I just realized today that after a few years of playing Dreamcast, I've yet to play a really good Konami game on the system. Are there any? What am I missing? Seems like they did better on the Saturn. Why such a drop off on the Dreamcast?
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I just realized today that after a few years of playing Dreamcast, I've yet to play a really good Konami game on the system. Are there any? What am I missing? Seems like they did better on the Saturn. Why such a drop off on the Dreamcast?
My guess is they were either anticipating the DC not doing very well, or they were too busy with the original playstation, but that's only a guess.
Konami's policy seemed to be to avoid Sega consoles until they achieved a hefty market share, they would only start to think about releasing games when they felt that they were missing out on good profits
Reportedly Konami and Sega have actually had a vendetta going since the early 80s, originally the two companies were actually heavily involved with each other, with Sega releasing Konami's game Frogger worldwide.
From what I've heard Sega kind of took over the Frogger licence outside of Japan, and plastered their name all over all the ports to home consoles without giving Konami proper credit, apparently Konami ended up having a big row with them, saying that Sega had stolen their chances to make a name for themselves in the western market, the two companies split, with Konami going on to make a name for themselves with relative ease anyway due to their general huge talent at videogame design.
That's what I've read in some old magazines anyway.
I've seen some comments on that also reflecting a bitter rivalry in the arcade in general later on. (in the late 80s and 90s, though in terms of market competition, Namco and Capcom were in pretty heavy direct competition with some of Sega's primary markets -and Capcom seems to have maintained a rather good relationship with Sega on the home console front -Namco was obviously tied to Sony as 2nd party with the PSX)Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
^ Some interesting thoughts guys!
Konami did release Silent Scope and Air Force Delta which might have been developed in Japan. Other than that most Konami releases were produced by Konami USA it seems: The Grinch, Nightmare Creatures 2, Track & Field, some NBA game, and Castlevania Resurrection (which was canceled when Sega canceled Dreamcast).
Still seems to proof the Frogger theory rather than contradict it.
But during the late 16-bit days and early 32-bit day Konami did a lot of Sega work: Parodius, Twin Bee, Gradius, Snatcher - all were released for Saturn and PlayStation during the early days and almost simultaneously. Their Saturn support started to slow down during the later years with the Saturn's colossal failure in the US and Europe. Castlevania (which was initially developed for 32X, then moved to PS1 and ported to Saturn later) and Metal Gear Solid are some good examples for that phase.
The support in Japan was pretty good but over here tepid at best.Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
I'd have to agree with the original sentiment,
As per wiki:
The only title I always wanted out of this was Silent Scope. I own Airforce Delta. But the truth is, there's nothing extraordinary about any of these (silent scope, maybe, considering it's arcade popularity).Quote:
"Dreamcast
1999
Airforce Delta (Japan & North America) / Deadly Skies (Europe)
Dancing Blade: Katte ni Momo Tenshi
Dancing Blade: Katte ni Momo Tenshi II - Tears Of Eden
Eisei Meijin III
Pop'n Music
Pop'n Music 2
2000
Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix
Dance Dance Revolution Club Version Dreamcast Edition
ESPN International Track & Field
ESPN NBA 2Night
Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū Dreamcast Edition
Nightmare Creatures II
Pop'n Music 3 Append Disc
Pop'n Music 4 Append Disc
Silent Scope
The Grinch"
P.S.> Notice how they stopped releasing/developing for the DC halfway through it's lifetime. More and more, I'm noticing that was the trend that brought our beloved DC to its end. By the end of 2000, even Sega itself wanted nothing to do with its own system. It's just sad... :(
In my opinion, Konami's Saturn support was piss poor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
All they did was port some of their arcade games to both Saturn and PS1 early on, and being that (I would imagine) Sega's name was probably associated with Shmups in Japan (a lot of the major shmup companies had supported MD) they would've had added incentive to release Saturn ports.
Also, according to Mobygames the Parodius compilation was released 5 months earlier on PS1 than Saturn, and Snatcher over 1 month earlier.
Konami's major, ambitious releases early on were Suikoden and Vandal Hearts on the PS1 (with the Saturn ports not arriving until over a year later), Konami even chose PS1 as the lead platform for Symphony of the Night even though it was a 2D game, Symphony of the night was released in early 1997, I don't know what development time was like in that era, but Saturn actually had the lead in Japan until sometime early-mid 1996.
Gradius Gaiden, their biggest shmup release, was also exclusive to PS1.
