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This seemed like the best place to post my latest comparison video for Samurai Shodown on 3DO, Sega CD, Genesis and SNES.
View and Download the high quality DIVX video here.
The 3DO was home to some classic games and it seems that there's been some excellent choices by the TC such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Star Control II and Gex.
I'll throw in Lucienne's Quest as well, it's arguably my favorite game on the system aside from SSFIIT and Gex. Just a great sense of adventure with destructible environments, cool music, and an innovative battle system that I would've loved to have seen recreated in modern RPGs.
Space Hulk: Vengence of the Blood Angels is the thrill of the movie Aliens with Tactical capabilities of an RTS. It's hard, but it's real addictive.
Virtual House: The Life Stage is hard to find, but it's real cheap if you can usually. You basically get to create your own house from the ground up and go exploring in it, and the possibilities are endless.
Guardian War is a great Strategy RPG with unique character classes and unique stylistic choices. It's something of a personal favorite of mine.
Killing Time was a game I felt was enjoyable as far as storyline and intrigue are concerned, as the story is told through flashbacks reenacted by ghosts that you bump into (no loading times either!), and the game is appropriately creepy thanks to its music and bizarre choice of enemies (yes, I hate clowns!).
Iron Angel of the Apocalypse: The Return is much better than the original, and it has a smooth framerate and pace. I still liked the original for its story primarily (not so much the gameplay), but the second comes with my full-on recommendation.
Burning Soldier is a great First-Person Arcade shooting title that's arguably just as fun as Starblade was on 3DO (the latter is well worth getting too by the way). Just smooth action and great production values.
Strahl is an exciting game if you like FMV anime-style games like I do (especially if you liked them on Sega CD).
I'll try to think of more if I can, but these are the other recommendations I can give aside from what you already named in your first post.
Okay, this thread accelerated my plans for picking up Super Street Fighter II X on 3DO. It came in today and my Capcom Soldier pad is broken, that's no good. Also, I immediately noticed that the backgrounds are FLAT. There is line scrolling on the floors but absolutely no layers in the backgrounds themselves. Is this commonly known, or should I be looking for the US release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo?
I mainly bought this because I haven't played SSF2T since it came out in the Arcades and I want to make a comparison vid between it and the SNES and Genesis versions of SSF2. This is going to turn out the same as my SF2 Champion Edition comparison vid did for the PCE version. Not a terrible thing, and the arranged music plus Q sound is nice, but I expected more.
I have a large 3DO collection, and unfortunately, you've listed just about every really noteworthy 3DO game in the OP. I will say, though, that FMV games that were released across a spectrum of systems, usually have their best versions on the 3DO. So if there are any FMV games that you even remotely like, check them out on the 3DO.
For me, I love Sewer Shark, and I always choose the 3DO version over the Sega CD version.
It's unfortunately, however, that the 3DO doesn't really have a good pad for Street Fighter. Most 6 button pads move the X button to the face of the controller, while SSF2T needs the P button. The only controller which has a Street Fighter set up is shaped poorly. I normally play SSF2T with a normal pad and just sacrifice one button.
Oh a special note about the 3DO - when I was younger, I remember reading about the 3DO and wanting it for 2 games in particular - Gex and Way of the Warrior. I thought both, visually, looked great, and both were from genres I loved. Of course the $799 price tag meant I had to wait a long, long time before getting an FZ-1 and FZ-10.
So, several years later, I finally picked up my two crown jewels and popped them in. Gex delivered big time. It's one of my absolute favorite 2D platformers. I'm convinced that, had it come out on, say, the SNES, it'd be hailed as a classic. Great game.
Way of the warrior, however? Awful. AWFUL. I can't express how let down I was. It's not Kasumi Ninja bad, but it's very close. Probably one of the worst fighting games I've played. It looks good in stills, but it plays like trash.
Also, I dunno if you mentioned it, but check out Return Fire. It's a great game which actually reminds me sort of like Desert Strike meets Cannon Fodder.
EDIT: And, so not to triple post, there is no parallax in SSF2T, either domestic or import. Pretty much the biggest flaw.
