Official Sega-16 Haul Thread. 4.0

[Bastardcat]

Got Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World, for $10.45 + Free shipping. Not too shabby considering that anything with Mario in it goes for a premium on eBay.

[TheSonicRetard]

I ordered a shitload of games recently, and they've begun arriving in groups. Today, Rayman (Jaguar), Cannon Fodder (Jaguar), Ultra Vortek (Jaguar), Hyper Force (Jaguar), Panzer Dragoon (Saturn), Panzer Dragoon Zwei (Saturn), 2 3-button Sega Genesis controllers, 1 6-button Sega Genesis controller, a new MIB Turbo Grafx 16 controller, and a multi-system arcade joystick all arrived.

As you might have noticed, I'm on a bit of a jaguar kick, as I've been stuck with the 6 games I got with the system for years now - Checkered Flag, Bubsy 3, Tempest 2000, Cyber Morph, Alien vs Predator, and Katsumi Ninja. Save Tempest 2000, I'm of the opinion that all the above suck, which has given me a (more than normal) low opinion of the system. I figured that my opinion of the Jaguar wouldn't turn around until I actually explored its library, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

In addition to the games above, 2 other games arrived last week - Zool 2 and Doom. I'd already played both on other platforms (Zool 2 on the CD32, Doom on the 32X and 3DO) and I enjoy both very much. Doom on the Jaguar is incredible, definitely a system showcase. The graphics and complexity blow away the 32X version - just having enemies which can turn makes a huge difference. It lacks music, but I just turn on the Doom OST on my speakers while I play and it works out alright.

Zool 2 is great, one of the biggest hidden gems on the CD32. It's a dramatic improvement over the original, even including a touch of Sonic & Knuckles in that the two playable characters can access different parts of the game. The Jaguar port isn't as good as the CD32 version - it has worse controls, worse music (obviously), and fewer levels (namely the levels exclusive to the CD32 version). I suspect it's a straight port of the normal amiga 1200 game. However, despite being inferior, it's not bad by any means. By contrast, it's a wonderful game that I think anyone with an Amiga or Jaguar should check out.

So that leads me to today's haul. Two of the jaguar games I got I'd played on other systems, and two of the games are jaguar exclusives. I'll start with the best game - Rayman. Rayman was designed first for the jaguar, and as such this is one of the best versions of the original game you can get. The graphics are phenomenal, even today. I'm pretty sure everyone has played the original rayman by now, so I need not go into detail about its gameplay, but suffice to say it's easily among the highest quality jaguar games around.

Cannon Fodder, like Zool 2, is another Amiga classic. The original game was the source of major controversy upon it's release (mainly due to knee-jerk reactions in the media who misunderstood the game's intended anti-war message) and it's a pretty great game on top of the controversy. The Amiga version was a blast to play with the mouse, but the jaguar version has to make due with the game pad. Now, personally, I believe the Jaguar's controller has gotten a bum wrap. The design might be stupid, but it's not horrible. The biggest flaw isn't the size of the controller, or the numberpad (which, with overlays, actually feels more like a super primitive touch screen), but in fact the grouping of the main face buttons. They're more vertical than horizontal, so it's unlike a genesis pad. It makes hitting the A button difficult as it's more above B than it is to the right of it. With that in mind, I feel the jaguar controller does a good enough job to properly enjoy cannon fodder.

For the jaguar-exclusive games, Hyper Force is the one which came most highly recommended. It's not an original jaguar release, it wasn't finished until after Hasbro had declared the jaguar an open system, with Songbird snatching up the rights from the original developers, finishing it, and finally releasing it a few years ago. As my very first post-mortem jaguar release, I had high hopes. Surely they wouldn't go through all the effort to release a sub-par game, right? Besides, while the jaguar has a few games in just about every genre that could be considered a good release, it's library lacks severely in the action genre. There is nothing comparable to contra or turrican on the system, and Hyper Force was said to be in the vein of those games.

