We’re not out of the Saturn Mines yet, folks. I have a LOT of Saturn games I could talk about in this series. And I’d love to. Speaking of which, STEAMGEAR MASH!

I first discovered this game while on a deepdive for obscure Saturn gold. I found this and Tryrush Deppy, which I’ll get to later. This one stood out to me because of it’s aesthetics. This game is very of its time, but its got style for DAYS.

title screen

Steamgear Mash came out in 1995 for the Saturn exclusively in Japan, and for an early Saturn game, it’s quite good! It’s not too hard to play if you can’t read Japanese, either, which is good, because I cannot. It was developed by Tamsoft, who you may not recognize the name of, but you prolly know their games. They made Battle Arena Toshinden. They also worked on Melty Blood! And of course they made the ever classy Onechanbara series, which is the game series about a nearly naked cowgirl who wields a katana. It is dangerously horny. This game is thankfully a little less horny, but it’s a WEIRD lineage.

intro cutscene

In Steamgear Mash, you play as… Mash, a “steam engine lifeform”, or a Steam Gear. He is a cute robot friend made by Dr. Sendagaya, who the manual says is a “Self styled ‘Justice Genius Scientist’” which is great. They live with the doctor’s granddaughter, Mina. They live a happy life, until an evil alien robot sees Mina from a space station and immediately falls in love with her, sending a horde of baddies down to kidnap her! Mash tries to stop them, but is beaten up. Dr. Sendagaya fixes up and upgrades Mash, Megamanning him up with weaponry to take on the alien menace!

This is all shown in the opening cutscene, which is kinda adorable in how dated it looks. It’s SO early CG-I, and while the robots are stylized and cute, Mina uh… hasn’t aged as gracefully.

orbs

You all remember when Orbs were the future? The Genesis to me will always be the Orb console. There were a lot of pre-rendered 3D lookin’ orbs, and this game has that aesthetic down EXTREMELY. Everything is a lot of pre-rendered sprites just built of orbs, on really nice sprite art backgrounds. It’s got this kinda isometric angle, which could have been bad for platforming but honestly isn’t that bad.

level 1

This might sound weird, but I feel the genre that best described Steamgear Mash is “semi-linear metroidvania”. It’s split up into 6 self-contained levels, but within those levels you must explore and obtain the items that’ll allow you to proceed. For example, the first level is a bunch of rooms to explore, but with a locked door that can only be blown up by the bomb power up, found elsewhere in the level.

The gameplay is a kind of isometric run and gun. You control Mash as he runs around in 8 directions. You can jump and shoot, where you’ll shoot in that direction. You also have these special upgrades which modify how you move or shoot. For example, you have the LOCK ability, probably the most useful one, which keeps you facing the same direction while you move, for more accurate aiming and attacking. You press R to use these abilities, and there are six in total.

You have LOCK, you have ROLL, where your body spins around automatically (not super useful), BACK, where you face behind you as you walk, STOP where you stand still as a turret and can aim more carefully, SIGHT where you home on the closest enemy, and DASH which just makes you run fast. You find these abilities through the levels like you do other upgrades.

level 2

Speaking of abilities, you have three ways to attack. Your normal shots, a charge shot by holding the attack button, and your secondary attack, which can be changed after finding modules in the levels. Stuff like bombs, a shotgun blast, and the flamethrower which is AMAZING for bosses.

Through the levels, you will also find save points, very Metroid, and some warp points to go back to previous levels. There ARE upgrades you’ll have to backtrack to find, but nothing required, really, most of the levels are very self contained. It’s mostly for 100% or additional upgrades.

Another weird thing you can find in the levels… there are two cats. If you walk up to them, they’ll follow you for the rest of the game. I have… NO IDEA why they’re there. They just follow you and hang out. But hey, free cats.

level 3

Mixing it up, some of the levels are shmups! Weird isometric shmups. They’re simple, but fun enough, not much to say, but it’s a nice change of pace.

Not that the game really needs a “change of pace”, cause it’s really quite short. It won’t take you very long to beat at all, it only took me a few hours my first playthrough, maybe two or three? It can be quite challenging.

level 1 again

I dunno if I’d call Steamgear Mash a masterpiece, or a hidden treasure or anything. But I do weirdly love it. I bought a physical copy of it, cause it’s not too expensive, and is just obscure and weird enough to be something I love. Not to mention how cute it is, this game’s aesthetic is SO GOOD. Mash is adorable, the world and characters are cute with a cute 3D rendered cartoony artstyle, and the music is of course fantastic. Here, listen to some of that music.

https://youtu.be/4ABQeziReEs

It won’t blow you away, but I really do thing that this game has a lot of charm and love to it, and it doesn’t deserve to be unfairly forgotten. Maybe give it a try~