I also saw someone mention the memory manager - only the Panasonic FZ-10 model (the top-loader model), and maybe some of the asian models, have a built-in memory manager. The Panasonic FZ-1 (the big boxy looking one that sorta looks like an N64, which undoubtedly is what people think of when they think of 3DO) and goldstar models don't have a built in memory manager. You need to either burn a Game Guru disc, or buy one, to manage your memory on these systems.
Huge, huge flaw.
EDIT: OOOOH one last tip - if you can find them, the SNES->3DO adapters are awesome. I like the Panasonic 3DO controllers quite a bit, but I had to confess that the SNES controller is a bit more comfortable. I've never bought 3DO stuff off ebay, so I dunno if these things are rare or expensive, but if you can find one for a reasonable price, it's well worth picking up.
Same here, though since I'm a E. Honda player it's less of a loss. I usually assign punches to the face buttons, Fast and Strong kicks to the triggers, and put the Medium Kick on P.
I'd like to check that one out. Can't imagine that it's worse than Shadow: War of Succession, though. Has anyone ever hacked S:WOS to restore the missing fatalities?
Yes, this is really annoying. I think the person who owned my FZ-1 before me unlocked everything in Return Fire, which confused the heck out of me when I first started playing it. I need to burn a Game Guru disc (or some other title that has a memory manager) but can't burn 3DO games right now, alas.
Never played S:WoS so I can't compare them, but Way of the Warrior is pretty bad. The problem is how loose the controls feel, while at the same time, paradoxically, feeling sluggish. It's something that really doesn't translate into screenshots or video of the game being played, but the feel of the game is way off. Punches and kicks feel like they have no impact, special moves are sloppy, and the worst part is how you jump - you jump like you're on the fucking moon. Contrast to Street Fighter and even Mortal Kombat, there was a lot of strategy in the air game of those two fighters. The way you jump in Way of the Warrior kills any sort of air combat. It's impossible to cross someone up, and even the turn-around kick from MK2 is impossible in this game.
The presentation of the game is top notch. It looks and sounds like an arcade game, certainly something a step above what was available on the SNES and Genesis. But it plays like garbage. Which is a shame, because for years I gazed at it in magazines. I really, really wanted to like it.
Luckily, though, Gex is incredible, and completely justifies the system for me.
Ha, I'm in the middle of playing Shaq-Fu (don't ask why), and a lot of your description would fit that game quite well. The jumping in Shaq-Fu is maddening and the air game seems similarly nonexistent.
You should definitely try S:WoS at some point. If you don't already have it, I'd be more than happy to sell you my copy, though I doubt you'd thank me for it. :D I seriously don't think I have ever played a worse fighting game, except maybe Karate for Atari 2600 -- and even that's a tough call. It's one of the absolute worst console games I've ever encountered; it makes Bible Adventures seem like Super Mario Bros. 2.
Thinking about it, comparing it to Shaq Fu would be pretty close. Shaq Fu feels a lot more sluggish, but they still are pretty comparable.
What system is S:WoS for anyways? I can't pass up a bad fighting game... they're like car wrecks. I have to try them out. I've played some awful, awful fighting games in my day (especially on the Amiga) but I'm always willing to try another.
It's on the 3DO! And I would be pretty surprised if you've ever played a worse one -- it's just mindbendingly bad. There's a fairly accurate and very funny review of it embedded here.
The Video Game Critic also reviews it to similar effect, though there are a couple inaccuracies in his review. Most notably, though there are fatalities in the game's code, they apparently kept crashing the game, so instead of debugging the developers just branched around them. So at the end of the fight, you get a "FINISH HIM!" (or equivalent -- I don't remember the exact language), and then...nothing. You just hit your opponent once more and he/she falls down. The end.
This basically sums up the entire reason I bought a 3DO recently, I would play the copy in my local Media Play for HOURS because I enjoyed it so much. I didn't know there was a version of Sewer Shark for the 3DO though, I'll have to look into that since I really enjoy the game as well.
I do like to compare FMV titles between the 3DO and Sega CD, it's good fun. Sewer Shark is next on my list, I wonder if it has better music.
The first thing I noticed about Gex when I picked it up is the choppy scrolling framerate. That seems to happen in 2D games on the 3DO though.