Player One Podcast

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
Developer: Park Place Productions
Release: 1994

Here we have the second of four ESPN-licensed sports games from Sony for the Sega CD. In the last instalment of this series I covered the baseball game, which was downright atrocious. National Hockey Night isn’t quite as bad as all that, but when you consider the only real competition on the system was EA’s own NHL 94 – considered one of the best hockey games of all time – National Hockey Night was doomed if it was anything less than perfect.

And that it was.

While National Hockey Night isn’t completely broken, it doesn’t really play very well, either. Players have a strange sort of momentum that makes them really difficult to control. It’s not uncommon to check an opponent off the puck, only to have him get back up and regain possession while you struggle to move your player into position.

Passing is a pain in the ass, too. Unlike EA’s NHL games, where aiming in the general direction of one of your players usually resulted in a successful hand-off, directional control in National Hockey Night is so touchy that it feels next to impossible to complete a pass on purpose. Aiming a shot is also next to impossible, it seems. The puck seems pretty much attracted to the goalie, and doesn’t feel like it reacts at all to your direction.

It’s safe to say that NHL 94 is a better game than National Hockey Night in almost every way. And the shocking bit is, of course, that Park Place Productions developed both titles! I guess there’s a lot to be said for publisher involvement.

National Hockey Night does have a couple of interesting things going for it, though.

Up until EA’s NHL series, most hockey games were played from a side view (like the coverage you see on television). This view is more or less horrible, as the goalie sprite tends to take up a huge chunk of real-estate in front of the net, making it hard to judge exactly how much room you have between the pipes when you take a shot.

Even after EA’s NHL Hockey came out, it was still pretty common to see this view (Sega’s own Mario Lemieux Hockey and NHL All-Star Hockey come to mind). National Hockey Night, though, actually includes both views – the more TV-like side camera and the extremely more playable vertical camera.

National Hockey Night also features some of that great multimedia shoehorning that was so common back in the early 90s. But rather than doing full-motion video highlight reels or commentary (though National Hockey Night does feature a bit of the latter), this game does something else entirely – randomly during play the game will cut to full-motion video clips of hits, shots, and saves based on what’s happening out on the ice.

Few problems, here: First of all, each of these clips needs to load, and then the game proper needs to load up again once the clip has stopped playing. So all this really does is disrupt the flow of the game. That wouldn’t be so bad, though, if the clips featured the same teams that were actually on the ice (let alone the same players or situations). For example: as my Penguins goalie lays a Nordique forward flat in the actual game, I’m treated to a scene where two Flyers are flattening one of the LA Kings.

I understand the logistical issues behind showing the right teams at all times, but shouldn’t the very nature of the problem have been a huge red flag on this feature in the first place?

Anyway, that’s ESPN National Hockey Night. Two ESPN games down, two to go.

Greg Sewart ESPN, NHL Hockey, Park Place Productions, Sony Imagesoft ESPN

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
Developer: Park Place Productions
Release: 1994

ESPN Baseball Tonight is the first in a series of ESPN-branded sports games for the 16-bit machines. This is one of four that made it to the Sega CD (National Hockey Night, NBA Hang Time and Sunday Night NFL being the other three). I always thought it was kind of interesting how Sony didn’t use league licensing to bring legitimacy to their sports games, rather relying on the ESPN branding to draw all of their sports games together.

Baseball Tonight does feature an MLB license, so players have access to every team in the league. It doesn’t, however, feature a players association license, so none of the little digital men who take the field are named properly.

Not that it matter anyway, as the graphics in this game are so bad the players don’t resemble humans in the first place.

Baseball Tonight is absolutely horrible. Once you get past the decent-by-1994-standards ESPN intro and appearance by Chris Berman, you’re face with extremely mediocre visuals and a baseball game that plays worse than it looks. In fact, the only real plus in the game play department is the above-average animation on the players – they move really smoothly for a game of this vintage.

But I think that may actually be one of the reasons the game is so hard to play. The batter just doesn’t react to your buttons presses they way you think he should. And when the ball it hit…yikes. Fielding in this game is downright awful, thanks to the fact that the camera angle never changes from the behind-the-plate batting view, leaving most of the action off-screen as you struggle to figure out which fielding you’re controlling and exactly which way you should run for that ball sitting somewhere in the outfield. Not to mention how difficult it is to discern exactly where in the outfield the ball is, as this camera angle offers almost no indication of depth.

