Called the leader of the 16-bit revolution, this system enjoyed great popularity in the 1990's and eventually cost Nintendo its monopoly of the video game industry.  It was more commonly known as the...   SEGA GENESIS

Sega's first portable system didn't enjoy the same success as the Genesis due to a higher retail price than its main competitor, the Game Boy.  Still, for years the only way to play Sonic the Hedgehog on the go was on the...   SEGA GAME GEAR

	GAMES YOU'LL WANT BUST-A-MOVE:  The Game Gear translation of Taito's cute puzzler is better than any other handheld version, even Super Bust-A-Move on the Game Boy Advance! FROGGER:  You can't buy this, but you CAN download it from the Internet, a course of action I strongly advise you to take.  It's a great sequel to the arcade game. MORTAL KOMBAT:  Astonishingly, this pocket version of Mortal Kombat is better than the Genesis version.  You won't believe the size and detail of the characters! SONIC: TRIPLE TROUBLE:  Robotnik, Knuckles, and Fang.  Triple the enemies means triple the fun for Sonic fans with a Game Gear. TAILS' ADVENTURE:  Sonic's kid sidekick finally gets a chance to stand on his own.  It's a bit more cerebral than your typical Sonic game, but still good in its own right. GAMES YOU WON'T AERIAL ASSAULT:  Here's my definition of hell... a boring, Master System quality shooter that goes on and on forever.  Bring a drool bib... you'll need one. BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD:  "Huh huh.  Hey, Beavis, this game sucks."  "Yeah, yeah!  Can I, like, hit it with a hammer or something?"  "Yeah, that'd be... cool." CHICAGO SYNDICATE:  Good luck trying to figure out this misbegotten spinoff of the Genesis fighter Eternal Champion.  SONIC BLAST:  It's like Donkey Kong Country, except with Sonic characters and some of the ugliest computer rendering you've ever seen. THE LAST ACTION HERO:  You'll wonder how Sony made it big in the video game industry after releasing dreck like this simplistic beat 'em up. REVIEWS FROGGER SEGA ACTION     Several years ago, I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of this handheld version of Frogger.  Sega had intended to release this for the Game Gear over ten years ago, but decided against it for undisclosed reasons.  This made no sense at all to fans of the company who naturally assumed that Frogger was Sega's property.  However, now that we know the game's true origins, it becomes more obvious why Sega was unwilling to distribute it.  They never had the right to make a sequel to Frogger at all, because it was actually Konami's game.  Other web sites have reported that this sparked a lawsuit between Konami and Sega, and as is often the case with custody battles, the game went back to its biological parents, leaving its adoptive family empty handed. In retrospect, I wonder if the Frogger series would have been better off had it remained under Sega's control.  We've seen a lot of lousy games calling themselves Frogger since Konami reclaimed the license.  You couldn't directly blame them for the atrocious Playstation version of Frogger... although asking Hasbro to design an update of a classic coin op is as good as dragging the game through the mud yourself.  However, the frustrating, unappealing Playstation 2 game was entirely their faults.  If you haven't tried Frogger: The Great Adventure, all you need to know is that you'll hate everything about it, from its Southern-fried reinvention of the Frogger character to the odd hop-walking that literally cripples the control.  Konami was also responsible for a handful of mediocre Frogger spin-offs on the Game Boy Advance... the only one of these that truly cuts the mustard is buried beneath five other games on the exceptional Konami Arcade Classics. Sega never had the chance to make a dozen Frogger games, but their one and only sequel on the Game Gear eclipses anything Konami has done with the license.  It strikes an even balance between adding new features and keeping the game faithful to the original, so the player is never bored but never questions the game's relevance to the Frogger they remember as a child.  The biggest difference between the arcade game and this update is the main objective.  Instead of finding a home for your frog at the top of the screen, you'll rescue small orange toads scattered throughout the vertically scrolling rounds, then bring them back to the cabin at the beginning of the stage.  This adds the important element of risk and reward to the gameplay... you can either rescue the toads one at a time, ensuring that they'll stay put if you die, or you can press your luck, grabbing all three in one run and saving yourself a lot of time in the process.  Just be careful, because if you're hit with all three toads trailing behind you, you'll have to start that round from the beginning. The Game Gear version of Frogger benefits greatly from the addition of power-ups and bonus items.  In your quest to retrieve the toads, you'll also find treasure chests, apples, eggs, and, most appropriately, flies for Frogger to devour.  Frogger can collect some of these items by leaping on them, but sometimes, you'll need to snag the prizes with a quick flick of your tounge.  Flies are toughest to collect, since they remain hidden until you flush them out by leaping at them.  Once they're discovered, they'll spiral around you, giving you a brief shot at striking them with your tounge before they vanish.  They're worth a lot of points, but the most helpful item in the game has to be the egg which grants Frogger temporary invincibility.  Neither the biggest Mack truck nor the hungriest alligator will be able to harm you while you're energized by this incredible edible prize. As you can already tell, there's a lot of variety in this game.  You'll find even more of it in the level designs and obstacles.  Unsatisfied with traditional Frogger staples like turtles and cars, Sega added gigantic tanks, dinosaurs, trains that move in both directions, and even rivers of blood to the game's two dozen rounds.  Every third stage brings with it a new surprise, and there are even bonus rounds which let the player relax and snap up a rainbow of delicious apples as they float by on logs. The game is very well designed, holding up beautifully even ten years after it was released.  The graphics may not be as loaded with color and detail as the artwork in Konami's Frogger games for the Game Boy Advance, but they're still quite charming, with plenty of animation and a style of artwork that's cartoony without being downright silly.  The music doesn't offer as much variety as the arcade game did, but it certainly fits, and won't try your patience the way most Game Gear (and Game Boy, and Neo-Geo Pocket...) soundtracks do.  Finally, the control is responsive and, for the most part, responsive.  It suffers slightly from the Game Gear's mushy D-pad, and you can't rotate Frogger in place like you could in many of Konami's games, but you'll only wish you had this ability during the bonus rounds, where it can be tough to line up with the apples due to the dividers blocking your path. It's hard to make this judgment from just one game, but the Frogger series would have been much better off in Sega's hands if the Game Gear version had been an indication of the quality of future releases.  Even if this wasn't the case, it's hard to imagine Sega doing any more damage to the Frogger franchise than Hasbro or Konami's clueless Hawaiian division. TAILS' ADVENTURE SEGA ACTION/ADVENTURE     "What? A mascot game!? Tails fans rejoice!" Too many people tend to pass this game by because it's not your typical Sonic game, but for me it was the game that really made the system (Game Gear) worth its cost. It possesses lots of trappings of a great game: good play control, decent graphics, and a password system. While I found most of the Game Gear Sonic games to be sorely lacking compared to their Genesis counterparts, Tails' Adventures did not disappoint. What this game is not, however, is a normal Sonic game. It is more action-adventure oriented than the pure action of Sonic, and it is not as fast-paced. You'll actually find yourself (gasp) revisiting stages with newly-acquired items to accomplish things which were impossible on your first run through. The game's focus is more on exploration and using items than a straight run-through. The plot involves Tails taking a break from being Sonic's sidekick in favor of some relaxation on a small island where he's built himself a little house complete with a workshop (this was, I believe, the first game that officially established Tails as a mechanic). Lo and behold, the peace is shattered when an army of bird warriors tries to take over the island (for what reason is left unknown; hey this is still an action game, not an RPG). So off Tails goes, armed with skills gained from his many hours of following Sonic around, as well as his talent with gadgets. Unlike in the regular Sonic games, here Tails does not attack bodily except when using special items (such as the Super Spin Dash item, which sadly is a huge waste since the play mechanics for the dash were very poorly done). Tails begins the game armed with bombs--yes bombs--which he chucks at enemies. Later on he picks up or builds other items and weapons to use, including an ever-vital remote-controlled robot and the SeaFox, a submarine. Naturally Tails can also fly to explore or to escape attacks. His flying ability is limited by a meter which can be extended using Chaos Emeralds. The flying mechanics are actually different than the regular Sonic games--rather than tapping a button repeatedly to flap, here you press a button just once to get Tails airborne, after which you can move around freely using the control pad. This gives you much finer control on where Tails flies, which in some levels is quite necessary. It also allows you to, at the press of a button, plunge out of the sky like a lead weight whenever you desire. A rather surprising addition to Tails' list of moves is the ability to climb--he can cling to the edge of platforms and will automatically scale ledges that are low enough by just pressing toward them. Tails' Adventures is somewhat short compared to many games of its type, but it is a lot of fun to play through and possesses only moderate difficulty. If you're unfortunate enough to own a Game Gear I really do recommend picking this one up.

