A Brief History of... Panzer Dragoon

[Music] the Sega Saturn to the extent that people ever actually think about it is synonymous with failure in the course of a single console generation Sega was knocked from its perch as a major hardware competitor to an also-ran overshadowed by Sony's wildly successful playstation and eventually the Nintendo 64 rushed to shelves in an unsuccessful bid to capture the early 32-bit market the Saturn was expensive unwieldy and notoriously challenging to develop for it sold poorly and as the PlayStation and n64 became household names the Saturn slid quickly into obscurity settings Sega up for its eventual exit from the hardware market altogether after the Dreamcast subsequent failure Sega's next generation gaming platform revolutionary sports and arcade gameplay all with amazing 3d experiences never before possible on home game systems yet despite being seen as little more than a footnote in gaming history the Saturn's library is rife with classics like Virtua Fighter radiant Silvergun Shining Force 3 and even a seemingly impossible console port of quake sadly even the system's most beloved games qualifies cult classics of best consigned to discussions on retro gaming message boards and Let's Plays with a few hundred views on YouTube and you thought you knew how to play the game but no one has played this hard this fast this real until now come look into the world of Sega Saturn perhaps the cultist of cult classics is the Panzer Dragoon series by Sega's team and dromeda over the course of seven years and two consoles the Panzer Dragoon series overcame technical financial and artistic challenges to forge a strange and surreal world unlike any other in gaming giving the world three incredible arcade shooters and one of the greatest and rarest RPGs of all time Panzer Dragoon saga is turning 20 years old this year which makes it a perfect time to revisit the series join me as I walk through the history and legacy of one of Sega's most underappreciated franchises Panzer Dragoon welcome to looted Rome I'm Nate Behrens and this is a brief history of where I read the entire Wikipedia page so you don't have to [Music] [Applause] 16-bit Archie recognized in 1993 Sega was riding high on the success of the Genesis and it's 32-bit successor the Sega Saturn had been in development for two years the company's internal software development divisions began to turn their focus from Genesis and arcade software toward developing launch software for the new consoles release the divisions were further subdivided into small teams who were asked to develop pitches for Saturn launch titles for yukio futatsuki a 23 year old designer who had joined the company right out of college this was an opportunity to submit pitches for a number of ideas he'd been idly mulling over welcome to the family get ready one of these pitches was for an arcade-style flying tank game in the vein of Space Harrier and Star Fox much to futatsuki surprise siga accepted the pitch and he soon found himself placed in charge of his own development team comprised of members of Sega's AM 6rk development division the team was christened team Andromeda and development on the unnamed shooter title began games of this type usually put the player in control of a vehicle such as Star Fox's our wing or afterburners fighter jet during initial discussions futatsuki and his art director ma abu kusunoki bounced around ideas for the type of vehicle the player would control in the game they essence elves a seemingly simple question what would be fun to ride according to Fatah sugi quote a dragon seemed like it would be fun and it would show off the 3d capabilities of the Saturn to maximum effect because while spaceship is made of solid metal the dragon has moving body parts and it looks different from every angle so a dragon it was when work began on team Andromeda's untitled 3d shooting game in early 1994 the first months of the project were spent developing a setting and visual identity for the game futatsuki was a fan of the Brian Aldous novel the long afternoon of the earth which featured a far future earth overrun by mutated plants and animals elements which inform the games setting a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by a wildly mutated ecosystem the most important element to nail down would be of course the dragon as it would be the focal point of the entire experience initial concepts featured a more typical sword and sorcery style green scaly dragon but the team decided to add a science fiction spin in order to stand out from the competition inspired by films like Nausicaa of the valley of the wind Star Wars and David Lynch's adaptation of dune as well as the works of french comic artist mobius who later produced the japanese cover ER for the game kusunoki redesigned the dragon as a blue creature covered in a bony white armor a hybrid of organic flesh and alien technology this design informed the rest of the games aesthetic a style that blurs the line between natural and man-made creations this can be seen in everything from the environments to the enemies both man-made and mutants Takashi Awad a was responsible for designing and modeling enemies he took inspiration for his designs from sources as varied as antique clocks to mollusks and fossils rail shooters don't typically contain much in the way of narrative if any if the style Andromeda had developed so inspired the team that they went above and beyond the needs of the genre creating a bridge backstory in world even going so far as to create their own language for the game at this point the working title for the project was key code ru or simply armor dragon but futatsu he felt that the name was too bland for the world they were creating they translated the name to German to add an exotic flare and armor dragon became