Games That Push Hardware Limits 5 – Game Sack

(Game Sack Theme) – Hello, and welcome to Game Sack! Today I'm gonna look at somemore games that push consoles to do more than you everthought they could do.

These games take theseconsoles and are like, “yeah, you do this”, “no, no, I can't” “yes, you can, you do it” “okay”.

Anyway, a lot of these gamesare suggested by you guys and there were somepretty good suggestions.

Let's start off with some 8-bit games.

(cool music from Legend of Heroes) This is Mitsume go Tooru for the Famicom from Natsume and Tomy.

This is an action platformer, and as you can immediatelytell from the character design, it's based on a manga or an anime.

In this case, it's basedon something called “The Third Eyed One”.

It plays kinda sorta like Mega Man, except that you shoot yourshot from your forehead.

Even though everything isin Japanese, it's pretty self-explanatory andyou won't have any issue figuring this one out.

You just shoot down enemieswhile avoiding their attacks and pick up the coins theydrop after you defeat them.

There's a shop girl thatyou'll find around sometimes.

Here you can restore yourlife, power up your firepower, and even buy extra lives.

Your new firepower will lastuntil you lose your life.

As you can see, it looks prettygood, but not necessarily anything you'd considerout of the ordinary for the system.

Well, check out the secondpart of stage one here.

Not only does it havesome awesome overlapping parallax scrolling, but the foreground even has a transparentshadow on the background.

You rarely even see thatin Genesis games, much less on the NES or Famicom.

So that's pretty awesome in my opinion.

There are some sizeable bosses too.

Oh, and the music is great.

It's a challenging game, though it only has five stages, but at least it's good while it lasts.

How about Sagaia onthe Sega Master System? This is actually a port ofthe arcade game Darius 2, but they changed the nameoutside of Japan because they wanted to make sure thatit wasn't very successful at all.

Anyway, Sagaia on the Genesiswas actually the first Darius game I ever played.

It's okay, though I'venever really been a huge fan of Darius, but I thinkDarius Gaiden on the Saturn is pretty cool.

Anyway, my first experiencewith Sagaia on the Master System was on an emulator in themid 90's since the game was only released in Europe.

Right away, I was surprisedthat they had the wavy flames in stage one here.

– [Past Joe] This is prettygood for the Master System.

– [Joe] In fact, they managedto keep most of the parallax scrolling in the game.

None of it ever overlaps though.

NES games were much morelikely to feature parallax scrolling than Master System games were, thanks to the specialchips that often came on the cartridges, soit's nice to see here.

And yes, the hugebattleships are still HUGE! Fairly impressive for theMaster System which rarely ever had parallax scrolling in shooters.

(8-bit PSG music) Another Master System gamethat was only released in Europe was Road Rash.

Yeah, I know I've talkedabout this one before, but it deserves to be mentioned in a Pushing Hardware Limits episode.

First off, the MasterSystem doesn't do hills.

Most Master System racinggames were on flat land only.

Outrun had hills, butthey were extremely choppy and poorly done.

Even in its time, I wasdisappointed in Outrun's hills.

But look at Road Rash here, handling them all over the place like it's just any other day.

This game was done almostentirely by one programmer named Gary Priest.

He did what Yuji Nakacouldn't do with Outrun.

It's also a fantastic conversionof the Genesis original.

Yes, things are smaller andoverall the speed is slower, but check out the twoversions side by side.

They don't look as different from each other as you'd expect.

This was even on the GameGear, and it pushed that system the same way as well.

The majority of the original game is here and if you can't play it onthe Genesis yet still have a Master System somehow, you can't go wrong here.

Cheers to Gary Priest foran amazing conversion.

(8-bit music that's not too bad) The last Master System gameI'll look at is Aladdin, developed by SIMS in Japan.

This was only released inEurope, but the Game Gear version got a US release, and it's mostly the same.

It's not a port of eitherof the 16-bit versions, it's its own unique game.

The main thing that'shardware pushing here happens in the first two levels.

You start off running asthe evil guards chase you so they can inflict their evil upon you.

Not only does it havesome really nice parallax, it even overlaps, which isunheard of on the Master System.

Not only that, but you cansee the sides of the buildings change as they scrollpast, which is really cool.

Obviously, these are animatedtiles and not 3D polygons or anything, but it'sstill a great effect.

Stage two does the effecteven better anytime you jump over a gap, not to mention thecolorful layers of parallax in the background.

