Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! Today I would like to talk about SEGA!
More specifically the Sega PC games that were released throughout the late 80s and
into the 90s and early 2000s. This is somewhat inspired by having played
through Sonic Mania recently a couple times and I just frigging love that game
and I was happy to see it on PC. I'm always happy to see Sega stuff on PC
which is why I've collected a good amount of it, so let's take a look at a
good amount of it. This is not going to be a comprehensive video of everything
Sega's released on PC or anything like that, just a selection of my collection.
And when I say PC throughout this video I'm going to be referring to the IBM PC
and compatibles even though Sega released their games on all sorts of
personal computing systems. Wspecially during the 80s like this one right here
the official Zaxxon by Sega. Rhis is from Data Soft Incorporated for the Atari
8-bit line of computers. Although this is just sort of a generic box they used for
all of their releases, as far as I can tell, here in the US from 1983 to about
1985. But let's take a look at the PC version from 1984!
Well you can kind of tell this is pretty early on in the PCs life I mean it was
still using four color CGA for one thing. The low intensity cyan and magenta color
palette which is just not very appealing at all to me. I prefer the higher
intensity one or even the warmer colors to this. Not to mention that horrible
sound, oh my word, it's just a cacophony of noise and... NOISE. But you know, the PC
didn't really have any kind of good sound at that point. It's also one of
those games that expects a 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU so
running it on anything faster is gonna make the game completely unplayable. Not
that it's very playable anyway but you know, this is just an early arcade
conversion for the PC, and really most of the conversions weren't very good at the
time. PCs weren't up to snuff yet. Let's skip ahead a bit here to 1989 with
Afterburner here, which is released by Sega. Right here they had their Arcade
Hits brand going on at the time. This one is the Amiga box but again we'll be
looking at the PC version. And yeah they actually put some screenshots on the
back here that are pretty representative of the actual game that you're gonna get
on a home computer. They a lot of times would put fake ones on here like just
photographs of the arcade machines screen and say "ah you know your
mileage may vary depending on your computer" but yeah. This one they were
actually trying to represent it pretty well so let's take a look at what you
got on the PC in 1989 from Sega.
This is definitely an improvement. For one thing you've got 16 color VGA
graphics -- yeah that's *16* color VGA. It's kind of a
weird choice but I mean. I don't know, I guess they just wanted to do it that way.
Maybe it had to do with speed because Afterburner is something you want to run
quickly. Although unfortunately they didn't get it to run very quickly as you
can see here the framerate is kind of a mess. It's just not fast enough or smooth
enough to make it a very fun version of Afterburner.
Or Afterburner 2 in this case which is the arcade update that they're basing it
on. It does feature a fascinating remix of the original levels though, you can
tell what they're supposed to be if you've played the arcade game to any
degree. But this is sort of, you know, still kind of messed with to make them work.
And as you probably notice there were no sound effects here whatsoever you just
have more awful PC speaker music. It's really repetitive and shrill but hey at
least it's better than Zaxxon. Well that's all I'm gonna show in this video
from the 80s because I really want to get ahead to the stuff I really remember.
And that is the 1990s! Sega PC games like Daytona USA Deluxe here from 1997. And
yeah I know I'm skipping ahead a bit here here because there were a lot of
things in between like '89 and '97 that Sega did. For instance they ported games like
Altered Beast in 1990 to MS-DOS and then Ecco the Dolphin and Comix Zone in
1995 or '94 for Windows 3.1. But yeah, 1997 is where they really started
diving into the PC world once again. And this is the deluxe version of Daytona
USA which it's based on the arcade one and the Saturn one and you know just the
things that they had released up to that point.
However the 'Deluxe' really does mean that it's a different game. It was also known
as Daytona USA Evolution in Japan and this is a Windows exclusive update.
Really a re-imagining. It's got new cars, a new course, and a completely new
soundtrack, and eight player multiplayer. Yeah just take a look at this!
