Exploring The Saturn: Part 5

Sonic's grand return, the craziest pre-Smash crossover fighter, and two other Sega racing games. Let's see how many of them are good...

Fighters Megamix: Fighters Megamix is the big Sega AM2 crossover I never knew I wanted. It doesn't just bring together the casts of Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers, it goes even further.

Fighters Megamix basically works as a mixture between Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers. You can choose between the fighting styles of both games, and each characters's stage depends on which game series they come from (so Virtua Fighter characters have no walls, Fighting Vipers characters do). I'm not entirely sure mixing these two fighting styles really works the best, but Fighters Megamix isn't meant to be a great competitive fighting game, it's just meant to be fun. And it's incredibly fun, and very content-rich too. With a whopping 34 characters to play as, the game comes with an impressive nine different Arcade Modes, along with plenty of other great modes like Survival, the Training mode from Fighting Vipers, and even a VS Mode that allows for 1P vs COM play! Glad to see that's now a thing. But really, the highlight here is just seeing all the hidden characters that got thrown in. Bean and Bark from Sonic The Fighters, the kids versions of Akira and Sarah, the Hornet from Daytona, the tree in the AM2 logo?! You know those joke picks that Sakurai would throw into Smash like Mr Game & Watch or Duck Hunt? Well, the entire unlockable roster of Fighters Megamix is solely comprised of joke picks, and I adore it. Nothing beats fighting the goddamn Daytona car as King Of Speed plays in the background.

And that's kind of what Fighters Megamix feels like, a joke, but in a good way! I'll argue that from a purely mechanical perspective, Virtua Fighter 2 is the best AM2 fighting game on the Saturn, but Fighters Megamix is the most fun. You can tell AM2 just wanted to celebrate their achievements, and throw all of their previous characters and IPs together into a weird but endearing blend. It's all good-natured fun, which is really all a good crossover should be.

5/5 Stars

Sonic Jam: We did it! We finally got to Sonic! And after all this time, the first Sonic game to come out on the Sega Saturn was... a collection of all his Genesis games. Hey, but at least it was a pretty cool collection.

Sonic Jam goes several extra miles beyond simply porting Sonic 1-K to the Saturn, Sonic Team had greater ambitions. This collection not only includes Sonic 1-K in their original forms, but they also received Easy Modes as well as revised versions that fixed several issues with the game that Sonic Team initially had. Sonic 1 got a spin dash, several stage layouts are slightly changed, bugs were fixed, and best of all, the infamous Barrel Of Doom was removed. On top of all that, you could use Sonic & Knuckles' lock-on features on the other games, play time trials for every single act, and even play the Special Stages outside of the context of the games. This is a very content-rich and fully-featured port, and it's a real shame that Sonic Team wouldn't put all these features in their other collections. The "fixed" versions in particular are exclusive to Sonic Jam, which is especially saddening since these aren't the best ports on a technical level. Nothing unplayable, mind you, but they do suffer from some pretty rough sound issues at points. Sadly, there are better ways to play these games, and I wish the Jam versions would get touched up to rival them one day.

Of course, then there's also Sonic World, which most people remember Sonic Jam for. Most compilations have a menu where you can look at concept art, watch videos, or get behind the scenes info on your favorite games... but what if that menu was actually a 3D Sonic overworld. Yep, if we were to exclude Christmas Nights, this is the first true 3D Sonic game, and it's pretty alright. The visuals are stunning for the Sega Saturn, bright and colorful, and barely chugs a bit. There's just something about Sonic Team, they really know how to push the Saturn to its limits. I love the low-poly Saturn era Sonic look too, it's so cute. There are even some rings to collect and (surprisingly tough) missions to partake in, just to make it so the place doesn't solely feel like a glorified menu. However, Sonic World does have its issues. Sonic can feel a bit slippery upon landing which makes precision platforming annoying, the two camera options are either too close or too far away, and much of the scans that you can view look pretty crusty and hard to read. As a whole, the menus just don't look the most polished, especially in the shadow of Mega Collection's godly presentation. Still, I do admire the effort here, and the novelty of playing as 3D Saturn era Sonic is still really cool.

As a whole, Sonic Jam isn't my favorite Sonic collection. Mega Collection just feels more polished as a whole. However, the sheer amount of extra effort Sonic Team put into Jam is worth celebrating, from all the extra options and adjustments made to the games themselves, to the pretty stunning depiction of what Sonic in 3D would've looked like at the time.

