Limited, collector or special editions are a dime a dozen these days and for the most part, are actually pretty common. While there are a few exceptions to that, I think I may have found the most epic special edition of all time.
First, some background for you non Sega Saturn collectors, or those that came after the Saturn was in its prime (yes, the Saturn arguably had no prime, but play along with me here).
Enemy Zero, was a very hard survival-horror game from Kenji Eno’s infamous WARP studio. You may remember another of their games, D, which was an early PS1 release. It even features the same character from D, although there is nothing remotely related about the story lines or even the overall situation. It addition to having future influence on series such as Resident Evil, Enemy Zero was arguably the first 3D CGI game to have a nude scene.
The game began life on Sony’s PlayStation. Irritated by Sony’s failure to meet even a third of preorders for the PlayStation version of D, at a Sony conference Kenji Eno made a shocking move. Eno showed a preview of Enemy Zero. At the end of the clip the PlayStation logo appeared, but slowly transitioned into the Sega Saturn logo. Despite popular opinion that the Saturn cannot handle 3D games as well as the PlayStation, Eno commented “…the PlayStation and the Saturn aren’t that different, so moving it to Saturn wasn’t too difficult.”
So yeah, opting to release on the Saturn instead of the PS1. In retrospect, not such a good idea. Still, a ballsy move to pull that off at a press conference.
With much hype in Japan, it was released in 1997 – and sucked. Even than, it still managed to get ported to the PC. Now here’s where it goes from a blip on the history of video games to a massive blob of awesomely epic proportion.
Twenty copies of a limited edition Saturn version were produced and sold for a price roughly equal to 2,000 US dollars. These special copies were hand-delivered to recipients by Kenji Eno himself.
Not only were they hand delivered, but they came in a big ass crate which showed up at the buyers door on a flatbed truck. Seriously.
The contents included:
– copy of the “regular†Enemy Zero special edition
– A full set (leather outfit w/gloves, hat, tights, EO-logo badge and earrings) of the outfit worn by the companion girls at WARP’s 1996 Tokyo Game Show booth, designed by Yasushi Nirasawa
– A towel embroidered with the EO logo
– A model of an “enemy†corpse, complete with bodily liquid
– A metallic bookmark
– A flyer and ticket to an Enemy Zero art exhibit held in 1996
– A set of press releases for Enemy Zero (back when these were faxed around instead of emailed)
– VHS video of Enemy Zero music clips
– A large 3D lenticular sheet
– A set of stickers
– An Enemy Zero T-shirt
– A replica of the gun Laura uses in the game, again designed by Nirasawa
– Actual design documents used in developing the game
– Floppy disks, envelopes, and paper bags with the WARP logo
– A Sega Saturn-stamped CD-R (contents unknown)
Number eight, appeared on Yahoo! Auctions in Japan back in November 2009 and eventually sold for ¥300,000 ($3,396).
So even with the number of Limited Edition games and consoles coming out these days, in my mind this set remains unmatched. I’d love to see it toppled however.
Throw Shigeru Miyamoto in a helicopter and get him to airlift a even bigger crate.  Someone pitch that to Nintendo for me, ok?
Additional Fun Fact: Fumito Ueda, director of the recently popular and collectible cult video games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus worked as an animator on this game, before becoming a video game director.
