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ItBreathes posted:This looks amazing. Based on the fact that I've never heard of it I have to assume it's got a fair amount of jank? Like nobody's business from what little I recall. It's got a lot of little systems and also controls like a platformer, soooo
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Nov 6, 2019 02:18
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Phyein posted:Final Fantasy on NES. I knew to buy weapons but didnt know you had to equip them, nor did I understand that you shouldn't run from every fight so as to get no xp. Needless to say the first boss ripped me a new one as I was level 1 with no gear equipped and I figured the game was just borderline impossible and I didn't know the ultra secret cheats that whoever previously rented the game used to get as far as they did. That game might have my highest “time spent/didn’t come close to winning” ratio, but it was so much fun. It was the first RPG I played so the inventory screens took getting used to. I still like your party can carry around multiple cabins and houses for when they want a break. I remember saying screw it and making party of four fighters that worked really well. When I was really little and didn’t understand what “20 foot deep river” meant, Oregon Trail was extra difficult. I think I just assumed you could ford the first river but had to always buy ferries after that. I do like the idea of an indoctrinated wagon party obeying an order to march into water ten feet over their heads and only lose a few sets of clothing. Would have been a fun Buster Scruggs segment.
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Nov 6, 2019 15:20
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Faxanadu! Buncha super run-down looking npcs who blink a lot. Weird monsters. Once you make it to the 2nd or 3rd town everybody's talking about a meteorite like that was something already established in the story.
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Nov 7, 2019 03:47
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Wise Fwom Yo Gwave posted:Mikie, by Konami. A brave choice, ripping off a Beatles tune for the first level
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Nov 7, 2019 20:09
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Nebakenezzer posted:A brave choice, ripping off a Beatles tune for the first level I looked it up and apparently Konami actually had a license granted in Japan for the Beatles music in game 
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Nov 7, 2019 20:17
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Space Shuttle Project on the NES. It sounded like a great idea, launch the shuttle, command a mission, build the space station, but was a confusing mess. NASA demanded astronauts manually drive elevators and flip switches while dodging obstacles then run into the shuttle with seconds to spare, or they'd scrap the launch. So my dad is for reasons bad at gift giving And because I was fond of microprose sims where you could blow up all of Baghdad, scooped up from a bargain bin Space Shuttle Simulator by Virgin. the game actually set out to accurately model spaceflight by the space shuttle and for all I know succeeded, as for me fifteen screens of incomprehensible switches that if you were lucky would cause an explosion. Actually happy memory here, my dad could tell he really goofed with the gift, and took me out to get a SNES game or something. At Canadian Tire I spotted The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past, and I got that instead, having read about it in Nintendo Power and thinking that it sounded good. This turned out to be a better choice Game I never understood: SNES Cool World by ocean. An incredibly cursed tie in to begin with, the game starts with you literally being thrown into the world, with zero instructions as to what the goal is, or who you are, or what you are supposed to be doing. I found it via roms, and would play it now and then just to see if it was as baffling as it was the last time I played it.