Panzer Dragoon Panzer Dragoon takes place in a far future world thousands of years after humanity was nearly wiped out by its own bio engineered weapons these bio weapons now roam the land while humanity struggles to survive a young hunter encounters a dying dragon rider who implores him to prevent Imperial forces from reaching the tower an ancient ruin that contains weapons of unimaginable power the boy mounts the dragon and takes off to complete the dead riders mission the actual plot as such is very slight consigned to a few paragraphs in the manual and very brief cutscenes but it is a triumph of minimalist evocative storytelling with each stage enemy and cutscene hinting at something much greater with the story in art style nailed down they turn toward gameplay Panzer Dragoon expanded greatly upon the existing rail shooter' formula in addition to the standard rapid fire attack the player is armed with homing lasers been triggered by holding down the attack button sweeping the reticle across enemies and releasing to unleash a volley in addition the game's fully 3d nature allows for enemies to attack from all sides players can rotate the camera around the dragon in 90 degree increments in order to fight from the sides and back adding a new layer of complexity to the gameplay the game's development was difficult for a number of reasons futatsu ki was younger and less experienced than all of his team members and he was often stubborn about getting his way despite their opinions on top of that they were among the first wave of developers to use the Saturn hardware which was notoriously complex to develop for as it used a multiprocessor architecture that split 2d and 3d rendering capabilities across two GPUs that ran in parallel and relied heavily on programming in assembly language what's more the hardware was not finalized until well into Panzer Dragoon development meaning that much of the work had to be done based on educated guesses about the capabilities of the final console toward the end of development after the game was nearly complete composer Yoshitaka Asuma was brought on to score the game as a rail shooter the game was linear and developers had complete control over the pacing meaning that the music could be written and much like a film score matching the on-screen action [Music] CD audio was still relatively rare in gaming and Panzer proved a perfect showcase for the potential fully orchestrated CD audio backgrounds say Casa tada Sara masa Shimkus Tajima Sanada Sarita wa samosa tawa syntax of Toshi Ocasio the Sega Saturn launched in Japan in November 1994 but Panzer Dragoon intended to be a launch title was nowhere to be seen the frequent roadblocks for the team forced them to delay the game several months but it was finally released in time for the u.s. launch of the Saturn in May 1995 after only a little more than a year at development as one of only a few launch titles for the system and one of the few fully 3d games available anywhere at the time Panzer Dragoon garnered far more attention on launch than it had pre-release audiences were wowed by the graphics and atmosphere which were unlike anything the gaming world had seen at that time as well as the tight gameplay which proved a worthy match for Sega's acclaimed arcade heritage that said Panzer Dragoon is a very short simple game there are seven stages each around ten minutes long which play out exactly the same each time it has tough moments but overall it's not terribly difficult to finish the game though chasing a perfect score provides some replay value there are no power-ups or abilities beyond what you start with and while the world is compelling and the storytelling evocative there's really not much to it still as slight as the game is it holds up today the graphics are primitive but beautiful and the music remains as ethereal and Atmospheric as it was in 1985 and it's still a whole lot of fun to unload a volley of homing lasers and do an imperial ship the game's success let's say get to encourage team Andromeda to jump immediately into development of not one but two sequels simultaneously a second rail shooter as well as a much more ambitious role-playing game [Music] while flow tsuki remained heavily involved in the shooter sequel the amount of work the RPG required prevented him from directly overseeing both games the shooter was handed over to Tomohiro condo while Fatah segi directed the RPG [Music] the direct sequel Panzer Dragoon 'zv I served as both an opportunity to address issues with the original game as well serve as a test but four concepts that would play a role in Panzer Dragoon RPG with Vye they can concentrate on expanding and improving the original games core tenants and expand they did Panzer Dragoon spy is actually a prequel to the original game taking place some 12 years earlier the protagonist a young boy named Lundy lives in a village that raises half-breed mutants known as kulia as beasts of burden occasionally aku Lea is born with a green glow in its throat a dark omen to the villagers who have ordered that all such kulia be put down immediately to prevent the village from becoming cursed unbeknownst to the villagers lundi has hidden away one such cursed kulia a baby he names loggy not only does loggy have the strange glow he has another mutation wings lundi manages to keep lucky hidden as he grows into a mature winged kulia until one day a massive ancient ship appears overhead and effortlessly destroys Lindy's village for seemingly no reason the pair watching horror from the outskirts and loggy overcome with fear and anger reveals the true nature of the glow and his throat as he spits a volley of lasers into the sky Lundy realizes that loggy is no mere mutant he's a dragon together they take off to exact revenge on the ancient ship yet lucky is not a full-grown