Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Switching Sides

Seems City Connection isn't done with its shiny new Zebra Engine just yet. The proprietary Sega Saturn emulator for the Switch, previously used in three obscure games by Success, will be making its encore in the upcoming S-Tribute line, featuring a handful of 1990s arcade titles by Taito. 

The games offered in S-Tribute include Puzzle Bobble 2x and 3, Cleopatra Fortune, Metal Black, Layer Section, and most tantalizing of all, Elevator Action Returns. Not many people have played this one, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has and didn't enjoy it... even the irascible Angry Video Game Nerd heaped on the praise for this sleek action title in his review of the two Taito Legends collections for Xbox and Playstation 2.

There are just two problems. The first is that the Zebra Engine brought significant lag to the first three games that used it. Luckily, that seems to have been smoothed out in Layer Section, if early YouTube reviews of the Japanese demo are any indication. The second issue is that these games aren't scheduled for release in America, and may never officially arrive on these shores. You can always circumvent this with a Japanese Switch account, but a native release in English would be a lot more convenient.

Whatever happens, it's fantastic that the Switch library is bursting at the seams with arcade hits, with more coming this late in the system's life. Like the GameBoy and 3DS before it, it looks like the Switch will be sticking around for a while, to my wallet's great relief.

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