How is your Saturn gaming going?

[marurun]

I agree that it is a fantastic game. Maybe not great for tournaments (some crazy balance issues) but lots of fun for just making a mess of things.

[Nemoide]

I got a custom stick from Benj Edwards which has really rekindled my love for the Saturn, especially for 2D fighters. The Saturn controller might be legendarily good, but having an arcade-quality stick still a big improvement IMO.
I'm mostly playing Capcom fighters and feel accomplished for finally beating X-Men: Children of the Atom : even on the easiest difficulty, Magneto is ridiculously hard. I'm basically playing through Capcom fighters in chronological order with the end goal of playing a ton of Darkstalkers 3 and X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

I've also only recently learned that I can get a Pseudo Saturn cartridge with a physical switch for 1MB/4MB RAM-expansion and apparently this fixes the slowdown that a lot of 1MB-expansion games have when using an Action Replay (ie Marvel Super Heroes, Metal Slug). Even though I already have a Pseudo Saturn cart, two Action Replay 4-in-1s, and a few other memory expansion carts, I think I'll have to get one of those.

[pierrot]

Congrats on beating Magneto, dude! That's no easy feat. I must have been on default difficulty when I beat it (what is that, like 2 stars, or something?), but I feel like I remember hearing somewhere that the difficulty in COTA doesn't actually change at all, no matter what difficulty level you set it to. It's always the same amount of incredible pain to beat even the first opponent. What character did you beat it with, by the way? The cool thing about the Saturn version is the code to set it into the arcade revision mode. I can't remember the rev number, but I think it might have been one of the more popular revisions, for tournament play. Not that I could even tell you what's different, though.

It is great playing Saturn games with a decent arcade stick. I have the Japanese Virtua Stick HS-0136. It looks beautiful, but the parts aren't quite arcade quality, and it has a square gate, so it's not exactly ideal for fighting games. I was playing X-Men vs Street Fighter some more, recently, though. It really is just a wonderful home arcade machine.

I also popped in D&D Shadow over Mystara, for a little bit. I've always been a little disappointed by that port, but I actually wasn't as bothered by the loading this time. It's more frequent than I'd like it to be, but it's not very long, aside from the title screen loading. The only other real issue is maximum two player multiplayer, but it's pretty solid aside from those two issues.

I've been slowly plugging away at Madou Monogatari, which is a very different experience from the original. It's much more of a traditional RPG, by comparison, and the only real "hooks" are the list of different attacks in combat (which is pretty much a staple of the series), and the SP gauge, which works a bit like Trances in FFIX, but only powers up a selected move for one round. Also different characters have different methods by which their SP gauges actually fill. It's not that interesting, but bosses also have SP gauges. I guess the star levels on equipment is a little different, but it's not that special. I basically just run around with insta-death weapons, and healing armor on Lulu and Arle, and I just have the third character do whatever, because it doesn't really matter. I've had some trouble being motivated enough to play it lately because it's just such a bog standard affair, and the dungeons have gotten really long, boring, and replete with umpteen-thousand random encounters. The graphics and music are good, but not great. The plot is paper thin, and it's mostly a character driven story, but it's just not great. Sometimes the banter between characters is kind of fun, but a lot of the time it just hangs out there like a windsock in the breeze. I'm kind of really tired of Shezo at this point, too. I do have MoMoMo in my party now, though. That's kind of neat. It'll be nice to finish it up, hopefully this weekend, and put it back on the shelf.

[Nemoide]

It's that's true about the difficulty not changing in X-Men: CotA, I might need to try again on the hardest difficulty. The game really is crazy hard and it's amazing how enemies can seemingly block while walking forward and the bosses especially will spam absolutely brutal attacks that can range from unblockable to dealing high chip-damage if you do block.
I used Wolverine mostly because he's the character the game highlights by default. Also since he's in everything, my skills with him should carry on to the other Capcom Marvel games. I recently discovered a YouTube channel that compares the different ports of fighting games and it really drills home how good the Saturn can be, especially for the games that use the 4MB RAM cart.

