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Played some NES Tecmo Bowl on my Switch and thanks to the magic of save states, discovered that the score can only go up to 99 points. I don't even give a drat that I'm cheating at this game. It's still fun. I suck at football, can't read the plays, etc. I don't give a drat. Also I know that Tecmo Super Bowl is the better game, but this is the one I have access to.
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Apr 12, 2024 06:07
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Played some old Tekken last night for shits and giggles, streamed on Discord. Jesus the first game has not aged well at all for several reasons, but the (lack of) balance is on display -- King is just straight-up loving busted, and Nina isn't far behind with her stupid roll-kick, a move which has such an absurd stun time it might as well just be loving unblockable. T2 is a massive step up, and of course T3 is still fantastic. Tekken 4 is loving weird to go back to, the changes to the formula are so bizarre that it almost feels like a fan game (no neutral jump?  ).Unsurprisingly, TTT2 is still my favourite 
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Apr 12, 2024 14:25
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I played T4 for the first time recently and yeah, it feels like a bootleg both in feel and presentation. It’s a super weird entry.
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Apr 12, 2024 15:27
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I started playing the first Tenchu the other day and I love the graphics (lots of jumping PS1 polygons), but I'm also very very very bad at it. Using the dpad for a 3D somewhat action game is already difficult but also enemies can look up??? I'm so used to modern stealth games where being above enemies is an instant win that it's taking me ages to get used to the game. Still, think I'm gonna stick with it because overall the game seems to rule.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:40
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Mr E posted:I started playing the first Tenchu the other day and I love the graphics (lots of jumping PS1 polygons), but I'm also very very very bad at it. Using the dpad for a 3D somewhat action game is already difficult but also enemies can look up??? I'm so used to modern stealth games where being above enemies is an instant win that it's taking me ages to get used to the game. Still, think I'm gonna stick with it because overall the game seems to rule. My only suggestion right now is you kind of want to get good at the combat because end game Tenchu kind of isn't what early game Tenchu is, if I'm remembering it correctly.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:20
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Barudak posted:My only suggestion right now is you kind of want to get good at the combat because end game Tenchu kind of isn't what early game Tenchu is, if I'm remembering it correctly. That makes sense, even the first level has you fighting a guy when you first find the target for the level. Combat doesn't seem too bad as long as you just wait to attack until after blocking the strings from the NPC.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:23
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Yeah it's another one of those stealth games that loses faith in itself towards the end and just becomes combat.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:24
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Tenchu also has a few command moves you can do for attacks that aren't necessarily obvious if you don't have the manual or guide to look them up with. I'm not sure I knew when I played it as a kid that I could block by holding back.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:39
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I remember playing Tekken Tag Tournament a lot, and being really hyped for Tekken 4 because of the trailer. I don't know who the spinning woman is, but they did a great job of making it look like the trailer for a Blade sequel or something like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKrbhUJvr_U
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Apr 16, 2024 16:40
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The spinning woman is Christie, basically Eddy's replacement.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:44
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Phantasium posted:Tenchu also has a few command moves you can do for attacks that aren't necessarily obvious if you don't have the manual or guide to look them up with. I'm not sure I knew when I played it as a kid that I could block by holding back. I looked up the manual after completely failing at being stealthy at all in the tutorial and it's very funny to me to play a game from this era and being reminded how worthless many of the tutorials/training modes were compared to just reading the manual. Game doesn't teach you anything at all in game, just sticks you in a series of rooms.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:48
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This came up in a Tumblr post I saw recently where someone was going off about the people who say retro games didn't hold the player's hand they expected you to figure things out for yourself because no, all that poo poo was just in the manual you'd read on your way home instead. Sometimes they'd even have a full guide to the first level in there. The Gran Turismo manual has a step by step guide to the process of buying your first car and doing your first race in its manual, alongside explainations of what all the setup options do. It does make me wonder how the perception of some games are warped by people just never looking at the manual.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:57
