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Metal Gear Solid, (commonly abbreviated as MGS) is a stealth action video game directed and written by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan and first published by Konami in 1998 for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Kojima's early MSX2 computer games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The game featured an unprecedented amount of cinematic cut scenes rendered using the in-game engine and graphics, as well as voice acting in numerous codec sequences.
Metal Gear Solid follows Solid Snake, a retired soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons disposal facility to neutralize the terrorist threat from FOXHOUND, a renegade special forces unit. Snake must liberate two hostages, the head of DARPA and the president of a major arms manufacturer, confront the terrorists, and stop them from launching a nuclear strike.
GAMEPLAY
Despite a transition to 3D, the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid remains similar to its 2D MSX2 predecessor Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The player must navigate the protagonist, Solid Snake, through the game's areas without being detected by enemies. Detection is triggered by the player moving into an enemy's field of vision and sets off an alarm that draws armed enemies to his location. This also triggers "alert mode" and the player must then hide and remain undetected, at which point "evasion mode" begins and once the counter reaches zero the game returns to "infiltration mode" where enemies are not suspicious of Snake’s presence. The radar cannot be used in alert or evasion mode.
SOLID SNAKE
The protagonist of Metal Gear Solid is Solid Snake, a legendary infiltrator and saboteur. According to character designer Yoji Shinkawa, Solid Snake's physique in this particular installment was based on Jean Claude Van Damme, while his facial appearance was based on Christopher Walken.
MUSIC
The musical score of Metal Gear Solid was composed by Konami in-house musicians, including Kazuki Muraoka, who also worked on Metal Gear. Composer and lyricist Rika Muranaka provided a song called "The Best is Yet To Come" for the game's ending credits sequence. The song is performed in Irish by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh. The main theme was composed by TAPPY and was also used in Ape Escape 3.
Music played in-game has a synthetic feel with increased pace and introduction of strings during tense moments, with a looping style endemic to video games. Overtly cinematic music, with stronger orchestral and choral elements, appears in cutscenes. The soundtrack was released on September 23, 1998, under the King Records label.
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Suikoden is a role-playing game series originally created by Yoshitaka Murayama. The game series is loosely based on the classical Chinese novel, Shui Hu Zhuan by Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong. Shui Hu Zhuan is rendered as in Japanese, and read as Suikoden. Each individual game in the series center around relative themes of politics, corruption, revolution, mystical crystals known as True Runes and the "108 Stars of Destiny" the 108 protagonists who are loosely interpreted from the source material.
Though the Suikoden games follow an irregular chronological sequence of events, the entire series takes place within the same world among continuing and overlapping histories. In some cases, several characters appear in multiple installations.
MAIN SERIES
Although the games of the "main" series are numbered, each individual game takes place either before or after a consequent installation. The second and third Suikoden games were direct sequels from the respective previous installment but with Suikoden IV, the series has begun to delve into prequels whose events take place before the games released earlier. The sequence is as follows according to in-universe chronology:
Suikoden IV (143 years before Suikoden V and 150 years before Suikoden) -> Suikoden V (7 years before Suikoden) -> Suikoden (3 years before Suikoden II) -> Suikoden II (15 years before Suikoden III) -> Suikoden III
DEVELOPMENT
The Suikoden series was created, written, produced, and overseen by Yoshitaka Murayama, who left Konami near the end of Suikoden III's development.
ELEMENTS
Uncommon to most RPGs, Suikoden features save data transfer such that saved game data can be transferred from Suikoden to Suikoden II, and Suikoden II to Suikoden III (Suikogaiden Vol.1 can also receive data from Suikoden II, and is transferable to Suikogaiden Vol.2, but only in Japan), and also from Suikoden IV to Suikoden Tactics.
The series implements many unique features as each title allows players, in varying degrees to:
- Conduct strategically pitched war campaigns
- Participate in turn based, one-on-one duels
- Recruit a colorful cast of 108 pre-determined characters, each specializing in various aspects of combat or support
- Building an immensely large headquarters that grows as the story progresses (which fully develops when all the characters are recruited)
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| | Jet Moto (Jet Rider in Europe) is a series of futuristic racing games for the PlayStation video game console. The gameplay differs from that of a traditional racing game with cars, as players instead control hoverbikes which hover close above the ground and can be driven over both land and water. Most of the courses in the games are designed to take advantage of this ability. Bikes are adorned with logos of products such as Mountain Dew and Butterfinger, similar to real-life sponsored racing.
