by phanboy4
Showing 1-10 of 21 items
Wow. Holy crap. This game. This game singlehandedly got me into shumps. Amazing OST, deeper gameplay than I think I've ever seen in any other shmup, great art and pacing. The best shump on the Saturn, and that is saying a *lot*.
Sure, the Saturn has a stunning Alpha 3 port, and an overabundance of amazingly-faithful non-Street Fighter Capcom fighting greats. But for my (filthy casual) money this is the best Street Fighter on the platform. This is the sweet spot, before the series got too complex, and before the roster got out of hand. Plus, it looks great, and has the best OST this side of 3rd Strike.
NiGHTS into Dreams is a deeply strange, trippy game that had the misfortune of looking rather pitiful next to Super Mario 64. This feels more like a creative and engaging indie title than the worldbeater/Saturn-saver people wanted it to be, and in retrospect, it's pretty special.
This is the best 2D Technosoft shooter on the Saturn, and one of the best shooters on the Saturn period. Rad 2D art, thanks to a Saturn-exclusive visual remaster, well-paced action, and a thumping trash-rock soundtrack push this one over the top for me. The Saturn port is the only home port, and was published in limited numbers, so this one is extremely pricey.
It's a pretty great port of the Jaguar version. Enough said.
This one kinda blew me away. Even with the crappy 3D of the Saturn, the alien and imaginative art direction manages to shine through. The game is 15-20 hours long max, with virtually no fluff or filler. JRPGs as a genre are as trope-laden, tedious and overlong today as they were back in the 90s. Sega showed us the path forward from that, and they showed it to us in 1998. If the JRPG genre as a whole had learned from this game’s lessons, it might have grown into something much more diverse, creative, and interesting than it is today.
This game is weird, even by the standards of the Darius franchise which it apparently spun off from. It doesn't play amazingly, but it introduces the "beam duel" concept which later Darius games and spiritual successors would emulate, and the music and atmosphere are top-notch. I'd never heard of this game, but the aesthetic, the amazing Zuntata soundtrack, and the simple but fun push-pull of weapon upgrades vs spending it all on beam duels with the large, freaky bosses is just top-tier stuff.
The best Psikyo shooter on the platform for my money. A 2D horizontal shmup set in feudal Japan.
Known as Layer Section in Japan and the EU (a much better/more descriptive name, due to the unique multi-level stages), this is another top-tier Taito joint, with a really interesting "net" mechanic and a fantastic Zuntata soundtrack.
Thunder Force V is underappreciated. While the 3D graphics haven't aged as well as its 2D predecessors, and the soundtrack (while great) doesn't reach the heights of Thunder Force IV, this is more fun to play than the previous games, by a long shot. One of the best shmups on the Saturn, and better on the Saturn than the PSX.