Stadia, we hardly knew ye. Or cared.

You're often judged by the company you keep,
which is why it may not have been wise for the
Stadia to hang around with a Dreamcast, a
Power Glove, and ET for the Atari 2600.
(image from USA Today)

I'd like to close out the month with this news... Google hasn't just abandoned their cloud gaming service Stadia, they're hastily trying to blot it from existence, without so much as an early warning for developers who were making games for the service. Rude. At least the players who took a ride on this Hindenburg are getting their money back from any Stadia purchases they made.

One could argue that the Stadia project was foolhardy from the word "go," and that cloud gaming just cannot work in a country as large and with such poor internet infrastructure as the United States. Google should have known better, but sometimes you've just got to let stubbornly stupid people stick a butter knife in an electrical outlet before they learn not to do it again.

The Last to Fall

The Playstation cast its lot with high-tech
compact discs, while Nintendo was content
to stick with damage-resistant cartridges for
its N64. Meanwhile, the Sega Saturn asked,
"Why not both? Like, at the same time?"
(image from Fully Retro)

Funny how being deprived of something makes you all the more determined to get it, even if what you want with all your heart and soul isn't actually all that great. Take for instance King of Fighters '95 and Ultraman: Hikari no Kyojin Densetsu for the Sega Saturn. I've played roughly a hojillion games for this system, but these two titles were always the odd ones out, since they both rely on special ROM cartridges that were paired with each game. You couldn't make copies of the discs, because they were only half of the equation... without the cartridges, they just wouldn't run. You couldn't even buy the games from Japan and play them on your US Saturn, because although you could technically use a Pro Action Replay to circumvent the system's region locking, uh... where would you put the ROM cartridge while the Pro Action Replay is in the slot?

For years, I had to go without these two vexatious games. Not anymore, though! Thanks to the coding skills of YZB, who you might recognize as the guy who helped bring most of the Atomiswave library to the Dreamcast, we now have hacked versions of KOF '95 and Ultraman which put all of the cartridge data on the disc, then transfer it to the obscenely common Pro Action Replay before the game begins. What this means is that if you've got that cartridge and a mod chip, or a Pro Action Replay with Pseudo Saturn KAI installed on it, KOF '95 and Ultraman are now as easy-peasy to run as any other Saturn game.

AHHH! Sideshow Kusanagi!
(image from RetroGames.cc)

That's great! The games, well... that's another story. King of Fighters '95 is as hyper-competent as any other Neo-Geo port on the Sega Saturn, but the problem is that you're getting a strong conversion of an underwhelming arcade release. It's better than KOF '94 for sure, with the option to build a custom team and slightly less block-crazy opponents, but it's still an early entry in a fighting game series that didn't find its footing until the latter half of the 1990s. Seriously, compare this to the later games in the Orochi saga, and you're going to notice a gap in quality that's better described as a gorge. Completionists will be happy to have this, but with YZB also making 4MB-enhanced versions of KOFs '96 and '97, there's little point for less dedicated fans of the series to partake.

Ultraman on the other hand is an objectively worse game, but also a more tantalizingly unfamiliar one. It's from a pre-Namco acquisition Bandai, so if you've played any of their games on the NES, you already know to keep your expectations ankle-high. However, if you've got a sense of humor, an appreciation for the Ultraman television series, and perhaps a drunk friend you can trade punches with, you'll wring some amusement out of this title.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward... you choose from five different Ultraman characters (including personal favorite and late night Turner network staple Ultra Seven) and battle against giant monsters, including the apparent love child of Godzilla and a flying squirrel, and a butterfly chrysalis that willed itself arms and legs. Your scarlet clad hero fights with punches and kicks, and can use a guard button to block incoming attacks, make a hasty retreat, or throw a nearby monster. Special moves are governed by a charge bar under your hero's life bar, and the more punishment you dish out, the more quickly it fills. There are also super moves that shred a quarter of your opponent's health, but mercifully, you won't need to finish your opponent off with them. That alone makes the Saturn version of Ultraman a big improvement over the Super NES game released years earlier. (Did you know there was also a Genesis version of Ultraman available in other territories? I can't even fathom why. I guess Bandai felt like spreading the misery around.)

One of the game's more visually arresting
stages, with a ring of pine trees circling the
arena and a sheet of rolling clouds
looming overhead.

