I’m Kinglink and last month I joined Retroachievements as an official developer, which means I can make achievement sets for pretty much whatever I want and there’s minimal oversight.  It’s a great freedom for the developer and makes me feel like I’m part of a larger team or group, and that means I can try to develop interesting achievement sets. 

But that’s not the end, it opens up a lot of doors, and one of those doors is the ability to participate in what’s known as DevJams. DevJams are a way to focus on a single system, especially systems that never had an official launch on the site, and try to work together to develop as many achievement sets for those games. 

As this video comes out it’s the Sega Saturn’s turn, and honestly… I don’t have much to say about the Saturn, well I can say one thing, I think I’ve only ever seen one or two Sega Saturns if that and I’m definitely sure I’ve never seen one actually set up or running.   That’s not super surprising, the console never sold well, like two million units in America.  And the fifth generation was dominated by the PlayStation and even after that the N64 was everywhere, so I’m not surprised. 

But I don’t want this to be a discussion of the Sega Saturn, a console I’ve really never seen, this is more a discussion of the games, and I have two amazing titles to talk about, there are technically three games in this video though.  

Let’s start with a big confession.  I’m not a fan of the original Elevator Action, or really any of its titles.  I don’t think it’s that fun, in fact, it’s almost always frustrating, and in the arcade, it’s great the first time you play but I don’t know, I just don’t like the game. 

The sequel of Elevator Action released only in Japan was called Elevator Action Returns feels different.  Graphically this title completely blows the original out of the water.  You have three characters you can choose from.   You have really nice visuals, in fact, this looks almost as good as the arcade machine, and the controls are tight.  But it’s still Elevator Action, right?   

Well yeah, until you get to this part.   And holy crap… This is one of the best transitions in gaming that lets you know this game is not going to mess around.  The rest of this level is similar to the original game, but from here, Elevator Action Returns completely changes and just becomes exactly what it says on the title screen.  It’s a return to the pinnacle of gaming.  Elevator Action Returns has 6 awesome levels, the remaining 5 all have unique moments, and I’ve played through this game multiple times while testing but every level here is great, and having three characters that feel slightly different is a nice touch. 

At the same time, it is still an arcade game, you can beat this game in about 20 minutes if you were trying.  There’s a decent challenge to the game, and if you play by the rules of it, three continues will be tight, but before long it’ll be more than enough to beat the game on normal or even hard.  However, I will say the fourth stage does have a completely awful encounter here that feels almost like it’s impossible to beat without getting hit.  Maybe you are supposed to grenade spam. 

But still, this is a fun time, even having two possible endings and if you beat the game with a good ending, you get to play the original Elevator Action… Which still sucks.   And before someone says it was great for the time period.   Sinistar, Mario Brothers, Spy Hunter, Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, and the release of the Japanese Famicom, which would eventually be renamed the NES when it came to America two years later.   No excuses, this sucks. 

Still, I made a great set for this, and if you’re curious about what you’ll be up against. You can beat the game on Easy, but the real challenge will be beating the game on Normal and then Hard difficulty,  Beat the first level without taking any damage, pretty simple actually, and then beat each of the rest of the levels without losing a life.  Beat the game with all three characters, without a continue.  Earning a million points, using a jump kick, which is the best way to kill enemies.  Ultraviolence mode, and then a variety of special challenges such as level-based ones, or just not using bombs or cautions.  It’s a pretty solid list of achievements, and this is honestly a great game that I feel a lot of people don’t know about, so I hope some people will check it out.

Admittedly, this was released only in Japan and even if it wasn’t it’s become popular enough that… yeah the prices for this one are insane, but find a way to check this title out, and if you want to check the Retroachievements, they’re going live as this video is posted, all of these achievements are.  

This brings us to the second game I worked on and this one is probably a little more well-known.  If you can’t tell by the little you’ve seen on the screen, it’s Virtua Cop.  Possibly one of Sega’s best-known arcade machines has a home console version and again it’s a pretty faithful port.  Ish.  

Ok, there’s obviously one big thing missing from this title especially if you’re emulating.  You won’t have the light gun which is a huge part of what makes the Virtua Cop games actually Virtua Cop, but still, this is a great title, with a lot of fun, three levels with three sections each, tons of enemies, and a nice flow through the levels. 