For one thing it runs in 640x480. Which I believe maybe the arcade one
did, but the Saturn one didn't, so it's at least an increase over those home
conversions. It also has a higher draw distance and a higher polygon count
available for the cars. Unfortunately it also runs a kind of a low framerate even
on the lowest settings on a Pentium 3 and all sorts of faster things like that. It
just didn't really matter, this game does not run very well, at least with the
version I have. I know there was a Direct3D version later on, maybe it
was a patch, I don't know I haven't actually looked into it yet because I
plan to review this in the future. I'm sure that one made it run a little
bit better, but the one that they actually sold in stores it doesn't run
terribly well. And personally, I don't know, I'm just not a fan of this because
of the things like the different soundtrack and the different way that
the game plays because of that lower frame rate. It doesn't feel very "Daytona
USA-y" to me but I guess it's nice to have a couple of extra features thrown in
there. Around 1996-97 though Sega started releasing a lot of their games through
Expert Ssoftware like Virtua Fighter PC here. "Distributed exclusively by Expert,"
they say, at least here in the US for a time. This is their PC Collection as
most of them were branded, and yeah this is a version of Virtua Fighter that has
been updated and optimized for the PC in a number of ways. Now this one in
particular is just I think the Direct3D version -- actually it might not even be
that, I think this might just be software rendering still. However, there was
another version of this that they released that I have talked about before
which was optimized for this beast right here. This is a Diamond Edge 3D 2120
video card using the Nvidia NV1 chip. So this is actually Nvidia's first
video card, or the first video chipset, that they sold in retail. And yeah the
Sega had their branding and everything on this you could actually plug in an
adapter here for real Sega Saturn controllers to work on your PC. It had
sound as well which is quite interesting, and yeah there you go! It's a thing
that lets you have your own specific video acceleration for games like Virtua
Fighter on PC. Not this one, but there was an Edge 3D version.
Again I've talked about this in the past, if you'd like to see my Oddware episode
on that you can see that by clicking the little card there or there's gonna be a
link at the end of the video. While I think that's super fascinating though
let's just take a look at this first one that they've released on PC here again
Again you get up to 640x480 resolution which is a nice little increase, and the
framerate is pretty good. It's probably, I don't know, on-par from what I remember
the Saturn being. Same goes for the rest of these games, pretty much all of them
have some sort of upscaling to 640x480 and usually 16-bit color graphics as
well. Yeah overall this is just a pretty solid port. It has some speed
inconsistencies if you play this on a faster CPU -- sometimes a fight will start
off too fast and kind of increase or slow down here and there as it kind of
readjusts. I'm not really sure what that's about, but for the most part, yeah
it's totally playable and having Virtua Fighter and the PC is just neat. Or at
least it was at the time. Sega loved their 'virtua' games like this
one right here also released in '97. This is Virtua Squad from Expert and Sega and
yep -- this is a conversion of Virtua Cop the arcade game, and I don't know why
they called a Virtua Squad when they brought it over to PC but they did. And
yeah this is what you ended up getting. And you can actually see right there
that it's supporting the Diamond Edge 3D card right there in the back. So this one
also had the Diamond Edge support but this was included out of the box instead
of needing a patch or a separate version for it. Anyway let's take a look at some gameplay!
Out of all these games I'm showing here today this is the one that I spent the
most time replaying to get this footage. I just like this game. I like Virtua
Cop in the arcades, I like the arcade simplicity of Virtua Squad here, which
is really just the same basic game. In fact it's really on-par with the Saturn
version just with higher resolution and color depth once again, and some texture
smoothing and other things like that. This is looking pretty good on a
computer that's fast enough to run it. Again I don't think it's actually 3D
accelerated unless you have the Diamond Edge but still, it's very nice on a
Pentium 3. And playing lightgun games like this with a mouse I quite enjoy. The
only problem is it kind of makes it a little too easy. I don't know if that's
just me but I find that playing these with a mouse is almost trivial to a
point. At least during the first half of the game, the last half is still a little
bit tough. But anyway that's Virtua Squad, I quite like this one.
Now here's one that many people seem to be rather surprised when I show them
that it appeared on the PC officially. This is Panzer Dragoon, a very much cult
classic from the Sega Saturn. "Blast through mystical surreal worlds" yeah I
would say so, it's a pretty mystical surreal game. I like it a lot, it's
optimized for the Pentium processor and Windows 95 mmm, real time texture mapped
graphics, ooh. Let's take a look some gameplay.
