Grind Stormer
Thoughts:
Very pretty game, nice use of color on the enemies and their projectiles. Some of the enemy and level designs felt kinda Konami-ish.
There are some neat effects that I don't think I've seen in other games. The ship's options will lock into place while you're holding the fire button down, but they snap back into follow or "float" mode as soon as you release, which requires some additional strategy. One of the later levels presents you with a wall of these blob things that do not move until you shoot them (which causes them to move towards you) and you have to quickly manipulate them so you can squeeze by. One of the bosses can pull all projectiles (yours and his) into his mouth by opening it, but they instantly resume original trajectory when closed.
The bosses all felt like they took way too many hits to kill, and there's no sound or visual indicator that you're actually doing damage. The game could've really benefited from this, sometimes it's hard to tell where you should be aiming.
A couple of levels have small "bonus" sections where you can rack up a ton of points by grabbing point blocks at up to 10000 points each.
I'm pretty good at shmups, but this one was frustrating even at default difficulty and I'd never make it through at the harder difficulties. The challenge ramps up quite a bit around the 3rd stage. I found myself using bombs defensively more than offensively to save my ship from a wave of bullets or a blast of fast-moving lasers.
Last edited by jperryss; 01-19-2017 at 01:15 PM.
Love Grind Stormer! It is tough, and like you said, the bosses sure can soak up some bullets. Still, it has a nice arcade feel and look. I like playing the V.V game version as well.
Anybody take a run at Trap Gunner yet? It's like Spy vs Spy and Bomberman had a baby at an anime convention...
Nice finish on Strider. I know its controls are sloppy compared to the regular version, but I love the look of the game. I really dug the PS3/PS4 Strider sequel they did a couple of years ago, too. That was a lot of fun.
A few Tengen games that are a little more playable-
Paperboy (Genesis)
RBI Baseball games (the early ones only take a little while to beat, having a ten or so game season and a 10 run mercy rule)
Fantasy Zone (NES)
Vindicators (NES)
Rolling Thunder (NES)
Robo Aleste (Sega CD)
Dragon's Revenge (Genesis)
Last edited by celerystalker; 01-20-2017 at 09:02 AM.
In case anyone is interested, here are the totals as of today:
FieryReign: 4
Scissors: 3
Emperor Megas: 2
jperryss: 2
Az: 2
Cornelius: 1
RP2A03: 1
A couple of days left in the week to bang out some games!
Last edited by celerystalker; 01-20-2017 at 11:16 PM.
Gimme that point for the Tengen game. Did a quick run using Ty, spamming that punch button and special kicks. Genesis port. Seems like cheating but I'll take it. Was too lazy to take screenshots of it. There's no ending anyway.
Last edited by FieryReign; 01-20-2017 at 06:55 PM.
⃟Mario says "... if you do drugs, you go to hell before you die."
Managed to finally slog through Tengen's Genesis port of Pit Fighter tonight on my last credit using Ty with the default settings.
I have a love/hate relationship with this game and could ramble for days on all the things that it does good and fails horribly at. Until this week I had never actually sat down and paid close attention to all of the details of the game mechanics. It ended up actually being a bit deeper than I expected but was balanced out by being even more broken than I had ever noticed in the past.
After losing the pomp and spectacle of the arcade game it comes home basically as a boss-rush beat 'em up. The broke shit includes features that don't work or are totally useless like blocks, dodging, & evade rolls. You bend over to pick items up and for some reason it's just a coin toss if you'll actually pick them up or not. Context sensitive moves also come out at random. Maybe you knee a downed opponent once, maybe not at all, or maybe you can a hundred times in a row. All of those things should never, ever happen in a beat 'em up.
This port can handle 4 different characters fighting at once in 2p mode, so why not be like the arcade and include more than 1v1 matches in 1p mode? For that matter why not also fight against the other 2 player characters since the AI is already present? Also, with a Game Genie the boss characters are totally playable and have complete move sets (no specials though). This had to be known by the programmers so why not finish it and make them all playable?
Emulating this on a Retron5 is way faster than a real console, strangely just like the arcade version on MAT is too fast.
Nice finishes! However, now I have a delightfully grotesque mental image of monsters with gooey grins...
I played through Trap Gunner for the first time. It's an interesting game, but I wasn't really into it. I feel like it might be more fun playing with another person.
celerystalker, shouldn't I have 2 points (now 3 with Trap Gunner)? I played a Super game the first week and a Tengen game this week.
Last edited by Scissors; 01-20-2017 at 11:15 PM.
I'm playing through the portable Castlevania games again (just started Aria yesterday) so most of my gaming time has been spent there. I'm going to try to get in at least one point per week here and hopefully tackle the RPG challenge next month.
Looking forward to next week's list!
Last edited by jperryss; 01-21-2017 at 08:52 AM.
Those games are great. I really especially dug Portrait of Ruin on DS. I was really surprised to see a storyline sequel to Bloodlines, and the return to tons of equipment and items like Symphony of the Night felt great to me. They're all tons of fun.
New list coming tonight!
I'm playing Strider right now. Let's see if I can finish tonight.
A few hours to go in week 3 yet, but here are the week 4 challenge games:
-Granada (Genesis)
-Rooms: The Main Building (Wii) or Rooms (DS)
-Player's Choice: pick any game based on a western cartoon (no anime). Examples might include Tiny Toons games, Disney games, Wacky Races, Felix the Cat, Masters of the Universe, GI Joe, TMNT, etc.
-Still some time left to stop the march of the Black Queen. Ogre Battle games need some thrashing. Tip: the NGPC game is the shortest of the bunch, and it's okay not to get a great ending...
Good luck, and I'll post end of week 3 standings tomorrow.
What's the rule on arcade games. Limited to an x number of credits or...?
Ugh. I'm on the last level of Strider, but I can't beat the boss.
Edit: I beat it!
Last edited by Scissors; 01-22-2017 at 12:37 AM.