Player One Podcast

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

Publisher: Digital Pictures
Developer: Digital Pictures
Released: 1993

Double Switch basically feels like Digital Pictures returning to the well. Night Trap was pretty much the game that put Digital Pictures on the map – for better or worse – and Double Switch seems like an attempt to emulatethat sort of campy, trap-em-all formula.

Welcome to Edward Arms. You are… well, I’m not sure, actually. You are the stranger that the owner of Edward Arms (Eddie, ‘natch) has conscripted to help him escape from his basement prison. See, for some reason, Eddie has been locked in the basement of his own building by the handyman, Lyle. To make matters even more confusing, the building is being overrun by secret agents and assassins. Eddie, who seems to suffer from a pretty unhealthy case of paranoia, equipped the building with a series of cameras and traps before he was confined to the basement.

Now it’s your job to keep the rest of Edward Arms’ tenants safe by trapping intruders, as well as to find the various codes needed to free Eddie from his basement prison. You do this by jumping from room to room, arming traps, and then springing them at the precise moment an enemy passes over a trigger point.

Yeah. This is Night Trap.

Trap the assassins/agents/whoever and you’re rewarded with a quick (and sometimes hilarious) scene of the results. Miss too many of these antagonists, or let one of them get to the circuit breaker and shut down power to the building, and you lose.

This game, to me, is pretty much the ultimate Digital Pictures title. Not only is it exactly the kind of linear, b-movie-level FMV experience the company was known for, but it also seems to be the pinnacle of their story-telling ability. Not to mention it features probably the biggest names a Digital Pictures game had ever drawn or would draw again.

Eddie himself is played by none other than ’80s teen hearthrob Cory Haim. This was during the post-rehab, straight-to-video phase of his destroyed career. But still, most of the people playing this game had fond memories of The Lost Boys, so his name still carried a bit of weight.

The building manager is played by Deborah “Blondie” Harry. Perhaps a bit old for most of the audience who were likely playing this game. But seriously, who hadn’t heard Heart of Glass?

Finally, the antagonist Lyle is played by R. Lee Ermey – better known to oldsters as the hard-as-nails Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, and to youngsters as “Sarge” the plastic army man from the Toy Story movies.

OK, so it’s not like any of these folks were burning up the red carpet in 1993. But they were still pretty big names to appear in a video game. This is back when this stuff was mostly still considered child’s play, remember.

The story, as well, is not bad in that the writers spend the first part of the game convincing you that Eddie is the protagonist. As the game progresses, it becomes obvious that Eddie is actually insane, and he eventually becomes the main antagonist of the story. It’s also well-hidden that Lyle and the building manager Elizabeth are Eddie’s parents.

The crew has a bit of cred, too. Especially director Mary Lambert, who has a handful of popular music videos to her credit, not to mention the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.

As much as we all like to look back at the folly of the full-motion-video games and shake our heads in disbelief that they were once considered the future of our beloved hobby, there was a time when this stuff was right on the cusp of becoming the next big thing. The genre was being noticed by people outside the gaming industry. Double Switch seems like one of the titles that was just about “there” in that regard, though it wasn’t enough to help the genre break through and become a mainstay.

Greg Sewart Blondie, Cory Haim, Deborah Harry, Digital Pictures, Double Switch, R. Lee Ermey, Sega CD

Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Alexandria, Inc.
Released: 1994

Our series goes from the dizzying heights of a quality stratRPG like Dark Wizard to the depressing lows of a bog-standard 16-bit licensed action game in Demolition Man.

The film Demolition Man is memorable for a few reasons. Firstly, it was definitely one of the last of the 80s-style action movie breed – big guns, big muscles, ridiculous one-liners, extremely improbable scenarios and lots and lots of explosions. But despite that, it was also memorable for its satiric take on the future and genuinely funny jokes. I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s also one of the first films a lot of us ever saw that featured Sandra Bullock, back before Speed made her a mega star.

The story begins in 1996, where cop John Spartan (Stallone) has finally tracked down and captured super criminal Simon Phoenix (Snipes). In the process, however, Spartan apparently set off an explosion that not only leveled a couple city blocks, but inadvertently killed a group of hostages Phoenix was holding. Thus, Phoenix is sentenced to an eternity of incarceration in suspended animation, while Spartan is sentenced to 70 years of the same punishment. During which time, both of them will be subconciously rehabilitated.

Flash forward to 2032, where LA, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara have merged into San Angeles – a planned city where pacifism prevails and violent crime is a thing of the past. Somehow, Simon Phoenix has been thawed out and is running amok. The woefully under-prepared SAPD decide the only way to take him down is to thaw out John Spartan a bit early and recruit him for the job. And that’s where our game picks up.

Most folks who remember Acclaim know that the publisher made its money through releasing generally crappy action games that sold on the strength of various movie licenses. It has to be said, however, that Acclaim was not the only publisher doing this. The 16-bit era in general was license-happy, with movies, TV shows, and even soda and potato chip mascots finding their way into dozens of games.

The problem with almost all of these games is the business model dictates that the money is more effectively spent securing the license and marketing the game, rather than creating a quality product. Who cares about developing a fun, engaging game? People are buying it for what’s on the box, not what’s inside. Thus you get a unending series of mediocre-to-awful, same-ish action games simply painted up to resemble the movie/tv show/whatever they’re meant to represent.

Demolition Man fall near the upper end of that spectrum, though. It’s nothing special, but it’s not exactly awful, either. This game is mostly a side-scrolling shooter along the lines of the Contra series (though not nearly as good). John Spartan makes his way through a number of levels (1996 LA, San Angeles’ Museum’s “Hall of Violence,” San Angeles underground, etc) killing dozens of armed thugs in his pursuit of Simon Phoenix. Along the way he picks up health power ups and a handful of different guns.

