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thegoldenband

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Posts posted by thegoldenband

  2. Posted

    4. Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road (NES)

     

    I think Jeremy Parish's recent review of this one is fair: it's a total janky mess, yet it's clear the developers were trying to do something ambitious and impressive. They just didn't figure out how to integrate any of those innovations into the gameplay, as there's no reason to do anything but spam boomerangs (or grenades for the bosses) and buy health potions.

     

    The only real challenge comes from the ridiculous boss battle at the end, but fortunately there's a way to manipulate the boss's movements and make the fight nearly as trivial as the rest of the game. D.

     

    5. Sword Master (NES)

     

    At the opposite extreme -- sort of -- we have a highly-polished game with parallax scrolling, a dynamic soundtrack, crisp graphics, and boss-heavy gameplay that requires real skill (or at least insight) and anticipates trends that became popular years later in games like Alien Soldier. And you even keep all your earned levels after a GAME OVER, which is a nice perk (also seen in the game's predecessor Castle of Dragon) that rewards the player for giving it that "one more try".

     

    The only problem is, they didn't figure out how to make the character jump in a sane way. Instead you have two glitchy options: a double-jump that only works 25% of the time even when you've got the timing down; or, you can walk off the edge of a platform and then jump. Without mastering one of those two things (and I'd suggest making it the second one: the double-jump is unusable), or using some other glitchy mechanic, you can't get past the fourth level of this game, which suddenly expects the player to engage in super-accurate platforming.

     

    Of course, even once you've got that down, there's still a chance of falling through a platform. Here's an idea, developers: what if you'd left out the platforming completely? Then you might have a borderline "hidden gem" instead of a game that may wear its jank on the inside of its coat, but is still as janky (in its way) as Ikari Warriors II. C-.

     

    6. Hyper Final Match Tennis (PlayStation)

     

    And in the continuing saga of "games that meant well but failed to execute", we have Hyper Final Match Tennis -- the third and last game in a series whose first entry, Final Match Tennis on the PC Engine, is still cited by some as the best tennis game ever. (I haven't played it yet, though I did play the Super Famicom sequel, which was OK.)

     

    Clearly the people behind HFMT appreciated the sport, as it's full of nuances that reflect real-life tennis. Slices are good for getting the opponent to dump the ball into the net, for example, and taking the ball early or late is the key to sending your shot in the correct direction.

     

    But the game is just ugly, and epitomizes the worst sins of early 3D efforts: grainy, aliased players, lifeless backgrounds, and a bunch of camera angles, none of them quite right. (Don't try to play the PAL version on NTSC, by the way: the Japanese version jitters when changing camera angles, but at least at 60Hz, the PAL version also jitters during gameplay.)

     

    The game's World Tour mode is, for once, the right length. But it screws everything up by forcing you to play a mixed doubles tournament with an AI partner -- a partner with no sense of court coverage, who will sprint in front of you and attempt to take every ball herself. The only antidote is to run to the net as soon as possible.

     

    On top of that, the loading times are excessive, the UI is totally underdone (why can't I turn the music off or quit a match in progress?), and it does that annoying thing where you're simply not allowed to hit certain shots from certain positions -- at least not successfully. Overhead smashes are especially hard to pull off: if you're at the net, they'll always go long, and even when you're in the game's preferred location, 50% of them will go in at most.

     

    At least that means, unlike some games, the CPU in HFMT doesn't get to lob you to death but smash all your lobs. In fact the CPU is quite vulnerable to lobs, standing there gobsmacked if you hit a sharply angled lob from the correct position. Why does that AI bug show up in so many tennis games, I wonder? D.

     

  3. Posted

    My times for the week:

     

    NES:
    Solar Jetman - 62 min.

     

    PlayStation:
    The Curling (SuperLite 1500 Series) - 7 min.
    Imadoki no Vampire: Bloody Bride - 518 min.
    Simple 1500 Series Vol. 24: The Gun Shooting - 2 min.
    Simple 1500 Series Vol. 100: The Uchuu Hikoushi (The Astronaut) - 5 min.

     

    Spent almost all of my gaming time this week playing a goofy vampire-themed dating sim/RPG hybrid with my wife. It's a fan translation, and unfortunately crashed at a key point in the game, but we were able to run the original Japanese disc for long enough to get past that bit.

    • Like 4

  5. Posted

    10 hours ago, Nintendo64 said:

    That is very interesting to know. I only played the NES version in short spurts, but it always seemed like a different and fun game to play. Yeah I remember a back in the 80's and 90's when the NES would just crash on me in the middle of a game, which was pretty frustrating as a kid.