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njsykora posted:This came up in a Tumblr post I saw recently where someone was going off about the people who say retro games didn't hold the player's hand they expected you to figure things out for yourself because no, all that poo poo was just in the manual you'd read on your way home instead. Sometimes they'd even have a full guide to the first level in there. The Gran Turismo manual has a step by step guide to the process of buying your first car and doing your first race in its manual, alongside explainations of what all the setup options do. It does make me wonder how the perception of some games are warped by people just never looking at the manual. I've been playing a bunch of old dungeon crawler RPGs and such in the last few years and while I've always looked at the manual for any game before playing it if it came out before the 360 era or so, those really drive home how much the devs expected you to read the manual. Most of them have a small cutscene explaining the plot at the start and then plop you into the intro dungeon or town, sometimes with enemies directly in front of you. Things like weapons or spells may show attack values in game, or simply have the name of the item or spell and expect you to look them up in the manual - I both love and hate that, I like manuals a lot but it's not the same to pull up a PDF of it compared to thumbing thru the pages or having a big spiral bound manual like the first Neverwinter Nights.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:04
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rental games usually didn't have manuals or had a condensed manual on a sticker on the clamshell
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Apr 16, 2024 18:34
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They had manuals more often than not IME, and my family rented a lot of games. I had an arrangement with my brother where he would get first crack at any single player game we rented with a shorter session, while I read the manual. Sucker thought he was getting the upper hand...
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Apr 16, 2024 18:46
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I have a very vivid memory of trying to get my mother to read the Super Punch-out manual to me and learning how to throw a hook in that game thanks to her.
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Apr 16, 2024 18:52
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Yeah it might have been that I always got stuff from a locally owned rental place instead of blockbuster but I remember getting the manual most of the time with Genesis and N64 games I rented.
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Apr 16, 2024 19:11
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Nintendo sued Blockbuster to get them to stop photocopying manuals, saying it violated their copyrights. Blockbuster said Nintendo was just trying to make things difficult for them after Nintendo was unsuccessful in getting game rentals banned outright, but they stopped copying the manuals. Nintendo didn't pay as much attention to smaller stores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_of_America,_Inc._v._Blockbuster_Entertainment_Corp.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:13
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My mom thought that "Phlan" was some kind of profanity she wasn't familiar with.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:27
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Mr E posted:I looked up the manual after completely failing at being stealthy at all in the tutorial and it's very funny to me to play a game from this era and being reminded how worthless many of the tutorials/training modes were compared to just reading the manual. Game doesn't teach you anything at all in game, just sticks you in a series of rooms. For what it's worth, the "expanded" version of Tenchu 1 (which is the only version of Tenchu anyone got outside of Japan) is horrendously buggy with the AI being able to see you through walls and on rooftops and all sorts of places they shouldn't be able to. Also it has some other lovely bugs like enemies randomly vanishing and/or teleporting throughout the level. If you can manage to get your hands on it you might have more fun with the original Japanese version. It has two fewer levels and doesn't have the level editor but IMO it's a better experience. Note that Japanese Tenchu 1 is available in two versions, "Tenchu" and "Tenchu: Shinobi Gaisen"--the latter is the version everyone else got, re-translated back into Japanese, and is just as buggy, so is better avoided.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:50
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Genpei Turtle posted:Note that Japanese Tenchu 1 is available in two versions, "Tenchu" and "Tenchu: Shinobi Gaisen"--the latter is the version everyone else got, re-translated back into Japanese, and is just as buggy, so is better avoided. Searching for this is what made me discover there's a followup release that's just 100 stages that Japanese fans made with the level editor named Tenchu Shinobu Hyakusen.
