Showing posts with label Microsoft Xbox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft Xbox. Show all posts

6 Games that Scratch the Shenmue Itch

There really isn't anything quite like Shenmue. As most Dreamcast fans know by now, the gameplay of Yu Suzuki's magnum opus, which juxtaposed snail's pace sleuthing around Japanese suburbia with frantic Virtua Fighter ass kicking, was polarising back when it surfaced in 1999. I am one of those many crazy people who absolutely loved everything Shenmue had to offer, especially the game's focus on the minutiae of everyday life. While some might prefer to escape to lands of medieval fantasy or vast universes of the future, I was completely entranced by the real world in which Shenmue was set, and the ordinary people that inhabited it. It felt like I'd finally found the game I'd always wanted to play.

In the 18 year absence of the series' third entry, I still needed something to scratch the Shenmue itch, and with many now wondering when a fourth instalment is going to happen, I find myself searching once again (seriously though, #LetsGetShenmue4). That's why I thought I'd present to you, dear reader, a selection of games that I believe capture the essence of Shenmue, some in more ways than others. Of course, I'm not implying that any of these games trump Shenmue in stature or quality. I'm simply suggesting that you may find some of the same enjoyment in them that you found that first time you assumed the role of Ryo Hazuki, as he set off on his quest to irritate his fellow townspeople with excessive deadpan and waste all his money on plastic Sega-shaped tat (a man after my own heart, really).

The Yakuza Series
For those of you who aren't aware of the Yakuza series (if you even exist at this point), it is a modern Sega franchise that often draws comparisons to Shenmue for obvious reasons. While Yakuza didn't necessarily copy Shenmue's homework, we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't admit that the later games in the series definitely take some inspiration from Shenmue, at least when we compare the two at face value. A man walks angrily around a Japanese neighbourhood, beats up a load of thugs, chugs a drink, then heads to the arcade to play Space Harrier… I could be accurately describing Shenmue or Yakuza with that sentence, and the internet’s gaming population at large have picked up on these somewhat shallow similarities also. There’s not a single day that goes by without someone shouting "why don't you just play Yakuza?!" at some poor unsuspecting Shenmue fan on social media.
Image credit: New Game Network
When you start to play any of the Yakuza games, however, you soon learn that the series very much has its own identity and its gameplay differs in many ways to the adventures of Ryo Hazuki. Sure, later Yakuza games started to incorporate a lot of the same time-waster stuff that is a beloved staple of the Shenmue series, like arcades and gambling, but Yakuza is overall much faster paced, and its beat-em-up style of brawling is even more dynamic and ridiculous than Shenmue's. Think Dynamite Cop on steroids. Let's just say you're not really taking time to appreciate the scenery in Yakuza, unless that scenery is a bicycle you can pick up to smash a dude's head with. Which style of game you prefer is all down to individual taste, of course.
Image credit: New Game Network
What the two series do have in common though is a commitment to escapism. Just like Shenmue, the Yakuza games contain excellent stories, all featuring likeable characters and gameplay loops that will keep you immersed for hours on end as you bond with characters through missions and become fully encapsulated in Japanese nightlife. For those still longing for that fourth Shenmue, Yakuza is a pretty fitting game to fill the void, and with a whopping number of instalments to play that span multiple console generations, you've got plenty to work with. Go forth and be the best organised crime bloke you can be.

The Persona Series
In the past, Shenmue has been branded a "life simulator" by fans and critics alike. Well, if there was ever a series that took that concept and ran with it, it's the Persona games. Created as a spin-off of Atlus' dark-as-heck Shin Megami Tensei RPG series, Persona has grown from a quiet cult hit to a monolith franchise in the last decade. Combining turn-based RPG gameplay and creature fusing with (from the third game onwards) time management and relationship building, Persona will steal your heart and not give it back. Play it for a few hours and you'll soon find yourself thinking in the same mindset as the Japanese high school student turned defender of humanity you play as, asking yourself such questions as: "should I slay demons tonight or go sing some karaoke?"
Image credit: New Game Network
While turn-based RPG battling and creature training has more in common with Pokémon than Shenmue, Persona's commitment to exploring the finer details of real life and asking you, the player, to make decisions on how to spend the main character's precious free time definitely shares some similarities with what Yu Suzuki was going for back in '99. While Persona is a lot less interactive than Shenmue (it's a JRPG, so be prepared for text galore), it goes a bit further in some ways. In Persona, you form more than just one-sided Ryo Hazuki relationships, and most activities you do in your free time have purpose (such as karaoke), boosting stats of some kind, rather than being there to simply kill time.
Image credit: New Game Network
As far as recommending a game in this series to start you off, I'd say start with Persona 5 Royal or the upcoming Persona 3 Reload (both of which can be found on modern gen systems and PC), simply for their sheer size, depth of mechanics, and level of graphical detail. The best storyline, however, is definitely that of Persona 4 Golden, which was previously stuck on the PS Vita, but eventually got ported to PC and Nintendo Switch, along with eighth/ninth generation PlayStation and Xbox systems. Small town countryside vibes, combined with the best plot and characters of the whole series, definitely makes Persona 4 Golden a candidate for everyone's first Persona game. Reach out to the truth!

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Review or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love this Spiritual Successor to Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radio (or as it was known in North America, Jet Grind Radio) came skating onto the scene in the year 2000. Developed by Sega's in-house studio Smilebit, the flagship Dreamcast release saw players enrol in the rollerblading GGs gang to claim their turf back from their rivals, one graffiti tag at a time, all whilst evading the clutches of the law. A platformer at heart, JSR was fun gameplay-wise, but what kept me and many others coming back for more was undoubtedly its revolutionary cel-shaded graphics, along with its premise, style and music - all a loving tribute to hip-hop and street culture. The exceptional soundtrack, the majority of which was composed by Hideki Naganuma, combined elements of hip-hop, J-pop, funk, electronic dance, rock, acid jazz, and trip-hop, and has been lauded by fans the world over to the point where it's almost taken on a life of its own outside of the game.

North American magazine ad for Jet Grind Radio

In the years following Jet Set Radio's release, Sega stopped making consoles and moved to being a third-party developer. Initially things were pretty good, with a wide range of their IPs receiving new titles or reboots, including Jet Set Radio, which received a beloved sequel/re-imagining on the original Xbox in the form of 2002's Jet Set Radio Future.

But, with series developers Smilebit closing their doors in 2004, and Sega's attention to any IP that wasn’t Sonic slowing to a drip feed over the following decade, the possibility of a new entry into the JSR series became less likely with each passing year. We did see a HD remaster during the seventh generation, which was cool, but the fully fledged third instalment many players have been waiting for just never happened.

The album cover for 2 Mello's "Memories of Tokyo-To"

During the series' absence, a cult community of fans slowly began to form around Jet Set Radio, with its art style and music finally being appreciated for how excellent it really is. A fan developed a whole website to stream JSR tunes 24/7, while artists like 2 Mello made entire albums in the style of the JSR sound. Many new indie titles like Umarangi Generation and Hover aimed to emulate that funky cel-shaded feeling we were sorely missing. Seeing this community of fans and creators blossoming around JSR really got me thinking... with the series' strongest suit undoubtedly being its aesthetic style and music, and with aspects such as the story and character's personalities taking a backseat (with perhaps the exception of DJ Professor K), it made me wonder: could someone else make Jet Set Radio? We'd witnessed it in the indie space for years, with titles like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Shovel Knight and Cities: Skylines filling the void left behind by the neglect of bigger developers. For me, Jet Set Radio’s best asset is not that it was made by Sega. Sure, the genius minds of Dreamcast-era Sega gave it its best assets, but the fact that Jet Set Radio's winning formula has been abandoned for so long, that it hasn't had the chance to be developed further, to become bigger and better with the power of modern systems, to be re-introduced to a new generation of gamers, is criminal, frankly. As long as the right people were involved, Jet Set Radio could come back in style, even if it meant sacrificing the name.

Lethal League Blaze

The answer to my prayers came in 2020, when Dutch indie developer Team Reptile teased Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Having previously worked on Lethal League, an excellent series of fighting games that feature cel-shading and character designs reminiscent of Jet Set Radio, and with the second game, Lethal League Blaze, even featuring a song from Hideki Naganuma, it was no surprise that Team Reptile were going to attempt a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio for their next release. From their short teaser alone, I immediately knew they were the right people for the job. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk looked so much like a new Jet Set Radio game that I would've forgiven you for thinking it was made by Sega themselves. The teaser even featured a Naganuma track. It was finally happening!

