Player One Podcast

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

Publisher: American Laser Games
Developer: American Laser Games
Year: 1994

Here we have the first appearance of a handful of titles that will appear in this series from American Laser Games. ALG was a group based out of New Mexico that briefly revived the laserdisc genre in arcades during the early nineties. This type of arcade game (many of which appeared on the Sega CD) had enjoyed its heyday during the eighties, but had largely disappeared by the time American Laser Games started releasing cabinets.

In order to extend their business, ALG released their games across just about every active, disc-based platform during the early nineties as well. All of their games fell into the shooting gallery genre, where the player ideally used a light gun and shot at various “bad guys” who appeared as they were forced through each level. Each gallery normally featured a few innocent bystanders that would jump out at the player, as well.

Crime Patrol puts the you in the shoes of a rookie cop who must work their way up to the SWAT team. You’re presented with a series of missions at each new level (rookie, undercover, SWAT) that you can choose to tackle in whichever order you wish. Start off shooting heavily armed thieves during an electronics store robbery, end up trying to put an end to a highly volatile hostage situation.

As is evident from the screenshots here, the video quality is about as poor as you’d expect. Though this game does illustrate the evolution of the technology over the lifespan of the system. The video shown in Crime Patrol is almost full-screen, which is a far cry from the postage stamp size found in the first FMV games on the Sega CD.

The only thing worse than the video quality in Crime Patrol is the acting. It’s all very over-done and laughable. The wardrobe and dialogue doesn’t help. Most of the criminals are ridiculous stereotypes, laughing maniacly at you whenever you get shot.

Actually, the game play itself is pretty awful as well. The window between the time most enemies show themselves and the time you have to shoot them is ridiculously small. Crime Patrol suffers from the same problems so many other FMV games did – game play that relies almost entirely on playing the same level over and over again, memorizing when and where your targets are going to leap out at you. A great way to keep people pumping quarters into an arcade cabinet.

Thankfully, each level is rather short, so the amount of targets you have to memorize is pretty low. Unfortunately, however, the last levels feature enemies that pop up in random positions, bringing the frustration factor to a whole new level if you bother to get that far.

Following their four-year run, consisting largely of these shooting-gallery FMV games, American Laser Games began producing PC games aimed at the female market under the moniker of Her Interactive. This wasn’t a successful venture, however, and after spinning off Her Interactive into its own label, American Laser Games was eventually bought out by the company.

Her Interactive still makes games today. The company has made its name releasing a series of Nancy Drew titles for the PC and Mac. The rights to American Laser Games’ library is currently owned by Digital Leisure, and they along with other laser disc classics like Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace have been more recently released for home DVD players and the PC.

Greg Sewart American Laser Games, Crime Patrol, Digital Leisure, Her Interactive, Nancy Drew, Sega CD

Publisher: Digital Pictures
Developer: Digital Pictures
Released: 1994

Another of the infamous series of U-Direct films from Digital Pictures that greatly contributed to the horrible reputation suffered by the Sega CD. These games tended to fall into a limited number of genres – Corpse Killer is basically a video shooting gallery.

You are part of an elite military unit that has been dropped onto a tropical island that is apparently overrun by zombies. After getting hung up in a tree, you are bitten by one of these zombies before being rescued by Winston, the man who will act as your guide through the rest of the game.

It’s not long before you meet Julie, a photojournalist who tags along in order to build her story on the whole situation. She hips you to the real reason you’re there – Dr. Hellman, the man responsible for turning the island’s inhabitants into zombies.

With me so far?

Game play consists of tracking left to right across various locales, shooting at the different zombies that come after you. Before and after each level you’re treated to a bit of story either explaining the upcoming level or revealing more of the overall plot.

While most of the enemies you face can be defeated by simply shooting them, certain characters (mostly boss characters) require special bullets to bring down. The game also supports various light guns available for the Genesis, which was definitely the way to play, as moving the cursor around the screen with the controller makes the whole thing pretty difficult.

But that’s about the extent of the variety on tap here. Sure, each level looks a bit different, but the experience is exactly the same.

One thing about Digital Pictures’ games is that you can usually recognize at least one of the actors involved. Corpse Killer is no different. Dr. Hellman is played by none other than Vincent Schiavelli, who may not have been huge star, but is someone everyone has seen in a movie or two. He appeared in films like Ghost, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, etc.

The director actually has some cred, too. John Lafia co-wrote Child’s Play and directed Child’s Play 2, as well as some television shows, including episodes of Babylon 5.

Corpse Killer is also one of the five Sega CD games that saw release on the 32X as well. The 32X version of the game plays exactly the same, but the visuals have been slightly upgraded. The HUD elements, video resolution and color have all be upgraded to take advantage of the Sega’s 32-bit add-on.

