An explanation of what we’re doing here can be found in the introduction post.
Last time, we endured the gauntlet of Jaguar games released in December ’94 with Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, Kasumi Ninja, Val d’Isère Skiing and Snowboarding, Zool 2, and Iron Soldier.
When we were last with the PS1, we looked back at the first half of ’96 with our Mid-Year Round-up.
We’re now entering July with a batch of ports and a shameless knock-off of one of the PS1’s launch titles with Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, Gunship, SimCity 2000, and Bogey Dead 6.
**This post was originally published on 5/29/2024 on Giant Bomb dot com**
Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angel
Developer: Krisalis Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 7/1/1996
Time to Getting My Genes Stolen: 20 Minutes
As with everything else, this story begins with Dungeons & Dragons. As the original editions of D&D blew up in the anglophone world during the early-80’s, a group of mates running a store called Games Workshop over in dismal ‘ol Britain developed the bright idea to take the RPG elements of D&D, which itself evolved from tabletop wargaming, and roll them back into a proprietary wargaming ruleset. So, you had the physical maneuvering and fiddliness of wargames with the Tolkien-inspired roleplaying and progression of an RPG. The resulting game was released in 1983 as Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and I’m sure the blokes who made it thought they would be able to go touch up that name at a later date.
At the same time, one of the employees at Games Workshop’s figurine studio, Citadel, was gradually working on a sci-fi tabletop game called Rogue Trader. In the late-80’s that project really started coming together so the company slapped the Warhammer branding on it, for synergy and whatnot, and shipped the ruleset out in 1987 as Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. The combined Warhammer and Warhammer 40k brands would quickly begin to take over the international tabletop scene, thus ruining wargaming for all future generations.
Capitalism being what it is, various spin-off board, card, and alternate scale tabletop games have been developed from the two Warhammer properties over the decades. One of the earliest was 1989’s Space Hulk, a two-player game where the biggestest strongestest space marines fight xenomorphs tryanid genestealers on small, tight maps representing derelict spaceships. This represents a shorter and lower unit size experience to the main ruleset and gained some popularity as such. This led to Electronic Arts acquiring the Space Hulk license in ’91 and adapting it surprisingly well to an action-tactics game for DOS. That game, 1993’s Space Hulk, was well-regarded at the time and is still a nostalgic classic in certain crowds. Having both First Person Shooter and Real-Time Tactics gameplay put it at a middle ground between Doom kiddies and weird old guys who fucked hex grids. The game experienced enough success to give someone at EA the bright idea to develop a version of the game from the ground up for consoles. The result of that bright idea was Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels.
Why have I told you all that backstory? To kill time, of course. The damn thing is mostly unplayable without the game manual, which I couldn’t find for the PS1 version. I’m talking about a convoluted control scheme only slightly below the PS1 ports of Wing Commander III or Descent, and I definitely needed the manual for those things. On top of that, the structure and flow of the different mission types is poorly explained in-game and would also likely be more apparent with the manual. What I’m saying is that in the first campaign mission the guy I was controlling got trapped in a corner by the AI teammates and I wasn’t able to get unstuck.
That impasse I found myself in is related to the nature of the gameplay itself. In any given mission, you have a tactical view and a first-person view. In the tactical view, you can theoretically order the squad members around and see the overall situation. In first person, the game plays like a very slow version of Wolfenstein 3D. There’s usually some objective to accomplish and a massive number of genestealers to shoot along the way. Contemporary reviews commented on the difficulty of the game, though there’s a difficulty slider that can make the combat trivial. From my experience, trying to navigate the levels is where the challenge lies. Again, I got trapped in a corner and couldn’t find a way to get out after futzing with the tactical view for several minutes. This has all the feel of a janky 90’s PC game, even though this version of Space Hulk was made exclusively for consoles. That vibe is so strong that I mistook it for a straight PC port instead of smelling the 3DO stank like I usually do.
I can only guess that the game would be alright enough assuming you can physically play the thing. As for everything else, I can only say that a lot of people spent a lot of time in the 2000’s making Warhammer 40k into something other than the dorkiest thing imaginable. Every second of the cutscenes and dialogue are the lamest stuff possible; the magnitude of the hokiness is astounding coming from the modern grim and nasty aesthetic. I never took space marines that seriously before as a faction, and it’s even harder now that I’ve seen this silly nonsense. Taking everything into consideration. I can’t make heads or tails of this game. Oh well.