Most – though not all – of the levels are based on settings from the film. And as an added twist, two of the levels are actually top-down, free-roaming shooter affairs. This is a surprising and refreshing thing to discover, considering how completely by the numbers the game is in general. In these stages, Spartan must not only kill his enemies, but save a certain number of hostages before being able to move on to the next area.

Demolition Man commits one of the cardinal sins of the Sega CD library – this is simply the Genesis cartridge loaded up with some nice audio tracks and a few minutes of full-motion video taken directly from the film. Though I have to say that, in this case, the video does add to the overall experience. Unfortunately, most of the clips shown are pretty serious – the film’s tongue-in-cheek vision of the flawed, utopian future is effectively missing from the game. Pity.

I couldn’t find any interesting trivia about this game. Sorry. Check out the video and get a sense for what it was like to buy movie games based on faith alone back in the mid-90s.

PS – I just realized this is the second mediocre action game in our series that stars Sylvester Stallone. Arnie better make an appearance soon!

Greg Sewart Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock, Sega CD, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Released: 1993

Finally we get to one of the Sega CD’s rare yet awesome RPGs.

The land of Cheshire used to be a beautiful place where the powers of light and dark were in perfect balance, and the people prospered under the rule of a just king. That was 300 years ago, before the king’s high priest tried to disturb the balance by giving the dark god Arliman form. A war that lasted 10,000 days followed. This war resulted in the death of the king, and the emergence the heroic warrior Armer, who ultimately succeeded the dead king.

As peace and prosperity came back to Cheshire, the high priest’s apprentice plotted against the land and its people. Velonese had been charged with guarding over the imprisoned Arliman, and as the decades went by, his hatred for Cheshire grew. He has finally grown powerful enough to command his own army, which is trying to conquer Cheshire while he concentrates on freeing the dark god Arliman once again.

Dark Wizard is a strategy RPG where players get to assume the role of one of four heroes and try to stop Velonese from carrying out his evil plan.

Amer IX is the son and heir to the throne of his father, Armer VIII; Robin is the finest warrior in Cheshire and will give her life to save it; Amon is a vampire – the ruler of Cheshire’s undead who kills Armer VIII and assumes his identity in an attempt to control Arliman himself; and Krystal is an entrantress who is tricked by Velonese into killing Armer VIII, and who ultimately sets out to right her wrong by killing the dark wizard instead.

No matter who you pick, poor Armer VIII meets his end right at the beginning of the story, and Velonese’s forces have pretty much overrun Cheshire.

Unlike a lot of other RPGs that feature multiple main characters, each story in Dark Wizard shares nothing but the background – there is no canonical link between the four tales. What you do get is different basic attributes, resources, and a handful of character-specific allies based on your actions during the story.

Dark Wizard’s claim to fame back in the day, besides the fact that it was one of the few strategy RPGs on the console, was its lengthy animated cut-scenes. These were sprite based rather than full-motion video, so they looked generally excellent. Along with the game’s robust intro, each character had a lengthy intro cinema, as well as an animated ending.

Honestly, that’s the main thing that sold me on the game when it first came out. I’m a bit embarassed to say that I never actually got all that far in Dark Wizard, however. This is pretty much the game that I’m not really into strategy RPGs that go much deeper than something like, say, Shining Force or Vandal Hearts.

Dark Wizard features hex-based maps, where the player must move their troops over all sorts of terrain, visiting castles and cities along the way in order to restock equipment, buy weapons and armor, recruit new soldiers or summon new monsters. Each character’s army is made up mostly of one or the other based largely on whether they have a lot of MP or bring in a lot of tax revenue.

Army units on the field each have their own specific attributes, as well, and can be leveled up. So you really didn’t want to simply overpower your enemies with sheer numbers, as it was worthwhile to keep your soldiers around as long as possible.

For all the graphical splendor on display during the story scenes, Dark Wizard is disappointingly mediocre to look at much of the time. The overhead map screens are understandably simplistic, since there are usually a lot of units and terrain to represent. The battle scenes, though, are impressively ugly – the beautiful, anime-inspired style does not seem to carry over.

That doesn’t really matter, though. Every battle scene in Dark Wizard features a little bit of loading time, followed by a bit more as the game switches back to the overhead map. This adds a significant amount of time to the overall length of every battle, so I personally leave them turned off almost all of the time.

For people who aren’t stratRPG wimps like me, there is a whole lot to love in Dark Wizard. The variety of units and level of depth is not something we were used to seeing on a console game outside of Koei’s library back in ’93, so it really spoke to some people. It’s kind of a shame the system itself wasn’t more popular, as I’m sure Dark Wizard could have had a really wide audience.

Oh, and I can’t say enough about the soundtrack. It’s fairly limited for a game this size, but the music that’s here is fantastic. It’s actually another reason to turn off the battle scenes, as they would constantly interrupt the great general themes that would play in the overhead map.

One more bit of interesting trivia – the original concept for Dark Wizard came courtesy of Kenji Terada. Anime fans may know his name, but Final Fantasy fans should definitely know his name: he wrote the first three games in the series.

This is one of the true hidden gems on the Sega CD. Those who love it feel a sort of pride about having played this great game that relatively few people got to experience. Even speaking as someone who never got that into Dark Wizard, I count this as one of the reasons the Sega CD is one of the greatest consoles known to man.

Greg Sewart Kenji Terada, Sega, Sega CD, Strategy RPG