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Apr 16, 2024 21:10
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Genpei Turtle posted:For what it's worth, the "expanded" version of Tenchu 1 (which is the only version of Tenchu anyone got outside of Japan) is horrendously buggy with the AI being able to see you through walls and on rooftops and all sorts of places they shouldn't be able to. Also it has some other lovely bugs like enemies randomly vanishing and/or teleporting throughout the level. If you can manage to get your hands on it you might have more fun with the original Japanese version. It has two fewer levels and doesn't have the level editor but IMO it's a better experience. Huh, hadn't heard about this and I'm not too far into the game and understand Japanese well enough to play something like Tenchu so I might check out the original JP version in that case. I definitely noticed getting spotted what seemed like thru walls.
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Apr 16, 2024 21:13
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TheHoosier posted:It's Capcom, and sadly a series they'll probably never revisit As in, every time you recruit a villager in the town-building minigame, you're actually making a choice: every villager goes in specific spot in the town, each spot has multiple candidates, and when you pick one the others (which you may not have even seen) poof out of existence. And there's no way to know what any villager actually provides until you've selected them.
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Apr 16, 2024 21:21
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BoF1 is pretty much a relic of its time. BoF3 and 4 are considered the best ones. I think there are some romhacks of 2 that smooth it out and correct the translation. 3 and 4 are worth your time, 2 is still a little rough, and I didn't make it very far in 1.
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I played sonic advance and it's actually gotten better with age. playing it on a mister, a big display makes the game a lot more fun to play. I then made the mistake of trying sonic advance 2 and the shift pretty much describes the universal problems with sonic, new useless features and new useless characters
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Apr 17, 2024 04:10
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The Voice of Labor posted:I played sonic advance and it's actually gotten better with age. playing it on a mister, a big display makes the game a lot more fun to play. I will not hear anyone poo poo talking Cream and Cheese
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Apr 19, 2024 02:53
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I'm playing the PS1 Ace Combat games. Kinda funny that from the very first game they had the music and flight feel down perfectly. Up to AC2 and the wingmen are pretty useless and they don't chat like they do by the PS2 games but everything else feels pretty perfect.
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Apr 22, 2024 17:31
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emSparkly posted:I will not hear anyone poo poo talking Cream and Cheese sega president : we need a girl version of tails to attract girl players to the sonic franchise sega president's administrative assistant: isn't tails already a girl?
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Apr 22, 2024 23:26
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Along with the Ace Combat games I decided to try out The Ur-Quan Masters for the first time and while I'm mostly just collecting minerals and bio samples right now it seems like a fun time. I'm terrible at the combat and the ship that farts missiles as its special attack seems to be by far the best choice in any fight I've been in so far. Loving the alien designs and it's cool to see the context for so many goon and other avatars I've seen over the years.
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Apr 23, 2024 19:36
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Just finished up Valkyrie Profile, ending A.  "Yes, I have total power!!!" Sure ya do. Thanks, Lennith.  Pretty fun play loop even if the Dragon's Palace was a goddamn nightmare to navigate without a guide. Some things that I'm still confused about. What the gently caress was Arngrim's and Mystina's relationship with Hrist? You do the fall city dungeon and the flashback/past area has them with Hrist killing the King and his guard? Did that only happen like 5 years ago? What? 
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Apr 24, 2024 02:30
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trying to get all the super hyper emeralds in sonic and knuckles and it's sucking all the fun out of the game
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Apr 24, 2024 04:08
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AlternateNu posted:Just finished up Valkyrie Profile, ending A. It's been a long time so I might be misremembering, but I think it's supposed to be some reincarnation poo poo. Like, those are past lives of Arngrim and Mystina.