The lack of quality is a bit surprising here. Developers Park Place Productions had definitely proven their sports-game chops by this point – Madden Football and NHL Hockey on the Genesis were just the tip of the iceberg on their development resume. All I can think of is that this game was released after their decline and closure.

Park Place Productions is actually an interesting story. This was one of the first super-developers in the industry. Founded in 1989 by Michael Knox and Troy Lynden (who already had an impressive game dev resume), Park Place really made their name creating big sports games for the likes of Electronic Arts and Virgin Interactive.

By 1993 they were the biggest third-party developer in the world, with 130 developers creating 45 games for 14 different publishers. The party was short-lived, though. By the end of 1993, milestone dates had begun slipping and publishers began withholding payments. According to wikipedia, one major publisher that accounted for 30% of Park Place’s business pulled their contracts, setting off a chain reaction with other publishers that ultimately ended in the death of the studio. By December 1993, Park Place could not afford to pay its employees. It was also around this time that about 30 of Park Place’s employees left to join the newly formed Sony Imagesoft. So I assume most of the work on this game was done just before the death of Park Place.

Troy Lynden is still around today. After leaving Park Place, he began work with the Jesus Film Project, which was the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ. There he worked on a plethora of software including missionary CD-ROM programs and iLumina, the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite.

Lynden is currently the CEO of Inspired Media Entertainment, otherwise known as Left Behind Games. Gamers will likely remember them for the game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a real-time strategy game that takes place in a post-Rapture New York City. The game was quite controversial when it was released, being criticized for apparently promoting everything from religious warfare to racism, bigotry, and misogyny.

Good times.

Greg Sewart EA Sports, Left Behind Games, Madden NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Park Place Productions, Sega CD, Sony Imagesoft, Troy Lynden

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Novotrade
Release: 1994

If folks considered the groundbreaking Ecco the Dolphin a bit too difficult for its own good, this follow-up thumbs its (bottle)nose at anyone who complained by ratcheting up the challenge even further.

The Tides of Time is a direct sequel to the previous game – Ecco starts this new adventure with all the abilities bestowed upon him at the end of his recent adventure. The most important of which is the ability to breathe under water. The party, however, is short-lived, as these gifts from the Asterite are taken away pretty early on, reverting Ecco to his previous “gotta breathe air to live” limitation. This is a good thing, as it adds a level of intensity to the game that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Unlike the previous game, things get crazy almost immediately in Tides of Time. It appears that Ecco didn’t actually destroy the Vortex Queen after all, and it actually followed him back to Earth to build a new hive. Ecco learns this after he runs across a dolphin with decidedly large fins, who informs him that she’s his descendent and offers to help him travel to the future.

Turns out this is only one possible future where the ocean has developed its own mind, and is connected via a series of “sky tides” or floating water. Dolphins have also evolved, gaining some telekinetic powers as well as the ability to fly.

It gets better.

Ecco finds the Asterite in this future, where he learns that he split the time stream when he defeated the Vortex Queen, and that he must travel back to his time to revive the apparently-dead Asterite and set things right. What follows is a time-hoppin’ adventure that would have Doc Brown spinning in his grave.

At first blush Tides of Time looks like little more than a slight graphical update to Ecco. And for the most part, that’s the case – Ecco moves and controls exactly the same as before, with all of the old abilities. But this sequel does bring a few new things to the table. Travel from one major area to the next is now handled through pseudo-3D open ocean segments, where Ecco swims into the screen and must pass through a series of rings both under the surface and above it.

The sky tides are new, shooter like areas with forced scrolling. Here Ecco must navigate one or more “tubes” of airborne water, often having to jump between them in order to keep from falling to the earth far below.

Finally, at various points during the game Ecco actually transforms into other animals: a seagull, jellyfish, shark, a school of fish, and even a Vortex Drone. These transformations are level-specific, however, so each new creature features very specialized abilities.

The Sega CD version again comes complete with a fantastic soundtrack by Spencer Nilsen (though not as impressive as the previous Ecco CD soundtrack, in my opinion), as well as glyphs scattered throughout the game that trigger 3D rendered video recaps of the original Ecco the Dolphin. I’m sure these were impressive back in the day, but they sure don’t look too hot at this point.

I’m not as big a fan of this as I am of the first Ecco, but that likely has more to do with the steep difficulty curve than quality. I actually think Tides of Time is a better game overall.

