Here's a review I wrote way back for an old gaming blog I had back in 2007. It was a part of a series of games that were released to promote import games on the Wii virtual console, and us Brits had a chance to play the untouchable Nintendo 64 shooter, Sin and Punishment. Back in 2000, Nintendo of America were thinking of releasing this game to the west, but just as they were organising that, Nintendo of Japan were ready to announce the Game Boy Advance and Game Cube. So there wasn't a point in localising the game as people were hyped for the new hardware. But I do remember seeing this game in the magazines and hoping to get a chance to play it. Well, in 2007 I did, on the Wii virtual console! A little costly for it's 1200 Wii Points price, but without importing it and modifying a Nintendo 64 to play Japanese games, the price wasn't going to cost my soul...
Sin and
Punishment is one of those games that made N64 history in Japan,
sitting next to Zelda Ocarina of Time, this Treasure classic was
released in early 2000 in Japan with the intention to be released in
the US and Europe, the problem was that by the time the game released
in Japan, the Sega DreamCast was already released worldwide and the
N64 was coming to an end. Even if the game was easy to localise,
Treasure decided to cancel the International versions despite release
the game in 2004 in China for the iQue (The Chinese N64). Due to its
limited number of copies it's one of the most sought-after N64 game for
gamers, not just in Japan, but all around the world.
Nintendo
began their first series of special Virtual Console games on the
European Shop Channel calling it the “Hanabi Festival”, Hanabi
meaning Fireworks in Japanese, started to introduce the Virtual
Console’s first wave of Japanese import games made available for
European Wii owners to buy and download. This included the Original
Japanese Super Mario Bros 2, Ninja Jajamaru-Kun and Mario’s Super
Picross. The last game in Nintendo’s Hanabi Event is the Legendary
N64 game, Sin and Punishment, localised and with a 1200 Wii Point
price tag (£8.40 GBP/ €12 EUR /$12 USD) making it the most
expensive game on the European Shop channel so far. The price might
be scary due to the fact that there are Xbox Live Arcade games
cheaper then that, but this game is no simple port, Nintendo and
Treasure worked on translating the Japanese text in the menus,
options and title screen to make sure that you know what you’re
doing. As for in-game, the game already has English voice-overs and
the Japanese subtitles still exist.
Sin and
Punishment takes place in a near future, 2007 to be exact, how
uncanny that they release the game on the Virtual Console the same
year that the game is in, heh. The world has been terrorised by an
insect-like alien race named the “Ruffians”. The US Army have
acquired Ruffian corpses and have been performing weird genetic
experiments to make their Army stronger, to discover that the new Ruffian blood
infused soldiers have turned into corrupt uncontrollable freaks that
mutate into monsters. You play as one of two surviving rebels that
want to bring back peace and order to the world, who have to fight
against the US army that have been infused with Ruffian blood and
prevent any more experiments, to discover that the Male lead
protagonist, Saki, is in fact a Ruffian blood infused human and turns
into a very powerful, 60 foot vertebrae Ruffian that the US Army has
called “BEAST”. Playing as the Female protagonist, Airan, you go
out to prevent the US Army to destroy the mutated Saki and turn him
back into a human; however you end up being teleported from Japan to
the USA and now you got to race to save Saki from being killed by the
US Army.
The game
play is pretty simple; it’s an on-rails shooter similar to the
likes of StarFox64, Space Harrier and Panzer Dragoon. Except this
time around you get the freedom to strafe left and right
independently to avoid enemy fire with the D-Pad, whilst moving a
cross-hair on the Screen with the analogue stick. The L button on the
Classic Controller fires the gun, whilst the R button executes a
jump. In close range of an enemy, the player’s gun turns into a
light sabre and slashes the enemies, you can use this same move to
deflect missiles, hurling them back towards the enemy. The A Button
switches between two cross-hairs, a Manual mode, and a Lock-on mode.
Manual mode allows you move the cross-hair with total freedom like in
a typical shooting game, whilst the Lock-on mode will instantly lock
the cross-hair onto the nearest enemy, however by doing this you
sacrifice your fire power by 50 percent. The Issue that I have with
these controls is Nintendo’s decision to put the fire button on the
L Button rather then the R button. The reason why I'm saying this
is because it makes sense that the hand you use to aim should be the
same hand you use to fire. However in this case it’s flipped around
and Jump button is on R instead, which makes the experience very
weird. Originally on the Japanese N64 game, you would hold the N64
controller with your left hand on the D-pad with the right hand on
the analogue stick, as the Z Trigger fires and the L Button is for
Jump, which makes sense, but in this case, it’s quite weird that
they swapped the buttons. There are other button layouts that you can
try out, Such as using L and R to strafe rather then the D-pad, but
this doesn't really work very well for me, so I stick to the
peculiar swapped button layout. If only Nintendo swapped those two
buttons around to make it feel more like the actual N64 game, then it
would make it a better experience for me, and I would be rating this
game higher. Thing is, Nintendo in the past has fixed control
problems in VC games before, so it’s very possible that there could
be an update for this game soon that will swap these buttons around
and will make the game a much better experience.
The Graphics
in the game is very “blocky”, I mean fair enough, I can’t
expect super quality poly-models on an N64 game, but it does make it
feel that Zelda: Ocarina of Time have some poly-models that looks
better on the eyes then this game. However the game does sport some
really awesome camera techniques that I never thought was possible on
the N64. In certain levels, the camera will pan and roll slightly
depending on where the cross-hair in positioned on the screen, which
gives the game an extra touch of polish. However the best is to come
when you play in mid-air level riding on a levitating piece of metal;
the whole environment will rock, roll and twist around giving the
feel of some crazy mid-air flying, plus there’s a part where you’re
practically hanging upside down and you actually feel like hanging
upside down, something that I can honestly say, I haven’t ever felt
in an N64 game before…
As for
sound, it uses typical sound effects that you would find in an anime,
even with the over exaggerated machine gun noises. The Voice acting isn't too bad, but it’s still the typical kind of voice acting
you’ll find in an anime, as if the whole game itself is meant to be
an interactive anime. The background music consists of generic 80's
style rock music that’s kind of forgettable; however the first
level music is only “semi-hummable”.
Overall,
this game is still very good and it’s worth every penny, but as I
said, the swapped buttons to me are a bit of a let down. I would
prefer it if it had the button layout I want, or if Nintendo aloud me
to map my own buttons. But the swapped buttons will definitely
confuse you at first, here’s hoping that Nintendo will solve this
problem with a Virtual Console Update.
Amendment: Even since 2007, they never did fix those weird controls. As I've mentioned to people before, I don't really like playing Nintendo 64 games without an actual Nintendo 64 controller. Maybe I should invest in one of those controller adapters...
