Vectorman V.S DKC

[Vehemont]

I think EWJ is too hard myself. I can't get past the underwater level. I hate the stupid watercraft thing that you have to drive perfectly. I can never do it.

[Genesis Knight]

Crap, I forgot about that part. That one is actually worse than the puppy level.

[TmEE]

Oh how I hate the watercrafts and puppies !!!

[Zebbe]

Despite Genesis Knight's good answer to me, I still don't get Vectorman, especially when compared to DKC.

First of all, the character is just made of balls, which used similarily before (Dynamite Headdy, Ballz 3D and maybe even Rayman). He looks boring, while the characters of DKC were pretty good looking IMO.

Then the graphics hardly impress me. The backgrounds are boring, being pre-rendered doesn't make it much better and the "3D" parts hardly make up for all that. Donkey Kong Country on the other hand looks pretty good with its pre-rendered graphics, very close to real photos sometimes.

The sound is extremely boring in Vectorman. There are Mega Drive soundtracks that are five years older I highly prefer. What I hear in this game makes me wanna sleep, there is no drive in it. DKC on the other hand embraced the graphics very well and completed them with a sound that gave a closer feel to the environments you were in.

For the lastability, Vectorman is only about 15 stages, of which a big part of them can be completed in just a few seconds. The game has only 16 MEGA POWER, which is pretty bad for such a late release, especially since DKC had 32 Mbit and was released earlier (I don't think Vectorman had half the price of DKC). In that game, there were around 35 long stages, you could save your progress, it had multiple endings, you could play it for a long time until you got 101% etc.

So what is better with Vectorman? Well, the controls are maybe. Then it was released on a console that was better in general, but this doesn't help much here. Bottom line is: Vectorman is a very poor competitor to DKC.

[Iron Lizard]

I never really did get it why they choose Vectorman of all games to compare.

[Zebbe]

Probably because Sega of America decided to make a game with pre-rendered graphics and show it as an answer to DKC.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Nice thing about Vectorman: when falling, shooting downward would slow down the fall

[Genesis Knight]

That's another Vectorman plus for many people, Zebbe - you have control over either blasting through the stages (literally in under two minutes in some cases) or taking it slow and finding the wealth of secrets squirreled in the game. But yeah, I mean - opinion varies, and that's all this whole thread really is.

BTW, to anyone: who said V was even a direct competitor to DKC other than that they were on the market at the same time? Who started this assumption?

[Aarzak]

It was the Genesis' killer app for the 1995 holiday season, and the most remembered-and-promoted Genesis game for 1995.

...........Dammit, it was Sega's equivalent/response to DKC and that's it!

[Genesis Knight]

Star Wars Arcade is what is commonly suggested as the title that saved Sega against DKC that Christmas, not Vectorman.

[Aarzak]

I didn't mean the 1994 holiday season, I meant that it was a response and counter-strike towards DKC1 (which was STILL selling like mad all throughout 1995 and to the '95 holiday season) and the impending release of DKC2. A belated response on the part of DKC1, but still a response.

Without Vectorman the Genesis would've probably floundered worse than it already did during the '95 holiday season. It had no other or upcoming killer apps and/or Japanese software, and had pretty much degenerated into the budget-conscious gamer's console by then...........which coincidentally is the period in which I first got mine.

That SNES DKC1 bundle also moved a lot of units as well. Other SNES best-sellers that year were Yoshi's Island and the Killer Instinct port. I believe Mortal Kombat 3 was the best-selling Genesis game that year. Both MK3 ports supposedly moved close to if not a million copies.

[j_factor]

Star Wars Arcade is what is commonly suggested as the title that saved Sega against DKC that Christmas

That's retarded.

[Genesis Knight]

It's in one of our interviews and a feature as well. Can't find either at the moment, unfortunately.

[Dartagnan1083]

DKC has level design?

coulda fooled me :mr green:

serriously though, the levels are just cut-out archetypes of the worst sort from the late 80s/early 90s;
Run straight ahead, move across a giant gap, and mind the mostly invulnerable spikes.

[Aarzak]

"Star Wars Arcade" being Sega's Christmas '94 killer-app has been assumed as far back as that SegaBase Genesis article which quoted it from some guy who was involved with the game (or Sega) at the time, probably the same one who Sega-16 tapped to interview.

As much as I love reading those SegaBase articles...........just how accurate are they? And weren't they scheduled to be revised and cleaned up after the demise of their original site like 10 million years ago? Eidolon's Inn is now in charge of them.

I'd be surprised if SWA really was their killer-app. The Star Wars franchise was in a recession at the time with nothing new on the horizon, except for LucasArts churning out those SNES and PC games on a regular basis.