QCF: Clockwork Aquario

’d say leading up to this review I felt a bit out of my element. For one, I think it’s safe to say that George would be our resident Westone fan with their legacy of games including the Wonder Boy series. And that in the early 1990’s I did not own any consoles, let alone was going to the arcades. However, I do have an appreciation for the arcade genre and its history which is why the release of Clockwork Aquario is such a milestone. For a game that was in limbo for thirty years to finally have a console release is worth all the accolades. And although this may not be a game for everyone, it showcases the expert design and gorgeous artwork that made this developer such a legend in the industry even to this day.

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Bullet Heaven #321 - Panzer Dragoon Old and New

conic for the time of its release, it's no surprise that Panzer Dragoon would receive a complete overhaul. But what is Panzer Dragoon all about? And how does its remake fare? Old meets new in this episode of Bullet Heaven.

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QCF: Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX

here are so many forgotten classics that somehow still get overlooked after all of this time, and are honestly just ripe for the remake treatment. I mean, sure there are a few classic titles that undoubtedly deserve a new coat of paint, but personally, I get all the more excited over the obscure games with sleeper followings that get chosen for an HD resurrection.

SEGA’s abandoned Simian Martial-Artist, Alex Kidd, is one such prime candidate, as the forgotten mascot has only managed the occasional cameo or two over the past thirty years, and has only now been granted the opportunity to be relevant again with a remake of his very first outing, Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX. Now the Master System exclusive wasn’t a mechanical marvel by any means, exuding just enough charm to offset its finicky physics and platforming flaws—making the concept of a remake that could improve upon its issues all the more exciting.

In some unfortunate twist of fate, however, the folks behind the remake, Merge Games and Jankenteam, have somehow produced a version of the game that’s genetically inferior to the 1986 original—and I couldn’t have been more disappointed in my experience with it as a result.

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25 years of the Sega Saturn: Part 2-The Two-Pronged Stumble

ell, this is embarrassing; I had planned to publish this entry much sooner than now, given that it’s been a little over a year since I last published the premier piece to this editorial series, but I suppose it’s appropriate since we’ve now arrived at the anniversary of SEGA’s polarizing 32-bit powerhouse once more.

When we last left off, we looked at the pre-launch hype of the Saturn and SEGA’s internal dissension over the mechanical complexity of the hardware, with technical specs that were arguably geared more at enhancing the present climate of gaming than preparing for the next dimension of gameplay the medium had been building to. The corporate disconnection only grew from there as SEGA of Japan hedged all their bets on the console with one fateful announcement during their 1995 Electronic Entertainment Expo presentation—the Sega Saturn was available now, retailing at $399 MSRP with the inclusion of Virtua Fighter to the surprise of everyone, including major retailers.

It was with this first big step that the Sega Saturn had begun its perpetual tumble towards commercial failure, as we look back at one of the most infamously mismanaged console launches in Video Game History.

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QCF: Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown

t one point in the medium of Video Games, Fighting games were on top of the world, overtaking screens across Living rooms and Arcades across the world. It didn’t take long for everyone to come for that piece of pugilistic pie, and while there were many who tried, a few found success, and even fewer redefined what the genre was—one of those releases was SEGA’s Virtua Fighter.

Aside from pioneering the concept of three-dimensional fighting, the series has steadily earned the reputation for being one of the most technical-minded brawlers on the market and has remained a staple where competitors measure their skill of the genre within the fighting game community. Admittedly, the series has struggled to find mainstream success outside of the dedicated niche of players that have kept up with each new installment, but the series has recently found new life in another popular SEGA franchise—Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Yakuza.

The inclusion of SEGA’s historic fighting series may have been a fun Easter Egg at first, but players quickly took notice of the excellent handling of emulation and coding of the series by RGGS, gradually drawing in new interest for the property once more. Striking while the iron is hot, the wild minds at SEGA have paired the talented folks of AM2 and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio together for a new iteration of Virtua Fighter 5, VF5 Ultimate Showdown

Even though Viruta Fighter 5 has waned on for 14 years in its “Street Fighter II” rut of incremental additions and improvement, the super-group effort from RGGS and AM2 goes on to prove that not only is there still plenty of mileage left in the Polygonal Puncher, but they also deliver the definitive version of the game in the process.

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QCF: Balan WonderWorld

here are developers out there who hold some of the highest prestige in the industry from their work on a few, or even just iconic game—some of these developers have gone on to do great things in the current day scene, and then there are some who are just stuck in the past.

Yuji Naka’s Balan WonderWorld is an indictment of the latter because the new release from Arzest and the Balan Company is seemingly engineered to compete with platformer games released back in 2003 more than anything else. At its core, Balan Wonderworld plays like a pale imitation of the Super Mario Odyssey formula dressed up in a bad NiGHTs into Dreams aesthetic…

I know I started marching my steps strong and heavy with the Poo Poo Parade real early into this review but I honestly can’t help it; for every neat idea the game seems to have, it comes back with three more flaws or design choices that put a big sour on any fun to be found.

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QCF: Sega Astro City Mini

here Names like Nintendo, Atari, and SEGA respectively boast a large zenith of the home console market between themselves the past thirty years, no brand commanded a foothold in the coin-operated world of Arcade gaming quite like SEGA did. Beyond the global hits like Golden Axe, Space Harrier, and Virtua Fighter, the Japanese Gaming giant spanned a wide array of genres and gimmicks that redefined the arcade scene with Astro City line of Arcade cabinets. The horsepower behind their intricate PCB boards made way for unique experiences that deployed a wide array of technical marvels that set them apart from their upright peers like super scaling graphics, over-the-top, and JAMMA quality stereo sound.

As the preservation for Arcade software gets harder with each passing year, SEGA took to celebrating its 60th anniversary with a bang with the release of the Astro City Cab Mini—a scaled-down take of their signature 1993 arcade cabinet that’s packed with 37 games that shaped SEGA’s storied legacy of its quarter-fueled library. While it’s a shame that the retro gaming wizards at M2 weren’t programmers for this nifty little machine, the unit’s nostalgic design and collection of titles more than make up for its above-average emulation.

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QCF: Yakuza: Like A Dragon

espite all of the social and technological advancements we’ve made over the last century, there’s an old saying that still gets thrown in the face of anything progressive to this very day—the tired phrase of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 

There are merits to the sentiment though—it isn’t often that an open-world action-adventure dynamic like that of the Yakuza series is able to work as well as it has for the last fifteen years, as each entry only worked to improve upon the foundation of the 2006 PS2 original. Fortunately, that isn’t the case here, far from it; Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's Yakuza Like A Dragon is a revival, unlike anything we’ve seen from a legacy franchise before it, taking the series to a new generation of players while successfully carrying it to new heights for longtime fans all the same.

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