Unfortunately, they weren'tas ambitious with the rest of the game as there's nomore parallax but it still looks pretty good for the system.

Overall, it's a fun game that'snot like the other versions.

Here's Contra The AlienWars for the Game Boy.

That's right, they portedContra 3 for the Super Nintendo all the way down toNintendo's black and white portable system.

And considering how muchless power the Game Boy has compared to the Super Nintendo, Factor 5 did an amazing job.

The first thing you'll noticeis how well the introduction sequence captures theoriginal, with the wavy lines going up and down as thecity gets demolished.

The game itself also looks verygood, but since the Game Boy has fewer buttons, thingshave been simplified.

For example, you can onlycarry one weapon now, and you need to pressSelect to use your bomb.

Of course, some other things are cut back.

The hoverbike stage ismissing, and even a few minor boss fights are missing.

But man, the first fewstages are nearly 1:1 in stage design and enemy placement.

That's what impressed the hell out of me.

Of course, the parallaxscrolling is mostly gone, and there are fewer colors on screen.

In fact, there are no colors on screen.

But still, they managed to doa great job with the visuals, and it all feels aboutas close to Contra 3 as it possibly can.

Even the overhead stagesare here, though they no longer rotate of course.

The music is really faithful, and it sounds great for thesystem, a truly excellent port all around.

This is Toki Tori for theGame Boy Color, which was published by Capcom.

In the beginning, someoneis stealing all of the eggs! Oh no! But fortunately, youhatch just in time to see all of your brother andsister eggs being kidnapped.

With complete selfawareness all ready in place only seconds into your new life, you decide to set off to save the eggs.

This is a puzzle platformer, agenre I don't really care for much at all, so I'm not goingto gush about this game being great or anything.

But hey, if you like thegenre, you might like this.

You need to rescue theeggs on each screen.

You have different powers todo this, and you have limited use of them in each stage.

And the game gives you exactlywhat is needed to complete each stage, no more, no less.

And it's constantlyintroducing new powers.

But what's cool about thisone is that it has some overlapping parallax scrollingwhich is hardly common for a Game Boy Color game.

It's done really wellthough each area generally doesn't move around a whole lot.

It's likely done via animatedtiles, which means the background tiles areanimated to give the illusion of parallax scrolling, eventhough it's really only a single plane.

I love it when developerstake the time to add touches like these to theirgames, when they really don't need to.

And the music is reallygood too, even though it's full of arpeggios, which I'm generally not fond of in my 8-bit game music.

Sounds great here though.

(arpeggio-laden 8-bit music) If you remember, in thelast episode I talked all about the Game BoyAdvance, well I've got more Game Boy Advance game to talkabout, because that system was maybe a bit more powerfulthan we were initially led to believe.

Gonna get to the bottom of this! (sweet music) This is Crazy Taxi Catch aRide for the Game Boy Advance.

Interestingly, this systemdid have some rudimentary 3D abilities which evenincluded texture mapping, and Crazy Taxi Catch aRide here utilizes this.

It's kinda amazing to beplaying a portable version of the arcade and Dreamcast game.

However, not everything here is truly 3D, as the other cars and thepeople are actually sprites.

Sadly, the game doesn'tplay as well as you'd hope.

It feels really slow and there'squite a bit of control lag.

It also doesn't offer thelicensed soundtrack that we're all used to, not reallya big surprise there.

However, the crazy box isstill in here, and the events are just as difficult, if not even more so.

I mean, it can be hard to even see what you're supposed to do.

It's not a game I'd really recommend, but it's interesting to see it in action.

(crappy music) Here's V-Rally 3 fromInfogrames and Atari, also on the Game Boy Advance.

This is a rally racinggame, and it pushes polygons pretty well on the system.

Honestly, I'm surprisedat how well it's done.

Yeah, there's some texturewarping going on here, but don't be fooled, thisisn't the PlayStation, this is the Game BoyAdvance, make no mistake.

Moreover, the game controls really well, and it's actually fun.

It even feels likethere's a sense of speed.

Basically, you're justracing against the clock all by yourself with noneof the evil enemy cars on the track at the same time as you.

Before some tracks, youcan change your equipment settings based on thetrack you're about to race, and repair the damaged parts of your car.

The game is really easy, in fact I couldn't lose no matter what.

I always came in first place.

It does get a bit tougherduring the snow and ice stages, but you're still gonna win.

Besides the difficulty, theonly other disappointment is the sound.