So, basically, Konami supported PS1 early on, then during the period when it had become clear that the Saturn was completely obliterating the PS1 in hardware sales in Japan they started to release some easy to port arcade games multi-format for the two systems, whilst still concentrating their big new games on PS1. Then when the PS1 started to take over popularity in Japan they immediately dropped the Saturn, making only ridiculously belated ports (Suikoden was nearly three years out of date by the time it arrived on Saturn)
Personally I would say that Konami only took Sega seriously with the Mega Drive, and even then only from the latter half of 1993 onwards as their prior games are either fairly un-noteworthy, or have indications of being rushed, or poorly funded. I also think that their Treasure co-workers splitting and working exclusively for Sega may have been a possible factor in making them be more careful about the quality of their releases on the platform, not wanting to look inferior to their own prior staff's output, (as well as the more obvious fact that the MD had proved by that stage that it was there to stay)
Though I hadn't heard about the rumour about SotN originally being on 32X, that would be a pretty good show of support for Sega coming from Konami. I had a minor look into it, and it seems that development of the two games may have crossed over at the same time, one of the programmer's of the 32X game states that he asked to be moved to the PS1 Castlevania after the 32X game was canceled, saying that a lot of the 32X team were disbanded and moved to different projects, so I'm not sure if SotN was actually the 32X game for definite, or just re-used some of its assets.
It was my understanding that the really big jump for the PSX wasn't just a jump away from the Saturn, but a far more dramatic ump away from Nintendo in part spurred by Square's announcement of FVII being moved to the PSX as well as the general discontentment over the N64. (both from a developer and consumer side of things... especially no optical drive and not even any announced plans for an add-on to address that limitation -a proper add-on not that inefficient/expensive/way too late DD crap)Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
Perhaps that was back when SoTN was still planned to be an SNES game and the 32x version was to be a simple port.Quote:
Though I hadn't heard about the rumour about SotN originally being on 32X, that would be a pretty good show of support for Sega coming from Konami. I had a minor look into it, and it seems that development of the two games may have crossed over at the same time, one of the programmer's of the 32X game states that he asked to be moved to the PS1 Castlevania after the 32X game was canceled, saying that a lot of the 32X team were disbanded and moved to different projects, so I'm not sure if SotN was actually the 32X game for definite, or just re-used some of its assets.
Sheath pointed out that SoTN was originally started as an SNES game and later reworked into a PSX game. (not sure if it was ever planned to have a PCE/PCFX release)
Oh no! I think SotN looks like a SNES game with more animation and scolling and some (obviously) polygonal 3D enemies, I have no knowledge of it actually starting on the SNES. The 32X had Dracula X (Rondo of Blood) announced for it at the same time as the SNES adaptation though.
Oh, my mistake then. ;) Hmm, wiki makes a vague reference to the 32x and there seem to be some ties to that on other articles online. It seems odd that Konami (Japanese and not a huge Sega supporter in general) would have pushed for a 32x game rather than PCECD (which had just gotten the Arcade card), SNES, Saturn, or PSX instead. With the Saturn's hype in Japan, that would have been an obvious interest, especially if they were going to be doing something Sega-wise, the SNES was aging but had more enhancement possibilities and more ROM then ever (as all cart platforms of the time), with the SA-1 chip being particularly useful (fast CPU, hardware decompression with chunky to planar conversion for higher compression ratios, more secure lockout/piracy resistance too I think), and the PSX would have been an option in any case as well. (not sure what sort of presence the 3DO had in Japan in 1994)Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
The MCD or even MD might have seemed more attractive than the 32x from that standpoint, but they seemed to be aiming at a newer market and (at least for Japan) they'd both be behind the SNES and PCE in priority.
Hmm, with some of the 2D games that remained popular in Japan into the mid/late 90s, and given NEC's screw up with the PCFX it's even more of a shame the SuperGrafx had been botched too (really NEC screwed up a lot with hardware -and marketing outside of Japan- from the SGX onward... or you could even argue the PCE CD in some respects -might have been wise to drop the ADPCM and push for 256 kB of program RAM, or just 128k of program RAM at full speed and no ADPCM initially- but the SGX should have been an add-on for the CD/PCE and should have been built into the Duos, and should have had something like a 512-1MB expansion prior to the arcade card, or should have pushed for 512k in the super CD from the start).
The SGX would have meant double the sprites, 2 scrolling backgrounds, etc making it reasonably competitive in 2D for the mid/late 90s, especially with the Arcade card, and early enough to establish a strong install base and be more cost effective than the PCFX... (some accounts claim a larger palette for the SGX, but I think that may be false and the plain 9-bit RGB remained)