Also, even though it's for the universally-disliked PS1 port of X-Men: CotA, this old IGN review cracks me up:

Like all of Capcom's 2D fighting games, the main focus to winning is to roll your thumb around (half-circles rule! Not) the keypad while pushing any punch button. Maybe it's just us, but we're tired of all-you-cans and ha-doo-kens.

I've never played a Madou Monogatari game but I'd like to try at some point. I'm not sure if my Japanese-skills are good enough, but I SUSPECT I'd do okay. Maybe it will someday see an English patch. I mean, if Linkle Liver Story can get a translation in 2019, I feel like nothing is off the table.

[pierrot]

It's that's true about the difficulty not changing in X-Men: CotA, I might need to try again on the hardest difficulty. The game really is crazy hard and it's amazing how enemies can seemingly block while walking forward and the bosses especially will spam absolutely brutal attacks that can range from unblockable to dealing high chip-damage if you do block.

Yeah, COTA is like the best example of what it feels like to play against a computer that might be self aware, and realizes that it doesn't actually have to lose, ever, if it doesn't want to. At least the AI can be escaped in the versus mode.

I used Wolverine mostly because he's the character the game highlights by default.

I guess that's a pretty good reason. I feel like Wolvey is pretty top tear in COTA. He's at least a really popular choice, outside of Sentinel, it seems. I used to use Cyclops a lot in X-men vs Street Fighter, back in the arcades, but as an adult I mostly choose female characters, regardless of the disadvantage it puts me at in the game. So I started with Psylocke, but just couldn't do much with her. Fortunately Storm still does Storm things, like she does in all of the other games she's in, so I was able to eventually get lucky enough to win the game, thanks to her.

Just as an aside, how friggin' great is Omega Red's stage theme in that game!

I recently discovered a YouTube channel that compares the different ports of fighting games and it really drills home how good the Saturn can be, especially for the games that use the 4MB RAM cart.

Oh, hell yeah. I was watching a bunch of those videos about a month or two ago, also. They're pretty amazing comparison videos. I feel like the MSH one is a little too kind to the Saturn version, but I really like the animation frame comparisons, and such.

we're tired of all-you-cans and ha-doo-kens.

I'm not sure why, but I find it very funny to hear people basically spout gibberish for what the Shoto moves sound like to them. What is "all-you-can" supposed to be, though? Shoryuken?

I've never played a Madou Monogatari game but I'd like to try at some point. I'm not sure if my Japanese-skills are good enough, but I SUSPECT I'd do okay. Maybe it will someday see an English patch. I mean, if Linkle Liver Story can get a translation in 2019, I feel like nothing is off the table.

Well, I beat Madou Monogatari on the Saturn today, and I can pretty safely say you don't really need to worry about ever playing it. It's longer than it should be, and doesn't really provide much value for the time spent. The first chapter of Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 doesn't really have much in the way of story, though, and should be pretty approachable for anyone, regardless of Japanese proficiency (aside from maybe the Mega Drive version). That's a much better game than the Madou Monogatari for the Saturn, anyway, but the Saturn game might even be playable with limited Japanese knowledge. It's fairly linear, and straightforward.

I played through Linkle Liver Story a number of years ago, and I'm surprised how much people seem to want to play it. I love Nextech, but Linkle Liver Story is not one of their better efforts. Maybe that's just me comparing it to Crusader of Centy, but their graphical tricks are still abound, it just doesn't play very well. At least more people will be introduced to one of the most unlikable characters ever in Lalala.

[marurun]

Iceman was my jam in CotA. He has a GREAT keep-away game.

[pierrot]

Iceman was one of my absolute favorite X-men characters when I was a kid. He certainly has the keep-away going for him, but I don't think arcade mode does mirror matches, so the best thing about playing him in arcade mode might be that you don't have to actually face him. He is an absolute nightmare in the hands of the Sega Saturn. Also, I kind of feel like his ability to not take chip damage from projectiles is a little broken.