All you hear is yourengine and your backfiring when you switch gears.

(tinny car noises) It'd be way more entertainingwith some sort of Euro-techno trance music or something.

Because when you think rallyracing, you think Euro.

And when you thinkEurope, you think techno, at least I do.

Otherwise it's a decently fungame that's pretty impressive.

(wimpy car noises) – [Game Announcer] Checkpoint! – [Joe] The port of Stuntmanwas made by the same team who gave us V-Rally 3.

And it has similarlyimpressive driving graphics.

In this game, you're astunt driver and you need to do stunts things in yourcar as the movie director tells you what to do.

Yeah, because that's howmovies are made in real life, with no preplanningwhatsoever, the director just giving you commands on a whim.

Oh well, that's okay, it's a video game.

Sometimes you'll need tosmash through an item, go over a jump, pass carson one side or the other, things like that.

Unlike V-Rally 3, thisone feels a bit slower, but it's not bad.

It's definitely a lot more challenging, especially this ice stagewhere you need to keep up with the car in front of you.

The voices of the directoraren't that great, but otherwise this is atechnically impressive game.

I definitely admire the concept.

– [Director] Hit the object.

Narrow passage.

Action button.

Checkpoint.

Jump.

Hit the object.

Narrow passage.

– [Joe] Up next is Smashing Drive, which was published byNamco, once again for the Game Boy Advance.

Of course, this is anothercar game, but it's CrAzY!! Okay, that was dumb I'm sorry.

But this one does havea pretty crazy concept.

Basically, you're a taxidriver and you have to get your passenger to hisdestination before your rival.

Because the other passengeris going to the same place, at least I think that's what's going on.

The game is kind of a mess.

Basically you drive amostly predetermined route which has lots of jumps and shortcuts.

You use these to graborbs which will let you cut through traffic and do crazy things like blow them away with your horn.

(car horn) You absolutely need to grabas many of these as you can, otherwise you stand nochance of winning the race.

And it's often hard to seethe jumps or otherwise how to get to some of these powerup orbs, mainly due to the low resolution.

Still, it controls nicely, and it moves well enough to be perfectly playable.

Not only that, but manystages have a song that plays in the background withsome dude singing to you.

(weird song and car noises) It can be pretty toughsome times, and fortunately there is a password.

Check this one out.

(another weird song) The Game Boy Advancehad a surprising amount of first person shooters.

It has a fairly decent portof Doom, with bright green blood and some silly music.

Doom 2 was pretty muchthe same in terms of its technical presentation, and by that I mean not bad at all.

Even Duke Nukem made itto the system in the form of Duke Nukem Advance.

This is an exciting newDuke Nukem adventure and not a port of any of the originals.

It's designed for thesystem, and as a result it's pretty impressive, at least visually.

The game runs very fast, and sometimes even as quick as 60 frames per secondfor very quick spurts.

And it doesn't seem like alot of detail was sacrificed to achieve this kind of performance.

It plays like you'd expect a90s era first person shooter to play, because that'sexactly what it is, despite being released in 2002.

You run around, shoot aliens, pick up weapons and ammo, flip switches, go throughdoors, and do it all again and again.

Aiming is easy, and you don'tneed to worry about looking up or down.

You do have a jump buttonthough, which takes the game to the next dimension and beyond.

The only thing that botheredme is that there's no music as you play.

Instead, you get constantsirens and klaxons wailing which can be annoying.

But at least you get alot of Duke's one liners, which will remind you ofyour angst filled years as a 90s teenager.

– [Duke] That's gotta hurt.

– [Joe] There are other firstperson games on the system, like Ice Nine here, which run nearly as well as Duke Nukem Advance.

You even get to go outsideand see plants and water and stuff, which is ofcourse way better than doing that in real life.

There's also plenty of others, like James Bond: Nightfire which do not run as well, though it's still impressive for the system.

It runs slower and at a lower resolution.

Out of all the first person shooters here, I'd say that Duke Nukem Advance has the best combinationof impressive graphics and fun gameplay.

Okay, for this lastsegment, I'm gonna look exclusively at some 32-bit games, even though the GameBoy Advance is 32-bit.

However, I'm gonna focusmainly on the Sega Saturn, with a dash of PlayStation.

My shirt says Sega Saturnon it, thus the bias.

(sweet-ass music) ♪ Everybody's Super Sonic racing ♪ – [Joe] Sonic R on theSaturn is a racing game that's generally prettyeasy to hate at first.