The Jet Moto series utilizes a system called the Magnetic Grapple. Pressing an assigned button creates a magnetic attraction between the player's bike and red energy poles that are placed strategically throughout the courses. This enables the bike to swing around tight turns without slowing down, and also to swing over large gaps and chasms otherwise too large to drive over. If executed properly, bikes can also be propelled out of tight turns at a faster speed than when entered.
Jet Moto (1996) and Jet Moto 2 (1997) were developed by SingleTrac, known mostly for Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2. SingleTrac then left Sony, the publisher of the series, and Jet Moto 3 (1999) was developed by Pacific Coast Power & Light in their absence. Former employees of SingleTrac later left to form Incognito Entertainment and signed again with Sony, sparking rumors of a fourth Jet Moto game being developed by Incognito because of this. However, such a game has yet to surface.
JET MOTO 1
The original Jet Moto was released for PlayStation video game console and the PC (1997), and a download for the PSP and PS3 from the Playstation Store (2007) following much later. Twenty Characters and three tracks are available at the beginning of the game, with seven more tracks unlockable by winning tournaments. The first Jet Moto is notable for introducing suicide courses. Instead of being a continuous loop, these tracks have a point A and point B; racers start at point A, race to point B, turn around, then race back to point A while facing oncoming racers. Traditional tracks are also included, and typical courses range from beaches with debris-littered water, ice covered mountains, and even a floating track set above a city. At the time of its release Jet Moto was seen as Sony's response to Nintendo's Wave Race 64.
TEAMS
Jet Moto has twenty selectable characters split up evenly through four teams sponsored by name brands (Mountain Dew,K2,Axiom,Butterfinger).
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Yoshi's Story is a side-scrolling platform game, published and devoloped by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 entertainment system. It is the sequel to the Super Nintendo game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. It was released on December 21, 1997 in Japan and March 9, 1998 in North America.
Like most Yoshi games, it is a 2D platformer. It features digitized 2D graphics of high resolution 3D models (similar to Donkey Kong Country), which resemble patchworks of fabric and other materials, giving it a unique look. While interviews and previews described these visual methods as 2˝-D, the gameplay remains completely two-dimensional. The game received mixed reviews from video game critics.
PLOT
The Yoshis live in harmony on their island, Yoshi's Island. Through the Super Happy Tree, a magical tree on the island, the Yoshis are able to maintain a perpetual state of joy. However, Baby Bowser becomes jealous of this happiness and casts a spell to transform the entire island into a storybook. In addition, Baby Bowser steals the Super Happy Tree in an effort to ruin the Yoshis' happiness. Six eggs survived in the dismal environment and hatched. While confused, the Baby Yoshis were aware of the gloomy atmosphere and set out to retrieve the Super Happy Tree and restore happiness to the Yoshis.
DEVELOPMENT
Originally titled Yoshi's Island 64, the game was developed by the Yoshi's Island team, directed by Hideki Konno and produced by Takashi Tezuka. This was one of the first EAD-developed titles that was not produced by Shigeru Miyamoto. It was renamed Yoshi's Story in August 1997. At the same time, the size of the game was changed to 128 megabits from an initially planned 96.
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| | Conker's Bad Fur Day is a Nintendo 64 video game developed and published by Rare, and distributed by Nintendo. The game stars Conker the Squirrel, a Rare character who had previously appeared in other games marketed towards children, such as Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64. Marketed as an "adult" platform game, Bad Fur Day features scatological humor, graphic cartoon violence, sexual themes and several film parodies. The game received very positive critical reviews, despite its limited advertising, and earned a cult following. A remake of the game was made available on the Xbox in 2005 in the form of Conker: Live & Reloaded.
