What is your most RECENT import? Post often!

[neogamer]

Here we go:

Sega Ages: Last Bronx - PS2

Sega Ages: Galaxy Force II - PS2

Sega Ages: Panzer Dragoon - PS2

Garou: Mark of the Wolves - PS2

Love the classics and Sega does a great job of bringing them back to life!

[blue lander]

I just picked up Densetsu no Stafi 2 and 3 for the GBA. Even though I hear 3 is far better than 2, I decided to start with 2 anyways. So far I'm enjoying the game, but the difficulty curve isn't nearly steep enough. It's getting a bit more challenging so hopefully that trend will keep up. I'm not too suprised, though, since it is geared towards younger children. The level designs are a little generic too, but I hear Stafi 3 addresses those issues.

[Wolfrider31]

My copy of Mother 3 just arrived from Play-Asia. Quite happy, though I think the box with the phallic like joystick and the Hong Kong sticker on the top made the guy at the post office think I had ordered something erotic.

They were all giving me weird looks.

[Tron 2.0]

Famicom
Holy Diver cib


Well i finally got this game and i tend to agree what most say about it.

The game is rather difficult and is similar to castlevania in some degree.

Still i'm glad i finally got a copy of it i like the theme it has.

[Drag0nsfyre]

Gunstar Heroes: Treasure Box (ps2)
Simple Series 2000 vol. 37 The Shooting: Shienryu (ps2)
Kid Dracula (nes/famicom)
Klonoa Volleyball (psx) $2 ebay
Puyo Puyo Da! (DC) $2 ebay same seller so $4 for both plus he was in the U.S. so good deal.

I think that's it for recent stuff.

[RadiantSvgun]

After an import drought, I placed an order today for Strikers 1945 I&II and Dodonpachi on ps2. I also plan on getting Arcana Heart next month.

[Wolf]

[tritium]

Dragonball Z Buyuuretsude Megadrive
Capcom vs SNK 2 Dreamcast

Should have 'em anyday now.

edit: in my hot little hands as of yesterday.. oh yeah....

[fahlim003]

I just wish I could find an unboxed X-Men VS. Street Fighter SS that didn't originally come with the box(ie, it has the back lining and spine, etc..). The search continues!

I've spoke too soon, thankfully I did find a complete non-boxed:
X-Men VS. Street Fighter for Saturn, so I'm looking forward to that.

Notable:
Gradius Gaiden (original release) complete

Onto the hunt for SFZ2'!

[Lord Contaminous]

PC Engine
-----------
Tengai Makyo/Far East of Eden II: Manji Maru
Final Soldier
Sidearms Special

Ganbare Goemon: Sarewata Ebisumaru (Game Boy, loose, in the WILD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOsoUonJvDQ
Busting up a nice score on Final Soldier.

[Fighter17]

Rolling Thunder 2 Sega Megadrive complete.

$20 shipped.

[Spartacus]

Agent Armstrong - King of the Jungle 1997 PlayStation
This is a 3D arcade/platform shooter about a British Secret Sevice agent who's attempting to thwart an American organized crime syndicate from taking over the world in 1935. Rather than simply running and gunning to the end of a level, you're tasked with completing objectives like destroying targets, rescuing hostages, or simply killing key personel. The character's and settings are humorous and cartoonish, giving it a slight Metal Slug vibe. There are 30 missions to the game with plenty of power-ups and a few secret area's to find. The only real knock I have about the game is that properly lining up for jumps seemed more difficult at times than it should be and some of the narrow areas were easy to fall off. It's a fairly nice looking game, the FMV is especially nice looking.
Here are some screenshots courtesy of Moby Games...
http://www.mobygames.com/game/agent-...ng/screenshots

GAMEPLAY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 8
OVERALL: 8


Firo & Klawd - Interactive Studios 1997 PlayStation
This is another comedic Mob shoot-em up game done in an isometric style. Klawd is a cat who was an unwitting courier for the Mob until he realizes he's delivering money and decides to steal some of it. Firo is an ape cop who busts Klawd for spending the counterfeit money and then deputizes him to help him take on the Mob. The Mob retaliates by plastering the city with wanted posters for Firo and Klawd and do their best to rub them out - including by doing drive-by shootings. All the characters in the game are animals such as dogs, cats, pigs and walruses and the game takes place in New York City in the 1930's with eight worlds, branching paths and multiple endings.
Firo and Klawd work together to basically blow everyone away and tear down as many wanted posters as they can find for extra lives. You can switch between playing as either Firo or Klawd at anytime and you can play with the game with two players as well. You find powerful weapons along the way as well as bullet proof vests, first-aid and extra lives. The game scores you by the number of kills and your accuracy.
The game tries hard to be funny with spoken one-liners and visual gags and succeeds more often than not.
I didn't run across any screenshots, but here's some game footage on YouTube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpZm9Xva5nE

