The Sega Game Gear Thread

Started by TL, May 15, 2013, 19:31:20 PM

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108 Stars

Left Lynx, right GG:


I did not play on GG for ages,  but my guess is:
Bigger screen, Lemmings stats always displayed and more vibrant colors may be reason to prefer the GG version.
Systems owned: Atari 2600, Lynx, Jaguar, NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, Master System, Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Game Gear, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Wonderswan

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "108 Stars"On the Lynx those games are all bad for me:

Hard Drivin
Pitfighter
Dirty Larry
Robosquash
Kung Food
Shadow of the Beast
Pac-Land
Viking Child
Lynx Casino
Basketbrawl
Batman Returns
Bubble Trouble

And I haven't even played all available games yet, and I would not rate Cyberball or the Football and soccer games because they are not my cup of tea. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Fat Bobby Double Dragon, Electrocop and Steel Talons are not much more fun imo.

Then comes a lot of average or fairly good stuff with Rygar, Battlezone 2000, Switchblade II, Xybots, Dracula, Ninja Gaiden 1 & 3, Blue Lightning, Chip's Challenge and Paperboy being my favorites. But even there... Paperboy or Ninja Gaiden would probably not be on my top 10 list on the GG, the cream of the crop there is of a higher level to me.

What I love about the Lynx is how unique its games are, and how powerful the handheld is. But it's just no match to for the competition when it comes to official releases imo. I could just name so many more gems on the GG and GB...

And please, take no offense, I think such threads re dor discussion, and while I prefer the GG's and GB's official libraries, it is the Lynx that stole my heart with its unique flair. :)

Quote from: "The Laird"It's weird because I have heard people say its too easy as well as too hard!

I always thought it was fine, I can get to the last level but can't finish it.

Really, people calling it too easy? It's barely playable imo, the enemies come at you relentlessly. Such a shame because I'm a comic fan and the graphics are good. Yet again, on the GG there is an uglier, but much more fun version of Batman Returns and the also better Adventures of Batman & Robin.


From that list:

Never played:Robosquash/Bubble trouble/Fat Bobby/Viking Child (ST port i think?)

Kung Food looked great, was'nt all that.Battlezone i had, loved at the time, but then big fan of coin-op, but i know a lot who hated it.Pac Land, decent enough in arcade and on C64, as well as Lynx, SOTB-technically impressive on all formats i've seen (Amiga/ST/CPC/MS+Lynx) just devoid of anything special gameplay wise.Double Dragon was dated by time it hit Lynx, Rygar i love, Xybots+Electrocop i've only dabbled with.

see G.G has already thrown up a hidden gem in form of Arena, sadly starting to doubt i'll find such a gem on Lynx, just too few games left to try....

108 Stars

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"From that list:

Never played:Robosquash/Bubble trouble/Fat Bobby/Viking Child (ST port i think?)

Kung Food looked great, was'nt all that.Battlezone i had, loved at the time, but then big fan of coin-op, but i know a lot who hated it.Pac Land, decent enough in arcade and on C64, as well as Lynx, SOTB-technically impressive on all formats i've seen (Amiga/ST/CPC/MS+Lynx) just devoid of anything special gameplay wise.Double Dragon was dated by time it hit Lynx, Rygar i love, Xybots+Electrocop i've only dabbled with.

see G.G has already thrown up a hidden gem in form of Arena, sadly starting to doubt i'll find such a gem on Lynx, just too few games left to try....

My issue with SotB is that it offers even less than anything special gameplaywise, it is actually below average for its time when you take away the graphics. Extremely limited playability, lots of memorization.
Viking Child seems nice enough on screenshots, but it runs in slow motion. And I mean that it's less than 50% of the speed of an average jump' n run.
Double Dragon has this terribly zoomed in view that I hate; sprites are original arcade size, just that the Lynx screen is not 320x224 or whatever the arcade ws, but 160x102.
Robo-Squash: Well, it's f'in Squash.^^
Systems owned: Atari 2600, Lynx, Jaguar, NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, Master System, Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Game Gear, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Wonderswan

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "108 Stars"Left Lynx, right GG:


I did not play on GG for ages,  but my guess is:
Bigger screen, Lemmings stats always displayed and more vibrant colors may be reason to prefer the GG version.

Yep, Lynx version might be technically superior, but i just always prefer the stats on screen and did'nt get on with Lynx version having them on sep.screen.Again, personal choice thing.

Pity Lemmings 2 never got funded for Lynx though.

TL

Lynx Shadow Of The Beast is not the same as the original Amiga game, its been changed quite a bit to give it more gameplay. Still has drop dead gorgeous gameplay though and fantastic music.

