thegoldenband

There's a channel on YouTube called Video Game Esoterica with a ton of content related to the Hyper Neo Geo 64, even including coverage of prototype versions of the games (well, one of them, anyway). The system seems to have been a mixed bag, but by no means a complete disaster. The guy behind that channel also covers the 3DO M2 and Bandai Pippin, so he's rather fond of failed platforms.

Fortunately the person behind that Super Famicom chronogaming project started a new project focusing on RPGs -- two of them, actually: Super Famicom RPGs (SFC RPGs that weren't localized, plus PC Engine RPGs) This Map Is Completed! (strategy RPGs on all consoles) The blog author is on AtariAge, and mentioned that the scope of the original SFC project was just too broad (understandably). There are a bunch of other chronogaming projects that have surfaced over the past 5 years but most are video- or Twitch-based, rather than text-based. Frankly I love the written reviews, and am pretty much at saturation point when it comes to video content, so I'm glad to see you continuing in blog format!

Yeah, the arcade category was always the big headache -- though more of a potential headache than an actual one, since it never really posed a problem, but just always lurked in the background. I think your approach is perfect: Neo Geo games are tracked as such no matter where they appear, but everything else is just "Arcade", with sorting into pre- and post-crash based on pretty obvious parameters on an ad hoc basis, at the will of the statskeeper. As you note, I tracked Vs. System games as Arcade, as I think did cvga before me. If someone were to play one of those on their NES, it'd become an NES game, I suppose, and I'm fine with that. The only other major case of "console hardware in the arcade" I can think of is the Atomiswave arcade platform, whose entire library has recently been converted to run on the Dreamcast (which is basically what the Atomiswave is: a "deconsolized" Dreamcast). But again, that seems easy enough: play it on the Dreamcast and it's a Dreamcast game; play it in the arcade and it's an Arcade game.

My time for the week: 3DO: Phoenix 3 - 48 min. This game is so gloriously Nineties. I love it.

11. Tank Command (Atari 7800) This short, punishingly hard game could have been a floppy disk release on the Atari 8-bit. As a console game, it's more likely to annoy with its brevity and limitations. Still, despite the janky collision detection and near-useless aiming system, I enjoyed it for what it was. (Having my Genesis controller adapter, i.e. not a Proline, was crucial to that enjoyment.) C-. 12. Iron Angel of the Apocalypse (3DO) A rare example of a game elevated by its FMV cutscenes, which may well be the best I've ever seen -- not because they're flashy, but because they actually succeed in capturing a moody, foreboding tone. Their arthouse style is effectively used here, and the pleasantly understated voice acting is wisely left in its original language (is this the first console game to subtitle Japanese dialogue?). Too bad the game itself is so low-end, with a poor frame rate, clunky controls, and relatively little challenge -- and I like slow, clunky robot FPS games from the mid-1990s. That said, it also gets points for having zero loading times, a highly responsive UI, and a hypnotic atmosphere. I should give it a D-plus, but it's got an ineffable something, so C-.

My times for the week: Atari 7800: Double Dragon - 26 min. Food Fight - 5 min. Ikari Warriors - 8 min. Tank Command - 136 min. Water Ski - 3 min. 3DO: Iron Angel of the Apocalypse - 534 min. Saturn: Golden Axe: The Duel - 39 min. Beat Tank Command and Iron Angel of the Apocalypse (thoughts here), and also completed Golden Axe: The Duel on Easy with "Gillius" [sic].

I was thinking about this topic today, as I'm fond of a sub-genre of FPS games that might be called "robots moving slowly through lots of corridors". I'm thinking of games like Kileak (PS1), Robotica (Saturn), and Iron Angel of the Apocalypse (3DO). They tend to be slow and methodical, to the point that they'd probably bore most FPS fans to tears, but for exactly that reason I find them relaxing and even a bit hypnotic. (It also helps that, being slow, they don't tend to make me feel sick.) Another genre that can be kind of narcotic is the Star Raiders clone. Now, that's double-edged because some of them, like Star Voyager on NES and Starmaster on the Atari 2600, are highly stressful affairs with a tight time limit. But then there are really slow-paced ones like WarpSpeed on the Genesis and SNES, which has an almost sedative effect on me (especially the SNES port). You're just cruising around the galaxy, finding enemy squadrons one at a time and picking them off, without much time pressure unless you want to pick up the random events (and you should). Of course WarpSpeed more or less requires you to make maps to succeed in some of the more complicated missions. I find mapmaking to be a relaxing activity -- well, mostly: it's aggravating to realize you messed everything up by one spot! -- so games that necessitate it, like some grid-based dungeon crawlers, can be pleasant. And speaking of RPGs, roguelikes can be great because you're never too invested in any one run, and they don't take too long. Let me recommend Cave Noire for Game Boy -- a totally addictive "pocket-size roguelike" that's easy to end up playing for hours on end, yet can be dropped at a moment's notice.