This console was the beginning of the end for Sega, but after you play it you'll wonder why it didn't catch on the way the Playstation had.  If you're a fan of Capcom's fighting games, your collection of systems isn't complete without a...   SEGA SATURN

	GAMES YOU'LL WANT GRANDIA (JPN):  Refine everything that was great about Lunar, then remove all its lesser qualities, and you'd be left with one fantastic RPG.  That RPG is Grandia. MARVEL VS. STREET FIGHTER (JPN):  The sequel to X-Men vs. Street Fighter is more fun and lighthearted than its predecessor.  Dan is in top form here. METAL SLUG (JPN):  Saturn fans can't live on Capcom fighters alone.  Luckily for them, there's Metal Slug, an intense military shooter with a touch of dark humor. MIDWAY'S ARCADE CLASSICS VOLUME 1:  Six flawlessly emulated Williams games are brought together in one exceptional collection. NiGHTS:  This was an unexpected surprise for Saturn owners.  Instead of a sequel to Sonic, they got NiGHTS, a gorgeous, imaginative game that defies description. NIGHTWARRIORS:  This clash of classic movie monsters is arguably the best fighting game ever.  The graphics are superb, and it plays as good as it looks. PANZER DRAGOON SAGA:  In a world of generic role-playing games, it's nice to find something that doesn't shamelessly steal all of its ideas from Squaresoft. PANZER DRAGOON ZWEI:  If you can imagine how exhilarating it would be to ride a dragon, you can imagine how exciting it is to play this superb shooter. STREET FIGHTER ALPHA 2:  To this day, there isn't a game in the Street Fighter series that has surpassed this one.  I even prefer it to the loud and flashy Alpha 3. VIRTUA FIGHTER 2:  Although it's been eclipsed by two sequels, Virtual Fighter 2 is still a marvelous game in its own right.  I'd choose this over any of the Tekkens. GAMES YOU WON'T BATTLE MONSTERS:  It's kind of like playing a Harryhousen movie.  Actually, that's only half true... it's nowhere near as innovative, but every bit as antiquated. CLOCKWORK KNIGHT:  Admittedly, this isn't terrible... it's just so bland and uninspired in comparison to other, better side-scrolling platformers. CRITICOM:  Sadly, the characters (including a wrinkly alien nerd in a metal diaper and a possessed dominatrix) aren't the only awful things in this futuristic fighter. CROC:  Like dozens of other 3D platformers, Croc desperately wants to be Super Mario 64.  It doesn't even come close thanks to lousy control and tiny stages. DARK SAVIOR:  Surprisingly, the sequel to Landstalker is dark, depressing, and dull... the exact opposite of the game that inspired it. ELAN DOREE' (JPN):  You'll have more fun doing el laun-doree than playing this simplistic, frustrating fighter, which features a cast of dragonriders. MIGHTY HITS (JPN):  This obscure light gun game is the Saturn's rough equivalent of Point Blank... and when I say "rough", I'm not kidding. RACE DRIVIN' (JPN):  There's nothing slower than the cars in Race Drivin'... and nothing faster than your hand reaching for the Saturn's eject button after you play it. RISE 2: RESURRECTION:  They made a sequel.  I just can't believe they actually had the gall to make a sequel to one of the worst fighting games ever made. SHINOKEN (JPN):  The operative word here is "no."  The Neo-Geo's failed Killer Instinct clone is no better on the Saturn.  The computer rendering is completely awful! REVIEWS BUG! SEGA (REALTIME ASSOCIATES) 3D PLATFORMER   It's an unwritten law that every post-crash video game system must have an obnoxious mascot to go with it... the Genesis has Sonic, Nintendo's systems has Mario, the 3DO has Dana Gould, er, Gex, and the Saturn has Bug!. He's your typical wisecracking anthropomorph, sort of a computer rendered Bubsy with antennae and a thorax, and he does your typical mascottian things- stomping on enemies, hunting down power-ups, making smart-ass remarks, et al. There's one big difference, though... Mario and Bubsy were stuck on one plane of perspective. Bug!, however, is less restricted and can take off in any one of four cardinal directions (toward the screen and away from it as well as left and right as is typical in games in this genre), provided that there is in fact a pathway in the direction he chooses. Walk from left to right and the game plays like any other in the genre, but take one of the northern or southern paths, and the Saturn responds by scaling the screen inward or outward in an impressive display once thought impossible on the system. It's a little disorienting at first, but hey, that's the price you pay for neat 3-D eyecandy... :) That aside, Bug! is just your standard side-scrolling Sonic and/or Mario clone, without nearly enough new ideas to set it apart from better games in the genre, like Ristar and the clearly superior Jumping Flash!. I'd recommend a rental, or better yet, purchasing the $5 Saturn demo disk with three rounds of the game as well as a stage from Sega's overrated 3-D shooter Panzer Dragoon. BUST-A-MOVE 2: ARCADE EDITION ACCLAIM (TAITO) ACTION PUZZLER   Truly one of the classics in the Neo-Geo's otherwise derivitive software library, Bust-A-Move has arrived on the Saturn with dozens of new puzzles, a Vs. mode for one player as well as two, and even an edit mode which guarantees to keep the game fresh even after its many modes have been beaten. It goes without saying that this very well-rounded package is a must-buy for fans of the original. However, I do feel it important to note that Bust-A-Move 2 is, despite its candy-coated cutesy setting, one of the most frustrating games you can buy for your Saturn. The puzzle mode isn't so bad in this respect, but the Vs. mode against the computer... aargh! In it, you're pitted against twelve bizarre characters ranging from ethnocentric little girls to the undead to cast members from Bubble Bobble, and the difficulty of each battle varies wildly from character to character. For instance, Beluga (the purple fiend from Bubble Bobble) isn't too hard to dispatch, and the blue snake woman in the middle of the game makes ridiculous mistakes which cost her the match in a matter of seconds, but the girls... yeesh! You're forced to take on a very young African tribesgirl in the third stage, and dispite her innocent wide eyes and fondness for the color pink, she really knows her stuff and can literally flood your side of the playfield with bubbles if you're not quick. The same applies to the little girl who waits for you at the Great Wall of China. She looks like a two-year old Chun Li, but does enough damage to her opponents to make the Super Street Fighter 2-era M.Bison jealous! This wouldn't be so bad if these two characters weren't such sore winners. The pink tribesgirl in particular leaps up and down with her fist outstretched squealing "Do do do, do do do!" EVERY TIME she dumps a load of bubbles into your playfield, and this gets absolutely maddening after the seventh time. You can turn down the sound effects in the options screen, buuut I'm not really willing to do this because there are some great voices in the later stages that I'd rather not miss. I would be a lot happier if I had the option to just shut her up... This isn't as inconsequential as you'd expect, but is nevertheless not too tough to ignore when you consider the overall quality of the game. One thing that could be the deciding factor in whether or not you'll want Bust-A-Move 2 is its high level of cuteness. Bubble Bobble fans will adore the opening screen and the cartoon introductions in the Vs. CPU mode, but anyone with a low tolerance for doe-eyed, extremely Japanese characters will want to think twice before picking this up. However, everyone else who loves puzzle games just has to have Bust-A-Move 2. I can't wait to try Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo next! DAYTONA: CHAMPIONSHIP CIRCUIT EDITION SEGA (AM2) 3D RACER    I probably don't have the right to review this, since I've only played one round of Daytona:CCE on the Sega Screams game sampler, but what the hell... I fully admit that I haven't had much experience with this game, so I'll make this review short. The first Daytona on the Saturn was a fine game in its own right, but was quite laughable in comparison to Ridge Racer, with a low frame rate, excessive pop-up, and some of the most intensely dumb music ever in any video game. Sega realized that Daytona was somewhat of a misfire on their parts, and decided to release this championship edition as an atonement of sorts as well as an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the Playstation's flagship racing title. The graphics in CCE are smooth and have a slicked over, high-tech look, just like in Ridge Racer, and the cars themselves are more compact this time out and smack of RR's vehicle design. It's plainly obvious, even from the single round I'd played on my demo disk, that Daytona:CCE wants to be Ridge Racer. It succeeds in copying RR in most respects, but not in the most important one: control. Even with a digital controller, Ridge Racer controls beautifully, but to fully enjoy CCE, it must be played with Sega's 3D control pad or steering wheel. Playing the game with a standard controller is an exercise in frustration... the gameplay is unforgivably stiff, and if you try to use both gas and break pedals at once (an accepted procedure in the first Daytona), the breaks lock up and you're left sliding out of control! Arrrgh!!! If you kicked yourself for buying a Saturn after playing Ridge Racer, and own a 3D controller, CCE is worth a look. Otherwise, stick with the first Daytona. GUARDIAN HEROES TREASURE (distributed by a little company called Sega) SIDE-SCROLLING FIGHTER   First, let me get one thing off my chest: "Why the HELL did Sega completely ignore the fact that this game was designed by Treasure!?" Like most Saturn instruction booklets, a gaggle of American playtesters and marketing losers were given sole credit for the creation of the game, and the name Treasure is nowhere to be found in either its own manual or Battle Arena Toshinden Remix's, where Guardian Heroes was advertised. Even in the game itself, Treasure's glorious spinning violet logo