The first game to ever use cel-shaded graphics. Sure, today you see plenty of games with cel-shading, so it's become sort of commonplace. From Zelda to Zack and Wiki, cel-shading has truly expanded in the gaming industry. But back then? It was unheard of. Imagine how we felt when the game was first shown and then released: to us, it wasn't merely a game, it was art. But looking beautiful is not really enough to justify a game if the gameplay is wonky (I'm looking at you, Uncharted!). Luckily for us, SEGA more than delivered with Jet Grind Radio. A bit of Tony Hawk, a dash of Shenmue's free-roaming, and a lot of SEGA quirkiness makes Jet Grind Radio one of the greatest Dreamcast games of all time, and one of the greatest games overall.
Jet Grind Radio is SEGA at its finest. It's a game that took a ton of risks; I'm not talking small risks here, I'm talking the kind of risks that would make conservative Nintendo pull in its knees as it sits in a corner rocking back and forth. The risks came coupled with astoundingly good gameplay, some fascinating concepts, and what is possibly the most bitchin' and rocking soundtrack of any game ever made before and since. JGR is a perfect example of the SEGA magic and why, once, long ago, SEGA was by and far the greatest developer of its time, surpassing even the Big N in ingenuity, quality, and quantity.
The saddest day in SEGA history was when Smilebit, the creators and developers of Jet Grind Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie, and Panzer Dragoon Orta were forced to disband. That Smilebit was broken apart along with some of SEGA's other best development houses (AM2) makes me rage when I think of the fact that Sonic Team is still somehow together despite their consistency in delivering shit games. In a perfect world, Sonic the Hedgehog would be at the bottom of a dark pit, rotting away while SEGA's better, more original franchises like Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio and Panzer Dragoon would be front lining another SEGA console.
This game: Kicks. My. Ass. I hardly ever have trouble with games; I'm the same person who beat Ninja Gaiden Black on the hardest setting. But Space Channel 5: Part 2, along with Ikaruga (another wonderful Dreamcast game), are the two games I simply absolutely suck balls at. I cannot, for the life of me, get the timing down and I think it has to do with the fact that I'm musically talentless, making it hard for me to keep up with the rhythm of the game. But that's what it is: a music game, and as far as music games go, none is better than Space Channel 5 and its far superior sequel. The premise? Aliens are attacking humanity and using a most nefarious weapon to control our species: a ray that will force any person within its range to dance untrollably. You are Ulala, a young reporter for Channel 5, trying to get to the bottom of everything. It's your job to dance your way through enemy hordes by matching their moves exactly and literally out dance them into defeat, all the while liberating the humans these oh-so-evil-aliens have trapped.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well it is, and that's what makes Space Channel 5: Part 2 so absolutely incredible. This sequel is one of the most infuriatingly difficult games I have ever played and, paradoxically, one of the only games I cannot, in any way, stay angry at. There is not a moment when I play this game I'm not smiling or laughing, even as I watch poor Ulala spazz out every time I hit the wrong button and curse internally at my lack of musical skill. It has something do with the way the game is designed, right down to the last detail. A good example is how the game rewards you for rescuing fellow human beings: each person you rescue becomes a backup dancer to Ulala. When I'm not sucking at the game, it's oddly entertaining to watch Ulala go against the villains with a battalion of people dancing behind her. It's all a crazy mix of 1960's-esque futuristic art design, an incredible soundtrack, and a ton of fun all in one package. And if that's not enough for you, then I present to you...
Space Michael! That's right, Michael Jackson is in this game (and in the first), and he actually dances with you. Apparently, MJ was so thrilled with the game that even with only a month left of development time for the first title he asked Tetsuya Mizaguchi (the head designer) to be part of it. Even Michael Jackson, the greatest pop star of all time, couldn't help but love Ulala's infectious title.
Technically, the second part never released on the American Dreamcast, but the homebrew community has managed to get it running in English. Just look it up if you're interested. Either way, I demand a Part 3 to this, preferably one that features Lady Gaga as someone Ulala needs to rescue. Don't look at me like that! You know that would be AMAZE-balls.
This game is pretty outdated in this day and age, but I think that applies to most JRPGs, so it's not alone in that respect. But back when it released there was just nothing that had a mix of qualities like it. Skies of Arcadia is one of the most charming games I have ever played, rivaled in that department only by Final Fantasy IX. There is just something so magical about being an air pirate and flying airships in a world parallel to our own during the Age of Exploration. There is an immense sense of adventure, of a large and vast world with treasures to plunder and a million things to learn. Above all, however, what makes Skies of Arcadia so truly remarkable is that it's obviously meant to be an homage to old school RPGs, right down to the silly plot featuring a mysterious girl and several crystals tied to the salvation of mankind.
