I played Twinkle Star Sprites: La Petite Princesse for week 34. It might be the shortest shooter I've ever played. I guess it's meant to be played with other people though.
I played Twinkle Star Sprites: La Petite Princesse for week 34. It might be the shortest shooter I've ever played. I guess it's meant to be played with other people though.
Belated comments on a few games:
Splatterhouse - (Wii Arcade VC) Played some of this but didn't actually beat it. I had no idea so many Arcade Virtual Console games were Japan-only, and was surprised this was even released at all. Emulation seems to be spot on.
Kenseiden - (SMS) Like Emperor Megas, I started out playing this on emulation and ran into issues, so I ended up finishing it on real hardware. Picodrive made these weird green box outlines on all the bosses and didn't support FM sound, which was the main reason I tried emulating it in the first place. Fantastic, underrated game, if a bit short. I really like the Eastern-style music, which is one type of tune the stock SMS hardware excels at. The enemies and bosses are fantastic, with my favorites being the puppet master, "child scarer" (according to the manual) and weird ass lizard thing with a woman's head on its tail. The developer rib by putting in a stage select is brutal, the last stage is impossible unless you get the power ups by playing through the stages.
I also checked out the Mark III original. I first thought it only differed by having the player with a slightly different color palette. Nope, there's some major color changes in several of the enemy sprites also. IMO, the US version changes were all for the better.
Sonic Wings Special - PSOne Classic Played through this on the Vita for the airplane piloting game. Never had played it before purchasing it a few months ago, and it's turned out to be one of my favorite vertical shmups. Lots of player ships, shuffling stages that vary on each playthrough where you can't see them all in one go, and best of all the ability to save your game after you beat a stage. Definitely worth $6!
Annett Again (Annet Futatabi) - Mega CD Played this one for the "game you'd never played" entry..... and after about two hours of torture I threw in the towel. Absolute and complete utter rubbish with zero redeeming qualities, and that's coming from a Mega CD apologist and beat 'em up fan. Slideshow animation, character design that had to be done over a smoke break, laughable magic attacks, hell I could slog through all that if it played even remotely well, which it doesn't. Hands down one of the worst 16-bit beat 'em ups I've ever tried to play.
I really appreciate your sharing your thoughts here, especially on Annet Futatabi. I've almost purchased it several times, as I really dig El Viento, but I'd always held off, as I've always considered a single player beat 'em up to be a waste. Sounds like it was the right call!Originally Posted by Az
Scissors-yes, the magic of Twinkle Star Sprites is in the Vs. mode, for sure. It's a killer party game.
MoneyPuzzle Exchanger! I FREAKING LOVE that game! The wife used to play it, too, on MAME back in the day.
Of COURSE since I got the television thing ironed out, my computer dies, so no MAME! This season just sucks SO MUCH for me.
Man, you can't catch a break lately!
It is an awesome game. I mainly play it on my MVS cabinet. Such a cool puzzle game. It's one people don't seem to know about, but at my last tournament, people raved on it. That, and Street Hoop for Neo Geo.
Played through Kid Niki (Arcade) for the Player's Choice. I still can't attach images to posts so here's a link.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nxjtoya0gf0hx0w/kn3.jpg?dl=0
Also, THIS DAMN FROG.
Nice! As easy as that one starts, it does ramp it up rather a lot!
I'd never played Joe & Mac before, but managed to tackle it on my third night. I never did really figure out how to reliably get into the areas where you can get keys.
The trial-and-error gameplay is comparable to Adventure Island's later levels. It's quite a bit more difficult than the NES version. The NES port was pretty darn faithful overall.
Week 36
A few good Data East clears this week! Still a few hours to go, but here are the games for week 36!
-Space Harrier (Arcade, Saturn, 32X, Master System, Dreamcast, everything...)
-Flink (Sega CD, Mega Drive)
-Player's choice: pick a game with a real person's name in the title. Examples might include Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat, Troy Aikman Football, Mike Tyson's Punch Out!, Reggie Jackson Baseball, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, etc.
-September RPG is Beyond Oasis or Legend of Oasis. C'mon, you'll love 'em!