GAMEPLAY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 9
OVERALL: 8


Chou Kousoku Grandoll - KID 1997 PlayStation
This is based on the Hyper Speed GranDoll anime about a school girl who discovers she's really an alien with super powers. The games an old school style platform shooter, but her armored suit gives her some powers like a grappling hook that was fun to play with and she earns other suits with different abilities as well. For being a platform game though, the controls for jumping accurately from point to point were really loose. The between stage anime looked good, but the in game graphics were only fair considering it's only 2D. It's worth a play even though it really doesn't do anything you haven't done before.
Here's some pics courtesy of C-Games....
http://www.c-games.info/games,002,1514.html
And some info on the anime it's based on here...
http://www.absoluteanime.com/hyper_s...doll/index.htm

GAMEPLAY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 8
OVERALL: 7


Cosmo Warrior Zero - Taito 2000 PlayStation
This is a 3rd person combat shooter based on the Cosmo Warrior Zero anime. I wasn't familiar with Leiji Matsumoto's work, notably Galaxy Express 999, Star Blazers or the "Leijiverse" , but I found the story, characters and locales in the game to be pretty interesting. You travel from planet to planet, exploring small bits of worlds and fighting enemies that range from mechanical droids and tanks to specters. Ultimately you'll find yourself in a one on one boss battle in an area with plenty of stuff to duck and hide behind. The combat aspect of the game isn't superb by any description. You can strafe and roll, you can shoot regular and charged shots, toss grenades and if you're close enough - launch a powerfull melee attack. You don't even have a target reticule to aim with, but the game does help a little with a small amount of auto aiming. It was the people and places that made it interesting to play. Just seeing a long train being pulled by a steam locamotive chugging thru space was cool, but getting to fight in and on it was cooler yet! The between stage anime was a mix of moving and slide show type, but the voice acting (entirely in Japanese) was good and there's little reading involved. The game starts you out as Warrior Zero, but you can unlock other characters to play as and they all handle and fight differently. The stages and enemies remain the same, but all the story anime changes for each character, which was pretty cool. Damn shame you can't seem to save your progress though. There's also a VS fighting game that two players can battle it out with all the different characters. Just an interesting game, with lots of the original artwork to unlock and it's well worth a look.
You can see some screenshots of the game here...
http://www.c-games.info/games,002,3042.html
You can see the games intro, as well as many clips of the actual anime here......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzMAtSQBbfo
And finally, you can read an in depth description about Cosmo Warrior Zero anime series here......
http://enokifilmsusa.com/library/cwzero_np.htm

GAMEPLAY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 7
OVERALL: 8

[importaku]

Finally after years of trying i have the full set.

[bust3dstr8]

Super Star Soldier
AeroBlasters - (NM+,EX+,EX+)
PC Denjin (Air Zonk) - (NM+,EX+,EX)
Avenger - (EX,NM,EX)
Gunhed
Twin Bee
Daisenpu (NAPH-1014)
Dungeon Explorer - (NM,EX,EX)
Vigilante - (NM+, NM, EX)
Bikkuriman World - (EX,EX,EX)
Majin Eiyu Wataru (Keith Courage) - (NM,EX,VG)
Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu - (EX,EX,EX)
Bomberman '93
Bomberman '94
Splatterhouse - (EX,EX,EX) slight smokey smell
Genpei Toramaden
Bloody Wolf - (NM,EX,EX)
Shinobi - new/sealed
Kato & Ken
New Adventure Island
Shubibinman 2
Jim Power - (M,NM,NM,spine,reg card, insert)
The Kung Fu (China Warrior)
Space Battleship Yamato (HMCD2004)


Dean at multimods hooked me up, $104 shipped for this stuff.

My useless thoughts on some of the games.

Space Battleship Yamato: Great animated intro, but can't play this stategy game without knowing Japanese.