The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, and for good reason. There was originally a third Ecco game destined for the Genesis, which was meant to complete the trilogy. I’m not sure how far along in development Ecco 3 got, but it seems like Sega opted for the kid-centric Ecco Jr instead. Unfortunately, that means this particular storyline was never concluded. Although there was another Ecco game released – Defender of the Future for the Dreamcast in 2000 – and it was even developed by the same company (Novotrade had become Appaloosa Interactive by that point) it had nothing to do with this particular storyline. It’s more or less a reimagining of Ecco’s tale.

Greg Sewart Appaloosa, Ecco the Dolphin, Ed Annunziata, Novotrade, Sega, Sega CD

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Novotrade
Release: 1993

Ecco the Dolphin is one of the games that defined Sega and the Genesis back in the ’90s. As crazy as an adventure game starring a dolphin sounds nowadays, it was doubly so back when Ecco was first announced. But when people actually got their hands on it, the game proved itself to be worthy of all the praise it got. It was nice to look at, featured beautiful animation, it was supremely challenging, and decidedly original.

Well, despite the whole Star Trek IV vibe.

Ecco is the story of a bottlenose dolphin – a dolphin with star-shaped markings on his forehead (in the shape of the big dipper, it appears). The game starts in a shallow pool where Ecco is swimming and jumping with other dolphins (his “pod”). As Ecco leaps high into the air, suddenly a vortex appears, sucking all the life out of the water. Ecco finds himself alone and in search of his missing pod. The adventure that follows takes him from the pool to caves deep below the sea, the open ocean to the frozen northern waters, the lost city of Atlantis, 65,000,000,000 years into the past, and finally to space.

Yeah. Things get pretty crazy.

That was the cool surprise awaiting those that invested a bit of time into Ecco back in the day. We were actually playing a science fiction game, though that wasn’t made clear until well into the experience. What starts as a simple tale of a dolphin searching for his lost pod morphs into a dolphin learning his destiny as the saviour of the waters and the world – battling alien life forms by utilizing ancient technology.

All of this is done through surprisingly simple controls. Ecco can move in any direction and jump out of the water whenever he likes. He can fire a sonar wave to speak to other seaborne mammals as well as bounce it back to give himself a detailed look at the surrounding area. He can accelerate to a faster speed to swim against currents or jump high out of the water. And he can charge enemies using his nose as a ramming weapon (he also uses this technique to break certain items as well as restore health by feeding on schools of fish).

Ecco is essentially a puzzle game with a heaping helping of exploration. There are so many underwater nooks and crannies to explore that it’s easy to get lost in it all. And that’s a dangerous thing, as Ecco constantly needs to replenish his air supply by surfacing or finding air pockets deep below the waves. It’s a great, natural “time limit” that doesn’t feel like a hamfisted play mechanic thanks to the nature of the main character.

It’s also one of the most difficult games I’ve ever played. It requires very accurate movements at times, and is extremely unforgiving. It’s so easy to run out of air, or be overwhelmed by schools of jellyfish or roaming sharks or atlantean booby-traps that it’s pretty common for most players to just give up entirely. But the payoff is definitey worthwhile, if only to see how insane the story gets.

Not to mention the fantastic atmosphere of it all. The Sega CD version in particular achieves this through a combination of the already-great graphics and a brilliant, haunting redbook soundtrack by Spencer Nilsen. This is one of the best video game soundtracks of all time.

Other than that, though, the Sega CD version of Ecco the Dolphin brings very little to the table over its cartridge-based predecessor. Some levels have been reworked here, and some of the glyphs accessed later in the game feature National Geographic-style video documentaries on dolphins (it doesn’t necessarily fit the vibe of the game, but it’s cool when you discover it for the first time), and that’s about it.

Ecco the Dolphin is probably the most well-known game from Novotrade, which was a Hungarian developer that was pretty prolific over multiple generations of game hardware. It eventually became Appaloosa Interactive, and was based out of Palo Alto, California. Other games you may have heard of from them include the PS1 Contra games, Jaws Unleashed, Kolbri (the greatest hummingbird-based shooter of all time), Three Dirty Dwarves, and Tiny Tank.

The most famous name associated with the studio is Ed Annunziata, who is also credited on such games as Mr. Bones and Chakan: The Forever Man. He was also an Executive Producer for Nokia’s N-Gage device. His game Smallball Baseball is credited as one of the first microtransation-based games in the US market.

