Battlemorph is criminally underrated

[MikeA]

I love Battlemorph.  Why doesn't everybody?

 

I got a Jaguar for Christmas 1993.  I lived in San Francisco and was lucky enough to convince my parents to buy it for me.  I got the only 2 games available - Cybermorph and Trevor McFur.  I loved them both.  I was blown away by Trevor McFur's prerendered graphics and had no idea that I should have been upset at no parallax scrolling.  But Cybermorph really blew my mind.  I never played a fully open 3d game before.  Everything was slow and cryptic, but kind of beautiful and relaxing even though the game was quiet and annoying at times.

 

Battlemorph was released 2 years later to a dead system on arrival.  At the time, everyone hated it - it was compared to Cybermorph, it was belittled for not being as good as Ridge Racer and Warhawk, and was seen as irrelevant and lame.

 

But play it now and tell me that.  I dare ya.  I finally after many years got a Jaguar CD broken and was able to fix it.  I bought the reissue of Battlemorph and played it for the first time.  Holy smokes it blew me away.  First, the music is truly amazing.  If you enjoy synthwave / techo / edm, you are gonna love this stuff.  I really tripped when the music changed when I went from underwater to above ground.  Second, the audio issues from Cybermorph are gone.  No more" where did you learn to fly", no more grating audio, just beautiful sounds to the ear to enjoy.  Go into the settings and turn music up, voice up, everything else down.  Third, the texture mapping is beautiful, although a bit too limited.  Fourth, the game is not confusing.  All the cryptic nonsense of mid 90s games is gone.  Everything is laid out but still fun to do.  If you want to go back to cryptic times you can just ignore the hint boxes.

 

Why isn't Battlemorph more beloved?  I think it's because the original symbolized so much that was wrong with the Jaguar and the sequel didn't do enough to compete with the PSX and Saturn in 1995.  But playing it now, the game friggin holds up.  Maybe I'm nuts, but Battlemorph is a classic and an absolute gem.  There isn't a better game on the Jaguar CD, period.  Comparing it to the entire Jaguar library, I personally rank it third after Tempest 2000 and Raiden.  Just my view but I think it needs to be heard.

[sirlynxalot]

I agree. It is a wonderful title on the system and feels more like a complete and polished game than many other titles. I think ridge racer and warhawk have an edge over it though, but those were basically AAA games of their time made with a lot more money than it probably took to make battle morph, on a system that has greater technical capabilities.  If it's been ignored by the jag community I think that would only be because it was a jag cd game only, which is a very small pool of potential players.

[jerseystyle]

Battlemorph is arguably my favorite Jag title. I played it for HOURS when it was released. I also thought the audio shift between above and below water was such a cool touch. Great game, and am pumped it’s been re released. Would love to see it on modern systems to give more people a crack at it.

[+LS650]

34 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:

If it's been ignored by the jag community I think that would only be because it was a jag cd game only, which is a very small pool of potential players.

Exactly.  It's one of a handful of JagCD games I've never had a chance to play.

[Atlantis]

Alot of people around here consider it the best Jag CD game, no mystery there.

 

why those who do, bash the game? 
Just guessing here. One reason: hotter stuff on the horizon, coming 95 and 96.

second: I enjoy it alot. Have beaten it in Easy mode. Great music. BUT it took me almost an hour to understand the game’s logic. People seldom have that energy, while comparing it to Starfox on rails. Yeah that argument ’morph vs ’fox.

 

Together with being on an obscure and detested system’s Add-on CD module… Just me.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Atlantis

[captainblack]

I've only played a semi-functional version and I still think its the best Jag game. It feels like a AAA PS1 game yet its running on 1993 hardware. No idea how they pulled it off.

[+neogeo1982]

4 hours ago, ls650 said:

Exactly.  It's one of a handful of JagCD games I've never had a chance to play.

I thought you had a Game Drive?

[+LS650]

14 minutes ago, neogeo1982 said:

I thought you had a Game Drive?

I haven't bothered to install any JagCD images on it.  The last time I looked into, there seemed to be a lot of issues, so I've held off until things look more stable.

Maybe it's time to revisit that?

[+jgkspsx]

I still haven’t played it, although I would like to. Sounded like GameDrive support was touchy for a while.

[JagChris]

Battlemorph was innovative and extremely lazy at the same time. And bizarre. My friends thought it was weird.

 

I think @Lost Dragon said they even admitted to phoning it in on this one.

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, JagChris said:

Battlemorph was innovative and extremely lazy at the same time. And bizarre. My friends thought it was weird.

 

I think @Lost Dragon said they even admitted to phoning it in on this one.

I don't think so , the design is very thoughful.

[+neogeo1982]

3 hours ago, ls650 said:

there seemed to be a lot of issues

Well I've followed the support thread as best I can. Ripped several discs and even got them to convert to the correct formats. Battlemorph being one of them. No dice on it actually working though. Loads for 20min and freezes. I gave up on getting CDs to work. Carts, betas, demos work great but not the CD stuff.

