Boy, it's been a good couple months for robots. Shin Mazinger is running, I just saw the Gurren-Lagann movie, and yesterday Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram popped up on Xbox Live. A robot fighting game with online play: imagine that! I'm about the happiest dude around.
I'm not going to try and give you the detailed history and analysis that's been done here, but I'll try and lay down the basics for you: Virtual On is one of the lesser-loved Sega classics, a 3D robot fighting game with rather unconventional controls. A lot of people get confused and try to aim and shoot in this game, the way you would in a third-person shooter, and that's not exactly how it goes. VO is about two players jockeying for position: dashing and hopping around the stage, all the while dodging bullets and trying to guess where the opponent is going next. It's quite fast and once you get the hang of the controls, you'll see how they create such a unique and exciting experience. There have been VO games since VOOT, but they're widely regarded as failed experiments.
In the arcades, VO was played on a twin-stick setup of the kind you often see in robot anime. Because they're the controller the game was made for-- and by virtue of being so damned cool-- twin sticks for the home versions of Virtual On have always been sought after. A cursory glance at Ebay has you paying $100 for a Saturn twinstick and $90 for a broken Dreamcast twinstick. I hear it's not so bad in Japan (if you've ever looked at the real prices of old games on Yahoo JP, you're already well aware that all imports are gouge-priced) but we're not over there, you know?
So any home port of Virtual On has this essential problem: 99% of the people who play VO are never going to even see a twinstick, much less actually use one themselves. Particularly with the Xbox Live Arcade release of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (hereafter VOOT), the only way to have one is to either build it yourself from the already-rare Saturn or DC sticks or pay soembody to do the same: in Japan people are paying modders $250 for it. Will Sega release a twinstick for a game they only released via direct download for $15? It's likely to be nearly as expensive as just getting a modded stick.
So yeah, dire situation. You'll be playing on pad. I'll be playing on pad. We will all pretty much be playing on pad. In that case, the whole thing hinges on how the pad controls turned out. The answer is: they're fine. The dual sticks are approximated with the two analog pads, with some minor changes to make the game workable on a control pad: doing the things you do on a twinstick on a pair of analogs will not be comfy on the thumbs (though you do have the option). This setup does not address every high-level concern, because it cannot overcome certain inherent issues with analog sticks as opposed to digital twinsticks. However, and let's be honest here, you and I are not high-level VO players. You've likely never even played it before. Players on twinsticks have an obvious competitive advantage, but the game is extremely playable on this setup. Telling people the game is broken and to skip it in the absence of a $100 controller is, frankly, cheating a wider audience out of a great experience.
That said, the 360 game is a straight-across port of the last arcade version of VOOT (5.66), with a bunch of things that the Japanese got on their Dreamcast VOOT (5.45) but we didn't: some additional robots, online play, a color editor, and so on. The DC nostalgic will be happy to hear that the Dreamcasts on the back of the robots, as well as the big old VMU icon to load custom colors, are intact.
I'm not sure too many people know this is out: Sega did zero promotion in the US that I saw, and since its release I've gotten a bunch of messages on Live to the effect of "holy shit you're playing VOOT, when the hell did VOOT come out for 360 oh my god I have to buy this". When not even hardcore gamers know your game is out, something is wrong, Sega. In any case, buy the hell out of VOOT. Twinsticks or not, this is a brilliant game, there's nothing else out there like it (the criminally underloved Senkou no Ronde (Wartech) is a 2D cousin with heavier shooter influences) and $15 is a steal for a game this big and rich.
If you're not yet sold, might I remind you that Virtual On is one of those rarest, most beautiful things in all the world: a Blue Skies Videogame from Sega's best times? Happy music, blue skies, and brightly colored robots courtesy of famed anime mechanical designer Hajime Katoki all await! Creators of brown and black videogames, please take note that Virtual On remains gorgeous, years and years later, especially on my HDTV.
(Update 6/8/09: Hori and Sega are making a twinstick controller, but it's Japan only and it's going to retail for an obscene $300. At half that, I'd have considered it, but $300-- not to mention the $50 or so more it would cost to ship the big heavy thing-- is just ludicrous. No deal.)
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