Reader request: Astal
A Saturn launch title — well, it was supposed to be — that's been seemingly forgotten by Sega.
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You can’t really discuss Sega’s gorgeous 2D Saturn platformer, Astal, without also talking about the context it released within. Astal was supposed to be a launch title for the Saturn in North America, in the fall of 1995. September 2: that was “Saturnday” according to Sega of America itself, and Astal would release not right there in the first week, but within the launch window before the end of that first month.
Saturnday never came, though. Sega of America abandoned their plan for a late-summer launch with “at least” 10 titles available out of the gate, with 100 games by Christmas. And they did so with a surprise launch announced on stage at E3 in the May of 1995. How do you surprise launch a console? Well, you don’t. Developers and publishers were aiming for a fall launch, which means even if the hardware was ready, there wasn’t much to play. Certainly not “at least” 10 games! But Sega of America made this decision, anyway, without informing any of their partners, with the belief that it would help them get ahead of Sony’s impending Playstation launch in North America.
Maybe it would have worked out if there had been high-quality games to buy and time for word of mouth to give them the edge over the fall release of the Playstation they were hoping for, but there weren’t, and there was also a shortage of consoles, too: so, the people who did get a console weren’t thrilled with the lack of options and the quality of those options — the initial Saturn port of Virtua Fighter required an updated re-release to address its issues, while games like Clockwork Knight didn’t do much to impress — and retailers were furious at being surprised with the need to make room on their shelves they didn’t expect to, with the limited stock, or, in the case of KB Toys, with being left out of the initial retailers with Saturns to sell in the first place. (KB Toys would actually end up refusing to ever carry the Saturn because of this.) Oh, and Sony went on stage after Sega did at the same E3, and announced the Playstation would cost $100 less than the Saturn.
Yes, the initial port of Daytona USA rocked and still rocks, and Panzer Dragoon was something special and impressive that could sell people on the idea of the Saturn, but there was little else there. Especially given the Playstation’s price point, and the games Sony was showing off to hype people for their own launch, like Namco’s Ridge Racer, the existence of which dampened enthusiasm for Daytona. But you have to understand that what was there on May 11 is all there was for some time. Bug was the next Saturn game to release, and it took two and a half months — there’s nothing seriously wrong with Bug by any means, but there was a ton of pressure on the game when it’s the only new one around for literal months!
The Saturn launch was much smoother in Japan, and the system actually held up well against the Playstation sales-wise until the release of Final Fantasy VII, resulting in Sega’s most successful console in their home territory, and one that received exponentially more games (and often more interesting games) than North America did. Everything was bungled from the jump by Sega of America, however, and that’s without even getting into how, while all of this was going on, they were still marketing the 32X add-on for the Genesis, which had little support for it, too. The brand was taking a huge hit coming off of the massive success of the 16-bit era. Sony, meanwhile, sold so many consoles and games in both the lead-in to the launch of their first console and after it that they reportedly ended up having to buy extra plastic cases from Sega, which is why some early Playstation games like Rayman don’t have the more standard CD-sized cases of the era, but instead the North American Saturn-style ones.
That’s the situation Astal released into in the fall of 1995. Not as part of a triumphant, successful launch, but four months after a nearly barren launch window, with Sega in desperate need of a huge win to follow up. Like with Bug, Astal is a solid game, and its visuals are truly impressive, but it, too, was not the kind of game that would necessarily sell you on buying a Saturn. While its graphics and art style were tremendous 32-bit sprites and lovely hand-drawn backgrounds, polygons were what were making people lose their minds at that moment in time. So it was easier to not get overly excited about the 2D, sprite-based capabilities of the Saturn on display, and to not truly see what made the system have next-gen potential, because what it was showing you wasn’t necessarily considered next-gen, so much as a prettier version of what already existed.
Oh, and Sega didn’t put the name of the game on the side of the box in North America for some reason:
Anyway. Astal is a solid game. The visuals are the real selling point of it all, which is not to say it’s style over substance: the game’s look is just that impressive. It’s still beautiful to look at now, not just in a “for the time” way: on original hardware hooked up to a CRT with an S-Video capable, the game’s fluidly animated movements and hand-drawn backgrounds absolutely stun, and you don’t even need to be setup like that to notice. The Saturn excelled at this kind of thing, and Astal was supposed to be a showcase for that in the same way Panzer Dragoon was a showcase for the kind of 3D that the Playstation couldn’t handle well — and in Japan, where it released five months after launch without any kind of undue pressure on it, and with feelings about the potential of the Saturn more optimistic, it could be that showcase. In North America, though, Astal was no longer in a position to be an enjoyable look at what the system it was on could do more of (and better of) in the future with support: instead, it was being asked to justify the existence of a Saturn purchase right now, since little else had managed as much in these early months.
Why couldn’t Astal do that? The levels are exceptionally linear and straightforward, missing the kind of pathfinding and choice and challenge of the Genesis’ exceptional array of platformers. The game is a short one, as it’ll take you about one or two hours to get through, and the latter only if you struggle quite a bit — and you probably won’t. Sega of America reduced the default life count from five to three (with the option to push it back up) and the continues from unlimited to one (without the option to increase them) when they localized it for release, likely due to the game’s lack of difficulty. None of this makes it a bad game, as Astal is still enjoyable and has enough tricks up its sleeve to make those 1-2 hours fun, but, besides the quality of the graphics and the lovely Redbook Audio CD soundtrack that successfully showed off what Saturn games could sound like (and what direction Sega was taking their sound in that gen), there was nothing here screaming that it was next-gen or an evolution from the kind of games people already had access to. Given, again, Sony showing off what was deemed to be the future of games at the same time, Astal was up against it.
