SEGA Powered 05

ISSUE FIVE

FREE GAMES! Dreamcast demo disc free inside!

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master system

Game Gear

mega drive

mega cd

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32x

saturn

dreamcast

contents issue 5 58

08

62

features 15 keep on dreaming

To celebrate the fact that we’re giving away the Dreamcast demo CD this issue, we thought it would be nice to have a proper deep dive with SEGA’s last console.

58 vive la difference!

Noticed how some PAL games are different from their US and/Japanese siblings? James Handford did, and he was kind enough put some words together for this very cool four-page feature.

62 Blast from the past: Les ellis

It’s a GamesMaster double bill, with our new Dominik Diamond column starting this month and a good chat with Les Ellis – long-standing member of the GamesMaster magazine team.

04 / S E G A P O W E R E D

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regulars 06 power play

Bits of news, the odd feature or two and the occasional strange bit – all revolving around the world we call ‘SEGA’.

27 the gamers’ guide to: driving games

Take two experts of a particular genre and see what they believe to be its shiniest of shining examples. This month: Mirror, signal, manoeuvre… it’s the driving game round-up.

64 special brew

reviews/RE-REVIEWS 32 sonic origins (switch)

One Sonic compilation too many?

34 shadow gangs (DC) Just how good is this new Indie beat-’em-up?

48 thunder force iv (MD)

Another re-review and another solid gold classic.

50 shining in the darkness (md)

Back down the dungeon we go…

36 streets of rage 4 (mobile)

52 samba de amigo (dc)

38 sonic adventure (dc)

53 columns (ms)

Small and perfectly formed, or small and ugly? Paul knows. Yes he does.

Sonic heads up our Dreamcast review section – who else, frankly?

42 metropolis street racer (dc) Crappy and jerky? Pfffft.

44 soulcalibur (dc)

Great in the day, but has it aged well?

46 rez (dc)

Another landmark DC game, but the team was divided over this one.

Issue 5

I did Latin at school, I should be great at this.

There’s way more games still being developed across the range of SEGA consoles, and these are the three pages where, every month, we showcase the very best ones we can find.

68 the hardline

Based on the old Hardline from Sega Power, this is a breakdown of the games we think you should own.

Disagree? Write in and let us know.

72 shop directory

We bet that you didn’t realise just how many independent games shops there are dotted around the country. We certainly didn’t, which is why decided to put as many as we could fit on a page in the mag.

You know the game, but this re-review is for the Master System version.

54 nhlpa hockey 93 (md) Ice to see you, to see you, ice.

55 night trap (mcd)

So bad it’s genius, or just so bad it’s bad? Either way, it’s bad.

56 the lucky dime caper (ms)

Master System platform perfection gets the SP re-review treatment.

S E G A P O W E R E D / 05

P L AY

POWER

Scouring the four corners of the SEGA world to bring you the very freshest news and features

WHAT’S ON YOUR FREE SEGA POWERED/WAVE DEMO DISC Controls A

Fire

X

Jump

LEFT TRIGGER RIGHT TRIGGER

Shadow Gangs JKM Corp / Beat-’em-up

Mine

Press the Jump button twice to do a double jump

Ninja Magic

What is it?

A fantastic side-scrolling beat-’em-up inspired by the classics: Shinobi, Final Fight, etc. You control a lone ninja out to destroy the Shadow Gangs and save his kidnapped family. There’s a whole load of varied levels and some very tricky bosses to battle through.

What do you get?

The whole of the first level. There is a time limit to complete the stage, but there’s plenty to find if you go exploring.

Controls A

Driving Strikers LD2K and Reality Jump / Sports

Jump

LEFT TRIGGER

Reverse

RIGHT TRIGGER

Boost

What is it?

An ideal opportunity to play this early version of Driving Strikers from the dynamic coding duo of Luke Benstead and David Reichelt. All being well, the game will be out in the autumn, complete with a full online mode.

What do you get?

One-to-four players can battle it out on the Blue Sky Beach level. You get a three-minute match and you can pick from one of two team choices.