So there.

Greg Sewart Appaloosa, Ecco the Dolphin, Ed Annunziata, Novotrade, Sega, Sega CD

Publisher: Interplay
Developer: Shiny
Release: 1995

And now we arrive at one of my all-time favourite games. Dave Perry made a name for himself during the 16-bit era mostly through licensed games – he had a hand in most of the great Disney games on the Genesis, the most memorable of which is probably Aladdin. Not to mention earlier classics like Global Gladiators and Cool Spot. These side-scrollers always featured fantastic animation, graphics, and control. In fact, the same basic engine would be used over and over again for subsequent Disney titles.

In order to fund the formation of his own company – Shiny Entertainment – Perry signed a three-game development deal with Playmates Interactive. Earthworm Jim was the first of those three games.

Earthworm Jim is the story of a regular earthworm just trying to live his life. One day, a super-powered space suit falls from the sky right onto Jim, mutating him into a sort of superhero. Turns out the suit had been stolen, and was being pursued by the evil Psy-Crow, in an attempt to return it to Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt. Jim overhears the two talking about the Queen’s plans for her sister, Princess What’s-Her-Name, and decides it’s up to him to rescue her from her villainous sibling.

At its most basic level, Earthworm Jim looks and feels a lot like the games I mentioned earlier. But since Perry and crew were no longer shackled by licenses, the game also represents the greatness that can happen with what seems like total artistic freedom. You get great scenes like a level boss that’s an evil fish in a bowl (just knock him over to win), or an escort mission that’s actually fun, where Jim must guide his friend Peter the Puppy through a meteor shower – if Peter takes too much damage, he mutates into a very big, angry version of himself and attacks Jim. Plus there’s the cow Jim launches in the very first level…

Earthworm Jim is also a great example of one man being the face of a game, and thus credited for the work of several other extremely talented individuals. This syndrome has gotten worse and worse in the gaming press in the ensuing years.

One man who tends to get forgotten when talking about Earthworm Jim is Doug TenNapel, who actually created the characters in the game, not to mention is the voice of Jim himself. Others on the team included Nick Bruty and Bob Stevenson, who went on to create Planet Moon Studios. All in all, just a really talented group of people.

It would be easy to label Earthworm Jim: Special Edition as another cartridge rehash for the Sega CD, but enough new content was added to the original game, in my opinion, to make it worth playing through again. Along with a new weapon and a completely new level (where an invincible creature called Big Bruty stalks Jim from the shadows), the levels included in the original cartridge have been updated with new enemies and whole new sections. Most of these involved controlling a “nude” Jim as he attempts to rejoin with his suit.

It also features one of my all-time favourite endings. Completing the game on the easy setting rewards you with a quite lengthy lesson on worms, which scrolls way too fast for the accompanying narrator to keep up, and so ends up being a series of improvised jokes instead. Good times.

Earhtworm Jim was a great game with a lot of imagination, varied game play, and a great sense of humour. Special Edition takes all that and just gives it a little extra “oomph,” making this one of the games that made owning a Sega CD worthwhile.

Greg Sewart Dave Perry, Doug TenNapel, Earthworm Jim, Interplay, Planet Moon Studios, Sega CD, Shiny Entertainment

Publisher: JVC
Developer: FTL
Release: 1994

Considering the relatively recent shift in popularity of console RPGs, it’s kind of easy to forget that a western RPG on home console was a bit of an oddity during the 16-bit days. And when they did happen they were almost always very poor ports of PC games that normally required much more powerful hardware. The result was almost always a stuttering, near-unplayable mess of a game.

Even if you could get past that, though, if you were like me you’d likely still have issues. Anyone who played games predominantly on consoles back then had been bred on RPGs like the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series – very linear, heavily story-based, and relatively user-friendly. Western (read: PC) RPGs tended to be all about open worlds and very exploration heavy. Go anywhere, fight anything, pick up absolutely everything (no matter how useless). To me they felt completely overwhelming.

It’s funny that in the years since both extremes have kind of moved towards the middle.

Anyway, Dungeon Master II suffers from every problem I’ve listed above. As the game was obviously designed to be controlled via mouse input, the port simply included a free cursor that could be moved by the Genesis’ controller’s d-pad. Not an elegant interface, to be sure.