Ultraman on the Saturn also uses a splash of polygonal graphics for visual depth, turning each stage into a shoebox diorama. Your battles are framed by trees, mountains, and buildings, and when you're thrown by a freaky crawdad creature, the camera briefly shifts perspective for a more dramatic view of your fall. The action is locked to a single plane, but there's enough sleight of hand to sell each stage as just that, instead of a flat background. Sure, it feels like you're stomping through a set of flimsy cardboard buildings, but you'd have to expect that kind of low-budget cheese from a game based on Ultraman. It's just not tokusatsu without bad special effects and the occasional exposed costume zipper.

So there you have it. That's two Saturn games you'll never have trouble playing again. You may not even want to play them again, but you can at least satisfy your curiosity about them after all these years.

Livin' on Channel Z

How many of these ports, switches,
dials, and gizmos on the front are
there just for show? I presume the
floppy drives are phony, at least.
(image from the Zuiki Twitty-
er, Twitter)

In case there was any doubt at all, Zuiki recently confirmed that the X68000 Mini, or should I say, the X68000Z, is a real thing that's really happening, and really soon. They've been coy about the specifics beyond the images that have already leaked online, but Zuiki will be offering more information about their shrunken down super computer on October 8th.

With this in mind, it's the perfect time to speculate about what will be on this thing! The suspicion is that Zuiki will stick to titles that are easy to start (and not every X68K title is) and whose licenses they can procure fairly easy. What that means are a bunch of arcade titles from "cheap date" game publishers; most likely the wealth of games by Jaleco (now City Connection) but also possibly Taito and Namco. Konami and Capcom are the biggest names associated with the original X68000, but due to their recent involvement with other mini-consoles, they may not be willing to get their hands dirty with this one. However, since those two companies published the bulk of the killer apps for the system, Zuiki will likely work extra hard to get them onboard the X68000Z train.

What I'd like to see on the system could be quite different from what we actually get due to the aforementioned licensing issues and the Japanese appetite for role-playing games. Nevertheless, here's a handful of X68K titles I think would be welcome additions to the Z.

CHO REN SHA X68K

YouTube replayers like Shuhalmo
make Cho Ren Sha look easy, but it's
about as easy as the nuclear war
it so closely resembles.

This indie shooter is an absolute must, and Zuiki needs to move heaven and earth to guarantee its inclusion on the Z. It's kind of plain on the surface, looking like the caravan shmups that were popular in Japan through the 1990s, but there's nuance hidden beneath the minimalist gameplay... fly into a ring of power ups and you'll collect them all, if you've got the nerves of steel to stay inside it as the screen fills with fleets of ships and their bullets. Some boss fights even let you trick your enemies into blasting themselves with the massive plasma balls meant for you! Past the clever twists and some pumpin' synth tunes, Cho Ren Sha is the explode-iest shooter on the X68K, with bombs bursting in air and scrap metal flying past at any given moment. Set off a smart bomb and things really get hectic! (Go ahead. You know you want to.)

AKUMAJOU DRACULA/CASTLEVANIA CHRONICLES

A Castlevania game most Americans haven't played, at least until the release of the Playstation port Castlevania Chronicles many years later? Don't mind if I do! Presented as a retelling of the original game in the series, Akumajou Dracula steps the graphics up to top shelf 16-bit quality and swaps out some of the stages for new ones. The new levels aren't as good as the ones from the first Castlevania, with a raft-bound battle against a dragon skeleton being particularly aggravating, but props to Konami for serving up something fresh rather than giving X68K owners a predictable rehash. The game has the distinct feel of a long-lost sequel to Super Castlevania IV, something fans who didn't like Bloodlines on the Genesis will appreciate.

NEMESIS KAI '90

No Moai heads in Stage 1, but you get these
ugly customers instead.
(image from STG-SLK)

A Gradius game most Americans haven't played? Like, anywhere? Oh Konami, you spoil me! Like Akumajou Dracula, Nemesis Kai '90 isn't entirely original, borrowing its stages from the MSX version of Gradius II, but the graphics are considerably improved, and there's a novel play mechanic that rewards you with more devastating weapons if you're able to squeeze your ship past the defenses of the stage boss and into its vulnerable core. It's early 1990s Konami, so don't expect an easy go of it.

