Mega CD FMV Retrospective

But what of the other efforts? One way of filling up all that extra lovely space that game makers far and wide stumbled upon, fairly early in fact, was the use of Full Motion Video, or FMV, thus leading to the advent of the FMV game.

FMV games used memory sapping digitised video footage and sound that would far exceed the limitations of cartridges leading to a glut of titles that were riddled with it. There were several flavours of these games. Some were of the more leisurely variety like the famous Night Trap where it was all about keeping an eye on what’s going on, strategically setting traps, and flicking between video feeds at the right time, rarely relying on reactions. Others however, could be likened to Quick Time Events these days in how they operate, i.e. watch the game playing what’s effectively a cutscene until you’re prompted to interact with well timed button presses. Except in the Mega CD days, they weren’t really cutscenes that crop up every now and then to progress the story. They were the game.

From Mega CD pack-in titles like the anime flavoured Cobra Command and Road Avenger, to Sewer Shark and Tomcat Alley, there were many who tried their hand in the field. But were any of these games actually any good? Have a seat my obsequiously gallant Grigadiers of the Grigmungous order, as we take a brief look at some of the games that broke through their developmental shackles to break out the other side and find their ways into our homes.

Night Trap

Well, let’s not mess around and cut right to the chase. Night Trap. Yep, the game that sparked a whole lot o’ trouble all those years ago, and which, along with Mortal Kombat, lead to video games receiving age certificates in the vein of movies. ‘Sfunny really. The game was about as convincing as an episode of Top Gear, and if you can believe it, even worsely acted. In fact, the only thing scary about this game was the crazy fuss around it, with the press jumping in at every potential opportunity to herald it as the thing that will finally push the youth of the day over the edge.

Course, the thing that they actually should have been focusing on is the bizarre Night Trap song the girls start miming to for some strange reason near the beginning of the game that truly is so bad it’s almost goes all the way round the crap spectrum to become good again. With this song in mind, I’d have argued that the fifteen certificate the game was awarded was lenient in the extreme.

Double Switch

Now I never actually got to play this game back in the day, but I was aware it was treated with some level of prestige, possibly even skating around the notion of being decent. Can’t say for sure if that’s true, but what I can say is that it plays in a similar manner to Night Trap. So chances of that being true are thin on the ground.

Anyhoo, starring a character called Eddie who has been locked in the basement of a building, you are to flick between a selection of cameras while setting traps all over the show. Sounds a bit like The Grigs current situation here at Grig Towers. We’ll be sure to keep any and all copies away from him so as not to give that monster of iniquity any ideas.

With higher production values than Night Trap, apparently the main criticism levelled at the game was that it was too hard. Better than getting called too crap, I guess.

Silpheed

There were some interesting anomalies with the Mega CD, and one such title that you wouldn’t necessarily consider an FMV game was space-shooter Silpheed, which seemed to show the Mega CD pumping out incredible amounts of polygons and throwing them round like the basement bound The Grig does with poop in one of his particularly noteworthy dirty protests… until you realise it wasn’t doing anything of the sort and was just streaming video of said polygons behind your controllable ship that was layered over the top. Sneaky!

Yep, it’s a shooter. But this game had FMV coming out of its ayne!

Dragons Lair

There was also the release of the impressive Dragons Lair, which upon its late 80’s arcade release, was probably the goal post marker for this type of game.

With its voluptuous cartoon graphics and awesome dramatic sound, it was basically as close to an interactive cartoon as you were gonna get back then. And while the Mega CD version had more than a slight tarring of the ol’ grain-o-vision brush, it was still a wonder that this game had made it into the home in its original guise, rather than the awful NES adaptation where it had become one of the worst platform games known to man. I own it and can attest to the buh.

Time Gal

Time Gal was a good one. Well, in that it looked good. The actual game was a pile of Grig, but it had that awesome looking late 80’s anime flava down to a tee. Taking control of the shenanigans of the time-travelling temptress, Gal, or whatever her name is, traversed the circuits of time, hitting up many a period (hee hee! Period!) and taking on an assortment of adversaries as she strove to save her scantily clad hide.

Whilst it looks quite good, with the cartoon graphics using simpler and flatter colours allowing for a marginal drop in the usual graininess found in live action FMV, the gameplay is left wanting with confusing scenarios and so fine a line between what you should and shouldn’t do it can often leave you wondering what the Grig is going on. Close, but no cigar.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault

Rebel Assault was an interesting one. Up until this point, most FMV games on Mega CD were grain-fests of washed out colours due to the seemingly bizarre issue of still sharing the Megadrives very limited amount of colours on screen. New tech was called for, and so Sega developed new rendering methods that allowed for more colours and a bigger FMV display window. In fact, after a brief Griggle search, I can find nothing on this but I distinctly remember it at the time. Another lead for Grig Orig to track down lost in the annals of time! Anyhoo, Rebel Assault was the first game to bear the fruits of this labour.

Converted from the PC original, Rebel Assault sees you controlling your usual assortment of Star Wars flavoured vehicles, taking down the Empire, and generally kicking Imperial ayne all round the galaxy. ‘Twas a fair crack of the whip, though the Mega CD version came off as slightly lacking compared to the PC original and even missed out a few chapters due to the developers being unable to overcome some of the constraints of the system. Me and Lartens had a pop at it a while ago (note: I think I wrote this article about 2 years ago, so it’s now probably a heck of ‘a while ago’)… think we were done in about five minutes. So it’s still got better lastability than a modern FIFA title.

So that was our merry jaunt down the FMV Mega CD memory motorway. While these games missed the mark for most people, there were undoubtedly some awesome games for Mega CD. Usually not of the FMV variety of course, but they were definitely out there, despite the relatively bad rep the machine still seems to have these days. I certainly never regretted buying one and had way too much fun with it to give a crap about all the people talking buh about it. From Snatcher and Thunderhawk, to Batman Returns and Sonic CD, and the earlier mentioned Final Fight CD to name a few, there were plenty of titles to get stuck in to. And that’s not counting some of the gems that snuck past me, such as the Snatcher-esque The Space Adventure and (somehow) Shining Force CD, which I’m surely gonna be checking out at some point! Anyway, we’ll get round to all those games in a future episode of Grig Orig, same Grig time, same Grig channel! But for now, toodle-doo!