I mean it has some of the worstcontrols in any racing game, track designs that aren't really very fun, and a big complaint when it was released was the music with the singing.

Honestly, the game cangrow on you somewhat, but I always felt thatthe controls and a couple of the track designscould have been better.

Like a lot of games from that generation, it sometimes feels like it'shard to move in a straight line because you're constantlyoversteering and trying to correct yourself.

The game takes too longto respond to your inputs, so you input too much and oversteer, but that's not why I'mtalking about this game today.

I'm here to show you whatthese graphics are doing on the Saturn, I mean check it out! We can see right awayin the title screen that we've got some fancy stuff going on here in the reflection in the letter R.

That's just crazy! It even does this duringthe loading screens, how is this possible?! And as you may recall, popup was a pretty big issue in games back in this generation.

However, instead of just popping in, the polygons here all gradually fade in.

But wait, the Saturn can't do that.

It can't do transparencies, remember, especially on the polygons! What kind of black magic ishappening inside of my Saturn?! But here we are, witnessingit happen in real time, not only that, but thereare instances of lighting here and there on some track, and it makes things look nice.

The final track is completely transparent, and it has a cool movingMode 7-like texture gliding over it.

This is the only level where the graphics don't fade in from the distance, and that's because everythingis already transparent.

The programmer who didall of this, Jon Burton, explains how he was able toaccomplish most of these things over on his YouTube channel, Gamehut, so be sure to check it out.

And I can't imagine anyone complaining about the music anymore.

It wasn't composer Richard Jacques' idea to include the vocals, but they're cheesy enough to the point wherethey're almost endearing.

However, you can turn thevocals off if you want as well.

♪ Living in the city, youknow you have to survive ♪ ♪ You got to keep that dream alive ♪ ♪ Where everything isfree, can't you see ♪ ♪ Living in the city, youknow you have to survive ♪ ♪ You got to keep that dream alive ♪ ♪ Where everything isfree, can't you see ♪ – [Joe] How aboutPowerslave on the Saturn, also know as Exhumed.

This first person shooterreally puts the 3D capabilities of the system through itspaces, as it was the first game to use the Enslaved engine, developed by Lobotomy Software.

First of all, it moves fastand at a very respectable framerate for the time, certainly more than we were used to seeing in similargames on the console.

The control feels utterlysmooth and precise if you use the Saturn3D analog controller, and everything is very responsive.

I remember back when buyingthis game when it was released, I was really surprisedat how well it performed.

As a game, it's unique forits time as it involved a lot of exploration and even backtracking as you get new abilities.

Could it be the first 3D Metroidvania? The answer is no, becauseit's neither Metroid nor Castlevania.

Again, except for that partwhere you kill Dracula.

My point is though, isthat it's not a basic first person shooter of itstime where you just run around a maze and open doors, though there is a lot of that here too.

The sound is decent, withloud and clean samples, though the large majorityof the music is in mono.

They even got Don LaFontaineto do some of the voices, and back when this came out, it was very unusual to hear a familiar voice in a video game.

– [Don] Unknown forceshave seized the city, and great turmoil is spreadinginto neighboring lands.

– [Joe] Oh yeah, and Ialmost forgot to mention the cool dynamic lightingthat happens sometimes.

It looks really good, and the Saturn isn't supposed to be able to do this.

Well, they did it anyways, and it's a great effect.

This game was alsoported to the PlayStation and the PC.

(game sounds) Next is Duke Nukem 3D, which was ported by Lobotomy and they used theirEnslaved engine to do it.

Once again, it runs really fast and smooth with very few hiccups.

Sega's analog pad worksgreat, and it helps you to kill the aliens that havekidnapped Earth's women.

Everything looks amazingfor the system, including the dynamic lighting.

Of course, the game can bepretty crass, and you'll have to cover your earssometimes as there are scary cuss words which will absolutelydestroy children's lives if they hear them.

As a game, well, you runaround a maze killing enemies and grab keys to opendoors so you can move on, pretty basic stuff.

I'll be the first to admitthat I've always sucked at this game, and I'm notreally very fond of it.

I think the Game Boy Advancegame is actually more fun, but this is prettyimpressive for the Saturn.

(synthesized gunfire) If you think Powerslave andDuke Nukem were impressive, then you definetely needto see the Saturn port of Quake.

Once again, this wasalso handled by Lobotomy, and it uses a beefed upversion of the Enslaved engine.

