well as the Evolution Points needed to use the evolution grid.
The evolution grid is a pretty original concept: it's a 10x10 grid, upon which you draw in six colours. Each colour corresponds to one of your stats (you choose which colour goes to which stat at the start of the game), and drawing in a colour raises its associated stat. Drawing also makes available more body parts for

you to grow. Once you discover the secret (that minimalist designs tend to yield higher stat boosts and better parts), you'll get stronger faster, but towards the start of the game developing weaker parts is necessary, since the higher level parts need a lot of nutrients to grow, and some kinds of nutrients don't even appear until later stages.
On the other hand, developing high-level parts early in the game is fun, since it means you see strange creature names in there such as "Laser Horse" and "Electric Mollusk", which you won't get to see until much later on.
Despite my saying earlier that the game isn't very good, you might have guessed from how much detail I'm going into that I've played it a lot. And I have! I guess this is all down to the atmosphere: Seventh Cross is definitely what some circles would describe as a lonely game, with it's sparsely populated environments, complete lack of dialogue and minimalist plot. In fact, that there even is a plot isn't even made obvious until

you start the second era, and see a giant golden angel killing the local fauna with lasers. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the game so far and not a single word of dialogue has been spoken, nor has there been a single clue as to the identity or purpose of the time-travelling genocidal being.
In conclusion, Seventh Cross Evolution is a boring, ugly, repetitive game that I totally love and can play for hours at a time.

Nekketsu Oyako (Playstation)

So, the title apparently translates as "hot blooded family", and refers to the three playable characters: a dad and his son and daughter. The dad, Rando is the worst character. He's slow, can't pick up most of the guns in the game and has less moves than the other two. His two redeeming features are his Haggar-esque jumping

piledriver and the fact that he's the only character who can use the (very rare) bazooka weapon. There's also a beer health pickup that only he can use, but it doesn't heal very much and it's at least as rare as the bazooka (I've only seen one of each). The daughter, Rio is a little better. She moves faster, and has a fun little move where she can pogo around on top of the enemies' heads. There's also a nice little touch with her when she picks up a weapon and walks around with it, she does so while carrying it on her back. It's a pointless thing, but it adds a little personality. The son, Tora is the best character by far, though. He has a bunch of moves, like a flying kick that bounces off the top of enemies upwards and away, a brutal moves where he repeatedly slashes a knife back and forth, doing and ton of damage, and he's the only character of
the three who can run.
The game itself seems at first to be a regular, generic beat em up, though it does have a couple of interesting gimmicks, like the versatility and mobility of Tora's moveset, and the fact that though you obviously start with a single bar of health, even when its full you can collect more food to fill it up a second bar (like in the Dynamite Deka series).
The setting is pretty cool, too. The first stage takes place on the city streets like any other beat em up, but as soon as the first boss is defeated, things take a more surreal turn. A whale smashes through the bridge on whivh you're standing and swallows you, leading you to spend the next stage inside and on top of the whale, fighting the usual thugs and goons along with boxing gloce-wearing octopi and weird creatures

made of water. The next stage mostly returns to normalcy on a theme park island resort, but includes a really cool section where you fight big crowds of enemies on top of a roller coaster.
Nekketsu Oyako isn't anything special, but it is pretty good. There's also an english path available, though there's barely any Japanese text in the game, and none of what there is is essential for progress. The game's worth playing, but you should definitely play as Tora if you do.