Swagman

Hot on the heels of their worldwide hit Tomb Raider, Core and Eidos pushed out a curious little game titled Swagman. Being of a British software house, it made its Saturn debut in Europe, followed by… wait. That was all. Despite some advertising in North American magazines as a forthcoming title, Swagman is a European Saturn exclusive (a European and American PlayStation version also exists). The game wasn’t a big seller unfortunately, which means it is uncommon, and typically commands a hefty price on the open market.

An action-adventure game in the 16-bit tradition of titles such as the excellent Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Swagman spins the tale of Zack and Hannah, twin residents of Paradise Falls. The young duo is tasked with rescuing their pleasant town from the evil Swagman, the self-styled Prince of Nightmares and ruler of the Territories. You see, the crooked Swagman is hell-bent on expanding the boundaries of the Territories (the land of nightmares) using Dream Ash, preying on innocents as they sleep. To counterbalance his nefarious plans are twelve Dreamflight – a band of magical fairies that protect people’s dreams using Dream Dew. Anticipating resistance, the tricksome Swagman has imprisoned them all in the Void. In their sleep, Claris and Elliot Zack and Hannah must work together to free the Ideya Energy Dreamflight and bring the abhorrent Wiseman Swagman down.

The game plays from an overhead perspective and takes place – mostly, anyways – in the quaint town of Paradise Falls, which is being taken over by the cruel Swagman’s grotesque denizens. The graphics are rendered sprites shuffling about on 2D planes, with the occasional 3D object for effect. Visually, things are crisp and simple, and although rendered, have an almost hand-drawn quality to them. Each and every set-piece feels as if it were hand-drawn, scanned and rendered, and then inserted into the Saturn game. In-game, Zack and Hannah’s sprites animate smoothly. The environments are colorful and pop nicely, lending to the happy/scary dynamic that the game does so well. The presentation is equally top-notch. Indeed, the attractive loading screens are a matte white background with the level title written in crayon in children’s handwriting, with a hand-drawn character image to boot. I know, I know… they’re loading screens! Still, little such touches of art go a long way to add professionalism and artistic expression to the overall product.

The title sports a quasi-Halloween, somewhat Tim Burton-esque theme. The visual artists did a great job in making the adventure look and feel like it is set at nighttime, even though a good deal of the action takes place indoors. Brightly lit rooms actually look as they should, if illuminated by artificial lighting. Other areas are much softer, as if lit by a corner lamp. Other areas still – and this includes the garden and bone graveyard – are quite dark. The enemies themselves range from ghosts to jack-in-the-boxes to skeletons dressed in clown hats (so-called Skallywags), and this humor/horror blend is where the Tim Burton-like influence feels strongest. Doors creek as they open, teeth chatter convincingly as piranha plants try to bite, and pumpkins splat convincingly when they are thrown.

This macabre setting is further enhanced by the excellent accompanying soundtrack. Composed by Nathan McCree (Tomb Raider) and considered by some to be his greatest work, the soundtrack to Swagman is rich, multi-faceted, and generally superb. The opening theme’s (The Swagman) harps suggest a haunting adventure, Zack and Hannah’s theme (The Children’s Nursery) is innocent and yet slowly turns chilling in a way that gives goosebumps, and even the boss theme is epic with its’ organs, strings and fast tempo. Each track is expertly arranged and really lends atmosphere to the proceedings. All the tracks are Red Book compliant (meaning, they are CD Digital Audio tracks as opposed to code that must be converted to music by the Saturn’s sound hardware), resulting in excellent fidelity. Overall the soundtrack is surprisingly robust for a release of Swagman‘s caliber – it’s a major strength of this title.

Players initially control only Zack. Quite early in the adventure, Zack rescues the trapped Hannah and the player can then interchange between characters as they work together to overcome puzzles and obstacles. Make no mistake – this is a one player game, but the gamer must often guide one character after the other to overcome obstacles and progress. For example, the player might guide Zack to a pressure pad that lowers a set of stairs, and with Zack in position, swap out and control Hannah to ascend the staircase. Viewed from a fixed top-down view, both Zack and Hannah run in the cardinal directions, and can slow to a walk by holding down the R trigger. They can jump (B button), as well as push certain objects or levers (Y button). Further, the A and C buttons are assigned to each child’s left and right hands. Pressing the L trigger brings up a shared inventory screen to equip items to each hand. The children’s standard weapon is a flashlight; it projects a very short beam that damages enemies – functionally, it works like a short sword. As the adventure progresses, the children pick up other various useful items like keys or warp marbles, as well as weapons such as a yo-yo or bombs. Some items are character-specific and some are limited in number, so there is definitely an inventory / item management aspect to the game. Items cannot be used mid-jump, meaning timing is critical. Lastly, the kids have no life bars per se; vitality is represented by a number of Zs, indicating how asleep they are. A hit taken reduces the number of Zs, and no Zs means game over and victory for the reprehensible and shameless Swagman.

