Ghoulish greetings, Shiromaniacs! It’s Halloween time again, and that means time to grease back your jet-black hair, light your dark candles, take out the Ouija board, and ask it what Saturn games to play! Halloween is a great time to enjoy some thematically appropriate titles on everyone’s favourite black-as-night console. There are some well-known classics as well as some more obscure titles to get through… and with over 20 titles sliced and diced, there will hopefully be something for everyone to love.
Games in this feature are discussed in alphabetic order, and at the conclusion of each showcase, we award a fun Potion Rating to each game. The goal is to make it easier to pick your Halloween gaming poison, if you will.
It must be said that there is an amazing variety of games in our Saturn Halloween candy bag – shmups, puzzle games, light gun games, a disproportionate amount of point-and-click FMV adventures, platformers, retro arcade conversions, a pinball title, and even a gambling game. That’s quite incredible, and it means it should cover most gaming tastes. Beware, however. Not all games are treats; there are most definitely some tricks that will try to sneak through undetected. Will they catch the appropriate scrutiny from our gaming-weary eyes? Let’s open our Saturn lids, wait for the bats to clear out, pop in some discs and find out!
Alone in the Dark 2: One Eyed Jack’s Revenge
Oi… not the best start to our exposé. Alone in the Dark 2 (subtitled Jack is Back in Europe and One-Eyed Jack’s Revenge in North America) is a 1993 PC adventure game that was ported to and released on the Saturn in 1996, but where it wanted to age like fine wine, it aged more like leftover seafood.
Alone in the Dark is a supernatural horror style game, using 3D characters against static backgrounds. The game takes place roughly a hundred years ago in the mid 1920s and sees detective Ed Carnby search for a kidnapped little girl named Grace. His sleuthing leads him to an old mansion known as Hell’s Kitchen, and there, his investigation (and the game) begins. The Halloween themes are strong here, with zombies, pirates, voodoo, and other scares on offer, but the execution and art style fall flat – it’s hard to know if the game takes itself overly seriously. Some of the themes being explored are quite dark indeed, but the somewhat goofy presentation truly takes away any impact those themes strove for.
For starters, the human characters are depicted exceptionally badly. They simply look awful, and not in any arbitrarily artistic way. To boot, they animate very stiffly. Transitions between scenes take a split second, but it is long enough that it is jarring. The in-game music is inappropriate for this style of game, giving the entire adventure a weird circus-comedy style vibe. If there is more than one character on screen, prepare for horrible framerate stutter. The few polygons that are displayed are not even always textured, leaving the game looking inconsistent at best and mood destroying at worst. Yes, it really is that bad.
This game was relatively well regarded upon its original 1993 release, but by the time this showed up on Saturn, it was utterly outclassed by more contemporary titles. The Saturn port itself is incompetent, and while the game pioneers several solid ideas, the way they are implemented ruins any of the scare factor. Even implementing somewhat scarier music would have seen the game faring better. Alas, it was not to be.
Should you play this on Halloween? Maybe if you’re played every other title on this list and are thirsting for more, but even so, the scariest aspect of the experience will be just how horri-bad this game is. Yech.
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands
Taito: masters of 80s arcades, legends of old-skool gameplay. 1996 saw Acclaim release a two-for-one retro compilation titled Bubble Bobble: also featuring Rainbow Islands. Of the two games, Rainbow Islands’ third world is exceptionally Halloween-y. That makes this an Honorable Mention entry in this feature, albeit a very worthy one. After all, the 1987 arcade original is an absolute classic. Full kudos to Acclaim for releasing this retro title.
The gameplay features Bubby (Bobby joins in 2-player mode) as he attempts to climb platforms to reach the top of each level, and either avoid or defeat enemies along the way using the patented rainbow attack. There are four levels per island, and a boss battle awaits before the player proceeds to the next island. The third island is called Monster Island, and it is the epitome of a Halloween-themed set of levels.
Enemies on Monster Island include little ghosts, wolf-men, Draculas, bats… you name it. The platforms to climb here include castles and other medieval masonry, and the level boss is a huge Dracula that shoots mini bats your way. Absolutely charming in looks and sporting killer gameplay and an appropriate difficulty curve, this game is a winner.
The 8-bit visuals are clean and crisp, but definitely look crusty when compared to the Saturn’s best 2D… but fret not, because Taito have included a special ‘Enhanced Mode’, which introduces higher fidelity 2D graphics much more in the style of solid 16-bit visuals. The only changes in Enhanced Mode are graphical; all other elements of the game remain untouched. This is a welcome touch, as the Enhanced Mode really makes the game shine.
So, should you pump it, or dump it? Play it, or slay it? Give it a spin, or huck it into the bin? To be honest, even though only one of the seven worlds are Halloween themed, the gameplay and genuine fun factor are high enough that this should definitely feature in your Saturn Halloween rotation. Excellent.
Bug Too!
The first Bug! game was an early attempt at taking a 2D platformer and grafting a third dimension onto it, with relatively fun results. The game did well enough that SEGA of American commissioned a sequel, and in 1996, Bug Too! appeared.
The Bug! games took their level inspirations from famous motion pictures, and the reason Bug Too! is included as an Honorable Mention on our Halloween list is that one of the movies spoofed is the 1981 classic Evil Dead. Bug, or the other playable characters Superfly and Maggot Dog, work their way through a haunted world named Weevil Dead. Set at night in and around a giant castle, the level is littered with menacing black trees, bats, and all manner of Halloween-y enemies to dispatch. Aside from all his antics from his debut game, Bug can now run and even choose the order in which levels are tackled.
Perhaps crucially, developers Realtime Associates also added more 3D freedom to the game as opposed to the pre-determined paths of the first entry, and this produced additional control quirks. Because 3D games are still viewed on a flat, 2D TV screen, there are sometimes perspective problems to consider, and Bug et al. occasionally misjudge and err when jumping on enemies – a problem that didn’t exist in the original. That said, fans of the first game will likely still enjoy the sequel.