06 / S E G A P O W E R E D

www.segapowered.com

Tucked away inside your copy of SEGA Powered you should’ve found a copy of our very first demo CD, New Powered Generation #1. It’s yours, and we very much hope that you enjoy it. Unwrap it, pop it in your Dreamcast and get stuck into four fantastic demos of the cream of the last 12 months’ Indie releases, courtesy of WAVE Games Studios. Just to help you on your way, here’s a bit of information about each game to help you get the most from it.

Controls Jump A X

Attack

B

Look

Y

Special Attack

LEFT Map TRIGGER Inventory RIGHT TRIGGER

Intrepid Izzy Senile Team / Platformer

What is it?

Bloody marvellous, that’s what it is. One of our favourite Indie Dreamcast releases and a fine platformer to boot. Developed

by Senile Team (who also coded Rush Rush Rally Reloaded) it’s a great example of what can be achieved on the Dreamcast.

What do you get?

A whole chunk of the game taken from the first half. You’ll get to do a bit of exploring, collect some goodies and take on a boss battle.

Controls

Flea!

Lowtek Games / Puzzler

A

Mash to small jump

X

Interact with characters

Y

Restart level (costs one life)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Some recent news nuggets that may have passed you by In the Zone Four new Mega Drive games were added to Nintendo Switch Online at the end of June. Joining the already impressive roster of MD titles is the superb Comix Zone, the also rather lovely Mega Man: The Wily Wars, Zero ‘All your base are belong to us’ Wing and Target Earth – which is better known as Assault Suit Leynos. Subscription to the service ain’t cheap though, but if you’re interested then head to Nintendo’s site for more information.

The sound of Shenmue Shenmue fans will definitely want to pick up the CD soundtrack to the show when it’s released on August 3 – all 33 tracks of it. The only real downside (and it’s a whopper) is that it’s only currently down for a Japanese release.

Matt Oliver from Shenmue Dojo has created a video with some excellent Japanese retailers though, and you can check it out on the QR code here.

What Yu did next While some of us were patiently waiting for some Shenmue 4 news (and still are), it turns out that Yu Suzuki has gone back to his roots slightly for his next game.

Air Twister came out of nowhere last month for an exclusive Apple release.

It plays a wee bit like a cross between Space Harrier and Panzer Dragoon, and although it looks pretty impressive, the reviews so far have definitely floated around the middle scores.

Bernie Stolar

What is it?

An incredibly tricky yet horribly addictive puzzler. Guide the flea through the stages avoiding spikes and collecting blood. You can trade in the blood you’ve amassed at different points in the game to earn extra lives.

What do you get?

This demo contains 10 levels from the full game’s 80, plus a boss to beat.

Issue 5

NEWS

Finally, we were sad to hear the news that former SEGA of America president Bernie Stolar passed away on June 22 at the age of 75. Most of you will surely know that he was in charge of the company during the Dreamcast launch and came out with ‘that quote’ at the 1997 E3, but you may not also know that he worked at Sony for many years – and that he also headed up the development of the Lynx at Atari.

S E G A P O W E R E D / 07

[game paused]

stateofmind ...all the feels, all the SEGA

14 / S E G A P O W E R E D

“

True game fans always explore the settings of a new console.

But take care, ’cause at least one Dreamcast owner has made this schoolboy error...

“

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

www.segapowered.com

FEATURE

When SEGA’s new console landed on shelves in 1998, it had an unfettered road stretching ahead. Two short years later, it was unceremoniously dumped, its maker simultaneously departing the hardware business.

Economically, Dreamcast was a failure. Critically, it was anything but…

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Reveries and Passions

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Ooh...

Interesting!

Devious DC-UK Covermount Action Replay demo on iss #11 that inadvertently ran imports and back-ups.

Naughty!

CAPTURING THE RISE, FALL AND RISE OF DREAMCAST FOREWORD As is often the case, retrospection beams through the clearest lens – 20/20 vision, the beats, revelations and backstaging laid bare for measured analysis. The first instinct is to welcome this, a vantage point to be maximised; the entire story visible as a single truth. But pay heed: an omniscient perspective brings risk. It corrodes vagaries with daylight, and renders memory as cold fact, bereft of the anticipation, promise, and joy of the past. This is not where Dreamcast lives.