Well considered me fooled. Hyper Force is a mediocre, even below-average side scrolling shooter. In screenshots, it looks pretty good - huge sprites, jump animation which resembles turrican, etc. Playing the game is another story. Even with upgrades, your weapons never feel like they pack a punch. You jump like a fucking moron, able to clear several screens-worth height in a single jump. The graphics look alright, although very uninspired, and the music is subdued but surprisingly not-crappy. I'd chalk this game's hype up to game-starved jaguar enthusiasts overstating the quality of this game simply to make them feel better about their purchases. I paid $80 for this cart and don't feel even half satisfied with my purchase.

I had already previously made up my mind about the final game, Ultra Vortek. I had long decided I'd never pick it up, as I had heard it was just as awful as Katsumi Ninja. However, hanging around the AtariAge forums, and reading a couple of reviews, it seems many considered this game to be amongst the best on the system and the best fighter available. Now, considering the Jaguar library includes primal rage, which, while not a world-beater, is at least competent on a level well beyond Katsumi Ninja, coupled with the high review scores from jaguar owners, I decided that I'd give this game a go. I found a great price on a CIB copy ($10?! GTFO I couldn't pass that up), and here it is now.

While I'm not gonna claim it's some sort of lost genius fighting gem, I will say that my initial writing off of the game was wrong. This is a pretty good little fighter, with pretty good (if very inconsistent) graphics. It plays a bit slow - I'd compare it more to Eternal Champion than Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter II - but once you compensate it's pretty fun. It's obviously a mortal kombat clone, but compared to it's closest peers (Way of the Warrior, Katsumi Ninja, etc) it stands above as a quality release. Not quite AAA, but definitely on the level of Eternal Champions or Primal Rage. A good, quality release.

I have a few other jaguar games coming in - Super Burnout, Iron Soldier, and Raiden - and I'll talk about those when I get them. Thus far, I'd say Tempest 2000, Doom, Rayman, and Zool 2 are the must-own Jaguar games I've played thus far. Ultra Vortek, Alien vs Predator, and Cannon Fodder are good games worth owning if you've got interest in the system. The rest - Hyper Force, Checkered Flag, Cyber Morph, Bubsy 3, and Katsumi Ninja - are trash. These are the games which earned the Jaguar it's reputation.

Beyond the jaguar games I received, I also got the two Panzer Dragoon games. I had beaten Zwei years ago after repeatedly renting it from blockbuster, and I had the PC version of Panzer Dragoon, but I lacked the two saturn editions. I picked them up mainly to boost my saturn library.

The multi-system joystick I bought came, unfortunately, broken in the mail. The face of the joystick flat-out shattered. The plastic is in pieces and I can't really use it. I've emailed the seller of the joystick and he's going to replace it, so no big deal. I'm still a bit bummed, as it's a pretty great joystick - the buttons and actual stick (which can be changed from bat to ball if you want) feel good, and the best part is that it works with the Neo Geo AES, Sega Genesis, SNES, and Turbo Duo. On the Turbo Duo, it even has a switch for 2-button and 6-button mode, which will feel great with street fighter II'. I have an avenue pad 6 for that particular game, but it feels pretty odd. The joystick will definitely get some use.

Finally, I replaced some worn-out 3-button genesis controllers I had. Unfortunately, these two pads look like they came from the model 2 days, as they lack the model 1 markings. Not a big deal, but I might pick up 2 model-1 pads in the future. I also bought an official sega 6-button gamepad to compliment the working one I have. I love these tiny controllers, and having official pads makes playing sega games more fun IMO.

All in all, a pretty fun day coming home. Hopefully it keeps up as more games arrive.

[JFLY]

Super Mario 3D Land and Astal


Street Fighter Zero and The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword


Sonic the Hedgehog CD Original Soundtrack 20th Anniversary Edition

[SpaceFlea]

MORE IMPORT GOODIES!!! 99 Of them to be precise. I now have about 20% of the Super Famicom Set - only about 1100 to go .

This was (perhaps) my last purchase for the year... so I made it a big and expensive one.

[jerry coeurl]

Christ Almighty! Talk about an impressive haul. Love seeing so many import titles lined up like that.

If you don't mind me asking, how much did it set you back? And was that an eBay purchase or what?

