bishopcruz
Member
Year of the Saturn: January
2014. 20 Years after the Saturn launched in Japan. The Saturn was, overall probably Sega's least loved system by the general public. But that is a goddamned shame. So each month in 2014 we are going to look at the greatest games on Sega's least successful system, and play them. And discuss them in this thread.
To start the new year with two of the greatest rail shooters ever made.
Listen to this while reading
Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei are two of the games that defined the Sega Saturn. In the era of early 3d games that looked quite frankly terrible, Panzer Dragoon was a revelation. Its art syle worked with the limited rendering capabilities of the Saturn and created a Mobius inspired alien future that is still impressive to this day. The resolution might be low, and the framerate might be a little dodgy, but the game is still beautiful. And more importantly is is a blast to play. Panzer Dragoon Zwei came out a year later and is still one of the most impressive games graphically of that era.
The games were developed by Team Andromeda, an offshoot of the Consumer R&D division. Team Adromeda (also called AM6) was pretty much the studio that began what we now know as late era Sega. They only made three games, Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, and Panzer Dragoon Saga, but members eventually moved on to studios like Smilebit (Jet Set Radio) and United Game Artists (Space Channel 5, Rez). Many however consider Panzer Dragoon and its sequels the crowning acheivement of these devs.
Panzer Dragoon
Japanese cover. US one SUCKS.
In the early 90s, rail shooters were still pretty popular. In fact after the release of Star Fox on the SNES, they seemed to be bigger than ever. We had games like Silpheed, Sewer Shark and Total Eclipse. Most of the bigger ones at the time were FMV based, and if they weren't flat shaded polygons were the order of the day. Even the mighty 3DO was using mainly FMV for its titles.
But the day that PD launched we went from this:
to this:
Full polygon graphics, an amazing orchestrated soundtrack, FMV that was reserved for cutscenes, it was mindblowing. Well, for Saturn owners at least. But even those who ignored the Saturn at the time respected the game.
In Panzer Dragoon you play as Keil Fluge, a hunter who witnesses a duel between a blue and black dragon. The rider of the blue dragon is killed, and Kei is tasked with stopping the black dragon before it can reach a mystical tower and bring about untold destruction. In order to do this you will have to fly through several beautiful stages, and kill everything in them.
Development:
From the Wiki:
From there, they came up with the sci-fi look of the game, making the dragon blue, with bone like armor, and created the world around it to match. The design was creative as hell back then, and still stands out today. And yeah, they came up with the world, dragon and the designs in 3 months, and the rest of the game in less than a year. Crazy.
So how did it play?
Well the basics of Panzer Dragoon are very similar to that of say Total Eclipse or StarFox. With two major differences. First, you're on a dragon. It flies you around and you shoot down enemies with your badass organic future pistol. But the dragon can also attack, by holding down the attack button, the cursor turns into a lock on system. Paint however many enemies as you can, and when you let go of the fire button, your dragon will unleash a horde of homing beams that will hit anything you targeting in a spectacular display of badass. The second change is that unlike previous rail shooters which always focused all the action directly in front of you, Panzer Dragoon let you look around the dragon in 360 degrees. Enemies would flank you, bombers would come from behind, bosses would fly every which way as you frantically tried to keep your view locked on to them. It was a small addition, but it changed the gameplay immensely. You constantly had to keep your eyes on not only what you were shooting, but on your radar, so you didn't get smoked by the guys coming up from behind.
The game, like many of Sega's best comes out of it's arcade design philosophy. The game is an experience in and of itself, but it requires you to learn the stages, replay them to get a feel for enemy patterns, and once you have done so become an ancient harbriger of desturction as you rip through the levels. It's even more satisfying than it sounds.
Add that to the attention to detail the game had. Enemies would fall apart when killed, not just transform into a sprite based explosion. The cinematics were all voiced in a newly created language, and told an actual interesting story. The sound design was also top tier, the dragon cries, the exlposions of the ships, everything was unique.
The game only pales in comparison to its sequels.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei
Already used the Japanese cover up top.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei came out a year after the original. And what a difference a year made. If Panzer Dragoon 1 looked impressive, if a little sparse, Panzer Dragoon Zwei blew it out of the water. The stages felt even more alive, the enemies were bigger in both size and number, and the soundtrack was more alien.
The biggest changes were in the gameplay department. Stages were not a single unchanging path. There were two routes in episodes 2, 3, and 3 and which one you followednot only changed what types of enemies you faced, but how your dragon evolved.
Yes, evolved.
In Panzer Dragoon Zwei you weren't playing as a guy on a dragon that had been kicking ass for centuries, but as a khoriet farmer named Lundy who just couldn't kill a winged mutation as his village custom dictated. It's a good thing you didn't, because that juvenile dragon is what lets you seek revenge on the empire that burned your village to the ground as a result of the massive battle they brought to it.