dragon at the beginning of the game in fact he can't even fly and this leads to one of the major innovations in the sequel Kondo and foo toxic II wanted to deepen the bond felt between the player and the dragon and to that end they implemented a progression system that allows loggy to evolve and grow over time he begins the game relatively weak unable to fly and limited to only a couple of lock-ons and then in the second mission this happens from this point on at multiple points in the game log evolves into new forms gaining new abilities like the berserk super attack and the dodge roll having loggy start as a baby triggers a sort of paternal instinct in the player you want to protect your baby while also feeling the joy of seeing it grow into its potential while one would be hard-pressed to say that Panzer Dragoon Spy is a deeply emotional experience one certainly feels more attachment than in most rail shooters additionally was Vai included branching paths that take you through different parts of the level facing off against different enemies and eventually unlocking new tragen forms the game also included Pandora's Box an unlockable set of extras including a secret level new dragon forms and abilities and different modifiers for the game adding an unheard-of amount of replayability for a game of this type development on Panzer Dragoon spy went much more smoothly than on the original game as the game concept was well established and the team was now familiar with the hardware they were able to greatly improve the graphics while also improving performance creating arguably at the best-looking Saturn game ever animations are more fluid levels have more detail and variety and the enemies are more complex and intriguing the story also has much more going on even if it's still quite minimal all-in-all Panzer Dragoon Spy improves on the first game in nearly every way and remains one of the finest arcade shooters ever made it was released in 1996 one year after the first game - even more rave reviews and sales success during vies year of development futatsu G and his team were deep in pre-production on a far more ambitious title an epic role-playing game that would finally do justice to the expanse of a unique world that had captured the imaginations of Panzer fans when development on the project known as özil Panzer Dragoon RPG began Sega was convinced that the 32-bit console race would be won by whomever produced the greatest exclusive RPG for their system they were aware that Sony had exclusive rights to squares upcoming Final Fantasy 7 and they decided to give team Andromeda the resources they needed to give the Saturn II the Final Fantasy competitor they desperately wanted Hazell Panzer Dragoon RPG or Panzer Dragoon saga in the u.s. soon became Sega's highest budget project ever of course no one on Team Andromeda had ever actually worked on an RPG before but then a low experience to ambition ratio hadn't stopped futatsu G and his team before so they set out translating the Panzer Dragoon experience from a fast paced shooter to a turn-based narrative heavy RPG among their goals creating a fully real-time 3d game with an expansive explorable world full voice acting and an emotionally rich storyline oh and a unique battle system that was unlike any previous RPG ever made no biggie the story would take place decades after the first Panzer Dragoon and would follow edge a young guard working for the Empire who gets caught up in a war between the Imperial forces and a rebel faction led by the sinister creamin unlike the Star Wars the rebels here aren't any friendlier or more forgiving than their enemy Edge's friends and fellow mercenaries are brutally slaughtered by kremens forces as they search for weapons from the ancient age which they find in the form of the Atlin dragon and its pilot a bioengineer young girl in the aftermath of the carnage edge encounters a dragon and together they set off to take revenge on Kraven and his men but what begins as a standard revenge tale turns into a uniquely complex and somber love story that stands on its own while also fleshing out the lore of the panzer dragoon world most RPGs of the era told their stories through 2d character portraits and unvoiced text boxes but team Andromeda wanted full voice acting and animated cutscenes both real-time as well as nearly 90 minutes of pre-rendered FMV a choice that cost them dearly in time and money the environments as well or wildly ambitious where other RPGs used pixel art or pre-rendered images for their environments team Andromeda was determined to retain the look and feel with the previous Panther games which meant sticking with real-time 3d environments only this time they would be freely explorable instead of the linear tightly controlled experiences of the rail shooters while they had years of experience with the Saturn at this point the system still struggled with 3d compared to the PlayStation but futatsu he was adamant that the sensation of free movement was essential to the Panzer Dragoon experience pre-rendered backgrounds would simply have restricted movement too much and so with a combination of Hardware tricks and smart art design they were able to create environments both massive and intimate explorable from the air and on foot which retained the signature Panzer Dragoon feel where the characters in the first two games were almost entirely devoid of dialogue and personality saga would feature a cast of dozens and the main characters would be far richer than before the core relationship is that of edge and the girl from the ruins özil who both find themselves unwillingly thrust into opposite sides of the same fight edge is a curious headstrong young man whose initial desire for revenge shifts as he discovers more about the world he inhabits özil is a man-made bioengineered