Gunship
Developer: Microprose
Publisher: Microprose
Release Date: 7/3/1996
Time to Crashing During A Milk Run: 45 Minutes
Moving on to an actual PC port, we now have to deal with a Microprose helicopter MilSim game from 1991 for some reason. That game, Gunship 2000, was itself a sequel to 1986’s Gunship, which is a different game from this Gunship, or Gunship! Which was released in 2000. What I’m saying is its gunships all the way down. Say ‘gunship’ five times fast, go on I’ll wait.
Gunship 2000 did what we would now expect from a game of this type. There are a few missions in two large, open maps where you need to balance your helicopter type, fuel, armaments, and weight against whatever objectives, distance, and expected enemies you need to deal with. Some basic real-world tactics can be used, and the maps even feature FARPs. Everyone loves a good FARP. This original release looks and feels exactly as you would expect of 3D flight game on DOS from ’91, and I’m sure it was popular among contemporary dads. Microprose pumped out so many Sim games in the 80’s and 90’s that they all blur together for me, and they all probably shared significant amounts of code between them which doesn’t make differentiation any easier.
For reasons I’ll get to later, they ported that game to the PS1 in 1996, and that is the thing we’re actually looking at. This is structurally identical to the PC original, but with a few expected changes to the look and feel. Most obviously, the 3D graphics have been heavily overhauled, with ground textures added, fog of war improved, and with removal of that old polygonal pop-in. The built in sound chip of the PS1 also greatly improves the audio experience; I think this is first time I’ve unironically referenced the CD Quality Audio™ as a positive. The menus have been completely redone to be more usable for controllers, which is a shockingly considerate change even if the outcome wasn’t 100% effective. That consideration extends to the controls, which almost feels appropriate for a PS1 controller. That limited success is on its own worlds better than the last Microprose PC port, XCOM: UFO Defense, which was an unmitigated nightmare. Flight Sims were probably the easiest PC games to port in this era.
The most significant and subtle change is in the gameplay. The maps seem to have been slightly shrunk, reducing the flight time for each mission, and the missions seem more populated with targets, making the reduced timespan more action dense. This creates a slightly more arcade-y feel, which was the correct line of thinking for a console port. This last point might be a complete delusion on my part, but it feels right after looking up gameplay of the original release. Though, in my 45 minutes tooling around with this game I only got through the tutorials and the first mission of the campaign, so I suppose I shouldn’t speak too confidently about what’s going on under the hood.
What I can speak confidently about is the reason for this port’s existence. Microsrose was one of the companies who were coaxed by the Tramiels into signing up for Jaguar CD development when it was announced in 1994, and Gunship 2000 was the game they chose to release on that doomed system. Yet, that port wasn’t done by the time of the Jag CD’s launch in ’95, and it became abundantly clear to everyone that the thing was dead on arrival. Microprose likely saw the disaster unfold mid-development and decided to jump ship, retooling the port for the PS1 instead since they already had a devkit from their terrible XCOM port. That was a savvy move since this eventual release was moderately received and let them avoid a loss on this whole misadventure. I suppose I find the background more interesting than the game itself, it being what it is, but I need to reiterate how relieved I was that this game wasn’t abjectly wretched like Black Fire or mildly annoying like Thunderstrike 2.
SimCity 2000
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 7/6/1996
Time to Reticulating Splines: 15 Minutes
Now that we’ve seen a less janky PC port, let’s look at a more janky PC port. We last dealt with SimCity 2000 on the Saturn way back in October ’95. I don’t remember much about the experience, and, funnily enough, after re-reading my write-up it turns out I made it about as far this time as I did last time. I have since been informed that I was “doing it wrong” and that there are uncommunicated conditions that need to be met to make a city go. Remember to read the software documentation if you want to have fun, kids.
Aside from my usual dumbassery, this version feels slightly better than the Saturn release. The action windows are turned on by default and the scrolling is maybe a couple fps faster, which are minor changes but it’s the little things that count towards look and feel. That said, this is still a terrible experience, and there was no good reason to play either of these console versions of SImCity 2000 back then and there certainly isn’t now. The SNES version is the port people like and the DOS original regularly goes on sale for like $2 USD on GOG. This is a seminal and important game, so I’m not going to dump on its fundamentals, but it super did not belong on these consoles without significant modification.
