My 10 Most Influential Games: Panzer Dragoon (Sega Saturn)

Truth be told, I've never been a fan of rail shooters. You know, the type of shmup--or shoot 'em up--where the ship or flying character moves and shoots into the screen while the game pushes them along a set path.

A few examples, if the description above isn't enough: 1985's arcade classic, Space Harrier, 1987's Thunder Blade and 1988's Galaxy Force, among many, many others.

Don't get me wrong, I love the looks and even the general idea of each of those titles. Their gameplay has never appealed to me, though--or maybe I should say their gameplay has always confounded me. Moving around a screen while simultaneously shooting into it just feels weird to me.

Still, when I bought a Japanese Sega Saturn system in early 1995 (embarrassing aside: I paid about $600 for the console, one controller and a copy of Virtua Fighter), I also bought Panzer Dragoon.

Admittedly, I didn't realize Panzer Dragoon was a rail shooter at the time. I had a feeling that was the case, thanks to all the articles I'd read in magazines like DieHard GameFan and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but I wasn't absolutely sure.

I wasn't disappointed when I finally spent some time with this particular into-the-screen shooter, thankfully. Its softly colored visuals, dynamic camera positions and majestic soundtrack helped acclimate me to it, I'm sure, but they only would've taken me so far had Panzer Dragoon's gameplay been a total bore.

I guess some folks may describe this Sega product using that term, but not me. In fact, I've found its gameplay exhilarating since day one. Chiefly responsible for that, I think, is the fluid movement (for the time, at least) of the blue-and-pink dragon that serves as the protagonist's airborne "steed."

That movement gives Panzer Dragoon's gameplay an element of depth I thought was lacking in older rail shooters--I have a hard time judging where I am in relation to oncoming enemies in the vast majority of those games--and that was key to me finally enjoying one of this shmup sub-genre's offerings.

Did this surprising love affair prompt me to seek out, play and even lust after other into-the-screen shoot 'em ups?

To an extent, yes. I certainly found 1997's Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64 far more appealing than I would have if Panzer Dragoon hadn't pushed my buttons, so to speak. And the same could be said for 2000's Sin and Punishment and 2001's Rez.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say rail shooters have become one of my favorite game genres thanks to this early Sega Saturn title, but I definitely enjoy them a lot more than I did before I took it for a spin. For that reason alone, I think declaring Panzer Dragoon one of my most influential games makes perfect sense.

See also: previous '10 Most Influential Game' posts about The 7th Guest, Balloon Kid, Bubble Bobble, Final Fantasy V and Kid Icarus

20 years of PlayStation memories

In case you weren't aware already, Sony's monumental first foray into the world of video-game consoles (after the botched Super Famicom CD-ROM attachment, of course) made its initial appearance on Japanese store shelves 20 years ago today.

(North Americans didn't get their hands on the system until Sept. 9, 1995, while Europeans had to wait until Sept. 29 of the same year and Australians had to wait until Nov. 15.)

In honor of that fact, I thought I'd share some of my "PlayStation memories."

One of my earliest such memories relates to the PlayStation's Japanese launch. I'm pretty sure I wore out the pages of the DieHard GameFan, Electronic Gaming Monthly and other magazines that covered its development and release (as well as the release of the Sega Saturn and the NEC PC-FX). Thanks to those articles, I was all but set to buy a Japanese Saturn from a retailer I can't remember (it was one of the many that advertised within the pages of the above-mentioned publications back then) when I came across screenshots of some of the PlayStation's most newsworthy launch and launch-window titles--Battle Arena Toshinden, Crime Crackers, Jumping Flash! and Ridge Racer.

For whatever reason, the first and last of the above-mentioned games were the ones that nearly prompted me to pick up a Japanese PlayStation rather than a Saturn. Granted, at the time, GameFan's writers, especially, were pushing both of them as being akin to the Second Coming, so don't give me too hard of a time about the fact that I once pined for a game (Battle Arena Toshinden) that later was revealed to be a bit of a turd.

Still, even now it's easy to see why I and others were blown away by the experiences the PlayStation was able to produce. We were coming from the era of the Mega Drive (Genesis), PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) and Super Famicom (SNES), after all, and we were used to pixels and sprites and two-dimensional games. Seeing three-dimensional games that were produced using polygons was mighty foreign, not to mention thrilling, to most of us--especially those, like me, who tended to ignore PC gaming.

In the end, though, I dropped a boatload of hard-earned cash on a Japanese (gray) Saturn rather than a PlayStation, mainly because I was completely obsessed with two games that were released around the same time as Sega's console: Clockwork Knight and Panzer Dragoon.

Strangely, I can't for the life of me remember when I finally bought a PlayStation. All I know is that the system had been out for some time before I acquired one.

I do remember what pushed me over the edge, though: Final Fantasy Tactics. For whatever reason, although the much-ballyhooed (especially at the time) Final Fantasy 7 left me feeling cold--I rented it and a PlayStation system from the local video joint shortly after its North American release--this tactical spin-off had the opposite effect on me. In fact, I was so gung-ho about it that just one week with it (thanks to the same video store I mentioned a second ago) was all I needed to run out to the nearest big-box store and buy both a PlayStation and a copy of this game.

That ended up being both a blessing and a curse, of course, as I quickly became obsessed with Yasumi Matsuno's masterpiece--to the point where I played it for hours on end, often in lieu of completing my homework.

A number of other PlayStation games also have left an impression on me over the years, of course--games like PaRappa the Rapper, SaGa Frontier and Umihara Kawase Shun, just to name a few--but none of them hit me as hard as the one that forced me to (finally) give Sony and its PlayStation console a chance. Because of that--and a slew of additional reasons--it'll always have a place in my heart.

So, those are just a few of my own "PlayStation memories." What are some of yours? Please feel free share them in the comments section of this post, if you're up for it.

So far, so meh: The latest Panzer Dragoon game will be a Kinect-only XBLA release

I seem to be the only person on the Internet who is disappointed by the fact that, according to a number of sources, Project Draco, the spiritual successor to Team Andromeda's Panzer Dragoon titles, will be a Kinect-only XBLA release.

Sure, it's great to hear that Yukio Futatsugi and Manabu Kusunoki, the two men chiefly responsible for the series' first three installments, are working on this Microsoft-backed iteration, too, but I highly doubt even that info will be enough to get me to invest in a Kinect between now and whenever Project Draco hits the XBLA service early next year.



Should its developers be so kind as to throw in an option that allows folks to play the game with a good, old-fashioned controller, though, I'll of course pick it up without a second thought.

Anyway, for more information on Project Draco, including a fairly in-depth description of how it's played, check out this NeoGAF post.