So should you play Bug Too! on Halloween? It’s a fun game, so maybe add it to the B-reel of Saturn discs to spin up, once all the A material has been sampled.
Casper
Games based on movies were a big thing during the 16-bit generation, and the trend carried over somewhat into 32-bit land. Casper was a 1995 family-friendly movie, shot as live-action and augmented with computer graphics to represent Casper and other ghosts. The concept seemed perfect to bring to a videogame, and that’s exactly what Interplay did.
The game is a 2D top-down adventure game that takes place in Whipstaff Manor and focuses heavily on puzzle solving. Aside from the Ghostly Trio, there are no real enemies to contend with here. Casper is split into three main acts centered around finding friendship tokens, finding parts for the Lazarus Machine that can bring ghosts back to life, and lastly, finding the Cellular Integrator, which is required to complete the game. The game doesn’t follow the movie’s plot per se but does maintain enough elements thereof to be familiar, especially to younger players. Indeed, the target audience of the game is such that there isn’t anything overly difficult, scary, or mature about the game, but it does make for a pleasant playthrough.
The Halloween draw here is obvious – Casper is a friendly ghost exploring (haunting?) a large spooky-ish house with many secret passages, contending with unfriendly ghosts and other supernatural goings-on. It’s a great little title to pop in when you just aren’t in the mood to hunt down Dracula or find Richter. Recommended as such.
Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition
Digital Pictures, that darling developer of the 90s, makes an appearance on our Halloween list and offers up one of their world-famous FMV titles for sacrifice! Though to be honest, despite Digital Pictures’ produce being limited to the North American market and almost exclusively derided by fans and press alike at the time, their titles have all aged far better than expected.
Corpse Killer is as Halloween a game as you could ask for. You are a Marine air-dropped onto an unknown island that makes friends with a horrendously stereotyped Rastafarian driver and a cute blonde reporter. Your mission is to stop the eccentric necrobiologist Dr. Hellman, who is creating an army of undead zombies in his island compound so that he can menace the world. The game consists of your driver taking you along various routes on the island while you shoot at zombies as the screen scrolls by. As you play, there are stronger weapons / bullets to acquire, various zombies to dispatch, and brews to drink to replenish health. In between shooting sequences, the story plays out in glorious 90s live-action FMV (Vincent Schiavelli is especially memorable as the mad scientist Dr. Hellman), and you typically have a choice to determine which route to take next. The acting is excellent though not necessarily in the way one would expect, with the B-movie vibe being deliciously strong.
The game is a joy when consumed through that lens, though it has a relatively major flaw: this shooting game doesn’t support light guns! Although this is dumbfounding, the reason may lie in that the Saturn version of this game is the ‘Graveyard Edition’ with more in-game features and options than the vanilla SEGA Mega CD / 32X CD / 3DO console versions, all of which DO support light guns. The ability to switch between bullet types would be difficult to achieve if the light gun were your only control method. As it stands, the player is left to manage an on-screen cursor via the standard control pad. Was this a wise choice, in the end? Perhaps, although intuition will make many a gamer reach for their light guns in vain.
This game should certainly be part of your Halloween Saturn play-a-palooza. It’s solid and quirky enough that you’ll have fun, and the 90s come through strongly here. It was, after all, one of the “top 20 games of the year”.
FUN FACT! Want to dive deep into the making of the game, including never-before-seen Corpse Killer footage and interviews? Watch the definitive Pandamonium documentary here!
Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams / Cotton Boomerang
Cotton 2 may be the only shmup on the list, but we’ll include Cotton Boomerang as well, as it is a remix of sorts of the first release and shares the same theme and many of the same visuals, if not the same gameplay mechanics. Both are 1 or 2 player games and both are exceptionally accurate ports of SEGA’s ST-V Titan arcade board originals.
Cotton is a hot-headed little broom-riding witch in search of a delicious willow that went missing from the castle at the heart of the Pumpkin Kingdom. Her adventures have her facing waves of evil as she tries to restore balance to the land across seven intense stages. The Saturn shines again here as the visuals are absolute 2D bliss, with resplendent castle ruins, underground lava veins, and deep ocean currents which are populated by hordes of gorgeous enemy sprites.
In addition to the standard forward shot, both Cotton games employ fighting game-like button combinations to pull off special attacks, which produce interesting effects such as trapping enemies in bubbles of magic. There are different colored crystals to collect, and these influence what elemental magic Cotton will have at her disposal. Once the player gets a handle on basic gameplay mechanics, it’s time to dive into the game’s many layers of depth. Chains and combos can be strung together for spectacular bonus points or can be exploited to replenish health by building heart containers to be grabbed. Aside from Cotton’s life meter, players should keep an eye on her magic levels, as each increase yields stronger and wider-reaching shot power.
Cotton 2 features both a Saturn and an Arcade mode, with the Saturn mode featuring graphical changes. The lush and hilly first level, for example, becomes frosty and snow-capped in Saturn mode. That underground lava cavern is suddenly a river of ice. What’s more, the game is compatible with the 4MB RAM cartridge so that all the arcade’s voice samples and sound effects can be retained. Awesome.
The game’s spooky enemies and locales – castles, chapels, pumpkin heads, skeletons with scythes – coupled with the rock-solid and ocean-deep gameplay really makes this the perfect Halloween shmup. Grab a broom (a vacuum, or even industrial squeegee will also do in a pinch) and ride like the wind against hordes of bad guys!
BONUS! Read our full Cotton 2 review here.
The Crow: City of Angels
There is perhaps few franchises as dark and as supernaturally macabre as The Crow. The 1994 movie about musician Eric Draven coming back as The Crow to avenge his and his fiancée’s brutal murders became a cult classic, and the real-life death of actor Brandon Lee perhaps added to the film’s mystique over the years. Naturally, a sequel emerged in 1996, subtitled City of Angels. The film tanked, and it is upon this critically panned sequel that the game is based on.