In fact, Digital Pictures got a lot of mileage out of this game, as it eventually saw release on the 3DO, PC, Mac, and Sega Saturn. Subsequent releases included new elements such as new enemies, difficulty settings, and subtitles due to the fact that players complained they couldn’t understand what the rastafarian Winston was saying half the time.

Greg Sewart Corpse Killer, Digital Pictures, Sega CD

Publisher: Compton’s NewMedia
Developer: Compton’s NewMedia
Released: 1994

This is another of the handful of reference media that was released for the Sega CD (I already covered Animals in a previous installment of the series).

Anyone who was in school back in the 90s likely remembers discs like this. Back in the early days of multimedia – before the internet was so lightning fast and accessible – most school libraries had at least one copy of Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia (or something similar) on CD-ROM. You remember: this was when CD-ROMs came in little, plastic, cartridge-like shuttles.

The advantage these discs had over a traditional, paper encyclopedia was that they could include sound and video, as well as a searchable database that was much faster than finding the proper volume of the book set and searching the contents for your desired subject.

It’s kind of amazing how recently encyclopedias on CD-ROM were actually state of the art technology. Nowadays with services like wikipedia and youtube, as well as thousands of other sites dedicated to just about any subject you can think about a simple Google search away, stuff like Compton’s feels downright archaic. But man, this was the future back in the day.

So what the heck is this doing on a game system? Well, as I’ve mentioned before: multimedia game systems were in a weird space back in the mid-90s. There was this desire to justify the hardware by proving that it could do more than just play games – that it could be a productive part of family’s lives. The Sega CD, 3DO, CD-i, etc all had products like this. Much like my dad justified an NES back in the day by telling himself it was a great way for us to practice our hand-eye coordination, I’m sure publishers of the 90s were hoping parents would use these discs to justify an even more expensive purchase.

In fact, Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia was one of the pack-in discs for JVC’s X’Eye, which was a licensed Genesis/Sega CD hybrid console. The disc was also released as a standalone product, but I can’t imagine it was in very large numbers.

So how useful is this thing. Honestly, I can’t imagine using it for any serious research on any subject. The database seems pretty limited, the articles on each subject are ridiculously short, and most of the “videos” included are slideshows of still images with a bit of commentary over them. Not to mention the size and resolution is so small it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at.

Even if the information on offer wasn’t woefully lacking, the user interface is awful as well. A slow moving cursor and a tiny on-screen keyboard coupled with a few buttons scattered along the bottom and side of the screen are the only means of navigating the database.

Multimedia encyclopedias were a good idea for their time, but they should never have appeared on game consoles.

Greg Sewart Sega CD Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Wolf Team
Released: 1992

And we finally get to our first Wolf Team game. Wolf Team was a very prolific developer on the Sega CD platform, perhaps more so than any other team.

But Cobra Command is not a Wolf Team original. This game started life as Thunder Storm – a 1984 laserdisc arcade game from Data East.

Cobra Command is basically a full-motion video shooting gallery that features game play elements from titles like Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace – occassionally an arrow will appear at the bottom of the screen, and the player has a limited amount of time to press the d-pad in that direction or risk a game-ending collision.

Likewise the targets presented to the player are part of the video, and thus need to be shot down before they’re scripted to shoot back. Players can shoot down enemy choppers, planes, cars, etc using either their standard machine gun or a supply of missiles. Levels take place over such diverse areas as New York City (complete with landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and WTC), the Grand Canyon, and Easter Island.

Cobra Command was one of the first games released for the Sega CD in North America. And while in hindsight it really represents an early warning of the full-motion video road the system was about to go down on our shores, I think that’s unfairly dismissing it. Cobra Command was one of a short list of classic Japanese arcade games (others included Time Gal, Road Avenger, and Revenge of the Ninja) that appeared in homes for the first time thanks to the Sega CD.

Fans of Double Dragon II might feel some faint recognition when they watch the video of this game: the helicopter in the garage at the beginning of that game is the helicopter flown by the player in Cobra Command. Yoshihisa Kishimoto directed both games, along with a string of other popular games like Renegade, Double Dragon, and Super Dodgeball.

If you’re interested in checking this classic out, it’s also available for the iPhone.

Greg Sewart Sega CD Cobra Command, Data East, Thunder Storm, Wolf Team

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Digital Pictures
Released: 1993

This is a bit of an odd one. Those who remember the launch of the Sega CD in the US might also remember that the pack-in software bundle included two music CDs – a regular music sampler and a CD+G disc. Right from the start it seemed that Sega was serious about pushing their new hardware to be everything to everyone. In Japan, the thing even had an optional Karaoke attachment. And let’s not forget Sony’s much-maligned Make My Video series.

The Colors of Modern Rock is kind of an extension of that whole philosophy. On this disc were six different music videos from artists signed to the Warner Music label – ‘Donna Everywhere’ by Too Much Joy; ‘Backdoor Romeo’ by T-Ride; ‘Outshine The Sun’ by The Belltower; ‘Hooker’ by Xtra Large; ‘Haven’t Got A Clue’ by Dramarama; and ‘To Be With You’ by Mr. Big, which is undoubtedly the biggest mainstream hit on the disc. In fact, it’s likely most folks haven’t even heard of the other five songs listed, though people who remember that original Sega CD bundle might also remember that Dramarama made an appearance on those discs, as well.

