Age of Empires
Mischief Makers
Gunvalkyrie (6.2)
Sin & Punishment 1 (7.1)
Mystical Ninja Goemon (6.7)
Project Justice (7.5)
Street Fighter III: Third Strike (7.4)
Evolution 2 (5.7)
Star Wars Jedi Power Battles (5.4, 5.8)(PSX, DC)
And then we have the poor, poor Saturn
They badly low-balled about 20-30 games on the Saturn, making me thrilled that they never bothered to review most of the system's best games.
On several occasions, they would tell you how great the game was in the body of the review and then give it scores like...
Mr. Bones (6.3)
Review Tagline for Mr. Bones: "Combining imaginative gameplay mechanics with cool graphics and killer music, Mr. Bones will not disappoint." The body of the review is similarly glowing, going so far as to call the developers "ingenious." So the score is what, A typo, perhaps? Nope, this game has a flaw, it appeared on the Saturn in an age when only PSX and games from Rare on the N64 got respect from the "journalists."
or calling Dead or Alive an above average fighting game and giving it a below average 6.8 score, only to give the PS version released the next year an average score of 7.3 even though it's graphics weren't quite as good as the older, supposedly weaker in 3D, Saturn.
But don't think the DoA effect works in reverse, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which got an 8.6 on the PSX, one year later it gets a 6.0 on the SAT, even though it was called the superior version in the body of the review by the reviewer.
Fun A-RPGs like Legend of Oasis, Dark Savior, and Magic Knight Rayearth also got trashy sub-7 and even sub-6 scores with poor cause imo. The blasting of MKR's graphics as simplistic and unimpressive is particularly funny as there is no way the psx could have handled the 2D animations on display, and unlikely would it have handled all the detail in the backgrounds very well. Gamefan magazine called the graphics dazzling, EGM called them amazing, colorful and just plain beautiful, and RPGfan said they were some of the most beautiful they had seen to date.
Action games like Burning Rangers, Die Hard Arcade, and Assault Suit Leynos were also underscored.
Dungeons and Dragons Collection got a 5.6 (Users 7.7), and while they gave legit reasons for the gripes and acknowledged the PSX could not handle the game, it still feels wrong. I find the genre fun to begin with and GS obviously never has as they've demonstrated time and time again with beat em ups, lamenting their simple nature. For a beat em up though, it has most of what you'd hope for, including tight controls, variety in moves, levels, weapons, etc, multiple paths to finish. IOW, the users are right, as they were with every SAT game I've mentioned, all of which have significantly higher user scores. I especially hate this score because it's lack of appreciation for titles like this that led to us never getting home versions of great arcade games like Battletoads (1994), the "real" Golden Axe sequel, Revenge of Death Adder (1992), and Battle Circuit (1997), among others.
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