     

    I didn't know that about Blaster Master 2. Those type of games are quite annoying where you lose a life at the beginning of the stage, and have no progressive build up in difficulty level.

     

    I also wasn't aware there was a PS1 version of the game, I need to try that out. Thanks for that information.

    You're very welcome! The PS1 game is pretty affordable and some people like it quite a bit; I wasn't a huge fan but my first impressions, at least, were that it was somewhat better than I'd expected.

     

    I think you'd enjoy replaying the NES game with savestates. Without them, it's likely to be frustrating and stressful, but with them you can enjoy some of the best music and stage design on the NES. There's also a well-known pause trick that makes several boss fights trivial, though it doesn't work on every boss.

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    21 hours ago, nosweargamer said:

    Rare Atari 2600 Games Month continues with a fight against unicorns!
    Ep 685: Mr. Do's Castle

    I grew up playing the 5200 version (don't remember if you've viewed that one or its 8-bit equivalent?), which I quite enjoy -- so I think I'd have a hard time adjusting to this stripped-down take, especially if the controls are as bad as you note. The music is impressive for a game from the era, though.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    36 minutes ago, Nintendo64 said:

    Id really like to try to play this series more on the NES and Genesis, as for they both seem really fun to play.

    Blaster Master on the NES is an excellent game hampered by its lack of a password system: repeatedly replaying early levels, just to get a crack at the difficult later levels and bosses, is simply too much to ask (as is any game that expects a 3-4 hour playthrough on a system as crash-prone as the NES). It's also lousy that you lose weapon power for getting hit, as it's not a mechanic that makes the game more fun, and the later bosses are too cheap to make it justifiable. In almost every other respect, it's great.

     

    Blaster Master 2, sadly, stinks. It looks and plays like a low-tier Amiga game, and the stage design is especially poor -- the kind of thing where you get hit as soon as you enter a room, or where enemies spawn at the edge of the screen and give you no time to react. I'm planning to play through it but don't expect to enjoy it much.

     

    Haven't played the Game Boy game or any other games in the series except the PlayStation entry, which is okay (or seemed that way after an hour or two of play).

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    My times for the extended week:

     

    NES:
    Dragon Warrior III - 9 min.
    Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road - 178 min.
    Krion Conquest - 220 min.
    Magical Doropie - 90 min.
    Marvel’s X-Men - 115 min.
    Sword Master - 54 min.

     

    Genesis:
    Blaster Master 2 - 101 min.

     

    PlayStation:
    Block Wars - 8 min.
    Brave Prove - 3 min.
    Cyber Egg: Battle Champion - 8 min.
    DamDam StompLand - 2 min.
    Imadoki no Vampire: Bloody Bride - 141 min.
    Lucifer Ring - 3 min.
    The Smurfs - 2 min.
    Snow Racer ’98 - 4 min.
    Stahlfeder - 8 min.

    Two-Tentaku - 3 min.

     

    Beat X-Men, Magical Doropie, Krion Conquest, and Ikari Warriors II.

     

    BTW Magical Doropie is the Japanese version of Krion Conquest, but Krion has had big cuts and changes made to it, so it's certainly worth counting them separately. I played the fan translation of the former game.

     

    Regarding the question of systems "aging into" the classic gaming tracker, I still like the idea of this as a tracker for 20th-century systems (or more accurately years that begin with 19xx, since 2000 is technically and irritatingly in the 20th century). There really was a sea change in gameplay around 2000, and differentiating between the two is potentially useful.

     

    But ultimately the people who were most vocally against the inclusion of anything newer than 198x haven't even participated for a long, long time, so it doesn't matter too much! :)

    • Like 5

  9. Posted

    16 minutes ago, mbd30 said:

     

    I wonder if the controls actually get less responsive or if nerves play a part in pulling off certain moves.

     

    Moving up and down also works well in avoiding her floor attacks. Also turns out that Ranzou's sword is really effective against her. When I beat the game I got in all the hits from the nunchucks and iron claw, and then managed to finish her off with Ranzou.

    See, I thought it was nerves, but it's been so consistent that I suspect something's going on under the hood. If nothing else maybe slowdown is changing the required timing of the move in some subtle way.

     

    Ranzou is underrated! His shuriken are nearly useless, but the attack where he flares out his arms can be pretty effective against the mummies and even Noiram.

  10. Posted

    1. Marvel's X-Men (NES)

     

    I've beaten this six times now (!), so no need to rehash past comments. Oddly I found myself playing a lot more as Cyclops this time around, though Colossus is still the gold standard for his ability to endure the game's penchant for inflicting massive, unavoidable damage.