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Apr 24, 2024 07:47
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Super Tempo: For the Saturn Game Club. This game is bursting with style, personality, and artistic talent. It looks great, sounds great, and plays fine. When I wasn't wowed with how nice the presentation was, I was bemoaning how sort of heavy and clunky it felt, though to be honest that was a case-by-case basis. Some of the levels flowed very well, while others felt sort of cumbersome and irritating to navigate. I can't necessarily articulate what it felt like except it sort of felt like playing Earthworm Jim. There were mini-game segments that were largely good; in one of them, I had to guess the name of displayed musical instruments. The game is in Japanese, but luckily the names were in katakana. It's definitely a game worth playing, and a great pick for the month. Command & Conquer: I bought the Ultimate Collection/Remastered on Steam and decided a replay for the series* was due. I decided to play all of the games as Nod/Soviets this time and GDI/Allies next time. Some thoughts on each: C&C1 remastered is excellent, and the remastered soundtrack loving slaps. The missions are hard as balls, though. The Nod campaign has a lot of tactical missions where you don't get to build a base, but rather have to complete mission objectives with what you've been given. Some of those missions are rough; there's one, I want to say 7C, where you can straight up lose within seconds. On the final mission, I had to cheese it via engies and Traveling Obelisks after a few failed attempts. Story-wise, I still smile at the cheesy cutscenes and Cobra/GI Joe plot. Kane's grand entrance is still an all-timer scene. The Nod ending is actually really cool, and stands in stark contrast to 3's "Kane laughing with his Friends Just Off Screen". The progression of Nod from para-military rogue state with religion leanings to Full-On Jihad For Kane throughout the games is pretty interesting. Red Alert is a marked improvement over C&C1, and also has some missions that feel kinda over-tuned. From what I understand, there wasn't rebalancing in the remastered versions, and it really shows. Still, RA1 is a great game to revisit. Not much else to say, really. I didn't play any of the expansion or console-exclusive missions, and I understand that those get buckwild. Tiberian Sun is probably my favorite of the entire series. I love the music, the cutscenes, the characters, and the presentation. The soundtrack has an eerie futuristic techno feel to it, almost like something out of Terminator. Anton Slavik is the best Nod commander in the entire series don't @ me. The missions were varied, interesting, and fairly open; I didn't necessarily feel railroaded into any particular strategy or tactic, and that makes for a fun time in an RTS. Let me approach the mission how I want, and I will likely enjoy myself. Nod's hit-and-run style gives you a lot of options, and they're fun to explore. None of the Nod endings are canon of course, but the Nod ending in TS has a finality to it and actually raises some interesting questions like "What is Kane's actual plan?" Nod victory has him achieving his goal, but the GDI campaigns are all considered canon. If we don't take 4 into account, there's some open questions about what Kane is actually trying to achieve. TS's Nod ending is an interesting glimpse into what the initial thought may have been. A lot of stuff in TS gets changed or retconned, which is a bummer. The best cutscene in the entire series happens in this game. Firestorm wasn't as tough as I thought it would be, to be honest. The mission design was really excellent, and I like that the Nod/GDI campaigns happen simultaneously. The Core Defender went down in a heap of poo poo after getting battered by Banshees and Tick Tanks. Some of the Firestorm missions did a good job of preventing players from cheesing the objectives, which was nice. Red Alert 2 is the crowd-pleaser of the series, and for good reason. I had a blast playing through the Soviet campaign, and didn't really have any trouble until the final mission. Hell, in one of the later missions the par time was 1 hour and I beat it in 5 minutes. The final mission took a long time, however. I mostly played it straight and just clawed my way through it. Truthfully I probably could have just restarted and done much better with the knowledge gleaned from the first attempt, but I decided to just press forward and finish a rather clumsy run. Yuri's Revenge is fuckin' great. The Soviet campaign was tough but fair, and the new/modified units were a blast