Well this is just an excellent port as far as I'm concerned. Going from the
Saturn to this feels very natural, there's nothing missing. In fact there's only
things added as far as I can tell. Again you have 640x480 16-bit color, the
pre-rendered full motion video scenes look good, it controls very well with the
keyboard, no problems there at all, and it runs nicely!
It doesn't really slow down except for a few scene transitions here and there and
sometimes when things get really really hectic even on a much faster CPU than it
needs. It will slow down just a little bit, but either way I'm really happy with
this port. And it's a great way to play Panzer Dragoon, in fact I've played
through it on the PC. And it's just a rad game anyway but it's somehow even cooler
to me on a Windows 95 PC. Alright sticking with the Saturn conversions
here we have Bug! A game that isn't like particularly great in my opinion, but hey
it has real-time 3D action and a cute mascot from the time when cute mascots
were still a thing. This is a platformer that is in 3D but kind of works in
2D. It's interesting. I don't know it's not like my favorite or anything as I
said, but yeah they tailor the graphics for PC performance with four resolutions
and it has "incredible SGI rendered movie sequences" ooh yeah. Let's take a look at
some gameplay for this one.
Well once again there's some increased resolution, it runs very smoothly, runs
great actually. It plays great, I really don't have any complaints. It's pretty
much just better in every way than the Saturn version as far as I can tell. Not
that I've played it a whole lot on the Saturn but you know, like for the first
few levels on each back-to-back, and the PC game is a little bit better. It's just
too bad the *game* isn't that great! I don't know, there's nothing wrong with it
it's just like so average to me. But anyway, that's Bug! And I find that it's
fascinating that it was on the PC in a full big box release, and not just a
Saturn exclusive as I've heard it referred to before. All right, time to
move on to one of my absolute favorites in the arcade, on the PC, and just really
I don't know, anywhere. It's just a fun game. This is The House of the Dead which
was released on the PC in 1998. "It's the number one arcade hit!" That's such a cool
box, isn't it? Like it's got these embossed shiny things going on, yeah. "One
of the most popular arcade games ever," yep, I would say so. Let's just dive into
some gameplay here.
Well that's House of the Dead, you pretty much know what to expect because chances
are you have played this. Controlled with the mouse which once again makes the
gameplay just a little bit trivial if you're used to the lightgun or are very
used to the mouse, whichever. But it's still fun! The only real problem I have
is that the mouse does feel a little bit floaty, I don't know it's not as precise
feeling to move around. Almost like there's some smoothing or acceleration
or something. just compared to something like Virtua Squad which just felt dead
on to me. It really is just like the arcade game which is awesome, you play
through the whole thing as far as I can tell, all the content is there. It's solid
stuff. And it also has an exclusive PC mode which lets you select your
character to play if you want to do that. Otherwise yeah it's just House of the
Dead as you would expect and it's good stuff if you like House of the Dead and
who doesn't! Also House of the Dead 2 was on PC which
is also fantastic. This is the better game in my opinion as well, they're both
on the PC and are pretty great. Look at that box! I want to review these at some point
but yeah, House of the Dead 1 & 2 released by Sega on the PC and they're solid
man, solid. And I've almost forgot to mention you might notice that it didn't
have any of the Expert Software branding anymore which i think makes for
a nicer, just better looking box. So I guess Expert's
whatever they had going on -- a licensing agreement or something? -- with
Sega was over and they were actually releasing their own things and their own
Sega PC brand in 1998. Including the curiously packaged Sonic & Garfield
Pack from 1998. Yeah I get a lot of questions about this one any time people
see it in the background of my videos. So yeah, you do get three games here: Sonic
and Knuckles, Baku Baku Animal and Garfield. It just says Garfield, doesn't
actually say what game it is. Even on the back it just says Garfield. It does
actually say right here that it is "Caught in the Act" but we'll get to that
in a minute, that's not quite right. Anyway let's take a look at the first
one well that I want to look at in this pack which is Baku Baku.
