MMMC Week 4: Ninja Emaki

[scooterb23]

Week 4: A New Hope

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/scooterb23/mameclub.jpg

Club Rules

01. You do not need to sign up for the club. If you want to participate, simply download the game of the week and post about it!

02. At the end of the week, I will randomly select a game from a list of nominations.

03. The current MAME Club Pick of the Week can be found every Monday stickied at the top of the Arcade Alley.

Welcome everybody to week 4 of the MMMC. I hope everyone has been having a good time so far. I know I have, playing some great games...a couple of which I had never seen before MAME.

So, what is this week's game? A wonderful little Commando style game by Nichibutsu called Ninja Emaki

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8880

http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242141155.png

Remember, we've got two...count them...two sources for the MAME Club ROM files!

Flack is back with hosting at http://www.robohara.com/mameclub/

and 2DSkillz will have the ROM at http://www.retrogoggles.com/

*because I was a bit late getting going...the roms may not be up immediately today.

K, I really don't have a whole lot of witty comments this week. I just hope everyone is having a great time, while exploring the MAME catalog a little deeper.

Let's see some high score screenshots this week!

Former MMMC Games: Jump Coaster, Rampart, Jungler

[2Dskillz]

Made it to Brain Frog on my first play. Man there is ALOT of things on screen at a time, kind of impressive in that respect. This would really benefit from being a twin-stick shooter a'la Smash TV.

[Ed Oscuro]

My (apparent) highscore (from a couple years ago, I think, but not sure about the date, could even be back in 2003 as a post here shows):
Ninja Emaki (MAME)- 2,951,900 Ed Oscuro

That's right, folks - only 3 million points to claim the highscore crown on this one! Can you do it in a week? As much as I like this game, and as long as I've known of it, I've only played it intermittently.

Today's highscore:
2,057,700
I just ran through the game, only stopping at one place to trigger the secret bonus a couple times (getting killed possibly by invisible timeout protection in the process, but it's more likely I wasn't paying attention to my health). That could account for the scoring discrepancy.

Youma Ninpo Cho:
Dunno, but the other day I got to the skeleton boss. Piece o'cake. Just keep it together.

Back to the game at hand, then:

I'm late getting in my post because I decided to play the game first - and so an hour passed...it takes about half an hour to get a million points on the game, if this play is any indication.

When I first started playing this, I too thought "this would be much better as a dual stick game." But this ain't Commando, or Smash TV. It's more like Konami's Jackal, because it has a unique magic system. With the right magic selection and strafing skills you'll easily hit a million points. More about that in a moment.

Trouble really starts at about 1.6mil, when the game decides to get really tough and starts throwing lots of bullets. The fish in the sea throw maybe three to five bullets each at a time, and there's no fewer fish than before. The sand worms will chase you to the edges of the screen with their bullet trails, and the footsoldiers you laughed at before will kill you now. Ironically, the black-haired ninjas (that throw groups of stars and lightning strikes) don't seem to get any harder, and if you just realize you need to keep moving when they're ready to toss stuff, you'll do fine.

Actually, if I have a complaint about the game, it's that I realize now that most of the time, especially on the starting difficulty, just strafing like crazy, randomly, will do you a lot more good than focusing intently on where stuff is headed. This isn't quite true later on, though, and the firebomb / grenade-tossing enemies are there just to keep you going.

There's a whole ton of tricks to this game, and I wanted to play again to make sure I wasn't missing any.

The health bars

First, this game has three bars of health, and picking up magic replenishes one. As a result it's usually in your best interest to use magic as soon as you get it. The harder Japanese version only uses magic as a sort of one-hit shield; once you're hit, you lose the magic. I suppose this would make for faster approaches to bosses (when I wait for my magic to run out so I can get fresh magic for use at the boss), but in practice I find the three bars of health and magic that doesn't disappear more useful.

The magic system

I can't really say that every type of magic has a use. The first type is my favorite for most situations, and at the very beginning of the game I like to position the character so he's shooting diagonally up with his main weapon, and the magic shuriken head off another way. Two lines of fire for the price of one, and the shuriken will fire as quickly as they disappear offscreen. Very handy.

Type two and three I skip over: Type 2 seems to be a "big blast" type weapon, but I can't see that it does a lot of damage and where it's doing the damage isn't as clear as in types 5 and 6. Type 3 seems just completely useless: three small fireballs circle around and then disappear. It's not a barrier, it doesn't seem to do tons of damage (although I should test this further), and most crippling is the very short range.

Type four is a Turrican-like sweeping yellow-orange arrow that does a lot of damage and which I often use at certain bosses - namely the frog and the final boss. I can't guarantee it's the best thing to use, but it seems to work for me.

There's two "big shot" type weapons: a floating cannon and a wave. I'm not sure one is better than the other, although at the floating witch section (she'll turn into a bat) I would guess the cannon is better if you can land all five pellets - on the other hand, the wave impacts a big rectangular section which can be good for clearing up any nasties in the area.