BOSCONIAN

This is one of those arcade titles on the X68000 that was blessed with an enhanced mode, offering new stages and the rich, vibrant graphics you'd normally expect to see on the Super NES. The option to play the game in its original 8-bit form is available, but if you're going to hunt down space stations while swatting away pesky swarms of enemy ships, you might as well do it in style. An enhanced X68K-exclusive mode is also available in Namco's other shooter Super Xevious, and you can pretty much count on its inclusion with the system, given Japan's enduring fondness for that series.

GRANADA

Sure, you've played it on the Genesis, and will get a chance to play it again on the Sega Genesis Mini 2 once that arrives next month. However, you've never played Granada with this soundtrack, an intense collection of synth tunes that instantly bring the television show Airwolf to mind. It adds a lot of ambience to this exciting search and destroy mission, set in (and occasionally above) the war-torn wastelands of Africa. One stage sets your tank on top of a flying fortress many times its size, and tasks you with taking out each of the massive aircraft's jet engines. You'd better hope you have an escape plan for when all those engines are destroyed, because it's a long way down... 

ARKANOID: REVENGE OF DOH
also, CAMELTRY

The X68000 has no hardware scaling
and rotation, but somebody forgot to
tell Taito that.
(image from PipiTan/YouTube)

Hey, they've got to have at least a couple games to justify that crazy mouse/trackball hybrid, and these two Taito arcade classics should fit the bill. Revenge of DOH is the sequel to the familiar, futuristic brick breaker, and while its new features (including a Twin power-up that doubles the effective size of the Vaus, while leaving a precarious gap in the middle) make the game more aggravating than the original Arkanoid, it will nevertheless give that mouse a proper workout. Same goes for Cameltry, a fast-paced trip through a surreal labyrinth, with the player rotating the maze to speed a marble along to the goal, dodging time penalty squares and other hazards along with way.

BUBBLE BOBBLE

Home versions of Bubble Bobble are typically at least competent, and this eclipses the already fondly regarded Commodore 64, NES, and Amiga versions. If you liked the cuddly characters and surprisingly nuanced action of the arcade game- and who doesn't, really?- you won't find much to complain about here. One odd hidden bonus is Sybubblen, a crossover that merges the bubble blowing dragons of Bubble Bobble with the metallic, flame-spitting space dragon from Syvalion. Nuts 'n gum, together at last!

DAIMAKAIMURA
aka GHOULS 'N GHOSTS

Those vultures are already thinking
about which sauce tastes best on knight.
(image from ISB/YouTube)

Look, you've played this spooky, if just slightly silly, platformer on a million different formats, but another one won't hurt, and it is a good sight more faithful to the arcade game than the Genesis version was. Ghouls 'n Ghosts makes a good showpiece for any console capable of handling it, and with its cutting-edge hardware, the X68000 is more than up to the challenge. 

(You might not be, though. Just sayin', this game is hard, even with the new magic attacks and multi-directional firing. At least this time, you can keep your quarters. Well, the ones you haven't already used to buy this system.)

GALAGA '88
aka GALAGA '90

Namco and the men from Dempa (not to be confused with The Denpa Men) team up to deliver yet another sterling arcade port on the X68000. It's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; a flashier, more colorful sequel to Galaga where the insectoid enemies burst like fireworks and warp capsules can be collected that tear holes in the fabric of time and space, granting you access to alternate dimensions. And possibly resulting in the eventual collapse of the universe, I'm not sure. This game is notoriously difficult to run on emulators, typically leaving the player stranded on a loading screen, but I have little doubt Zuiki can find a way to circumvent this bug. It'll be up to you to squash all the other ones.

BUTASAN

There's the referee now, making sure this
death sport with explosives is conducted
fairly. I guess you get a red flag for using
a nuke or something.
(image from Vyze the Determined, who's
a cool guy despite my not liking his RPG.)

If you thought it was painful getting hit with dodgeballs in gym class, try playing the game with explosives! That's the core concept of Butasan, a chaotic battle with brightly colored swine hurling bombs at each other. You've got remarkable control over the length and trajectory of your throws... with practice, you can even ricochet bombs off the edges of the screen, taking your opponents by surprise. Alternately, you can just grab a gas mask and put all the other pigs to sleep, leaving them helpless to defend themselves. Hey, the ref says it's not cheating! After you've played a few rounds of this simple yet exhilarating action title, you'll learn to love the smell of napalm and bacon in the morning. 