drone who loses her singular purpose in life and struggles with her developing human emotions the designs for both characters went through several changes edge was initially more a blank slate like many RPG protagonists of the era though he was designed to intentionally avoid the stereotypical spiky-haired design that was so common but Fatah segi found that edge developed a stronger personality as he wrote the story özil on the other hand began as a colder and more inhuman character only to become warmer and more relatable as development continued Kraven is a complex and compelling villain whose ruthlessness belies more ambiguous motives side characters like Dash and Piatt lend a dose of humanity and humor missing from the far more stoic rail shooters and minor NPCs have names and character arcs that play out to the course of the game helping to transform the Panzer universe from what could sometimes feel like a series of cool concept art paintings to a real place inhabited by real people even the dragon is given more personality edge can name the dragon this time and during stops at camp can choose to give the dragon attention which strengthens their relationship [Music] the game also examines the Dragons backstory finally giving in a developed sense of agency history and purpose one of the trickiest parts of development was translating the rail-shooter combat into a turn-based RPG battle system since the game focused on a lone protagonist and his dragon they could not rely on the party based gameplay of most RPGs instead they built a battle system from scratch based around a combat gauge that fills in in real-time with different abilities using of different amounts of the gauge as in the rail shooters players can choose between using their pistol to target an individual enemy we use homing lasers to attack multiple targets 360 degree aiming of the shooters was reworked into a quadrant system wherein the player can fly around the targets positioning themselves to avoid enemy attacks and target weak points the berserk attack from spy was expanded into a set of super attacks with varied effects and the dragon morphing system was flushed out to allow morphing between different dragon classes on the fly experience points and money were doled out based on a player's efficiency in completing a battle encouraging players to experiment and find the optimal method for dealing with each type of encounter for the soundtrack Team Andromeda reached out to Sega composer and sound designer say ori kobayashi kobayashi was a fan of the previous panzer games who had only previously produced music for the extremely limited Game Gear but now she was able to produce an ambitious and lengthy score that took the series cinematic Flair and unique atmospheres new heights [Music] fusing sweeping orchestral pieces with wild driving electronic percussion and soothing ambient sounds saga soundtrack is the crowning achievement even as series renowned for its music sokka's development was lengthy difficult and stressful nearly every aspect of the game was being designed from scratch by developers with no experience working in the genre on a system that was not designed for the kind of game they were making not only that but pressure from Sega was sky-high the company said a sales target of 1.5 million copies sold which they expected would match or exceed its closest competitor Final Fantasy 7 but midway through development it was clear that the Saturn was lagging badly behind both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 and the situation was even more dire in the United States than in Japan Final Fantasy 7 was released on the PlayStation in early 1997 to ecstatic reviews and record-breaking sales moving over 2 million copies in three days in Japan alone Sega would need a miracle to match that kind of success they didn't get one a year later after three grueling years of development özil Panzer - Grune RPG was released in Japan and then in North America in April as Panzer Dragoon saga it was an incredible game and the few who played it knew it was something special in the ways that most RPGs are bombastic and operatic busy and packed with filler saga is a quieter leaner thing full of mystery and loneliness the battle system was innovative and engaging the story was compelling and emotional and the world was more beautiful fascinating and strange than ever the critical reception was triumphant with unanimously high review scores saga was immediately crowned as not only one of the greatest games on the Saturn but one of the greatest RPGs of all time and a true work of art but critical praise was not enough by 1998 the Saturn was dying if not already dead and Seco was turning its attention to its next generation console the Dreamcast hoping to take back the market by leapfrogging the PlayStation technologically as team Andromeda wrapped up work on Panzer Dragoon saga they found themselves all but abandoned the localization budget didn't include any funding for foreign voiceovers meaning that foreign language versions would include Japanese voices with subtitles marketing for the game was nearly non-existent in Japan and even more limited in other territories little more than a couple of print ads one of which actually joked about the game's rarity few people even knew the gaming system and retailers wanted nothing to do with the Saturn they had long shifted shelf space away from the Saturn towards the PlayStation and were getting ready for the upcoming Dreamcast launch while around a million copies were pressed in Japan as a result of combined apathy from Sega and retail stores only around 30,000 English copies were ever produced sales were dismal in Japan only around a hundred thousand copies were sold only a fraction of a percent of the target and in the United States there simply