Did Nintendo just plain ol' not care (nes games)?

[vintagegamecrazy]

Some one voice their opinion, but I love the NES and most of Nintendo's games for it I look at Mario Zelda Metroid, and a few others and they are just perfect games, graphics, gameplay, control. All just play perfectly. I have finished all of those. My rant is this, I have been playing Zoda's Revenge, I am in Chapter 8 now (finally) and I have finished Startropics. I don't get it, I like this series a lot don't get me wrong, but why do their other franchises have such gameplay and Startropics have some of the crappiest control and handling out of any game released on the NES. I finally finished the boss in chapter 7 and I was to the point of throwing my controller in anger over how many times I died due to the controlling not working right. I can understand the first one of a series being choppy but to continue that crap in the sequel, there's a reason that this franchise died early on, how did Nintendo pass that through their quailty control? that game came out in like 1993 I don't get it. Another prime example is Faxanadu, come on every other game could save at that time but this one has a password save and bad controlling. keeping a good game from being exceptional, I don't want to turn into a bash Nintendo session but it seemed that they let their arrogance and iron hold on the market get the best of them at the time. Anyone else agree, because nowadays a game with that poor control would get a bottom of the barrell rating and the company would take a lot of heat for pulling that crap.

[Daria]

I haven't played Zoda's revenge but I quite liked StarTropics. I didn't think that the controls were unresponsive, just that the game was fucking difficult.

[Aussie2B]

Ah, my summer of StarTropics... I played through both last summer and had a blast. I think I'll have fond memories of that for many years to come. Overall, I think I like the original better, but the sequel is great too.

I think it's quite the contrary that they didn't care. I think they put more effort into the control scheme than they did in most of their other titles. Does it feel a little clunky and slow? Absolutely, but they were going for a very specific style of play control, which resulted in more realism and allowed for greater precision. For every moment of frustration, there was another moment where the play control style really helped me out more than it would had with Zelda-style movement. Plus when I got frustrated, I knew it wasn't the control's fault; it was my own because they're both very challenging games.

I'd liken them to Katamari Damacy in that a lot of people didn't care for the tank controls and would've prefered a more standard form of movement; however, in the end, the tank controls are what best suited the game, as is the case with StarTropics' controls.

As for Faxanadu, don't complain to Nintendo about that one. That's a Falcom game.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Does Nintendo credit Falcom any where in the game for producing it? I thought they programmed that game, I will probably play that game on an emulator, I got really far and then my password would not work and I verified it, I was frustrated with that. Password games make me reluctant to start playing a game.

[Daria]

Faxanadu is part of a Falcom series which includes other games such as Sorcerian, Dragon Slayer, and the upcoming N-Gage title Next Xanadu.

So yeah defiantely not made by Nintendo.

[rbudrick]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/view...&postorder=asc

Here's a cool rant type thing I did on the Dragon slayer series.

Hudson brought Faxanadu to the US in cooperation with Falcom and Nintendo. Since the credits at the end don't say shit about Falcom either, I can see where vintagegamecrazy is coming from, since as a kid I wondered the same thing, but knew there was something very Falcomy about the music and game in general.

As for the password thing, SRAM and a battery took a significant chunk out of profits as they were rather expensive back then. Plus there were a lot of memory shortages back then, driving prices higher. Also, it came out in Japan first, of course, and it was probably easier and cheaper to just keep the same code rather than reprogram a bit for the save feature (not sure how hard it is from a programming perspective).

I believe the SRAM and battery added somwhere between 1 and 3 dollars to the cost of each cart. If you multiply that times a million, you can see where that would suck from a business point of view.

-Rob

[digitalpress]

I tend to think Nintendo agrees with you, vintagegamecrazy. Ever wonder why there wasn't a StarTropics III or Zoda's Revenge II?

See? You're practically inside their heads.

[Graham Mitchell]

Um, call me crazy but I don't remember Startropics II having the same rigid, square-based system of movement that Startropics I did. You can move diagonally in the sequel, and if you push a direction you aren't obligated to keep moving the length of the sprite tile if you release the button--you can stop on a dime. I thought II was much easier than I because of that. I also thought that they were both phenomenal games (Faxanadu as well), and the things you're complaining about seem exceedingly minor to me.

Rob is probably right about the batteries and SRAM as well. That problem continued on into the 16-bit era. I remember Electronic Arts was putting out RPG's like Fairy Tale Adventure and Rings of Power, which were much more complex than Faxanadu was, without a battery to keep costs down. Legend of the Mystical Ninja for the SNES has some gawdawful passwords, as well.

[Graham Mitchell]

Hey, double posting is the best! You guys should try it sometime!

[rayearthknight]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62033&postdays=0&postorder=asc


Hudson brought Faxanadu to the US in cooperation with Falcom and Nintendo. Since the credits at the end don't say shit about Falcom either, I can see where vintagegamecrazy is coming from, since as a kid I wondered the same thing, but knew there was something very Falcomy about the music and game in general.


