SEGA Vintage Collection Comments by Dan Whitehead

Loved Gunstar Heroes! The other games can be found in the Ultimate Megadrive Collection for a pretty decent price so.

On the PC emulators for really old consoles and computers such as the Commodore 64 they include a "scanline" filter which simulates a CRT TV effect even on LCD screens and made games look less blocky. It mystifies me why retro developers don't include it and all the other filters in these ports, it looks a million times better than the "smoothing" filter.

I already own these but 400 points is good pricing again from good old SEGA, dig in if you don't have 'em. some greats in there.

Dan, Dan Dan. Altered Beast 3/10 you sir are a SNES fanboy or something, or is it ANOTHER huge mistake just like that Dead Space one? Carebear..... ;)

Shinobi on the Commodore 64 is a genuine classic! I still remember the awe I felt when I first fought the gigantic helicopter! Just wanted to mention that.

How dare you talk that way about Altered Beast!

I think the following Altered Beast has is bizarre. I remember playing it on my new Mega Drive in 1991 at the age of 8 and thinking it was a useless piece of junk, before putting Sonic back on.

Gunstar Heroes is forever awesome though. Only 8/10? :)

Altered Beast only lingers because it came in the box with the UK Mega Drive. Those of us who bought a Japanese imported Mega Drive don't hold the same fascination with the game. It's a load of piffle, with a side salad of tosh, and only memorable for the 'Wise Fwom Your Gwave!' audio sample.

@Pinewood_Groves

I agree Sir, I thought it was terrible when I was young and whilst games like Sonic and Mario etc bring back great memories, I physically shudder when I think of that abomination.

xbox live arcade really shows up the wii's virtual console for the overpriced junkyard that it is! These games run with no borders and at full speed, many include online support and all for LESS than half the price of the virtual console versions.

Nintendo, you make me laugh!

Comix Zone really wasn't that good, it was full of retarded insta-deaths (Skreeches knocking you off wires) and leap of faith jumps that made it a chore to play.

Reading about all these old SEGA games makes me want to reach for Shenmue tonight!

/ heads to arcade

ive never played altered beast but from what i understand,
its creation was a graphical showcase to show people that the megadrive
was capable of arcade quality visuals well beyond that of current NES competitor.


please mr sega man sir,
put zero wing game with the full audio intro as an unlockable in one of your collections.
surely the greatest jap->eng translation of any media ever.

@Mr_Smith

You must be pretty young i guess. Gunstar Heroes plays better than Killzone 2 in many ways.

It'd be far better value to just buy the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, which has all of these games (bar Gunstar Heroes) plus 35 more and can be had for about £15 online.

Anyway, Comix Zone is a nice game. One of the best-looking of the 16-bit era IMO. It's hard as nails though (you lose health for attacking enemies FFS), and lasts about half an hour at best.

I love Dice Palace. Rolling a 1 when you really, really need anything except a 1, and the ensuing challenges :) Not many more bittersweet times to be had on a Mega Drive.

Love that we've finally got the Sonic Trilogy, with Sonic & Knuckles to come.

Sonic 3 was my personal favourite of the series, so despite having the MegaDrive collection, I'm going to buy it anyway, because I'm a tool :(

"... thorough players can spend blissful hours mining the game for every last ring."

No they can't! You die after ten minutes, there's no way to collect every ring in that time.

I'm hearing you Aretak, outstanding presentation but just stupid frustrating in places.

Is there any plans to get Ristar up I wonder? Surely up there with Sonic, if not even better.

Ristar is on the Megadrive collection. I thouth it was crap. Better than Sonic you say. You make me laugh.

Altered Beast was the fall guy....shame..

God, I loved Phantasy Star 2 when I was younger...I think I paid about 70 quid for an american import at the time too..

I remember playing Altered Beast on a crappy coin-op in a Spanish cafe all the time near my grandparent's apartment- I used to think it was the shit at the time but I must have been able 7 and being deprived of all videogames for a week or 2 at a time probably had that affect!