were no copies to be bought those that did get their hands on the game found themselves in possession of the Sega Saturn swansong but for the greater gaming public Panzer Dragoon saga came and went with a whisper in the years since Panzer Dragoon saga has gone on to become one of gaming's most coveted collector's items while the Japanese version is relatively common and affordable North American copies are extremely rare and routinely sell for over $600 used and over $1,000 unopened one reason for the game's value is that unlike many of Sega's classics it has never been ported to another system and it likely never will because according to futatsuki the original source code was lost during a period of internal power struggle at Sega meaning that any rerelease would either have to run on an emulator or be a remake Saturn emulation is notoriously tricky and it's nearly impossible to imagine Sega investing in a ground-up remake a port of a game that sold so poorly which means that there are only two ways to play the game shell add $1,000 for original hardware and a collector's copy of the game or deal with shady pirate copies and user unfriendly Saturn emulation that said it's hard to feel guilty for emulating a game that has been so thoroughly abandoned by its owner and Saturn emulation has come a long way in the past few years in fact I'll come right out and say it go play this game on an emulator mid Navin and SSF are capable of playing the game from beginning to end with near 100% accuracy and ISOs of the game are not hard to come by until a miracle comes to pass and the game is rereleased on a modern platform there's no shame in back-alley dealings to experience one of game's greatest hidden gems for real go do it if the FBI knocks on your door tell them it was my idea the utter commercial failure of saga all but killed the Panzer Dragoon franchise at least for the next few years and along with it team Andromeda the team dissolved and its members drifted to various other Sega projects many of which would go on to become classics in their own right Shenmue jet set radio and of course res while the 2001 Dreamcast res was the brainchild of Tetsuya Mizuguchi who had never worked on the Panzer Dragoon series several of the game's key developers had come from Team Andromeda and as such meets a Gucci's ideas of creating a synesthetic rhythm action game were merged with the team's collective experience working on rail shooters and the final result is in many ways the spiritual successor to the Panzer series borrowing many of the gameplay elements and continuing the tradition of using the rail shooter genre as a vehicle for an intense audio-visual sensory experience the Dreamcast unfortunately met a similar fate to the Saturn fizzling out after only a couple of years and Sega reeling from the financial damage of two failed consoles in a row decided to exit the hardware market altogether and focus on software alone this led to yet another reorganization of Sega's internal development teams one such team known as smile bit was coming fresh off the release of Jet Set Radio in 2000 when they were approached with a proposal to create a new title in the Panzer Dragoon series smile bit accepted and decided that they would produce the game for Microsoft's powerful new console the Xbox yukio futatsu II had since moved on from Sega and so the project was headed up by Akihiko Fukuyama who had led the development of the battle system for Panzer Dragoon saga and he brought on several former Andromeda team members to assist Fukuyama was not particularly thrilled with the idea of returning to the Panzer Dragoon franchise after so little time but Sega made it clear that if he didn't take on the project the series would be dead he didn't want to carry the responsibility of being the one who killed off Panzer Dragoon and so he accepted the genre had not been specified as part of the initial pitch and so smile bit was free to start throwing around ideas two ideas started to take form an online realtime strategy game in a more traditional rail shooter the higher-ups wanted to focus on shooters that would showcase the Xbox is powerful hardware and so the shooter was greenlit [Music] Timlin Dean Amelia so famous who like you it was sick Louis who will be a sick who has for your language oh my I've got a mate taking place years after the events of saga Panzer Dragoon Orta follows the titular main character a young girl who's been imprisoned in a remote tower as long as she can remember the Empire having returned to power attacks the tower in an attempt to kill her but she's rescued by a dragon at the last moment together they flee from the Empire following a mysterious drone named Abad who seems to want to help Horta with the digital encyclopedia included on the disk as well as a series of bonus missions that expand the narrative or does story is more fleshed out than the other shooters in the series though obviously less so than saga however it had to take some liberties with the way that saga closed out the series in order to introduce a new character and keep the conflict going and without free top Sagi's involvement some fans felt the game was closer to fan fiction than a canon entry the core gameplay in Horta is much the same as in Panzer Dragoon and svaty however smiled it felt that in order for the game to feel worth the asking price they would have to layer on several new mechanics that increase both the difficulty and replayability of the game the player can now slow their dragon down momentarily as well as use a short speed boost to dodge attacks or RAM enemies more dramatic is the addition of the three dragon forms your dragon can transform into each of these on the fly with each having its own strengths weaknesses and tactical applications the base wing which plays like the