At its core, the game is a 3D beat-em-up that sees the payer take on the role of the titular Crow character. As the mysterious and dangerous Crow, you work your way through static pre-rendered scene after scene, taking on poorly animated bad guys. The pre-rendered backdrops don’t look too shabby, but the 3D models laid overtop them are shockingly bad. Many of the scenes take place at night, so you’d expect dark character models with light-sourcing applied as appropriate and based on the background art, right? No, no, no. There is zero light sourcing applied here, making the characters stick out awkwardly when they don’t change color stepping out from the shadows and under a bright streetlamp. The camera changes locations as you move from zone to zone within the same scene, but it does so in a disorienting way that negatively affects combat. Lastly, all of this could be somewhat forgiven if the game controlled beautifully, but… it doesn’t. Tank controls rule the day, and not only are the Crow character’s movements robotic and unnatural, but the game is slow to respond. The computer WILL kick your butt, and your frustration will be with the control scheme as opposed to any lack of fighting skills.
The game is terrible – one of the Saturn’s worst games out of its 1100+ library. A complete mockery of the Crow property. Sure, the second movie may not have been as acclaimed as the first, but the Saturn game is a real stain even then. The game engine sucks, the game’s various elements don’t come together at all, the controls are an insult, and the difficulty level is subsequently unreasonable.
If it hasn’t been made clear yet, this game does not deserve a play in your Saturn this Halloween or any Halloween thereafter. I never, ever thought I’d write the following three words in any of my writings, but here goes… flush this turd.
Crypt Killer
Shakespeare once said “Graphics maketh not a game great, amirite?” and I think he was on to something. Games with simple or even poor visuals can still be fantastic, and there is perhaps no finer example than Crypt Killer.
Crypt Killer (Henry Explorers in Japan) is a conversion of a Konami arcade light gun game whose main draw were the pump action shotguns and up to three players at a time. The arcade game had serviceable graphics, featured branching paths and suitably varied enemies, and even had multiple endings. A home conversion seemed a no-brainer.
The Saturn disc, unfortunately, visually fares much worse than even the pedestrian arcade game. It’s a shame, because graphics are the first thing gamers see, and in this case, they are shockingly bad. Very poor draw distance, atrocious pixelization (perhaps the very worst seen in ANY Saturn game), and sprite-based monsters that scale in so close that they look Minecraft-like make for a bad-looking game. The shame here is that the game plays on rails, meaning the developers should have been able to make the 3D look really good. Wa waaaa.
Underneath the repulsive visuals lies a solid game, however. The Saturn must make do with using the Stunner / Virtua Gun instead of a pump action shotgun, and there can only be two players instead of three but look past these two points and the rest works just fine. There are six levels to choose from and a playthrough consists of completing three. Further, each level has two points which offer branching paths, meaning there are many, many ways to play through and complete this particular adventure. The level designs are interesting and won’t get overly boring too fast, and blasting skeletons, mer-monsters and magicians can be a ton of fun.
Good Halloween game? Yes, it is! But – and this is a big BUT – one must first get past the truly awful visuals. Just remember that good ol’ Shakespeare saying, and you’ll do all right.
D
Games like D prove that the medium can just as rightly be considered art as anything else.
In D, you play as Warp’s digital actress Laura Harris, hurrying to the Los Angeles hospital run by her father. Something is horribly wrong because Dr. Harris has gone on a killing spree and has taken some hospital staff hostage. The situation is grim. Laura enters the hospital, only to have… something unknown pull her into an alternate dimension. She finds herself in a dining hall in an unknown castle.
What follows is two hours of Laura’s life, in real time. She must solve all riddles and reach her father before two hours pass in the real world, or the game is over. The game makes use of the Saturn’s internal clock to keep track of real time, so there is no cheating or pausing the game. When the time comes to change discs (it’s a 2-disc game), the game writes a small save file to the Saturn’s memory which it then erases once gameplay on the second disc is started.
D is an FMV adventure and an important one at that, having served as gaming maverick Kenji Eno’s breakout title. The story is presented primarily through a first-person perspective. Clicking on certain areas of the scene triggers video sequences depicting movement from one location to the next. When Laura interacts with important objects or triggers significant events, the viewpoint switches to a dramatic third-person angle for story exposition. The video is heavily bordered and quite dark, and Laura’s model, however amazing at the time, looks dated today.
However, the puzzles are fascinating and the story is compelling. There are frightful moments, certainly, but the real pressure comes from the two-hour time limit. The extra dimension Laura was sucked into will collapse at the conclusion of the two hours regardless how far Laura gets, and the player must restart from the very beginning on their next playthrough.
Does D deserve your time? It absolutely does. The game was groundbreaking at the time, the time limit is very novel, and the story that unfolds is that of an excellent Halloween-themed psychological and paranormal thriller. It also explores some hardcore elements, including cannibalism. Recommending the game is easy but be warned: there is only one time through that the game will feel fresh and be able to deliver its full impact, so do yourself a favor and avoid looking up guides and spoilers.
BONUS: Once you’ve played the game and want more in-depth information, read our exhaustive exposé here!
Deep Fear
This was perhaps the last big SEGA production to grace the Saturn, landing in Japan in mid-1998 before hitting Europe as that region’s final game few months later. A North American version was completed but unfortunately never released, though a complete build does exist out there, on the internets. So just what is Deep Fear?
Essentially, it’s a Saturn-exclusive clone of Resident Evil, featuring the same gameplay style of 3D polygonal characters that are overlaid atop static 2D backgrounds, viewed from ‘security camera’ style angles and utilizing tank controls to move the player’s character. The story centers around a space pod that fell to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific; the US Navy dispatched a nuclear submarine which retrieved the mysterious pod. The sub then headed for the game’s primary setting: an underwater refuelling and research facility called the Big Table.
You are ex-Navy SEAL John Mayor, member of the Emergency Rescue Service. Once the sub arrives at the Big Table it goes silent and you are sent to investigate. There, you discover the crew has started to mutate into horrible monsters! The monsters are particularly superb looking, being designed by manga artist Yasushi Nirasawa.