has been reduced to a cheesy static picture, and you're given no clue whatsoever as to who designed Guardian Heroes until you actually finish it. I guess it's to be expected from the same company who would have us believe that they released the first consumer video game system six years after the 2600 was introduced... Anyways. I've been a huge Treasure fan since the advent of the cult hit Gunstar Heroes, and was naturally expecting big things from this odd cross between Golden Axe and Street Fighter 2. I can't say I wasn't disappointed, as Guardian Heroes offers the most frenzied fighting action this side of Street Fighter Alpha 2, but the game has various annoying quirks which set it a notch below the game which (didn't) make Treasure famous. Sega of America is to blame for some of these (ie the crappy Treasure logo, no music in the character select screen), but most of the game's flaws can be directly attributed to Treasure itself. For instance, the storyline, while competantly translated and reasonably clever, gets old fast and has a tendency to bog the game down in otherwise intense moments. Guardian Heroes' characters are remarkably long-winded, and their conversations are more difficult to speed through than they should have been (you're forced to press the right shoulder button, then the C button, to skip through each line of text. Oy...). While it's true that Treasure wanted GH to be considered a fighting RPG, endless lines of text was not the way to justify this catagorization. Secondly... the characters are rather quirky, and there's simply not enough of them to use in the quest mode. Oddly, half of the enemies you'll beat up in an average game of Guardian Heroes have magic points and special moves just like the title characters, but you can only use them in the versus mode after you've defeated them. A survival mode with an abbreviated story line and a larger selection of characters would have greatly bolstered Guardian Heroes' playlife, but alas, that was not to be. Instead, you'll have to settle for the versus mode, which allows you to have a six character battle royale with the ability to select teams and several of the locales from the actual game. It's a nice addition (especially since up to six human players can participate in this mode!), but playing as unique fighters like the Muscle Heads and the Undead Soldier just makes you wish you could use them in the Story Mode all the more. OK, enough complaints. What Guardian Heroes does have makes it more than worth the purchase. The gameplay is as I'd mentioned before an odd mixture of Golden Axe and Street Fighter 2, with the basic attacks and magic of GA and the special moves and combo system of the latter. There are all sorts of breakable objects, plus the combos can get into the eighties or higher if you cast spells at the right time (HA! Try topping THAT, Killer Instinct!). Also thrown in for your pleasure are elements from nearly a half-dozen Neo-Geo games, including intense super special moves and a three-tiered playing field which allows you to switch planes if things are getting a little too hot to handle in your own. Very cool stuff. It doesn't stay fresh for long, since the selection of characters is so thin and the fighting action isn't quite as indepth as it is in Street Fighter Alpha 2, but it's still fun to jump into the game with someone who hasn't played it. They'll be overwhelmed by Guardian Heroes' incredible graphics and chaotic battles. Guardian Heroes is, like most Treasure releases, a game you simply have to have in your collection. However, it doesn't touch the ceiling of Saturn perfection as Capcom's best fighting games had, and isn't even as revolutionary as Treasure's first Genesis efforts. But considering the way that Sega had treated the company, is that any surprise? NIGHTWARRIORS: DARKSTALKERS' REVENGE CAPCOM SIDE-SCROLLING FIGHTER    Back in 1993, a humble Genesis game named Gunstar Heroes shook the very foundations of the video game industry and shattered misconceptions about Sega's often maligned console with its jaw-dropping special effects and terrific gameplay. A half year after its release, it was sold at clearance for $19.95 at most retail outlets. So why is it even more depressing that NightWarriors, easily one of the best titles ever released for the Saturn, is selling for the same ridiculously low price at most stores? If you've played both, the answer is clear: Gunstar Heroes had everything you could possibly ask for in a video game- intense action, innovative level design, two player simultaneous action, wonderful graphics- but this didn't change the fact that it was at its heart just that- a video game. NightWarriors, on the other hand, is a work of art. What else can you call a game with hand painted, museum quality backgrounds and characters which animate with more fluidity than those in any Saturday morning cartoon? This, of course, is not to say that NightWarriors falls short as a video game. In fact, it excels here as well, with the rock-solid gameplay we've come to expect from Capcom. However, much of the game's charm stems from the vast imagination of its creators. Before the Darkstalkers series, nobody expected much from fighting games with monsters and aliens as the main characters, because the characters in these games weren't too much different than their human counterparts. Darkstalkers legitimized the concept of vampires, werewolves, and yeti duking it out, because their interpritations of these classic movie monsters were fresh, innovative, and in some instances better than those of their creators. It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I feel that Brahm Stoker and Mary Shelly would be quite satisfied (or, at the very least, very amused) by Capcom's reinventions of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster. One thing that could be said with absolute certainty is that the creatures in the Darkstalkers series far outclass their movie counterparts. The emaciated mummy in Universal's cheesy black and white flicks doesn't hold an incense candle to Anakaris, a towering Egyptian pharoah who can transform his wrappings into massive poisonous vipers and drops fourty foot tall coffins on his victims. Similarly, the merman Rikuo could swim circles around the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with his incredible agility and the power to transform any part of his body into that of other sea creatures. Nightwarriors builds on the success of Darkstalkers' personable cast of characters with two newcomers, Hsien-Ko and Donovan. Hsien-Ko is charming as a Kyonshie (remember the hopping Chinese phantoms that made up 95% of the population in the corny NES beat-'em-up Phantom Fighter?) with enough tricks up her sleeves to make Moose from the Ranma 1/2 anime' and game jealous. As for Donovan, he seems to take some inspiration from the title character in the mediocre animated feature Vampire Hunter D, but is more likely a parody of Simon Belmont, much as Street Fighter Alpha's Dan was of the title characters in SNK's The Art of Fighting. In addition to these characters, the bosses Pyron (an imposing human flame) and Huitzil (a Mayan contraption with over a dozen crushing and slicing weapons as standard features) are now playable, which is a nice- if somewhat extraneous- feature. Truth is, the bosses are absurdly powerful and throw the game's balance off to such an extent that it's unlikely that anyone will use them more than a few times. OK, now to the gameplay. It's great (would you expect anything less from Capcom?), but there are a few quirks which keep Nightwarriors from being as balanced or as playable as Street Fighter 2 and its many sequels and upgrades. For starters, the attacks are easy to perform but tend to have illogical and downright bizarre trajectories. I find it incredibly frustrating when, as Felicia, I attempt to counter a grounded enemy's attack with a ducking fierce punch, only to wind up leaping straight into the air with a claw flail and landing on the foe's extended fist. Huitzil and Pyron are even worse in this respect, as the range of their projectiles are affected greatly by the strength of the buttons pressed. Pyron's Red Dwarf Sun immediately curves upward and rockets off the screen if you initiate it with a Fierce Punch, and has a standard trajectory if it's started with a Jab Punch. It would have made far more sense if the angled attacks had been assigned to the weaker buttons, as these are naturally associated with weak, short-ranged hits. Not that that's a big deal, of course. In fact, there are several features in NW that are sorely lacking in the Street Fighter series. My favorite is the enhanced special attack system... provided you have enough energy stored away in your power bar, you can greatly improve your character's special moves by pressing two punch or kick buttons when initating them. For instance, Sasquatch's already cool Typhoon Twister Kick creates a large, snowy tornado which encases enemies in ice when enhanced, and Bishamon's Katana Toss forces enemies to commit seppuku on themselves in its powered up form. And if that weren't enough, there are extremely impressive and uproariously funny EX moves which can only be performed with a full power guage. Street Fighter Alpha fans can say what they like, but I'd rather slamdunk my opponent through a demonic hoop or drop them into a frozen lake with an angry whale than perform a tired jumping uppercut which hits enemies eight times instead of the usual two or three. It'd be redundant for me to call NightWarriors a must-buy for Saturn owners, since it's already obvious that I think quite highly of the game. But is it worth buying a game system with next to no third-party support, that's likely to be obsoleted by another Sega console in the next two years? If you absolutely must have the full Darkstalkers experience, yes. If you're willing to accept anything less than a perfect translation of this arcade classic, feel free to pick up the pared down version of Darkstalkers for your Playstation. However, true fans of the series will be more than willing to plunk down $120 for