standard dragon heavy wing which has fewer but more potent homing users of the expensive mobility and the glide wing smaller and more mobile and adept to taking down large numbers of weak enemies each form also has a unique bezerk attack while it's possible to get to the game without micromanaging your forms this adds a level of strategy to the game allowing players to optimize their playthroughs the game also included numerous bonus missions and even came with a complete port of the original pains which are guaranteed it's quite a complete package in a genre often criticized for a lack of content the game also looks fantastic no longer limited by the clunky 3d hardware of the Saturn or de was easily the best-looking Panzer Dragoon game and arguably the most impressive looking game on the Xbox running a silky smooth 60 frames per second in supporting widescreen and progressive scan the amount of detail occasionally works against the Saturn games less is more elegance which can take a little bit of adjustment but the game is undeniably gorgeous and impressive even today Panzer Dragoon Orta was released in late 2002 and early 2003 in the States to further critical acclaim and decent sales many fans welcome to the return of the series after several years while others couldn't shake the feeling of the game lacked some of the magic of the original ISM and saga diehards were disappointed that the game was a traditional fairly limited rail shooter rather than another still it remains a worthy addition to the series if not exactly the last hurrah those friends might hope for despite its moderate success or to signal the end of the Panzer Dragoon series Sega began scaling back internal development in the mid-2000s sticking mostly to Sonic sequels of dubious quality but consistent financial success as well as publishing games by external developers with no new sequels no rear releases and no remakes Panzer Dragoon faded into gaming history a small blip of hope appeared in 2009 when streaming game service gametap acquired the rights to distribute PC versions of the series however other than re releasing the pre-existing PC version of the original Panzer these plans never came to fruition after leaving Sega and Microsoft Yukio futatsuki co-founded a new studio known as grounding Inc and in 2011 they revealed their upcoming project known then as project and Rocko for Xbox 360 the game was very obviously intended to be a spiritual successor to Panzer Dragoon even though it shared no explicit connection it had a similar aesthetic and gameplay style however the game was being developed with Microsoft's Kinect motion sensing technology in mind as the 360 neared the end of its lifespan and the Kinect proved to be something of a bust the game now known as Crimson Dragon was unceremoniously delayed and re-emerged in 2013 as an Xbox one launch title with Kinect elements removed in lieu of traditional gamepad controls Crimson Dragon shares much of the core gameplay with Panzer Dragoon but layer is on dragon collecting loot and role-playing elements as interesting as that sounds the game essentially has you grinding out the same repetitive missions over and over again in order to level your dragons so that you can grind out the same few missions again all while the game dangles microtransactions in your face tempting you to reduce the grind by shelling out cash as opposed to the cinematic linear nature of Panzer Games the missions in Crimson Dragon felt disconnected while the story had little of the Wonder and charm of its predecessor sadly Crimson Dragon was a game it was released to middling reviews and was forgotten soon after so is there hope for more Panzer Dragoon in the form of sequels or even just a pre-release not really Sega has released so many of its games on various platforms over the years that if they had any interest in revisiting Panzer they would have by now the series is a historical curiosity and object of nostalgia at this point rail shooters are a relic of a bygone era and have little relevance in this day and age and the series towering achievement Panzer Dragoon saga is both too obscure and too difficult to remake report at least there's emulation the Panzer Dragoon series is too unique too charming and too beautiful to be so forgotten what could easily have been a bog-standard arcade shooter blossom into something special because it's determination of team Andromeda to make something no one had ever seen before arcade shooters as fast and fun as any other in the genre but delivered with literary and cinematic panache far ahead of its time and what's more they went on to create one of the greatest RPGs of all time one that anyone with the slightest interest in the genre owes themselves to play while the series may not have been wildly successful throughout its run it's made an impact on many creators since both in terms of mechanics such as in res and later star fox games as well as in atmosphere and style scene perhaps most clearly in the works of Team Ico which shares similar minimalist storytelling and surrealist atmosphere [Music] yet even with the legacy of the series there just isn't anything quite like a panther jargon getting more people should know about and love this series dammit it's too good to languish alongside gex into clockwork mate I've done my part shouting its praises from the rooftops for years apologies to all my friends who've had to listen to me drone on and on but now if I piqued your interest at all I hope you'll go check it out I think you'll be happy you did [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Ludodrome

Views: 44,046

Keywords: gaming, gaming history, panzer dragoon, sega saturn, retro games, jrpg, rail shooter

Id: D8QM83ytaSc

Length: 38min 26sec (2306 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 30 2018