Existing comment:
SEGA Saturn
Action: Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider introduced Lara Croft, the first female protagonist to appear in a widely-successful video game. In a genre dominated by strong male characters, Lara Croft represented a tough, fearless woman capable of facing the perils of an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure.
In the game, players traversed the globe with Lara, uncovering artifacts from locations in Peru, Greece, Atlantis, and Egypt. The additional storage space provided by the CD ROM format allowed designer Toby Gard and his team to add high quality cutscenes with full voice-over dialogue. These elements enhanced the storytelling, giving context and background to the fast-paced game play.
Most of the action is seen at close range. This decreased the overall size of the environment that the system had to render, increasing the dramatic tension of these dynamic scenes.
Target: Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei
Panzer Dragoon Zwei is an excellent example of the balance between player freedom and constraint. The game is an "on-rails shooter," which means that you follow a pre-determined path through the world. The player can control some movement left to right and up and down, but the forward motion cannot be stopped.
This mechanic provided the design team with greater scope in the creation of the game world. Since the player and the camera had limited movement along a specific path, graphics could be loaded progressively, or streamed, directly from the CD ROM. This allowed for increased detail in the player's surroundings, from huge caverns to sweeping vistas, and created a believable 3D world on a system designed for 2D.
Adventure: Panzer Dragoon Saga
Panzer Dragoon Saga was the third game in the Panzer Dragoon series, and took the story into the role-playing genre. Set in a postapocalyptic world, the soldier Edge, who explores the world on a dragon, is determined to thwart evil forces and discover the identity of a mysterious girl.
The CD ROM technology of the Saturn allowed designers to incorporate full motion video in their games. This meant that they could add cutscenes to the game play to help tell the story. The cutscenes were pre-rendered, allowing for far greater quality than seen in the game play itself, which loaded progressively in response to player actions.
Combat takes place in mid-air rather than on the ground, with sweeping camera angles and sophisticated animation heightening the tension.
In role-playing games like this, players typically controlled three or four characters during battles. In this game, however, you control just one, increasing the sense of isolation as you explore this grand and desolate world.
Tactics: SimCity 2000
SimCity 2000 built upon the wild popularity of its predecessor, adding transportation, power, and a more elaborate monetary system to the city-planning game.
The designers took advantage of the increased power of the console by creating a diametric view of the city instead of the standard top-down perspective. The enhanced visuals allowed them to show building elevations as well as pipes and subways underground, creating a more complex environment for players to control.
All of the games in the SimCity series challenge the player to deal with disasters, many of which were inspired by real world events.
This game also included elements from popular culture, such as towns named after characters from the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf, and a hidden essay by fantasy author Neil Gaiman.
SimCity 2000 gave players the freedom to create and manage complex environments of their own design, in a world that supplied realistic consequences for every action.
Dialogue:
"How does that make your wallet rumble?"
"I'm sorry I only play for sport..."
"...and there's this little trinket. An age-old artifact of mystical powers buried in the unfound tomb of Qualopec." |