Type seven sends out lots of small spinning cyclones that gradually separate into two bars that revolve slowly around your player. I find this somewhat useful in certain situations, but usually not.

The very last magic type seems useless as the shadow ninja helpers turn slowly, but I use them on the boat because there they fire quickly and at diagonals.

Stage hints

Stage 1: Sky
For the first stage, I push to the bottom of the screen and just let the screen scroll by slowly. Easy points until the game gets hard. At that point, you'll start flying about the screen in a more frantic fashion, although the bottom of the screen is always a safe spot to head back to. The flying heads-on-fire don't always come at you in waves; sometimes they come in big clumps that nearly cover the screen, so my "use Type 1 magic and shoot diagonally" trick only has so many legs. The Type 8 shadows align to the cardinal direction you're closest to, so I don't think that's a replacement for Type 1 on the early stages - but play with this for best effect.

Stage 1: Ground
The enemies aren't particularly interesting. Protection against timeout is in the form of the flying snake you saw earlier; it appears and you can't kill it. What you need to pay more attention to are the borders of the map.

This is very important for staying alive in either version of the game!

The magic scrolls appear after a period of time when you've gone without magic.

They appear at any place you can walk to. They often appear at the very edge of the places you can stand in.

They will appear on the other side of a wall if you let the wall scroll up, and that is bad if you're not near the turn in a wall. The scrolls don't stay around long offscreen.

That's important in this stage and in the later stage with spiders and kite fliers.

Stage 2: Hell-like place
If I've used up some time on the magic from the previous stage, I re-start it as soon as I start this map so I will have fresh magic before the boss. Of course, I'll trigger magic later along this stage if I need to make another appear to get health back. Froggie gets zapped with Type 4, and I stand to his right for some reason (maybe I should be off to the left actually). You don't have to shoot it precisely in the brain.

Stage 3: Starting by two bridges
There's not much danger of falling off the bridges if you're careful, so if you have some time left on the magic, or need to get health back, trigger your magic to clear out musket knights and bomb-throwers. If you just cross the bridge, you can walk back and forth above it. If you go too far, black-haired ninjas will appear and make you life harder, so hang back while getting more magic if you can. As soon as you max your health / get fresh magic, rush to the boat and get in (you might want to start switching magic types right now, because you'll want the final type for the sea stage).

The sea stage is pretty straightforward: Hang back, as in the sky stage, and let the scenery scroll by as slowly as possible since these fish are worth a good deal of points and trying to rush past them will just put you closer to their bullets.

Stage 4: Kites and spiders
Be careful immediately after the sea stage, because kite flyers appear and while they can hit you through the large statues, you can't return the favor unless you use magic, and you probably don't have magic right now. I concentrate here on just getting through the gates as soon as possible.

Once inside there's spiders that can shoot webs in eight directions, and more kite guys. Stay closer to the bottom walls as you make your way around walls, because if you scroll too high there'll be a lot of play area that you can't get to where magic can appear. You of course will make some use of the wall to shoot lots of spiders and kite guys from below (the spiders will be helpless), of course.

When you finally get out of this spot, there's an interesting little area with a pond and a monument. I like to run counter-clockwise around this monument over and over, continually shooting, until a secret 10,000 point bonus appears. There's a particular way to trigger and "catch" it, but I'll leave that up to you.

Stage 5: Lava
One of the toughest points in the game. Lots of lava worms appear, spit bullets, and you fall into the lava if you're not careful. Just move carefully but quickly, and don't worry about magic until you're at the skeleton. My path is diagonally left, then cross by under the skeleton, and then from the right up to his island. The skeleton has a pretty predictable pattern (at least up to about 1.7 million points, when he unexpectedly circled around towards me), and it's easy to fit through the gaps. The lava worms pose more of a problem, honestly, so it might be good to pick Type 1, 5, or 6 so you have some freedom to target them when they pop up. After the skeleton is killed, you'll automatically be transported to the next stage if you die (but don't).

Stage 6: Sand and stuff
The evil force behind the whole thing is finally revealed! As you move up the screen, black-haired ninjas who shoot lightning and shuriken one after the other (in groups of three, I believe) appear. They're not too difficult to deal with as long as you remember to move when they target you. As you get to the top of the screen, magic usually appears right on cue along with the big bad girl herself. Watch out and get magic as soon as it's available again. I target her directly with either the cannon or the wave; either seems to work well. Next form is a bat that can be somewhat challenging to deal with using Type 5 and 6 magic as it likes to crowd players towards the beginning of the stage (bottom of the screen) and is also well equipped to deal with such players: its fireballs split into three and it can shoot them quickly. This doesn't give you much chance to line up your shots if the bat is "protecting" the area right underneath it with the splitting fireballs. Thankfully, being quick prevents it from getting that far. If it does, your plan be is to rush up the stage. Piece of cake really.

Again, if you die here you get to go on to the next area.

That next area has familiar-looking worms, except these come out of sand instead (I just started playing Secret of Evermore so these seem familiar...); this is one of the few places I'd consider using the Type 7 hurricanes. But I generally think it's a better idea to stick to Type 1 here.