The game plays similarly to Resident Evil but with a few twists. The player can walk / run and shoot simultaneously, and weapons are unlimited… although the oxygen in the underwater base is not. A countdown clock ticks away with the falling air levels, and shooting weapons increases the countdown speed. This adds a timing element to the game not found in Resident Evil. Like Resident Evil, the voice acting is ridiculous and the game relatively straightforward with little chance to deviate from the prescribed sequence of events, but overall, the game flows well. The FMV sequences are very nicely done as well.
A quick shout must also go to the game’s solid soundtrack, scored by Kenji Kawai. Much of a game’s mood is enhanced by the use of sound and music, and Halloween games highlight this fact especially well. The music, though sparse, has a somewhat sci-fi flavor in its creepiness and it blends the rest of the game’s elements well.
For those that have completed Saturn Resident Evil and are looking for more of the same, Deep Fear fits the bill nicely. Perhaps not as polished as Evil but delicious in its own right. Play it.
Digital Pinball: Necronomicon
Kaze were the masters of pinball games. Their two contributions to the genre fell under their ‘Digital Pinball’ series, and included Last Gladiators and Necronomicon. While the first game enjoyed a worldwide release thanks to Time Warner Interactive, the spooky sequel is locked to Japan.
Necronomicon features three gorgeous tables to play that perfectly fit the Halloween bill. We’re talking tables called Cult of the Bloody Tongue, Arkham, and Dreamlands. The tables are all inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American author of fantasy and horror fiction, and can be played as standalone experiences or via a ‘realms mode’. Realms mode has the player tackle the tables one by one as they follow the story of a monk who has discovered the text of the Necronomicon. The monk is slowly being driven mad as he reads the evil book, and his visions are the pinball games you play. The soundtrack is an excellent gothic heavy metal, with a couple of tracks written by John Petrucci of Dream Theater.
The game itself is the finest pinball game on the Saturn. The physics engine is excellent, the table viewpoint is logical and easy to follow, the graphics display at a smooth 60 frames per second and in the Saturn’s high-resolution mode. As a bonus, despite the game only releasing in Japan, all of it – from the menus to the options to spoken dialogue – is fully in English. Beautiful.
Necronomicon is an easy recommendation for Halloween. The action is realistic, can get chaotic when there are multiple balls in play, and the theme is satisfyingly evil. Go on… play it. It’s really great.
Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight (a.k.a. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
Look… everyone knows that the Saturn port is not the best way to experience Symphony of the Night, but at the end of the day this is a Saturn page for Saturn fans… so we will play the game on the Saturn! Plus, the game plays much better with a Saturn controller.
Only released in Japan, this absolute gem has seen a fan translation so that it can be enjoyed in English. Play as Alucard, Richter, or Maria as you assault Dracula’s gorgeous 2D sprite-work castle. Gain new weapons and abilities to unlock more and more of the castle and unravel the mystery of Dracula’s reappearance in the world of mortals.
The locations in Dracula’s castle are fantastic, from the quaint Long Library to the haunting Royal Chapel; from the utterly creepy Abandoned Pit to the Catacomb, to the demonic Underground Garden (one of two Saturn-exclusive levels!). The gorgeous pixel art and scrolling parallax is a sight to behold. Each level is accompanied by absolutely outstanding music. Michiro Yamane’s compositions range from the eerie Crystal Teardrop to the rock-like The Tragic Prince, and of course, the absolutely sensational classic piece Dance of Pales. The audiovisual punch is quite something else.
The enemies deserve special mention, too. There are hundreds of unique foes, from simple shambling skeleton guards to phantom skulls to ectoplasm. The variety on offer is truly stunning. Beast designs draw upon many world mythologies and augment this creepy adventure even more with a touch of authenticity. There’s nothing quite like coming into the very top of the royal chapel, with its intricate pane glass windows, and having the spectral sword rise to attack you with its spinning implements of death. The major enemies of the game are equally noteworthy, from the dark priest Shaft to Death himself, complete with scythe.
Another of the adventure’s many hooks is the deep equipment and accessory system. Each item has its pros and cons and may confer various special abilities, and equally wonderfully, many items’ names come straight from legends and myths. Have you managed to find the Nauglamir, or the fabled Crissaegrim?
The game has picked up a somewhat mixed reputation because it is a mediocre port of the PlayStation game, and suffers from occasional slowdown, especially in the inverted castle. Don’t let that stop you from enjoying the Saturn version of this game, however. If you must, play both versions.
Look – the game controls wonderfully, the medieval-gothic themes are beautifully represented, the music is phenomenal, and the bestiary is vast and varied. Some rightly consider this the pinnacle of the Castlevania series, and it is a pleasure and a joy to enjoy the game on the Saturn.
Enemy Zero
Oh Kenji Eno, how the gaming world misses you! A true maverick and pioneer, both of Eno’s Saturn efforts to see release in Western regions make our Halloween list this year.
Like most of Eno’s games, Enemy Zero is unique and sees Laura hunt down enemies that cannot be seen, relying only on sound to detect them. The fear factor draws on the fact that we tend to fear what we cannot see – sort of like being afraid of the dark. Some actions, such as recharging your weapon, have been purposely made slow, so that as you reload, you can hear enemies coming closer and closer. This works surprisingly well to heighten the fear factor.
The story is – as to be expected from Eno – somewhat bizarre and creepy. Laura finds herself aboard a space station with few inhabitants, and the unseen aliens are slowly killing everyone around her. It is up to her to unravel the mystery before she is turned to goo.
Eno’s company Warp really favored FMV as the medium of choice to drive their games, and Enemy Zero is (mostly) no exception. The space station is laid out as a set of rooms interconnected by corridors. Laura is safe while in rooms, and these play like traditional FMV games in that clips play out in response to players clicking on various items, etc. In the corridors is where the enemies lurk and here the game is in fully rendered 3D. These sections are where the ‘action’ is, and where the fear manifests. Movies sometimes contain scenes in which a character is frantically fumbling, trying to reload a weapon, whilst the ‘bad guy’ comes closer and closer… this is the fear effect in Enemy Zero.
