Sega's VIRTUAL ON for the NINTENDO 64?!?

[fishsandwich]

a
a

Ok, it's not called "Virtua On" and it's not by Sega, but it's surprisingly close.


It's called Last Legion UX





It's a blatant Virtual On clone complete with mech fighters, 3-D fighting in different enviroments with varied structures to navigate around, and even an obvious copy of Virtua On's launching sequence before battles. It came out in 1999 and was never released outside of Japan.

Note... this game IS NOT as good as Sega's arcade/Saturn fighter, but it's much better than a lot of the Nintendo 64 imports that I have tried and disliked (Evangelion, Sumo 64, Irritating Stick.) The graphics aren't as good as Saturn VO, the control isn't as precise, the gameplay is not as deep, and the total package lacks polish. But it plays surprisingly well.

One player games aren't bad... you can set your computer opponent's aggressiveness/intelligence to range from wimpy/stupid to downright hostile/devious.

Two-player games are damn fun. Me and a friend played this game for several hours last night even though we had a perfectly good zombie movie just waiting to be watched.

You can choose from a variety of robot mechs, just like VO. You can also choose your level of weaponry (slow but powerful long-range, faster yet less powerful projectiles, weak but fast gunfire, up-close sword/ram attacks that are hard to do but inflict major damage, plus a variety of bombs, grenades, and missiles.) You can choose your level of shielding that may offer more protection than other types but will slow you down. Some meches can fly while others are too heavy. You can also find special power-ups that will make your weapons kick ass.

There's even a story in there somewhere, but I sure as hell can't read or even mildly understand any of it.

The graphics are not impressive. This game's developer, Hudson Soft, wasn't particularly good at programming the N64 (Hudson did the atrocious Dual Heroes, the fairly ugly Bomberman games, and the well-received but hardly graphically ambitious Mario Party games.) They continue their tradition of graphic underachievement with Last Legion UX. Battlefields are sparse, character models aren't very detailed, there's plenty of slowdown when you win a battle, and the camera goes nuts once in a while. Explosions are your standard N64 "expanding red half-spheres", but at least the smoke effects are good. You can play in split screen horizontally or vertically, and you can even duke it out 2-D style in closed arenas. The closed fights are pretty lame, but it was a nice touch.



















It never ceases to amaze me how some developers were able to really work the N64's hardware (Nintendo, Rare, Ubisoft, occasionally Midway) while others never quite got it right (Konami, Atari Games, Iguana) and still others just flat-out sucked at N64 programming (Bandi, Titus, Kemko.)

I firmly believe the N64 is stronger than either the PSone or the Saturn when it comes to 3-D... take a look at the Zelda games, Conker, Turok 2, Rayman 2 for proof. Yet in the hands of an untalented or lazy developer, the N64 was more than capable of producing some spectacularly ugly games (Superman 64, Carmageddon, Power Rangers, Dual Heroes.)

The music ranges from decent techno to painfully awful easy-listening (especially in the story mode.) Nothing notable, to be sure.

All in all, I have to wonder why this game wasn't brought over to the States. It's certainly better than a lot of N64 games, and the N64 was sorely lacking in fighting games. Is there a domestic Nintendo 64 game that has gameplay even slightly resembling that if Virtua On?

I recommend this one. Playing imported games on the N64 is super-easy with a cheap pass-through convertor, a Gameshark, or even a hacksaw to your N64 (how cheap are these things, anyway? I found a red one with Mario Party 2 at a thrift store for $12. I sold the game for $15, so I basically paid -$3 for the console.) The N64 has some worthy import-only games, and this is one of them.

[ProgrammingAce]

That's awesome, I've never really known which N64 imports were worth the price, so i've left them all alone. I'm always up for a good mech game.

Maybe i missed this in the review, but is the game pretty easy to figure out if you don't speak Japanese?

[kevin_psx]

The N64 had awesome graphics! Neither Front Mission nor Xenogears robo-mechs looked that good on PS1. Me want this game.

[fishsandwich]

That's awesome, I've never really known which N64 imports were worth the price, so i've left them all alone. I'm always up for a good mech game.

Maybe i missed this in the review, but is the game pretty easy to figure out if you don't speak Japanese?

It's super-easy to play with no knowledge of Japanese. Many of the menus are in English, and even story mode is easy to play... just skip past the text. Straight battles (1 or 2 players) are no-brainers.


Other most excellent or at least pretty good N64 imports...

Dezaemon 3-D (Make your own shooters if you have A LOT of time on your hands. Also comes with three already-made shooters, two of which are pretty decent.)

Rakuga Kids (2-D fighter with kiddie graphics but real fighter gameplay. Came out in Japan and Europe.)

Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaio (Same as Bangai-O for the Dreamcast but with slightly different gameplay and less detailed graphics. Low production run makes this one pricey.)

