MMMC - Dark Seal / Gate of Doom

[scooterb23]

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

Welcome back everybody. This week the random number generator spit out Gate of Doom. Which I'd never heard of. As I was looking for the ROM, I found that the parent ROM was a game called Dark Seal...which I've also never heard of. For simplicity's sake, I've just offered up the parent ROM.

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.

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7921

http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242110181.png

So, what is this game? Based on one quick play it looks like Gauntlet from an isometic POV. It seems pretty darn fun, and you can play a ninja. Very nice.

Need the ROM? Go visit the mighty Flack http://www.robohara.com/mameclub/


Previous MMMC games: Jump Coaster, Rampart, Jungler, Ninja Emaki, Port Man, Psycho Soldier, Metamoqester, Gunbarich, Sengoku (series), Snacks'n Jackson, Metro-Cross, Moon Shuttle, The Real Ghostbusters, Moonwalker, Black Widow, Kid Niki, Joust 2, Super Contra, Shoot-Out, Raiden, Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Dead Connection.

As this week's test to see if anyone is actually reading this post: next week, let's play a real classic. At the end of your comments this week: nominate your favorite old school truly classic arcade game.

MAME ON!

[jb143]

I still need to find time to play this one. It looks fun. I missed the last few weeks, I've just had too little time lately.

[scooterb23]

I get my lunch handed to me pretty early on no matter which route I take. I'm really digging this one as kind of an update of a Gauntlet style game.

[Arasoi]

Shame on me for almost missing this, this is one of my recent pcb acquisitions.

This game is great, like scoots mentioned a fun gauntlet/simple arcade RPG, but with all of that late 80s/early 90s data east charm (read: awesome cheese).

Simple but fun gameplay, invite a friend over or use kaillera and run through the game, it has some interesting bosses and stages and I find it difficult to put down the controller.

I guess if I had to make one complaint it would be those mushroom plants that take so many hits to put down, but its a minor gripe.

It's hard to complain about a random ninja in your D&D too, especially when he declares it so proudly.

I'd like to toss the game SAR: Search and Rescue into the rotation if it isn't already, along with Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road, and Tatsujin/Truxton.

[Ed Oscuro]

I played this a bit a few years ago, I'll try to get to it again soon. I don't really remember the scene from the screenshot - well, maybe I do, it'll come back to me when I play some.

I do remember the music is pretty nice however!

Arasoi and I have been talking about Surprise Attack lately, so I would put that into the rotation as well.

P47 Aces is my other pick :D

[scooterb23]

I'd like to toss the game SAR: Search and Rescue into the rotation if it isn't already, along with Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road, and Tatsujin/Truxton.

Quick question about Ikari Warriors II (I think this also applies to a game that has been on the random list for a while, Midnight Resistance), If I recall correctly, it had that funky controller that could turn as you moved. I am under the impression that would be difficult to replicate using, say, a keyboard(which, even though I have a gamepad, I still use more often than not). Although if you have a gamepad with shoulder buttons, I suppose that would work, though not an optimal solution. Thoughts?

[Ed Oscuro]

Set the game to use a mouse instead of keyboard for the positional controller. Turn the mouse's sensitivity down and move it left to right to spin.

After all these years, I finally SHOWED SOME GUTS and defeated the first boss. Then immediately died after on my way to pick up the item that spawned in the middle of the screen, d'oh!

Score entry doesn't work right using the mouse for some reason, not sure how to switch letters.

[InsaneDavid]

Ah, not to much into this one myself. There's just too much off-screen crap / I don't like how lazy the scrolling is.

Blood Bros. (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7163) is still my future nomination.