a used Saturn and a copy of NightWarriors. Hell, this game not only convinced me to buy a Saturn, but was purchased weeks before I actually picked one up! That's strong testimony coming from someone as jaded as myself. RESIDENT EVIL CAPCOM ACTION/ADVENTURE   After being inundated with hype from both the professional game rags and fanzines, I guess it was in my destiny to buy this. I wasn't too happy about having to pay $45 for the game (as $20 is usually my self-imposed limit for Saturn purchases), but at the time, I could either buy it, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, both Tunnel B-1 and Criticom, or go home emptyhanded. MKT was out of the question, because, well... if you'd read my review of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on this web site or in Video Zone you'll understand. Tunnel B-1 fits in the dreaded Doom rip-off category, and Criticom was renamed Criticrap by most gamers, so I decided to pass on both games. And going home without any Saturn games would have been stupid, so I made an impulse buy and brought home Resident Evil. Was I glad I did? Not at first. In fact, I absolutely hated the game for the first fifteen minutes... the characters, while admirably well rendered and texture-mapped, move like robots, and the weapons system made absolutely no sense to me. I had to force myself to really get into Resident Evil, but the effort paid off in the end. After thirty more minutes, I couldn't pull myself away from the game. Resident Evil presents the player with constant, nagging questions... "What's in this room?" "Is there something around this corner?" "What do I do with this thing?" And every time you answer one question (usually with the business end of your combat knife), three more pop up. Like a good horror movie, Resident Evil is loaded with tension... you never know what could happen next, and if you drop your guard for even a moment it could spell your demise. However, like any garden variety slasher flick, Resident Evil is filled with aggravatingly arbitrary situations that'll make you feel as helpless as the blonde bimbo that's running from Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films. For instance, you're offered a variety of weapons as you progress, but ammo for these sidearms is hard to come by, and if you waste it, tough titties... you either have to do without when you need it most or start from an earlier point in the game. And believe me, Resident Evil's flaky control makes it tough to make every shot count. You have to hold down the right shoulder button on the Saturn joypad to draw your weapon, then use the D-pad to aim, then press the B button before you can actually fire. By this time, the game's tougher opponents (such as the demon dogs sprinkled throughout the courtyard) will be all over you like hemoglobin on blood cells. Resident Evil would have benefitted greatly from analog joypad support, but in a final crushing blow, no such support is offered, forcing owners of the controller to suffer just like standard Saturn joypad users. As long as I'm nitpicking, may I add that the puzzles in Resident Evil are by any measure ridiculously easy? For instance, there's a shotgun in the game which is perched on a lever that triggers a falling ceiling. Instead of doing anything especially clever to keep the lever from lifting, you simply replace the shotgun with a broken one to escape with the weapon. Oooh, that's a real brainstrainer. Other puzzles in the game are similarly uninspired... the toughest of the lot are a security panel which plays the game Lights Out in reverse and an art gallery with paintings of people in various stages of life. These aren't 7th Guest quality brainteasers, folks. So here's my verdict... I admire what Capcom has done with Resident Evil. The game is certainly diverting, with a long quest and some eerily realistic enemies that, if you'll pardon the expression, blow up real good. However, there's plenty of room for improvement. Here's to hoping that Resident Evil 2 has analog joystick support, better puzzles, and fewer arbitrary deaths than its innovative but somewhat flawed forebearer. RISE 2: RESURRECTION ACCLAIM (MIRAGE) FIGHTING   Yes, I spent good money on this.  Don't ask me why... I hated the original Rise of the Robots on the Super NES, and after reading tons of negative reviews on the Internet and in fanzines, I knew this sequel wasn't much better. But damn it, I just have to try every damned fighting game ever released for the Saturn, no matter how lousy it is!  This morbid curiousity led me to waste my time and money on stinkers like Criticom (the words "That didn't hurt!" still ring in my ears to this day...), Toshinden Remix, and Battle Monsters.  What can I say?  I'm sick... I need help. But anyway, about Rise 2: Resurrection.  It sucks.  Specifically, it's not even slightly fun.  It's not fun to play, it's not fun to look at, and it's not even fun to ridicule, because the characters, the backgrounds, and most likely the designers have no personality at all.  Everything in this game is so lifeless that you half expect to catch a whiff of rotting flesh every time you play it. I'll make one itsy bitsy teenie weenie (yellow polka dot bikini... that she wore for the first time today... oh, um, sorry) concession.  You get a lot more options in Rise 2: Resurrection than you did in the rather bare-bones Rise of the Robots.  There's a combo system, super moves, fatalities, and fourteen characters to choose from, each with a wide selection of alternate colors. Unfortunately, this just gives you even more reasons to hate the game.  The mechs are so small you could mistake them for nanoprobes, the alternate color schemes would embarass Earl Schieb, and the dull metallic backgrounds are next to impossible to tell apart.  The entire game is about as pleasing to the eyes as a severe case of glaucoma, without the marijuana high.  Even the ultrahyped soundtrack by Queen's Brian May comes up deuces... I've never heard an electric guitar sound so bored.  Of course, starring in a game like this, who could blame it? As for the "new and improved" gameplay, it's new, but it sure ain't improved.  All the characters have three seperate punches and kicks (instead of the one punch and kick that would animate more slowly depending on the buttons you press), and you can get a little combo action going if you're quick, but Resurrection still has that icky Rise of the Robots feel to it.  Computer opponents have no trouble beating you into a corner (unless you've got a character with a Blanka-style electrical shield move, in which case you can mash the buttons until your fingers fall off to keep him off your back), and even if you do manage to land a blow, you don't "feel" it connect. Because of this, you're forced to keep one eye on your enemy and the other on his life bar to make sure you're damaging him. So why would I bother buying a game this awful?  Well, I don't really consider Rise 2: Resurrection a game.  I prefer to think of it as a towering, hand-chiseled monument to the unfathomable stupidity of Acclaim in the mid 1990's.  It's an important piece of video game history, and just like the Constitution or the Mona Lisa, it's best kept behind a thick glass case with plenty of security guards and infra-red sensors, to ensure that nobody ever touches it again. STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE ACCLAIM (CAPCOM) DIGITIZED TOURNAMENT FIGHTER   "After all my work in ER and 'The Joy Luck Club', you had to show them this..." An embarassed Ming-Na Wen to Conan O'Brien, after watching a clip of her work in the Playstation version of Street Fighter: The Movie I haven't talked to a single gamer who can tolerate this cheaply produced cross between Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat (and judging from the above quote, the actors were equally unenthused about starring in it), but y'know, I must admit that I have a certain admiration for the original designers in that they had the gonads to alter the eternally popular SF2 engine and risk pissing off fans of the series in the process (and boy, did they! :). And hell, it was about time someone tried to incorporate Street Fighter 2's precise, intuitive controls into a fighting game with digitized graphics... who's idea was it to release Mortal Kombat with a block button, anyhow!? Urf... But anyways, here's the deal. Capcom went through the original game as designed by GameStar, took out the storm trooper and most of the Mortal Kombat-style moves, and replaced these features with better control and characters more familiar to the series, like Dee Jay and an unfittingly scrawny incarnation of Blanka. They sold the rights to the new and improved game to Acclaim (who'll apparently buy the rights to anything that's been on a film reel), and smash boom bang, we have Playstation and Saturn versions of a title which could very well have been released on the Genesis and SNES. In fact, the dull digitized characters aren't even as detailed as the vivid sprites on the 16-bit versions of Street Fighter 2, or even the 8-bit Turbografx version, if you're willing to go that far back. Their outfits look like second-hand wardrobes from the Goodwill Thrift Shop for Needy Fighting Game Characters, with drab earth tones and butt-ugly reds and oranges, and the actors themselves are nothing to shout about. They're stiffly animated, and many of their attacks are clumsily performed (as one would have to expect from a digitized version of a game with superhuman characters). The voices are pretty silly, too, but are especially bad on the Playstation, where Jean Claude VanDamme announces the beginnings of rounds and the characters' names. If you thought the scratchy vocals on the Genesis version of Street Fighter 2 were bad, try deciphering phrases like "Roun' Wan" and "Yeew Ween"... Things aren't all bad on the Saturn version, though. Its access time is nearly half that of the Playstation's, and the control is much better thanks largely to Sega's nifty six button pads. Even the full motion video is better... it's very blocky, but it moves at a much smoother clip than the full-mo on the Playstation version (and I thought that system had compression hardware especially designed to handle the stuff...odd...). So if you've got to have a copy of this game and own both systems, the Saturn version is definately the one to get... that is, if you find it on clearance and can't afford X-Men, Night Warriors, or Street Fighter: Alpha. Otherwise, it's only worth renting once. Coincidentially, when you DO rent it, have a friend who loves Street Fighter 2 come over, and pop this in when he's not looking. Watching him wince at every special move and sound bite is in itself worth the three clams... >:) VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 SEGA (AM2) 3D TOURNAMENT FIGHTER   Like I've said countless times, I'm not fond of 3-D fighting games. Nevertheless, I was very pleased with Virtua Fighter 2, as it does two things people never thought possible... 