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Wachenröder – Steampunk Saturn RPG

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Mr Huang (Crabfu) very kindly pointed out this video on YouTube for the game Wachenröder, a Japanese language RPG/strategy game for the Sega Saturn. This is a video of the introduction to the game (a little meandering) showing some beautiful Steampunk backdrops – murky steamtrain stations, peculiar airship-variants, and silly-sized artillery. The game itself (there’s a little ingame footage at the end) looks like a turn based, grid based combat RPG, with an isometric view and cutting to a closeup, almost cell shaded, sequence for the individual hits. The combat apparently has a nice tweak to it where you can charge up your weapons to attack more powerfully, but you run the risk of a boiler explosion!

There’s some lovely concept art here, and apparently should you manage to find the game for your Saturn, you can find a translation into English over at GameFAQs. It’s spoken of quite highly, and it’s a shame it’s not been picked up for a sequel on one of the more recent machines.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 10:13 pm by Tinkergirl and is filed under Games, Steampunk Images.

Modern Metal Art

Great miniatures.

Thanks

Derek

I disagree
Can you give more info?

BlackSpiral

I imported this game, but I do not read or speak any japanese.
Granted I didn't know what was going on, but it was simple enough to figure out how to play the game.

I really enjoyed it, one of the only import games I own that I finished.

I love the steampunk setting, and the steam powered weapons are awesome.

I am acctually working on a Steampunk PnP RPG with a freind as we speak

TheGZeus

I own this game and speak Japanese.
I was repeatedly pulled out of the game by the fact that places and characters are often named after popular 'Western' heavy metal bands and required side-quests.
The art is great, the acting is great. It's incredibly linear and the characters can be a BIT shallow.
All in all, if you buy it for the art and really like turn-based-strategy gameplay(shining force 2 et al), it's great.
I'd sell you mine....but I like the art....

hitomo

"The Saturn had bizarre hardware interactions which make emulation dicey. Modern systems such as the Gamecube and PS2 are better emulated than the Saturn"

...TOTALLY WRONG! ... the Saturn is very well emulated by now with "SSF" much better than Dreamcast... recently I am playing all the great games I missed back on the days... SF3, DragonForce, PDS and I jusz found a link to get a version of WACHENRÖER that seems to be compatible with the SSF-Emulator... man, times have never been better...

Roman Alberto

nice site

Operator23

Thalarion: Despite the age, you can't really emulate this one. The Saturn had bizarre hardware interactions which make emulation dicey. Modern systems such as the Gamecube and PS2 are better emulated than the Saturn.

For example, the compatibility list for the emulator at the top of the news on the linked site indicates that Waechenroder runs with graphical glitches and garbage audio.

Tiny's Patented Commentalizer

Tremendous! More steampunkish RPGs, please...

Thalarion

Certainly that is an acceptable form of communication. Email is in my LJ profile (to avoid the spam automatons).

Mr Svensson

Surely, Mr Thalarion. I am afraid that I lack a LJ account, but is it okay to contact you by e-mail?

Thalarion

Mr Svensson, could you please get a hold of me at my LJ site? My name is linked to the site.

Mr Svensson

Ah, another one of those games that I've wanted to try for years now, and yet I am painfully aware that I probably never will. Ah, such is the fate of obscure Japanese videogames. Thanks for posting the intro, I haven't found much media of it. Only seen a few screenshots, reviews and the official trailer (featuring Segata Sanshiro, the greatest videogame mascot ever). Interesting trivia: the illustrations and character designs are made by Range Murata, who later designed the steampunk anime Last Exile. One of my favorite steampunk designers, even if his art is more art deco than victorian.

rillian

Wow, miniatures.

Demosthenes

that seems to have very good graphics for a sega saturn. . .

Thalarion

And if you don't have a Sega Saturn, there's always emulators for your PC! Of course you would still need the original media to play the game but still, this looks extremely nifty.