Genre Spotlight: Full Motion Video Madness

[Melf]

Sega-16's Genre Spotlight series is designed to examine every single Genesis/Sega CD/32X title available for a specific category, be it fighters, RPGs, or shmups. It's a hard, time-consuming thing to do, but all other entries pale before this latest installment. Staff writer Patrick Wainwright has boldly gone where no one has gone before: full motion video games. Yes, Patrick dove head-first into perhaps the most controversial genre of them all, and his hard work has given us a great piece on all the FMV games released for the Sega CD/32X. Check out his awesome article Full Motion Madness for all the details. Welcome to the Next Level.

[Joe Redifer]

I still have the Dragon's Lair demo CD. An EB employee gave it to me for free one day for no reason (I came in a lot asking about Sega). I did not argue and accepted it. I also have or had a playable AH3 Thunder Strike demo CD.

How is Racing Aces an FMV game? Same question goes for Urusei Yatsura. Urusei uses normal bitmapped animation like the cutscenes in most TurboGrafx/PC Engine CD game, or like the opening sequences in Sol Feace or the scenes in Lunar, etc etc etc. It is not recorded video like, say, Time Gal. In fact there really isn't a ton of animation in the game, mostly it is point and click on still backgrounds. Silpheed, however, does stream FMV for it's backgrounds.

Typo I saw:

Fahrenheit:
"It's playable on the Sega CD alone but receives a boost hrough the 32X,"

[wayne919]

Yeh i may have some mistakes in my classification. I havent played all the games on the list and just went with what classification i saw or what i read.

[Benjamin]

There was never a Prince Make-My-Video developed. The Prince Sega CD title was simply a collection of videos on disc which could be played like a VHS tape but offered no editing options. At least that's what was mentioned in the brief EGM article that covered the title.

[kevinski]

I've never played any of the FMV games on Sega CD, but I wanted to point something out regarding a comment made in the description for Microcosm. A microcosm is a miniaturized representation of something. Furthermore, a microcosm can simply be a miniature version of of something. This game is obviously leaning more towards the latter.

To give an example of a microcosm in the former sense, however, you could consider a household in which the father is very overbearing and controlling to be a microcosm for a kingdom under the rule of a dictator, should you choose to approach the narrative as such. A microcosm really just needs to convey a general idea that could apply to something on a larger scale.

Again, this isn't the reasoning behind the game, but I wanted to clarify.

[Rodger]

way to go Patrick!!! Awesome article, there are a few games in there that I think I may have to go buy! Wow, it must have taken you awhile to come up with such a great piece, again my congrats to you.

As for the urusei yatsura and probably yumimi debate of being fmv, hmm. I've seen video of the Urusei game in action over at www.segagagadomain.com in the wonderful Retrocore section (I think the first episode), and it's one of the seemingly endless type of point and click anime adventure games. Having quite a few of these games on my import saturn, I would hesitate to call them FMV per say, however since the genre seems somewhat limited on the sega cd, I don't think it's wrong to bunch them in with all of the other fmv games.

That's just a small quibble though, and ultimately I think you did a great job. Congrats!!

[Melf]

There was never a Prince Make-My-Video developed. The Prince Sega CD title was simply a collection of videos on disc which could be played like a VHS tape but offered no editing options. At least that's what was mentioned in the brief EGM article that covered the title.

Yep, you're right. The Virtual VCR. The ones that never made were for REM and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

kevinski]'ve never played any of the FMV games on Sega CD, but I wanted to point something out regarding a comment made in the description for Microcosm. A microcosm is a miniaturized representation of something. Furthermore, a microcosm can simply be a miniature version of of something. This game is obviously leaning more towards the latter.

Very true, not sure how I missed that. I've tweaked the entry to reflect the correct context.

How is Racing Aces an FMV game?

I've never played that one but upon closer inspection, it definitely isn't an FMV game. It's been removed from the article. The others are still open to debate, I think (never played those either, myself).

If there are any games missing, please let us know!

[j_factor]

Good article overall, but how is Jurassic Park an FMV game? It's just an ordinary point-and-click adventure, no more FMV than Myst or Monkey Island.

[108 Stars]

Although mentioned as highlight of FMV-games, Road Avenger is still a very bad game.

[Mendicant]

If you can somehow read your opponents and figure out when to correctly utilize each fighting technique, you might be able to play this game.

That, or you can set the difficulty to "easy". An icon will show up whenever you need to press a button, telling you which button to press. Atleast on the 32X version. (The normal difficulty level shows icons as well, but gives you a lot less time to press the buttons.)

I would be interested in knowing when Star Wars games will stop sucking and will once again be good.

When they start re-releasing classic compilations...?

point to Silpheed to quench your thirst for hybrid games of this type, and since that game doesn't use FMV (but glorious flat-shaded polygons!)

Like Joe said, Silpheed streams FMV of glorious flat-shaded ploygons. Because the game is showing a background consisting of pre-rendered glorious flat-shaded polygons on par with all the polygons it's actually generating in real-time, most people (my self included) assumed that the entire level is actually being rendered in real-time.

I always thought Virtual VCR tried to be more of a poor-man's-Laserdisc; and it's advent was sealed by the advent of VCDs & the PCs (and VCD players) capable of playing them.

[Henry Spencer]

Ummmmm, you missed out Snatcher (the only game aside from Sonic CD that I love)... :-/

[Chris Marsh]

Go to the digital comics article for that game. They're two different game genres. I actually like FMV games, but I agree that they seriously lack replay value. At least they are simple and easy to get into.

[redrum666]

Bug Blasters has 6 diffrent covers not 4 Green Fly, Brown Tick, Black Spider, Purple Locust, Blue Mosquito, and the 1st release cover that is out of print

[redrum666]

allso what about Lethal Enforcers 1 or 2 why are they not on the list

[Zebbe]

Totally awesome feature. Now I feel even more encouraged to buy Road Avenger and Night Trap (for the 32X). This quote gave me the laugh of the day:

This barely qualifies as a game even by FMV standards.

By the way, Patrick Wainwright, you should do an interview with some Good Deal Games guy. They should have some interesting stuff to tell.