Article: Out of Service (Games)

I'll make no secret of the fact that I'm a Sega fanboy. The console ownership record of my earlier years followed the rather predictable path of Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast, and then... something truly awful happened: Sega stopped making consoles!

I'm going to take this opportunity to put forward my view on Sega's journey from console manufacturer to third party publisher. The Saturn had been a substantial commercial failure. Sony's fancy new Playstation console had smashed all competition right out of the park. Sega and Nintendo were both reeling from having the proverbial rug pulled out from under them. Then Sega unveiled the Dreamcast.

Boy what a console! Everything about the Dreamcast was Sega screaming "we're back" from the rooftops! (even the horrendously uncomfortable controller still had the forward thinking Visual Memory Units!). I still maintain that the Dreamcast was a fantastic console, and this is clear to me from the high regard the console is held in by the Twitter community. Sega had fixed all the issues that plagued the Saturn. The console was powerful, easy to program and capable of hosting near arcade perfect conversions of Sega's great arcade games; an area in which they were still a major force.

It's hard to explain how I felt at the time of Sega’s announcement. Even though most people saw it coming it was still a shock. The Dreamcast had a relatively short lifespan for a console and lots of great games in the release pipeline had already been cancelled. I think anger played a big role in my emotions back then. I'm not proud to say that I held Sony personally responsible for ruining everything by having the audacity to turn up uninvited with a clearly superior machine. It was a childish and irrational response; video games are big business after all. It also led me to steadfastly avoid owning a PlayStation until the third generation. Of course that meant that I missed out on two whole generations of great great games, which is something I deeply regret. On the plus side it forced me into supporting Nintendo!

Supporting Nintendo. Two words that sound simple enough but let's not forget how much of a die-hard Sega fanboy I was! Imagine my despair when the console choices I was presented with were either buying a PlayStation from the evil Sony corporation, or joining forces with the old enemy in order to help bring down the new kid in town. This all sounds very melodramatic and over the top, which of course it was, but I'm trying to accurately paint the picture of the depths of my despair!

So I eased myself into my new Nintendo life gently. I bought a second hand N64 and a copy of Ocarina of Time. A happy coincidence that it just happens to be one of the greatest games of all time! It wasn't long before I was galloping across Hyrule field on horseback, collecting stars in the Mushroom Kingdom and bounding around Spiral Mountain with a bird in my backpack! It didn't take me long to realise I'd made the right decision and the pre-order for a GameCube followed soon after.

This article isn’t a homage to the potted history of my video game legacy however; it’s about the demise of a once truly great company. The sad thing is that despite Sega's best efforts the Dreamcast just didn't sell well enough. The installed user base wasn't large enough for many publishing companies to want to gamble on releasing a game that might not sell. So they took the sensible, heart-breaking decision to pull out of console manufacturing and focus on publishing instead. Arguably the best business decision they made in many years, great news for Sony and Nintendo, but ultimately devastating for all their fans. Whoring Sonic out to all takers wasn't a popular decision in many eyes but it put Sega back in the black financially and saved the company from the brink.

A financially stable Sega has to be the best news for all their fans, not least because it gives us the hope that they may, one day, return with a new console. It's highly unlikely but if it does ever happen one thing is for sure: I'll be there on launch day grinning like the hedgehog that got the cream, with a super shiny copy of Shenmue 3 in my hand!

I still love Sega, but it saddens me to say since they were this good Is Ages!

Review: Rolling Thunder 2 on Sega Mega Drive

I first came across Rolling Thunder 2 during the heady Mega Drive days of the early 1990s and loved it instantly. It’s one of those rare games that actually evokes a sensation of identity with the main protagonist during play. You dodge bullets, hide in doorways and defeat waves of evil henchmen - in essence you feel just like a real secret agent!

Released in 1991, Rolling Thunder 2 was a port of the Namco produced arcade game that was released a year earlier. This home version also has a few extras thrown in for good measure. Extra levels, power-ups, story cut-scenes and a unique password system were all added to beef up the home console offering.

The game is a side-scrolling "run and gun" affair in which you play a secret agent on a mission to track down the crime syndicate Geldra. Two playable characters are featured: a suave Bond styled male named Albatross, and his female counterpart Leila (complete with bad 90s perm!). Co-operative two player is supported and really adds to the fun! I stress that the two player offering is “co-operative” because it relies on you sharing weapons, ammo and health power-ups. There’s no room for loose cannons in the war against Geldra!

Gameplay is a mixture of gunning down waves of henchmen and also memorising the patterns of when they appear. Conserving ammo and dodging enemy attacks plays its part as well. If you should find yourself with an empty chamber your gun is still capable of firing a fairly lame single bullet at a time until you can find somewhere to restock. Each level has two floors that you can switch between with a high jump and enemies spawn on both floors. There are multiple doors in each stage that offer refuge from being attacked and they also house power-ups including extra health, ammo and special weapons. You can pick up machine guns for rapid fire and flame-throwers for when you want to get up close and personal! Most levels also have secret doors containing power-ups but there are no visual clues as to their locations – you’ll just have to experiment.

Enemies come in a variety of guises, from standard henchmen that vary in strength to stage specific ones that you’ll need to figure out before attacking. There are henchmen with force fields, scorpion-like guys that can disappear into the ground and enemies that copy your moves by hiding in doorways, peeking out periodically to try and put a bullet in your skull! Even bats and panthers make an appearance to try and take you down. There is a boss battle every few stages and these vary in imagination and difficulty. If there is one flaw with this game then the difficulty spike is probably it. The levels themselves are challenging but it won’t take you long to get past them if you persevere. The bosses however are a different story. A couple of them verge on being plain unfair and this can be a little frustrating. Having said that they are far from being impossible and there’s a great sense of achievement to be gained from besting them.

The graphics in the game are decent enough although they hardly push Sega’s 16-bit masterpiece to its limits. Having said that there’s a nice consistency to the quality of the stages, the backgrounds and the enemy design. Animation and collision detection are both good, meaning you’ll never die and be sat there wondering what the hell just happened. The music is good, with suitably spy-themed jingles and there’s even the obligatory Egyptian theme for the desert level!

Rolling Thunder 2 really is a great game – one of the Mega Drive’s many gems! At the heart of a well presented package lies a core game mechanic that, quite simply, is just a hell of a lot of fun. Grab a copy, grab a mate and get after Geldra before they destroy all of the world’s satellites!

This review will self-destruct in 10 seconds.