Bogey Dead 6
Developer: Asmik Ace Entertainment
Publisher: SCEA
Release Date: 7/8/1996
Time to More Like Fart Combat: 35 Minutes
Y’all like Ace Combat? Well, so did Asmik Ace and they liked it so much they decided to make their own, to our misfortune. This is the first direct knock-off we’ve seen of our top-ranking PS1 game, though it won’t be the last. The quality and successfulness of Flight Combat games on consoles was a precarious and fly-by-night kind of thing before Namco came in and showed everyone how it was done. These things consisted of either cumbersome sims like the above Gunship or arcade Rail Shooters like Afterburner, and it wasn’t until Air Combat came along that the correct balance was achieved. Asmik Ace was one of the purveyors of that old paradigm, having developed the bottom-tier Air Diver series for the Genesis and SNES. Bogey Dead 6 (called the more comprehensible Sidewinder in Japan) began their effort to transition to this new generation on the coattails of more talented developers.
Bogey Dead 6 itself consists of a dozen or so missions where you fly around shooting combinations of air and ground targets. You have a handful of contemporary and speculative U.S. fighter/bombers to choose from and a loadout of a few different types of armaments. It theoretically plays how you would expect given its influences and is undeniably a functioning video game.
Positives first, because I’m trying. This game is more graphically advanced than Air Combat, featuring textured polygons and a missile cam view inset with the UI that works without negatively impacting graphical performance. The sound design is mostly fine, with the kind of good briefing VO that you would want from one of these. Yet, I don’t give the technical performance too much weight in the comparison, since Air Combat was graphically derived from a Namco System 21 game released in 1993. But hey, this game took enough advantage of the hardware to get Sony to publish it outside of Japan.
Now for everything else. This game plays like poop. The handling is too loose in a sucky way; the physical relationship between the size, speed, and distance of the different polygonal objects feels viscerally wrong; the mission design is inelegant; the scoring system doesn’t matter like in Air Combat; and the enemy AI is so incomplete that they constantly try to kamikaze into you. All the little competencies that would go into making one of these games truly good are completely missing here. It’s not a vile garbage fire like Agile Warrior or a nothingburger like Thunderstrike 2, but I’d play that Top Gun game over this thing every time out of ten. Oh, and this game gave me motion sickness, so fuck ’em.
I don’t have a good reason for resenting Bogey Dead 6 this much. Maybe it’s because the developers saw what a good one of these looks like and then completely misunderstood the assignment. Contemporary reviewers seem to have felt that something was off, and it’s been effectively memory holed in the U.S. even though there were like five Sidewinder games in Japan up through the PS2 era. Enthusiasts in the west are more likely to recognize Asmik Ace from such beloved classics as LSD or The Ring: Terror’s Realm, and their involvement in those Dokapon games. Let’s close with a fun fact, the phrase “bogey, dead six” comes from fighter pilot terminology for someone having a hostile plane directly behind them. That has nothing to do with this game since all the AI planes fly into you head-on, so I can’t explain why they used that for the name of this thing.
I hope everyone had as much fun with that batch of PC ports and sims as I did. This is the first July we’ve had to deal with in this project, so just remember that the assumptions about the release calendar being barren in the lead up to Madden became received wisdom for a reason. Yet, there’s no time to wallow in our circumstances, we need to update the Ranking of All PS1 Games!
1. Air Combat
…
35. Gunship
52. Bogey Dead 6
62. Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels
72. SimCity 2000
…
107. World Cup Golf: Professional Edition
Next time, we’re going over to the 3DO and beginning our trek through its non-chronological releases from 1994 with Another World, Cannon Fodder, Club 3DO: Station Invasion, Corpse Killer, and Cowboy Casino. Typing out that list made me cackle maniacally, so be sure to check it out.
Afterwards, we’re back with the PS1 in the middle of July ’96 with Robo Pit, Olympic Soccer: Atlanta 1996, Star Fighter, and Tecmo’s Deception: Invitation to Darkness. I’m personally curious about one of those games.
I stream around twice a week over on my twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/fifthgenerationgaming. There, we’re looking over the games covered in these entries along with whatever other nonsense I happen to be streaming.
I streamed the games featured in this post on that Twitch channel. You can watch the archive below.
Fifth Generation Gaming 
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