Jim Power: Crappy enemy pathing and tankish contols make this game too frustrating to play.

Avenger: Raiden style shooter with multiple weapon configs before each stage. Your ship pivots while turning and can shoot at up to a 45* angle. You can lock in any angle by holding the second button. I was surprised how much I enjoy this game. The music is great and the controls are very tight. The grafix are a bit bland for a CD game though.

Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu: Solid platform game with some nice catchy toons. You start off with normal attacks and then can power up with special kicks and even a Jackie Hadouken. This is a pretty big game, I've played far into it and I don't know if the end is even close.

[Aussie2B]

I really should pay closer attention to this topic, considering all the loads of great info and pictures here.

I got a small lot of imports for various systems recently, but it's nothing too notable in value or quality. I actually spent more on shipping than the total for all the games, and I even went with relatively cheap Airmail.

So far the only one I've played is Galaxy Fraulien Yuna for PC Engine Duo. This was somewhat of a significant game in Japan and spawned a series that stretched to Saturn and PlayStation as well as an anime. The production value is pretty good, especially with its really long intro and multiple j-pop songs. The art is pretty nice too. I have a weak spot for cheesy, cutesy late 80s/early 90s style anime. The only problem is that gameplay is kind of nonexistent. Its got a window view of where you are, but as opposed to adventures like Shadowgate and Deja Vu where you can point and prod at things, the player's interaction with Yuna is limited to selecting whatever options the game is currently giving you like "look", "talk", etc. If it was in English, that would be fine and dandy and make for a great digital comic if the story was engaging, but as an import, it doesn't offer much unless you know FLUENT Japanese or are in the mood to let your brain go numb and just enjoy some pretty pictures. My knowledge of Japanese is extremely limited, but I've still played RPGs, dating sims, you name it in Japanese but this is a bit much even for me. I'll probably be in the mood to slog through it some day, though, just to appreciate the graphics and see how much of the story I can figure out. I just wish Yuna's voice wasn't so darn irritating, especially since there's A LOT of voice acting.

I'll get to the other games later, but I've also been buying a lot of other stuff from Japan related to video games. I got the second volume of the Star Ocean: Blue Sphere 4-koma manga series (now I have 1-4, but still missing 5), and I picked up two hentai doujinshi, one with Star Ocean 2 and King of Fighters and the other is entirely about Valkyrie Profile. I usually just buy hentai as a joke since I'm not the type to get my jollies from it. The Star Ocean 2 doujinshi caught my interest because it was drawn by Minato Koio, the OFFICIAL artist for the Star Ocean 2 designs. That's comedy gold to me. That's basically official hentai, in my book. :P What really took me by surprise was the rough sketch section it has (which is non-porngraphic, I should clarify). Not only does it have Koio sketches of the Star Ocean 2 cast, which I believed were used in the designing process, but he also did renditions of some of the Star Ocean 1 cast, which is beyond awesome to me and an amazing find. The official art for the first Star Ocean wasn't that great to begin with, and with the Star Ocean remakes coming out on PSP, it makes me sad that their art is largely disappointing. To top it all off, the sketch section also has drawings of Picard, Riker, and the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Forget the porn, now THAT is nerd-gasm worthy. :P

[Bloodreign]

Got a gaming jewel I've been waiting to get ahold of for awhile, Bubble Symphony for Saturn, now alls I need is a Saturn to play it on (got the hookup on the Saturn, just need to set up for the guy to send it to me). This hookup also was the one who snagged Bubble Symphony for me off Yahoo Japan. Right now stuck playing it in an emulator, still loads of fun to play even this way.

[chang2]

its an wonder ful gamez love its graphics n characters

[DragonBomber]

Sega Saturn Digital Pinball: Necronomicon
$31 shipped (high but I REALLY wanted it)
Two loose Famiclones with one multicart [one seems broken]
$6.50 with option to have returned the likely dead one
Bomberman pencil board cardboard game unopened
$27 shipped (REALLY wanted this also)

Nothing super fancy but I was happy. As soon as I find my NES power supplies in the garage tubs I intend to grab some various PAL and Famicom carts now that I finally have a toploader. Friend in town gave me a working deck sans PS. I will always need more Bomberman naturally.