Luckily, movement is simplified a little bit in that you can simply hold the C button while pushing in a direction to control your team. For everything else, though – from inventory management to combat – is crippled by the slow-moving cursor and imprecise navigation controls.

But that fits with the rest of the game, anyway. Movement is very slow, with the odd extremely long load time in between steps.

Visually things aren’t much better. The Genesis’ limited color pallette always had trouble with very dark games, and Dungeon Master II is a very dark game. Early on you’ll spend a lot of time outdoors, in the middle of a driving thunderstorm. What should be an impressive, atmospheric weather effect comes off as a muddy mess.

Dungeon Master II is a bit of oddity, though, in that it is a western RPG developed by an established western company (Faster Than Light Games) that, for some reason or another, was released on Japanese computers almost two years before it saw the light of day in other parts of the world. And as we all know, two years is an eternity in this indusstry. By the time Dungeon Master II hit the rest of the world it looked and felt extremely dated.

This situation was even more strange considering the 1987 original was really popular, garnering a huge list of awards and being the best-selling product of all time on the Atari ST computer.

Either way, it appears that Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep was FTL’s swan song. According to wikipedia, there was only ever one subsequent game released under the FTL banner after this one – Dungeon Master Nexus, a Japanese exclusive for the Sega Saturn. And it’s unclear whether FTL had anything to do with this release. It may well have been developed by publisher Victor Interactive.

Greg Sewart Dungeon Master, FTL Games, JVC, Sega CD

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Westone
Release: 1995

Dungeon Explorer is likely a game even the most Sega CD faithful have never heard of, let alone played. It was one of the last half-dozen or so titles released on the platform. What makes it a bit more of an oddity is that it’s technically a port of a Hudson Soft game released on the PC-Engine, though it has very little in common with its namesake, and it was never actually released in Japan, coming out only in North America and Europe.

That’s not a unique situation on the Sega CD, though.

Dungeon Explorer on the PCE was an action RPG that borrowed iberally from the arcade classic, Gauntlet. Dungeon Explorer on the Sega CD, however, is pretty much Gauntlet to the letter. The game tasks one to four players with taking on a series of dungeons (‘natch) in order to gain levels, find loot, buy better gear, and eventually earn the ability to take out a final boss. I’m sure there’s a lot of story involved as well, but I never really experienced any of it during my brief play sessions leading up to this entry.

See, because Dungeon Explorer apes Gauntlet in almost every way, it feels like exactly what it is – an arcade-style loot hunt. As arcade games are built to eat quarters, they’re generally balanced way in favour of the AI enemies rather than the player. And that’s the same with Dungeon Explorer. It’s so common to get completely overrun by enemies that the game quickly becomes frustrating. Oh, and you only have one life to give to the cause.

I’m sure the game is much better with four players. Not only because there’s strength in numbers, but because the various character classes likely complement each other very well on the battlefield. Unfortunately, since the game features no option for AI teammates, I don’t really know how it feels to play with multiple people at once.

Dungeon Explorer on the Sega CD does some things well, though. Gone are passwords in favour of save files. And unlike the PCE version, the Sega CD game allows you to gain levels simply by fighting the basic enemies in the game – so grinding is a valid option if you feel strongly enough about seeing the game’s ending.

When you consider the developer is Westone, it’s not surprising that this is actually a clone of another game altogether. This company had a bit of a reputation for such things.

Old-school gamers will likely remember an old Sega arcade game called Wonder Boy. They more likely remember a remarkably similar game called Adventure Island, which was released by Hudson for the Famicom.

Westone developed the original Wonder Boy for Sega, and had a licensing arrangement where they owned the rights to everything in the game but the characters and their names. Thus, when they set out to create a conversion of Wonder Boy for the Famiom, all publisher Hudson really had to do was change the look (very slightly) and name of the main character, and voila! A totally new game!

Westone did very much the same thing with another Sega game called Riot City. Again, they retained the rights to everything but the characters, and so set about porting the game to the PC Engine CD for Hudson Soft. Hudson simpy changed the look and names of the main characters – from Paul and Bobby to Hawk and Tony, renamed the game Riot Zone, and suddenly a whole new game appears!

What does any of this really have to do with Dungeon Explorer? Well…nothing. Sorry.