Depending on how many points you got, your dragon would evolve from a wimpy hatchling, to, if you were good enough at the game, the god-like Solo Wing. Seeing your dragon get better and better as you progressed is one of the coolest things in this game. By far.
That and the stages themselves were just jaw dropping. Panzer Dragoon's stages were pretty, but several of them were largely empty, but stages like the forest in Episode 3,
the attack on your village in Episode 1,
and the attack on the Shelcoof, a sillily-named badass death ship.
Other cool stuff?
Well, there was the kickass cheat system known as Pandora's Box which made a return in Orta. It started here. Basically it let you play any stage with any dragon, and also unlocked a series of survival horde stages that you could play for high score. It is cool as hell, and unlocks as you play through the game.
So how do I play these forgotten masterpieces?
Take your pick.
I don't have a Saturn.
Get one.
Really.
Ok, well there are options. SSF is the best Saturn emulator out there, and it plays PD and PDZ perfectly. Pop the game CDs into your disk drive and enjoy.
There are other options for Panzer Dragoon 1:
The main one is to play the PC port, which is dirt cheap nowadays. The problem with that one is that the gamepad support for the game is pretty horrible, even if it does have actual Saturn Pad support if you have one of those.
The other option is to play it in the Pandora's Box of Panzer Dragoon Orta. However that only works on an OG Xbox.
There was also a PS2 port of the original game as well. I can't speak to its quality however.
PDZ was only on the Saturn. Well, Gametap had it for a bit, but no longer.
But this is year of the Saturn, play them on a Saturn if at all possible. Saturns aren't expensive anyway. So play it together with GAF and enjoy!
Links to PD info and other stuff:
Hardcore Gaming 101 Atricle on the Panzer Dragoon Series
Classic Game Room's Panzer Dragoon Review
Classic Game Room's Panzer Dragoon Zwei Review
The Art of Panzer Dragoon
NeoGAF Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread
Panzer Dragoon Main Theme
The ONEUP's Panzer Dragoon Main Theme remix
Panzer Dragoon Intro
Panzer Dragoon Zwei Intro
This got left off: Thanks to IrishNinja for the idea and the I'm let you finish img w logo.
2014. 20 Years after the Saturn launched in Japan. The Saturn was, overall probably Sega's least loved system by the general public. But that is a goddamned shame. So each month in 2014 we are going to look at the greatest games on Sega's least successful system, and play them. And discuss them in this thread.
To start the new year with two of the greatest rail shooters ever made.
Listen to this while reading
Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei are two of the games that defined the Sega Saturn. In the era of early 3d games that looked quite frankly terrible, Panzer Dragoon was a revelation. Its art syle worked with the limited rendering capabilities of the Saturn and created a Mobius inspired alien future that is still impressive to this day. The resolution might be low, and the framerate might be a little dodgy, but the game is still beautiful. And more importantly is is a blast to play. Panzer Dragoon Zwei came out a year later and is still one of the most impressive games graphically of that era.
The games were developed by Team Andromeda, an offshoot of the Consumer R&D division. Team Adromeda (also called AM6) was pretty much the studio that began what we now know as late era Sega. They only made three games, Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, and Panzer Dragoon Saga, but members eventually moved on to studios like Smilebit (Jet Set Radio) and United Game Artists (Space Channel 5, Rez). Many however consider Panzer Dragoon and its sequels the crowning acheivement of these devs.
Panzer Dragoon
Japanese cover. US one SUCKS.
In the early 90s, rail shooters were still pretty popular. In fact after the release of Star Fox on the SNES, they seemed to be bigger than ever. We had games like Silpheed, Sewer Shark and Total Eclipse. Most of the bigger ones at the time were FMV based, and if they weren't flat shaded polygons were the order of the day. Even the mighty 3DO was using mainly FMV for its titles.
But the day that PD launched we went from this:
to this:
Full polygon graphics, an amazing orchestrated soundtrack, FMV that was reserved for cutscenes, it was mindblowing. Well, for Saturn owners at least. But even those who ignored the Saturn at the time respected the game.
In Panzer Dragoon you play as Keil Fluge, a hunter who witnesses a duel between a blue and black dragon. The rider of the blue dragon is killed, and Kei is tasked with stopping the black dragon before it can reach a mystical tower and bring about untold destruction. In order to do this you will have to fly through several beautiful stages, and kill everything in them.
Development:
From the Wiki:
Panzer Dragoon was created in the early 1990s as the Japanese video game company Sega was getting ready to release its Saturn console. At the time, the Saturn lacked third-party games; because of this, Sega had to internally develop games in every genre, including shoot 'em up.In 1993, Sega asked its developers for new game ideas, and it was then that Yukio Futatsugi, a young developer who had joined Sega only two years before, proposed several new concepts. One of these concepts was accepted and became Panzer Dragoon. Futatsugi, then 23 years old, was put in charge of the project and became the head of Team Andromeda, a development team that Sega assembled for the occasion in early 1994 and was built around the duo formed by Futatsugi and Manabu Kusunoki, art designer on the project.Overall, development lasted almost a year, and 15 people worked on the game.