Drache

[namzep]

A couple of things from Play Asia:

Sega Saturn Action Replay
Puzzle Bobble 3 (SAT)

What can I say, I love me some puzzle games. Got both for a little under $50/shipped, total.

[Nightram]

64DD Auction goodness!!



Shown there:
A Japanese 64
The 64DD
Mario Artist: Polygon studio
Mario Artist: Talent Studio
SimCity 64
F-Zero X Expansion 9with track editor and car editor!)
Doshin the Giant
Microphone
1 Controller
Capture Card
Other supplies, including the RandNet Modem.

Can't wait to try this stuff out. I also snagged the Mario Artist: Paint Studio off of Play-Asia.
Now all I need for pure 64DD goodness is a N64 mouse.
I also grabbed an F-Zero X Japanese Cart so I could play around with the expansion.

I also recently got Dream Mix TV World Fighters for PS2 and a slim kit for my silver slim.



Also, Congrats Importaku!

[Spartacus]

G Vector - Soft Office 1997 Sega Saturn
This is a storyless chase-plane rail shooter that unfortunately is entirely too difficult to enjoy. You fly a fighter ship through 6 stages that include asteroid belts, tunnels, over cities and above oceans and clouds. The terrain is 3D and while you can't actually run into it, enemies can and do use it for cover. There's a pretty good mix of enemy types that include air and ground vehicles, mecha and mechanical insects. You're equipped with slow and rapid-fire lasers as well as homing missiles. You also have two shields per stage and they aren't anywhere near enough as this game literally sweeps the front of the screen with blobs of incoming fire. It can be so intense at times that it actually causes the frame rate to stutter and slowdown. It probably doesn't help that they decided to show hits and model damaging on enemies as streams of colored chafe flying off.
A score attack mode option let's you play any of the stages you have already completed with unlimited shields. You'll probably wish you had the unlimited shield option in the regular game and there is an Action Replay code that will do just that.
The game graphics are colorful but pixilated. One nice feature of the game is a menu option that allows you to scroll through 62 enemies and manipulate and view them from any angle. It's not a game I would care to recommend to anyone.
Didn't run across any screenshots of the game, but you can see some gameplay footage here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2g5rGgvBKQ

GAMEPLAY: 4
GRAPHICS: 5
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 10
OVERALL: 4


Stellar Assault SS - Sega 1998 Sega Saturn
Engrish from the back of the manual...
The Furious COSMOS!
FINAL BATTLE Have Just Started Now!
WHY they come attack us biyearly?
WHERE are they from?
And WHO ARE THEY?

This is supposed to be a sequel/remake of the Sega 32X Stellar Assault (Shadow Squadron) game. It's a free flight space shooter that's displayed in a letter-box format, which is pretty unusual considering it's age and gives it something of an epic feeling. You can select from two types of ships with shields, radar and minor differences in speed and weapons. You're usually accompanied by multiple wingmen who I often wished would just shut up! Regrettably, they are impervious to ahh - weapons malfunctions. The missions are varied, lengthy and at times - rather fun to play. The game feels as immense as space itself and I seldom felt the playing field was constricted in any way. The graphics were so-so, but I never thought the Saturn was worth a damn for 3D games anyway. Somehow they managed to make the explosions appear like sparklers or small fireworks had gone off on the screen which looked good, but most of the big stuff breaks up into big flat polygonal shards and floats away. The Japanese voice acting (and there's plenty of it) sucks donkey balls. The sound effects were acceptably average except for the constant drone of your fighter's engines, which sounded like something that could have been done on an Atari 5200.
The numerous smaller enemy ships act as cannon fodder and sweeping the stars clear of them isn't really much of a challenge, but the large capital ships take some pounding and they do have formidable defensive laser cannons. The ground installations built on large floating asteroids were even more formidable still. Those built inside asteroids severely tested my flight skills and definitely make use of the ships otherwise useless roll capabilities.
The game provides for 2 players, but it's not the split-screen kind of play. Instead, one player flies the ship and the other player handles the weapons. It sounds dumb, but this game has missions that seemed designed to make that style of play very advantageous. The gunner has complete independent control of the target reticule and can aim and fire at anything on the screen. Instead of making kamikaze head-on charges into targets that the single player is forced to do, the pilot can take evasive action while the gunner is still able to hammer away at the target.
There's supposed to be 15 missions in the game, 2 of which are dependent on your actions while playing. All the game text is in English, but all the speech is in Japanese. It may not be worth the price of admission, but it is a reasonably challenging game to play.
Didn't find any screenshots of the game, but there is some gameplay footage here...
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...&search=Search