My times for the week: Atari 7800: Midnight Mutants - 161 min. Saturn: Albert Odyssey - 10 min. I beat those mutants and freed "Grampa" (ahem) from his psychic pumpkin. Fun game.

7. Bloody Bride: Imadoki no Vampire (PlayStation) Vampire-themed dating sim with a grafted-on RPG mode, playable thanks to an old, creaky, but still charming fan translation. And "charming" is a good word for the whole game -- no small feat when your protagonist is definitionally a predator, though the game takes pains to emphasize that willing victims are preferable (how noble!). Sure, the endgame drags and the RPG elements are on the level of a 2002 Flash game, but does any of that matter? I expect my wife and I will keep quoting lines and humming tunes from this one for some time, especially if we replay it to get one of the other endings (five total). B-. 8. Buttsubushi (PlayStation) This rare PS1 game, never released in the US and barely released in Germany and Australia, was made by a developer mainly known for erotic games (strike one) and was published by Phoenix Games in Europe (strike two, and a big one). And it's true that the normal/arcade mode is no great shakes: you make blocks and switches, push them into your opponents, hope to win if everything goes according to plan. It's a bit like Bomberman but not as coherent. However, the puzzle mode is totally addictive. On offer are 100 puzzles, unlocked in groups of 25, that range from stupidly easy to utterly diabolical (I stared at one puzzle for at least 90 minutes before figuring out the very simple solution). Yet the fundamentals of the game are simple enough that no puzzle ever becomes irritatingly labyrinthine in the wrong way: it never succumbs, in other words, to "move this block 1/2 the usual distance and time this other thing exactly right while taking advantage of game mechanics that almost seem like a glitch" syndrome. Everything you have to do is transparent, operates within the game's rules, can be figured out without needing to take screenshots along the way, and doesn't require hundreds of controller inputs. Add to that a terrific, crisp UI that lets you retry without loading times, and the earworm-y music, and you've got a real winner of a puzzle game. B+. 9. Jinks (Atari 7800) Did I beat this? I dunno, I cleared all four levels on one credit (one of them twice), and that's it for the game's content except looping at higher difficulty. Too bad, as if Jinks had eight levels and a proper ending -- or 32 levels, a proper ending, and passwords -- its offbeat, Video-Pinball-meets-Arkanoid charm could've amounted to something. As it stands, it feels more like an incomplete prototype than many protos I've played. n/a 10. Midnight Mutants (Atari 7800) Sure, Midnight Mutants has the "unavoidable hits paired with lavish health items" tic common to Western developers. The endgame is a bit obtuse (is it really necessary to walk all the way back there?), and an in-game map or passwords wouldn't have been unwelcome. But it's a fun nut to crack, controls well enough, never does anything to you that you didn't deserve, and if the music isn't fantastic at least it's tolerable. B.

That sounds like a mechanical failure. If Keith Courage is still fixing systems, I highly recommend speaking with him! Not sure which site he frequents these days, but I think he's at the PC Engine Software Bible Forum: https://pcengine.proboards.com/

Yeah, there's a high score table, so I suppose there's that at least. Don't remember if I reached the top of said table, and I suppose I should do that before calling the game "beaten". That said grinding for score in this game is tedium. It's really irritating that if you go to the effort of clearing the initial set of bricks (before the first forcefield barrier in Level 1), your reward is...absolutely nothing! And yes, the audio is such a bizarre combination of fancy digitized stuff on the title and splash screens, and totally archaic 2600 sounds during gameplay (that rapidly become annoying). A very strange mix. The worst part of the level-select deal is that, from an interface perspective, it leads you to expect you'll get Levels 5-8 next. But nope, just the bare minimum from your friends at Atari and US Gold!

My times for the week: Atari 7800: Jinks - 25 min. Midnight Mutants - 66 min. Tank Command - 14 min. Saturn: Mortal Kombat II - 13 min. Jinks would have a lot more charm if it went anywhere or had a meaningful goal. Once you've cleared all 4 levels on one credit, it feels pointless to continue. Too bad, as I have some affection for its vaguely Video Pinball-esque gameplay.

Bought Stadium Mud Buggies and Party Line. Thanks for making these available. Looking forward to the non-ECS Mind Strike. I hope Body Slam and perhaps the two Learning Funs await in the future.

I got my cart on Friday and have played several games -- Tank Command, Midnight Mutants, Jinks -- for between 5 and 30 minutes. I saw the corruption on the title screen of Jinks, with the vertical band of garbage that others have mentioned, but otherwise have had no gameplay issues or crashes so far. However, I've noticed that the display of the cart's name in the menu is somewhat corrupted -- has anyone else encountered this? As far as I can recall it's happening there and only there: That said, I'm using a SanDisk adapter for an unbranded 2GB MicroSD card that was apparently made by Kingston (SD-C02G), so I realize I'm not exactly using the ideal setup. If a bit of graphical corruption in a menu is the only price to pay for that, I'm OK with it.