Those who were committed to gaming; those enamoured with the colour SEGA brought to the pursuit (and there for the ride from the first whispers) might well reflect with fondness. If they understand SEGA, from its most terrible, to most illustrious, that fondness may well be amplified to affection, or even passion.

Given the fate of the console, made doubly bitter with SEGA’s retirement from console manufacturing, it would be entirely

Issue 5

understandable for even the most ardent disciple to declare the developer dead to them.

Exactly that happened during the previous two generations, the House of Hog haemorrhaging brand fans with Mega CD, 32X and – to a lesser extent – Saturn. That any gamer even listened to SEGA proselytise about its new offering was a miracle. But love is blind, and SEGA was a changed beast.

THAT DREAM IS MY REALITY Enter hardware built from off-the-shelf components; a machine designed to bring its big brother, NAOMI, direct to homes, while Windows CE compatibility promised seamless PC ports. A console with the very best of what had gone before, where four inputs, rumble and analogue control are standard, but with forethought, adding memory cards moonlighting as tiny, playable units, and an integrated modem for dedicated,

online play, and even DLC. Meet SEGA at its most holistic.

And it paid off, proving a heavy-duty stage from which to parade its most vivid, imaginative and downright outlandish talent through some of the greatest videogames ever made. Where Sony had courted the mainstream, popularised the hobby, and sold its nouveau caché to clubland kids languishing between Paninaro and Hipster, the blue swirl simply gave the hardcore the very best of the racket. This was SEGA’s bag, and its followers sensed a golden future.

When day eventually breaks, curtains part, and the light is harsh. To those on the winning team, those that are still in the race today, Dreamcast would never have made the grade.

It was a failure. But it’s fair to say that the console wasn’t for them – it was for those who got it, those of us who got SEGA, an emanant favourite, a lodestar that led to gaming heaven.

And it’s there, in that memory, that the dream forever endures.

S E G A P O W E R E D / 15

[game paused]

memorybank

...everything SEGA you’d ever forgotten

30 / S E G A P O W E R E D

“

“

The fabulous arcade collab between SEGA, SNK and Sammy was closer to Dreamcast hardware than NAOMI. Who knew?

www.segapowered.com

reviews intro

reviews

plucking only the daintiest flowers from the sega garden

reviews

38

32 sonic origins (switch) 34 shadow gangs (dc) 36 Streets of rage 4 (mobile)

re-Reviews 38 sonic adventure (dc) 42 metropolis street racer (dc) 44 soulcalibur (dc) 46 rez (dc) 48 thunder force IV (MD) 50 shining in the darkness (MD)

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52

52 samba de amigo (dc) 53 columns (Ms) 54 nhlpa hockey 93 (md) 55 night trap (mcd) 56 the lucky dime caper (ms)

44 34

The sega Powered guide to reviewing

Issue 5

Our Reviews section is split into two parts…

scored seven or above can be regarded as a hit in our book.

REVIEWS

RE-REVIEWS

New games, basically. Either official SEGA titles, third-party licensed ones or Indie gems. Scores are out of 10, and anything

Here’s where we take a look at older titles with fresh eyes.

Aged badly? Improved over time? We’ll let you know.

S E G A P O W E R E D / 31

sonic adventure

REVIEWED ON

It took a full console generation and a cancelled game to line up Sonic for the Dreamcast’s launch with one of its many killer apps.

Stuart Gipp reminisces about a game that absolutely revels in itself

INFO

I

Release Date October 1999

Publisher SEGA

Developer Sonic Team

Expect to pay £15-£20

Other Versions

GameCube, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (DX Director’s Cut)

t’s perhaps quite telling that my strongest memory of Sonic Adventure – even after many years of playing the thing – is of standing outside Beatties’ in Lakeside Shopping Centre, Thurrock, eyes popping out of my head and mouth hanging open as their display television looped the opening video over and over again.

