As I mentioned, both of these games were cancelled on Xbox by publisher City Connection weeks before release. Their official statement said, quote “Due to the nature of this title being a revival of works containing provocative expressions, we have been developing it with the goal of offering a consistent gameplay experience across all platforms,” “While each platform has its own set of standards, we have made continuous adjustments to the content. However, for the Xbox version, we have come to the realization that significant changes to the expressions will be necessary." unquote. That sure sounds like it's about lewd content, right? Maybe not, though, but I'll get to that a little later.
First off, obviously I didn't play the Xbox versions - I bought them on Switch instead. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even played them if they actually were on Xbox, but suddenly getting cancelled piqued my interest. I do like all girl fighting games and I like shmups, especially sexy ones, so it was an easy decision to jump in.
So what are these games? Advanced VG - the VG stands for Variable Geo - is an all girl fighting game featuring restaurant waitresses who enter a tournament to find the strongest woman in Japan all while promoting their restaurants. The winner gets fame and fortune. The losers get stripped down and humiliated. Variable Geo is actually an eroge series and the other games can be pretty uncomfortably explicit, but the fighting games released for consoles didn't ever go too far. It's only rated T for Teen so the fanservice is limited to skimpy outfits, some nice jiggle, and a still shot of the losing fighter in a sorta sexy position. It isn't too bad, really, and I can't see anything worth Xbox refusing the game entirely.
How is it to actually play? Uh, kinda not good. It stinks. It's an extremely bare bones basic fighter that doesn't do anything unique or interesting. The CPU is also absolutely brutal, even on the easiest difficulty level, and isn't especially fun to fight. It can be OK in multiplayer, but I still wouldn't recommend it.
Steam-Heart's is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up where a virus has ravaged the world and the only way to cure people is for the hero - who has natural immunity - to, uh, coom inside them. Yeah, this is another game that started life as an eroge. All of the bosses are mecha piloted by hot women in skimpy clothes, and they all need to be "cured". The Saturn version was redrawn to be less explicit and, honestly, you can barely tell what they're even implying is happening here. As far as fanservice goes, Steam-Heart's is pretty OK. The girls look good and it is kinda sexy for sure. In this case I can kinda see why Microsoft maybe wouldn't want it on Xbox due to the fact creampies are an integral part of the story.
Is it a good game, though? I'd say it's pretty middle-of-the-road as far as shoot-em-ups go. The sexy content was clearly the focus and the gameplay was almost an afterthought, but it's fine. It kind of overwhelms you with weapon upgrades and subweapons and health pickups flying all over the screen all the time, but it ain't bad. If you like shmups it's worth playing.
Here's the thing about both of these games, though, and the likely real reason why Xbox rejected them and wanted more adjustments - basically zero localization work went into either of them. The menus are in English, of course, so you can get to the gameplay and change options and stuff, but all of the in-game text and cutscenes and dialogue are all entirely in Japanese with no subtitles or anything. Advanced VG is easy enough to tell what's going on but Steam-Heart's has really, really, really long voiced cutscenes before and after each mission.
It recontextualizes City Connection's refusal to alter the Xbox version. I really believe it wasn't so much about the lewd content, but the lack of English localization. Microsoft was all like "Hey, could you maybe put some subtitles in or something" and City Connect said "No" and took their ball and went home and then used the excuse of wanting content parity across all releases to justify it. But they really SHOULD have done some localization work for all platforms, not just Xbox, and it would have been a better release for everyone.
In conclusion - the games as presented here aren't really sexy enough to warrant Xbox demanding more censorship than other platforms and the lack of localization effort seems the more likely reason for their cancellation on Xbox. The games themselves aren't really anything to write home about, either, which is pretty disappointing all around. It makes you wonder if some of these long lost Saturn games were better off staying mostly forgotten.
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