GAMEPLAY: 8
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 6
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 7
OVERALL: 7


EOS: Edge Of Skyhigh - Micronet 1997 PlayStation
This is a chase view flying mecha-suit shooter. You can transform yourself at anytime from flying Superman style to standing upright while in flight. You're a much bigger target upright, but you now have the ability to charge a weapon for a powershot. In either mode you can fire homing missiles or rapid fire plasma bolts. There are 6 stages in the game with the last devoted to "killing the core". The stages include flying over oceans and clouds, through forests and swamps, over cities, through twisting canyons, caverns and tunnels. In this game you can run into objects, so you need to avoid tree's, bridges, beams and other obstacles. The enemies included the expected assortment of fighter ships and aircraft, other mecha and some fixed point ground turrets. Where I thought it got to be pretty interesting was in the forest/swamp level. At first you're dodging through the trees blasting away at mechanical dragonfly's, then you get to the swamp and porpoise and other fishes are jumping out of the water shooting at you, get to the end of the swamp and gigantic metallic shrimp take flight and start to hassle you. Get past all that and you reach the stage boss - a towering praying mantis spewing flames with some sort of grabby three finger appendage coming out of it's groinal region. Some fairly original stuff!
The games features autosaves and unlimited continues that will restart you right about where you lost.
I will say this about the game, with all the stuff going on I never experienced a bit of slowdown. The game is colorful for the most part, the intro and ending FMV looked really nice, but the between stage stuff was just talking heads who's lips didn't even move in synch with their voices. The game is just mindless shooting fun that doesn't do anything new but also isn't overly difficult.
Here's some screenshots of the game, courtesy of C-Games...
http://www.c-games.info/games,002,3305.html

GAMEPLAY: 6
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 7
OVERALL: 7


Cowby Bebop - Bandai 1998 PlaySation
Another 3rd person flight shooter based on the Cowboy Bepop anime. The crew of the Bebop finds itself lost in an unknown galaxy and comes under attack. You take the Swordfish II on 6 missions to defend the good ship and crew. This plays a little differently because you don't really feel like you're steering the ship but rather you're steering the target reticule and the Swordfish II merely follows as if being towed. You can however, send roll inputs to the Swordfish II and control how it's oriented while it's tagging along. You're pretty much forced to fly a specific flight path with a guiding arrow on your target reticule showing you the way, but there are branching paths in the game if you can find them. If you release the controls entirely, the game will automatically take over and navigate the route for you. If you attempt to leave the preset paths, the ship will lose control, force you back on path and probably crash several times in the process. You don't want to do that because even though the Sworfish II has shields, everything it makes contact with in the game damages it.
Most of the missions force you fly through skinny spots - a narrow twisting canyon, between skyscrapers in a city, over and under bridges or even chasing a train through a tunnel, hence your ability to roll the ship. The challenge of the game is moving the reticule around to attack enemies while keeping an eye on the position of the Swordfish II so that it isn't running into anything. It's fairly challenging and after some of my early frustrations with it wore off, I actually started to enjoy it.
The first three missions take place on a hostile planet. Once off the planet, you'll fly one mission in space dodging through asteroids and then the last two have you attacking a death star complete with trenches, tunnels and walking At-At's.
At the end of each mission stage, you face a boss and can fly freely around in a small death match arena. The areas are a little cramped for space, but the Swordfish II is perfectly capable of doing loop-de-loops and you can attack your enemy in vertical power dives instead of wide circular runs.
The Swordfish II is equipped with a 12.7 mm machinegun with unlimited ammunition and a Ruby laser gun that fires for a few seconds before overheating. Successfully completing a mission earns you points that can be used to purchase upgrades for the Ruby laser, buy armor piercing or explosive ammo for the machinegun, or add new weapons like missiles and energy bolts.
The machinegun was my favorite weapon of the game. Not that it was all powerful, but the bullets would kick up dirt and shred leaves from tree's and look - well, like what real bullets would do and I liked that. More so for the fact that the game offers plenty of opportunities for strafing runs on trains, ships, vehicles and buildings.
The game handles the anime license by having the Bebop crew pop up in small windows during play offering encouragement and words of advice. The cut scenes looked like they were done with the in-game engine and suffered jaggies, but at least the voices were done with the original Japanese cast and they took the time to synch the lips with the voices. For a flight shooter it's not a bad game at all. If you wanted a game to play the Bebop characters, you'd be very disappointed.
Here some screenshots of the game courtesy of C-Games...
http://www.c-games.info/games,002,1546.html
And here's some low resolution gameplay footage on YouTube...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arch&plindex=0

