Omega Boost

Best. Intro. Ever. And the game is no exception. One of the Panzer Dragoon guys worked on it, the mechs were designed by the same guy who designed the mechs for Macross and the music is by one of the Ghost in the Shell composers.

Win all the way through.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table~

This is the PSX Mecha Game, yes? I remember playing this game and... never managing to finish it.

Hmm, I wonder if I could find my CD.

Nintendo Hard 3D Bullet Hell in a Mecha.

Damn hard game, but one of the best (and coolest) on the PS 1. I never finished it, but I got to the final boss on more than one occasion.

edited 25th Apr '10 2:25:00 PM by Barcode711

Worshipper of Ahura Mazda, as proclaimed by Zoroadster http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

There are THREE intros. They're all exactly the same, save the strangely appropriate music.

Wish i played the game more: Spent half an hour passing the controller at a friend's house and never saw it again. Oh well. I still have Future Cop: LAPD.

^That would explain why I remember the intro having cooler music.

Also, Future Cop was fun too. Kind of weird (hell, nigh-Nightmare Fuel at my age), but fun. Wish I knew people who played it back then.

I had bought Future Cop, but only rented Omega Boost. As well as a Front Mission and this one weird mech game where you would literally program a squad of pilotless 'Mechs to do battle against other 'Mechs.

edited 25th Apr '10 2:44:31 PM by Barcode711

Worshipper of Ahura Mazda, as proclaimed by Zoroadster http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

Carnage Heart. Fun times.

Man, the PS 1 Had it's fair share of awesome giant robots games. The dual-stick standardized FPS control setup would work perfectly for a blockbuster Humongous Mecha gameseries... Why has none arrived?

Played this game as a kid.

Never got far because I sucked at games back then.

I think I'll go back to it some time this year.

Umbran Climax◊

^^Yup, it's Carnage Heart. I remember that sideways-jump animation (which I refused to use because I was ubsessed with symmetry back then), and the vaguely-Nightmare Fuel music (I always remembered the game to be slightly disturbing).

Low interest. Sufficiently simplified 'Mech games tend to simply be slow/clunky FP Ses (like most flight combat games), and the complexity is usually dumped into the back-end game instead of the gameplay, which alienates most FPS players. Obviously, the solution is to make it less of an FPS and more of a vehicle-sim-style game, but that reduces your market appeal.

Mechwarrior did well throughout its generations as the simple-sim-of-choice for vehicle sim fans; trying to make it too mainstream killed it for the reasons above. Same thing with Crimson Skies.

Now, of course, every company wants to stay in business, which means making a specialist product is typically a no-go. I think this is why 'Mech games were dead for the last few years in the Western world - nobody big and experienced wanted to take the risk to make one, and all the little guys did something or other horribly, horribly wrong. The only way to expand in this market is to introduce your product to other enthusiast communities. Japan would probably work, but they've got the whole Eastern Mecha thing going on - who knows if Western Mecha would either by a welcome change of pace or just a market mismatch for them.

But with MWLL in open beta and Mechwarrior 5 in the works, who knows? Maybe we'll see a comeback for Western Mecha games.

EDIT: Er, yeah. Well, mech games in general; the thing is that they're doing fine in Japan, but they've tanked over here.

edited 25th Apr '10 6:27:25 PM by Barcode711

Worshipper of Ahura Mazda, as proclaimed by Zoroadster http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

I tried this on epsxe and the only part I fucked up on was the timeshaft.

Which also has one of the best songs in the game.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table~

I know this is a horrid bump but I remember those hellish dodge-the-wall-protrusions stages. Who the hell decided to fill the traveling space inside a time travel device with bent I-beams....?

Protip to anyone who tries to play it again - the Select button puts you in first-person, which might help you in those stages.

I plan to play this game again soon.

edited 16th Oct '10 10:35:43 PM by Barcode711

Worshipper of Ahura Mazda, as proclaimed by Zoroadster http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr