1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

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VideoGameCritic
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1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 19th, 2006, 7:34 am

I need to remember to post one of these messages for each set of reviews!
Dave


Zenzerotron

1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Zenzerotron » January 19th, 2006, 5:42 pm

I just wanted to say, if you are itching for a good BAM game, the DS version is excellent. It doesn't have the unpleasent(read:GAY) music, characters, and voices of the later home console releases.

Benjamin

1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Benjamin » January 19th, 2006, 7:44 pm

yeah for dreamcast reviews, it been too long, there are 270 or so game so keep em coming

 

p.s.  the "nice polygons" comment on the Ring game...umm made me laugh couldnt tell if it was sarcasm though


Caféman

1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Caféman » January 19th, 2006, 10:11 pm

I never played The Ring, but it looked just as crappy as you reviewed it. Never played Bust a Move on DC but those types of games are usually fun for a while. 

 

But Soul Calibur ... it really does deserve highest marks. I still prefer it to my GCN Soul Calibur 2 disc. It was so incredibly good looking , both in system performance, animation and (where Sega kinda lags) in art!   Soul Calibur is one of the best fighters I've ever played, not just because of its fun fighting and great audio/visuals, but all the TONS of unlockables. I can't tell you how much fun I had unlocking characters, pictures, modes, etc. You can even direct the opening with the characters of your choice, how awesome of a little bonus it that.  Xianghua is awesome, but my fave is Lizard Man! Great textures (play in S-video)! So bottom line, I agree with your review.


Michael Danehy

1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Michael Danehy » January 20th, 2006, 12:43 pm

[QUOTE=Caféman]

I never played The Ring, but it looked just as crappy as you reviewed it. Never played Bust a Move on DC but those types of games are usually fun for a while. 

 

But Soul Calibur ... it really does deserve highest marks. I still prefer it to my GCN Soul Calibur 2 disc. It was so incredibly good looking , both in system performance, animation and (where Sega kinda lags) in art!   Soul Calibur is one of the best fighters I've ever played, not just because of its fun fighting and great audio/visuals, but all the TONS of unlockables. I can't tell you how much fun I had unlocking characters, pictures, modes, etc. You can even direct the opening with the characters of your choice, how awesome of a little bonus it that.  Xianghua is awesome, but my fave is Lizard Man! Great textures (play in S-video)! So bottom line, I agree with your review.

[/QUOTE]

Was Dreamcast's hardware underrated? You need a high performance PC just to do smooth, detailed graphics similiar to Soul Calibur's and that was a first generation title! I wonder what they could've accomplished on the console if developers had time to fully exploit its capabilities.

 


Cafeman1
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1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Cafeman1 » January 20th, 2006, 11:52 pm

I used to frequent the old Dreamcast Technical Pages forum, which was a rather closed forum when it came to opening to new members.  It was awesome for a few years, in fact it had a number of developers posting on it, including the leads for Dreamcast games Test Drive: Le Mans and Soul Calibur. I hope I'm remembering correctly, because there used to be a Soul Calibur site & forum at Namco's site, and I might be remembering comments from there, too.

 

Anyway, polygon counts / system permance. The TD:LM guy said they were getting 5 million polygons per second and that was seen to be the max that DC could do (PS2/GCN can do twice that many "real in-game" poly counts).   TD:LM on Dreamcast ran at 30fps but was quite stunning, it even used anisotropic filtering which wasn't common. It's AI was quite impressive as was its lighting Fx. 

 

Considering 2 fighters on DC that both ran at 60fps -- Soul Calibur and VF3tb, I am pretty sure that VF3tb and Soul Calibur were under 1 million polys per second. It was stated a few times by the leads.  Here's the point I've been leading up to -- if Soul Calibur only pushed 1 million PPS, and looks as incredible as it does (it's textures, weapons-slice FX and lighting are superb IMHO), that means the art went a long way to making it look that good.  

 

Dreamcast wasn't designed to be as powerful in geometry calcs as PS2 or later systems (DC was 1998 technology after all), but what it did, it sure did great in the right hands.


bluemonkey1
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1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby bluemonkey1 » January 21st, 2006, 8:25 am

Thanks for the info Caveman.

 

Yeah I prefer Soul Calibur 1 over 2 myself too, although I haven't had the chance to play 2 outside of multiplayer yet.

 

I wouldn't quite say that SC was perfect though.  The fact is that it is a bit of a button masher.  Whereas VF3tb was an utter skilltest and completely fair in SC there were certain characters such as Sophitia that had repeatable moves that once you blocked the first one you couldn't get out of with the parry move (I forget what it was called Soul something).  As a result move repetition leant it to being a little broken.  There was a couple of character balance issues too e.g. Siegfried completely outclasses Nightmare, and Cervantes just about owns everyone.  VF3tb also had 3D arenas where the floor and height really had an impact on the game and after awhile I got a bit board of the generic arenas in SC.  A great game just a bit too short to master and a bit of a button masher.


Cafeman1
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1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Cafeman1 » January 21st, 2006, 1:38 pm

[QUOTE=bluemonkey]

Thanks for the info Caveman.[/QUOTE]

 

It sounds like YOU might have frequented DCTP too.


Bowser102

1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby Bowser102 » February 1st, 2006, 8:42 pm

Ah, I just have to say that I used to own The Ring: Terror's Realm, and I have to say that it is a horrible game.  From pretty much every aspect.  One of the worst games I've played, anyway.

chrisbid1
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1/18/2006: Dreamcast: Bust-A-Move 4, Soul Calibur, The Ring: Terror's Realm

Postby chrisbid1 » February 2nd, 2006, 2:20 pm

the amazing thing about soul calibur on the DC was it was the first time (that i know of) where a console port of a game was superior to its arcade original


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