Saturn Robo-Pit

This game will pass through the next few weeks with little fanfare and with little attention (as was the case with the Playstation version which came out for the US market a month ago) but it is a pretty good game. This is not exactly Gunstar Heroes revisited but its a cousin of that situation. Let me explain if you will. Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis was one of the best shooting games ever made and was from a company called Treasure. Treasure made a series of fine games on the Mega-Drive such as Alien Soldier, Yuyu Hakusho and Dynamite Headdy. They most recently hit the Saturn with their Guardian Heroes game which sold very well. So, even though Gunstar was such a good game, it sold like no units in this market and was heavily discounted in the ensuing months to my dismay. I can attribute it to a lack of advertising and promotion which pretty much shows what a difference advertising makes. The fact that Gunstar received great reviews from many magazines also did not make a difference...which might make the point that people don't read and only look at the pretty pictures, but I won't go that far. Robo-Pit is a 3-D environment fighting game where you control a robot that you assemble from different parts and then put out on the field to do battle with another assembled robot. You can walk around the field, climb up onto platforms, pick up trees to throw them as projectiles at your opponent, and of course throw a punch or two against your opponent. Robo-Pit added another dimension to fighting games which was interaction with the environment and the ability to walk up to another level and then attack from above if your hapless opponent was directly below you. The game also let you jump and double jump attack your enemies (like a robotic Mario) to do your damage. This type of fighting game will probably see some evolution from competing products in the coming months or years. Imagine a Tekken where you can climb up onto a tree and then jump down on your opponent to wreak some major havoc. Or maybe a Virtua Fighters where you can grab some dirt or rocks from the ground and throw it at your adversary to temporarily blind him. Admittedly those ideas weren't that great but I am sure the game designers will figure out cool things to do. Robo-Pit may not even be the first game to feature this type of fighting but its the first I've seen and I was impressed by the new ideas in the game that expanded the 3-D fighting game genre.

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