4/5 Stars

Manx TT Super Bike: Manx TT Super Bike feels like a happy medium between Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship in pretty much every way, taking the structure and vibe of the former and meshing it with the grittiness and strong port quality of the latter.

Manx TT Super Bike is yet another AM2 racing game, but this time, you're on motorcycles. It's just as fun as it sounds, Manx TT Super Bike is a blisteringly fast game, and carefully leaning to turn corners is always insanely satisfying. Unlike in Sega Rally, the tracks are actual loops again that you have to do 3-5 laps in, meaning that there's a bit more of an emphasis on learning the turns of each track. Both tracks are well-designed, and the second track even ends on a brutal hairpin turn, just as it should. Presentation-wise, Manx TT Super Bike is pretty great too, once again melding the styles of the games that came before it. The environments have the same rugged style as Sega Rally Championship, but the skies are as blue as in Daytona USA. The soundtrack is rock-heavy like in Sega Rally, but there's more energy to it, and the menus have narrators again. As far as the porting job goes, it's mostly good. The draw distance is noticeably not great, likely because of how fast the game is, but in exchange, the framerate is buttery smooth. My only real gripe here is how few tracks there are. There's still all the modes that were in the other racing ports, like Saturn Mode, reverse tracks, and time trials, but it's hard to really articulate how much of a downgrade two tracks rather than three is. Daytona USA and Sega Rally both have that one easy route for a chill race, that one brutal route if you want a challenge, and that main medium difficulty track you're likely going to spend a lot of time in. Manx TT Super Bike doesn't really have that medium difficulty track, which is a bit of a shame.

Overall, though, Manx TT Super Bike is yet another strong arcade racer. It feels great, it's satisfyingly fast, the porting job is mostly great, and the presentation is typically stellar.

4/5 Stars

Sega Touring Car Championship: This might be one of the most divisive games Sega has ever made. I'm serious here. Either it's a rewarding, realistic racer, or a twitchy, frustrating mess. Where do I fall on that spectrum? Ehh, I'm leaning towards the former... except for one issue.

Sega Touring Car Championship was Sega's attempting at making a realistic car racer, and for the most part, I think they succeeded. Touring Car is an incredibly fast game, it's easy to accidentally slam yourself into walls, but the game never feels impossible, both in AT and MT. In the case of AT, you need to know when to let go of accelerate. And in the case of MT, you need to figure out when to shift for each turn. I didn't have any issues with the controls (then again, I used a joystick), while there is a learning curve, it's a hurdle that is possible to get over. What doesn't help, however, is the lack of a map. Both Daytona USA and Manx TT Super Bike had a map screen so that you can quickly glance over to see what kind of turn you're going to have to deal with next. Sega Touring Car Championship, on the other hand, doesn't have a map, so despite its blistering speed, it feels like turns just hit me in the face without any chance to judge how sharp it is. Where the previous racing games allow you to use the map as a reference and plan out your turn accordingly, the only way to get by in Touring Car is sheer trial-and-error.

And it's a shame that this is such a glaring issue because you can tell Sega put a lot of love into this one. There's so much content here unlike in Manx TT Super Bike. There's Arcade and Saturn modes as usual, but there's also five tracks, several unlockable modes in both sides, customizable cars, and even special tracks and events accessed by playing on a certain date. That last part really shows that Sega wanted this game to be something big, and it's a shame it was just too inaccessible for a lot of people. The presentation is stellar too. The menus are slick, the game runs incredibly smoothly and looks super detailed (seriously, I don't know how the Saturn runs this), and the soundtrack. Oh man, the soundtrack. It's such an eclectic lineup of genres, with the highlight being an honest-to-goodness eurobeat track. It's amazing.

Sega Touring Car Championship isn't a bad game. It has a huge learning curve to it, but the controls are great, and if you can get over that hurdle, there's a massive wealth of content and one of the most polished racers on the console waiting for you. It's just a shame that the lack of a map screen makes getting over that hurdle all the harder.

3/5 Stars

Okay, this was a far better lineup. Pretty much every game in here was at the very least fun. Sadly, this is also the penultimate batch. The only games I have left to try and review are Sonic R, Burning Rangers, Radiant Silvergun, and Panzer Dragoon Saga, along with all of those other games I didn't have as much to say about. Let's hope we end on a strong note.