Of course, there are plot twists as the story progresses, and these help break up (or indeed, enhance) the game’s mood. Also worthy of high praise is the game’s music, composed by British pianist Michael Nyman. There is an incredible story of Kenji Eno basically holding Michael Nyman hostage in a hotel room in Japan for hours to get him to agree to write the score, and our benefit here is a truly special soundtrack to accompany the game. Laura’s Theme, a piano single, is especially mood-setting.
Like a few other games on our list, Enemy Zero isn’t for everyone, nor is it without a few flaws, and yet it is a fresh and unique Saturn experience. This is a good Halloween choice!
Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster
What could be scarier than a PAL-exclusive point-and-click adventure? Jokes aside, Frankenstein was released for PC and Mac in 1995, and Interplay saw fit to port the game to the Saturn and release it in Europe only, in what was the game’s only appearance on consoles.
You play the role of Phillip, a scientist that was hanged for the alleged murder of his daughter Gabrielle. You have been reanimated by the mad Dr. Frankenstein, and you must search his castle for clues that will help you regain your memory. As the game progresses, the plot twists and turns several times, from finding that the mad doctor has been working on a cream to rejuvenate damaged tissue (no doubt a ploy to disrupt the lucrative beauty industry), to finding out that the judge that sentenced you may in fact be in cahoots with the evil doctor, to supply him with bodies for his unholy experiments.
Gameplay consists of point and click fare quite similar to Myst, however there is significantly more animation in the mix. Torch flames will shimmer, flags blow on the wind, that sort of thing. The scenes are not full motion video… rather, they are still scenes and movement from scene to scene is effected by clicking on where you want to go, creating a slideshow of transitions, just like in Myst. When characters such as the mad doctor are in a scene, they themselves are video clips superimposed over the static backgrounds. There are ambient sounds in your surroundings, and you yourself will occasionally make a comment or remark about the situation at hand. Unfortunately, the game does not appear to be compatible with the Saturn mouse.
Does the title deserve your attention this Halloween? As a Halloween themed game, it obviously fits the bill, but as a gameplay experience, its appeal is limited to fans of old-school PC point and click adventures more than anyone else. The rest of us should approach with caution.
Gex
The Saturn was blessed with many ports from the outgoing 3DO, including the 2D platformer Gex. Platformers and mascot characters were very important in the 16-bit generation, and this carried over to the beginning of the 32-bit era. As such, we saw games like Clockwork Knight, Bug!, Blasto, Bubsy, and so on, and their games varied in quality. Fortunately, Gex was on the higher end of the spectrum.
Gex is included in our list because the game’s first world – that’s four levels plus a boss zone – is set in a cemetery. A full moon looks on as Gex traverses gravesites, headstones, guillotines… the works! The level features nice use of darker greens and blues, and the lime-green Gex and the golden fly icons he collects really pop against the backgrounds. As the game’s first level, the layout is conducive to trying out all of Gex’s moves, including his ability to smash through walls with his potent tail whip, and to climb up walls. The enemies aren’t too difficult here, allowing players to enjoy the level’s art and music.
Most platformers of the era were silent protagonists, but Gex regularly dishes out one-liners to lend him some character. Voiced by comedian Dana Gould, these one-liners are mostly cheese and they do grate after a short while. Novel for the time, but not the game’s strength.
Featuring a total of four worlds to conquer, Gex takes a fair time to complete. A password save thankfully tracks your progress.
Gex is a fun platformer, and with the first level fitting very nicely into the Halloween theme, is quite worthy of some playtime this time of year.
Haunted Casino
Ooohh, one of a handful of Red Label / Mature games to feature on our list! Haunted Casino is a Japanese exclusive 1996 release and it’s a curious fusion of FMV exploration and gambling games… oh what the hell. The main ‘draw’ here is the impressive amount of very nicely drawn hentai nudity, earning the game its red label.
This game can be broken down as follows: you arrive at the Haunted Casino which appears suitably Halloween-y inside and out – indeed, you are greeted by a small flying imp. You must then move around the casino halls searching for items such as keys. This moving around is accomplished via grainy and heavily bordered FMV sequences. The items you find will grant access to the various gambling games, of which there are shockingly few: only three table games (poker, blackjack included) and a spinning wheel game. When you sit at a table to play, the implement changes from dark and grainy FMV to a truly well-done hand-drawn dealer of the female persuasion, who plays with you. She – and it is always a She; there are seven Shes in the game – speaks a curious mixture of English and Japanese as you play the game. If you are doing well, the flying imp who acts as a host / maître d’ flies up and uses some kind of pervert magic to remove parts of the dealer’s clothing. There are three states of undress: ‘normal’, barely anything on, and completely nude. Once you ‘defeat’ a dealer and she has been fully undressed, she is sucked into a black vortex and turned into a playing card that you can collect.
Look, the gambling games are few and aren’t even super well implemented; the AI can be really tough at times. The FMV when moving between games is relatively bad and completely unnecessary, to be honest. The ‘exploration element’ could be completely done away with. But the hentai scenes are of quite high quality.
Should this be part of your Halloween playlist? The game is a nice representation of the oft-weird Japanese culture that the Saturn seemed so dialled in to. Play the game, by all means… just do so knowing that you’re going in for the hentai and not the tacked-on gambling games or awful FMV movement clips.
Horror Tour
This is a point-and-click style horror adventure, first released on PC and Mac and then ported exclusively to the Saturn in Japan as its sole console appearance. Titled Zeddas: Servant of Sheol for the PC and Mac English release, the game employs a first-person perspective in a small video window, with a HUD-style frame with action buttons to click.
The game takes place almost entirely in the maze-like Rodvydel Castle. The castle was taken over by the evil Zeddas, whose spells have turned the castle invisible to human eyes, and it’s your job to set things right! Moving around is accomplished by clicking on a sort of digital d-pad that is fixed just below the small video window, but thankfully, the game is compatible with the Saturn Mouse for ease of play. Load times are a bit on the annoying side as are the pixelated visuals.
