NintendoComplete | Heart of the Alien (Sega CD) Playthrough @NintendoComplete | Uploaded 2 months ago | Updated 9 hours ago
A playthrough of Virgin's 1994 action-platformer for the Sega CD, Heart of the Alien: Out of this World Parts I and II.
This video shows a continuous run through both games. Heart of the Alien begins at 21:01.
Heart of the Alien is the sequel to Eric Chahi's Another World, a 1991 Amiga hit that was released in North America in 1992 as Out of this World on computers, the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo (youtu.be/lZbNH1Wp6LE).
Interplay, the publisher of the console ports of Out of this World, had forged an agreement to produce a CD-based follow-up, and so Heart of the Alien came to be. The game landed on North American store shelves in the summer of 1994 as a Sega CD exclusive, and it remains one to this day.
The sequel is posed as direct continuation of Out of this World, so the disc bundles Heart of the Alien with an enhanced port of the first game. The extended ending from the 3DO version of OotW has been repurposed as HotA's intro sequence and serves as a bridge between the two games. (If you play OotW first, the game will continue directly into HoTA, just like Ys Books I & II did youtu.be/KrH2uvC-zog).
This version of Out of this World is a nice upgrade over the cartridge versions. Most of the slowdown has been eliminated, the animation is more fluid, the controls are snappier, and the sound quality has been improved. The speed in particular makes a huge difference. I never realized how slow the SNES game was until I played it on the Sega CD! The playthrough of the SNES version that I linked runs thirty minutes, and it took me just twenty minutes to get to there in this video.
Heart of the Alien initially feels a lot like the first game: it's a cutscene-laden, flip-screen platformer that demands memorization and pixel-perfect execution. This time, however, you play as Buddy, the friendly marshmallow dude who worked with Lester in OotW. Buddy is huge and wields an electric whip instead of a Light Phaser, but mechanically, the games feel very similar.
The art design, the flow of the action, the level design, and the storytelling are a wholly different matter. HotA prioritizes combat over puzzles, and it ditches OotW's atmosphere and environmental storytelling for a more bombastic, spectacle-laden approach.
Even though he originally gave the project his blessing, Eric Chahi blasted the quality of the final product and distanced himself from it in the media. On his website, he says that "[HotA's] concept was good but, alas, neither the animations nor the game, entirely developed by Interplay, were up to the job." Ouch. I can't say as I blame him, though. I didn't much care for the changes, either. I mean, I enjoyed it, and I think it's an alright game on its own, but it lacks OotW's special sauce.
The art is nice and the graphics are technically better, but it looks like they went with rotoscoped pixel art (and in some instances, FMV sequences) instead of vector graphics to render the characters and cutscenes. The animation is silky smooth and there's a lot more detail, but I can't help but feel that it looks cheap and cheesy in comparison. So much of it looks plain silly.
The gameplay feels like a second-rate imitation, too. Jumping is awkward and glitchy, the collision detection is frustratingly inconsistent, and most of the game's challenge stems from having to memorize which insta-kill trap lies just a few pixels from the edge of the next screen. And the story - what little there is - culminates in Interplay giving Lester the Tasha Yar treatment. All for the sake of cartoony spectacle, I suppose. What a shame.
Like I said before, it's an okay game, but I wouldn't call it a worthy successor to Out of this World. At least the inclusion of OotW makes the disc still worth owning.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
A playthrough of Virgin's 1994 action-platformer for the Sega CD, Heart of the Alien: Out of this World Parts I and II.
This video shows a continuous run through both games. Heart of the Alien begins at 21:01.
Heart of the Alien is the sequel to Eric Chahi's Another World, a 1991 Amiga hit that was released in North America in 1992 as Out of this World on computers, the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo (youtu.be/lZbNH1Wp6LE).
Interplay, the publisher of the console ports of Out of this World, had forged an agreement to produce a CD-based follow-up, and so Heart of the Alien came to be. The game landed on North American store shelves in the summer of 1994 as a Sega CD exclusive, and it remains one to this day.
The sequel is posed as direct continuation of Out of this World, so the disc bundles Heart of the Alien with an enhanced port of the first game. The extended ending from the 3DO version of OotW has been repurposed as HotA's intro sequence and serves as a bridge between the two games. (If you play OotW first, the game will continue directly into HoTA, just like Ys Books I & II did youtu.be/KrH2uvC-zog).
This version of Out of this World is a nice upgrade over the cartridge versions. Most of the slowdown has been eliminated, the animation is more fluid, the controls are snappier, and the sound quality has been improved. The speed in particular makes a huge difference. I never realized how slow the SNES game was until I played it on the Sega CD! The playthrough of the SNES version that I linked runs thirty minutes, and it took me just twenty minutes to get to there in this video.
Heart of the Alien initially feels a lot like the first game: it's a cutscene-laden, flip-screen platformer that demands memorization and pixel-perfect execution. This time, however, you play as Buddy, the friendly marshmallow dude who worked with Lester in OotW. Buddy is huge and wields an electric whip instead of a Light Phaser, but mechanically, the games feel very similar.
The art design, the flow of the action, the level design, and the storytelling are a wholly different matter. HotA prioritizes combat over puzzles, and it ditches OotW's atmosphere and environmental storytelling for a more bombastic, spectacle-laden approach.
Even though he originally gave the project his blessing, Eric Chahi blasted the quality of the final product and distanced himself from it in the media. On his website, he says that "[HotA's] concept was good but, alas, neither the animations nor the game, entirely developed by Interplay, were up to the job." Ouch. I can't say as I blame him, though. I didn't much care for the changes, either. I mean, I enjoyed it, and I think it's an alright game on its own, but it lacks OotW's special sauce.