[scooterb23]

I assure you David, as well as everyone else, all previous nominations that I could find are in a nopepad document on my desktop...remember, when a game is nominated, I don't keep who nominated it attached, and I use a completely random number generator to choose the game. So blame random.org if your game doesn't get picked. We now have over 20 games in the queue (and none of them are mine :( )

@Ed - I guess that option works...for those that have mice (laptop touchpad fail). ;)

[InsaneDavid]

@Ed - I guess that option works...for those that have mice (laptop touchpad fail). ;)

I wonder if you can set it up to use the analog sticks on a PS1 controller. Actually, I'm gonna try that right now.

[scooterb23]

Ooh, interesting idea. Like I said, I do have a gamepad around here...I'm just kind of thinking out loud about some potential issues.

While I'm at it, any thoughts for making trackball spin games like Golden Tee or (more importantly Birdie King) work correctly? Even with a mouse I've never gotten those to play correctly. Talk about derailing a thread :P

[InsaneDavid]

Actually that works pretty decently for Victory Road. I use an old PS1 controller through a PS Family to USB adapter for MAME. I have player movement set to the left analog stick and player rotation set to left (counterclockwise) and right (clockwise) on the right analog stick. L1 is used for gun and R1 for grenade. Doesn't work as well as two stick games (Robotron, Karate Champ, SmashTV - it's also the only way to play emulated Vindicators) but by no means is the game unplayable or overly frustrating with the controls set up like that.

[scooterb23]

Excellent info! Now, to find my PS1 -> USB connector, I know it's around here somewhere...

[Ed Oscuro]

@Ed - I guess that option works...for those that have mice (laptop touchpad fail). ;)
You may want to check out my new bestselling title "How to Invest In Critical Infrastructure," now only $10 with this online coupon code whygameonlap!

Seriously though, mice work for nearly every unique controller type in MAME, so at worst you'll need to haul around a mouse and a joypad for many games. Mice are nothing compared to a decent arcade controller anyway. I just picked up a Logitech VX Nano for $20 at a local lawn sale (admittedly far below retail but that's the beauty of it).

Also, I generally hate emulating in MAME on my laptop because they gave the WASD keys priority in button combos, but not the arrow keys - so probably W+A+Ctrl works, but not Left+Up+Ctrl, or even Left+Up+random key, argh! The Saturn USB pad is terrible for most games I play.

[Arasoi]

Midnight Resistance and Ikari 2 are rotary joystick games, yes. I've also used the PS2 analog stick to control that function and found it to be quite usable, once you adjust the speed settings for rotation.

I've also used mice, the only mouse I have is a Logitech performance laser so it moves the character far too fast to be useful without tweaking mouse settings I don't want to mess with. I'm going to have to look into using the mouse wheel to rotate, as it has a bit more of a "throttle" on it so to speak..

[Ed Oscuro]

It's a pain, but you can use Windows' pointer precision setting to slow down the mouse, leaving the configuration box open for resetting after you're done. Both of the mice I use regularly have DPI buttons (increase and decrease) for changing sensitivity on the fly, so I just clicked my Razer Lachesis a few clicks down (and regretted it immediately afterwards since every time I mess with that thing it feels wrong afterwards - never been really happy with that mouse).

Incidentally you want to turn off "enhance pointer precision" if you have a decent mouse, since that's just interpolating and creating fake points of precision between your mouse movements (also probably sucking up a few CPU cycles now and then).

[jb143]

Well, I finally got a chance to play the game and it was pretty cool. Though quite hard. All the enemies seemed to take far too many hits. Played to the Chinese looking dragon and tried to play as each character. Seemed to me that the Knight worked the best. Overall it was a pretty fun Gauntlet style game while being enough of it's own game to overlook small annoyances.

[stargate]

IMO, the game is not fun at all. Comes across as a poorly designed dungeon crawler. Really nothing all that fun or interesting. I guesss the best part was having my ninja turned into a pig... snort snort !! :)

[scooterb23]

Doh!

Despite doing an all day Monday Movie Marathon... I forgot to update this!!!!

Crap. OK, gimme a few minutes, and I'll get a new game up. Sorry everybody.