[SpaceFlea]

Christ Almighty! Talk about an impressive haul. Love seeing so many import titles lined up like that.

If you don't mind me asking, how much did it set you back? And was that an eBay purchase or what?

That lot cost $1,435 shipped. And $300 of that was the shipping, so the total price for the games alone was about $1,135. It was all from eBay. Which isn't too shabby at about $11 per game - especially with the decent number of middle range gems in there. Each game was a single purchase from the same seller.

I could have done without all the sealed PS games (since JP PS is one of the very few systems for which I'm not currently seeking a full set), but it's so very difficult to pass up super cheap sealed games. Those are the only filler in the entire lot (though some of the SFC stuff may be a bit squishy for some) - and there's nothing bad about padding your collection with sealed games - I would have saved only about $150 total had I left all 17 of them out.

[QuickSciFi]

MORE IMPORT GOODIES!!! 99 Of them to be precise. I now have about 20% of the Super Famicom Set - only about 1100 to go .

This was (perhaps) my last purchase for the year... so I made it a big and expensive one.

Is there a special brick n mortar store you buy these at a time?

[SpaceFlea]

Is there a special brick n mortar store you buy these at a time?

Just the same JP seller on eBay from whom I procure about 80% of my imports. I've been buying from them for 10 years - since I started collecting.

[Barone]

hit-japan?

[SpaceFlea]

hit-japan?

Hell no!

Bad experience. I've only bought from him a couple times. And will only do it again when desperate or looking for cheap filler. The attraction of him is that his prices are cheaper (or at least they used to be) than anyone else. And, if I recall, he has a very large PCE selection.

[QuickSciFi]

Just the same JP seller on eBay from whom I procure about 80% of my imports. I've been buying from them for 10 years - since I started collecting.

That's lucky to find just the one seller who can be this diligent. I have my own for the Genny. He's not cheap, but not so rough, and always mint as described.

[Joe Redifer]

JFLY gimme an audio rip of that Sonic audio CD. No compression. You have 20 minutes to comply.

[xelement5x]

Hell no!

Bad experience. I've only bought from him a couple times. And will only do it again when desperate or looking for cheap filler. The attraction of him is that his prices are cheaper (or at least they used to be) than anyone else. And, if I recall, he has a very large PCE selection.

Yeah it seems like a fair number of JP sellers can be hit-or-miss (no pun intended), but I've had good luck with Hit/Game of Japan, the big attraction for me is he lets you do best off so I can normally get stuff pretty darn cheap.

I'm wondering if there should be a thread comparing the pros/cons of a lot of the sellers somewhere, but I can understand some folks might be reluctant to reveal their sources too

[TheSonicRetard]

so 2 packages arrived at the office today - one was my copy of Raiden for the Jaguar, the other is my Atari 7800 NES-style gamepad. As I understand it, these types of gamepads were never released in the US, and are slightly uncommon in europe. I got mine for $30, which seems about right, as they tend to go for about $50 on ebay.



I need to get a few more 7800 games so I can take advantage of this baby, holding it feels pretty comfortable actually. It's funny how it looks like it could have been a jaguar accessory, and how it's actually a lot more comfortable than a 7800 controller (oops).

I plan on picking up an atari jaguar pro controller in a few days.

[cheaterdragon1]

Don't mind the cat.

I've wanted a complete Ristar for a while now. Finding one complete is a real challenge if you're after a North American copy, but there always seems to be plenty of Complete and mint PAL copies for sale. I gave in and bought one.

Now the game has arrived and I've seen that PAL certainly is different. The end label on the Ristar cart doesn't actually have the Ristar name labeled on it. Also the manual is in several hundred languages including English, Spanish, German, Klingon, Wookie, and even French. On the back of the game's box we find that in PAL land they do not have ESRB, but instead ELSPA. This is because some games might be acceptable for people aged 11-14, but not acceptable for 18+. Everything is so blue on the packaging. It's very unique and you'll definitely be able to tell where Ristar is among the rest of games which are mostly black or red. No region lockout means I'm enjoying this game on my Genesis.

Now once this damn test is over with I'll actually play the game.