There is something so fun about Arcadia as a world and it's always so varied that I couldn't help but find myself entertained whenever I pick it up and play it again. In a world where most JRPGs are becoming more and more serious than they should (Thank you very much, Final Fantasy VII!), Skies of Arcadia stands alongside Final Fantasy IX and Golden Sun as the only JRPGs that provide a taste of what once was. A return to form of what JRPGs used to be before the high production costs and focus on cinematic presentation, and it works. It lets the player focus on just the gameplay. In Arcadia you will find a rich world, full of sweet and memorable characters, packed to the brim with old school style dungeons, and yes, gratingly difficult bosses that like to toy with you before effortlessly mashing your face into the ground.
The battle system is a mixed bag because one side of it is only okay and the other, to me at least, is spectacular. The regular, on-foot battling is a little run-of-the-mill and somewhat frustrating because of an inability to choose your moves separately. You have to choose all of your moves at once, which is annoying because it can easily cause a party wipe if you don't guess the right choices of moves beforehand. The other side of the coin is the ship battles, which I personally feel are downright incredible. They're a bit slow, true, but it takes a lot of strategy and it's always fun running into other ships and blowing them out of the sky. Besides, the best boss battles all happened in the air. Remember the Blue Gigas? Yeah! Badass!.
Did I forget to mention that the soundtrack is spectacular? Yeah, it is. I guess that's a SEGA standard: I can't think of a SEGA game in the last fifteen years that had anything less than stellar musical composition. But it extends further, to the quality of just about everything SEGA used to make, and Skies of Arcadia is one of the best representations of that. I will always fondly remember playing Skies of Arcadia and enjoying it to pieces.
Yeah, okay, so I'm a little biased. You know what I say to those accusations? Stuff it with walnuts! I adore the first Shenmue. In this day and age it's hard to recognize just how incredibly groundbreaking it was at the time of release, how out of this world the graphics were, the incredible effort it took to make (think: making a game look like Uncharted on Gamecube hardware), etc. The thing about Shenmue is that it's a game that focuses on reality, and while I usually think reality has a knack for showing up to my games and ruining them like an ideological version of Buzz Killington talking to me about a bridge, I feel like Shenmue is one of the few where it actually works. There was just something fascinating about getting lost in Ryo's house, doing all kinds of stupid mundane tasks like opening drawers and turning light switches on and off for no reason other than to see how intricately the world was made.
The story itself is actually pretty good and the characters are interesting, if only held back by the God awful voice acting (seriously, it's like SEGA hired people off of the street to do these!). It's also bogged down by a very slow, methodical pace, but for those of us that saw Shenmue for what it really was, it was then and remains to this day like nothing we ever played before. Basically, despite Yu Suzuki liking to claim that he created a brand new genre ("Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment" or "F.R.E.E."), the truth is that Shenmue is more or less a detective graphical adventure set in an expansive, minutely detailed world.
Outside of its core though, it's so much more than that. Shenmue pretty much inspired modern day games to be the way they are. The sandbox gameplay, the realistic setting, the mixing of all sorts of different gameplay mechanics, the addition of games within games (The countless hours I spent playing Space Harrier!), etc. It also revolutionized the cinematic foundation that Final Fantasy VII set before it, and it changed the way game development was looked at forever. The way Shenmue was made is the way video games today are made, which is problem depending on how you look at it; the games of today risk a lot with their multi-million dollar budgets. Still, the influence is there.
Less on the side of influence, as a gamer, Shenmue was just like nothing else for me. I admit that after playing it it became a bit difficult to enjoy other games nearly as much, especially games that claimed to be "epic." I had trouble finding anything "epic" in Final Fantasy X after experiencing what Shenmue brought; Shenmue made other games feel downright uninteractive at times and even dumbed down. Very few games I played were able to match this, with the only exception coming to mind being Morrowind. It's astounding to go back to Shenmue today and see that the detail is still there and that seldom, if almost never, has a game developer been able to reproduce such high quality level of presentation.
Shenmue remains one of the Dreamcast's greatest titles, surpassed only by...
Almost everything that was wrong with the original was fixed with the sequel, allowing the pacing to change and the game to move smoothly and quickly if one desired. Despite being amazing, Shenmue is not flawless, but the sequel goes a long way to rectify what went wrong with the first game. Shenmue II is vastly superior to Shenmue, incorporating a world that is, inexplicably, much larger and equally as detailed. The characters are all much more interesting too and the story is more well developed, minus the ending. Virtual Hong Kong is also a lot more interesting than Yokosuka, and the game is full of much more action than the original ever was.
There isn't really much to say except that Shenmue II is everything I loved about the original, but times ten. Considering how much I just gushed about the first game, you can be fairly sure that Shenmue II is a game I deeply adore. In fact, Shenmue II is my favorite game of all time.
- Kharlo -
ook on my list skies of arcadia is number 1 and power stone is no. 2
ReplyDeleteI totally agree, except for SC5 2, I love it, but I'd take this game from the list and add Soul Calibur :)
ReplyDelete(Brother Fe)
Unfortunately, I never got a chance to play the original Soul Calibur. :(
ReplyDelete