Games of the Abstract: Tempo (1995)

 

Developer: Sega and Red Company

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Sega 32X

 

Tempo is an odd game. Even in how it came to be is strange, because as much as I am growing to love Sega as a company, and am also learning of the people behind them, the history of the company from 1994 onwards is one which causes one to consider that they hired howler monkeys for advise on their business decisions. Tragically, the truth is that the people involved were individuals in a very tumultuous time for video games in general, all stemming from the fact Tempo is a game for the 32X. After Sega had such success in the West with the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, this would be a tangent part of what would lead to them leaving the hardware industry in 2001. 

Sega had reached a good point by 1994 where the Mega Drive / Genesis, as whilst not in Japan, it became a very successful console in the West. They had, yes, released the Sega CD in 1991 which is known for many full motion video games, but the original cartridge console was still going strong since its 1988 release. The new 32 bit generation was where things went amiss. The Japanese branch was pushing ahead with creating the Sega Saturn, but in early January 1994, Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama wanted a 32-bit cartridge console to be released that Christmas, codenamed “Project Jupiter”¹. Contextually this was a period where Atari with the Jaguar were claiming their machine had 64 bits, and the Panasonic 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was the talk of the town, leading to this project to keep the Mega Drive going before the Saturn arrived with a technological push, the final machine the 32X what looks like a cyber mushroom parasitically attached to the top of the machine. It was however released as a full priced machine in winter 1994, and discontinued in 1996 with only forty titles worldwide released. It evokes the Nintendo Virtual Boy, Nintendo's own ill advised project released in 1995 and discontinued only in 1996, but in two cases of major companies who flunked, with consoles whose software and existence is ignored entirely barring emulation, comes with the fact Nintendo even after this and their own problems with the Nintendo 64 not stopping them from surviving into the decades after whilst Sega in the Millennium would be releasing games on Nintendo systems as former rivals.

Among the games, you have something as odd as Tempo, a game which looks and sounds far too weird, sadly, to ever reach a huge audience yet getting a Western release for this curious little console. Developed with Sega, Red Company would move onto becoming Red Entertainment, developing the likes of the Gungrave franchise, figures who did not work with one console but did a lot with Sega over the years especially with the Sakura Wars game franchise. Sticking out as an aesthetically rich 2D platformer, Tempo himself is an anthropomorphised green cricket, invited with his girlfriend Katy to a dance competition, on the Major Minor Show on television, only for King Dirge and his minions, called Mussi Productions, to want to squash Tempo's chances and win the competition trophy.

From the get-go, Tempo is beautiful to look at, rich 32 bit graphics which would have sold the technology even if, with all due respect, it would have made more sense to port the 32X games to the Saturn and built a machine which played old Genesis cartridges. The problems are entirely with having decided to create the 32X in the first place when backwards compatibility, and the issue of creating the Saturn with difficulties for develops to work with, should have been the greater concern at the time. Without the context of the machine it was doomed to be on, the game shines visually is feels like a fever dream, one where whilst there are three tiers to unlock on the Major Minor Show soundstage, you can still choose which levels from each tier to begin with, taking you on a journey over surreal landscapes to reach bosses, whilst the basement contains mini games to earn additional points.

The game itself, mechanically, is a traditional 2D platformer where you have stages to go through for each level, bonuses and secrets to find among the hazards. The most important is "Dance", a word icon which brings in Katy as a permanent assistant, and even if found afterwards still has the screen clearing advantage of forcing everyone else to dance until they explode, something which was clearly an obsession for certain developers at Sega as, back with Michael Jackson's Moonwalker tie-in games, any of them, a super move of dancing until people explode came was to be found back then. Certain secrets can only be accessed by Katy and, as well as being an additional life bar, one of your moves alongside bopping on people's heads in a floating move or kick them is to stun them with music notes, more useful with Katy as she will go directly at them and clear them off-screen with a kick as a supportive love interest.

Just be aware that, in the boss battles, later ones can acquire a Dance token to make you dance and lose health instead of you to them, one of the many quirks of this titles which does feel random at points. This is a dance competition in story, but the first three levels involve entering a giant mouth avoiding when the teeth come down, entering the body for the rest of that level, or one electronic based level which is the one moment the game (possibly to put some off) looks of the mid 90s in visual style especially in trying match the latest quasi-polygonal effects. You can get an invincibility CD power up which leads to the power of yodelling (with psychedelic cow effects) clearing your way, or how some of the earliest bosses are also quasi-polygonal figures, such as a giant pair of vindictive headphones or a man riding in a giant shoe. Truthfully, this style to the game is both its biggest virtue, as this would be a typical platformer if it did not have this beautiful visual look or its craziness, but this side of Sega is arguably too weird to have sold a console too, let alone one doomed from the start like the 32X came to be.

It neither helps that this was a 2D platformer released at the time when polygonal 3D games were being more common, even if there might have been a hope, as happened for Rayman (1995) for consoles like the Sony Playstation, if this had been released on the Saturn instead. A lot of the challenge - where hoards of hazards moving and stationary need to be negotiated around - is from a genre of the 16 bit era, said not as detraction in the slightest from Tempo as a game, but with a sense of a type of game about to be maligned. The look and style of the game is where this stands out considerably, alongside the fact that you have such a vibrant looking game in visual appearance and slight gags, such as moments involving sleeping enemies and trying to figure out how to turn the lights back on. Even if there is one disappointment in style, that the final boss is generic in the truest sense, even the last level being a maze of doors over multiple rooms befits the tone of the production. The game managed as well to get sequels, with Tempo Jr. (1995) a tangent into the Game Gear handheld, but also Super Tempo (1998) coming for the Sega Saturn. Sadly, that was a Japanese only release, and many games for that system, and the entirety of the 32X catalogue in that form, are not readily available. This is sad in mind nostalgia did not bring me to this, and not just morbid curiosity about the 32X either, but a general interest in seeing what a game for this notorious system was like. Tempo is a game you could publish in the modern day and people could find so much joy in for the various qualities outlined.

 

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1) Supplemental: Remembering the Sega 32X, written by Fred Rojas for Gaming History 101, and published on January 9th 2012.