Metal Gear Solid On Dreamcast! - Review By Retrovertigo - Page 1/2
The Dreamcast is really an impressive piece of hardware. I've played things on this console that I never imagined were possible. I'm not talking about the high caliber of games that have been released throughout the years for the Dreamcast (although there were certainly dozens of excellent titles for the system that blew my socks off), I'm talking about the programs that tech geeks have engineered and designed to play on the Dreamcast.
Did you know that I've played classic Genesis games on my Dreamcast (outside of the Sega Smash Pack)? I've played a few classic GameBoy games on the system. I've also enjoyed more than my fare share of classic Nintendo Entertainment System games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden on Sega's machine, as well as a variety of Super Nintendo titles. I'm talking about emulation. I'm sure many of you have downloaded a video game emulator and a few game ROMs on your home PC at least once in your life. I never imagined that I could actually play old "classic" games on my Dreamcast console, with a controller I might add, instead sitting 2 feet away from a monitor, hunching over a keyboard desperately clicking the arrow keys, hoping to lead Mario to Princess Toadstool's rescue, they same way I did many, many years ago.
However, most emulation is not legal, and coming across the necessary software can be difficult, unless you have friends who know about this stuff or you know where to look on the Internet to find it. Also, the emulators I've played on the Dreamcast are not 100% perfect. It's interesting to be able to play other systems' games on a Dreamcast console, but at the same time, the experience is not as good as playing the real thing with real games. Some games suffer from horrible "slow down", while others play fine but have no sound or music. Some games just won't play at all. It's a cool concept to play emulated games on a video game console, but it hasn't been perfected yet.
About a year and a half ago, Bleem! made the announcement that they would be developing discs that would enable Dreamcast owners to play their favorite PlayStation games on their Dreamcast consoles, with perfect sound but with more polished graphics. Originally, the discs were supposed to come in 4 different packs, each supporting 100 games. However, because of legal reasons, Bleemcast! was constantly being delayed, and gamers began to wonder if the product would ever come out.
Well, Bleemcast! is out now in a much smaller version than what was originally promised.
The Good
Metal Gear Solid is arguably the best game on the PlayStation. With its compelling story and awesome cinematics mixed with tactical espionage action, its very clear why this game is still one of the most popular PlayStation games even after all these years.
If you are one of those Sega gamers who shelters themselves inside their Sega-only world, and refuses to acknowledge Sony as a viable video game company, then you should be ashamed of yourself, as you have missed out on a lot of enjoyable PlayStation products. Thankfully, with Bleemcast! for Metal Gear Solid, you can still stay loyal to the Sega Dreamcast while playing an enhanced version of a PlayStation game on your Dreamcast.
Let me explain very briefly how Metal Gear Solid plays, for the three or four of you out there who have never seen it or played it. MGS is a story of nuclear terrorism, that hits a little closer to home today after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America. You play as Solid Snake, a special-ops soldier skilled in the art of lethal combat and armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art equipment. Your mission is to find the terrorists' nuclear weapons and take away their ability to use them. Of course, doing so isn't going to be easy, as there is a cast of freaky characters from the psychotic mind reader Psycho Mantis, the extremely patient Sniper Wolf, and the main man behind the plan Liquid Snake, who will try to make you bleed.
Perhaps the best game to compare MGS to is another action-strategy game Rainbow Six, although these are two different genres of action, they involve the same gameplay idea. They're both action games, but they're not action games in the sense of Quake. Instead, you're not encouraged to kill every enemy you see, in fact, avoiding confrontation altogether is sometimes the best option.
What exactly does Bleemcast! for Metal Gear Solid do? The biggest feature, besides being able to play this PlayStation game on your Dreamcast, is the improved graphics. Not only does Bleemcast! smooth out the graphics, it also increases the resolution of the screen.
Surprisingly, even though I've only ever experienced Metal Gear Solid on a PlayStation Dual Shock controller, the control scheme on the Dreamcast controller is pretty good. It does take awhile to get used to the controls, as the game instructs your controls by using the triangle, square, circle, and x button from the Dual Shock controller, which can confuse some people. Thankfully, if you have any questions, you can check out the button mapping at the Bleemcast! startup screen. The Dreamcast also doesn't have a select button, which comes into play when radioing in for help and saving games, so to replace the missing select button, the Dreamcast uses the down arrow on the directional pad to do so.
Starting a game of Metal Gear Solid on the Dreamcast is easy. Bleemcast! comes with a startup disc which you load into your console, and when prompted, you remove the disc and replace it with the MGS disc.
Next: The Bad, and The Final Word
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