Even now I can’t bring myself to skip it. That slow build. The superb title drop. Perfect Chaos emerging from the skyscraper. Those quick cuts to Sonic…

It’s a flawless build of adrenaline, not entirely unlike the thrill of pulling off a particularly skilful line through one of the game’s Action stages.

Let’s face it though, it would be pure folly to describe Sonic Adventure as an evolution of the Mega Drive series’ formula. It would be difficult to conceive of a game that’s any less in tune with its own past, to be perfectly frank. Why then does Sonic Adventure still feel resolutely like a classic Sonic game? Why does it still absolutely hold up as the

very finest 3D Sonic game ever made?

It’s a question of freedom, really.

Not the freedom afforded by exploring the game’s large ‘Adventure’ fields, though that is a factor. Rather, it’s in the looseness of the game’s controls, the lack of invisible walls, hand holding or general stickiness of its stages. Sure, there are rules. There’s a critical path, so to speak, through each level (though many of them offer alternate routes to explore). Find an exploit, though? Find a way to spin-dash just right that lets you skip a huge chunk of the level? Hell, Sonic Adventure isn’t going to stop you.

Indeed, it’s this kind of looseness that characterises the Mega Drive originals – Sonic 1, 2 and 3/Knuckles. It’s the reason why they’re still so popular with speedrunners and generally have so many fans. There’s always another exploit to find. Always some new way to break the game over your knee.

This sounds bad, doesn’t it?

It isn’t. Top to bottom, Sonic Adventure is a polished experience.

Little-known Sonic fact: Whales hate Sonic, and will attempt to kill him on sight 38 / S E G A P O W E R E D

www.segapowered.com

re-review

Issue 5

S E G A P O W E R E D / 39

OTHER reviews

Official Dreamcast Magazine “A racing game on a scale never seen before.

Incredible stuff.”

9/10

EDGE “MSR is a great strategic challenge.”

9/10

In the ideal world you’ll see the Kudos ‘Wey hey!’ flash pop up a lot. The more you get, the more you unlock

REVIEWED ON

metropolis street racer

A racing game where you’re rewarded for careful driving may sound a tad dull, but Dean would argue that Metropolis Street Racer is anything but

INFO

S

ince having children and a mortgage – two devices purely designed to suck money out of you like an industrial vacuum cleaner, the thrills of a Day One purchase are

rare, but I remember a carefree time when they were a regular occurrence.

And the one that sticks in my mind the most? Metropolis Street Racer. I picked it up on the way into work, and then

a loser is you Release Date November 2000

Publisher SEGA

Developer Bizarre Creations

Expect to pay £7

Other Versions N/A

42 / S E G A P O W E R E D

We know what it’s like as we were all there at some point. You’re just starting out, but the mustard is very much uncut. Honestly? It’s a touch embarrassing, but you should expect your first few games of MSR to be a painful introduction to the Kudos system. You’re banging into barriers, smashing into cars and losing Kudos points like sand through your fingers, but trust me, it does get easier.

Kudos is what set MSR apart from pretty much any game before it. Powerslide around a corner and you earn some points. Overtake an opponent with the perfect racing line and you earn some more. Do all of that while breaking the course record and you’ll be swimming in them. Trust us.

it was just sat there on my desk in an MVC bag for the rest of the day. On reflection I should’ve thrown a sickie, but at this point I was still unaware of the pleasures that were about to be revealed to me.

Okay, so let’s get to the point, what is it and, if you haven’t already got a copy, why should you buy it immediately?

In the late 1990s, Bizarre Creations was better known for developing the first two Formula One games for Sony.

SEGA were smart enough to spot the talent though, so the team was quickly signed up to work on a brand-new driving game for their newest console – the Dreamsomethingorother. The deal was a good one for Bizarre Creations, and aside from a wheelbarrow-load of cash (allegedly), they were also pretty much given free rein to be as creative as possible.

So when Metropolis Street Racer was released in November of 2000 (January 2001 in the US, which gave them a couple of months to iron out the bugs

www.segapowered.com

re-review

it’s about time

dean

In a game overflowing with neat touches, one of MSR’s features that always impresses is the fact that the course you race on is directly affected by the time of day you play it.