-Rob

Actually, the title screen mentions Falcom, Hudson Soft and Nintendo:

http://www.juegomania.org/nes/299

[GarrettCRW]

Actually, the title screen mentions Falcom, Hudson Soft and Nintendo:

http://www.juegomania.org/nes/299

Hudson ported the game to the Famicom, and Nintendo published the US version. Gotta love the tangled web Falcom weaves, eh?

[goatdan]

I tend to think Nintendo agrees with you, vintagegamecrazy. Ever wonder why there wasn't a StarTropics III or Zoda's Revenge II?

See? You're practically inside their heads.

You know, why hasn't there been a third game in the series? It seems like a no-brainer at this point, with Nintendo's lack of quality RPG style games, as well as the classic in-jokes that it was littered with. Earthbound has become a cult classic for much of the same reasons...

Then again, Earthbound 3 is still stuck in their planning meeting it seems, and so I doubt we'll ever see another StarTropics either

[rbudrick]

Actually, the title screen mentions Falcom, Hudson Soft and Nintendo:

http://www.juegomania.org/nes/299

Oh yeah...good call. I could have sworn when I was younger mine only said Hudson.....hmmm.

-Rob

[SlayerOfFurbies]

why do you think recently they removed these two words "Of Quality" from there seal?

so they arent responsible for crap games published by others

that explains the now, but then?
through out history every console had crap games.

[imanerd0011]

I personally really like the controls in Zoda's Revenge. Although I do think the end of the game is pretty damn hard (when you have to fight all the bosses in a row! ). The music in town after everyday turns into pigs is awesome!!! I remember playing it as a kid and just sitting there and listening to that music, rocking on!
I agree however that Faxanadu has the WORST password feature of all time! It's mainly because they were going for an odd style of test (old english or something), and some of the letters are very hard to distinquish.

[rayearthknight]

I agree however that Faxanadu has the WORST password feature of all time! It's mainly because they were going for an odd style of test (old english or something), and some of the letters are very hard to distinquish.

No, that honor (or horror) goes to River City Ransom with a 36+ character password and The Guardian Legend...both use lowercase letters and "O";s that look like numbers.

Metroid takes 3rd with it's hard to see font.

[Graham Mitchell]

I agree however that Faxanadu has the WORST password feature of all time! It's mainly because they were going for an odd style of test (old english or something), and some of the letters are very hard to distinquish.

No, that honor (or horror) goes to River City Ransom with a 36+ character password and The Guardian Legend...both use lowercase letters and "O";s that look like numbers.

Metroid takes 3rd with it's hard to see font.

At least the Guardian Legend has umlauts over the lowercase letters. This is actually a cool trick to distinguish between those 1's and l's. I still use it today. I actually liked Metroid's codes becase they put a dot in the center of the uppercase O's so you can distinguish them from zero.

Have any of you guys played either Y's book I and II or Y's III for the Turbo-CD? Those have the worst passwords I've ever seen. They can get as long as 50 characters. They're horrible, and you inevitably will record something incorrectly. Sometimes I think Y's I and II just gives you bogus passwords every time, that don't work when you try to enter them. I don't think I've ever had one work for me. Thankfully, though, you can normally use the backup RAM in the Turbo to save. God help you if you want to play it without memory space to spare.

[8bitnes]

I agree however that Faxanadu has the WORST password feature of all time! It's mainly because they were going for an odd style of test (old english or something), and some of the letters are very hard to distinquish.

No, that honor (or horror) goes to River City Ransom with a 36+ character password and The Guardian Legend...both use lowercase letters and "O";s that look like numbers.

Metroid takes 3rd with it's hard to see font.

I totally agree on River City Ransom. I used to write down 3 different codes at a time when I was quitting just in case they were off.

---

As for Star Tropics, it was one of the 12 games I bought brand new from the store in my youth. It was also the one that saw the absolute least game play. It was entirely due to poor controls. It was also the first game I sold from my original NES games while keeping most of the others. The only reason I own it today is to get a complete set of NES titles.

[Blackjax]

I liked Startropics... except for one little detail.

You needed to have a map from the game in order to make it past a certain point in the game for some code... AND I DIDN'T HAVE THE MAP

So, I never finished it. Cart's still saved right at the point you had to put the code from the map in.

I hate it when they make you rely on packaging or pack in material to advance in a game, although the only other occurance of this I can remember was getting Meryl's Codec frequency off the back of Metal Gear Solid's package

[8bitnes]

I liked Startropics... except for one little detail.

You needed to have a map from the game in order to make it past a certain point in the game for some code... AND I DIDN'T HAVE THE MAP

So, I never finished it. Cart's still saved right at the point you had to put the code from the map in.

I hate it when they make you rely on packaging or pack in material to advance in a game, although the only other occurance of this I can remember was getting Meryl's Codec frequency off the back of Metal Gear Solid's package

That game didn't come with a map. It came with a letter, which upon reading (just did - I actually typed it out and then deleted it), it references maps that appear in the instruction manual. It has no code on it either. The code is derived from talking to villagers and solving puzzles I believe. Anyhow, try this code 135413.