1. It proves that the Saturn can hold its own against the Playstation in respects to polygon manipulation, and 2. It made a fan out of me. I'm undecided as to which of these feats is more amazing, but this much is obvious... if you own a Saturn, you've gotta buy this game. It's expensive, but believe me, it'll end up saving you money in the long run if you loved the coin-op. Even if you didn't, it's still worth having, as it utilizes the Saturn hardware more effectively than any other game for the system. (Apparently, Sega felt the same way, since you can get a free copy of the game alongside two others when you buy a Saturn. The only minus is that it comes in a cardboard sleeve that doesn't exactly make the CD shatter proof. Be sure to pick up a few jewel cases if you plan on doing something crazy like purchasing a brand new Saturn from Toys 'R Us) VIRTUAL ON SEGA (AM2) 3D MECH WAR   Y'know, the concept of battling mechs seems like it would lend itself well to the video game medium, but I personally have never played a truly memorable game with fighting droids. Take Heavy Nova, for instance. From the back of the box, you'd think that it was one of the best Genesis fighting games ever released, but its overly complex control scheme and excruciatingly slow characters make you wonder why you ever bothered to graduate from Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Or how about Cyborg Justice? Its gameplay was surprisingly smooth, and the characters could augment themselves with all kinds of deadly weapons, but its overall presentation was, in keeping with most American-designed Genesis games, cheap and unsatisfying. I was hoping that Virtual On would reverse that trend, and for the first ten minutes, was totally convinced that it had... On's complete freedom of movement and lightning fast gameplay gives you the kind of adrenaline rush that was sorely lacking in games like Heavy Nova, and its graphics and sound (while not superb) add a touch of intense realism to the game's white-knuckled battles. However... that was just the first ten minutes. I was really enjoying myself when the CPU threw me mindless chumps like VR Temjin, but like Super Mario 64, once I really delved into the heart of the game, I found it much more frustrating than it needed to be. And unlike SM64, I wasn't willing to return to give the game one more try after losing dozens of times to a particularly annoying challenger like VR Dorkas. After the second round, the computer gets unbelievably good at hiding behind barriers and hacking you into little bite-sized morsels with its close-range weaponry, and it's absolutely maddening how, no matter what you do, it's next to impossible to draw a bead on the CPU's character with your own attacks. If you try to hide behind a barrier and squeeze off some shots, your opponent will do the same thing or worse yet try to sneak up on you and deliver a close-range blow which will rob you of over half your energy. If you decide to leap into the air and fire a volley of blasts, he'll simply send a homing device up after you and force you to make a crash landing. And if you chase after your hated nemesis, he'll mercilessly pound you with devastating special attacks until you're reduced to a flaming pile of scrap metal. It's because of On's infuriating one-sided nature that most matches against the CPU will be reduced to a game of cat and mouse, with you running for your life trying to stave off an inevitable defeat for as long as possible. As frustrating as Virtual On is, however, you do have to admire the game's freedom of movement. It gives On a Street Fighter 2 meets Cybersled kind of feel, with the ideosyncratic characters of the former game and the frenzied, paranoid action of the latter. With two players (in the somewhat cramped split-screen mode), I could almost imagine the game to be a lot of fun, but if you're going it alone, it's strongly recommended that you pass on the full release and just play the Virtual On demo included with the Sega Screams game sampler.

This was Sega's last system, and it was a more than worthy successor to the Saturn thanks to a fantastic software library.  It's of such high quality that it actually takes effort to find a lousy game on the...   SEGA DREAMCAST

	GAMES YOU'LL WANT CRAZY TAXI:  Packed with thrills and attitude, this fast-paced, addictive driving game is a true classic that has yet to be surpassed. GRANDIA 2:  Some people hate this series with a passion, but I'm proud to say I'm not one of them.  This bright, colorful RPG is even better than the first game. MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2:  Fifty six playable characters and amazing polygonal graphics makes Marvel vs. Capcom 2 a tough fighting game to top. SAMBA De AMIGO:  Better get the maracas if you want to get the most out of this salsafied dance game.  Even without them, you'll still love the selection of tunes. SOUL CALIBUR:  Namco spared no expense when designing this beautiful polygonal fighter, and it really shows.  Every Dreamcast fan should own this. GAMES YOU WON'T MORTAL KOMBAT GOLD:  It's a port of the Playstation game Mortal Kombat 4, with a couple new (useless)features and a whole lot of bugs. NAMCO MUSEUM:  How could I give six of the best video games ever made a thumbs down?  When they're in a collection this crappy, it's pretty easy. SPAWN:  If you love frustration (and who does?), you'll go nuts over this hybrid of Power Stone and Quake.  In fact, even if you don't, Spawn will drive you nuts anyway. TEST DRIVE 6:  It's hard to believe that subsequent Test Drive games on the Dreamcast were so good when this was so very weak.  Mediocrity, thy number is 6. TNN MOTORSPORTS HARDCORE HEAT:  With a name like 'Hardcore Heat', you know the designers were desperate to sell it.  You'll know why when you play it. REVIEWS CANNON SPIKE CAPCOM SHOOTER   Wow, this is depressing.  It seemed like the tag team combo of Capcom and the Dreamcast was invincible after playing superb games like Street Fighter III and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but it seems that even they couldn't start a fire under the genre that's been dead cold for almost a decade.  I guess it's not entirely Capcom's fault that Cannon Spike isn't the kind of shooter that could club people over the head and drag them away from the latest Final Fantasy and Tekken sequels, but maybe they should have known better than to have a company named Psikyo design it.  After all, everyone knows that Psikyo, or should I say Saikyo, is the preferred martial arts style of Dan Hibiki, the lovably wimpy comic relief in Capcom's Street Fighter Alpha series. One of the most aggravating things about Cannon Spike is it offers two entirely different styles of gameplay, keeping Cannon Spike from reaching its full potential as either an intense shooter or a Final Fight clone, the kind of conveyor belt brawler that pumps out dozens of generic thugs and won't stop until you've reached the end of the stage.  The four buttons on the face of the Dreamcast controller could have been put to better use if Capcom hadn't split them evenly between these two entirely different styles of gameplay... if you like shooters, you'll resent Cannon Spike's two close quarters attacks, wishing for Smash TV's extremely useful omni-directional firing instead.  If you'd rather make like Haggar and crack open some skulls, you'll be reminded throughout the entire game that you can't jump or throw enemies.  If you're open to both game styles, you'll notice pretty quickly that there isn't much reason to combine your fists and firepower... the only incentive to switch your method of attack is when the other one gets boring.  In any case, you can tell that this isn't a "two great tastes that taste great together" arrangement. Cannon Spike's other major malfunction is that it's short.  It's not just Gary Coleman short... we're talking about the kind of size you'd have to measure with an electron microscope.  Most of the levels are a couple of screens long and last a few minutes... after you kill a handful of enemies and two bosses, you're done.  Perhaps this was intentional... it does speed up the game, but it also leaves you twiddling your thumbs through Cannon Spike's numerous load screens and cut scenes.  They look great, especially the close ups of your characters at the beginning of each round, but this sundae was already small enough... it didn't need to be buried in two pounds of attractive but otherwise useless whipped cream. That's perhaps the most frustrating thing about Cannon Spike.  If Psikyo had added more substance to the actual game, the attractive graphics and cast of characters from Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Three Wonders would have made it every bit as good as Capcom's in-house releases.  Unfortunately, Psikyo was more interested in making a strong first impression, and because of this it only takes twenty minutes for Cannon Spike to suffocate under its thick coats of gloss.  You're better off just heading to Blockbuster for this one... that way, you can reel it in, measure it, and throw it back when the thrill of the catch wears off. GUILTY GEAR X SAMMY (ARC SYSTEMS) TOURNAMENT FIGHTING   If I had to describe this game in a sentence, I'd say "It's Samurai Shodown with rock stars".  