OK, perhaps Astal isn’t as good as all that. Silence the naysayers and show them the power of Saturn 2D gaming! If it played as good as it looked, then this was the kind of game you debuted to your friends only when as many of them as possible were gathered together. All I knew was that I had something special, and I was filled with anticipation. Obviously, none of this was apparent to me when I took home Astal on its launch day. The company would soon dive headfirst into mostly polygonal releases, and though there would be a few of the old games released here and there, 2D on the Saturn would become a niche category in the U.S. How unfortunate it was that Astal turned out to be gases from Sega of America’s last generation meal, rising as one final burp at the 3D dinner table. Saving Princess Leda and the planet Quartilia from the evil Jerado looked like one hell of a good time, and it gave me hope for the Saturn’s future. Astal looked like everything one would want in a next generation 2D platformer, and it felt like all those months of drought after the surprise launch were finally at an end. The Saturn, with its beefy processing, CD sound, and impressive effects, could take those games that made the Genesis so great to the literal next level. Sega had all but mastered the art of 2D platforming on the Genesis, and there was little more that could be squeezed from that aging hardware.
To be honest, Astal was the kind of game I expected on the Saturn. It’s refreshing then, to see how well Astal looks almost a quarter-century after its release. I adore the original Panzer Dragoon, but if ever there were a game screaming at the top of its lungs for a remastering, it’s that game. A lot of the games looked rough even back then, and today they have not aged gracefully in the slightest. While it’s true that gaming did steam full ahead into 3D, the early 32-bit era hasn’t quite held up all that well visually. I have to say that things didn’t quite work out that way. Polygons were the future! Everything else was old hat, and the future would see this period as the glorious transition into the third dimension. Most magazines at the time seemed more intent on hyping the oncoming 3D revolution as the direction the gaming industry would forever take, as though anything hand-drawn no longer had a place. After months of playing Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter, and Daytona USA I was not expecting to see a 2D platformer in stores. The early debut of the Saturn in North America caught me completely unaware.
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