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Sega Dreamcast Collection is four Xbox Live Arcade titles brought together in one package.
The fun begins with Crazy Taxi. Just those two words tell you all you need to know: You know the game, you know if you like it and if you don’t like it then you clearly have no soul as it’s one of the most wonderful arcade games every created.
This home version features both Arcade and Original ways to play. However, both say “Play by arcade rules” and offer 3, 5 and 10-minute options, which makes it confusing. There’s certainly no discernable difference between the two, other than that the Original mode seems to be a bit more generous with the time remaining.
In addition, there’s the Crazy Box mode, a series of challenges, starting with “Jump past the K Point”, for which you’ll need to achieve with a Crazy Dash along the way. This involves pressing the ‘drive’ (ie. forward gear) button just before accelerating. Practice and you’ll get there. To get further, try a Limit Cut (reverse, drive and accelerate) – time it right and you’ll get the burst of speed.
What are the downsides to this release? Well, some will bemoan the fact that the graphics haven’t been updated and are just a port of the original game. That may be so, but they still look bloody good and haven’t dated at all. There’s something to be said about not tinkering with a classic and so I’m glad they’re unchanged.
What *has* changed, and what really does irritate is that there’s none of the original music from the game which is rather a big disappointment as you couldn’t beat a bit of The Offspring’s All I Want. That was an iconic tune for the game. It wouldn’t have hurt to include a custom soundtrack option…
Crazy Taxi is worth 8/10. It would’ve been 9 or 10 with the original soundtrack. Why couldn’t Sega have licenced that? Either way, click here to watch a large selection of videos in HD from this game. There are three from the main game plus every one of the Crazy Box mini-games.
When it comes to Sonic Adventure, this one is more of a curious oddity for me. It was the first Sega Dreamcast game to be released, yet is also the one that is much more a case of style over substance than the others. There is a plot to it that revolves around seven Chaos Emeralds, but after a mostly enjoyable opening level came a bit of running about to bump off Dr Robotnik, which involves a lot of “jump about, bash the baddy, run around and do it again” rather like the opening fight with the blue “Chaos 0” creature.
After a lot of faffing about to put a Wind Stone onto a special pedestal by a waterfall, you then get access to the next action scene, at Windy Valley. However, while the 3D is all well and good and looks very nice and that I’m generally one for the old school of Sonic and preferred the 2D originals, I have to say that the camera angles are all over the place and, thus, the playability drops like a stone.
The fact that something that’s quite irritating to play after a while just gets more repetitive is not something that endears you to it, and thus only scores 4/10 from me.
You can also view a second Sonic video here: Sonic Adventure – Windy Valley – Action Scene 2 – Dreamcast Collection (720p HD)
Go to page 2 for the other games in this package.
The third game on this disc is Space Channel 5 Part 2, a title that wasn’t actually released in the UK and which does get an HD version in this package. You take the role of Ulala, a space-age female TV presenter and dance diva who has to be the queen of the disco scene. Like the original, although with a longer campaign than that one, it’s basically a “Parappa the Rappa”-style affair in which getting hip to the beat and landing on your feet may be the key to success.
Keep in time with the music, breakdance better than the invading aliens, rescue their dancing hostages and boost your TV ratings. And that’s just about it. It’s a novelty game which was fine when Parappa was first released since it was a genre to which we’d only just been introduced. By the time the first game reached the Dreamcast it was getting rather long in the tooth and an alternative title would’ve been a better bet.
However, it is an effective UK premiere so you can’t take that away from it. For me: 5/10.
The package is completed with Sega Bass Fishing, a conversion of the arcade game. Does it pitch you against aliens in an intergalactic trade war full of gore and violence with mad bad guys that shout “S.T.A.R.S.” at you? Er… no. It sticks you in a boat and pitches you against fish and stupid ones at that. You know the type – the ones that have the memory span of a… erm… something or other.
The graphics are fine, but the sound is rather a disappointment. Cast your bait into the water (SPLOSH!) and wiggle it about a bit (imagine that one). If there’s one thing that saves a game, it’s great playability – something this game knows little about when trying to play it with a joypad. Move the buttons about and it’s basically guesswork as to how you’re doing. Even when I got the original Dreamcast game for review I never managed to get hold of a virtual fishing rod, although there isn’t one for this release anyway.
It’s weird. You’re looking at the fish looking at your bait, thinking about them in human terms and how they perceive the bait and its movement as you wiggle it. However, they’re completely thick and they’ll follow it anyway if they’re hungry enough, but they’re not hungry, they’re CGI fish, not living, breathing bits of flesh floating in the blue yonder.
I admit I did get a bit of excitement as I tried to reel a fish in on a couple of occasions, since the more you reel it in and the fish struggles, the more the line-tension-ometer increases. Reel constantly and it’ll snap, but ease off a bit and the bar will go down again, allowing you to try reeling in again. However, in real life such things aren’t thought of in such definite terms – the line’s either in one piece (in which you carry on) or it’s snapped (in which case you go home or thread another line).
The idea, of course, is to catch as many fish as possible and catch the heaviest ones possible. Bigger fish = more points. And what do points make? Yes, a high score (not prizes!)
The only amusing thing about the game is that the voiceover, as you can hear on the game clip featured (right), sounds quite a bit like the excellent German comedian Henning Wehn.
Sega Bass Fishing scores 2/10.
Overall, yes, there’s only 4 games on this disc, but then each Dreamcast game was always on a disc that held more capacity than a normal CD and sometimes up to a full 1Gb, so you are getting nearly a full DVD’s worth here for your money.
Visit my DVDfeverGames Youtube channel for many more gaming videos.
Important info:
- Publisher: Sega
- Price: £29.99 (Xbox 360)
- Players: 1 offline, online content: leaderboards
- HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
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Crazy Taxi Sonic Adventure 2 Space Channel 5 Part 2 Sega Bass Fishing |
8 4 5 2 |
| OVERALL | 5 |
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
| 1 | 2 |