It has identical controls toPowerslave and Duke Nukem, and it feels smooth andhonestly quite wonderful with the Sega 3D analog pad.

The levels in Quake are farmore complex than those found in Powerslave and DukeNukem, and as a result, it can run at a lower framerate sometimes.

But it does its best to keep up, and is still very impressive.

There's plenty of examplesof dynamic lighting again here.

In fact, there's lightinghere that wasn't even in the fancy-shmancy PC original.

It all looks awesome.

In Powerslave and Duke Nukem, the enemies were all 2Dsprites, but here they're all 3D made out of a bunchof polygons which requires more system resources.

I'm amazed that this gamedoesn't bog down a hell of a lot more than it does.

The game is quite dark, andit can be tough to enjoy on a modern display.

It's easier to see ona CRT, but even there can be pretty dark.

Fortunately, I'm looking ata CRT as I'm recording this, otherwise I might get lost forever.

I believe this is an artisticchoice, and of course the designers of Quakedidn't have flat panels in mind at the time.

The music is really eerie and I love it.

(eerie music and gunfire) As far as gameplay goes, it's your typical early first person shooter.

You guessed it, you gottarun around, shoot bad guys, get keys or cards to unlockdoors to precede further, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not a huge fan offirst person shooters, but I'm always surprised at how much I'm starting to enjoysome of these older ones.

I think I like Quake onthe Saturn a lot more now than I ever could haveback when it was released.

(eerie music and gunfire) Finally, here's Driver2 on the PlayStation.

Out of all the Driver gamesmentioned in the comments on the last video, Driver 2 came up the most so that's why I chose this one.

And if you don't like it, blame yourself, I listen to the comments, it's your fault.

Anyway, wow, this isbasically like a modern Grand Theft Auto on thefriggin' PlayStation! Now don't get me wrong, it'scertainty not as polished, but I'm blown away by whatit's able to accomplish.

You have an open 3D worldto wander around in.

The cities certainly feel biggerthan they look on the map.

The game consists mostlyof driving missions, hence the title.

You have a damage barwhich tells you the state of your vehicle, as well as a felony bar.

This is basically your wanted level.

And yes, you can even getout and steal other vehicles on the road.

There are multiple cities in the game, and it spans two discs as a result.

The controls take abit of getting used to.

For example, you needto press up and triangle to enter or exit a car.

You can't run in a straight line, though you can drive in one.

Also, the game turnedthe analog controller off more than once at thebeginning of a mission, so I'd suggest justplaying it with the d-pad.

The game packs a lot ofcontent that's really surprising for the system, and it even manages to have a few nice effects, like streaking lights during the night.

Not really my type ofgame, and I much prefer Grand Theft Auto, but it'sstill crazy impressive that they were able to do thison the original PlayStation.

Can you believe it? Well you better, because here it is.

(police sirens wailing) And there you go, moregames that defy the physics of reality to blow our mindsinto the next dimension.

Whatever that means.

Anyway, be sure to checkout our other episodes about games that push hardware limits, and let me know if you can think of others that haven't been coveredthat do some crazy things.

In the meantime, thank youfor watching Game Sack.

(Game Sack Credits Theme) Well, Sonic R, it'stime for you to go back on the shelf for another 15 years or so.

But what game should Iplay that truly exploits the magnificence of the Sega Saturn? Ooo, I know.

How bout Street Fighter:The Movie: The Game, let's do it.

(punching sounds) Ah man, screw this, Idon't want to play alone, who should I play with? – Leave it to me.

– Craig Stadler, oh hell yeah!!!!!!! – I can see you're gonnabe a difficult opponent.

– Damn it Craig Stadler, quit cheating.

– Don't be nervous, or youwon't be able to play your best.

– I'm not nervous, you're just cheating.

– I'm pretty strong at crunch time.

– Oh yeah, well try this on for size.

– You're playing much better.

– Damn straight, I ruleat the Sega Saturn.

– Can you take the pressureof an imminent victory? – You mean glory? Yeah, I think I can.

– I'm gonna have to lay up.

– Oh, Craig Stadler, Idon't even want to visualize that, okay? – Think you can get it inside mine? – Ahh, no no, just, just get ready to lose.

– I'm gonna drain this one.

– Wait, no, no, no! – Drained it! – Dammit Craig Stadler, I'm done playing Street Fighter: TheMovie: The Game with you.

– Don't give up too early.

– Screw you! – Mmmm Think you can get it inside mine?.