gamesncrap

This is the last Dreamcast game I ever bought brand new before I got an Xbox. I found it at a Walmart in Virginia, along with Phantasy Star Online for 20$. Since I already had PSO I got this, which kicked buttocks because my Dreamcast was starving and it was almost impossible to find games for it. I’m definitely glad I got it, seeing as I played it many hours and had it mastered pretty well. Too bad I suck at it now. I can’t remember any of the moves…

My favorite thing about this game was the awesome soundtrack. It’s got a lot of variety in it, and each characters theme fits them pretty well. It’s got some nice jazzy sounding stuff, some butt rock for characters like Ralf, and both fit well for a fighting game.

There’s about 38 characters in this game, ranging from giant heavy guys, guys that look like girls, a midget Freddy Krueger, and the most puzzling of them all, girls. Some of the characters are just plain weird. My personal favorites are Iori, the angry red guy, Ralf, because of his awesome headband/camo/blue hair combo, some chicks who I don’t remember, and finally, Mai. Mai is AWESOME. Not so much because she’s a good fighter, but because she has giant knockers that bounce around even when she’s just standing there. I know some people will call me immature because of that, but seriously, if you don’t agree your either a girl, or reproduce by budding. It really doesn’t take much to appreciate a nice pair of video game jubblies, especially ones like these.

KOF ’99 pretty much plays like other 2D fighting games, but it does have the nifty three person team battles. It’s pretty fast paced too. You’ve got super moves, fireballs, throws, super bars, and cheap AI opponents. The games pretty hard, especially the last boss.

I remember playing this for the first time in a demo pod at Toys R Us and loving the graphics. Not only was I finally playing a Dreamcast, I was playing one of the best games at the time. Jet Grind Radio is another unique Dreamcast game that, of course, didn’t sell in the US. It’s also one of the games that pioneered cell shading into the fad it was for awhile. Unfortunately this is the game that helped make cell shading a fad for awhile, too, so Zelda fans might want to stay away from this game. It is a very cool graphics style when its done correctly, so it’s understandable it was used a lot.

In Jet Grind Radio, you play the role of a juvenile delinquent. Said juvenile then joins a gang, and they express themselves by spray painting art throughout the town, battle other taggers in territory battles, and avoid police. So basically your a stupid teen in this game, but it’s still fun. You stick it to the man…with ART.

Probably the strongest point in JGR next to the gameplay is that the game has an excellent mix of music. There’s a lot of variety, and pretty much all of it’s good. The bad thing is that most of the music is just loops that repeat, usually the full song isn’t there.

There was also a cool feature where you could go online and download or upload graffiti made by people. Now it’s dead like most of the Dreamcasts online features.

The worst thing about JGR is probably some of the difficulty. I never beat this game simply because I stopped playing it for awhile, and when I came back I had no idea what to do. The sequel had this problem too. Still, definitely pick it up. There still isn’t that many games like it.

I have some great memories of this game. I first saw previews of it back in 1998 in the now defunct Gamers Republic magazine. All the previews looked interesting, a big reason being Dreamcast was new. I always thought it was the first Dreamcast RPG to come out, but I guess elemental Gimmick Gear beat it out. Back in the summer of 2002, the summer before we moved across the US, I saved up a bunch of money to get some Dreamcast games, and this is one of the games I bought. Even though it was missing the cover for the booklet, I lived because the game was pretty good.

I really don’t think this game got any of the respect it deserved. All I’ve seen for it is negative reviews, but I know quite a few people who loved it, me included. You know when you play a game, and it’s so good, you just keep playing it until its over? Evolution isn’t like that. The actual game in Evolution isn’t that great. It’s the great characters, dialogue and setting that makes it worth playing. Just about all the characters are interesting, and almost all the NPC’s have something worth reading to say. A great example of what I mean is Lunar, but Lunar has a better game behind it.

Evolutions game part is actually just a simple dungeon crawler. This pretty much means its repetitive and gets pretty tiring near the end. Pretty much the whole game is clearing out a bunch of different ruins, each one bigger then the last. Probably the dumbest thing was making the last ruin you play 50 FREAKING FLOORS. That crap is ridiculous, especially when your hitting into battles constantly. Each floor is filled with traps, and by traps I mean different colored gases that do things like obscure your vision, confuse you, and annoy you. Nothings worse then a cloud of CONFUS GAS in your face.

Which brings me to another weak point. Whoever translated Evolution definitely couldn’t speak English, and probably couldn’t speak Japanese either. They did a BAD job, I mean BAD. There’s numerous typos, symbols where they shouldn’t be, and sentences ending with ;. Theres also ENTIRE blocks of text missing. It’s embarrassing how many times I was told to find the elusive BLANK. Or I told someone I can’t wait to BLANK. You get the point.

Theres a lot of bugs and technical crap too. Theres a lot of times where the game will sometimes lock up, you’ll get stuck in a wall, or the game just plain won’t load sounds. There’s not much voice acting aside from yells and grunts during battle, but it would be nice if they didn’t cut out mid grunt or play after they’ve done something grunt worthy so the characters didn’t sound retarded. Some of these problems are acceptable, since Sting isn’t a giant company.

Even after all these problems, I still love this game. It’s got great personality to it, its simple, and its got a great ending. I like RPG’s like this. I have a hard time with newer RPG’s because they seem to always have some super complicated plot with 80 hours of gameplay and anti terrorist groups and whatnot. This proves not everything needs to be complicated to be enjoyable. There wasn’t a buttload of RPG’s for Dreamcast like there was Playstation or anything, so definitely check this out after those ones.