US Saturn Release #008 - Myst

Played on a real American Sega Saturn with the Fenrir ODE

Myst knows how to truly immerse you quickly and efficiently. Even if you have a hard time getting into the puzzles and the general game loop, I think you'll appreciate how it feels.

On those puzzles though, they really vary in fun factor. Some of them are really easy, some are tricky nut actually fun to do and make you feel smart for accomplishing, and others make you drag out the ol' notebook. That's not necessarily bad but I wasn't exactly expecting it so I wasn't too happy about it.

This is a game you really need to play with the shuttle mouse (or on emulator with your regular PC mouse). Playing with the controller is just kind of slow and annoying for the most part, really draggin stuff out making you not want to go through some puzzles the intended way just due to how much playing with controller tanks it.

So I guess overall, Myst is an ok game for the Saturn, though, I don't really know why you would play this on Saturn and not on PC.

6/10

Yoshi's Island kind of blows me away. It doesn't feel like a game that looks and sounds like this should be able to play well on a 16-bit console, but it does. It felt a lot like playing a Sega Saturn platformer, actually, with that console's insane power for 2D. In the end the game really shows just how much you can do on the SNES.

And still, the game holds up if you look beyond the art and the sound. At its core this is just a really fun platforming game, one that provides plenty of fun mechanics (primarily egg throwing) to keep the long runtime fun, and a good scoring system to keep the game challenging at all times. I found myself picking this up every time I had nothing to do.

So obviously, this is a must-play, must-own SNES game.

8/10

This game is painfully middle of the road. It's by no means horrible but there's a lot wrong here like how your health doesn't replenish upon level completion, or how the screen is cropped in a way that makes it hard to see what's coming, or how insane some difficulty spikes get later on. At its core the actual platforming and stuff is fine and functions well but the issues I mentioned hold back the good stuff from being great at all. It's just a passible middle-of-the-road platformer that is easily skipped.

6/10