Custom Robo 1 & 2 (Prequel to the Gamecube game, pretty darn fun if you stick with it and use a guide for the tough spots.)

Sin & Punishment (One of the best games on the N64. Totally playable with spoken English. Action/shooter by Treasure.)

Bomberman 64 (The last N64 game released in Japan. It's NOT anything like the 3-D games that came out in the USA. It's classic Bomberman with 4-player cababilities out of the box.)

Air Boarder 64 (Ok, it's not that great, but at least it's different and moderately playable.)

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh, now I remember. The only N64 era Nintendo Power I've ever owned had a preview of this (the screenshots/artwork I recognize are from it), starting off with a bad, bad X-Files reference/joke (I don't know what they were thinking). This is a game I was interested in tracking down for the longest time, but found out some time later didn't ever come out for the N64. Such a shame, as I always wanted to pilot Lieabouts...come on, a giant robot named Lieabouts! How is that not awesome?!

[roushimsx]

Sounds/looks reasonably interesting. I also agree that the N64 could pump out some impressive 3d, but the texture limitations really hurt it.

Also, I disagree that Rare really did a good job of showing what the hardware was capable of...if anything, they did a good job of showing people how annoying slowdown really could be. There weren't enough developers like Sucker Punch or Boss Studios out there.

It's a shame this sucker isn't emulated so that I could fire it up right now and check it out.

And on a nice tangent, Stunt Racer 64 is one of my favorite N64 games and hopefully it'll be emulated at some point so everyone can enjoy its awesomeness. That'll probably happen around the time this one starts working...so...yea ... guess I need to look into importing this, eh?

[Aussie2B]

while others never quite got it right (Konami

Blashemy. O_O Have you never played Goemon's Great Adventure? It's a fantastic game. Even if you want to solely discuss graphics, it's quite nice. I think most of Konami's games for N64 were pretty good, both overall and in graphics.

But yeah, generally Hudson wasn't too ambitious with the N64's graphics abilities. That's why I like the two imports from them I own, Getter Love and Bomberman 64, since they're both 2D (Getter Love has some 3D, but it's kinda piss-poor if not for the fact that the chibi, undetailed designs fit with the goofy nature of the game). My favorite import for N64, Wonder Project J2, is also 2D, so I guess I gravitate towards those games when importing for the system. It's almost a novelty, as silly as that sounds (considering I can play countless 2D games on other consoles), since there are very few US-released 2D games for the system and the ones that are 2D look like crap (Yoshi's Story, I'm looking at you).

[Famidrive-16]

I was so looking forward to this game after I saw the NP preview. It kinda faded off after a while though.

[CrimsonNugget]

I firmly believe the N64 is stronger than either the PSone or the Saturn when it comes to 3-D...

Oh yeah, that's a definite. I think most N64 games only looked crap because there was not enough room for nice textures on those carts.

[kevin_psx]

I firmly believe the N64 is stronger than either the PSone or the Saturn when it comes to 3-D...

Oh yeah, that's a definite. I think most N64 games only looked crap because there was not enough room for nice textures on those carts.

Do textures tons of room? Take a PS1 game. Delete all the background art + movies. Just leave program + polygon textures. Wouldn't the result fit inside a 32 megabyte cart?


When I view a 100% 3D game like Xenogears or Spyro - it looks like crap compared to the N64's 3D games.

[fishsandwich]

while others never quite got it right (Konami

Blashemy. Have you never played Goemon's Great Adventure? It's a fantastic game. Even if you want to solely discuss graphics, it's quite nice. I think most of Konami's games for N64 were pretty good, both overall and in graphics.

Point taken... Let me alter my opionion of Konami's N64 games to "mixed bag. Konami did some good-looking games for the N64 but they did some shite, too.

Deadly Arts is deadly ugly. Castlevania had its moments (big skeleton!) but it looks pretty shabby. The quasi-sequel utilized the RAM expansion and looks almost exactly the same. Hybrid Heaven has got some seriously dull levels and ugg character models.

Then again, International Superstar Soccer 2000 is one purty game. Rakuga Kids is funky 2-D. Goemon is indeed pretty darn good looking, but the full 3-D prequel Mystical Ninja had some terrible slowdown if I remember.


I played Last Legion UX some more yesterday, and I found some of the character models if be pretty decent, honesty. Some look terrible, but some are actually pretty detailed and nicely animated.


As for textures on N64 games... big carts with lots of memory were expensive! CD's can hold TONS of data although what can actualy be displayed on screen is limited by the host console's RAM. Check out Soul Blade for the PSone and compare it to any fighter on the N64. Those nice textures made a big differance! The programming for the actual polygonal characters take of relatively little space, leaving the rest of the available RAM for textures. 2-D games take up a lot more memory for all the animations (check out PSone X-Men Vs Street Fighter or the multiple loading times for Metal Slug) but that certainly didn't help the N64 any... how many 2-D fighters did it have? 2.5-D (polygonal) is less memory-intensive than real 2-D if the texture quality is low.

[frogofdeath]

There's even a story in there somewhere, but I sure as hell can't read or even mildly understand any of it.

Okay, since I didn't see this in any of the previous replies, I had to resurrect this thread mainly to comment on the story of Last Legion UX. If I recall, the story is something like this: robots need to collect power stone thingies to keep them powered, there are other robots fighting to find these power stones (maybe for world domination?), you must find other robots and defeat them to earn your stones. Also, I feel like there was some time traveling aspect involved. Now I could be way off, but I feel like I remember reading this as part of the preview in an old Nintendo Power.

[kafa111]

a
astill others just flat-out sucked at N64 programming (Bandi, Titus, Kemko.)

BUT TITUS MADE SUPERMAN

[BetaWolf47]

It never ceases to amaze me how some developers were able to really work the N64's hardware (Nintendo, Rare, Ubisoft, occasionally Midway) while others never quite got it right (Konami, Atari Games, Iguana) and still others just flat-out sucked at N64 programming (Bandi, Titus, Kemko.)

I firmly believe the N64 is stronger than either the PSone or the Saturn when it comes to 3-D... take a look at the Zelda games, Conker, Turok 2, Rayman 2 for proof. Yet in the hands of an untalented or lazy developer, the N64 was more than capable of producing some spectacularly ugly games (Superman 64, Carmageddon, Power Rangers, Dual Heroes.)

Er, Turok 2 was made by Iguana... although I agree, Turok 2 looks great graphically. It's also the best FPS for the system after Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.

<EDIT> lol, didn't see how old this thread was before replying.

[kupomogli]

[color=black]

[b]The N64 had awesome graphics! Neither Front Mission nor Xenogears robo-mechs looked that good on PS1.

Since this is a necro bump, the person probably won't reply, but someone else can chime in if they want. But really. I really think it's the other way around as the in game graphics of the robots in Xenogears and Front Mission look better looking than the robots in this game.

The robots in this game are hardly close to as detailed in those as Xenogears and in Xenogears the visual quality is just as good. Both in and out of battle the graphics to the gears are very clean(or smooth) as long as it's not panned too far back from them. However, looking at the pics of this game it's the exact same issue.





Watch this video to see a comparison to the storyline graphics and in battle graphics. They're the same, it's just when it pans much further back to show you all the enemies and characters in battle it's no longer clean and looks slightly jaggy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9RB2bSVKO4

Then Front Mission 3. Again. Far more detail than the N64 game in question. The Wanzers look clean and extremely detail. With Front Mission 3 there are differen't colored blotches all over to, what I'd assume, is make it look like wear and tear from being in battle. In Front Mission 3, body parts will also be destroyed mid battle and have a spark effect.



Panned out quite a bit from the Wanzers and it still looks good.



So yeah. The game looking better than Xenogears and Front Mission Wanzers? Right.

I'd even say that Armored Core Master of Arena looks better. Especially considering that you can customize your AC, add your own emblems, change color, etc. AC Master of Arena is the worst looking of the listed three though.



Anyways. Virtual On is a good game. Xenosaga also has a mini game similar to, though not as good as Virtual On.

[Aussie2B]

Hah, you're comparing old, low quality N64 screens recorded off of the actual hardware to modern PS1 screens taken with an emulator pumped up with anti-aliasing and upscaling and what have you? Gimme a break. That's not a fair comparison whatsoever. If I popped those games into my PS1 right now, even on S-video, they'd look nothing like that.

[kupomogli]

I'll agree that they're upgraded graphics due to emulation, but it's not a huge change. The one in battle screen shot of Xenogears I posted actually looks worse quality than being on an actual console and it still looks better. Also the youtube video I linked doesn't look like it's graphically enhanced.

Unfortunately the only Gamefaqs pictures are either Gamespots extremely low quality pictures or the user pictures created using an emulator. If you'd like I can create a few screenshots for a graphics comparison using an actual console.

[Aussie2B]

Well, I'm not saying that any of these games looks better than another, since I can't really come to a conclusion unless I see the games in action. Those screens don't necessarily represent the best that Last Legion UX has to offer, and animation counts for a lot. I'm just tired of PS1 vs. N64 graphics arguments, which are dumb in concept to begin with, where people are playing the comparison game with screen shots that aren't remotely created equal.

Although I will say that in terms of mecha, Neon Genesis Evangelion probably has the most impressive models on N64, and they probably do beat out any on PS1, in my opinion at least.

[Colorado Rockies]

That looks awesome. How much did you pay for it?