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Nov 8, 2019 03:05
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Return to Zork on PC. I foolishly thought all adventure games would be as great as Sam & Max. This was a bizarre kinda Myst knockoff with awful video clips of characters giving dialogue. The humor and acting was middle school level and the puzzles were incoherent. Return to Zork made "sense" at the time Alright, so we have this well nigh magic bit of technology, the CDROM, that uses LASERS to read data! And so in 1992 a venerable game franchise returned with **REAL MUSIC** and **VIDEO CAPTURE** and FULL SCREEN GRAPHICS of CGI HOUSES and EMPTY AREAS YOU CANNOT WALK IN. This game got bundled with 486s with CDROMs and I think for the time was enormously successful, selling something like 2 million units. It was also the last Zork to come with the encyclopedia frobozzica, which still sits on my bookshelf today. So yeah, it predated Myst, in fact, when I saw Myst, I thought it was a Return to Zork clone. (Lol many years later I'd realize they lifted a lot of the visuals in Return to Zork off of Clash of the Titans.) While it's a trip to surrealtown today, at the time we just accepted it because - that's what adventure games were like. Incoherent puzzles, too, were basically an adventure game thing. Read a walkthrough for the first Zork, and the game has you guessing what commands will keep you from not dying so you can bring poo poo to put in a house. That said, you play it and you remember what non-lucascarts adventure games were like. You can make the game literally unwinnable on the first goddamn screen in at least two ways, and the game gives you no sign that you've done this. As this is an adventure game, the entire gameplay loop is wandering around and trying random poo poo, so getting stuck and being baffled why may mean everything's normal, or it may mean you need to restart! Have fun figuring that out! Crazy insta-death lurks everywhere, along with the villain's sinister laughter. At the game's start, you can walk three screens, and then die because, you fool, you choose to take the road to the south instead of fashioning a raft out of some vines and fence wood. How did you die? That was vague, hellhounds (IE evil poodles) or something. When you get to the town after the raft trip, if you enter the school house, the one room school house teacher will murder you if you don't answer the copy protection question. (This must have been the last game to use those.) You can die in that town by handling mice. (I forget why you needed the mice, but if you don't put the mice in a box, you die of the disease the mice carry.) On the SECOND TO LAST challenge, they give you an inventory check - basically you have to dump out your entire inventory, and if you lost something, you get to start over! PS> For some odd reason most of the actors who appear in Return to Zork have also appeared on Seinfeld PPS> It is so weird to me that people would have different sound cards and they would make all music and sounds sound literally different e3: Holy poo poo, in this game you can die by burning hay the wrong way. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 03:53
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Nebakenezzer posted:PPS> It is so weird to me that people would have different sound cards and they would make all music and sounds sound literally different  Also Stunt Island is a great example of a retro game where I had no idea what was going on (also where the music on my PAS16 was unique and un-findable online). Somehow I could never learn to fly well enough to actually do any of the game's "intended" missions, but on the plus side as a result I ended up becoming a decent video editor. Stunt Island was a weird game.
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Nov 8, 2019 16:50
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Scalding Coffee posted:Dragon Warrior 2 was most of this. Castlevania 2 was like that as well with those villagers. Dr. Quarex posted:I want to look down on all of you for not being able to understand Nintendo games, but the first game that came to mind for me is so stupid that I can hardly claim the high ground AngryRobotsInc posted:So, I had this game for DOS (it releases in like a bajillion formats). Dell_Zincht posted:Dragon's Lair on the C64. This is why I can never remember the name of the game that came to mind when I saw this thread. There were just so many impenetrable old games named Dragon Noun. My offering: Dragon Lore: The Legend Begins The opening, when you're working on your farm, helping your father find this or that thing, repairing a fence ... That, I think I understood. When you come back from chores and he promptly announces that you're adopted and must now leave to seek your destiny, and guides you to the gate and sends you on your way? That's about where I got lost. Mostly, I was just young and not genre savvy. My older brother played through a decent amount of the game, but I wasn't there watching the whole time and was mostly confused by the lack of actual dragon stuff.
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Nov 9, 2019 09:34
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Dragon Noun: Noun of the Ancients
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Nov 9, 2019 13:44
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Nebakenezzer posted:When you get to the town after the raft trip, if you enter the school house, the one room school house teacher will murder you if you don't answer the copy protection question. (This must have been the last game to use those.) I was all set to point out that Matter of Orion had copy protection in fall off 1993, but apparently RoZ came out a week later. XCom came out in 1994 and apparently also had copy protection codes. That reminds me of an Apple II game (about a spy?) that had it, and since I had a pirated copy I just had no idea what the game wanted or why I couldn't progress. That was my first experience with copy protection.
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Nov 9, 2019 15:12
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PerniciousKnid posted:I was all set to point out that Matter of Orion had copy protection in fall off 1993, but apparently RoZ came out a week later. I'm not exactly sure when CD burners became a thing, but I'm picturing some weirdo using RAR to archive RTZ onto about 150 3.5" floppies and being totally foiled by not making a list of the Zork days of the week
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Nov 9, 2019 18:51
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm not exactly sure when CD burners became a thing, but I'm picturing some weirdo using RAR to archive RTZ onto about 150 3.5" floppies and being totally foiled by not making a list of the Zork days of the week That's a good point, I'm not sure what kind of piracy they were expecting from these CD-ROM games.