SINGLE PLAYER
In the single-player mode, the player takes on the role of Conker and plays the game in a free-roaming environment. Conker can duck and jump a high distance vertically, as well as jump at least twice his height in any direction. Conker can also spin his tail around quickly like a helicopter for a few seconds. Rather than give it an official-sounding name, as is the unofficial 'tradition' in the video game business, Conker just calls it the "helicoptery tail thing". This allows him to jump a little higher, navigate in the air to accurately land, and slow his descent if he is far from the ground. After a few seconds, the tail slows down, and he drops and is not able to do it again until he has landed and jumped again. Besides this, he has few other physical powers. He can swim underwater for a while until he runs out of breath, jog indefinitely and not get tired, and is strong enough to push heavy round objects, which in one of the later levels are a "big bourgeoisie boiler's brass bollocks"
MULTI PLAYER
Conker's Bad Fur Day has a multiplayer option as well, featuring seven different minigames: Beach, Raptor, Heist, Death Match, War, Tank, and Race. It also has eight different levels, one for each mode. Health is measured in chocolates just as in the single player mode. In Beach, the player controls either the Frenchies or the Tediz. As the Frenchies, the player must guide a french refugee up through the beach and into a waiting escape vehicle without getting killed by the Tediz. The Tediz fire down on the Frenchies from three different fixed positions located above the escape vehicles, utilizing either a sniper rifle, a bazooka, or a mounted machine gun in order to prevent the refugee's evacuation. The Frenchies are unarmed, but can retaliate by setting off a detonator switch, blowing up the Tediz who are preventing their escape and giving them a window of time to make the beach run uncontested. Though in any case, as the Sergeant, who has gotten the Frenchies to the beach, warns in the intro cutscene, within a several seconds, if one of the Frenchies does not get killed by the Tediz or escape, they will be instantly killed by an off-map laser weapon, thus forcing Frenchies to move quickly and not wait too long.
PLOT SYNOPSIS
The story opens with a prologue, spoofing the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange, where a miserable Conker tells the player that he is now "king of all the land", and begins to tell the story of the game...
RECEPTION
After the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day, many publications and websites declared the graphics were the best to date on the N64 (even better than Perfect Dark). The title included a number of technical effects that gamers were not yet used to seeing. The engine featured dynamic shadowing, colored lighting, and other visual effects, still fairly rare at the time; large areas with a long draw distance and no distance fog, a rarity among Nintendo 64 games; detailed facial animations, including lip syncing, at a time when the vast majority of characters in 3D games had static or minimally animated faces and individually rendered fingers on some characters, rather than the standard "brick." However, with all of these graphical effects, the game's frame rate sometimes suffered.
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Rayman 2: The Great Escape is a platforming video game and the sequel to Rayman. It was developed by Ubisoft and first released on January 6, 1999. It is considered to have raised standards regarding 3D, level design and game play, being praised by numerous reviews. It was first released for the Nintendo 64, PC, Dreamcast and PlayStation. Later remade for PlayStation 2 as Rayman 2: Revolution.
SETTING
The game centers on the invasion of the world where the game takes place (the Glade of Dreams) by robot pirates from outer space. In order to repair the damage to the world and defeat the invasion force, Rayman has to collect 1000 pieces (800 in the PS1 version) of the world's core (called Lums) and reunite four magical masks which will awaken Polokus, the world's spirit.
GAMEPLAY
In contrast to its predecessor, which was a traditional 2D Platformer, Rayman 2 is a 3D game, though it is still in most aspects a platform game. The player navigates through a mostly linear sequence of levels, fighting enemy Robo-Pirates, solving puzzles and collecting lums. Collecting enough lums gains the player access to new parts of the world. Part of the lums are hidden in small cages, in which other freedom fighters or Teensies are imprisoned, and can be obtained by breaking the cages.
DREAMCAST, N64
Entitled Rayman 2: The Great Escape, these two versions are very similar. A few of the differences are: The Dreamcast version has several mini-games and numerous changes have been made to the world map and final battle between these versions. Additionally, unlike the Nintendo 64 version, to unlock the mini-games in the Dreamcast version you have to collect hidden crystals within the game, which then you can trade in the Globox Village (hidden in the Woods of Light level) that you can access once you learn the ability to swing on purple lums. Three of these mini-games have been included in the Playstation 2 version, as one of the mini-games/challenges that you play from Ly's locations, they are named 'Grab Challenge' ('LIF' in the Dreamcast version) and 'Trampoline Challenge' ('WEBLUMS' in the Dreamcast verison). The other mini-game can be bought after buying all of the upgrades from the Magic Wells in the Playstation 2 version, this game being 'The Disc' mini-game from the Dreamcast version.
MUSIC
Original soundtrack by French composer Eric Chevalier.
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| | Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a 2D action-adventure game developed and published by Konami in 1997.
Symphony of the Night was an important milestone of the Castlevania series. It steered the series away from the standard level-by-level platforming formula of older titles and introduced a new style of open-ended gameplay mixed with RPG-like elements that would be emulated by most of its successors. A similar, earlier form of this type of gameplay existed in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. The development of these features can be attributed to Koji Igarashi, the game's director and one of the team's newest members. Igarashi, a noted fan of 2D games, was instrumental in refining the game's control scheme. His primary motivation for the abrupt design change was seeing dozens of Castlevania games in the "used" bargain bin in Japanese video game stores, as linear Castlevania games offered limited replay value after completion. He also established an official Castlevania canon, in an attempt to tie up several loose ends in the series' time line during Symphony of the Night. Other notable staff include character designer Ayami Kojima and composer Michiru Yamane.