Despite this, I still saw a fair amount of scepticism online. Some loyalists said they'd just wait for Sega's Jet Set Radio. Some even went as far as to accuse Team Reptile of "plagiarism". C'mon guys, it has been more than 20 years since Sega released an original entry into the Jet Set Radio series. To bastardise that famous lyric from John Lennon:

"All we are saying is, give Bomb Rush Cyberfunk a chance"

On the day it released, I bought Bomb Rush Cyberfunk for the Nintendo Switch, as that was the only console it was available for initially, and I don’t have a gaming PC, so that option was out. From the outset, the game's cel-shaded look, music and sound effects all felt familiar to me. It was great to jump back into that grinding and tagging gameplay I loved so much, to be transported right back to those special moments of playing the original JSR and Future for the first time. But Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is quick to remind you that while it remains incredibly faithful to its source material, it isn't completely derivative of it. Instead, Team Reptile are here to build and improve, which is exactly what I wanted to see from a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio. I've always sung the praises of the gameplay refinements that Jet Set Radio Future introduced to the series, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is no different, picking up where that game left off but now with the benefit of twenty years of hindsight in its arsenal. Throughout this review, I will be calling back to JSR and Future many times to explain how BRC successfully builds on - or even improves - the formula, but please don't understand this as me disparaging the JSR series at all. Both Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future will forever remain two of my most favourite games of all time.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's plot, while still containing the appropriate dose of hip-hop and street culture references you'd expect, is crazy, and immediately more involved than either of the JSR games. Rather than functioning as stylish avatars for your rollerblading escapades, the main set of characters of the Bomb Rush crew have unique personalities and converse with each other in cutscenes, much of which is humorous and often eccentric. The main character, Red, has a purpose - to get his head, which was chopped clean off his shoulders in the game's prologue, back, while also looking to investigate the past of his replacement head (I said the plot was crazy, didn't I?).

The rival crews, still serving as your opponents throughout the game, also have more purpose in the plot, as Red and his crew not only look to defeat them to become "All City" (to claim all turf in the city), but also to gain information to aid in their hunt for Red's origins. While I won't spoil the plot here, all I'll say is the whole idea of Red being a character patched together from the body and head of two different characters, and the duality that brings, is one of the more refreshing plot ideas I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a video game as of late. There are plenty of surprising twists and turns you may not have been expecting from a game that many will be turning to primarily for its aesthetic qualities, and it is certainly refreshing to see.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's cast of characters are all varied in design and dripping with style, with their clothing combining the aesthetics and fashion of not only hip-hop and its b-boy subculture, but also the skate culture of the early 2000s, with some sci-fi flair thrown in for good measure. Characters like Red, with his crimson "cyberhead", and the angel-winged crash dummy Solace stand out as the coolest of the bunch, while story characters like the "oldheads" are more amusing, looking like caricatures of golden age hip-hoppers with their maroon tracksuits and over-sized Kangol-esque hats. One of them even has a cyberhead that looks suspiciously like the mask of the late MF DOOM. DJ Cyber's cold cybernetic mask and long stylised lab coat really set him apart as the menacing antagonist he is and the Dot EXE crew just look fresh as hell with their pool ball cyberheads and two stripe tracksuits. Team Reptile really knocked it out of the park when it came to matching the imaginative character design seen in the games BRC takes influence from, so much so that you will undoubtedly be searching around the game's city to track down more peeps to add to your posse.

Depending on how you look at it, one potential flaw of BRC's playable characters could be that none of them have any stats, meaning that your decision on who to play as solely comes down to how cool you think they look. Jet Set Radio did assign stats to each character, which meant there was a bit of strategy involved when making your choice of whom to tackle a particular level with, but I suppose ultimately it's probably better to be able to play as your favourite character without their weaker stats holding back your enjoyment, and it does feel great to be able to constantly switch between BRC's aesthetically pleasing cast of characters just 'cause.

Credit: JREEL on YouTube

So we've got a great storyline and some cool characters, but how's the gameplay?

The Hunt for the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox versions of the Sega Dreamcast

Over the years, fans of the Sega Dreamcast have had the opportunity to see many interesting and artistic case mods, but some of the oldest to make a splash in the Dreamcast scene were the ones you see below; case mods designed to look like the Dreamcast's sixth generation competitors: Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PlayStation 2.
Cool designs? Or heresy against the Dreamcast? These case mods have had many fans and detractors over the years.
Long-time fans may dimly recall seeing pictures of these customised Dreamcasts making the rounds on Dreamcast forums and fan websites as early as 2002. The pictures have continued to show up over the last 20 years on various forums, fan sites and social media pages across the internet (including a 2006 post on this very blog), although genuine information about their origin has tended to be scarce. Given their relatively polished-looking designs and their appearance around the time of the Dreamcast’s commercial death, theories and rumors have spread that a Japanese gaming magazine or even Sega themselves may have commissioned them to use in conjunction with a story or announcement about Sega’s decision to create games for third party systems. Some critics have even gone as far as to argue that the images were mere Photoshop creations and never even truly existed.