The next area has many more of the low-level soldiers, and you'd better keep moving (watch carefully for shuriken and especially firebombs / fires if you're waiting for magic). When a wooden boardwalk appears, it's your cue to replenish your magic and life. That done, press up, and it's time for another small boss fight: Snakey! The same snake as seen at the beginning of the game, actually, with the girl inside its coils.

My plan here is tricky and sometimes gets me repeatedly killed, but whatever. When you try to attack it from below with a big shot type, you're stuck trying to dodge lots of bullets from it (plus attacks from soldiers). That's too risky. Instead, I rush off to its left or right, in the direction where I have the most room. Then I pull out Type 4 and blast it repeatedly. It's tricky lining it up, but works somewhat well. I need to experiment to see if this isn't possible with the wave type, since lining up the shots is rather painful. On the plus side, using the Type 4 would take the boss down about as fast as the frog, if you were able to keep hitting the target long enough, that is.

The girl runs out and starts following you (she can't take damage) and another walkway appears (like after the skeleton). HOWEVER, you shouldn't run across just yet. Get your magic and stuff back if you can (on higher difficulty levels, it might be worth it just to rush across however).

This head is so big I'm calling it an entire Stage 7:
Boss fight time! Not too tricky actually, and it doesn't seem to get worse as the game moves along (so in other words if you're going for a highscore it's not a bad idea to get here as often as possible, past 1.7 million points anyway, I'd guess; earlier difficulty levels seem more ripe for point grinding).

Not sure if the boss takes damage from the very start - obviously target the head, how can you miss it? - but it certainly will by the time it moves first to the left. Then it spits out a couple bat things (similar to the grey things you see at the end of the game start's sky stage, right before you land on the ground), and moves right, while shooting a couple lightning bolts around you. It's not difficult to move around the lightning or to take time out to hit the flying critters. Be careful of the fire, of course - sometimes it travels the full length of the floor and temporarily boxes you in. When the head is flashing orange, she's about done.

BONUS: 100,000 points, nothing to scoff at! That said, the majority of points come from the stages.

Now it's your turn!

[jb143]

Strange. I never realized just how similar Commando type games are to R-Type style shooters untill playing this game. Practically the same, just with different graphics. I'm not really a big fan of shooters(mainly because I'm no good at them) but there's something about changing the ship to a guy with a gun/crossbow that makes me like it better. I'm still not very good at it though. I can't get past the frog thing.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not really a big fan of shooters(mainly because I'm no good at them) but there's something about changing the ship to a guy with a gun/crossbow that makes me like it better.
Before I knew I liked spaceship shooters I knew I liked these. I'm still trying to find a good number of 'em - I have Out Zone, am looking for this, and Jackal (aka Top Gunner, already have the NES version), and the two Pocky 'n Rocky games on Super Famicom.

There are a number of games that are vanilla shooters but with flying / running people but which have forced scrolling all the time; it seems that many games with human characters let the player scroll and I think it's a good idea. SNK made some of these (TNK, Guerilla War, Ikari 1 - 2, Time Soldiers) before they went to the Neo Geo (and after they did, there was the pretty decent Ninja Commando by ADK). Definitely one of my favorite genres of game.


I'm still not very good at it though. I can't get past the frog thing.
Run up to his side and blast away. When you see an enemy warping in, shoot at them for a second instead.

Personally, I find this genre of game easier than beat-em-ups, which mystify me with their timing requirements.

[scooterb23]

I really like this game. Although, truth be told...I haven't beaten the frog yet. I guess I do have a dumb question...how do you pick the different kinds of magics? I assumed it was picking up several scrolls to trigger the higher levels, but it doesn't seem like that is correct. Any insight to help a struggling player out Ed?

Also, for anyone reading the thread. I think there were 2 nominations for games from last week, but I'm getting tired of just flipping a coin. So please post some more recommendations so I can give the ol' random number generator a workout this week. I guess I never actually said this outright, but just because your game has been picked before does not mean you can't keep nominating new games.

OK, rock the weekend! Keep on MAMEing

[Ed Oscuro]

I really like this game. Although, truth be told...I haven't beaten the frog yet. I guess I do have a dumb question...how do you pick the different kinds of magics? I assumed it was picking up several scrolls to trigger the higher levels, but it doesn't seem like that is correct. Any insight to help a struggling player out Ed?
Press the second button multiple times. The main fire button fires both your regular shot and the magic; the secondary button scrolls (no pun) through the available types of magic. You can loop it around as many times as you like.

[scooterb23]

A ha! Never thought of that. Will have to give it a try tomorrow

[Cryomancer]

Kind of a neat game, I couldn't get too into it though. I second the idea of this beinga good candidate for a twin stick game, perhaps twin sticks with the buttons on top to control your magic. Could work very well.

I kinda sucked at this, i got the the part with the spiders and that was about it for me. Might try again later.

[Ed Oscuro]

Spiders = walk into the wall at an angle with the first magic type out, blasting everything on the other side. Just blast everything on the other side. Spiders rarely get the chance to take a shot at me.