GAMEPLAY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 7
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 7
OVERALL: 7


Choro Q Jet: Rainbow Wings - Takara 1998 PlayStation
This is a 3D chase view shooter from Takara's Choro Q series. You start by selecting from eight different miniature aircraft, most of which are piloted by kids who are verbally enthusiastic for missions, while at the same time are apologetic for each enemy aircraft shot down. The aircraft are based on actual fighters and bombers that range from a WWII Dauntless dive bomber and P-38 Lightning to modern F-15 and F-117 jets. There's even an attack helicopter thrown in for good measure. Each is rated according to it's speed and armor and each has a unique special weapon that tries to look impressive in action but doesn't perform nearly as well as you would hope for. Your mainstay weapons are machineguns with unlimited ammunition and radar guided homing missiles. The missiles pack a good punch but are notorious for breaking off the intended target and chasing the nearest target of opportunity even though it doesn't have the range or maneuverability to have a chance in Hell of intercepting it.
The game tasks you with performing both offensive and defensive missions while the skies are filled with a never-ending supply of harassing enemy fighters trying to shoot you down. Your target area is always sprinkled with repairs, spare ammo and invisibility power-ups, but it's also defended with everything from missile batteries to monolithic structures firing super weapons. When you have successfully completed you're mission, you are immediately thrown into a one-on-one aerial boss battle with someone who seems none too pleased with your success.
All of the aircraft fly quite slowly, but you can use a never exhausting supply of boost for short bursts of speed. The tradeoff is that your weapons will be rendered useless for a few seconds after using it.
The game is done in a free flight form so you can perform your missions in whatever manner you choose, although some do have a time limit. There are only 4 missions to the game and the first three are easy enough to consider it a child's game. The fourth and final mission is a 3-stage marathon against an aerial armada and the end boss's "dirigible of doom". It's so well armed and armored that I think it was designed specifically to make children cry and has so far outlasted me despite every conceivable aircraft and tactic combination I could try.
I enjoyed the freedom that free flight gave the game, though it's very short and graphically designed for a younger audience. Sadly, I considered the games graphics to be below average. The difficulty is simply unconscionable!
The only pic I could find of the game is the case artwork....
http://noujoumonogatari.sakura.ne.jp...bouxingusu.jpg

GAMEPLAY: 4
GRAPHICS: 4
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 0
OVERALL: 4


Gamera 2000 - Surveyor Corporation 1997 PlayStation
This is a game I've wanted to own for a long time. I don't know that it will ever achieve the status of "all your bases belong to us" in gaming lore, but even Gamespot had an article discussing it's notorious FMV while reviewing the game. They even manage to put the game in the proper timeline to the Gamera films. HG101 classicgaming did a thorough review, so between the two there's really not much I could add. But for those who are particularly fussy about the completeness of their games, something that neither article mentioned is that the game did include a sheet of memory stickers. And by the way, I enjoyed Gamera 2000 much more than I did Zero Wing.
You can see some screenshots courtesy of c-games here...
http://www.c-games.info/games,002,1776.html
Classicgaming's review here...
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.c...era/gamera.htm
Gamespot's review here...
http://www.gamespot.com/ps/action/ga...00/review.html
And you can see the games intro and all the cheesy FMV courtesy of YouTube here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0UQOCx7L1c

GAMEPLAY: 8
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 8
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 10
OVERALL: 9

[Julio III]

I got these a week or so ago and promptly forgot about them. I should get round to opening them and playing them, let alone taking a pic for here:

DS:
Slide Adventure Mag Kid (with the stand/optical pointer add-on in a huuge box)
Nodame Cantabile

[fahlim003]

Stellar Assault SS - Sega 1998 Sega Saturn
Engrish from the back of the manual...
The Furious COSMOS!
FINAL BATTLE Have Just Started Now!
WHY they come attack us biyearly?
WHERE are they from?
And WHO ARE THEY?