The Colors of Modern Rock features very little in the way of interactivity. You can watch the six videos in order (complete with an on-screen set of VCR controls like play, pause, fast forward, and slo-mo), you can watch the six videos in random order, and you can take snapshots from each video, which can then be viewed in a separate menu.

Riveting, right?

Of course, all six songs are presented in the standard postage-stamp, screen-door video the Sega CD was well known for. So even if the idea had enough merit to make the Virtual VCR a series of discs, the visual quality of the product killed any of that potential anyway.

Couple of interesting things to note: when the picture gallery browser is loading, the text on the screen states “Relax…pretend it’s a game!” This is a semi-famous line from the opening of Sewer Shark (also from Digital Pictures) – one that became a bit of a tag-line for the system as it was used at the end of the earliest commercials for the console.

More interesting, though, is what was left off this disc. Digital Pictures and Warner Music had apparently lined up the artist Prince to appear on this disc. He would have been the biggest draw by far out of the included groups. Unfortunately, the disc was produced right around the time the mercurial singer was in the midst of a contract dispute with the label, changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol and putting out a quick succession of albums in order to run out his contract.

Hard to say whether it would have made a difference in the sales of the Virtual VCR, but Prince’s inclusion definitely couldn’t have hurt.

Normally I include a video at the end of these posts, but I’m unable to find one on Youtube, most likely due to the whole licensed tracks thing.

Greg Sewart Digital Pictures, Sega CD

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
Developer: Malibu Interactive
Released: 1993

We’ve already established that Batman Returns on the Sega CD is one of the greatest games in the history of everything. And that mostly had to do with the kick-ass engine used in the driving sequences. So hey, if you’re the people sitting on that technology, the logical thing to do is apply it to another big movie property in the hopes of striking gold one more time.

Malibu Interactive did just that with their Batman Returns engine, this time pinning it to the action flick Cliffhanger – Die Hard on a mountain starring Rambo and that chick from Northern Exposure.

Like Batman Returns, Cliffhanger is mostly a retread of the Genesis title featuring a bit of video and some CD-quality music. And like Batman Returns, Cliffhanger also featured console-exclusive levels (this time in the form of snowboarding areas) with scaling and rotation effects so gorgeous they made 17-year old me want to show the game to every one of my SNES-owning friends just to show them how lame their system really was.

The levels lifted directly from the cartridge game are nothing to get too excited over. Cliffhanger was, for the most part, a pretty lame Final Fight clone, in which Rocky runs from left to right beating up the same two or three bad guys with the same two or three moves. Every now and then you get to pick up a weapon of some sort, which is really effective, but not really enough variety to make these levels all that worthy of play.

And unlike Batman Returns, players weren’t given the option to turn off these ho-hum beat-em-up sections and simply concentrate on the awesome snowboarding bits. Probably because there are only two of them (as far as I know).

The console exclusive levels breaking up this mediocre action might have been enough to save this game if it weren’t for one fatal flaw – extreme difficulty. The difficulty in these snowboarding sections is tuned so high right from the word go that the frustration level for most players will be through the roof inside of about 10 minutes. Considering the first of these levels is the second area of the game, that makes for a pretty short play time overall.

The premise is this: Sly has found himself a snowboard with which he must outrun an avalanche. Along his path are endless amounts of boulders, tunnels, fallen trees, and so on that he must swerve around or jump over. Hit too many of these things, and his life bar is depleted, ending the level. Hit too many of these things in too short a time span (say, about three in a row), and he’s overtaken by the crushing mass of frozen water bearing down on him.

The whole thing smacks of being tuned based on the skills of the QA testers and developers themselves. Someone at the video game factory was way too good at this game, and was apparently taken as representative of the gaming population at large.

Fun Fact: According to Wikipedia, one of the testers on Cliffhanger was none other than David “God of War” Jaffe. I checked the credits, though, and can’t find his name listed anywhere.

One other notable aspect of Cliffhanger is the sheer amount of video included on the disc. It doesn’t sound like much by today’s standards, but this game boasts over 15 minutes of film footage sliced up and used as between-level story bits. Yeah, it’s crappy Sega CD video, but it was still pretty cool to see at the time.

Cliffhanger feels like an early taste of what was to happen with Batman & Robin on the Sega CD (a game that used the same driving engine and featured the same controller-snappin’ difficulty curve). It’s a shame, really. Even though half the game is really nothing to get too excited over, it would have been nice to recapture the magic found in Batman Returns one more time.

Ah well.

Greg Sewart Batman, Cliffhanger, Malibu Interactive, Sega CD, Sony Imagesoft