The art is nice and the graphics are technically better, but it looks like they went with rotoscoped pixel art (and in some instances, FMV sequences) instead of vector graphics to render the characters and cutscenes. The animation is silky smooth and there's a lot more detail, but I can't help but feel that it looks cheap and cheesy in comparison. So much of it looks plain silly.
The gameplay feels like a second-rate imitation, too. Jumping is awkward and glitchy, the collision detection is frustratingly inconsistent, and most of the game's challenge stems from having to memorize which insta-kill trap lies just a few pixels from the edge of the next screen. And the story - what little there is - culminates in Interplay giving Lester the Tasha Yar treatment. All for the sake of cartoony spectacle, I suppose. What a shame.
Like I said before, it's an okay game, but I wouldn't call it a worthy successor to Out of this World. At least the inclusion of OotW makes the disc still worth owning.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
![Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom) Playthrough [English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2RpshLptHkc/hqdefault.jpg "Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom) Playthrough [English]
A playthrough of Victor Musical Industries 1991 action-RPG for the Nintendo Famicom, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys.
This was recorded using an English fan translation patch. You can find the patch at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7229/
Wanderers from Ys was the last Ys game that the series creators worked on before leaving Falcom to form Quintet, it was the last Ys game to be created specifically for the NEC PC-8801, and it was the last one to appear on the Nintendo Famicom.
Ys III, like the previous games, was adapted for the Famicom by Advance Communication, and it was released three months after the SNES version (https://youtu.be/I8Tcdm2foE0) hit Japanese retail shelves. The Famicom game was the only console port of Ys III to not see an international release.
Of the three Famicom Ys games, the third one comes the closest to matching the experience of the game its based on. The intro text crawl, a few bits of dialog, and the parallax scrolling of the background layers are gone, there are fewer enemies milling about the action stages, and the layout of Galabans Island is different, but everything else is very familiar.
It looks and sounds fine for an NES game, and the controls are responsive, though Adols movement take a bit of getting used to coming off the TurboGrafx-CD (https://youtu.be/f-ZEdTDWslQ), Genesis (https://youtu.be/Q5J-IjYz8MA), and SNES versions.
Otherwise, its still the same fun (and regrettably brief) platform action game that it was on every other platform.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
![Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side (PlayStation) Playthrough [English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2bR9ZKqN2xo/hqdefault.jpg "Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side (PlayStation) Playthrough [English]
A playthrough of Nihon Systems 1998 role-playing game for the Sony PlayStation, Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side.
Ancient Roman was only released in Japan, so I used SnowyArias translation patch for this video. You can find it at https://github.com/Eight-Mansions/Ancient-Roman/releases
When CG movies and 3D polygon characters crossed paths, their meeting gave rise to a new trend in RPGs. Ancient Roman, a movie-like RPG.
That rough translation of the red text on the back of the box should give you a pretty clear idea of what this was intended to be. Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side is a two-disc JRPG that badly wanted a seat aboard the Final Fantasy VII hype train.
Ancient Roman didnt manage to steal Squares lunch, but it certainly hasnt been forgotten over the years. Its one of the PlayStations best known examples of what the Japanese refer to as kusoge. (Literally, a shit game.) Its somehow held in even lower regard than Camelots Beyond the Beyond (https://youtu.be/-O0DorKxVQE). Thats an impressive feat.
In essence, Ancient Roman is Final Fantasy VII (https://youtu.be/h0mqRkhOvtY) made on a tiny budget with zero skill or care. It stars a teenage boy with a clouded past and an innate talent for sword play. It has low-poly 3D character models running around on top of prerendered CG stills. It has a fully 3D, turn-based battle system.
But what makes Ancient Roman truly stand out is the way it bungles every single aspect of its execution. The story is absurd, the dialog is inane, and nothing makes much sense. Most of the games locations, including the dungeons, are made up of just one or two screens, and its often difficult to tell where the screen exits are. The loading times are irritatingly long. The battle scenes run at a laughably poor framerate, and the action freezes up to load a sound effect every single time a player character or enemy acts. The difficulty balance is utterly broken by status-afflicting weapons, over-powered spells, and the way holding the circle button allows you to avoid random encounters.
And then theres Another Romans most famous failing: the soundtrack, which gave rise to an endless parade of Japanese memes. Everything about it sounds wrong, as if someone imported a bunch of midi files and never bothered to check the sample assignments or tunings. (Remember Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood? Yeah, like that.)
Its because the game is such a trainwreck that I thought it would be fun to show it off, especially now that it can be played in English.
And how about that intro cutscene? Its like an unhinged fantasy-themed reimagining of the nuclear blast scene from Terminator 2. Someone deserves a round of applause for that bit where the guys face explodes into a million triangles.
And why is a game with no ancient Romans in it named Ancient Roman?
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
![Samurai Shodown RPG (Neo Geo CD) Playthrough [2 of 2, English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3di8DY_Z1ms/hqdefault.jpg "Samurai Shodown RPG (Neo Geo CD) Playthrough [2 of 2, English]
A playthrough of SNKS 1997 role-playing game for the Neo Geo CD, Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits: Bushidouretsuden (真説サムライスピリッツ 武士道烈伝).
This is the second part of a two-part playthrough, picking up with the partys arrival in Paris in Chapter 2: Lament of the Pale Blooms. (Part one can be found at https://youtu.be/IIsIL1lq-iA)
The final battle begins at 7:42:39
The ending begins at 7:50:36, and the animated credits sequence begins at 7:55:20
The bonus chapter, made up of five mini-scenarios featuring characters from other SNK franchises, begins at 8:01:32
The finale to Samurai Shodown RPG is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the story, but man, the credits! Its rare to see an animated pixel-art sequence go that hard! And how cool is it that they remixed the Psycho Soldier theme for Athenas cameo in the bonus chapter?
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
