"THE IMPARTIALITY OF TIME"
by J.M.Vargas
When the PSX and Saturn went head-to-head back in 1995 (gosh, has it
only been three years?), the machine's early games were placed
head-to-head to provide an early glimpse of the machine's potential.
Needless to say, the Saturn's rushed and messy architecture didn't make
developing 32-bit games as easy as Sony's 3d-dedicated chips, and that
showed badly in the first few games: "Daytona USA" and "Virtua Fighter"
(although deep in gameplay goodness) couldn't compete with the eye-candy
beauties that were Namco's "Ridge Racer" and Takara's "Battle Arena
Toshinden" (among other third-party offerings). Three years later, the
Saturn is dead and the PSX is thriving with a sea of third-party developed
hits that consistently feed the masses... and mediocre crap like the
"Toshinden" series, which was deemed as a quality benchmark early in the
machine's life, is now looked at with a mix of "what were we thinking of?"
contempt and sadness.
But back in early 1996 the "Toshinden" series was deemed so valuable by
Sega of America (led at the time by the now-departed Tom Kalinske) that a
rushed and unpolished Saturn port of the PSX killer-app was released in
March to steal some of the thunder away from the arcade/PSX sequel about
to hit retail. Although "Battle Arena Toshinden Remix" featured a neat
little intro, a Story mode, new special moves for the returning characters
and an all-new boss character (Cupido, which could be a playable character
if you knew tha way), it also showed that it was a futile early mistake to
attempt to match the PSX's games on a polygon-for-polygon basis.
GRAPHICS / VISUALS: C+
------------------
By the time "BAT Remix" was released (March of '96), Saturn owners felt
relieved that "Virtua Fighter 2", "Sega Rally" and "Virtua Cop" had proven
that Sega's planet had the chips to provide next-generation thrills as
good (if not better) than the PSX. The problem, though, was that anyone
besides Sega's AM teams seemed unable to squeeze acceptable graphics and
gameplay goodness out of the Saturn, unlike the PSX's third-party
developers (Namco and Psygnosis especially). Takara's "Toshinden" port for
Saturn wasn't as polished or featured the amount of eye-candy of the PSX
original, and fell way short of gamers expectations after the thrill that
was "VF2".
The transparent polygons, realistic shadows and lighting 'tricks' of
the PSX original were replaced on the Saturn by meshes of small colored
dots (transparency on software, or as close as it came on Saturn at the
time) and some rough-looking polygons that looked about 75% like the
source material. As good as it felt at the time to have a "Toshinden" Sega
gamers could call their own, the game should have been polished and the
rough edges smoothed a bit in order for the game to have a better impact;
the exclusive intro movie, for example, is a series of badly animated CG
renditions of the characters posing in front of a black or
sparcely-populated background. Things didn't go much better when Takara
developed a Saturn-exclusive sequel with the machine's strenghts accounted
for ("Toshinden URA"), but that's another story for another review.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: C
---------------------
The same lame English voice-overs from the PSX version of "Toshinden"
made their way, along with the same lackluster fantasy music and
dopey/cartoony sound effects, to "BAT Remix"; Takara or SOA should have
made it their priority to either redub them or release them in their
original Japanese voices with subtitles. I guess when the suits take over
quality-concers go out the window along with the localization budgets; you
might like the ridiculous (and funny in an "MST3K" way) voices and think
the music (composed on a Cheesemeister 2000 no doubt) is cool, but the
sound effects have got to go.
GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: C
---------------------
The game plays nearly identical to its PSX original, with only a slight
adjustment to the Saturn pad needed, since many of us got used to the PSX
pad set-up. The L and R buttons are still used to side-step left and right
and get away from an incoming attack, which gives Takara the honor of
being the first polygon fighter to have an evasive maneuver into the 3D
background. With that said, the game has a poor and antiquated engine
mixing the weapon-based gameplay of Namco's "Soul Edge/Blade" with the
button taps and 'fireball'-like magical weapons from a "Street Fighter"
game; you only need to keep executing a series of cheap and unblockable
moves to win a match, with the depth and balance of solid enemy AI missing
in action.
Duke and his bad-ass sword can inflict plenty of damage on the strenght
of the weapon's reach alone, which can be all the difference when going up
against a character with very little reach, like the green-haired
white-clothed beauty Ellis. Sofia (she of "bark like a dog" fame) and Eiji
are the most-balanced fighters, but that still leaves a huge gap between
"BAT Remix" and the better Saturn games from Sega, like "Fighting Vipers"
and "Last Bronx". The cheapness with which this game can be found ($10-15
at most stores still carrying unsold copies) is a small consolation when
you realize that, even as an early example of 32-bit technology breaking
new ground, the game fails to either excite or entertain in any meaningful
way in 1998.
OVERALL: C
-------
A poor attempt by Sega of America to humilliate Sony by having one of
its early advertising mascots (Sofia) and killer-apps ("Toshinden") making
an appearance on the competing software; it was almost as if Sega was
saying "no third-party title developed for Sony is locked exclusively on
that machine, while our exclusives will never appear on their machine".
Gamers apparently didn't call the bluff, and kept going to the PSX for
their quick fixes, while the Saturn faithful kept spreading the gospel to
the converted choir. Unless you appreciate your hard-earned bucks, avoid
"Battle Arena Toshinden Remix"; there are other much-better collectible
Saturn games that, unlike this weak and inferior port, are indeed
exclusives to the Sega Saturn and didn't appear on Sony's machine. Nobody
gave a f*** back in 1996, but with prices this low how can you not notice?
- J.M.
Vargas