TERRA CRESTA
with MOON CRESTA

Activate interlocks and connect dynatherms! It's time to tackle the Mandora army with your fleet of ships, which can either be merged for a concentrated blast, or spread out into a formation that fills the screen with sonic waves and other weapons of mass destruction. Collect them all and you can merge them into a flaming phoenix, burning all who dare come near to a crisp. As expected of the X68000, Terra Cresta is a damn near perfect port, but wait, there's more! You also get the considerably less impressive Moon Cresta, one of many early arcade titles that uses Namco's Galaxian hardware as the foundation for a shooter that's inferior to Galaxian. Don't complain... it's not like anyone is making you play it.

GAROU DENSETSU SPECIAL
aka FATAL FURY SPECIAL

Seriously, you can dip a dessert spoon
into Big Bear's shoulder.
(image from PipiTan/YouTube)

There are plenty of cost-conscious ways to play Fatal Fury Special, albeit with compromises to the graphics and sound. However, the X68000 offers the dubious distinction of giving you a less than perfect port of the Neo-Geo game on a system that's more expensive than a Neo-Geo. It's still a competent conversion with the same towering characters and overload of sherbet oranges and reds, even if the sound effects and especially the MIDI-based music seem like they're pulling a few punches. There are better versus fighting games on the X68000, but they're all some flavor of Street Fighter II, and really, haven't you played that to death already?

MAD STALKER: FULL METAL FORTH

This futuristic beat 'em up is a big surprise from Fill-In Cafe, which is better known for its long-running Asuka 120% series. Instead of a teenage girl with Popeye arms battling for schoolyard supremacy, you're a gleaming blue mech, stomping through the streets of Tokyo while sinking your hydraulic powered fists into rival robots and those annoying aerial drones that always seem just out of reach. Don't expect the complex combat scenarios and infinite customization of Armored Core... performing Street Fighter joystick motions for special attacks and playing footsie with the bosses is about as complicated as this joyously mindless action game gets. Imagine Final Fight if it had been directed by Masamune Shirow.

X68-what now?!

It's hard to believe in this day of X86 everything, but back in the 1980s and the early 1990s, the home computer market was a very splintered, and very provincial thing. A half-dozen different machines, all vastly different architecturally and mutually incompatible with each other, would battle for control of the industry, until the cheapest and most versatile of these systems would ultimately come out on top. These skirmishes all followed a similar template, but had a different cast of home computers and entirely different outcomes depending on the territory in which they took place. A machine that was successful in one region wasn't likely to carry that success to other countries, and may not even be recognized outside its home turf.

Sure helps keep the costs down when you
effectively steal half your computer's parts.
Isn't that right, Jack?
(image from Hack-A-Day)

In the United States, Atari, Apple, Tandy, Coleco, and Texas Instruments all succumbed to the Commodore 64, thanks to its massive software library and ethically questionable cost-cutting by the company's founder Jack Tramiel. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, there was a fierce battle between the ZX Spectrum and its bitter rival, the BBC Micro, along with a handful of minor competitors like the Amstrad CPC, the Oric, and the Commodore 64. Surprisingly, the C64's popularity in America didn't translate to the European market. It was crushed under the garishly colored heel of the Spectrum, just like every other computer that dared to challenge it in the British computer market.

Then there's Japan. Its dominant force in home computing was the MSX. Co-designed by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation, the MSX was a hardware standard that any electronics manufacturer could adopt by paying a licensing fee to ASCII. Licensing the technology meant the companies selling the MSX saved money on research and development while erasing the burden of manufacturing for ASCII, with the added bonus of offering cross-compatibility between computer brands. Whether you owned a system by Sony, Casio, Samsung, or Fujitsu, they were all guaranteed to take each other's software as long as the MSX logo could be found on the case. The MSX was legion, and contemporaries like NEC's PC-8800 and Sharp's X1 could not withstand the assault.

Here's Shadow of the Beast, one of the headliners
of the Amiga library and a demonstration of its
16-bit power. It's shallow and punishing, but
you're willing to overlook little things like
lackluster gameplay when your video game
looks like your uncle's progressive rock
album covers.
(image from YouTube)

By the end of the 1980s, consumers demanded more from their computers than the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and MSX could provide, resulting in a new generation of powerful 16-bit and 32-bit machines. In America, the x86 PC started to establish its dominance, due to lowering hardware prices, the success of multimedia titles like The 7th Guest and Myst, and the rising popularity of shareware titles like Wolfenstein 3D. Great Britain saw the rise of the Commodore Amiga thanks to jaw-dropping Psygnosis titles like Shadow of the Beast and the megahit puzzle game Lemmings. 