I came back in 1998 when I was about 12 they had Soul Caliber and one of the Metal Slugs, so they'd moved on a bit :-P

Comix Zone hard? You guys must try it now that you are all grown ups :) It's quite easy (except, maybe for Kung Fung, lvl 2 boss).
You want hard, try finishing Phantasy Star 2 (PS2) . Btw, I like the "smooth filter" in PS2. And yes, the PS2 was crazy expensive back in the days, and it amazes me how a 20mb game can be so complex.

Dan, Dan Dan. Altered Beast 3/10 you sir are a SNES fanboy or something, or is it ANOTHER huge mistake just like that Dead Space one?

I'd say 3/10 is generous for Altered Beast. It really has very little going for it, especially as a game appearing alongside a wide range of other - massively superior - Mega Drive games (both on Xbox Live Arcade and on the recent Mega Drive Collection. I think that a lot of the people who buy it because of their memories of the game are going to be surprised at how very badly it holds up in 2009.

Why don't they used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx scaling?

I never finished PSII although always wanted to. Maybe now achievements will make me more diligent.

I never beat Sonic 3 due to one thing, that goddamn plaform in the carnivale zone. You had to jump and land on it to move it out of the way to move on, there entire level bottle necked around it. Urghhrag! I hated that platform couldn't even use cheat debug to get past it.

maybe I'll finally beat it now

"Altered Beast only lingers because it came in the box with the UK Mega Drive. Those of us who bought a Japanese imported Mega Drive don't hold the same fascination with the game. It's a load of piffle, with a side salad of tosh, and only memorable for the 'Wise Fwom Your Gwave!' audio sample."

That and the "POWER UP!" and "WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM!" samples.

But it really is one of the worst games ever created.

Quite possibly one of the worst names for a game too. I mean, 'Altered Beast'? Think on it for a moment.

Sounds like a game starring Dolly the sheep or something.

@miiiguel

How come you bought Comix zone and Phantasy Star 2 when their already on the megadrive collection?
Easy Achievements i guess?

As a kid I loved Altered Beast, Golden Axe etc. but I think they were definately at their best in coin op format where 20ps were in limited supply :)

@VicViper - You can just hold up and down on the pad in sync with the platforms movement and it'll go up & down further. I remember trying to do exactly the same as you when I first played it when S3 was originally released.

@ muscleblade: Not easy Achievements, just Achievements (tbh I also thought Comix Zone was hard, but too many years passed, it's not all that really), regarding Phantasy Star 2, lol... easy???! Why don't you give it a try? But remeber you have to actually finish the game, and it features gameplay that does not feature headshots and muscled dudes saying one-liners.

I wasted many days in my youth getting high scores on Gunstar Heroes. Apart from Sonic, it's easily the best Mega Drive game.

@Pinewood_Groves

Altered beast is a cheese cult classic!!!

'Wize fwom you gwave!!!!!!'

'Power UP!'

'Ha Ha Ha Haaaaaaa!'

It's all about 1991 playing it as one of the only games your spoilt mate had on his new MD... then once he got Road Rash, Streets of Rage and EA Hockey - you never looked back!

:D

edit:

@VicViper

Can't remember ever getting stuck on that at age 15.

There is a bug in the Carnival zone though - where you could actually get stuck in the scenery! That caused much annoyance back in the day, but Sonic 3 has a save game system, so I can't believe you never got off of Carnival zone onto the Ice zone with the snowboarding at teh start!!!!

You missed out, man. Sonic 3 & Knuckles played through in a few sessions is the most complete, and fantastic Sonic experience I had as a yooot'.

Give it a go once the lock-on feature is available (or on Sonic Jam on the Saturn), and you'll knwo what I mean...

I know what Vic is talking about, there's a wheel on Carnivale stage that you have to turn by pressing up and down with an almost pixel-perfect coreography. One could "cheat" to pass that level though.

@Ryze
I did use a debug mode cheat to pass through it but it was a rental when I got it, back during those dark times when I could not buy games on a whim. I did see the Ice Zone (awsome music) and the snow boarding but I'm convinced that using the debug glitched the game so I couldn't finish it (least thats what I tell myself) and then I had to return it to XtraVision.

I read years later that you had to press up and down to get past it were as I was jumping and pressing down, if only the internet had existed in its form today back then.

I hated Altered Beast from day one, but it was a freebie with many MD systems for the longest while. I got the Super Monaco GP package instead, thank God for that.