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Nov 9, 2019 19:59
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Sapiens for Mac. You’re an early man and your tribe needs you to save them by finding somewhere new to settle. You begin next to your elderly tribal chief, and ask who he is. This grave insult makes him declare that he controls the thunder and begins fist fighting. A short time later he is beaten unconscious and you are wounded, with the animosity of your home clan. Whelp, time to begin the game! I never understood what exactly I was supposed to be doing and died quickly. So not a bad simulation of early man.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:57
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What I remember of Dragon Lore was the little person who rode on the shoulders of a muscular man, and a sentient plant that blasted you with poisonous pollen or something.
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Nov 10, 2019 02:06
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Pablo Nergigante posted:I played Drakkhen on SNES when I was a kid and had no idea what the gently caress was going on. Quite frankly, I still don't Second post nails it. The game was incredible to young me and I knew there was a lot going on, but I could never figure out any of it. At all. Is it an adventure game? An RPG? Who knows? Earlier than that the NES Robin Hood game really perplexed me, and Ultima 4 Quest of the Avatar really blew me away with it's morality system's and stuff but I eventually figured out how to play both of them. Drakkhen is still undecipherable. I remember playing Dragon View years later and really enjoying it, then my head exploded when I found out it was a sequel to Drakkhen. Somehow. I played Star Control 2 entirely too young and that was also just a mess of getting merced constantly by Sylandro Probes. That game really made me think it was something incredible and I would get really frustrated at exploring space and getting utterly destroyed. Alundra on PS1 I rmeember having extremely difficult puzzles. Not me but I let my friend borrow my copy of Lufia 2 and evidently he got super stuck at the Treasure Sword Shrine block puzzles, to the point where he had grinded to some absurd level (like really absurd, can't remember the actual level but it was probably high enough to legitimately beat Gades) because he was just stuck. PneumonicBook fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Nov 10, 2019 |
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Nov 10, 2019 10:47
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I rented bad game Mario Is Missing for the SNES when I was 6 solely because it said Mario on the box. It did not go well.
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Nov 11, 2019 02:02
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tf169hoOls I have no idea how Tesserae found its way into the stash of game boy carts that my older brother and I shared, the best I can guess is that a friend/relative abandoned it at our house and it got mixed in with our stuff. 25 years later it's still the single most completely inscrutable game I've ever played. Other early memories of being confounded by video games: - playing FF1 on NES and getting ganked by Garland over and over again, still apparently somehow having fun because I was 5 - trying out Beneath a Steel Sky aged 7 or 8 and literally crying in frustration at how easy it seemingly was to wander into the wrong place and die instantly - my bro getting frustrated and shouting at me when I tried playing Quake and Dark Forces because for some reason I didn't like the idea of pressing more than one key on the keyboard at a time and also I refused to strafe because why would I run sideways, that's stupid, I won't be able to see where I'm going  - renting Illusion of Gaia for a sleepover with my friend who had a SNES, starting a new game, and not being able to figure out how to get past that outdoor mountain area right at the beginning with the jumping puzzles and ramps (???). The first time I gave it another look via emulation years later I gave up after getting stuck in the exact same place, and when I finally gave it one last go when I was 15 I breezed straight through it without needing to hit up gamefaqs. Looking at a video now I think my problem was that I couldn't tell you could run down those ramps and pick up speed before jumping. Cool game. Terranigma was better tho.