MUSIC
The music in Symphony of the Night was met with broad praise by Castlevania fans and general gamers. It was composed by Michiru Yamane, who previously composed the soundtrack for Castlevania: Bloodlines. The soundtrack contains elements from multiple music genres including techno, gothic rock, jazz and many variations of metal. "I Am the Wind", a vocal ending theme performed by Cynthia Harrell, is played during the credits.
The soundtrack contains a few tracks that are remixes of pieces from Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo, particularly "Dance of Illusions", the music that plays during Chi no Rondo's last boss. There is also "Blood Relations", a variation of the piece heard in the first stage in Chi no Rondo, "Bloodlines".
The original PlayStation version of Symphony of the Night includes an audio track featuring an arranged version of the tune "Dracula's Castle", which can played on an Audio CD player after listening to Alucard's warning.
DEVELOPMENT
It is rumored that the canceled Castlevania game, The Bloodletting, eventually became Symphony of the Night. With the cancellation of the Sega 32X as a viable development platform, the team was tasked with developing a new game, so what was usable from The Bloodletting was absorbed into the Symphony of the Night project.
Symphony of the Night marks the first appearance of artist Ayami Kojima in the video game industry. Kojima's role in the game's production was that of character designer, specifically tasked with conceptualizing the game's main and supporting cast in a unique way. Her designs for Symphony of the Night borrow heavily from bishonen-style art. These illustrations proved popular amongst the Castlevania fanbase, which prompted similar designs to be done by Kojima for later titles.
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Pilotwings 64 is a video game for the Nintendo 64 (N64), released in 1996 along with the debut of the console. The game was co-developed by Nintendo and the visual simulation group Paradigm Entertainment. It was one of three launch titles for the N64 in Japan and one of only two launch titles for the system in North America.
Pilotwings 64 is a flight simulator that puts the player in the role of one of six pilots as they try to earn pilot licenses through various forms of aviation including flying a gyrocopter, using a rocket belt, and hang gliding, as well as bonus tasks such as skydiving and shooting the player character out a cannon. Pilotwings 64 received positive review scores from critics and went on to sell over one million copies worldwide.
DEVELOPMENT
Pilotwings 64 was one of thirteen games shown at Nintendo Space World in November of 1995 when the Nintendo first unveiled the N64 to the public. Pilotwings 64 was co-developed by Paradigm Entertainment (then known as Paradigm Simulation) and Nintendo EAD (design, music) / Nintendo IRD (technical support). Nintendo contacted Paradigm in 1994 concerning the latter becoming one of the N64's first developers. Paradigm worked directly with a team at Silicon Graphics and spent nine months developing a technology base for Pilotwings 64 and its other N64 releases. Development on Pilotwings 64 itself began in June 1995, with Nintendo working on the game design and Paradigm working on the technical production. Makoto Wada (EAD), the game's director, acted as the design contact for Paradigm. Shigeru Miyamoto, the producer of the original Pilotwings, reprised his role for Pilotwings 64, albeit more removed due to his concurrent work on Super Mario 64.
Pilotwings 64 contains six playable pilots, all of which are named after various birds. The character designs were sent from Nintendo to Paradigm to be implemented into the game. Lark, the first playable character, is the former mascot and comic strip star of Nintendo Power magazine, Nester. The game's soundtrack was co-composed by Dan Hess and Akito Nakatsuka.
GAMEPLAY
There are three main events in Pilotwings 64. The first, hang gliding, usually requires the player to fly through a series of floating marker rings or snap a photograph of a particular piece of scenery before landing in a target area. While hang gliding, altitude can be increased by flying through thermal columns. The second event, the rocket belt, lets the player gain height through the belt's equipped thrusters and allows for rotation. Goals include flying through rings or popping large balloons before landing. The third event, the gyrocopter, challenges the player to take off and land on a runway after completing objectives such as navigating a path of rings or destroying targets with missiles. Pilotwings 64 also features a several bonus events. Skydiving begins at very high altitudes, requiring the player to complete a series of formations with teammates, freefall, and finally open a parachute and land on a goal area. The cannonball event has the player character fired out a large cannon toward a distant bulleye several hundreds of meter away. The "Jumble Hopper" missions grant the player special spring-loaded boots to be used in bouncing across the landscape to an end space.
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