Well I've always just assumed that it's said Baku Baku, or is it Bah-ku Bah-ku? I've
never actually thought about it until now but anyway. I'm gonna say Baku
and it's just a pretty solid port as well. I mean it's a puzzle game, there's
not really not a whole lot going on. It's got all sorts of extra features too in
the menus for arcade operator options for fine-tuning the difficulty and
whatnot. And this was actually originally Sega's first network-playable PC game,
according to them anyway, back in 1996, when this was announced or launched or
whatever. Yeah I know I'm covering it a little bit later here but that's because
it was in a compilation, I don't have the original release. Originally it predated
Daytona USA Deluxe by several months and was the first one with network support
from Sega on the PC. It's just a fun little game. Moving on though to the real
reason that I bought this specific package which is the Garfield game.
Specifically it is Garfield Caught in the Act, or really Garfield in TV Land as
they renamed it here for some reason. Caught in the Act was the Genesis game that it
was based on and then when they released it on PC it was called In TV Land.
I don't know, branding. Like what they did with Virtua Squad or something they just
wanted to change crap around for the PC. But anyway it's a fantastic port so let's
take a look.
Well right off the bat you might notice that it has a new CD audio soundtrack, so gone
are the Sega Genesis twangy tunes from its FM synthesis chip. Which i kind of miss but
I don't know, that CD soundtrack sounds pretty good. It also has a new world to
play that is exclusive to the PC version and in fact all of the levels period are
reworked and reordered and they just kind of flow together better you don't
start off in the dracula sort of vampiric level anymore instead you start
off with the cave cat level and then move on to egypt and it's just it's all
out of order compared to the genesis one but i really do think that it's paced a
little better at least in the beginning of the game if it's not nearly as much
of a difficulty spike early on so maybe that's why they call it a TV land like
it's different than being caught in the act because the levels are a different
land of levels i'm not really sure I'm just making crap up at this point but
anyway I really like this game on the genesis and I definitely want to cover
this at some point I'm still looking for its original big box before I review it
and lastly in this pack let's take a look at the Sonic and Knuckles
collection and yeah as the name implies this is a collection of all of these
Sega Genesis cartridge configurations for Sonic 3 Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic
3 & Knuckles they're all represented here and they're in one package you can
select them from a menu which is pretty cool so let's take a look at how this
plays
well as you might expect Sega pretty much knew what they were doing at this
point the look and feel of it is spot-on as far as I can tell it just feels like
a Sonic game except you're playing it on a PC possibly with a keyboard which is
interesting but in a way I kind of prefer it because I always played
platformers on the PC as a kid jazz jackrabbit Commander Keen Duke Nukem etc
etc so I'm quite used to it and it feels good to me unfortunately the audio is a
mixed bag the sound effects are pretty low quality and the music is either FM
generated or general MIDI depending on what you choose and the options
well the FM can be kind of close to the Genesis depending on the chip that's on
your sound card the general MIDI music is using a wave table sense and that is
MIDI sonic music I mean you know it's kind of strange that that is officially
made by Sega at this point it's not just like fans recreating it in MIDI format
now these are actual MIDI Tunes for Sonic 3 Sonic and Knuckles and whatnot
it's interesting if nothing else alright moving on to 1999 and a half well yeah
this is a game this is Sonic R and I have a confession to make I used to
enjoy this it was my first Sonic game on the PC I never had a Sonic game on PC I
knew there were some of them but honestly I never saw that like the Sonic
and Knuckles collection and stores when it was affordable by the time it was
affordable it was like out of the stores and this was in stores and was on
discount anyway whatever I played it and I liked it because it was Sonic and it
was 3d let's take a look at some gameplay
all right well other than some ugly menus like seriously I don't know what
happened with the scaling of the menus they're hideous but other than that it's
a decent Saturn port of Sonic are the came isn't great it's kind of horrible
in fact it makes me kind of sick to play now but it's a decent port
it's got enhanced visuals the frame rate is pretty smooth I mean it runs at least
as good as the Saturn but definitely better in most cases and of course there
is the soundtrack mmm that CD audio soundtrack I hate it I love it yet I
hate it and I hate to love it I don't know I'm not a superstar