     

    2. Magical Doropie (Famicom) [aka Magical Kids Doropie]

    3. The Krion Conquest (NES)

     

    This is a textbook case in ruining a game when you localize it for a different region. Magical Doropie, the Japanese version, is a second-rate Mega Man clone with anime cutscenes and humdrum boss fights. Though it's got some major flaws in the controls, programming, and overall design, it's forgiving enough to be playable, with unlimited continues and reasonably frequent health drops. Let's call it a C, which is a bit generous; I used a nice fan translation from 2002.

     

    The NES localization removes all of the story, the game's original title screen, its ending sequence, and the transitions before and after each level. Furthermore, it takes away all continues (why not allow 3, at least?), diminishes enemy item drops to near-zero, gets rid of 1UP drops completely, tweaks some hit boxes to the player's detriment, and turns one of the bosses into a ridiculous damage sponge that takes 4-8x longer to beat than in the original game.

     

    The underlying, decent game is still there, but now its flaws are just about unforgivable, because The Krion Conquest is holding the player to a standard of quality that it doesn't itself meet -- all in the name of combating the rental market. D.

    • Like 2

  11. Posted

    22 hours ago, mbd30 said:

    NES Double Dragon III

     

    Very happy to finally get this one out of the way. It was the only one that I never owned or beat. It is worse than the first two but still decent. Not as bad or unfair as people make it out to be. The final boss is a real bitch though. A very large percentage of the challenge comes from the final boss.

    I find the main trick is timing my jumps to avoid her attacks through the floor. With that in place, plus some Iron Claw attacks from Chin, it becomes doable, but she's still a tough fight.

     

    The other things I always noticed is that the controls mysteriously become less responsive in the final area. Not sure why -- maybe the game is eating inputs when the playfield is overcrowded and slowdown kicks in? Whatever it is, suddenly my spin kicks become much less reliable.

     

    Up until then, it's not that tough of a game at all, and certainly far from a bad game. For one thing it's vastly superior to the Genesis port of the arcade game, and probably the arcade game as well (since I'm told the Genesis port is relatively faithful). I'd go so far as to say I rather like it, were it not for the problems in the last level, and a mild tendency toward laying the number of enemies on too thick -- but then again that's a DD "thing".

  12. Posted

    4 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:


    I posted that comment almost a week ago and I regret it now, certainly after Omega's examinations of the code.

    The first time I read the topic header, I thought: 'That one has already been dumped ages ago. What's so special about it?'

    That's all, no less no more.

    Thanks for that! And with that, hopefully all's well that ends well on that front.

     

    @Omegamatrix Thanks again for your research into this. I find this kind of forensic investigation of data (if you like) really fascinating!

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 1

  13. Posted

    7 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

    All I'm saying is that it was not the first NTSC dump of this game.

     

    That one has been floating around for many years, hence the reason I didn't get the so called hoopla.

    Are you saying there's another NTSC dump besides the Jone Yuan, or what exactly?

     

    Omegamatrix's work seems to indicate that the Jone Yuan is an extremely low-effort hack that does the literal minimum possible to put out a NTSC-compatible signal, whereas the Artkaris is the real deal and has large, meaningful differences from the PAL versions.

     

    The difference is several orders of magnitude in the literal sense, right? So if "that one" refers to the Jone Yuan release, I would think you'd be enthusiastic about the prospect of superseding it with a proper NTSC version that might even have originated with the original programmers (per Omegamatrix).

     

    It seems to me that "hoopla around this particular dump" is very much called for, if one cares about the history, playability, accuracy, and preservation of Atari 2600 games -- as I know you do! So what's going on? What's the purpose of choosing not to be enthusiastic and supportive here?

  14. Posted

    To answer the original question, as someone who got a brand-new 5200 for Christmas 198x that was practically DOA (controller-wise) fresh out of the box:

     

    The sticks weren't as bad as people say, but the buttons were much worse, and the ergonomics stank.

     

    If I still owned a 5200, I'd probably look for a Jaguar-to-5200 controller adapter. Back in the day we eventually got an Electra Concepts Masterplay 5200 Interface, and that turned the 5200 from a near-doorstop into a fun system.

  18. Posted

    45 minutes ago, wongojack said:

    I always thought it looked nice, but I preferred other options (RBI, MLB).  Same thing with Blades of Steel.  Nice looking, but there were other options that were more fun.