After being reminded of these designs through a chance encounter with a fan who had found the GameCube design for sale on an online marketplace, I set off on the complex mission of discovering the truth about these mysterious custom Dreamcasts. I searched my own memory, trawled through defunct websites of yesteryear on the Internet Archive, and even managed to track down and discuss the case mods with the original Japanese creator. After all of this, I can finally provide the authentic story of these early and unusual custom designs.

The Creator

Enter G-Cube – the name of a group of Japanese model kit builders. In the early 2000s, G-Cube was a group of three people who would get together and use their extensive modeling, graphic design and painting skills to cosmetically enhance existing model kits, toys and other items. 
One of many logos used by G-Cube
Their projects involved assembling things such as retail model kits with highly detailed custom paint jobs, some of which would also have significant modifications, including custom fabricated parts, to make finished products that were substantially different from their original design. The group’s work often included designs for mecha, figures, spaceships, and other vehicles from anime and video games. Over the years, G-Cube’s creations would be profiled in Japanese hobby magazines, and the group would even display their work at public exhibitions and festivals. The group would also take commissions from customers, and to this day, G-Cube puts recent creations up for sale on Yahoo! Auctions Japan from time to time.
Various older works by G-Cube
I was fortunate enough to find contact information for a Mr. Fuminori of G-Cube, who as luck would have it, was the designer behind all three of the Dreamcast case mods shown above. The following is a summary of information about each of the case mods...

Dreamcast Emulation Heading To Xbox One

In many ways, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner given the tangled history the Dreamcast and the original Xbox had: a Dreamcast emulator is potentially coming to the Microsoft Xbox One later this year. Well, that's the story if the recent news from XB1EMU is to be believed. As stated on their official website, XB1EMU is a collective of gamers dedicated to porting emulators to the Xbox and Windows platforms and they have already succeeded in putting several different console emulators on the market for Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. Interestingly, the Nintendo 64 emulator Win64e10 did in fact sneak its way onto the Xbox marketplace in 2016 before being pulled. According to the site though, work has begun on a new Dreamcast emulator specifically for Xbox One, similarly titled WinDCe10:

"We are starting work on WinDCe10 – the most advanced Sega Dreamcast emulator for Xbox One. Play your favorite Sega Dreamcast games on your Xbox One! No region lock, support save/load state, video/input configuration, and a turbo mode."
- XB1EMU

There's also an announcement video but it doesn't really show anything other than a list of games that you'll be able to play on the proposed WinDCe10. We're pretty sure Microsoft won't be approving of this new endeavour, and will most likely do its best to lay the smackdown on WinDCe10 quicker than Nintendo slaps the taste out of the mouths of Metroid home brewers.
Orange swirl of death.
Also, as someone who isn't really aufait with the Xbox One ecosystem (I went from an Xbox 360 to a PlayStation 4 because I'm a massive sell out), I can't really speculate on how gamers are going to get the emulator onto their Xboxes. That said, this is certainly an interesting story and one to keep an eye on. Also: turbo mode is mentioned. Sega Rally 2 with a stable frame rate? We can only hope! Here's the video:


Unlike the Nintendo Switch DreamStream thing, I haven't made this up, so what do you think? Are you excited at the prospect of playing Dreamcast games on your Xbox One? Let us know in the comments or join the conversation in our awesome Facebook group.

Original 1999 Xbox Controller Designs Show VMU Device

So you might have seen these images by now, as Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley tweeted them two days ago on Saturday night. As soon as I saw them I was intrigued and asked how 'genuine' they were...and my question simply received a 'favourite.' I'll be honest - I didn't actually know who Seamus was at the time so I was a bit sceptical, but it turns out these images are indeed real.
Dating from November 1999 according to Blackley, the drawings depict several prototype Xbox controllers and they all feature a VMU style memory unit very similar to the Dreamcast design. The most interesting thing here is the date - it confirms that Microsoft was planning a console as early as 1999, and was already looking at the Dreamcast as a blueprint for the Xbox.