[+Sauron]

I don't recall ever hearing much bashing of Battlemorph. It got pretty decent reviews at the time and has generally been held to be the best JagCD game. If anything, it's just suffered from obscurity as so few people actually played it back in the day.

 

[Hyper_Eye]

It certainly has a good reputation in the community. It is universally considered to be an improvement on Cybermorph.

[Editorb]

On 12/9/2021 at 1:55 AM, MikeA said:

I love Battlemorph.  Why doesn't everybody?

At the time, I considered $150 for Jag CD to be throwing good money after bad, and thus never got to enjoy its vast library.

 

Turns out buying a pallet of them at 10 bucks each would have been a sound investment even after storage costs.

[tripled79]

Skylar should be remembered for being blue skinned!

[UHATEIT]

I don't know about criminally underrated. Anyone who has a Jag CD and played it would probably put it up there as one of the best if not the best Jag CD game in all honesty. If someone downgraded it harshly it's probably someone that never actually owned or played a Jag or Jag CD. That's the problem with a bunch of internet chatter for the Jaguar, people that bash the Jag are probably those who just heard it from others and then joined in on the fad of talking smack and probably never really played one!

 

I think Battlemorph is awesome, I've made it to a point towards the end of one of the world's where I was struggling to find those orbs to move on. But overall a great game for the Jag CD for sure!

[Kirkman]

I have been wanting to play Battlemorph forever, and hoped the GameDrive would help make that possible, but so far I've had no success getting farther than the first mission. The game always hangs eventually (not to mention animations ending prematurely, etc). 

 

Anyway, I hope someday I'll get to play it. I have a feeling that once I do, I'll be among the game's admirers. I have always been partial to Cybermorph.

[+LS650]

4 minutes ago, Kirkman said:

I have been wanting to play Battlemorph forever, and hoped the GameDrive would help make that possible, but so far I've had no success getting farther than the first mission. The game always hangs eventually (not to mention animations ending prematurely, etc). 

Same here. The only JCD I've had success with is GORF.  Every other CD game I've tried either shows a black screen, or a few jittering screens, then locks up.

 

The CD support is still under development, so I've hopes it'll work someday

[sd32]

To me BM is a top 5 Jag game. And it got solid reviews BITD

The only problem I had with the game, was the short draw distance… I which it was comparable to Iron Soldier, but no other game on the system did

[Schmudde]

I love BattleMorph. I can't say it is definitively better than Iron Soldier II to claim top spot on the Jag CD, but both are excellent titles.

 

BattleMorph was definitely a bigger leap and has an emphasis on exploration. They managed to introduce three modes - tunnels, land, and underwater - and make them all meaningful. The music is killer and the visual effects are super creative.

 

It's a total gem and certainly holds up even better in hindsight.

[sd32]

19 hours ago, Schmudde said:

 

BattleMorph was definitely a bigger leap and has an emphasis on exploration. They managed to introduce three modes - tunnels, land, and underwater - and make them all meaningful. The music is killer and the visual effects are super creative.

 

It always caught my attention how seamless the transition between the different modes was… including the music

[KidGameR186496]

On 10 de diciembre de 2021 at 10:35 AM, Sauron said:

I don't recall ever hearing much bashing of Battlemorph. It got pretty decent reviews at the time and has generally been held to be the best JagCD game. If anything, it's just suffered from obscurity as so few people actually played it back in the day.

 

That's actually one of the reasons why I dug up all of those Jaguar reviews back when I started at Wikipedia in 2017, to show that not all Jaguar games were derided by critics back in the 90s.

[KidGameR186496]

20 hours ago, Schmudde said:

I love BattleMorph. I can't say it is definitively better than Iron Soldier II to claim top spot on the Jag CD, but both are excellent titles.

 

BattleMorph was definitely a bigger leap and has an emphasis on exploration. They managed to introduce three modes - tunnels, land, and underwater - and make them all meaningful. The music is killer and the visual effects are super creative.

 

It's a total gem and certainly holds up even better in hindsight.

You could really tell that both Attention to Detail and Eclipse Software really knew how to squeeze the Jaguar's hardware. It sucks that both companies are no longer around, 'cause they developed some pretty decent titles for other platforms besides the Jag. I would love to see remakes of both Iron Soldier and Battlemorph on modern platform!

[Austin]

On 12/10/2021 at 9:35 AM, Sauron said:

I don't recall ever hearing much bashing of Battlemorph. It got pretty decent reviews at the time and has generally been held to be the best JagCD game. If anything, it's just suffered from obscurity as so few people actually played it back in the day.

 

Same. Going even back to the '90s, among Jaguar fans at least, Battlemorph was generally seen as one of the better titles on the system and one of the reasons to own a CD unit.

 

As to why some don't put it on a pedestal, my guess is that it's because--much like the Iron Soldier games--it's in a genre that's not for everybody (mission-oriented, exploration type).