Cobra Kai

I just bought Volgar The Viking for $0.99 on the WiiU eshop. Also bought some game called KungFu Fight for $2.49. Volgar is fun but extremely difficult. Its a must buy for $1 though!

Night Slashers looks interesting, perhaps I'll see if that is on my old Xbox. I played one called Cadillacs and Dinasaurs last weekend.

I have always enjoyed Kung Fu Master and even more so to Vigilante. I wouldn't critique KFM with the same criteria as Bad Dudes, because it has a certain innocence about it, being so much older of a game. It's like, you can't really complain too much about Space Invaders ya know?

Dreamcast. It's one of the newest additions to my collection (within last 5 years), so it holds the least nostalgic grip.

I played some Bad Dudes VS. Dragon Ninja, from Data East. This is an early beat-em-up, but honestly, it's kind of terrible. I think I put a few quarters into this machine way way back. It's not much of an evolution from Kung Fu Master and Vigilante. The fighting is on a straight 2D plane, making your movements very restricted. The big difference is that there is usually an upper and lower platform to do combat, similar to Shinobi or Rolling Thunder. The selection of moves to perform are few. Meanwhile, every enemy, other than bosses, will die with one hit. This combination makes for a particularly boring game. One-hit kills really defeats the purpose of beating people up. I only played 2 levels of this the other day, and the only positive I came away with was fighting against Karnov as the level 1 boss. A couple of gamers could have some quick fun with this as a 2-player game, if they wanted to waste 15-20 minutes. They'd be begging for it to end before that time is up I'll bet.

I've always liked Sengoku 3 as well. I bought the AES cart 3 different times. What sets it apart from other beatemups is the combo meter/system. I liked the usable character variety, but at the same time, I thought the enemies were not very imaginative, and very repetitive. Of course, I can see how that's a silly complaint particularly in this genre of games, that are known for their repetitive enemies.

That game does not need rapid fire. There is a rapid fire power up.

Warriors of Fate 2 I'm just going to say right off, I will not be able to do this game justice here. There are multiple versions, of which I have not played. My knowledge of the game is based off the import Sega Saturn version which is in Japanese language, in an intensive story based beat-em-up. All this means is that I can play the game, but have no idea what the story is. The game can be acquired on the Capcom Beat-em-up Bundle/Capcom Belt Action Collection for some modern consoles (PS4/Switch) Here's Wikipedia's entry on the game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_of_Fate Now, they call it Warriors of Fate, but the Saturn release is definitely Warriors of Fate II, as seen here: For a beat-em-up, this is a heavily story driven game, as you will see by all the cut-scenes throughout. I have no idea what it's about, but appears as set in China, and you may be on a quest by some Lord to quell a rebellion (just guessing). Some of the cut-scenes show villagers running for their lives while being chased by soldiers who are cutting them down. While others depict a massive naval battle. There are 5 main characters to choose from, all males, but after searching for screenshots, it appears there are some secret unlockable characters. Also, the Saturn version is 2 player, the arcade game must have been 3-players: I would directly compare this game to Knights of the Round. But, there's quite a bit more to this game. Not only is there weapon based combat, there are many melee and grapple moves for each character. The button setup is 3 buttons, Attack/Jump/Mega Crush. Each character uses the same joystick motion and button presses to perform all the moves, so it's easy to switch from one character to another. For example, all the characters can grab enemies, and by pressing left/right and the attack button, will throw the enemy, while up or down + attack will perform a bite or choke style move. You can also grab, press jump + attack and that performs even another move. So, you can see, just the grappling makes the move set at-least twice as large as Knights of the Round. This is a deep beat-em-up with a move set as big as two of Capcoms other games in the genre (KotR + Final Fight). There is also horseback combat, and you actually begin the game riding into battle on a horse: Horseback offers it's own moves. You can do Front and Rear swipes with your weapon. You can perform your mega-crush while on the horse. You can also make the horse charge, or rear-up and pound the ground which unleashes a wave of energy to knock enemies back. There are even more moves that you can perform while on the ground, which can even lead to your enemies being chopped in half. Pressing Down + Jump will perform a character specific dash attack which is pretty powerful, and used to clear a path in a sense. You can also top-wise half circle for another special attack that's very powerful and doesn't reduce your health bar like the Mega Crush will. Top-wise meaning LEFT/LEFT-UP/UP/RIGHT-UP/RIGHT + ATTACK. You can do that in either direction. These are all character specific and vary wildly with each one. The stages are epic in size, and you will fight 20-30 enemies on each level before fighting the Boss. One thing I really like about this game are the boss fights. Not because they are particularly special, but unlike many beat-em-ups, in this game, the bosses don't fight cheap, and can be fought against using your full move list, even the grappling. Most beat-em-ups you have to totally change your techniques to fight the boss, or simply just take beatings and mega-crush your way to victory while pumping credits into it. Not so with this game, you can actually fight the boss with all your moves, they don't necessarily get priority over everything you do. There are many, many item pick-ups in this game as well. Treasure chests and barrels litter the battlefield. What lies within can be food, points, or weapons. Sometimes there's a pick-up that summons the Horse for you. There is quite a variety of weapons, such as large swords, scimitars, battle-axe, cudgels, daggers, hammers. Again, with the right weapon, you can slice enemies in half. With a hammer, you can actually stun enemies for a short time. I think the graphics are incredible, and impressive when you have about 10 fairly large character sprites on screen, all moving about and I haven't detected any slowdown. The backgrounds are fun to look at, some of it is in a forest, or you switch to fighting in a stream with running water effects. One stage is a large battlefield you fight through, and sometimes there are dead bodies strewn about in the background. This is why I wish I had the English version of the game, because there is some epic tale being told and I don't know what it is. That's all I got on this one.

No.

The way I see it, Doom/Quake changed the direction of gaming and pushed for hardware innovation. It will take another titanic game to change course. It will be an entirely new way to play games probably. Will it be VR? Who knows, but Nintendo tried hard with imposing motion control to change gaming, and despite great console sales, motion control was a fad and eventual flop IMO.

One for me please. I would really prefer the 2nd port as I enjoy Llamatron very much.

Trevor McFur could use rapid fire also. That game has separate buttons for standard 'shot' and another for the 'bombs' (not to be confused with a screen clearing bomb). The standard shot definitely can get a high rate of fire, but I can't remember about the bombs.

Currently unavailable on Amazon for pre-ordering. I imagine this is on hold until the dust settles on covid19.

X1 had a recent dashboard makeover. As usual, I'm never happy with the changes. I guess I just don't like my game consoles to get changes to them. I get used to a GUI and I want to stick with it forever, just like my classic consoles. It makes it so much easier when I have everything in muscle memory, I can switch back and forth between SNES or Jaguar and never have problems. They really didn't do much other than change how the pods are organized. But again, they didn't make it 'better', so a waste of time really.

I'm currently concentrating on trying to solo the SNES port of Knights of the Round (Normal difficulty). You get 9 credits, and I'm getting stuck at Level 6 the Muramasa samurai boss. There's a lot of combat strategy to this game. Anyone here gotten through the entire game solo? If so, which character did you use? I'm trying to do it with Arthur currently, but I'm wondering if Percival might be better with his extra strength. I'm not sure the speed stat has any real affect on the game.