Been Here Before

RKeefe1032
RKeefe1032@aol.com

This slow death of the Saturn seem so familiar. Is it the 32X or the Virtual Boy? Not a chance! Those pieces of hardware might have looked good in someone's board room but just didn't cut it in the real gaming world. It was the Turbo Duo. That was a legitimate piece of gaming hardware that deserved a better fate. The parent company, NEC, never brought out the games that showed off it's real potential and would have expanded the market.

In Japan, the Turbo Duo was known as the PC Engine. It was not as big as Nintendo or Sega but it had a real market and sold a lot of RPGs. Some of the best RPGs ever made were for the PC Engine: Far East Eden Maru, Far East of Eden - Kabuki Den, Poems of Angels, Xanadu 2, Wanderers From Y's 4, etc.. Everything I learned about RPGs, all the tricks of playing imports, I learned from the Far East of Eden series. (That's the subject of my next rant. I get a lot of questions on how to play Japanese RPGs without reading the language. There are some standard tricks of the trade). Only a couple RPGs made it through the apparent wall between Japan and USA. Guess who brought out a couple of them, like Cosmic Fantasy? You guessed it, Working Designs. Unbelievable! You talk about your deja vu. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't WD's fault on this one. It was the parent companies lack of planning and support. Period.

My favorite games ,in the new 32 bit era, have been made for the Saturn. RPGs - Lunar, Far East of Eden IV, Action RPGs - Magic Knight Rayearth, Sports - World Series Baseball, Racing - Daytona, Etc. - X-mas Nights. All of these games have an organic quality that is missing on the N64 and Playstation. They will remain in my collection right next to my Turbo Duo games that I still play from time to time.

I play the other systems but the Saturn is still my favorite. The other two are slick but I , for one, am tired of slick and just want good hands-on games. Let the polygons pop-up. Who cares if the game is good. There are a couple games coming out in the next month (Japanese) that you had better jump on because there is a real good chance they will never see the USA: Shining Force 3 and Grandia. They will show that the Saturn is just "getting it's legs" as it heads for the last lap. It was the "SUITS" at NEC and Saturn that caused this all to happen. Bad decisions, wrong game selections, and just poor judgment.