Phantasy Star II, however... I was more into that game than I had ever been into anything else. I thought about it all the time when I wasn't playing. Nothing had come close to that experience before... I beat the game all the way up until the final boss, but never managed to take it down (there's a long, dangerous trek from the last save point to the boss). I still think I'll pull my Mega Drive out and finish it some day, but I've forgotten all the intricacies of combat, so I probably don't stand a chance anymore.

And Gunstar... one of the most impressive technical achievements on the Mega Drive, and one hell of a co-op game. Still shines today.

I've already got the Mega Drive Collection so won't be buying any of these. However, I would have bought Sonic 3 for the three-thousandth time if it had Sonic & Knuckles attached to it so you could play Sonic 3 & Knuckles with its 14 emeralds and Hyper Sonic unlockable. It was on the Saturn's Sonic Jam collection so why not here?

Why didn't they include Sonic and Knuckles with Sonic 3? I reckon they were always meant to go together anyway... If they had I would have been sold on this.

@ neon: are you referring to Dark Force or Mother Brain? Phantasy Star has too much grinding, been 20 hours into the game and I barely scratch the surface - the dungeons are crazy complex, it's virtually impossible to complete them withour maps (which came with the original game - Dan's right, this port, as it is, it's unplayable without other info). Kudos to EGer Mr.Lutz who's been quite helpfull (dude knows the game by heart, impressive!).

WRONG ASPECT SCREENSHOT FAIL

i'm so glad there are others who see can see just how bad Altered Beast really was, is anmd will be. My mates take the piss out of me for how passionate I get when I start screaming at people when they say they remember how much they thinik its great. Arghhhh! And those pink unicorns dont raise the score from a 2 to a 3.

How does:

"Story-wise, it's embarrassingly generic, opening with a nightmare-stricken hero who is swiftly handed the task of investigating the sudden appearance of monsters. Everything unfolds much as you'd expect, with the only notable point of difference being the sci-fi setting and a combat style that apes Square's turn-based strategy but in a clunkier way."

turn to

"A rare JRPG that doesn't cling to the Final Fantasy template, it's an epic and fairly mature tale of sci-fi intrigue and environmental ruin, with a memorable stick-man graphical style and a vast open world to explore."

?

gunstar heroes was amazing. simply amazing

as for altered beast, i remember standing in my local shopping centre in a queue for 30 minutes to try out the demo of it, on a demo megadrive

i couldn't beleive the graphics at the time, i thought this was it, the future was here.

Altered Beast is remembered to this day not because of it's graphics or gameplay but purely because of "wise fwom your gwave"

Altered Beast isn't worthy of 3/10. Much too high.

Gunstar, seriously, it's a 9 or 10. Truely awesome. And EVERYONE dreads getting the sodding "Curry and Rice" fight in the Dice Palace! End boss is hard as nails if you don't have "homing" or co-op.

Whoever said Phantasy Star II was "easy achivement points" is off their ROCKER. Seriously mental. 75gp of the 200gp available are unlocked by the final series of boss fights, and this game has, by some considerable distance IMO, the toughest final boss fights of any RPG. First you get an arduous slog through a tough dungeon, then back to back boss fights with Dark Force and Motherbrain, and the best spell in the game to help you actually blasts your party too. Rock hard. And that's if you can even GET to the end. The dungeons are insanly big and complex, and the amount of grinding needed in the game is unreal. Probably a 60 to 80 hour monster of a session this game. I'm a big Phantasy Star fan, but I'd be hard pushed to give it anything higher than a 6/10. Wait for Phantasy Star 4; now THAT'S a great RPG.

I got stuck on that also for about an hour compared to cruising through the rest of the game. Was tempted to give up but accidentally did it by jumping up and down on it to gain the momentum instead but then realised its just a case of doing the up/down action.

Ryze hit the nail on the head. Altered Beast has a the classic retro cult following of the cheese and barrage of people who played it back in the day who would pay this price to play it again. By no means is a the game a shining example of quality gaming, and I KNOW Sega realise this.

Anyhow I'd already bought Sonic 3 and Gunstar Heroes, all I want is Streets of Rage 3 so I can play it co-op online. xD

I think "Help the aged" would have been better.