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Nov 11, 2019 07:47
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The Big Word posted:- my bro getting frustrated and shouting at me when I tried playing Quake and Dark Forces because for some reason I didn't like the idea of pressing more than one key on the keyboard at a time and also I refused to strafe because why would I run sideways, that's stupid, I won't be able to see where I'm going Oh, but I remember the reasoning behind not using a mouse being similarly as inscrutable as Tesserae; something about not wanting to have to use the same hand to move and fire or something? I definitely had only ever played games where you like held down the left mouse key to walk at the time, so I basically was a caveman trying to understand a car
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Nov 11, 2019 19:57
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I could never figure out how to play Kid Icarus properly. It's such a weird game, it looks simple on the surface, you just shoot enemies and travel across the level, but somehow I always end up dying really quickly and loving up. It seems like a really open game, but there's really a specific way in which you need to play it and it's much harder than it looks on the surface.
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Nov 12, 2019 20:27
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Yeah the short-lived Icarus Souls subgenre only had that one entry but it was a doozy. No for real though I totally agree, I do not remember ever making it past even the second stage despite that game having so much about it I should have nominally liked.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:00
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ur in my world now posted:I rented bad game Mario Is Missing for the SNES when I was 6 solely because it said Mario on the box. It did not go well. Yeah this was probably my biggest rental disappointment on the SNES. I don't think I even knew it was an educational game after playing it for a while.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:39
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Would La-Mulana count? It's based on the MSX games of yore and my first attempt to play it blind just had me stumped at multiple puzzles until I sunk a lot of time into trying to figure it out. And it's a massively labyrinthine puzzle-adventure game.
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Nov 12, 2019 23:37
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Dr. Quarex posted:Yeah the short-lived Icarus Souls subgenre only had that one entry but it was a doozy. I could consistently get to the first castle, then it's just pure confusion. I was never smart enough to draw a map.
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Nov 13, 2019 00:21
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Except for the complexity of the labyrinth levels, Kid Icarus actually gets easier as you progress because Pit gets stronger. Plus World 2 is easier simply because you don’t have to worry about falling.
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Nov 13, 2019 03:27
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wa27 posted:Yeah this was probably my biggest rental disappointment on the SNES. I don't think I even knew it was an educational game after playing it for a while. This would've been around the time I was watching the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? show, and I was actively interested in geography, so I'll admit to having gotten some enjoyment out of Mario is Missing at the time. Definitely bought it expecting a real Mario game and felt cheated, though.
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Nov 13, 2019 04:15
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Was Gumshoe for the NES ever play-tested, at all? Did anyone get through that game without the use of cheats or an emulator?
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Nov 13, 2019 13:10
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Pastry of the Year posted:Was Gumshoe for the NES ever play-tested, at all? Did anyone get through that game without the use of cheats or an emulator? I actually wouldn't be surprised if a significant percentage of nes games had little to no playtesting. Wasn't the first battletoads unfinishable? Remembered another one: Demon's Crest for the SNES. I played it and enjoyed all 20 minutes of it, and then the game ends. Having looked it up recently, I guess it is some sort of metroidvania where you keep going through the game and getting more powerful? At the time I thought it was fun but absurdly short.
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Nov 13, 2019 13:35
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Nebakenezzer posted:I actually wouldn't be surprised if a significant percentage of nes games had little to no playtesting. Wasn't the first battletoads unfinishable? So in level 11 of the U.S. version (iirc) there's a pretty major bug where the second player controller stops functioning. Considering this is one of those stages where there's instant death you need to outrun, specifically by using the d-pad, player 2 just keeps dying over and over again, and if people didn't know any better (which they probably didn't 30 ish years ago) they'd run through the stock of continues without being able to finish the level.
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Nov 13, 2019 15:44
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I mostly played Kid Icarus over at a cousin's house. I could never finish it not because of the labyrinthine nature of the first stage, but because the Grim Reaper and that drat tune traumatized me so much as a kid. Fun game: find someone who's somehow played both Kid Icarus and Sonic as a kid and figure out which song traumatizes them more: the "running out of air" jingle or that tune the Grim Reaper played.
