Sega Sorta Christmas 2008

Every December for a few years running now, I've started a 'Sega Sorta
Christmas' thread to keep the love alive (and to keep the signal-to-noise
ratio at a decent level.) What did you do, give, or receive this year that
was in support of or in the spirit of our favorite game company?

While I'm visiting family out in the midwest, I head out to a local game
store chain called Gamers. Yes, it's an unimaginative name, but they have
the best retro selection anywhere west of Akihabara. I never leave any one
of their six stores without picking up a pile of old 8-bit or 16-bit
games. And I try my damnedest to fill in the holes in my Saturn, Sega CD
and Dreamcast collections when I'm there.

Sadly, this year the pickings were quite slim. Only came home with two
Dreamcast games, Zombie Revenge and Fur Fighters. The first game was
roundly disappointing; how could you mess up a Die Hard spinoff set in the
House of the Dead universe? It's painfully slow and it's hard to see
what's happening on screen. The second game I wouldn't have been
interested in under normal circumstances, but I understand that many of
the head-to-head features of Fur Fighters were revived in The Club, the
excellent third-person shooter Sega released for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Fur
Fighters is a decent game on its own, but I like The Club much more.

Anyway. I think at this point I own something on the order of 70 percent
of the American Dreamcast library? I'm missing quite a few of the kid
games and the Playstation ports, so I'm thinking the further I go the
easier this should get.

The only other Gamers purchase of note was Alisia Dragoon, a loose cart I
bought to replace my broken one. You guys were right, it's not really that
special of a game. Still, it can't hurt to have more bikini armor
cartridge labels. Also, a three-dollar Genesis cartridge is better than
a fifty-dollar MIB package with manual and original price sticker.

After coming home, I noticed that the bad economy has a lot of gamers
selling the older items in their collections. I managed to snag a
second-hand copy of Iron Storm for the Saturn from one of these trade-in
situations. I didn't realize before that this was a version of
Daisenryaku, and very likely the first one localized for the west. I love
turn-based strategy and I like this particular game fine, but reading the
Working Designs translation notes years after the fact is just another
reminder of how arrogant and self-righteous that company was. If they were
just a little more humble and forgiving, they might still be part of a big
localization machine that they helped to build.

Reading back over my post, I realize that I sound a bit more negative
about things than I really meant to. I'm still really enthusiastic about
gaming in general and Sega in particular, but Sega's performance this
holiday season isn't focused on the west in particular. I'm thinking about
Phantasy Star Zero and other new RPG properties on the way, but we
probably won't see those until March or April at the earliest.

Anyway, that's the Sega part of my Christmas. How's yours?

-KKC, buying up Dynasty Warrior games like they're going out of style. Oh,
wait...
--
-- "Enjoy | kendrick @ |
your fishing!" | io . com | http://www.io.com/~kkc

In article <giuhdo$2vg$1@news.motzarella.org>,
BelPowerslave <bel.TakeThisOut@whipassgaming.com> wrote:
>
>> After coming home, I noticed that the bad economy has a lot of gamers
>> selling the older items in their collections. I managed to snag a
>> second-hand copy of Iron Storm for the Saturn from one of these trade-in
>> situations. I didn't realize before that this was a version of
>> Daisenryaku, and very likely the first one localized for the west.
>
>Yeah, isn't that wild? I think a version of Daisenryaku also showed up
>on the original Xbox.

Daisenryaku VII did indeed get released on the original Xbox, and a
remixed version with the subtitle 'Exceed' showed up on the PSP and the
Playstation 2. It's a little quirky, and since it's set in the 21st
century has way too many vehicles and equipment variations. Still, it's
hardcore strategy that assaults you with detail. Apropos of nothing, at
that same store I just picked up a bunch of Romance of the Three Kingdoms
games that I missed the first time around.

<snip>
>> Reading back over my post, I realize that I sound a bit more negative
>> about things than I really meant to. I'm still really enthusiastic about
>> gaming in general and Sega in particular, but Sega's performance this
>> holiday season isn't focused on the west in particular. I'm thinking about
>> Phantasy Star Zero and other new RPG properties on the way, but we
>> probably won't see those until March or April at the earliest.
>
>...can't wait to see those eight-polygon models running at 6fps on the
>DS! Ought to be....something.

Have you seen the latest games on the DS to have 3D character models?
Final Fantasy IV and the Dragon Warrior port are astonishingly good.
Sega's also got a new DS RPG coming to the west, something called Sands of
Destruction that's supposed to have excellent 3D world exploration.

-KKC, who doesn't actually have time to learn out to play ROTK properly.
--
-- "Enjoy | kendrick @ |
your fishing!" | io . com | http://www.io.com/~kkc