    My guess is that a comprehensive overview of the NES's baseball library might come out with one of the Baseball Stars games on top, but it's been too long since I've played those. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball was also a quirky good time, but of course then we're talkin' softball (Ozzie and the Straw).

     

    The RBI Baseball series bloomed nicely on the Genesis -- those are some of the better baseball games on the system, though a couple things are broken in the AI. But most console baseball games have no idea how to handle runners on 1st and 3rd anyway; if you keep feinting at stealing home, a lot of them will let you plop your runner down on 2nd base without resistance.

     

    MLB I found kind of...disturbing? It's hard to pinpoint why, but -- speaking of the The Simpsons -- the beanball routine always reminded me of the scene where the crash test dummies aren't really dummies, and "This exhibit is closed!" I replayed it recently, this year or last, and found it playd fine for a one-and-done game. I always liked sending foul balls so far back (and to the left/right) that all you see is crowd.

     

    I'd have to go back and play Blades of Steel again -- it's on my to-do list of "games I never quite beat as a kid". I never really had a copy of Ice Hockey but it seems to hold its own in the nostalgia department. Too bad the Hit the Ice hockey/RPG hybrid never came out!

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    84. Bases Loaded (NES)

     

    Nice-looking, nice-sounding baseball game that plays very well and set a new standard for baseball games on home consoles. Unfortunately it's also totally broken, has a career mode that goes on about 4 times as long as it should (and with a lousy ending to boot), and offers no challenge once you know the key tricks. Still, it was a classic in its time. B.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    Enjoyed reading this one. The topic may have been done a dozen times over, but it's still interesting to be reminded of games I'd forgotten about, and conversely to chuckle when people name some of my favorites (like Death Trap and Chuck Norris Superkicks) as the worst on the system. :)

     

    I tend to agree that many (though not all) of the absolute worst games are to be found in the PAL exclusives -- people underestimate those. I've kept a running list as I read the thread, and right now mine looks like this:

     

    Bi! Bi! (ROM Hunter makes a good case that this is the worst -- it's broken out of the box)

    I Want My Mommy (just 2 levels of garbage gameplay)

    Walker (the most depressing Atari 2600 game, with a weirdly East German vibe)

    Sssnake (the first game that made me think "This is garbage" as a kid)

    Custer’s Revenge (not just offensive, but a horrible game)

    Fire Fighter (pointless)

     

    I might throw a Swordquest game in there, maybe Waterworld. That entry has no nostalgia value for me, the gameplay has no appeal, and the abandonment of the contest -- the Swordquest games' only reason to exist -- was so cynical (and predictable). I'll always have a soft spot for Earthworld, though.

     

    Beyond that I'd have to refresh my memory of the PAL exclusives, though Nightmare rings a bell as disastrously poor. One of the word games, maybe Glib or Words-Attack, might have a place as they're just kind of pathetic.

     

    I'd want to give the Mythicon games another shot with the game variations/difficulty settings in mind; good tip earlier on that. Froggo loses points for reissuing games and hiding it with a name change, of course, and Cruise Missile is a "maybe it should be in the bottom 10" game. But Karate's ambition keeps it out of my bottom 10 -- at least they were trying to do something different.

     

    BTW I genuinely like a bunch of maligned games, like Artillery Duel, Airlock, Star Wars: Jedi Arena, and especially Bugs which is one of my favorite twitch games on the system -- sort of my Kaboom, I guess. I also enjoyed Donkey Kong as a kid; it was limited but at least it was playable, and had those ridiculously memorable sound effects that still get used in TV shows.

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    83. Fatal Fury Special (Sega CD)

     

    A lot of people talk about how this is a bad port because the Sega CD could have done so much more, animations were cut, the sound's not great, etc.

     

    And all of that may be true -- but when I can stand there, spam fireballs with Ryo, and win every match even on Expert difficulty, there are far deeper issues. I don't mind it when ports of SNK fighting games have holes in the AI, but does this one have to be so obvious? Nice music, though. D.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    ^Just an amazing video. You've got the gift of comic timing, at least as far as I'm concerned. The bizarre universe in which the answer to every situation is a quiz game is such a trip -- the one-size-fits-all, one-answer-to-everything contrivance of it reminds me of everything from pornography to the people who knock on my door spreading their particular beliefs.

     

    What a trip -- thanks for shedding light on it for us, I'm sure it did indeed take tons of work! How'd you manage to do it -- did you use emulation to supplement the footage, or find some way to pause the gameplay? Or did you just credit-feed, pick random answers until you progressed, and then went back and captioned the results? That's a lot of virtual 100 yen coins.

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