Finally, Japan turned to cutting edge arcade technology for its next generation home computer, the Sharp X68000. Since the early 1980s, game systems and computers alike made the promise of bringing the arcade experience home, but only the X68000 delivered. Capcom designer Hiroaki Kondo even used the X68000 as a development kit for arcade hits like Street Fighter II, and earned the nickname "X68K" for his skill with the computer.

Despite its considerable power, the Sharp X68000 was practically unknown in the United States. If American tech enthusiasts knew of the system at all, it was likely through obscure emulators or the peculiar release of Castlevania Chronicles for the first Playstation. Even if they knew about it, they weren't likely to be able to afford it... the X68K debuted in Japan at a mammoth three thousand dollars, and with only 150,000 units sold, it has scarcely gone down in price in the years since.

The X68000 Mini comes with a teeny
little carrying handle. Good luck holding
the original behemoth of a computer with
just one finger. You'll be sans one finger
after ten minutes.
(image from AusRetroGamer)

Consumer tech manufacturer Zuiki is hoping to close that price gap with the release of the X68000 Mini. Like the C64 and the A500 before it, the X68000 Mini hopes to shrink both the intimidating size and price of the machine, while including a handful of the X68K's most memorable games. What games, exactly? We don't know that yet, although Castlevania Chronicles and the X68000 exclusive extension of the Gradius series are likely candidates for inclusion. How much is this thing going to cost? We don't know that either, but early images of the system, including a mechanical keyboard and a nifty trackball/mouse hybrid, suggest that the X68000 Mini won't be cheap. Cheaper than the original, yes, but that's not saying much. If you want one, you'd better save your pennies, along with your nickels, dimes, quarters, high-yield savings bonds, and bars of gold-pressed latinum.

Special thanks to Madlittlepixel for spilling the beans on the X68000 Mini, along with AusRetroGamer for additional details.

Genesis Does... Steroids!

I've been screwing around with that AI art generation program Midjourney, having the service create various images in the style of popular science-fiction artists. I recently entered this prompt...

video game controller Syd Mead style

...and here's what popped out.

I could have sworn I've seen one of these before.

image from Planet Virtual Boy
(natch)

I knew I recognized that from somewhere! Actually, with all due respect to the late Gumpei Yokoi, I like the imitation Syd Mead design better. It's very "1960s vision of the future," as opposed to the Virtual Boy, which is more "only has a future as a conversation piece in someone's worryingly large video game collection."

Anyway. More great stuff is coming to the Sega Genesis, courtesy of some very talented hobbyist programmers from Brazil. You know that Genesis port of Final Fight I was talking about in a previous post? It's Mega Final Fight now, and it includes a mode where you have to patch a hole in the time-space continuum... by punching a lot of guys. I mean, it is Final Fight. You solve all of your problems by sticking your fist in the throats of street gangs and just-barely-legally-distinct professional wrestlers.

16-bit Mayor Cody? And new characters?!
This game is bordering on swagger at this point.

The expanded mode is purely optional, but it's worth exploring, as it increases the number of playable characters. Now you can fight as the nimble lady ninja Maki from Final Fight 2, and Captain Commando from his eponymous game. (Eponymous? I never liked the mouth feel of that word.) Maybe the designers will really go nuts and include one of the characters from Battle Circuit, an obscure beat 'em up that somehow manages to outweird Captain Commando. Yes, the game that features a baby in a mech and a zombie who can turn his foes into sludge with a swipe of his "genetic knives."

Also on the menu is a new demo for Mega Man: The Sequel Wars, and most ambitiously, a work-in-progress port of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, a later Neo-Geo release which common sense would dictate would be well beyond the reach of the Genesis. "Ao contrário!," claims the design team, as they crank out a game that's surprisingly close to the original, aside from an expected drop in color and detail for the backgrounds. The characters, though! They border on magnificent, nearly as vibrant and well animated as they were in the Neo-Geo arcade game... all 394 megabits of it. Ooh, ooh! Now do Garou: Mark of the Wolves next!

(They're Brazilians, Jess, not miracle workers.)

Last and certainly least, it seems we've seen the last of the bitter fruit from that online harassment site. You know the one... douchebag central. They've become so toxic that not even the Russians will touch them, leaving them to drift in the depths of the dark web like so many turds flowing through a sewage canal. You may have had to wait too long for it, Near, but at last, vengeance is yours.