Except for being sick the whole weekend, I had a lot of fun dragging out, dusting off, firing up the old Sega Saturn. For me the highlight of it all was finally finishing D after 11 years. In the end I cheated a little on the garden puzzle (push the green button for Sagitarius and the light blue button for Aquarius). I felt justified because I finally realized that the Knight Room level is just a cheap time synch. Anyone who has played D knows that you will suffer many many falls into the pit in the Knight Room no matter what you do with the controls. Getting through this level is virtually random. I did it once before years ago, but used up so much time that I ran out. D has a two hour time limit and no saves. Now, 11 years later, I realized that the only reason you’d need to go to the Knight Room is to get the sword to open the Observatory door where you would get the clue to which buttons to press on Sagitarius and Aquarius. Well, I’d already seen that and missed the clue anyway because it was far too simple. So I skipped that nonsense and finally finished the game. Clearly, the true purpose of the Knight Room is to slow the player down, boo! Later I played it through again for the kids because they wanted to see how the story ended and just what D stood for. All in all, I’d say that D was an okay game more interesting for the style than the gameplay which consisted of extremely simple puzzles.
Other old favorites to make an appearance were Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2, the reason I wanted a Saturn in the first place, and Virtua Fighter 2. Forget Grand Theft Auto! Capping bad guy asses with a big orange light pistol is a lot more fun! I remember driving all over Chicago before finding a copy of Virtua Cop that included the Stinger light gun which is really the only way to play the game well.
So thanks again Saturn for all of the fun!