From there, they came up with the sci-fi look of the game, making the dragon blue, with bone like armor, and created the world around it to match. The design was creative as hell back then, and still stands out today. And yeah, they came up with the world, dragon and the designs in 3 months, and the rest of the game in less than a year. Crazy.
So how did it play?
Well the basics of Panzer Dragoon are very similar to that of say Total Eclipse or StarFox. With two major differences. First, you're on a dragon. It flies you around and you shoot down enemies with your badass organic future pistol. But the dragon can also attack, by holding down the attack button, the cursor turns into a lock on system. Paint however many enemies as you can, and when you let go of the fire button, your dragon will unleash a horde of homing beams that will hit anything you targeting in a spectacular display of badass. The second change is that unlike previous rail shooters which always focused all the action directly in front of you, Panzer Dragoon let you look around the dragon in 360 degrees. Enemies would flank you, bombers would come from behind, bosses would fly every which way as you frantically tried to keep your view locked on to them. It was a small addition, but it changed the gameplay immensely. You constantly had to keep your eyes on not only what you were shooting, but on your radar, so you didn't get smoked by the guys coming up from behind.
The game, like many of Sega's best comes out of it's arcade design philosophy. The game is an experience in and of itself, but it requires you to learn the stages, replay them to get a feel for enemy patterns, and once you have done so become an ancient harbriger of desturction as you rip through the levels. It's even more satisfying than it sounds.
Add that to the attention to detail the game had. Enemies would fall apart when killed, not just transform into a sprite based explosion. The cinematics were all voiced in a newly created language, and told an actual interesting story. The sound design was also top tier, the dragon cries, the exlposions of the ships, everything was unique.
The game only pales in comparison to its sequels.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei
Already used the Japanese cover up top.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei came out a year after the original. And what a difference a year made. If Panzer Dragoon 1 looked impressive, if a little sparse, Panzer Dragoon Zwei blew it out of the water. The stages felt even more alive, the enemies were bigger in both size and number, and the soundtrack was more alien.
The biggest changes were in the gameplay department. Stages were not a single unchanging path. There were two routes in episodes 2, 3, and 3 and which one you followednot only changed what types of enemies you faced, but how your dragon evolved.
Yes, evolved.
In Panzer Dragoon Zwei you weren't playing as a guy on a dragon that had been kicking ass for centuries, but as a khoriet farmer named Lundy who just couldn't kill a winged mutation as his village custom dictated. It's a good thing you didn't, because that juvenile dragon is what lets you seek revenge on the empire that burned your village to the ground as a result of the massive battle they brought to it.
Depending on how many points you got, your dragon would evolve from a wimpy hatchling, to, if you were good enough at the game, the god-like Solo Wing. Seeing your dragon get better and better as you progressed is one of the coolest things in this game. By far.
That and the stages themselves were just jaw dropping. Panzer Dragoon's stages were pretty, but several of them were largely empty, but stages like the forest in Episode 3,
the attack on your village in Episode 1,
and the attack on the Shelcoof, a sillily-named badass death ship.
Other cool stuff?
Well, there was the kickass cheat system known as Pandora's Box which made a return in Orta. It started here. Basically it let you play any stage with any dragon, and also unlocked a series of survival horde stages that you could play for high score. It is cool as hell, and unlocks as you play through the game.
So how do I play these forgotten masterpieces?
Take your pick.
I don't have a Saturn.
Get one.
Really.
Ok, well there are options. SSF is the best Saturn emulator out there, and it plays PD and PDZ perfectly. Pop the game CDs into your disk drive and enjoy.
There are other options for Panzer Dragoon 1:
The main one is to play the PC port, which is dirt cheap nowadays. The problem with that one is that the gamepad support for the game is pretty horrible, even if it does have actual Saturn Pad support if you have one of those.
The other option is to play it in the Pandora's Box of Panzer Dragoon Orta. However that only works on an OG Xbox.
There was also a PS2 port of the original game as well. I can't speak to its quality however.
PDZ was only on the Saturn. Well, Gametap had it for a bit, but no longer.
But this is year of the Saturn, play them on a Saturn if at all possible. Saturns aren't expensive anyway. So play it together with GAF and enjoy!
Links to PD info and other stuff:
Hardcore Gaming 101 Atricle on the Panzer Dragoon Series
Classic Game Room's Panzer Dragoon Review
Classic Game Room's Panzer Dragoon Zwei Review
The Art of Panzer Dragoon
NeoGAF Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread
Panzer Dragoon Main Theme
The ONEUP's Panzer Dragoon Main Theme remix
Panzer Dragoon Intro
Panzer Dragoon Zwei Intro
This got left off: Thanks to IrishNinja for the idea and the I'm let you finish img w logo.