Monday 17 September 2007

Memorable Moments in Sega Gaming 1

Now while I said this blog would mainly be about the non-gaming side of Sega, I think I can make some exceptions. Mainly, the kind of memorable moments in Sega games that are the reason I love Sega games in the first place. here's the first of many of these I plan to write up.


#1 Saturn Bomberman - Footie Level

Fact: Saturn Bomberman is THE multi-player game of all time, and the best of the franchise to date. Not only do you get countless different characters to pick, all sorts of options and full stats at the end of each match telling you who blew up who, you also get some totally unique stages to fight on. One of these is of a Football theme, with a goals on either side. Once most of the blocks have been cleared and everyone is running around like Looney’s kicking bombs at each other, there’s a clever trick I discovered. You can actually kick the bombs into the goal’s, and when you do, a high-pitched voice shouts “GOOOOAL!” as fire engulfs two lines of the whole stage, the one’s net to the very middle line. Anything that walks through these lines as the flames fly across the screen are doomed, and of course, if you don’t move out of those lines when you kick the bomb, you’ll be doomed too. Still, this proves to be a very useful tool in taking out other players when there’s no where for them to get trapped. Lure them to the center, kick a bomb into a goal, and leg it. This game is still a multi-player favorite in my house, and whenever I start up a Series of matches on it, most of them are on this level. Fun~



More after the jump.


#2 Sonic Adventure 2 - Sonic Dies in Dark Side Story?

Well, not really, but if you play through this game from the Dark story side, it sure looks that way in one cut scene. Tails spits out “How’d you know the Emerald is fake?”, totally blowing their cover, the moron. Anyway, Eggman gives a farewell as Sonic is shot out into space in this little capsule, and you see it explode. As Amy started crying, I was shouting at the screen “OH SHIIIIIIT” then laughed my arse off. I killed Sonic! This Hero/Dark side story mode stuff was a brilliant idea! Then, as I went through the Hero mode, and go to the same scene, it was shown from Sonics view, as he somehow Chaos Control’s himself out of the capsule with a fake emerald just before it explodes. Oh well, it was funny while it lasted.


#3 Fighters Megamix - Fighting as the Daytona Hornet

There was a lot of hidden characters in Megamix. These ranged from the chick from Virtua Cop to that Rentahero guy with the battery power and the Sonic characters. The one that stood out to me the most, however, was that Hornet car from Daytona. What’s a car doing in a fighting game, I thought. My first guess was that it’d be the driver, but nothing prepared me for what came up when I tried him out. It was quite literally the Hornet car standing up on it’s back wheels. You punched with the front wheels, and kicked with the back wheels. It even has a throw in which it grabs the opponent and spins one of it’s front wheels over their face! Genius! Even stranger is when you use the armor strip move, the top shell rips off and suddenly the car plays just like Ura Bahn, another hidden character in the game, and one of the most powerful too, actually making the Hornet one of the best characters to play as in the whole game.


(Best screenshot of the exact area of the game I could find was from the PS2 remake. Bah.)

#4 Virtua Cop 2 - Shooting Car’s wheels Off

For the Saturn, VC2 is a real classy light-gun game. It gave you alternate routes, a boss that chucks a van at you and, most importantly, loads of things to shoot at. But not just bad guys, but loads of objects that do cool things when you shot them. Smash up windows, make chandeliers fall bit by bit, and even blow up watermelons. The most memorable by far, however, is in the 2nd half of the first level when you hop into your cop car and start chasing a group of vehicles. You could just shoot the bad guys and be done with it, but it’s just so much more fun shooting at the wheels. Rather a few rounds the car starts to wobble about, until finally the wheel pops off and the car goes flying in the air in an almost slow motion fashion, just like all those cop films you’ve ever seen. Also, if you take out cars with hostages in them this way, they don’t get killed. Oh yeah, and when you knock bad guys of their motorbikes, if your quick enough you can rip their bikes to pieces too. Haw.


#5 Ecco - That part at End of Level 1

Ecco is one of he most tranquil games you‘ll find on the old Mega Drive. Or is really a deceiving little bastard that fools you into thinking it‘s tranquil? I swear when I first played this game I wasn‘t expecting what happens at the end of the first level. “How high in the sky can you fly?” says one of the passing Dolphins. Yeah, ok, so I jumped out of the water a bunch of times and nothing much happened. As I found myself at a dead end with a jewel thingy blocking up a passageway, I jumped up out of the water there and suddenly: BUUWOWOWOWOWOWOW. The most horrific sound you could possibly image blasts out of the Mega Drive as the screen flashes in a mad foray of colours and all the sea creatures start spinning about in the air like a tornado. About 4 seconds later, everything went to normal and Ecco fell back into the sea, which was now more or less lifeless. Very freaky, but most certainly memorable.

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