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"SHALLOW EYE-CANDY WINS OVER DEPTH...OH MY!"

When gamers got a peek in 1995 at the opening salvos in the 32-bit war between Sega and Sony, "Daytona USA" and "Virtua Fighter" were destroyed (in the all-important perception of 'coolness' factor) by the bright colors and solid polygons of Namco's "Ridge Racer" and Takara's "Battle Arena Toshinden". Playing like a cross between "VF" gameplay in true 3D (for the first time in a console fighting game a character could evade incoming blows by side-stepping to the sides) and "Street Fighter II" pyrotecnics, "Toshinden" helped sell PSX's back in 1995 and made the blocky and untextured polygons of "VF" look primitive by comparison.

Never mind that Sega's game had long-term depth and played a million times better; Sofia's whip (and 'bark like a dog' ad campaign) and the transparent polygons of Ellis' dress made gamers ditch the Saturn early on as a has-been from the get-go. The game was deemed so valuable as a marketing tool against Sony that, in early 1996, Sega of America decided to release an unpolished and rough-looking port of the game to taunt Sony about losing their early promotional personality (since the sequel was about to hit retail). That may have given the Saturn a brief amount of public relations gloating, but the handful of token improvements and graphical flaws didn't improve the game's long-term value, as the low $10-15 price tag shows.

GRAPHICS / VISUALS: C+
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The Saturn crowd, spoiled by the wonderful sight of "Sega Rally 1995", "Virtua Cop" and the high-resolution wonder that is "Virtua Fighter 2", was probably not impressed by a visually inferior port from an aging first-generation fighting game. For better or worse, "Battle Arena Toshinden Remix" (along with a slew of other third-party games) cemented the perception that if your Saturn game wasn't developed by Sega's internal team of developers, it isn't going to look/play anywhere as good as the PSX versions. And Takara just poured gasoline on the fire of that theory by releasing a Saturn-exclusive enhanced version of "Toshinden" (with the title "URA") that was just a tragedy from beginning to end... but that one belongs to another review (ahem!). The addition of a crappy collection of badly-animated models over barely-populated backgrounds (or black one's) as a FMV opening segment is just a token visual bonus for the unfortunate few that get "BAT Remix".

The backgrounds survived the translation from PSX to Saturn intact but the transparencies, shadows and lighting effects were replaced with place-holder effects and mesh-like transparencies (a gazillion little dots). The shadows from the first "Toshinden" were replaced by a sad-looking grey little circle bellow the fighters, and the color pallette from the fighters suffered a slight washing-out (Ellis' hair used to be lushious green on PSX but turned dark green on the Saturn); even the resolution seems to be a tad lower than the original, but that could just be an optical illusion from the choppy movements of the combatants (no "VF2" smoothness here) frame-rate, which moves at 20/24 frames-per-second when not slowed down (which happens often). "BAT Remix" looks OK, but as a port from a first-generation PSX title it failed an early (and crucial) test of hype and was another weight in the sinking Sega efforts to establish a 32-bit franchise in North America.

MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: C
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The badly-dubbed English voices ("I never give up!") were translated to the Saturn, and that is a shame because they were horrible on the PSX and their cheesiness is still an earsore to this date (SOA should have left the original Japanese vocals, like they did with with "Last Bronx"). Music is a collection of forgettable keyboard compositions, and the sound effects are the usual suspects: fighters groaning in pain, swords clashing with shields and other weaponery, magic-like fireballs and thunders, etc.

GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: C
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Unlike the "Virtua Fighter" and "Tekken" series, the longer Takara's "Toshinden" series kept going (PC ports, as well as going up to sequel #3) the more irrelevant and shallow the gameplay revealed itself to be. The ability to evade attacks by side-stepping into the third dimension was a cool diversion, but the cheapness of the attack patterns, the lack of balance amongst the characters (Duke and Sofia have long-term attacks that can beat the crap out of weaker characters like Ellis) and the cliches of the genre (a Ryu/Akira-type character named Eiji, a dominatrix in leather clothing and a whi named Sofia, a bad-ass medievil dude with a HUGE sword named Duke, etc.) leave "BAT Remix" as an odd milestone of first-generation curiosities than a long-term gameplay attraction.

OVERALL: C
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A cheap, quick, shallow and barely-acceptable fighting game that brings bad memories about bonehead decisions taken by SOA early in the Saturn's futile bout for 32-bit supremacy. As a collector's item for badly-ported, ugly-looking, third-party PSX games going to Sega's planet, "Battle Arena Toshinden Remix" fits the bill; whatever you do, steer clear of it and its spiritual Saturn sequel "Toshinden URA" if you know what's good for you, your psyche and your thinning wallet. You'd be better off watching Nickelodeon's "The Secret World of Alex Mack" at its new time: 6:30PM ET Mon-Fri beginning October 5th... shameless? You betcha!