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Nov 13, 2019 16:03
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Dragomorph posted:I mostly played Kid Icarus over at a cousin's house. I could never finish it not because of the labyrinthine nature of the first stage, but because the Grim Reaper and that drat tune traumatized me so much as a kid. I didn't even know that you could kill those loving things until i watched a let's play, I thought they were immune and you were supposed to avoid them and jump over them so they can't sic the little guys on you. They take way too many hits and that demented tune also mentally knocks me off balance
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Nov 13, 2019 16:30
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I tried Kid Icarus again just now and it's crazy how it just pops you right back at the beginning of the level when you die. I know that's the norm for NES but it's especially bad when it's such a tricky game with so many chances to die instantly, it's worse than Ninja Gaiden.
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Nov 13, 2019 20:46
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It blew my mind when I tried Kid Icarus again somewhat recently and there were dungeon crawl maze levels. I never got past the vertical scrolling platformer levels as a kid and I never expected it to go that way.
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Nov 14, 2019 02:53
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I never got past the vertical scrolling platformer levels as a kid Oh no, I've gone and pissed off the Reaper; I'll just duck under this swarm of Reapettes and WHAT THE gently caress JUST HAPPENED I have no idea how I beat that game as a kid other than sheer bloody-mindedness, but the last level in which you have all the sacred treasures is a really satisfying payoff. It also had an unexplained and completely obtuse experience point system, about which I'm just copy-pasting someone else's work because jesus christ: quote:In Kid Icarus, there are five "Levels", reached by earning Experience points
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Nov 14, 2019 13:01
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drat that's like in Actraiser where your level raises based on population, which raises based on esoteric stuff like where you build your bridges and which kind of house they live in. It sucks because it looks like the kind of game I really enjoy, I really like my first few minutes in KI because it feels fun to shoot enemies and make jumps, but then I hit a platform from below and lose all momentum in my jump and fall down a pit, or something like that. It'd be cool if there was an official remake which slightly smoothed the jumping and that level system and added a few level checkpoints and a continue system.
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Nov 14, 2019 13:36
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Shibawanko posted:It sucks because it looks like the kind of game I really enjoy, I really like my first few minutes in KI because it feels fun to shoot enemies and make jumps, but then I hit a platform from below and lose all momentum in my jump and fall down a pit, or something like that. It'd be cool if there was an official remake which slightly smoothed the jumping and that level system and added a few level checkpoints and a continue system. It sounds like you might want to try Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters for the Game Boy: quote:The major difference between this mission and its predecessor is that Pit now has the ability to move in any direction; no more falling to his death. Also, his wings now have the ability to slow his descent, and Pit no longer takes an extra step when landing from a jump. However, he can no longer move while crouching. Though Pit's life bar functionality hasn't changed, Pit now has three lives and will restart at the beginning of the current stage if defeated. If all three are consumed, he must restart from the last save point.
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Nov 14, 2019 13:51
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Kid Icarus and a lot of early NES games are made a lot more fun with rewinding emulators, imo Mega Man 1 in particular is not a game I want to grind for weeks on until I beat it, but with rewind it's a delightful few hours of shootybots
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Nov 14, 2019 14:07
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:It blew my mind when I tried Kid Icarus again somewhat recently and there were dungeon crawl maze levels. I never got past the vertical scrolling platformer levels as a kid and I never expected it to go that way. Kid Icarus was a rough as gently caress game that really could show what the NES/Gaming could do but when it came out close to the Legend of Zelda/Metroid it just blown away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxDVTU20iC8
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Nov 14, 2019 14:17
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Pastry of the Year posted:It also had an unexplained and completely obtuse experience point system, about which I'm just copy-pasting someone else's work because jesus christ: Good lord I love that *hidden* stat in a system nobody bothered explaining Peanut Butler posted:Kid Icarus and a lot of early NES games are made a lot more fun with rewinding emulators, imo I had the same Experience with Mega Man 2. The music, enemies, and bosses are great, but there are sections in that game that would have driven me insane as a kid. There's one level where you basically have to die, and die, and die because you have to fall through this maze of instant death lasers
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Nov 14, 2019 15:18
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Nebakenezzer posted:Good lord git gud scrub  then lose to the loving robot dragon over and over during the first(?) end game boss stage 
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Nov 14, 2019 15:28
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