-Import Alternative: Metaphlist (PS1)
This week's challenge has given me an excuse to boot up Clive Barker's Jericho which I wouldn't ever bothered to otherwise, and Jesus, what a fucking HORRIBLE game this is! TERRIBLE, stuttering frame rate, awful, unresponsive controls, just boring and ugly environments, cheesy voice acting, buggy (events sometimes don't trigger and you have to restart from checkpoints), completely unscary in everyway, sleep enducing to the core, and worst or all FUCKING QTEs! WHO likes these in games? Who has EVER played a game with sudden death Quick Time Events and thought to themselves, "This is awesome!"? Answer: No one.
I can honestly say that I've hated every single thing I've experienced with Clive Barker's name attached to it, so I figured going into this that it would be bad, but I didn't think that it would be THIS terrible. The sad thing is the story and play mechanics could have worked if another developer that cared actually made it. I might have to cut my loses and tap out on this shit show and play through a game of Marky Mark* and the Funky Bunch's Make My Video instead. THAT'S how much I'm NOT enjoying this turd.
*I know he doesn't go by 'Marky Mark' anymore, but I'm assuming defunct stage names are still applicable, yeah?
I played through Metaphlist. I've had it for a while but never really played more than a few minutes. While it's one of the ugliest shooters I have ever seen, it's perfectly playable. A bit repetitive and quite easy, but not bad. I played on the normal difficulty, so maybe the expert mode would offer a challenge.
celerystalker, do you know what disc 2 is for? I booted it up after beating the game and when it loaded my saved data, all it did was tell me to insert disc 1 and reset.
What mode were you playing? In the main campaign, the last third or so of the game is on that disc. I may be thinking of expert mode there, as the normal is super easy if you grind out some weapon upgrades.
Interesting shooter though, isn't it?
At the beginning, you can either "start" or "expert start" and I chose "start". I guess disc 2 is only used for expert mode since I got an ending with credits without ever having to put in disc 2.
I liked being able to rotate where I'm firing (which would probably be easier to do if I wasn't using a saturn-style pad), but it seemed like a pretty basic shooter beyond that. There was the map with the planet select, but that didn't really add much to the game. It was kinda boring playing the same stages over and over, although it's possible there's something I was missing. Is there a way to make the front line move faster?
The order in which you play missions influences the movement of the front line, yes. Stopping to grind or playing the wrong order slows or even loses ground. I don't read Japanese, so it was trial and error for me mostly, but in multiple plays I found that there is a "preferred" route.
I wasn't counting, but I think I played the final stage at least 5 times in a row before the front line caught up and I was able to beat the game (maybe I wasn't playing well enough for it to move quickly?).
I just gave expert mode a try and it is significantly more difficult. I never really felt like I was at risk of losing in normal mode, but I just lost to the second boss fight twice in a row. Now it's like a bullet hell shooter, expect you have a huge hit box. At least it gives you plenty of life. I may have to switch to a normal controller for this mode.
WEEK 36 - Clive Barker's Jericho and Space Harrier COMPLETED
I ended up sticking with Clive Barker's Jericho in hopes that it got better, and it did, but it only went from a 4 to maybe a 6...until the terrible fucking ending which was TRULY so god awful it dropped the whole thing down to a solid 5.
I've played COUNTLESS 8-bit games with better endings than Jericho.
I also played through the Master System version of Space Harrier (a few times). I grew up on this shit, and I swear, I love it just as much today as I did as a kid when it released. Terrible, choppy 'scaling' effects and all. I was also THRILLED to learn that it didn't suffer the horrible audio bug that too many Master System games suffer when played on the Retron5.
Sadly, after 30 years I'm convinced that the airborne rocks that Wiwi Jumbo (Stage 17 boss) attacks you with are ENTIRELY randomized, simply appearing any random place on the screen at any time, and the only way to avoid them is just dumb luck. That was always my biggest complaint about the game.
Last edited by Emperor Megas; 09-17-2017 at 06:06 PM.
Week 37
Calm week went belly up here in St Louis. Anyway, sorry it's later than usual, but here are the new games!
-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NES)
-Earthworm Jim 2 (SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Saturn)
-Player's choice: pick a Wii exclusive home console release. Arcade ports are okay so long as the Wii is the only system with a physical release.
-September RPG is Beyond or Legend of Oasis. Come on, they're short and fun!
-Import Alternative: Shi Kin Jyo (Famicom)
On my way!
Nice! These games are somehow still relatively under the radar given their high quality. So glad you're having a go at the Genesis game!
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