The Halloween theme checks out easily here, but unfortunately the game is difficult to recommend. There are far better point and click adventures on the Saturn, and the lack of English is an impediment here. Proceed at your own risk.
The House of the Dead
One of the last Saturn releases in the West, The House of the Dead is a conversion of AM1’s Model 2 arcade thriller. Want a good light gun game to slice and dice zombies this Halloween? Right this way…
You play the role of agents Rogan and G and attempt to locate and take down the nefarious Dr. Curien, rumored to be conducting terrible experiments on living subjects. The game can be played by one or two players, and controllers can be used… but two Stunners / Virtua Guns is definitely the way to go! The action is intense and the game features multiple paths through each level, ensuring that a fair few playthroughs must occur in order to see all that the game has to offer. Each level culminates in an exciting boss fight.
Enemies are varied, overwhelmingly zombified, and can attack from any corner. The infamous Samsons wield chainsaws as they rush towards you, while Drakes are dressed in detective trench coats and hurl knives. The non-human foes range from slime slugs to giant mutant frogs to terrifying millipedes. Dispatching enemies produces spurts of green blood, but a cheat code will turn the green to crimson and sort us out. The action is generally fast and furious, meaning players will be busy blasting the undead rather than admiring the impressive scenery in Dr. Curien’s Mansion… which, for this Saturn game, is sadly a good thing.
The game’s main glaring flaw is unfortunately the visuals. In the arcades, the game pushed SEGA’s Model 2 board to its limits and produced eye-popping visuals. The conversion team, running up against production deadlines, left in vast amounts of low-resolution textures in the game. This results in awfully pixelated graphics which, for an on-rails game, is almost inexcusable. Worse, the game pauses at several points mid-level to load more data. The Virtua Cop games were never this rough and these flaws are an enormous elephant in the otherwise wonderful conversion room.
The game is great fun, especially around Halloween. Shame about the visuals. It’s a strange fate that of the three Halloween-themed Saturn light gun shooters, two suffer from horrendous visuals while the third, while looking much better, isn’t light gun compatible.
Lunacy
The final System Sacom FMV adventure on the Saturn, this is perhaps the state of the art of FMV games in general.
You are Fred and you come to in Misty Town’s jail cell with no recollection of who you are or how you got there. Oddly, making your way out of jail isn’t too difficult. Once out, you realize that the town ruler, a decidedly un-charming Lord Gordon, is quite obsessed with finding a place called the City of Moons. Instead of killing you, he takes an interest in you because you happen to have a strange mark tattooed on your forehead – a mark only given to those that have been to the City of Moons! Of course, you remember nothing, and the mystery is yours to resolve.
The adventure unfolds through FMV sequences, with interesting if creepy characters for Fred to interact with. As you’d expect, characters are varied, each with their own talents, issues, and bits of information for you to tease out. The town, bathed in perpetual twilight, has a palpable feeling of dread to it; there is little mirth in its inhabitants. A recurring theme carries over from the previous two Mansion of Hidden Souls games, but we’ll leave the details for you to figure out.
System Sacom did a good job of developing some good mechanics for an FMV game. For instance, important conversations can be replayed in Fred’s memory (i.e., via the pause menu), the transitions between FMV sequences are quick and smooth, and the graphics overall are quite clean and pixelization is kept to a minimum. Unlike many other FMV games, the actual walking sequences move at a brisk pace. The game’s soundtrack is surreal and complements the setting and story perfectly.
In a way, the game harkens back to old pen and paper adventure games. It is quite advisable to write down clues from bits of conversation with the Misty Town inhabitants, and it helps to draw a map of the town as you move about it, so as not to get lost.
Is this a good game to play on Halloween? Yes, it is. Like many FMV games, it’s more of a story driven experience than a straight adrenaline rush, but those who persevere with it will be rewarded with a unique experience. The FMV adventure genre may be dead, but at least on the Saturn, it bowed out in style.
The Mansion of Hidden Souls
This game is often dismissed as a relic from the bygone era of FMV adventures, but for those looking for something more cerebral to spin up on the Saturn, this one is great. The second of an unofficial trilogy of System Sacom FMV titles, it followed Mansion of Hidden Souls on SEGA Mega CD (actually a prequel of sorts) and was succeeded by Lunacy / Gekka Mugentan Torico.
You find yourself in a mansion inhabited only by butterfly spirits that can take on human form, with whom you can chat – and they are relatively normal people, albeit all with some sort of issue in their past and agendas in their present. The moon has unexpectedly turned blood red, and as the mansion gets its mystical power from a bright white moon, it’s up to you to investigate. Walking is accomplished by pressing a direction and watching an FMV clip as your character moves in your chosen direction, making it akin to an FMV walking simulator, or perhaps an animated puzzle. The video is full screen and, although sometimes grainy, isn’t too bad in the end. The mansion itself has a mostly dim, creepy vibe to it – perfect for Halloween.
Checking out the various rooms, listening to each spirit’s lamentations, and picking up the odd item is the way to progress in the game, underscoring that the story is the main draw as opposed to strict gameplay. Heck, you can even go have your future read by Jossie, who uses Tarot cards! But be warned… you must listen to what the spirits say and pick up on the clues they sometimes casually drop, because it is possible to hit some unpleasant ‘game overs’ in the course of your adventure and have to start again.
This early Saturn title is relatively cheap, common, and doesn’t take too long to work through. If you tire of blowing zombies’ heads off or shooting demons while riding a broom, then give this game a try. The recommendation here is to resist the temptation of looking up guides on the internet, as once the game is spoilt, it is spoilt forever.
Monster Slider
Surprise! A puzzle game sneaks onto our list of Saturn Halloween games! This Japan-only title for one or two players is not well known but is nevertheless a fun entry in the puzzle game genre.