The children come across magic mirrors during their adventuring. Traversing these mirrors transforms the children into powerful Dreambeasts, and as the mighty monsters, they must fight their way through a nightmare desert world (the Territories of the wicked Swagman) filled with dangerous creatures. Here, they have greater offensive capabilities. The difference between the two types of gameplay is stark; the kids’ regular dreams are centered around light platforming, puzzle solving and fetching, whereas the Territories are all about combat and precision control. Getting through the Territories is somewhat more challenging because the game does not control as well while in monster form, and this leads to undue frustration. More precisely, the control scheme is less well suited to the overhead, 2D fight fest that takes place on elevating paths and such. Eventually, Dreambeast Zack or Dreambeast Hannah find the exit mirror, and emerge back out of the Swagman’s realms.

The kids are not alone on their quest. See, Zack likes to keep a bug collection in his room, and in his hour of need, the bugs don’t disappoint. Coordinating the bugs and helping both kids out is a mysterious character known only as the Scarab. This creepy apparition can be summoned by opening treasure chests that are sparsely located around the Paradise Falls. Approach a chest and he appears, ready to dispense advice or, more practically, save your progress. The Scarab is, in fact, the king of bugs. You see, during the capture of Hannah, Skallywags broke Zack’s bug jar and the little bugs scattered. Now, they litter various sections of the game, and Zack and Hannah would be wise to collect them anytime they see them.

The game is split up into ‘levels’ – primarily, sections of the house and the surrounding Paradise Falls – and progression to the next level means that at some point, the kids must enter The Void. Here, crumbling tiles hang suspended over a vortex, and only one path through the tiles leads to the imprisoned Dreamfly and the subsequent boss encounter. This is where your bugs are let loose, and they point the way for you to cross the crumbling tiles without incident. If you don’t have enough bugs, then it’s do-or-die with each step taken, hoping that every next tile won’t shatter and send Zack or Hannah plummeting into the vortex below. At the end of the suspended tile path is a jar holding one of the trapped Dreamflies, and as soon as you free it, you are whisked away to the boss fight. Dispatch the level guardian to progress forward and come one step closer to bringing the vile Swagman down.

So, the game looks good, plays well, and sounds great… are there any criticisms to level against it? Sure. For starters, as with any top-down game, it is sometimes difficult to judge jumps, or sometimes see exits that are on the left or right of the room you are in. It can also be difficult to judge heights. Should you die, you restart with exactly how many Zs you had when you perished. This is problematic because unless you died by falling into the vortex, you will re-spawn with exactly one hit, and extra Zs are hard to come by. This leads to some frustrating sections, as you can save your game into a quagmire. On my first playthrough, I ended up having to face the Pumpskin boss with one Z, meaning that I had to try to dispatch him without taking any damage whatsoever. And I tried and tried and tried, before finally succeeding. Ugh. Playing as the Dreambeasts is also less fun than playing as the children, primarily due to the controls just not working as well as they should. This creates an imbalance in control between the two modes. Curiously, there is the odd section in the game where there is brief but noticeable slowdown. It’s unexpected to see this in a 2D game, and admittedly it doesn’t happen often, but I would be remiss not to call it out. Lastly, this game does not support direct-to-cartridge save! You can only save to internal RAM memory, which is unusual on the Saturn. That said, you are afforded lots of save slots, and can always back your file up in the Saturn’s dashboard.

Overall this is a good game, and it is a shame that it never reached American or Japanese Saturns. The game was largely ignored upon its’ release, partly because it did not represent what people expected from a ‘next generation’ game. The game looked like something that belonged on the Genesis / Megadrive, or the SNES. The truth is, many great Saturn games were ignored because they weren’t what people thought that 32-bit gaming was supposed to be, and a great many folks missed out on some spectacular games as a result. Swagman is such a game. It is an homage to games like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but with a richer color palette, an amazing soundtrack, and quirky 3D effects here and there.

A few closing thoughts, before we dive into the Shiro Challenges for this title. With it being a PAL-only release, you may be wondering whether it is built for the 50Hz, high vertical resolution of European PAL displays. The great news is that it is not! The game is fully 60Hz NTSC compliant, so there is no change in speed or any over-scan to deal with when playing the game outside the PAL regions. Pop it into your Saturn (taking into account region protection, if you are not using a PAL machine), and away you go. Also of note is the fact that there are currently no known cheat codes in the game… but surely, they must exist. The PlayStation version features an invincibility code, a level skip, and a few others, so where are the Saturn equivalents? This blogger firmly believes that they simply haven’t been discovered yet. So get cracking and hacking, gamers!

Shiro challenges

• Defeat Pumpskin with only one Z. Tough as hell but take it from me: it can be done!
• Collect all the bugs in the game. Some are missable forever – such as when bug jars are located near the abyss and can fall off once the jar is smashed.
• Pop the CD into a CD player and enjoy the exquisite soundtrack!

Enjoy Swagman – it’s a great little gem of a game that’s only gotten better with age!

Bonus! Swagman never received a North American release… but if it had, this is a really good guess what the box art would have looked like.