Sega Seaturn
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Top 10 Sega Seaturn seats
#10
If you think seriously about this very important matter, the first seats that will come to mind are probably those fancy evil lord’s thrones that typically pop up in grandiose cutscenes. Here is a good example with the shōgun’s throne in Grandia. What a pompous prick, that seat. It’s the very first thing you see when you start the game, and it even gets a spotlight all to itself.
#9
I much prefer a blue collar, hard-workin’ seat of the people. Something like the stool in Dee-Jay’s bar from Pocket Fighter.
… Not the lucky one on which Cammy’s cheeks seat. The one that gets to carry E. Honda’s full weight on its own. How does it pull it off? Is that stool secretly made of adamantium!? What a trooper. What a selfless proletarian hero. Literally crushed by the weight of a Japanese industrial juggernaut. I bet it’s silently screaming “Kolin! Wake up! Zangief has gone mad!”
#8
But the best seats are those that achieve to disappear from the picture. Consider Jonathan Ingram’s desk chair in the first scene of Policenauts. You barely notice it, but it carries the hero’s full weight to allow for his iconic laidback sneakers on the desk pose, then you literally get to play the first five minutes of the game from the perspective of someone seating on that chair. A perfect silent companion.
#7
Now, let’s get to the serious stuff: seats that have an important role to play in the plot. Wangan Dead Heat + Real Arrange would be nothing more than a fun, accessible arcade racer like many others…
… If the true goal of the game wasn’t to seduce one of the five MPEG-encoded gravure models on the passenger’s seat!
#6
And what about Marcus and his comfortable bedroom chair in Enemy Zero! Sure, our scientific friend doesn’t know where his head’s at, quite literally, but weren’t it for such a well molded and comfy chair, the rest of his body would probably be lying on the floor, off-camera, and we would have missed the whole thing. Good job, chair!
#5
Speaking of seats that carry the weight of a successful scene, consider the Emperor’s throne in Panzer Dragoon Saga. The scene that introduces the Emperor starts with a curveball. First you see the Capital getting annihilated, yet immediately you see the Emperor getting informed of the attack and commenting it with a mere shrug. What’s happening here? How did he survive? You’re hooked. That scene’s goal is to communicate the threat that the Emperor represents, and the idea that you the player are in a middle of a conflict between two equally menacing forces.
The Emperor is both a weakling, sniveling corrupt asshole and a masterful tactician. The game communicates all that by juxtaposing his morbid body with a gigantic levitating throne, always against backlight, until the scene zooms out and reveals his true location. What a great scene.
#4
Dark Savior has an entire dungeon based around the gimmick of carrying and saving a damsel in distress tied to a chair. Dark Savior is amazing.
#3
You can’t really get more iconic than Drac’s speech, sitting most casually on his throne, in Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku…
… But one should not overlook how many cool seats of surprisingly diverse styles there are in the game. You get old clunky wooden chairs, stonecut seats, rococo-inspired boudoirs, 70’s style funky fauteuils, and that super comfy-looking green seat on which the librarian gramps’ ass is sitting.
But the game ranks so high in this list because (sorry the capture quality isn’t great) this version – and only this one – contains this easter egg:
#2
About one third of a typical Sakura Taisen playthrough is spent roaming around the Daiteikoku Gekijō, the Grand Imperial Theater that hosts both the revue and the secret base of our heroines from the Hanagumi. A big chunk of that map is filled, on the ground floor, by the theater itself and its usually empty seats (since most often you roam around the building when the theater is closed to the public).
That might look like a mere detail, or a waste of screen space, but these theater seats are the key to the game’s heart, and the reason of being of the Hanagumi. If these girls are training so hard, both as a revue and a deadly armored squadron, it’s to make sure these seats are filled. To make sure the common Tokyo folks care to come see their shows, but also to make sure those same folks are alive and well to come see their shows. If the girls fail, on either side of their double-life, those seats will be empty tomorrow. That’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Still, not as beautiful as…
#1
GEESE
HOWARD
MUST GO.