| smbhax [sys=SAT; cat=Pinball; reg=J] |
| | | By KAZe. Runs in Saturn's interlaced hi-res mode (ie use Ymir for good deinterlacing).
Good article on KAZe's pinball games: https://landofobscusion.blogspot.com/2018/06/obscusion-b-side-kazepinball-super.html
Interview with KAZe director Shinichi Oguri: https://shmuplations.com/pinball/
Not getting the "9.7" Japan-only update version 'cause it has a Lovecraft ad right on the title screen--that was the theme of their next "Digital Pinball" Saturn pinball game, unfortunately. LG doesn't have the Dream Theater soundtrack--which alone apparently cost as much as all the rest of the game's production--and not quite the level of presentation all around that that one does, and has slightly less impressive ball physics, but it does have one more table and who doesn't like games about gladiators.
An Arthurian-style table has one mode about rescuing a princess and I'm not into women in distress themes but she has like one line and it's by far the shortest mode in the game, so may be able to live with that one; despite the big heart at the bottom it doesn't seem to be the focus of the table.
There's apparently a hidden fifth table accessible with a code--on GameFAQs--that is mostly a credits display while infinite multiball goes on. Also a code for a debug mode, not sure what that does. |
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| | | | From the sound of that interview, KAZe had big plans and wanted to expand their Western audience as they saw pinball as being more popular in the West than in Japan--three of LG's four tables have Western historical/fantasy themes for that matter--but it sounds like they didn't really understand the Lovecraft thing they hit upon through Google, and it may have backfired as in the end they didn't manage to get that next game picked up outside Japan, unlike LG which got to US and EU. |
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| | | | Yeah I think that miscalculation may have broken them, essentially. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/12917-kaze They only had the 9.7 Japan-only bugfix edition the next year--that was the last of Digital Pinball lead programmer Kunihito Hiramatsu and designer/director Takashi Kobayashi at KAZe--then one licensed game the year after--and it was pretty much all licensed stuff from there. Didn't get any pinball in at all until the licensed Akira Psycho Ball six years later. |
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| | | | After leaving KAZe, Kobayashi formed a studio called Watermarks that made a Japan-only PS1 graphic adventure of the same name, loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," among other inspirations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgnU7KOpe7I . Extremely in-depth article about it here: https://www.tumblr.com/easternmind/781371620514283520/japanofiles10-like-the-baseless-fabric |
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| | | | This shows what the fifth table and debug codes do: https://segaretro.org/Digital_Pinball:_Last_Gladiators/Hidden_content |
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| | | The ball physics quirks are fixed and the ball is heavier in the 9.7 update, but it consequently moves slower up the screen when you hit it, whereas in vanilla it really tears upscreen!
Also, vanilla has a number of Easter eggs, and some if not all of those may be missing from 9.7; the one where it plays a different video intro showing "behind-the-scenes" production footage if you play vanilla between 8 and 11am isn't there in 9.7, for instance. |
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| | | https://nichebarrier.com/weekly/1995-06-25 shows LG debuting at #4 in "Famitsu Top 30 - Week 26, 1995 (Jun 19, 1995 - Jun 25, 1995)"; lifetime sales https://nichebarrier.com/game/2080-digital-pinball-last-gladiators are 51,987.
9.7 https://nichebarrier.com/game/33656-digital-pinball-last-gladiators-ve did not chart and has no lifetime sales listing (I've read somewhere that it was only sold by orders from KAZe's web site or something).
(In between, KAZe's follow-up game had lasted 1 week https://nichebarrier.com/weekly/1996-11-17 where it had a sales total of 9,102 which is also its lifetime sales figure there.) |
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| | | Oh it was that article on KAZe pinball I linked at the top that says of 9.7 that "it's one of the less common Japanese Saturn games, due to it apparently only being sold by KAZe directly via mail order."
KAZe's SFC (first also on SNES) pinball games prior to the Saturn Games, "Super Pinball: Behind the Mask" and "Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey" share a lot of LG's aesthetic, including big single-color messages in block letters over the screen, but they flash/flicker/strobe those messages and most of the table lights sorta DMD-style in a way my eyes aren't too cool with; besides that they're a bit slower with long pauses between balls and so forth. Also, II's first two tables have gun themes and the last is my least favorite--besides maybe guns--pinball theme, a clown/circus thing. ; P But yeah surprisingly close to the LG graphic aesthetic. |
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| | | | Comes in a clear case with a white CD tray. |
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| | | | The CD underside ring/rim photos I posted in Sega Saturn (entry 2042) are of the disc for this game. |
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In Ymir
7:17 - Instruction Manual
8:58 - Gladiators
14:24 - Knight of the Roses
24:01 - Dragon Showdown
32:40 - Warlock (1 billion!)
42:24 - more Gladiators
Jeez a no-release-date Steam port of Last Gladiators 9.7 was just announced today, wild. Screenshots look like a straight port. I *think* I like the rocket speed of vanilla over the less-getting-stuck / less physics glitches of 9.7.
Press all the buttons at once to reset which is the only way I can find to get out of a table once you've started it, sheesh.
Forget subtlety of finesse; just crank it baby--crank it!
In a way it feels very thin; you wouldn't want to trade these four tables for an Addams Family, for instance.
I dunno if the balls lose horizontal momentum faster than you'd think or something but I got caught a bunch of times thinking a diagonal ball was going to carry across to the other flipper only to have it fall short right down the middle. = o
Got one ball caught at the top of that big yellow loop in DS and had to nudge a LOT to get it down but didn't tilt, huh. Not sure if you CAN tilt. |
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| | | Looked at 9.7 again and yeah it's way slower than vanilla, nuts to that. I wonder if the Steam version will remove the follow-up demo that's advertised on the title screen of the Japanese Saturn 9.7 version.
https://www.segasaturnshiro.com/2026/05/21/digital-pinball-last-gladiators-coming-to-steam-switch/ :
"BeXide — pronounced "B-Side"" handling the port. "president of Digital Pinball's new handlers, BeXide: Nanji Kazunori. A former programmer at KaZe, Kazunori is listed in the "special thanks" section of the credits for both the original version of Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators and its Ver.9.7 update, as well as its 1996 Japan-only sequel Digital Pinball: Necronomicon."
https://www.mobygames.com/person/656197/kazunori-nanji/credits/ : Kazunori was "Main Programmer" on KAZe's later (1996; LG was '95; 9.7 was '97 (OH 'p')) Power Rangers pinball game for PS1.
"This won't be the first time BeXide has ported Digital Pinball, either — it published the game on iPhone and iPad in 2010. That version was delisted eventually.
The rights to the game seem to be shared between the two companies at this point. BeXide is listed as both the developer and publisher on Steam, where there's no mention of KaZe anywhere. But the press release attributes the copyright to KaZe and BeXide, and both companies' copyright marks are on a promotional image for the game."
Not sure why Shiro is styling KAZe with lowercase "a"--maybe a later logo? In LG vanilla it's just lowercase e in both opening fullscreen logo and type on title page. Same in Power Rangers pinball. |
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| | | | I think I will skip the Knight of the Roses table in Last Gladiators in the future; you don't hear much from the Princess but the damsel in distress thing is inherent in the table's set-up. |
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