This is supposed to be a sequel/remake of the Sega 32X Stellar Assault (Shadow Squadron) game. It's a free flight space shooter that's displayed in a letter-box format, which is pretty unusual considering it's age and gives it something of an epic feeling. You can select from two types of ships with shields, radar and minor differences in speed and weapons. You're usually accompanied by multiple wingmen who I often wished would just shut up! Regrettably, they are impervious to ahh - weapons malfunctions. The missions are varied, lengthy and at times - rather fun to play. The game feels as immense as space itself and I seldom felt the playing field was constricted in any way. The graphics were so-so, but I never thought the Saturn was worth a damn for 3D games anyway. Somehow they managed to make the explosions appear like sparklers or small fireworks had gone off on the screen which looked good, but most of the big stuff breaks up into big flat polygonal shards and floats away. The Japanese voice acting (and there's plenty of it) sucks donkey balls. The sound effects were acceptably average except for the constant drone of your fighter's engines, which sounded like something that could have been done on an Atari 5200.
The numerous smaller enemy ships act as cannon fodder and sweeping the stars clear of them isn't really much of a challenge, but the large capital ships take some pounding and they do have formidable defensive laser cannons. The ground installations built on large floating asteroids were even more formidable still. Those built inside asteroids severely tested my flight skills and definitely make use of the ships otherwise useless roll capabilities.
The game provides for 2 players, but it's not the split-screen kind of play. Instead, one player flies the ship and the other player handles the weapons. It sounds dumb, but this game has missions that seemed designed to make that style of play very advantageous. The gunner has complete independent control of the target reticule and can aim and fire at anything on the screen. Instead of making kamikaze head-on charges into targets that the single player is forced to do, the pilot can take evasive action while the gunner is still able to hammer away at the target.
There's supposed to be 15 missions in the game, 2 of which are dependent on your actions while playing. All the game text is in English, but all the speech is in Japanese. It may not be worth the price of admission, but it is a reasonably challenging game to play.
Didn't find any screenshots of the game, but there is some gameplay footage here...
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...&search=Search

GAMEPLAY: 8
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 6
ENGLISH FRIENDLY: 7
OVERALL: 7

Hohoho. Isn't that the truth. I'm quite curious to hear how much this cost you? Although I will I don't agree with your 'review' of G-Vector, if anything, the challenge keeps you coming back, oh well.

[Spartacus]

Hohoho. Isn't that the truth. I'm quite curious to hear how much this cost you?Although I will I don't agree with your 'review' of G-Vector, if anything, the challenge keeps you coming back, oh well.

Hey, I think it's great to have people giving differing opinion's about games. Someone else might be interested or undecided about a game and would probably enjoy hearing as many views as possible.
I'm glad to hear you enjoy G Vector and think of it as a worthy challenge that gives you your money's worth. No doubt about it - it's tough. The slowdown and stuttering wasn't an issue for you? The lack of any intro, ending, between stage cut-scenes or story of any kind didn't give you the feeling that Soft Office just sort of slapped it together without much thought or effort? Well, I did enjoy how the game coaxes you into using the lock on missiles often by having so many enemies use the 3D terrain for cover. But I guess I'm the lazy casual gamer type who feels that if I have to replay a level over and over to get through it, then you damn well better let me save my game. I'll be much more likely to try again the next day if I know I won't have to start all over again from the beginning.

There was a time 3-4 years ago when I had made up my mind on what I wanted to own from the Sega Saturn's library and I remember looking at that list and thinking "Yeah, like that's ever going to happen!" But, with persistence....
Now I'm at the point where I can experiment a little with some games that I never even dreamed I would ever think about buying. So I decided to take a peek at what Stellar Assault SS and Psychic Assassin Taromaru were going for. There was one copy of Taromaru on Ebay for $350-ish BIN. There was this copy of Sellar Assault SS, without the sticker or spine, on Yahoo Japan for 9000 yen. I thought OK - I'll get a little kooky and give SS a whirl. Is it worth it gameplay wise? No, that would be tough to do. Do I feel some sense of satisfaction in owning and playing it? Yeah, I do. I probably couldn't explain why to anyone else's satisfaction, but I do.

[josekortez]

I got a copy of Lode Runner Extra for the Saturn off Ebay in the mail the other day.