Double Dragon for me is the best conversion of the arcade machine on a home console, granted most of them are terrible, but personally think the zoomed in graphics worked really well and I like the added battle mode. I don't care how old it was when it came out, a good game will always be a good game.

Lemmings might have more "vibrant colours" on the GG but to me that just means it looks 8-bit, which it does. The Lynx version looks like the ST and Amiga originals more, sounds like them more too.

Robo Squash isn't much like real squash though, it's a cross between Breakout and Pong in 3D, it's an ok game but nothing very special. Has a few annoying flaws that don't help it.

Viking Child is an ST port yes, a good one IMO. I like it and I am not usually a fan of that genre. But then it is vry like Wonderboy In Monsterland, which I love. It's a bit slow but that never bothered me personally.

Anyway this thread is talking more about the Lynx than the Game Gear now!

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"Lynx Shadow Of The Beast is not the same as the original Amiga game, its been changed quite a bit to give it more gameplay. Still has drop dead gorgeous gameplay though and fantastic music.

Double Dragon for me is the best conversion of the arcade machine on a home console, granted most of them are terrible, but personally think the zoomed in graphics worked really well and I like the added battle mode. I don't care how old it was when it came out, a good game will always be a good game.

Lemmings might have more "vibrant colours" on the GG but to me that just means it looks 8-bit, which it does. The Lynx version looks like the ST and Amiga originals more, sounds like them more too.

Robo Squash isn't much like real squash though, it's a cross between Breakout and Pong in 3D, it's an ok game but nothing very special. Has a few annoying flaws that don't help it.

Viking Child is an ST port yes, a good one IMO. I like it and I am not usually a fan of that genre. But then it is vry like Wonderboy In Monsterland, which I love. It's a bit slow but that never bothered me personally.

Anyway this thread is talking more about the Lynx than the Game Gear now!

Lemmings was never about the visuals though was it? so personally don't feel it had much to risk by being converted to any 8 Bit machine, other than number of...on screen at 1 time.

MS Shadow of The Beast had gameplay tweaks, attempt to make it deeper, still found it sorely lacking though, there just enough of a game beneath the engine.

Wonderboy:Dragon's trap was all time G.G fav of mine, mind you, quite liked the orig.Wonderboy

108 Stars

Quote from: "The Laird"Double Dragon for me is the best conversion of the arcade machine on a home console, granted most of them are terrible, but personally think the zoomed in graphics worked really well and I like the added battle mode. I don't care how old it was when it came out, a good game will always be a good game.

And that perspective makes it so bad to me.^^
Still better than the Atari 2600 or 7800 versions, but I much prefer it on MD, SMS and NES.

Quote from: "The Laird"Viking Child is an ST port yes, a good one IMO. I like it and I am not usually a fan of that genre. But then it is vry like Wonderboy In Monsterland, which I love. It's a bit slow but that never bothered me personally.

Now that I don't understand.^^ I originally trid VC because it had that Wonder Boy look, but comparing it to WB is like comparing Rise of the Robots to Street Fighter II imo.

That said, Dragon's Curse is one of the best GG games out there!
Systems owned: Atari 2600, Lynx, Jaguar, NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, Master System, Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Game Gear, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Wonderswan

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "108 Stars"
Quote from: "The Laird"Double Dragon for me is the best conversion of the arcade machine on a home console, granted most of them are terrible, but personally think the zoomed in graphics worked really well and I like the added battle mode. I don't care how old it was when it came out, a good game will always be a good game.

And that perspective makes it so bad to me.^^
Still better than the Atari 2600 or 7800 versions, but I much prefer it on MD, SMS and NES.

Quote from: "The Laird"Viking Child is an ST port yes, a good one IMO. I like it and I am not usually a fan of that genre. But then it is vry like Wonderboy In Monsterland, which I love. It's a bit slow but that never bothered me personally.

Now that I don't understand.^^ I originally trid VC because it had that Wonder Boy look, but comparing it to WB is like comparing Rise of the Robots to Street Fighter II imo.

That said, Dragon's Curse is one of the best GG games out there!

Thing with Double dragon being dated, which it was by time it hit Lynx, better examples of the genre could be found on other systems, so hardly a system seller to many.Lynx really needed good few 'newer' coin-op's under it's belt to have the mass market appeal ATARI wanted from it.

I'll have to look into Viking Child.

TL

Really? I still don't think there are that many beat 'em ups better than Double Dragon, it's a true classic.

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"Really? I still don't think there are that many beat 'em ups better than Double Dragon, it's a true classic.

If we are talking the genre, then i'd much rather play:SOR 2, AVP, Final Fight, SOR, The Punisher Caddys And Dino's etc etc, but again, personal taste.

TL

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"
Quote from: "The Laird"Really? I still don't think there are that many beat 'em ups better than Double Dragon, it's a true classic.

If we are talking the genre, then i'd much rather play:SOR 2, AVP, Final Fight, SOR, The Punisher Caddys And Dino's etc etc, but again, personal taste.

Of which half were not converted to a home console and of which most came out after DD was converted to the Lynx :3:

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"
Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"
Quote from: "The Laird"Really? I still don't think there are that many beat 'em ups better than Double Dragon, it's a true classic.

If we are talking the genre, then i'd much rather play:SOR 2, AVP, Final Fight, SOR, The Punisher Caddys And Dino's etc etc, but again, personal taste.



Of which half were not converted to a home console and of which most came out after DD was converted to the Lynx :3:

You did'nt specify a time period, just mentioned what to you was a true classic, so i kept my suggestions to within those lines.

Plus, as i mentioned, Lynx needed some newer coin-ops converted to it, D.D hit Lynx in 1993? D.D arcade game came out when? 1987? Home Micro's had conversions in '88, GB in 1990 MD in '92, so great as Lynx version is, it looked like yesterdays news, which was an issue ATARI faced as i mentioned earlier in this thread, fantastic to see classic arcade games converted, but it needed to be a mix of the classic and the new to stand level with GB+Game Gear.

:-) Besides, i've seen you call Streets Of Rage II the greatest Beat em Up Ever Made and that was a 92/93 release, lol.

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"Yeah I don't get the criticism of Sega here either by RT, I even mentioned in my video how shocked I was that the GG was so badly built when the MD and SMS were so good. I have also never had a problem with either of my Saturns and thought that machine had a rep for reliability, especially compared to the PlayStation.




 Laird has already mentioned, but i'm  thinking the full story went along lines of: Dave Needle  had become friends with an engineer at SEGA and this led to him being hired by SEGA to help resolve issues which had cropped up in last stages of Game Gear R+D and when he visited the Japanese facility, it soon became clear SEGA had some major engineering issues going on, which basically stemned from them not fully understanding the hardware they were attempting to copy but i've never been sure how they could pull this off unless Epyx copyright's had flaws, after all SEGA had been shown the electronics and schematics of the system, was this not infringement?

Issues with colour output etc-to me that smacks of pretty poor design work from an engineering point of view (ex-engineer myself, mechanical, not electronics, but basic principles remain the same), if your going to try and replicate something someone else has done, at have a basic understanding of what does what, espically as they'd previousily shown you the guts of the system!

The MCD struggled as despite 2 CPU's, the data transfer between the 2 was poor, bottle neck for starters, SEGA should have realised this.

The CD drives used, might have been cheap, but they were designed as audio players and not meant to be constantly pulling data off in the manner a game required, again, this was'nt realised until too late.

The Saturn's dual CPU's 1 basically had to wait for other to finish doing what it was doing, again flawed design

The Dreamcast had poor heat removal, hence the prongs inside warping and the reset issue-solution was open case, push prongs back into contact.

So i stand by my comments on SEGA.

108 Stars

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper":-) Besides, i've seen you call Streets Of Rage II the greatest Beat em Up Ever Made and that was a 92/93 release, lol.

1992. :) And part 1, which was also way more advanced than DD was from 1991. The first two Final Fights had also been released on home consoles by the time DD hit the Lynx, as were DD 2 and 3. And the Turtles brawlers, great games and the MD one being the last at the same time DD came to Lynx.

I agree, this was part of the problem; beside for my taste the port not even being good (and that's disputable), DD was a retro game by 1993. Old news, much like Paperboy, Ms Pac-Man or Battlezone. A classic, but not a hot game anymore.

That said, Lynx DD was much better than the GG DD which is n entirely different game, focusing on Jimmy avenging the murder of Billy (or the other way around?)
Systems owned: Atari 2600, Lynx, Jaguar, NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, Master System, Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Game Gear, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Wonderswan

Rogue Trooper

i must check out Youtube, see if the SEGA ad (dog spots a GB and GG lying next to each other in the grass, wanders up, sniffs both, tail wagging, SEGA lay into GB screen 'Creamed Spinach Colour' as the audio mocks Tetris blocks falling down on the screen, followed by shot of the full colour GG screen and:

'If you were colourblind, you would'nt care what you bought.Then again, you would'nt care if you drank out of the toilet either'


Man, i miss advertising like this.