The ridiculous story revolves around a village girl, Claudia, falling in love with Dracula. She vanishes inside Dracula’s castle and her younger sister Nina vows to rescue her. As you’d expect, Dracula has set up his best puzzle-players as a defence against attack. Nina must mercilessly mow down successively more brilliant puzzlers before confronting Dracula himself and rescuing her sister.
The game’s concept is somewhat like Columns in that colored diamonds fall in twos and must be arranged in at least groups of three to be cleared. The twist is that the floor is slanted, and blocks that hit the bottom of the screen will then slide towards the slant until they reach a barrier. This creates opportunity not only to create combos but also chains, where a block positioned on the right might slide left to create a grouping of three, and so on. Combos and chains send garbage blocks (skulls, in this case) onto the opponent’s board, but beware! The board’s slant can change directions and your carefully laid blocks could go sliding in the opposite direction. This fresh approach keeps the game interesting, and as is usual for games of this type, Monster Slider is infinitely replayable.
The visuals and music are suitably ‘cute’. The enemies particularly look somewhat deranged. In that sense, the game reminds of Baku Baku Animal – super-deformed CG characters and simplistic visuals. Yet as a puzzle game, none of this matters in the end, as it’s all about the puzzle action. Here, Monster Slider is a winner.
If you want to take a break from downright scary games or cerebral FMV adventure, give Monster Slider a try! You’ll remain in the Halloween mood but in a happy, non-threatening manner.
Mr. Bones
There are some who love this game, and then there is our very own TraynoCo.
Mr. Bones is an American production and the concept of one mad E. E. Annunziata of Ecco and Kolibri fame. The story is pure Halloween: the evil scientist DaGoulian wants to ensure that good survives and the best way to do that is, of course, to do your part to make evil thrive! The scientist starts to play his alchemomagical drums and summons the power of skeletism: a type of magic that keeps a skeleton’s bones together. Naturally, an army of skeletons rises from the grave to serve DaGoulian.
However, something has gone wrong. Mr. Bones is a reanimated skeleton whose heart was so pure that he simply cannot be made evil. DaGoulian becomes aware of Señor Bones and sends his army after him.
Gameplay is… everything and anything, really. Each level is a different concept in execution. The game’s opening level is a 2D platformer that sees Mr. Bones try to escape the graveyard, with other skeletons giving chase. Other levels see our skeletal hero jamming out some tunes, trying to turn evil skeletons to the ‘good side’. Think of it as a collection of mini-games; you will love some and loathe others. All-told, there is a lot of gameplay here and some awesome, bizarre, and crazy concepts. This game is a Halloween trip, for sure!
Mr. Bones also features sensational music, as the guitar bits were recorded by Ronnie Montrose. It features in several places in the game and really elevates the production values a few notches.
Will you like Mr. Bones? Think of it as a mad surrealist artist’s concept of a videogame. Lots of ideas and varying levels of execution come together to form either a jumbled mess or a brilliantly innovative package. Will you love it or loathe it? As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
EXTRA! Mr. Bones was voiced by Fitz Houston, who recently gave us a super-cool shout-out. Check it out here!
Phantasm (Phantasmagoria)
A Sierra game that released on PC and Saturn only, Phantasm holds a curious Saturn record: the game is a full 8 CDs large! It is a point and click adventure that is part still scenes superimposed with filmed actors and part full FMV sequences – quite similar in style to the Frankenstein game, although with a lot more FMV in total. Unfortunately, the superposition of live characters over still scenes is a bit cheesy-looking as characters have a distinct outline around them, which ruins the illusion that they are part of the backdrop. The game released in English on PC and was then dubbed for the Japan-only Saturn release, but the Japanese dub has been ripped out and the English dialogue re-inserted, in 2022. The game is arguably better for it, as the spoken English perfectly matches lip movement from the original footage. In Japan, the game is called Phantasm whereas the English version is named Phantasmagoria.
The plot sees the protagonist, mystery novelist Adrienne Delaney, buy an old mansion on a private island in New England. Almost immediately upon moving in, she begins to experience terrifying nightmares, and supernatural occurrences begin to happen all around her while she is awake. The story continues until she must confront the spirit of a previous owner of the mansion, who was infamous for practicing black magic.
The production values of the game were miles ahead of their time. A large cast of 25+ actors took part in the filming, and aside from real locales, the game features over a thousand pre-rendered spaces.
The game is controlled by pointing and clicking an on-screen cursor to advance the story. The PC version contained a large HUD; this is missing in the Saturn version and a menu must be opened to access various options. This trade-off facilitates a larger, nearly full-screen video window. Overall, the game is much more enjoyable for Western players now that English dialogue has been patched in.
This is another example of a genre that saw nearly no official releases in the West. The story is complex and mature, the tropes are perfect for the season, and the game has 8 CDs, damnit!! Play away, you won’t regret it much.
Resident Evil
Not the first ever survival horror videogame, but THE breakthrough title that blazed a trail for a deluge of sequels and ‘inspired by’ titles. Capcom’s thriller made its debut on the PlayStation (boo!) in 1996 before crawling over to the Saturn the following year, courtesy of programming house Nextech. The game centers around a highly specialized ops force being summoned to investigate very mysterious happenings in Racoon City. The STARS team is forced to take refuge in a creepy mansion overnight and almost immediately find themselves facing a threat they were completely unprepared for.
The game, best played with the lights off, is famous for being able to draw out a persistent, palpable, and visceral sense of fear in the gamer. The implementation of dramatic, static camera angles purposefully gives some scenes a very short overall outlook, bringing home more of the dread of not knowing what danger lurks around the corner. The mysterious, dimly lit mansion surroundings and complete lack of inhabitants (living ones, at least) and sparse use of background music accentuate the overall atmosphere. First-time players will have no idea why things aren’t what they seem in the mansion, and each creepy discovery thickens both the fear at hand as well as the distrust that develops between STARS team members, who frequently split up. The player is also heavily restricted in how often to save the game or indeed how many items to carry, continually demanding stressful inventory management and gameplay decisions that folks didn’t often have to make in contemporary titles.