If I were limited to a word, however, that word would probably be "superb".  This is one of the best looking AND most enjoyable side-scrolling fighting games I've played on the Dreamcast, which is unusual because most of them concentrate on either flashy graphics (with over the top, easily exploited play mechanics... yes, I'm looking at you, Marvel vs. Capcom 2) or great gameplay (with dated artwork and low resolutions... in other words, most of Capcom's other fighters). Guilty Gear X has flashy graphics.  If it gives you any idea, I've used the term "living painting" to describe the graphics to my friends.  The subtle colors and amazing detail in the characters make the stars of both King of Fighters and Street Fighter Alpha look like eyesores... which is pretty amazing because before Guilty Gear X, I had no complaints about them at all.  There aren't a lot of backgrounds in this game, but that's probably because the designers spent months creating each one... they're museum quality masterpieces.  You have to wonder why these guys even bothered with the video game industry when they could make themselves famous by painting chapel ceilings. Guilty Gear has great gameplay.  It's a whole lot better than the last few Samurai Shodown games, and I personally feel that it BURIES the more recent Last Blade series (I'll never understand why those games have such a cult following).  The characters are original, despite many of them being based on rock semi-legends like Axel Rose, and they've got special moves that are both impressive and useful.  It's a lot easier to take advantage of launched opponents than it was in the first Guilty Gear, and you can even dash in mid-air, a technique that showed a lot of promise in the otherwise unredeemable Shinoken.  Those destroy moves from the first Guilty Gear no longer kill both the opponent AND the gameplay, either... they're tougher to perform, require a fully charged super meter, and end a single round rather than the entire fight.  However, you still have access to a brutal and stylish attack that you can drop on an opponent if you're desperate, or are just feeling bloodthirsty. Guilty Gear X has it all.  In fact, it's so good that people have imported the Japanese version like crazy, even though it's a bit of a pain to play foriegn games on a standard Dreamcast.  If it's any consolation, though, Sammy is releasing the game for the Playstation 2 in the United States.  If you've got this system, you'd better hold onto fifty clams so you'll have that money handy the minute the Guilty Gear X is released... after all, it will be one of the few fighting games on the PS2 that's worth picking up until Capcom vs. SNK 2 is released.  If you just have a Dreamcast, well, you're screwed, but you can give the fickle bastards at Sega a taste of their own foul medicine by burning a self-loading copy of the Japanese Guilty Gear X. IKARUGA TREASURE SHOOTER     GAMECUBE:   Sometimes the most diplomatic way to settle an argument is to flip a coin and leave it up to chance.  No matter what comes up, you can be sure that there will be a clear winner... and a loser.  You can always count on a clear outcome from a coin.  Its answer to every problem is in black and white, never shades of grey. Inspired by this fact of life, Treasure created Ikaruga.  At first, this sequel to the fantastic Radiant Silvergun appears to be just like any other vertically scrolling shooter.  However, Ikaruga has one key difference which transforms it into an entirely new experience.  Like a coin, your ship can flip over, switching its protective barrier from light to dark and back again.  This gives you two advantages over the swarms of black and white enemies crowding the screen... switching to their color will protect you against their bullets, and switching back makes them more vulnerable to your own fire. To survive in Ikaruga, you must constantly adapt to hostile conditions, frequently switching colors to defend yourself against a constant rain of bullets and strike back against well armed bosses.  If that's not enough of a challenge for you (and it almost certainly will be), you can aim for a higher score by firing at enemies in sequence... hitting three black or white ships in a row will earn you a combo bonus which increases with every trio of like-colored enemies destroyed. Ikaruga is a very demanding game... perhaps a little too demanding for its own good.  It lacks the flexibility of Radiant Silvergun, which allowed you to experiment with weapons and explore your surroundings.  If you expect to excel at Ikaruga, you'll have to develop sharp reflexes and absolute precision... and memorizing the location of the enemies in each stage certainly couldn't hurt.  The best players will appreciate the chance to push their considerable skills to the limit, but the rest of us may not enjoy the challenge quite as much. Ikaruga's graphics are solid, but not outstanding... especially not on the advanced GameCube hardware but not even by the Dreamcast's more humble standards.  Perhaps it's because the game was designed by a skeleton crew at Treasure, or perhaps the backgrounds are drawn in subdued sepia tones to make the black and white objects stand out.  Whatever's the case, the game's visuals don't make the strong impression that its predecessor had on the Saturn.  On the other hand, the soundtrack is nearly as majestic as the amazing music in Radiant Silvergun.  It manages to be powerful without demanding your attention the way the screaming heavy metal in Dodonpachi did. If you're a fan of Treasure's past work or just need an exceptionally difficult shooter to keep your video game playing skills finely tuned, Ikaruga is a smart purchase.  My advice to everyone else?  Flip a coin. THE KING OF FIGHTERS EVOLUTION AGETEC (SNK) TOURNAMENT FIGHTER   Oh yeeeeah.  I was pretty disappointed with King of Fighters '98 (and apparently, so were the designers themselves, since they used the always convenient "it was just a dream" plot device to take it out of the KOF storyline), but King of Fighters '99- called Evolution on the Dreamcast- brings back everything I loved about the series and even makes some welcome changes to it. First of all, even though some of the characters from KOF '98 weren't invited to this tournament, SNK left in most of the good ones and spent a lot of time altering their fighting styles.  Characters from the same team who used to be clones of one another are now quite different (for instance, Robert Garcia from the Art of Fighting team is now a charge character, picking up the slack for Heidern who only makes a cameo appearance), and other fighters whose moves had gotten a little stale, or who were too powerful in earlier King of Fighters games, have been redesigned to make the game more fair and more fun. Also, instead of just regurgitating old, obscure characters from previous King of Fighters games, SNK added entirely new ones to Evolution, and a few of them are either so charming or so effective that they're among my personal favorites in the entire KOF series.  I didn't like Xiang Fei much in Fatal Fury Real Bout 2, but she's so cute (and powerful!) in Evolution that she's in nearly every team I make.  Same goes with Bao, an entirely new creation who at twelve is the youngest member of the cast.  He may be just a kid, but he's a tough kid to beat, since he can throw projectiles in a wide variety of ways or stuff himself INSIDE his projectiles and shoot toward the opponent. One of the best things about King of Fighters: Evolution is that it has its own distinct style and a very slick presentation, unlike King of Fighters '98 which was essentially a tossed salad of previous KOF titles.  There's a very futuristic feel to the game, thanks in part to the hard hitting music, an electronic/heavy metal hybrid that can sometimes get repetitive but still works a lot better than the contrived techno tracks in Street Fighter Alpha 3 or the cliche'd hip hop in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.  The storyline about an underground crime syndicate cloning one of the characters and the pre-fight graphics (especially the options screen with its randomly placed hexagons) make the game seem even more high-tech.  Even though the other King of Fighters games weren't like this at all, I really like the new look and feel... it's a great new direction for a series that was once a little aimless artistically. Speaking of important changes to the King of Fighters series, Evolution has a new feature that's been in plenty of Capcom games but hasn't been tried before in any of SNK's.  Now, each team has four fighters rather than three, and the fourth is kept on the sidelines as a "striker", who can be called out to attack the opponent or offer some other assistance to the player.  It works a lot like the special character system in the original Marvel vs. Capcom, but it's better because the strikers can be used in one of several ways and have more personality.  For instance, watch closely and you'll notice that some of the strikers get upset if their attacks miss. Before I end this review, it's worth mentioning that Evolution is not only a whole lot better than King of Fighters '98, but improved over the Neo-Geo version of KOF '99 as well.  All of the backgrounds are polygonal now, and each one is introduced with a sweeping camera view before each match begins.  Each playfield has two different versions as well, so you get a lot more variety than was available in the Neo-Geo game.  Not much has changed in the foreground, but SNK did add a transparency effect to many of the projectiles, and Mai's fans now subtly fade away after they hit an opponent.  It's easier to pick the order of your team now that each of your fighters appears on an onscreen crosskey, and a lot of characters from other King of Fighters games are available as strikers, including Yamazaki, who was sorely missed in KOF '99.  