Greg Sewart Adventure Island, Hudson Soft, Riot City, Riot Zone, Sega, Sega CD, Westone, Wonder Boy

Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Developer: Cryo Interactive
Release: 1993

Yet again I find myself trying to figure out how I have to frame this game. I’m not sure most of our readers are old enough to remember this book, the disappointing movie from 1984, or the father of the realtime strategy genre – Dune II.

Up until I cracked this game open for this article, I’d forgotten all about the fact that there was a graphic adventure based on Frank Herbert’s original novel.

Dune is the story of two warring houses – Atreides and Harkonnen. This time and this universe is controlled by a spice, called melange. This spice is the key to space travel, allowing pilots to literally fold space. Unfortunately, this spice is only available on one planet – the planet Arrakis.

Emporer Shaddam IV has begun to fear the growing popularity of Duke Leto Atreides, especially due to the Duke’s fighting force. In order to destroy the Duke, the Emporer decides to take advantage of a long-running feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. Shaddam gives Atreides the fief of Arrakis, previously controlled by Harkonnen. Thus Harkonnen begins to plan war with Atreides.

A further wrinkle, though, comes in the form of Atreides son, Paul. Paul’s mother Lady Jessica had been directed to give the Duke a daughter, who would then breed with the Harkonnen heir to produce a superhuman – Kwisatz Haderach. Instead, Lady Jessica bore the Duke a son, Paul. Furthermore, she believes Paul may actually be Kwisatz Haderach himself.

The third element is the Fremen – the local humans on Arrakis. The Fremen await a messiah…guess who!

It’s a lot to follow, which is one of the major reasons the movie was such a flop.

Dune on the Sega CD follows the settlement of House Atreides on Arrakis, and the subsequent war with House Harkonnen. Most of the time is spent searching various structures, interacting with the different characters from the story, and commanding the Fremen forces that eventually begin working for you.

The game is an enhanced version of a PC game released in 1992, complete with full voice acting and full-motion video travel transitions. And even though the game was originally mouse-driven, it controls surprisingly well with the Genesis controller, thanks to the cursor snapping to the nearest interactive element – it’s a surprisingly thoughtful design considering how poorly most PC games translated to home consoles back in the day.

Unfortunately the game is about as exciting as the horrible movie. The whole thing moves very slowly, and seems very repetitive right from the start. While this is a great port, it’s just not a very good game.

Greg Sewart Cryo Interactive, Dune, Sega CD, virgin interactive

Publisher: ReadySoft
Developer: Epicenter
Release: 1993

I guess this is pretty much the grandaddy of the FMV video game movement. I’m going to explain this game a bit because I’m guessing a lot of the younger folk don’t know it quite as well as my generation.

Dragon’s Lair was released by Cinematronics to arcades in 1983. Players took control of Dirk the Daring, a valiant (but clumsy) knight on a quest to save the lovely Princess Daphne from the dragon’s keep. The dragon would eventually come to be known as Singe thanks to the saturday morning cartoon series this game spawned, but in 1983 he remained nameless.

What made Dragon’s Lair so special is that it was comprised entirely of full-motion video. Animation, actually, by Don Bluth and his studio. Bluth and his people were former Disney animators, and so obviously the quality of Dragon’s Lair was way higher than folks were used to seeing in a video game. Bluth’s film credits are impressive, and include stuff like 101 Dalmations, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Pete’s Dragon, The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and on and on and on.

The game itself was housed on a laserdisc, the first of its kind. It was ridiculously popular to the point that the internal disc player in the original arcade units broke down pretty frequently. Today there’s actually a Dragon’s Lair cabinet on display in the Smithsonian.

Game play is comprised solely of what’s known today as Quick Time Events – as Dirk entered each new room, players would have to pay close attention to the screen for flashes of light. Then they would push the joystick in the direction the flash indicated (or hit the sword button if Dirk’s scabbard flashed). Perform the proper motion quick enough and the animation would continue on; perform the wrong animation or move too slow, and Dirk suffered a quick and often gruesome death. And I’m pretty sure you don’t always get a yellow flash when you have to perform certain actions, but I’m not positive.

Obviously, the advent of CD-ROM players on home computers and consoles was the perfect excuse to bring Dirk out of retirement, and so he appeared on almost every disc-based console out there. He also appeared on hardware like the NES and Game Boy, however, though those adventures were only loosely based on the original animation, mostly appearing as more traditional, sprite-based action games. Though it should be mentioned that Capcom managed a pretty impressive FMV version of Dragon’s Lair on the Game Boy Color.