to play with. I'll always prefer the Tiberium series over the Red Alert series, but Yuri's Revenge is definitely top 3 of the C&C pile. I do really hate Gatling Towers though. C&C3, and Kane's Wrath, are the best overall C&C games and I don't think that's necessarily a hot take. Everything comes together into a package that really extols everything that makes C&C what it is: Campy story with charismatic actors delivering poo poo lines in an awesome way, factions with unique play styles and sub-styles that shine in single AND multi-player, tight mission design that can be cheesed but offers decent challenge if you play legit, and tremendous music/sound design. The only reasons I slightly prefer TS are: I enjoyed the hellscape aesthetic more, and I thought the plot was better. Sorry but Sawyer from Lost can't hold a candle to Slavik. I also enjoyed the progression of tiberium into its own eco-system, giving birth to dangerous alien fauna and mutated humans that built their own society. Those things are sadly missing from 3/KW, which robs them of some flavor that I think they really needed. If it weren't for the unit design and Scrin, it wouldn't appear to be any different of a world than it was in C&C1. C&C4... yes, I played this one. I felt like I had to at least try. I finished the Nod campaign, and you know what? There's some potential here. Is it a bad C&C game? Absolutely. Is it a bad game? Also yes. But there is something here. Let's start with the cons: Missions are dogshit easy, campaign is (mercifully?) short, story is a disjointed mess that tries and fails to bring the series to a conclusion, XP unlocks in the single-player campaign of an RTS is a bewildering decision, class-based unit rosters were a terrible whiff, and no real strategic decisions to be made. Like, an RTS where you don't build a base can be good. Just look at Company of Heroes, Dawn of War 2, etc. Hell, in DoW2's case, it was also a big departure in gameplay mechanics from its popular prequel and it worked out fine. This crawler stuff is terrible, though. You just walk this big lumbering piece of poo poo around and mindlessly queue units to spit out. If you're going to have an RTS with no base-building, then you should at least give us some resources to gather/manage. Again, Dawn of War 2 is a decent example here. C&C4 doesn't have any of that though; just a set population amount. Also, population amounts in a C&C game?! gently caress you I want 100 Venoms you cretins. You could argue that individual units tend to be very stout and do significant damage, but still. Also, only having 1/3 of the roster available at a time sucks. Even subfactions in the old games didn't do that. The story is loving trash and there's no arguing that whatsoever. The travesty that is C&C4's plot could use an effort post just by itself. Even Joe Kucan couldn't be arsed to try and save this mess. The pros? I love the OST and the sound design. I also think the game's unit design is pretty strong, almost bordering on silly. The Nod units feel and sound like Nod units. The Scorpion Tanks resemble actual scorpions, and that's the kind of fuckin goofiness I can get behind in a C&C game. Nod's units employ a lot of stealth, fire, and lasers, which is appropriate. Their barks and other voice tracks fit in well with Nod's religious death cult aesthetic. It's really too bad that you can just park your big stupid oaf crawler unit next to the mission objective and pump out (1) type of unit, because the roster is a decent continuation of Nod's evolution throughout the series. If they had just given you actual strategic objectives and obstacles, I bet it would have been really fun to use those units! C&C4 also tries to bring some of the discarded threads from Tiberian Sun, but it's for naught. I know that C&C4 had a slapdash development period where it started as a multiplayer arena game and ended up as this pile of rear end, but that doesn't really grant it a curve to be graded on. I can say, though, that it seemed like people who have fond memories of C&C or worked on C&C previously also worked on this game. Too bad they were set up to fail. Here's some of the Nod OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsxGclQ-2Y8 Seriously, it's pretty decent. Sorry for the stream of consciousness. I didn't take notes, and probably should have just written post after each game, lmao. C&C is my favorite RTS series and it's been a blast to revisit. I'll run through GDI/Allies after a short break. * - Did not play Red Alert 3, Generals/ZH, or Renegade. Not for any particular reason, though. I still plan to do so, I'm just taking a break.
