Topic: The Switch Arcade Community Thread

Expand

@monkeyspasm Sweet!

I recommend not trying the Stratos at first and sticking to the Celica (which is still my favourite) or the Lancia Delta, which are both much easier to control.
It might take a little while to get used to the controls though as I was pin balling all over the tracks the first time I played the game. Don't worry about it, you'll get used to it soon enough. Several Sega Saturn games have quite a bit of a learning curve at first, but when they do click, it's incredible.

The gameplay was adapted to the D-pad in such a way that it kinda feels analogue at times. It's really weird.
Try to use small taps when taking light corners (right, right, right) for instance. Combined with longer taps for steeper corners. Never use your handbrake unless you are at a hairpin turn.
Letting go of the gas for a split second and throwing your steering wheel into the turn will be enough to take a somewhat sharp turn on it's own.
Again, don't become frustrated. Just give it time to learn the muscle memory needed to perfect laps.
Going into Time Attack and just looping around a track for half an hour or so might be a good way to do just that.
Actually, that is why I love doing time attacks in racing games till this day and why 99% of my time in driveClub was spent in Time Attack.

Oh and with some of those jumps in the Forest Track, make sure you position your car correctly before getting some air, and again when you actually land. Tapping left or right during these jumps is crucial as well.

I wouldn't write off import games just yet with a PAL Saturn.
The longest time I was playing with one of these:

It let's you boot up import games and has 4MB of RAM included as well as save memory. So you should be able to play most if not all of those Capcom fighters that utilise the 4MB cart that was only released in Japan with it without any problems. I recommend X-Men vs Street Fighter.
Other games such as Cotton 2 Boomerang also use the memory to give you many more frames of animation.
Some games can't use it though, like certain SNK games, especially the ones that came with their proprietary cart like KoF95. The problem with those was that certain data from the game was actually on the cart itself, so without it, you'd lose background for instance. But these are not very common and are sold with the cart normally.

If you are going to buy a copy of Sokyugurentai, and I highly recommend you do btw, be sure that if you use the 4-in-one cart, you don't buy the original release.
It'll play fine, but a lot of the Japanese text that flashes on screen during boss encounters, or in menus and such will be glitched.
You should get the Otokuyo version instead which has a white border around the artwork like this:

That was a re-release which doesn't have this issue for some strange reason.
If you're playing on Japanese Saturn, this isn't a problem at all though.

Virtua Fighter 2 is brilliant, but I think playing Fighters Megamix today will be a bit more fun since VF evolved quite a lot over the years. Then again, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is still my favourite, so what do I know.
Quake was actually an incredible port that should not have been possible on the system, yet somehow worked really well. Lobotomy were one of the few devs besides Sega that pushed the system to it's limits.
Sonic Jam was really great when it came out. I played that little 3D hub so much, dreaming of having a full 3D Sonic game like it one day... That didn't quite pan out the way I was hoping.

Speaking of dreams, you need to have a copy of NiGHTS into Dreams! But make sure you get a 3D control pad alongside it as it makes all the difference in the world.
Again, another game that's a little hard to get the hang of at first as it's a bit confusing and can certainly be played wrong, but when it clicks, it's pure magic.
None of the ports on later systems (PS2, 360, PS3) did the game justice simply because the controls were never as fluid and precise as the original Saturn version. I know as I have all of them.
If you like football games, Worldwide Soccer was actually really good. I only like arcade sports for some reason, so yeah, I can't really say much about actual simulations.
Not sure if you've played Destruction Derby before, but it's a blast. Even if it's certainly aged a ton since it was released. The Saturn port doesn't run as smooth as the PSone version, but the game is still as much fun.
I even imported both WipEout and WipEout 2097 from Japan because I love playing those on Saturn, even though I have them all on PSone and people keep telling me that the Sega Saturn ports are garbage and barely playable. Just don't listen to them. Well, unless you value graphics over gameplay, which seeing as you bought a Saturn in 2018, I don't think we have to worry about.

If you want to do some time trials for fun, just let me know.
I can pop my Pal copy in to make sure we're on equal footing, although I must warn you that I have a bit over 20 years on you.

If you're looking for more games to hunt down, take a look here, which you might have already done: http://www.outofprintarchive.com/articles/reviews/Saturn.html
The resolution on the site is a little low nowadays since it's created nearly 10 years ago, but if you download the full magazines in their "max-rez" versions, you should get the best possible digital version of the Sega Saturn Magazine out there.

I just came across a channel yesterday that's relatively new it seems.
Looks to be a really well done one too! And it's from the viewpoint of someone who actually knows his stuff and was there on day one, instead of lots of "internet experts" nowadays which are painting a distorted picture because they got most of their info from wikipedia and message board hearsay.