This is a faithful port though and a lot of fun to play through.  There’s technically a hidden boss… well hidden as in you only get to see him if you play through the levels in the order they’re presented.   So optional is a better word.   However the bosses in this game are really fun to fight, the combat is good, and even with a mouse, this is a challenging game. 

But again this is a port of an arcade game, and while Elevator Action Returns takes 20 minutes to beat, this takes 30 minutes, though I feel that it is a bit easier, and I feel that it has less replay value.   You’ll probably get to see all three bosses within your first hour with this game and you’ll eventually be able to beat the game in a couple of continues.  And that’s if you don’t cheat, hang on to that for a minute. 

While the game looks great, this was designed as a quarter gobbler in the arcade and there’s not that much special here.  The Training mode is good for a playthrough or two but that’s about it, and I feel that it becomes brutally hard, but also not interesting for the challenge it presents.   

But let’s take a look at the achievements, and I’ll be honest this achievement set is weaker than Elevator Action Returns, but there is a reason here.  And it’s simply that the game is impossible to balance.  Let me show you quickly how to master this game.  

That’s right, Pause, Move your cursor and Unpause.  Let’s assume that I blocked that from the game, you can do that at the emulator level, with no chance of detecting it.  And ultimately this is the problem.  Any sufficiently interesting or challenging achievement is trivialized by cheaters and punishes honest players.   So ultimately, there’s a good challenge in the shooting gallery, but otherwise… enjoy the game. 

I may have lost my mind a bit when coming up with titles for the training modes.  But I stand by it. 

Though I will say there is a good ranking mode that limits you to 5 hits and is quite challenging, however, I also will point out that I didn’t attach a required rank, because there’s a video of someone who got a near-perfect run…. And didn’t take the top rank, which… Come on Virtua cop, that’s ridiculous.  In fact, I don’t even think anyone knows how it officially scores ranking mode so… yeah I’m not going to push people to that limit. 

And with that, we reach… the third game.  Ok, I’m just going to explain I like puzzle games, and the idea of a moving picture on a puzzle IS more interesting and challenging than static images.  I also wanted to tackle a third game that’s relatively fast to develop, and this is.  Also, Soviet Strike was a total pain in the butt to work on and I needed a third game… 

This is Girls in Motion volume 1, and then Japanese that I won’t try to tackle but translates to memory and memories, I don’t know. 

I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain but let me be clear about one thing.  This isn’t porn. 

Which I think is actually negative because that, at least, would have made this game a bit more interesting because as it is, this game is really tame and like you’re honestly seeing most of the game.  You do puzzles with moving images, pretty girls are on photo shoots, the image is relatively grainy and when you complete a puzzle, you get a second video, and … that’s really it. 

There’s also a calendar mode in the game so you can do a puzzle of a random girl every day of a calendar year, and it’s based on the day of the year, so it still works in 2024. But don’t tell Saturn what actually happened to it.  Being replaced by the Dreamcast so easily is not the way it deserved to go… or maybe it did.  Again not a Saturn Review. 

I question if anyone actually bought this game, if so, why?  But also I’m afraid of that answer, which I think we all know.  Still, I did enjoy working on this game simply because I like jigsaw games, and the moving picture does have some interesting challenges to it, but also with only 20 moving images, you can become a master at this game entirely too fast… and again why would you? 

Still, I made an achievement set for this one too, and I will say I think I did a great job.  You’ll have to beat all the jigsaws of course, beat them with a time limit, and beat them without making a single mistake. Play the versus mode against the computer…. And then, oh yes… The calendar mode will have people manipulating their clock date for 366 days of torture.  But I do have one achievement to show….  National Gorgeous Grandma Day.  And while every holiday here is a real holiday, what is Gorgeous Grandma’s Day?

But with that being said, that’s really what I had to talk about this time.  All three games are going live on Retroachievements as this video releases, so go check them out if you are interested in the Sega Saturn.  If you want to see more from me, click subscribe and ring that bell.  And if there are more games I should check out on the Sega Saturn or any other console, let me know in the comments.   And next Dev Jam will be on the PC Engine, also known as the Turbografx 16, as well as the CD so if there’s any games that should be checked out there, that’d be great info. 

I’ll pop up my previous videos on Dolphin for the Atari 2600 and the Dynasty Warriors 3 for the PlayStation 2.  

See you next time.