Astal is a good time, though, despite the fact it was overlooked a bit in the moment, and especially so in the decades since. It’s never seen a re-release, nor a sequel. And that’s a shame, as it’s the kind of game that would have likely produced a killer followup. The bones of the game are solid: you play as Astal, who is drawn as if he definitely skips leg day but has never missed an arm workout in his life. He was imprisoned, shackled, but broke free when he heard the voice of the woman he was created to protect, Leda, calling out. He then traverses 16 levels of platforming and boss battles where he’ll grab enemies and throw them, or slam down on them with his fists from the air, or jump on their heads to bounce, or ground pound to stun them. He can also send his bird friend that he finds early on to fight foes or retrieve healing items, and a second player could play as this bird, too, if you’re looking for a co-op experience.
The controls can take a little getting used to, but they aren’t complicated. You just have to get a feel for the timing of grabs and ground pounds, how Astal moves when he jumps, how long it takes to start and stop his dash, and so on. Remembering all he can do is a challenge at first, if only because all of the information is never presented on screen but has to be memorized from the manual or figured out via experimentation, but it’s not like you’re figuring out the control scheme for a Treasure game here.
Once you get the hang of what your bird friend is going to do when you send it out, you’ll be golden: defeating certain enemies with a ring of light around them will fill up a meter, and when that meter is completely full, you’ll be able to unleash a powerful, screen-filling attack that even damages bosses. Before it’s full, the bird can still be sent out on the attack, but it’ll be more targeted in nature instead of everything on screen. And before that, the bird can be sent to retrieve healing items. Which creates both decisions and a bit of a balancing act: do you keep filling up the meter and save it for these big moments, or do you constantly rely on Astal to do everything, but have the bird always on health pickup retrieval to make up for this? It’s a matter of preference, really, as there isn’t a wrong answer here. Though, be warned that filling the meter does mean you will hear a constant alarm-like chirping from the bird letting you know you can use them at full power now whenever you want to, like right now, or now, or maybe even now.
While the levels are straightforward and linear, there is a diversity to them that stands out. In both look and in what the expectation is for you to do in a level, they are constantly changing. The first stage emphasizes your standard throw maneuver, even giving you opportunities to hurl a foe at another one to defeat them both, and you even get the chance to grab huge chunks of rock and throw them both out of your way and at enemies in your path. The next stage wants to get you used to ducking to avoid danger, so it’s set in a cave featuring a whole bunch of bats flying overhead on occasion, bats that will damage you if you make contact with them. Within this cave, you’ll also want to use your ground pound to knock enemies from the ceiling and stun them, which wasn’t a necessity at all in the prior stage. Following your first boss fight, you’ll head to a river atop a swimming creature, and play a very different, very bouncy kind of platforming stage that emphasizes timing, ground pounds, and dodging. Later on, in case you hadn’t figured it out for yourself, you’ll see Astal filling his lungs with air and blowing out a strong wind that clears away a fire and allows him to progress: that skill will be useful throughout the stage and later on, especially against foes wreathed in flame.
Linear, yes, but at least these stages aren’t samey. And the boss fights aren’t particularly difficult, but they do feature some lovely creature design, and ask different things of you in terms of approach, as well. Astal is a short game, yes, but it also makes sure to respect your time and not make you feel like you’re playing the same level with a different coat of paint again and again, so the time you do spend with it is enjoyable. Which is good news, because you can’t save your progress, and with just the one continue, if you do end up getting a Game Over, that’s that, you have to start over from the beginning. It all feels less daunting, at least, because of the design.
All of that being said, Astal should probably get a remake or re-imagining that beefs it up a little bit beyond what’s here, or at least adds some difficulty sliders and the kind of price tag that’s easier to justify with the amount of game that’s here. Unlike a short, arcade-style shoot ‘em up or what have you, which can still be justified as a “full price” game in the right setting since they’re meant to be played and played again and again, mastered over time over hours and hours, Astal just has the one difficulty mode and one set of levels and little reason to return to it once it’s over. Which is maybe part of why, along with how difficult Saturn emulation can be, Sega has never bothered re-releasing it or returning to it since it first hit.
The good news is that it’s still stunning to look at, especially in action, and the scrolling cutscenes with their large, detailed art stand out in a positive way. The soundtrack still sounds excellent even if parts of it are very of the time — Astal wouldn’t need a massive overhaul to get it in a place where it’s ready to go in the present. And really, the better play might be to release the original as is but with a sequel that addresses the concerns of the original.
It’s worth remembering, however, that Sega has mostly distanced itself from the Saturn era, and there are probably multiple reasons for that, between the difficulty in emulating some of those games and the fact that this was the generation that made it so that even the Dreamcast wasn’t capable of surviving, not with the irreversible damage done to Sega’s console brand abroad. So Astal’s disappearance might not even have all that much to do with Astal at all: it’s not like Burning Rangers or Dragon Force or the Saturn-specific Shining Force games are top of mind for Sega in 2023, either, and even the Panzer Dragoon series has been foisted off on another publisher to be remade and re-released. Sega is pretty picky with what they choose to bring back up from the Saturn days, in a way they aren’t with Genesis titles, often focusing on franchises that existed outside of just this system and had success elsewhere. Which is a shame, but it means you’ll likely have to seek out Astal another way if you’re curious about this moment in time.
Thanks to @Kamel_Rules on Twitter for the game request
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As someone not deeply familiar with console history beyond the basic narratives everyone repeats, my main takeaway from this is that Sega of America really fucked up the Saturn. Astal sounds like a decent game caught in a situation only exceptional games could survive unscathed.