They're not playable, unfortunately, but at least they're in the game. King of Fighters: Evolution isn't entirely superior to King of Fighters '98... there aren't as many playable characters to choose from (although I didn't care about most of 'em, I do miss Heidern and Yamazaki), and the opening intro is pretty lousy; not at all as exciting as the cartoon opener in the Dreamcast version of KOF '98.  However, it's pretty clear- to me, at least- that Evolution is a higher quality game overall... it's more polished, has more options, and is just more fun.  Fans of the King of Fighters series will probably buy both games no matter what I say (heck, I bought KOF '98 even though I don't really like it), but if you're just not that interested in SNK fighters or are pinched for cash, you'd be wise just to stick with King of Fighters: Evolution. MARS MATRIX CAPCOM (TAKUMI) OVERHEAD VIEW SHOOTER   GIGAWING 2 CAPCOM (PSIKYO) OVERHEAD VIEW SHOOTER   The big surprise about both of these games is that, even though they're great shooters, designed by an industry powerhouse for a game system far more powerful than the Saturn, Radiant Silvergun is still better than either of them.  Before playing Gigawing 2 and Mars Matrix, I thought Radiant Silvergun had set standards for shooters that would be tough to surpass... now, I'm wondering if that game will ever be topped! However, I'm not reviewing Radiant Silvergun... that'll happen later (knowing me, it'll be much later... heh heh...).  I'm talking about Gigawing 2 and Mars Matrix, which deserve credit for being two of the best overhead view shooters on the Dreamcast.  I personally prefer Mars Matrix to Gigawing 2, but heck, even that is an improvement over Psikyo's last Dreamcast shooter Cannon Spike... you know, the game you probably finished while your burrito was still in the microwave.  It's more formulaic than Cannon Spike was, but that actually works in its favor... instead of trying to force together two genres, Psikyo spent all of its time designing, then perfecting, a standard overview view shooter.  At its core, Gigawing 2 isn't much different from titles like Raiden, Twin Cobra, and especially Aero Fighters, but this game's got audiovisuals its predecessors couldn't even imagine.  When you fly over one of Gigawing 2's enormous, heavily armed airships (viva la Jules Verne!), you can almost see the texture of the wood grain on the decks... and as my friend noted, the astounding soundtrack makes the game seem more like an RPG than a shooter.  I'd have to agree... Gigawing 2's got all the wonder and beauty of Square's best adventure games, not to mention much more exciting battles! Mars Matrix, on the other hand, is hard-edged, garish, and well, let me put it to you straight... ugly.  Instead of gorgeous, sharply defined polygons, Mars Matrix has sprites... poorly rendered, blandly colored sprites.  It doesn't look any worse than your average shooter on the Playstation or Saturn, but that's the problem... it looks average and dated in comparison to Gigawing 2.  However, it's still the best of the two games, simply because there's more game here.  The levels are longer, the bullet shield (which both games STOLE from Radiant Silvergun... ahem) works better, there are more immediately available weapons, and it's just more fun.  You can't bomb your way out of tight situations like you can in Gigawing 2... if your bullet shield is recharging, you'll have to dodge every one of the dozens, even hundreds of shots thrown at you by both land and air based enemies.  The great thing is that you actually can avoid these swarms of bullets, and the longer you can survive, the more fun the game becomes.  If you can't hold out any longer, you can always rely on your bullet shield, which transforms the shots into beneficial point cubes or acts as a smart bomb if you hold the button for several seconds.  The question is, how should you use it?  You can tap the button, escape the worst of a flood of bullets, and get the bullet shield recharged in a couple of seconds... or you can hold it briefly, suck up as many bullets as you can catch, then let go and load the screen with point cubes... OR hold it down until the smart bomb activates, offering you the most possible protection and possibly eliminating the source of the bullets.  If those options don't put enough pressure on you, try this:  you've got a rapid fire cannon that overwhelms your enemies with weak plasma blasts, and a piercing cannon that fires a powerful bolt of electricity every half second.  You can use one or the other... but never both at once.  What do you do... what do you do? Here's what I'd do... buy Mars Matrix right now, and if you're hungry for another shooter, try Gigawing 2 later.  Most players will be happy with just one of these overwhelmingly intense games, but if you feel up to it, you can always take two and call your heart specialist in the morning. NAMCO MUSEUM NAMCO (MASS MEDIA) CLASSIC GAME COMPILATION   You know what's great about this collection?  No, really, do you?  I couldn't find anything myself.  I was already disappointed with the Playstation games in Namco's Museum series, but the Dreamcast version is just downright awful for a number of reasons.  First, it seems as though "omake" is a foriegn word to Mass Media, the programming team hired to poop out this version of Namco Museum.  Unlike the Playstation games, which all had buildings you could explore chock full of Namco memorabilia, hidden characters, and even slightly different versions of previously available games, Namco Museum offers you nothing at all but the games themselves.  Judging from its lackluster appearance, we were lucky to even get a menu screen. Does it get any worse than this?  Oh yes, it certainly does.  Since the Namco Museum discs for the Playstation have been out for years, and several are next to impossible to find, you'd think Namco would show a little decency and include all, or at least most, of the games on all five Museum discs.  Wrong!  Instead, you're stuck with six of Namco's most bland games, many of which you've probably played to death well before the Dreamcast was even released.  Whee, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Galaga.  Again. But wait, there's more (disappointment)!  It would be bad enough if Namco had thrown Dreamcast owners a bone, but this isn't even a real bone... it's one of those stale dog treats disguised as one.  The two Pac-Man games on the collection, as was the case with Namco's previous Museum discs, aren't perfect emulations of the arcade games.  Hell, they're not even close!  The graphics are absolutely awful, with an idiotic border drawn around the less than accurate playfield and characters, and both the gameplay and sound effects aren't accurate either.  Namco's "emulation" as a whole is so bad that hobbyist programmers have whipped up their OWN Dreamcast Pac-Man emulator just to show Namco how it's done.  That wouldn't be quite so pathetic if Namco hadn't created the FUCKING PAC-MAN SERIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! Okay, Jess... take a few deep breaths... there, I'm feeling a little better.  Perhaps Namco thought it was doing Dreamcast owners a favor by releasing this, but it's awfully damned hard to appreciate a collection that was so obviously pasted together, even if the games included were some of the best ever created.  Shame on you, Namco, for being so lazy, and shame on you too, Mass Media, for taking part in the desecration of classics like Galaga and Pac-Man. PROJECT JUSTICE CAPCOM TOURNAMENT FIGHTING      Writing this review is gonna be incredibly frustrating, because the Rival Schools series has always filled me with mixed, even conflicting feelings that don't go too well together in print.  I'd love to praise the games for having more of that wacky Japanese flavor and standard Street Fighter style gameplay than any other polygonal fighting game, but Rival Schools has so many weird, deeply annoying flaws that I can't enjoy the series as much as I'd like. Project Justice only thickens the line between the good and the bad in Rival Schools... on one hand, it looks great (but if you REALLY want to get your eyes bulging, try comparing it to the original on the Playstation), some of the new characters are brilliant, and there's much more involvement between team members.  On the other hand, many of the rather strange play mechanics in Rival Schools haven't been changed, and some of Project Justice's new features just make things worse.  In addition to the stiff chain combos, the jumps with barely any horizontal movement, and the ability to cancel projectiles with punches (?!?), the team up attacks that were so hard to successfully perform in the first game can now be countered by your opponent's teammates.  What the hell is the point to this, anyways?  I mean, the team up attacks had to be performed RIGHT NEXT to the opponent as it was, and even then they'd only hit them if they were in the middle of an attack.  Now, if the other player, or worse yet, the computer, doesn't want you to finish the attack, they can challenge one of your other characters to a brief showdown which could possibly (probably) ruin your team up attack and throw two levels of your super meter right in the garbage.  The player that performs this counter always has the upper hand, because they use only one level of super energy to practically guarantee that their opponent's team up attack will be cancelled.  Fortunately, there's a super team attack that can't be countered and which does hefty damage if it lands, but it saps an enormous five levels of super meter, making you helpless in the next round.  And if this attack misses, hoo boy, you'll REALLY be kicking yourself then... if the opponent doesn't do it for you. I guess, even after all that complaining, I have to recommend Project Justice, because it's only $20, and just about any Capcom fighting game for the Dreamcast is worth that price (except maybe that crummy looking Heavy Metal game that's coming out soon).  However, I have this funny feeling that the game won't spend too much time spinning in my Dreamcast a few days after I buy it. SAMBA De AMIGO 2000 SEGA (SONIC TEAM) MUSIC   Game companies often get bashed for releasing updates to their products with only a few minor changes, but I've noticed over the years that these additions add a lot more to the games than you would think.  