When you consider the postage-stamp of screen real-estate the early Sega CD FMV games used, later offerings on the console look pretty impressive. In fact, Dragon’s Lair is almost full-screen video. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that most of the backgrounds are completely static – the complete lack of moving video artifacts during most scenes makes me think there was a bit of trickery at work here.

Either way, the only thing holding back the Sega CD version of Dragon’s Lair is really the limited colour pallette. Dirk’s adventures suffer from a lack of colour and the screen-door effect seen on most SCD games, but for the most part, this is an impressive looking game for the hardware.

As far as game play goes, I don’t have much of an opinion on this one. I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but I really suck at Dragon’s Lair. I normally can’t even get past the opening drawbridge scene (a scene I believe isn’t actually playable in the original arcade release).

This is the last FMV title we’ll see on WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL for a while. And after three in a row (though three very interesting games, in my opinion), we definitely deserve the break.

Greg Sewart Digital Leisure, Don Bluth, Dragon's Lair, ReadySoft, Sega CD

Publisher: Viacom New Media/Sega
Developer: ICOM Simulations
Release: 1993

It would be easy to dismiss Dracula Unleashed without even learning what it’s about – horror-themed full-motion video games on the Sega CD were pretty much guaranteed shit back in the day (Night Trap, Corpse Killer, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, etc). But lumping Dracula Unleashed in with the rest of the standard, mediocre FMV titles back in the day is doing it a disservice.

This is the third (and I believe, last) of the FMV titles from ICOM Simulations on the console. The previous two being Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volumes I and II. All three of these titles have much more in common with classic point-and-click PC adventure games than your average offering from Digital Pictures or Don Bluth. Not surprising considering the developer’s pedigree (probably best known by console gamers for stuff like Shadowgate, Uninvited and Deja vu). The use of video here is simply to play out the scenes that happen at each locale as you visit it – no hokey point-in-this-direction-or-you-die game mechanics anywhere to be found.

Dracula Unleashed takes place 10 years after the apparent destruction of Count Dracula. An American, Quincey Morris, is fatally wounded while attempting to kill the Count. In Dracula Unleashed, you play Alexander Morris, currently in London attempting to find out the truth behind your brother’s death all those years ago. And hey…people seem to be dying under mysterious circumstances lately, with a lot of unexplained blood loss. Hmmm….

The game play here is pretty basic. You move from one location to another, speaking to the people who reside there or partaking in events that happen there. Each time you visit a location, you’re generally treated to a video that shows Alexander interacting with other characters or witnessing some sort of event. It’s then up to you take everything you learn and apply it to the overarching mystery and put a stop the madness that seems to have a grip on London.

Time is a very important factor in Dracula Unleashed, as well. Arrive at a locale too early or too late and you miss something or someone very important. Thus you have the ability to move time forward at will, though not to turn back the clock if you’re tardy.

Like the Sherlock Holmes games before it, Dracula Unleashed is a very satisfying experience. Yes, the acting is more than a little cheesy at times, but if you can get past that it’s a fun game.

Unleashed does suffer from the insta-death thing that both FMV and classic adventure games had in common, though. In this game you can choose to have something “in hand” when you enter an area. In some places, if you’re holding the wrong thing, you can walk into what is basically an unavoidable death and have to restart from your last save point. For example: go into the asylum with the blackjack and you’ll be able to beat back the crazy inmates when they attack you. Go in without the blackjack and those crazy inmates will end your life and your game. No real warning – it’s just something you have to learn.

But Dracula Unleashed does a lot of good things, too. My favourite feature is the automatic note-taking. After witnessing a new scene, you can choose Alexander’s notebook and click on the pen icon, Alexander will then proceed to make notes on what just happened, which you can refer back to at any time. Considering manual note-taking was the norm back in the early 90s, this is a very nice feature to have.

Not to mention that folks were getting pretty good at getting the Sega CD to work beyond its assumed limits by this point. For an SCD game, the video in Dracula Unleashed looks very nice, and the window it’s seen through is relatively huge.

The ICOM games definitely suffer from being painted with the same brush as the endless tide of crappy FMV games on the Sega CD. It’s a shame, because all three of them are totally worth experiencing.

Greg Sewart Digital Pictures, Dracula, ICOM, Sega, Sega CD, Sherlock Holmes