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Sega Saturn (Japan) |
Sony Playstation (Japan) |
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King of Fighters '95 from SNK/Sega (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $68 |
Bio Hazard from Capcom (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $68 |
| One of the most popular and polished fighters on the Neo-Geo comes to the Saturn this week in the form of a cartridge/CD combo. KOF'95 is a one on one fighting game with a team option; there are eight teams of three characters each from which to choose from. Your team basically goes against the other teams to become the Kings of Fighting. While there are set teams in the game such as Team Fatal Fury with Andy/Terry Bogard and Joe Higashi and the All Women team, you can mix and match your team to your own liking. The SNK/Sega collaboration should prove to be a good one for both companies. It may be deleterious to SNK's own system and software sales but perhaps healthier for the company in the long run since the Neo-Geo and the Neo-CD have always been niche systems that only a small portion of gamers have adopted. The Sega Saturn and soon the Sony Playstation will allow Neo-Geo software to reach the mass market since both systems have a large customer base and can reproduce a memory hungry Neo-Geo game faithfully. SNK may find its future as a software producer much like Capcom or Konami for these two systems and this collaboration is an excellent way to get started. Look for Fatal Fury 3 as the next Saturn title sometime in April/May. | |
| Highly anticipated and rightfully so, BH looks to be Capcom's shining jewel for 1996 and a strong departure from their recent spate of fighting games. The change is refreshing and revolutionary. Very little needs to be said about BH as it has been covered in countless magazine articles already. That and the fact that there are a lot of other PSX titles to cover will force us to shorten this blurb to a few short lines. | |
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Choro Race HQ from Takara (Japanese) Available 3/18 at $59 |
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| Reminescent somewhat of Motor Toon GP and Ridge Racer, Choro puts you in the drivers seat of one out of many deformed cars [They look scrunched up] in a stunning looking game. The graphics are excellent and range from green hillsides to crowded city streets to sharp looking mountain roads. Like Motor Toon GP, the cars look wacky with their stubby bodies and lack of aerodynamic design and consideration. Choro also borrows from Ridge Racer with its tunnel sequence [muted sound when you enter the tunnel] and with the clean looking polygon cars that you race against. Sales for Choro should be good since Playstation racing games are far and few between. Its also another game to try the Mad Catz Wheel and NeGcon on. | |
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Dragon Force from Sega (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $58 |
Final Match Tennis from Human (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $68 |
| Dragon Force is a fine looking role playing/strategy game with lots of animation sequences and an involving storyline. The main game itself looks like any other RPG with super deformed characters milling about a countryside background. Where it differs is in the interaction cut-scenes and the battles that you participate in. DF features epic looking battles where whole armies go against other armies in the battlefield and fight to the death. DF adds to the strong crop of Saturn RPG titles already available such as Magic Knight, Linkle Liver and Riglord. | A doubles tennis game with multiple views and polygon graphics would best describe FMT. You can select from a grass or a clay court among other options. If this game is any good, it should take up some of the current demand for V-Tennis which is no longer in print but got a resurgence in demand thanks to a favorable review in Diehard magazine. We can also hope that it does not turn out to be another Power Serve Tennis which looked great but played horribly. |
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Snatcher from Konami (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $58 |
Tenchi Wo Kurau 2 from Capcom (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $68 |
| This original PC-Engine game came out for the Playstation about a month ago and sold very well. The Saturn version will be the same exact game with the same sharp graphics, the same horror and the same gore. You get the idea. The sequel to Snatcher, Policenauts, will be available sometime in April for the Saturn. Feel free to contact NCS for more information on Snatcher or Policenauts. | Set in medieval China, TK2 is a Final Fight variant with Chinese warriors as the heroes against evil, out to save the world level by level. The graphics are arcade quality and the gameplay should be the same as Final Fight's with the standard punching, kicking and the picking up of weapons to use on your enemies. Tenchi is also known here as Dynasty Wars 2 but never did too well in the arcades. Sales for side scrolling punch and kick games have always been excellent for us but what we would like to see is Tower of Doom from Capcom already. Don't hold your breath for that one to show up anytime soon. |
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Gradius Deluxe Pack from Konami (Japanese) Available 3/29 at $58 |
Winning Post 2 from Koei Co., Ltd (Japanese) Available 3/25 at $68 |
| The classic game revue continues with this collection of classic shooters. Gradius, Life Force and Salamander are all alive and well in this blast to the past. Gradius was one of the pioneer games in the history of shooters and gave many nice ideas to the shooter field such as multiple power up options, multiple tailing drones, huge bosses, etc. Like the Namco Museum series, all of the shooters contained herein should be true to the arcade originals with the original arcade code. Fans of the Gradius series should definitely check this one out to see how well Gradius has aged. Wine? | Horses are beautiful creatures and horse racing is an ugly sport. Think about it for a moment, little men known as jockeys flog the horse's hind with what looks like a hand whip to make the horse run faster. The horse for the most part has no idea why the hairless mammal on its back is flailing and is confused by the throng of spectators yelling and screaming from the stands waving little bits of paper about. Its not fair to the horse and I am surprised that animal lovers have not taken to the streets (or at least to the track) in protest. Winning Post 2 takes us on a joyride to the `Sport of Kings' where you play the owner of a stable. Your mission in life is to rear a champion and win a lot of races on the track. Like any other asset management/strategy game, you will have to decide how to keep your stables, which trainers to use, watch the bottom line, etc. WP2 features all this and more. Horse racing enthusiasts around the world can now unite because Winning Post 2 is now here. Saturn owners can get a taste of the good life with Winning Post on the USA Saturn and get a few about what the excitement is about. |
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My Best Friends from Atlus (Japanese) Available 3/22 at $59 |
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| Five anime girls and ample nudity highlight this new title from Atlus. MBFs is a jigsaw puzzle game where you try to get all the pieces in the puzzle in place to see the resulting picture. There are also animation sequences featuring each girl in a `sexy' situation. The pictures are for the most part tame and nothing to invoke the name of Jesse Helms about. Note that March usually starts off the strip majong and strip for no reason flood of games on the Saturn market. We should see about 30 strip type games from now til September. Brace yourselves. |
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