For instance, I never liked the original Street Fighter II, but the few things that were added to the Championship Edition- new colors, new attacks, and the ability to use the bosses- helped get me interested in the Street Fighter series. Samba de Amigo 2000 is another game that proves little things really do mean a lot.  There are only three major differences between this and the previous Samba de Amigo, but the first difference alone is enough to justify this new edition of the game.  Samba 2000's hustle mode gives you more variety and a great new technique for your maracas... now, instead of just shaking and posing with them, you can swing them back and forth in time with the music.  You'll eventually start swinging the rest of your body along with the maracas, and as a result, the game feels even more like an exciting Latin dance party than before. The two other additions to the Samba de Amigo series aren't as important, but what the heck... as long as Sonic Team was updating the game, they might as well throw in some new songs and another character.  The new music didn't interest me much, I have to admit, and some of it just didn't fit.  It's insane that the theme from Rocky and S.O.S. (from the pseudo-Hindu band Dr. Bombay) are in here while not ONE song from Santana, the most popular Latin rock group EVER, is available for your shaking enjoyment. On the other hand, I really like Amiga.  She's a much better match for the game's title character than Linda, that butterfly stripper from the original.  She's also more reserved than her somewhat demented male counterpart, although she can still play a mean pair of maracas... just like Amigo, she nearly crushes her eyeballs in a painful looking squint when she really gets going! I couldn't complain too much about the original Samba de Amigo, and it's just as hard to find fault with this one.  However, one thing that is irritating about Samba 2000 is the heavily stylized font they used for the Japanese text, making it tough to select options and game modes.  Even if you can read Japanese, you won't be able to read this.  Worse yet, since Sega won't release this in the United States (who can blame them?  They lost a lot of money on both the first Samba and Space Channel 5), there will never be a way around this.  Also, if you haven't spent muy dinero on the maracas controllers, you'll want to forget about this (and the first game) completely.  Trying to play Samba de Amigo with a standard Dreamcast controller is almost as fun as Ned Flanders' idea of nachos (brush up on your Simpsons trivia if you don't know what I'm talking about). However, if you have the maracas, you'll never fully enjoy them without a copy of Samba 2000.  The new features in this game may only add a cherry on the top of the original Samba de Amigo, but man, what a sweet, savory cherry it is! SILENT SCOPE KONAMI FIRST PERSON SHOOTER   I've gotta be honest... I'm a little surprised Konami made another light gun game after the embarassing Lethal Enforcers.  I played this again just recently after years of avoiding it, and frankly, it'd be tough to identify this clumsily done digitized shooting gallery as a Konami product if it hadn't been for the company's trademark background music. Fortunately, Konami's new light gun game, Silent Scope, has two things going for it... one, it doesn't rely on the digitized graphics that were popular (for some strange reason) in the early 1990's.  Thanks to the more recent polygonal graphics fad, the playfields in Silent Scope are much more realistic and convincing... even breathtaking, in the case of the towering skyscrapers in the first round.  The characters benefit from this as well... you'll notice that the enemies in the game act more like people than knife-wielding cardboard cutouts, doing their evil business without even noticing you. That's the second thing in Silent Scope's favor... it's much more original than your typical light gun game, which overwhelms you with dozens of well armed bad guys.  Instead, you're a sniper who has to locate and pick off terrorists as they sneak around in a distant location.  Your targets are both far away and pretty well hidden, so you'll need to use your own eyesight to find them and the scope on your gun to make sure they're villains.  It's kind of like a much more intense and violent version of Where's Waldo... if you don't find and eliminate all of the enemies in the time you're given, they'll get away, or even worse, notice you and try to take YOU out! The Dreamcast version of Silent Scope is a great port of the arcade original, and the arcade game's rifle scope (complete with a tiny monitor built inside) isn't missed at all thanks to a picture in picture view that both lets you clearly see the enemies and makes the attractive graphics look even better.  Unfortunately, the one thing that brings this translation down is the fact that the game doesn't support light guns.  I'm sure Konami has a million reasons for this (Lieberman, the lack of a first party light gun, no convenient way to turn on and off the scope, blah blah blah), but I'm not accepting any of them, especially since Silent Scope is a real bitch to play with a Dreamcast joypad.  You'll be forced to use the way too slow thumbpad to position your crosshairs on an enemy even though you don't have the time to do it, because the D-pad is much too fast and will almost always make you zip right past the bad guys.  Besides, let's face it... what kind of satisfaction are you going to get from shooting people- even Eminem, who's in the training mode- with a fricking joypad?  Perhaps saying this makes me some kind of ogre, but it's true... c'mon, you're even thinking it yourself.  If you're going to blast virtual terrorists, you want to do it with some rough approximation of a gun. Unlike some people (cough- NAMCO- cough), Konami spent a lot of time with this game, trying to make it as close to the arcade original as possible.  Unfortunately, they didn't go all the way and include the light gun support a game like Silent Scope demands, meaning that it probably won't make much noise in the average Dreamcast owner's game collection. SPAWN CAPCOM POLYGONAL FIGHTER/PROFANITY GENERATOR   I don't have much faith in science, or progress, or anything else, really, but I did hope that Capcom could take the Spawn comic license and turn it into an enjoyable game.  My faith grew when I heard Capcom's Spawn game would be similar to the Power Stone series, and because of this I was still willing to try it after everyone else warned me that it wasn't anything special. I suppose my faith in Capcom was partially justified... their Spawn game is better than Acclaim's blandola side-scrolling beat 'em up for the Super NES, and the more recent (and much worse) Playstation game, which at best illustrated to Sony that forcing their licensees to make 3D games wasn't such a good idea.  Spawn on the Dreamcast even seems like fun... at first, anyway.  The graphics, particularly the characters, are beautiful, with more vibrant color than you'd expect from a game based on a gritty, violent comic.  Also, the gameplay is nice and simple, just as it should be in a fast paced action game.  There's none of this turn-walk-turn crap we've seen in Capcom's other 3D games, and there's even a camera button and radar that keeps the enemies out of your blind spots and within firing range. However, my interest in the game started to drain away when I noticed that Spawn, as professionally designed as it is, has serious, and seriously obnoxious, flaws.  The first is that, like Cannon Spike, Capcom tried to fuse together two genres that conflict with one another.  The game takes heavy inspiration from first-person shooters like Quake as well as the Power Stone games.  This means that you're automatically equipped with a gun, rather than being forced to locate weapons to have an advantage over opponents.  I wanted to throw some punches around when I first played the game, but I was advised against it because, naturally, a machine gun at long range does a lot more damage and keeps you a lot safer than a hand delivered blow to the stomach.  There's no incentive whatsoever to fight opponents hand to hand... not while you're in close, not while you're reloading your gun, not to gain valuable items from your enemies... NEVER. Speaking of reloading your gun, here was another idiotic part of the game... running out of ammo makes you completely helpless.  Instead of defending himself or trying to dodge the merciless attacks of a boss who's not too happy about being used for target practice, your character just stands there reloading while he's being ripped apart... sometimes literally.  In the later rounds, running out of ammo is a guarantee, signed and hand delivered by Todd MacFarlane himself, that you will die. Oh yeah... a game like Spawn just wouldn't be complete without overpowered bosses.  They're tough to pinpoint and insanely cheap, which is a real bitch because the arcade mode is all about locating and destroying them.  It's almost fun to hunt them down and wipe them out at first... but the difficulty rises to the point where you'll be instantly annihilated the moment the bastards find you.  Seriously, one character slice you in half while rushing at you... you can't get out of the way, you can't counter it, you can't block... basically, if he sees you, you're finished.  The fact that you get infinite lives makes this less obnoxious, but you don't have infinite time, and it's hard to make the most of it when you're resurrected at random starting points nowhere near the asshole who keeps chopping you to bits. By the time I was through with this game, I was so brimming with anger that I transferred my spare hatred to the comic, for inspiring this garbage, and to Todd MacFarlane, for making both the comic and the game possible.  Maybe that's not fair, but neither is being killing fifteen times in the last seven minutes.  I still have faith in Capcom, but even they can't make a Spawn game that's worth a damn.