For this to work, you have to make sure that your Dreamcast’s clock is accurate. Then, if you happen to be playing the game in the UK at 9am for example, it’ll be 1am in San Francisco (and so therefore a night course) and 5pm in Tokyo, so both London and Tokyo will be day courses. in the first load of PAL copies) you got a driving game quite unlike any other.

For starters, you could drive around real cities, accurately mapped from London, Tokyo and San Francisco. In total there were over 260 courses to race around – mainly because you were simply guided through various sections of the city maps – but there was (and still is) a simple thrill to powersliding around St. James’s Park.

Then you had the cars… loads of ’em in fact, ranging from a lawnmower right up to a Nissan Skyline. Nowt unusual there, but expect them all to handle differently (not in an exact way, this isn’t Gran Turismo), and bombing around the tracks in one of the high-end rides is ridiculously fun. Oh, and you can change the number plate to anything you like, too. It’s the little things…

So far so ruddy good then, but it was the solid gold USP that was the Kudos system that sold the game to me and many others. We go into more detail on it in the boxout, but suffice to say, it revolutionised the way we played driving games. In previous ones you could cut

final verdict As you’ll see if you read this month’s Gamers’ Guide, I’m rather fond of my driving games.

And although Sega Rally is a favourite of mine, this comes a pretty close second. It’s still glorious fun to play, and it’s challenging enough to keep you hooked for months.

in a word: karma-geddon

neil a corner as high speed and crash into a couple of barriers, but it mattered not as you’d recover in a fraction of a second and jump up a couple of places towards the race leaders – that gnawing feeling that ultimately you are only cheating yourself never really goes away, though.

But here’s Kudos, a system that forces you to behave, improve only from experience, and practice racing lines and overtaking manoeuvres until they’re second nature.

Behave and you earn Kudos, and you need that Kudos to unlock tracks.

Rather than simply coming first, you had to really earn it. Get through a race with minimal damage and a couple of decent lap times and you’ll be fine.

Smash into everything like someone who’s clearly got anger issues (probably undiagnosed) and a spot of road rage and you’re coming away with nothing.

So, to conclude, I’m very happy to say that MSR is still as playable as it ever was.

The series progressed on Xbox – with varying degrees of success – but there’s something rather special about Bizarre Creations’ Dreamcast racer, and Kudos to them for that.

The geographic accuracy was one thing, but the handling, weather, radio stations, music and Kudos system gave MSR a sheen no-one had ever seen. Bizarre Creations had paved its own way with a sublime racer that became a blueprint for many from the genre since.

In a word: kudos

paul I’m not really one for racing games as I’ve said before but this has some good things going for it. Radio stations, using the DC internal clock and the recreated cities stand out. I enjoyed it but it’s not the type of game which will keep me coming back long term.

In a word: join the joyride

marc MSR still has my heart now. Sure, it looks rough around the edges and doesn’t handle quite as well but the gameplay, graphics and thumping radio soundtrack (complete with adverts) still hold up. It’s a tough game to complete with the Kudos system, too.

in a word: streets of rave

The solid gold usp was the kudos system that sold the game to me and many others

Time Attack + Ghost car = fun by the oodle load Issue 5

S E G A P O W E R E D / 43

POWER down

Join us!

Aanndd that’s yer lot. Sorry to end quite so abruptly, but we do hope it’s given you a flavour of what you can expect from the full version of the magazine.

If you’re new to SEGA Powered then hello, it’s lovely to meet you – albeit virtually. As you’re reading this then you clearly have excellent taste in magazines, so I suspect we’d get along swimmingly.

SEGA Powered is a professional magazine created by independent writers with industry backgrounds. We’re proud to have worked on some of the biggest games magazines in the UK, and hopefully you’ll see some of that experience leaking out onto the pages.

SEGA Powered is a monthly magazine, and goes on sale towards the end of the month. You can find out more about the magazine by following us on Facebook (HERE) or Twitter (HERE), or feel free to pop by our Discord server (HERE).

Finally, you can head to our website (HERE), where you can pick up a copy of the magazine in either digital or print formats.

Thanks again for reading.

Dean Mortlock – Editor