More Saturn Games: Bug! World 6, Part 1

Описание: Originally streamed Nov 26, 2022.

After doing a bunch of Saturn games for Horror Month, I just want to play more Saturn games! So we keep going, Saturn games for another month!

Bug! is by Realtime Associates, a 2.5D platformer that was a launch game for Saturn. 2.5D refers to a 2D side-scrolling platformer made with 3D graphics, which is still quite common, (Bloodstained or Metroid Dread are recent examples,) but typically modern ones will do nothing interesting with the 3D. What I love about older ones is how they'll use the 3D to do various interesting things, like how Klonoa or NiGHTS "bend" the stage. Well, Bug! is probably the most interesting and ambitious of these ever made, with it's planes that crisscross around each other and form giant worlds to explore. It's an incredibly creative game.

Some people seem to dislike this game, and I think the main reason why is the difficulty. Not only can it be a bit demanding with what it asks from the player, but it's quite punishing as well, and it's not the most polished video game ever made. There's sometimes bits of awkward level design that verge on unfair. That's not surprising given how ambitious this game is, and for my money it should be forgiven: what this game offers is unique and cool enough that it should be highly valued! Aside from the difficulty, this game doesn't have the coolest theme; as a mascot platformer, Bug himself is not the most appealing character, though I don't find him nearly as annoying as Bubsy or Awesome Possum.

This game has another piece of weirdness to it that can really throw people, and that is it's very crazed death system. As you'd expect, this game has limited lives and limited continues. As you'd expect, both lives and continues can be earned within levels through exploration. This is a very good thing from a level design perspective, as it promotes level exploration and learning. Like with many classic platformers, your ability to progress through the game builds like a snowball the more you learn. That's standard game design, but what is decidedly NOT standard is to also have saves and loads, which are ALSO limited. Now that is crazy! How it works is this: you get a chance to save after each world. The save records all of your lives and continues, and you get a certain number of loads (which the game calls "uses.") You can make multiple saves, but each save only has so many loads.

Ultimately, if you use up all of your saves, you may end up having to start over from the beginning... not that that's shocking, after all many platformers have limited continues. Overall even having a limited save/reload feature ends up working like a second tier of continue system and actually makes the game less punishing than it would be if it didn't have the feature. But because the loads are limited, it FEELS very punishing. It's certainly a pretty crazy system! I know of no other platformer that works like this, and the only other game I know which uses limited loads is Enemy Zero, which is a horror game.

As convoluted as it is, it does a terrific job of emphasizing learning the stages. Your progress in Bug! tends to hugely snowball, and while the game can feel very tough at first, once your progress starts snowballing in the later stages it feels incredibly rewarding. You may find yourself running short on lives by around world 3, which is a bit of a difficulty spike world... at that point, just start over and replay worlds 1 and 2 again, this time much better. Once I had a good save on stage 3, my progress had already snowballed to the point where I never had to restart again, and scarcely even needed to revert to a previous save! The snowballing effect is insane in Bug.

In terms of aesthetics, it's not the most appealing presentation in terms of the theme, character, or music. The music is not bad and on certain stages it was pretty catchy, but it could've been a lot better. Having said that, I actually really like the look of the stages themselves. The way the levels crisscross around each other has such a cool, appealing look to it.

I know it may seem surprising to some who are familiar with this game, and perhaps write it off as an annoying mascot platformer like Bubsy, but this game really deserves far more credit. The things it's doing with 3D are super cool, and totally unique to this game as far as I know. Once you get into it, it's incredibly rewarding. To me, this is a very unsung big hidden gem that more people need to give a chance! Really cool game.

My Rating:
Overall 8/10 - Music 5/10

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