And with that, you got me back into a Sega Saturn mood!
Looks like I'm going to be playing a lot more Saturn this week!
I think I'll be taking some more picture of both my PAL and Japanse games as well as I like looking at those kinds of things myself online.

Also @Shiryu
It looks like none of my imgur pictures show up on the board anymore these last few days.
Could you take a look at what might be causing this?
I uploaded these last few to tiny pic instead.

Expand

@monkeyspasm Ah I see. Shouldn't be that hard to adapt to the controls then.
And I loved Athlete Kings, had so much fun playing against friends back in the day.
Winter Heat as well. So simple, yet tons of fun.
That's what I miss most these days, the simple arcade games that are easy to pick up, yet can take a lifetime to master.
Been playing a ton of Trials HD and Fusion this past week on Xbox one after the announcement of the new game for instance. Looks so simple, you have a gas button and a break button and you can lean forwards and backwards on your motorcycle, yet every tiny little bit of movement can make a world of difference.
And once you get into score chasing in that one, you can spends years on it.

It's been a while since I hooked up my MegaDrive. I really should do that. Been thinking about getting the new compilation since it's much easier to play that way these days then to hook up the old system to the Framemeister, find the right settings, digg out the carts and then put everything back into their boxes afterwards. That's why my Saturn and Dreamcast have their permanent place underneath the TV ever since I got them.

I got all those ports as well, on various systems actually, but in the end, they all play better on the original hardware. Like Crazy Taxi. Even though the controls are very very close, especially on Xbox with a 360, and even moreso with an Xbox One controller, it lacks the original soundtrack as well as voices and has some weird sound bug as well where the fare counter makes way too much noise all of the time. The soundmix as a whole is really bad in the ports, while it's perfect on Dreamcast.

I've been lucky with my systems so far as all my Saturns and Dreamcast still work till this day.
Well besides the one broken Japanese Saturn that I got for free. The laser is busted.
I ordered a new one, but I don't have the tools, nor the knowledge it seems to adjust it to the correct parameters to actually get it to read discs.
I refuse to throw it out though as the rest of the system is okay. Perhaps one day I'll convert it with one of those SD card mods or something, even though I'm not crazy of that stuff.

Oh, and that's my personal site btw. So if you want to download certain magazines and the links don't work, let me know and I'll re-upload them. After a while links get delisted or corrupted on a file host like that. Especially when they have been up for a couple of years.

@nitake92
You have to keep in mind that the Pinball Arcade has been going for quite a few years now, so many of those older tables didn't even start at 2012 when TPA released, but were already created in previous iterations before it got that name. Like Pinball Hall of Fame the Gottlieb Collection and the Williams Collection.
If I'm not mistaken, those earlier seasons were not originally like that either, but were put together later, which is why there are so many more tables in there and thus much better value.

From what I understand, they also can't really do sales and such they way they like as the licenser has quite a bit of control over the price. Which is why they can't do a "going away sale" for the Williams tables for instance.
Overall licensing, not just for the tables, but also the properties, likenesses, music and voices used in certain tables play a big part in how much things end up costing.
Just look at Addams Family, Judge Dredd, Last Action Hero, Terminator 2, Twilight Zone, Dr Who, Starship Troopers and Ghostbusters as an example of how complicated all that stuff can be.
Which is why it's flat out a disaster that Williams, or should I say the company that bought the Williams name and rights, is refusing to renew the contract with Farsight.
It was hard enough to get everything in order for these tables to be digitised and released like this in the first place, and I'm fearing we will not get a second chance with most of them, unless something can still be worked out, and even then the original deals might not be valid any longer.

As for value, €/$5 might seem like a lot for a single table, but when you buy them as seasons, you get an average of 11-12 tables for $/€30 which comes to €/$2.50 - 2.72 at most.
Seeing as how tables from the 60's or 70's can still be a ton of fun today and how the ones from the 80's and 90's are especially sought after and played by lots of people after all these years, the value proposition is actually nuts.
Naturally, it all depends on how big you are into pinball.

Just looking back at my own purchase lists over the years and seeing how I payed 38€ for Pokémon Pinball on GBC, €53 for Fantastic Pinball on Sega Saturn, €45 for Sonic Pinball Party on GBA, €45 for Pro Pinball Fantastic Journey on PSone, and many, many more less that €3 for very close recreations, with great physics I might add of some of the best tables ever creates, certainly was a good enough deal for me to buy all those seasons 4 times over.

I can't speak for the Wii U version since it never was released outside the USA for some reason.
But if it's anything like the PS3/360 versions, they should be perfectly playable, if a little less flashy than the current gen ones. Especially the lighting engine will see a downgrade there.