The classic fright moments of the early portions of the game – namely, players coming upon the very first zombie as it feasts on Kenneth’s flesh, and the were-dogs crashing through the windows in the narrow corridor – are as satisfying as ever and well worth a re-visit at Halloween time. Lastly, the combination of B-movie voice acting and the trope of characters making horrendously bad decisions (We’re trapped in a zombie infested mansion! Oh well, let’s split up!) keeps the player on the edge of their seat. With two characters’ stories to play through and various ‘surprises’ along the way, this is a perennial favorite and a great way to spend some quality Saturn time over Halloween.
BONUS: Check out our full-length Resident Evil review here.
Skeleton Warriors
Based on the short-lived 1994 Landmark Entertainment cartoon series, Skeleton Warriors is an oft-forgotten Saturn game that tells the tale of Prince Lightstar and his big-‘ol Starsword. As the handsome young prince, your task is to track down and fell the evil Baron Dark, who possesses half of the Lightstar Crystal needed to run Luminicity.
This is primarily a left-to-right hack ‘n slash game utilizing pre-rendered graphics, with the gimmick being that skeletons that are defeated drop a heartstone crystal. Collect the crystal to give the Prince ammo for a crystal-shot, but beware – take too long and the heartstone will reunite with the defeated skeleton and reanimate them! Animations are fluid if not somewhat unnatural, the combat is competent, and the music is nice. Indeed, the smooth scrolling of the on-screen proceedings and the smart use of colors initially makes the game look remarkable. There are also bonus 3D sections, where the medieval Lightstar jumps on a high-tech hover-speeder and collects bonuses, because of course he does. However, the graphics in these sections are far rougher and suffer from a so-so framerate. This is jarring when transitioning between gameplay styles.
There are a fair few levels to get through, but the game commits a common cardinal sin that so many 2D adventure games of the time were guilty of: not having any save functionality. The obvious problem is that the game requires a time commitment to complete, and unfortunately, the game is very monotonous. The average player is bound to get bored very quickly here as most levels include the same hack, slash, rinse, repeat. Hack and slash can be incredibly fun – see Streets of Rage or Guardian Heroes – but Skeleton Warriors just falls flat. Perhaps viewers of the cartoon will find the game’s theme enough to keep them going, but most of us simply won’t.
As a Halloween game, it is relatively thematic, but you could do a lot better on the Saturn. It isn’t a disaster, but if the games on this list range from eerily contemplative to adrenaline / fear inducing, then Skeleton Warriors is a palate cleanser.
BONUS! Read the definitive SHIRO! review here.
Swagman
Hot on the heels of the phenomenal success of Tomb Raider, the next game to emerge from Core’s wonder-labs was Swagman. Exclusive to Europe, the game unfortunately did not make much of an impression on buyers at the time, so copies are now uncommon.
Swagman is a 2D overhead adventure, similar both in style and substance to games like Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Here, you initially play the role of Zack and eventually his sister Hannah as you try to fight off the evil Swagman, and the only way to do that is to free the Dreamflights over the course of your travels. Starting first in your house and then making your way along levels such as sewers, dark forests and the town square, you work together with your sister to defeat enemies and solve puzzles to progress.
Through the course of the game, Zack and Hannah encounter magic mirrors. When they step through them, they are whisked away to The Territories, which are Swagman’s domain. Here, they take the form of Dreambeasts and have far more offensive abilities at their disposal. This serves as a nice break from their adventures as kids, which are more of a balance between dispatching enemies and solving puzzles.
Enemies are persistent and at times tough, and truly, the only significant gripe with this title is that platforming sections involving jumps over bottomless pits are sometimes difficult to judge, due to the perspective. Gamers will also occasionally encounter slowdown, which is an oddity in a 2D Saturn game.
Special mention must once again go to the music. Those who fell in love with Tomb Raider’s classical tunes will equally enjoy the rich and atmospheric soundtrack of Swagman. Both were composed by the brilliant Nathan McCree and the game’s music is certainly a highlight of the Swagman experience.
Swagman is perhaps somewhat of a hidden gem. Much like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the game may initially fail to impress but as one persists with it, the ambience can really tug at you until you complete the adventure. It’s a solid Halloween choice!
BONUS! Read our complete review of it here!
The Coming of Dawn
Well Shiromaniacs, these are the Saturn efforts that are thematic with this most ghoulish of times. There are some absolutely paradise-quality games on this list, as well as the odd stinker. If somehow none of these games have scratched the Halloween itch for you, may we suggest a few more games that fall just on the periphery of the Halloween motif? Alien Trilogy is a somewhat dark and suspenseful first-person shooter, and a solid one at that. Ditto for Quake which sees you using the slipgates to try and prevent the powerful Quake from invading Earth. What about Baroque, a Japan-only roguelike game that puts you dungeon-crawling in dark environments? Or perhaps the Darkstalkers fighting games, featuring dark characters of various myths and legends? Depending on how far we stretch the Halloween connection, we can add more and more titles to our bag of treats.
How many of these have you played? On the off chance that you have played ALL of them, perhaps we can offer one last suggestion to spin up in your Saturn this Halloween?
Find the VCD release of Michael Jackson’s Ghosts! With a VCD card inserted (careful – some of the VCD / MPEG cards are region-locked), you too can enjoy Jackson’s masterful, nearly 40-minute music video / short film. Released in 1996, right as the Saturn enjoyed its best days in the West, Ghosts will keep you in the 90s spirit of Halloween.
Happy Halloween from all of us at SHIRO! Media Group.
A Saturn fan since the beginning, Peter plays Saturn almost exclusively. For Peter, Saturn represents a moment in time where 2D games were at their best, 3D was just rising, and fascinating gaming ‘firsts’ were commonplace. There are very few Saturn games that Peter cannot find some enjoyment in!
Fantastic write up as always Peter! I’m lucky enough to own all of these but have never heard of the MJ release, “Ghosts”. Very cool indeed! Will have to hunt one down to enjoy in my Saturn 😎