when y'all all right that's enough of that let's
move on to more sonic our from the sonic action pack here this is a yeah I've got
more compilations in these later years because the individual releases it can
be kind of hard to find nowadays but yeah this is one that I found at a
goodwill years ago and yeah it comes with Sonic R and the Sonic and Knuckles
collection once again so we won't be looking at those we're gonna be looking
at Sonic CD here which was one of those that once again it's because it's in a
compilation it was released many years before this I'm not sure when exactly I
think 97 but yeah let's take a look at Sonic CD and the PC
supersonic
dude that is good stuff this is the only Sega CD port that I'm showing here today
and I wish there were more of them on PC if this is any indication it's just
really good it plays very well I think the sound effects are better than what
was in the Sonic and Knuckles collection and same goes for the music largely
because it's a CD audio soundtrack so you can get all the sonic boom that you
want they just left it the same and it's good stuff man it's really good stuff
plus you get faster load times you don't have to deal with as slow of a CD drive
as you had on the Sega CD which is great so yeah you just get to go to the future
in the past and zoom around and do all the things really fast that you can with
Sonic on the PC with whatever controller you want different resolutions which
scale quite nicely especially on a CRT I mean this is just brilliant and I played
through the entirety of Sonic CD once on the PC it was great I had no problems
highly recommended all right one last one we're gonna take
a look at today and that is Crazy Taxi hey released in 2002 this is very
similar to the Sega Dreamcast port and I have covered it before in review form
but let's go over it just a little bit here starting with some gameplay
which as I mentioned in my review runs a little bit slower and it has a new
soundtrack which I am not fond of you know it's it mentions it as a selling
point on the back of the box it's like oh yeah look it's rockin soundtrack with
the brand-new songs you know but I don't want brand new songs I wanted the
friggin offspring it at least still has the original licensed brands in-game all
the stores and whatnot KFC and Levi's or whatever but it's just not the same
without the offspring of course the bigger problem is the shoddy performance
that really kills this version of the game regardless of the hardware you run
it on it runs slower than that 60fps and sometimes really slows down for
seemingly no reason and I don't know I don't get it there is a version on Steam
that runs a whole lot better but again it's got some remixed stuff that you
different soundtrack once again all the ingame branding is gone is there's
really no perfect port of Crazy Taxi to the PC so you have to stick to the
dreamcast or surprisingly the mobile phone version is better than this so I
don't know man what they were really doing it's
unfortunate because I love Crazy Taxi but that's what you got in 2002 well
that's all I've got for this particular LGR episode on Sega PC conversions and
ports and adaptations of course there are more once again this is not a
comprehensive video and I'm no expert on everything Sega on the PC or any other
platform for that matter but I just like exploring these and I think they're
fascinating and they did a whole lot more - of course like the smash packs
here this is volume 2 that's playing and it released games like Sonic the
Hedgehog 2 for the first time on the PC at least officially them you know there
were emulators of course that really did a number I guess on certain companies in
the late 90s and early 2000s and then you ended up seeing a lot of official
emulations like these showing up on the PC at that point I think that's a whole
nother fascinating topic to cover now of course Sega is still releasing emulated
versions of their games on the PC today through Steam and whatnot and even iOS
and Android but it's a little different from what
some of those were that I was showing from the 90s which were like PC
adaptations let me know what you think though what are some of your favorite PC
ports of Sega games and maybe let me know some of the ones that I didn't show
here maybe you'd like to see in the future or even if you like this kind of
video at all maybe you'd like to see some other companies covered I think
Midway would be a fascinating one for instance they did a lot of really
interesting arcade ports to the PC that many people don't even realize were
thing but anyway if you did enjoy let me know and thanks for watching
well that ended up being longer than I anticipated but I enjoyed making it so I
hope that you enjoyed watching and if you did hear some others I've got new
videos going up every Monday and Friday as well so you could you know do YouTube
things if you want to and as always thank you very much for watching
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