Battle Arena Toshinden Remix

Sega has had quite a hard time convincing beat 'em up fans that the only game they need is Virtua Fighter. Of course they did have Virtua Fighter Remix and Virtua Fighter 2. Now though, Sega also has some third party ammunition. That ammunition couldn't have come at a better time, with Sony's arsenal of high quality games and low prices dealing Sega a staggering blow. It's no secret that the PlayStation is outselling the Saturn by a fairly substantial margin. They need this a lot.

Fortunately, the Saturn version of Toshinden is a sure-fire winner, it even has a couple of features you won't find in the original PlayStation version of the game, such as animated sequences, a few different moves and at least one brand new character. Add to that the highly detailed and colorful graphics and you have what appears to be a red hot smash hit.

There are a couple of teeny weeny problems though. For one thing, the Saturn is nowhere near as godd as the PlayStation when it comes to things like lighting and visual effects. The pay-off for this lack of power is unfortunately some pretty ropey looking effects. The shadows of the characters for example, are made up of cross-hatched dots, like something you might expect to see on a Genesis. The polygon build (the number of objects that make up a fighter) has been greatly reduced too, making Toshinden Remix look a little bit less detailed than its predecessor.

Sega are happy however, as awill Saturn owners be, but this does mark the start of an unavoidable glut of nearidentical 3D fighting games. Still, when they're as good as Toshinden Remix, who cares? The music, sound effects and speech have all been tweaked to suit the Saturn and rumor has it that there are going to be a couple of very nice surprises hidden on the disc.The question is, are you good enough to find them?