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Apr 24, 2024 18:01
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Since I found a copy of it randomly in a store for very little money I've been putting actual time into Gran Turismo Concept 2001 (specifically the European Tokyo/Geneva version) and enjoying it a lot more than I expected. The time trials to unlock races on each track are a bit tedious but the racing is as good as it always is in GT and the concept cars are cool as gently caress. It's a shame 40% of the game is Gran Turismo dirt racing which is never good but Midfield, Tokyo and Autumn Ring are 3 great tracks. It's also real surprising how fast it loads, even from an actual DVD and not OPL it's basically instant to retry a race. And the POD Race is still hilarious. njsykora fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 25, 2024 01:51
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Mr E posted:Along with the Ace Combat games I decided to try out The Ur-Quan Masters for the first time and while I'm mostly just collecting minerals and bio samples right now it seems like a fun time. I'm terrible at the combat and the ship that farts missiles as its special attack seems to be by far the best choice in any fight I've been in so far. Loving the alien designs and it's cool to see the context for so many goon and other avatars I've seen over the years. UQM/SC2 is legit one of my favourite games of all time, I'm glad you're enjoying it. The game assumes to some degree that you have the printed star map - it's not essential at all, but might help point you towards areas of interest. The spathi eluder is one of the better ships in singleplayer - you've worked out already that its front gun is useless and it's at its best when kiting, i assume? If so then chances are you're not actually terrible at the combat, but just need to get some better ships in your fleet (or upgrade your flagship into an absolute monster).
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Apr 25, 2024 14:41
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After putting it off for a non-negligible part of eternity I finally got to playing Ultima 1-3 and... was soon vindicated in not playing them. They're important as museum pieces and milestones of early RPGs, but holy poo poo was playing them a chore. Didn't help that it was the GOG versions which I later learned includes the worst port of U2 known to man. (I particularly liked the making GBS threads on Wizardry for not breaking what wasn't broken in a game notably worse than its predecessor )Welp, now I've experienced the history, I've seen where Chrono Trigger might've taken some inspiration from, I can cross them off my backlog, and the rest of Ultimas still in the backlog (the prehistoric and Mars spinoffs) will surely seem awesome in comparison. TheHoosier posted:C&C4 The Voice of Labor posted:just quoting for visibility
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Apr 25, 2024 16:39
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Crazy Achmed posted:The game assumes to some degree that you have the printed star map - it's not essential at all, but might help point you towards areas of interest. (on a related note, if anyone has zero-spoiler starmaps (star positions/colors ONLY, no wormholes, no racial spheres) for Starflight 1 and 2, I'd welcome some. )
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Apr 25, 2024 16:43
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Pierzak posted:You sound like a fellow metroidvania addict from some earlier posts, you wouldn't happen to have any personal list of metroidvanias (either favorites or just non-poo poo ones in general)? I beat most of what I have in the genre and it's gotten hard to ask for recs without a huge list of beaten titles to not mention.
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Apr 25, 2024 21:21
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Pierzak posted:You sound like a fellow metroidvania addict from some earlier posts, you wouldn't happen to have any personal list of metroidvanias (either favorites or just non-poo poo ones in general)? I beat most of what I have in the genre and it's gotten hard to ask for recs without a huge list of beaten titles to not mention. gato roboto on steam. the one good gba castlevania game. supraland and metroid prime might be overlooked, soul reaver and shadowman but that's scraping the barrel a little. tangentially, space station silicon valley e: steamworld dig 1 & 2
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Apr 25, 2024 23:31
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The Voice of Labor posted:gato roboto Commander Keene posted:You could try the Metroidvania Megathread for recommendations, if you haven't already.  Thanks for reminding me of the obvious I forgot.
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Apr 25, 2024 23:56
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Crazy Achmed posted:UQM/SC2 is legit one of my favourite games of all time, I'm glad you're enjoying it. The game assumes to some degree that you have the printed star map - it's not essential at all, but might help point you towards areas of interest. Yeah I have a fan made map that matches the original one and is a little more clear text wise to read. I can take out probes fine in combat but Ur-Quan ships that shoot blades are a lot harder tho I've managed and saved the Zoq-Fot-Pik from one. I've met a few more aliens and added them to the alliance along with the Spathi (tho they just disappeared), and I also managed to not kill a very angry Shofixti. Thinking about figuring out where the probes are coming from since I have some hints from conversations once I get enough cash to get my flagship's weapons upgraded.
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Apr 26, 2024 00:57
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