I use Taiyo Yuden, now manufactured by CMC I believe, but using Taiyo Yuden's equipment and protocols (as I understand it). TYs are the best-tracking, most-reliable CD-Rs I've ever used -- better than Mitsuis, which used to be the gold standard. There have been retail games that I own but play as burned copies instead, as the CD-R copies simply read better.

The struggle for me would have been determining the cut-off. We use the platform hardware for console games, but every arcade game is potentially unique, and some may have been released post-crash using pre-crash hardware (either in terms of capabilities, or literally in terms of "take this board and make it into something else"). Of course all arcade games are out-of-sync with the console mainstream anyway. Take Markham: a 1983 release on hardware that's extremely similar to the Master System! In any event however you decide to cut up the baby, I trust in your Solomonic wisdom.

Oh man, you're doing something I always meant to do but never did -- explicitly differentiating within the database (or spreadsheet) between pre-crash and post-crash arcade games. I feel your pain, or at least empathize with the headaches involved in your effort!

My very modest time for the week: PlayStation: Star Ixiom - 12 min.

Yeah, it's kind of a weird place for it, since it looks like a heading -- but IIRC it's a required page for Strategywiki so I figured I might as well use it! BTW if anyone wants to do the world a huge solid and contribute to the wiki, I pieced together screenshots for Level 1 of the Novice adventure, but didn't get any further with it. It'd be awesome to have full maps of all the non-random adventures (Novice, Tower/8, Tower/12, and Tower/20), but it'd be the kind of thing that should be done during downtime at a night watchman job or during a cross-country train trip, as it's a slow and vexing task.

Yeah, still not the biggest fan of this game, despite the excellent production values. It's not a question of disliking hard games or needing to "get good" -- I've made it through a few loops, after all, which is more than enough to form an opinion. I just find that it doesn't build fast enough, and the gameplay drags. Will have to try Mystic Castle. I think I bought the board but never did anything with it -- that was about when I started to get burned out on the Intellivision homebrew scene, with so many releases coming out (many of them piecemeal) and not a lot of urge to play them, especially since none of my Intellivisions are working 100%. I'd like to get back into it.

Thank you very much! BTW totally agreed that the sound exploit is extremely useful -- it's actually mentioned on the Walkthrough page of the StrategyWiki site, under "Dealing with traps": "Use a treasure - When using a treasure, a long chime sounds. As long as that sound persists, traps are ineffective. It's a really good idea to keep at least one treasure on hand at all times for this reason, as it's the best way to bypass a trap." You can also use a Wand or Holy Hand Grenade for the same purpose, since the sound they make lasts for about a second or so -- enough time to get past a trap that's blocking your progress.

I think chopping up Sega Ages Vol. 1 into its components, i.e. the individual Japanese releases, is pretty reasonable. I doubt there are any differences whatsoever in the gameplay, though then again now I've got some weird ping in my memory banks about OutRun being 60fps in the US version but only 30fps in the Japanese one, or something like that...hmmm...

My modest times for the week: NES: Batsu & Terry - 1 min. Saturn: Crows: The Battle Action - 5 min. Sega Ages: Galaxy Force - 5 min. Tryrush Deppy - 24 min.

Not much for me this week: PlayStation: Mitouhou e no Chousen: Alps no Hen - 63 min. It's tough to understand how to play a game when it's giving you onscreen advice in a language you don't speak! But I somehow want to crack this bizarre mountain-climbing experience...

@twoquickcapri! Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Meanwhile, my times for the week: PlayStation: Buttsubushi - 338 min. Hyper Final Match Tennis - 99 min. Imadoki no Vampire: Bloody Bride - 490 min. One Two Smash: Tanoshii Tennis - 29 min. Roland Garros French Open 2001 - 8 min. Beat Imadoki no Vampire: Bloody Bride with my wife -- or we got one of the game's five primary "good" endings, anyway. I guess you could say one ought to get all five endings, but it's a vampire dating sim, what do you want from me?! To my pleasant surprise I also finished off Buttsubushi. This was despite spending close to two hours staring uncomprehendingly at one of the puzzles and despairing of ever finishing the game -- to the point where I wondered if the designers had botched it and made it unsolvable. But nope, it can be done (quite simply as it turns out), and I'm now one of the few to have ever completed all 100 puzzles in this diabolical (and, apparently, quite rare) game. No ending or bonus for doing so, sadly. I also beat Hyper Final Match Tennis again -- in that I replayed the US Open to get the win there, and then beat the final hidden character, 6-0 this time. No difference in the ending, or anything else, so clearly the game only cares if you're world #1 at the end of the season. Tried a couple other tennis games to see if any of them "took", but no dice. Roland Garros seems almost unplayable, but then many of these games do at first.