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Post by Discoalucard on Jan 3, 2010 1:40:16 GMT -5
I'd love to see an American adaptation of Game Center CX. You'd really need to get a real comedian to do it and not some random dude, though. Someone who's kind of a nerd and really has an appreciation of old video games, but not enough to have actively played every game ever made. Part of the fun is that Arino is playing a lot of these games for the first time, or if he has, he's far from a master of them. I think Patton Oswalt would be a good choice. He seems sufficiently geeky and it'd be fun to watch him get frustrated at Ghosts n Goblins.
Some of the segments wouldn't quite work, since so much of 8-bit retro culture is rooted in Japan, so Americans wouldn't have quite the same access. And the number of retro game stores and arcades is unfortunately very limited.
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Post by Mr. Faptastic on Jan 3, 2010 1:52:11 GMT -5
I nominate Brian Posehn!
EDIT: I just wanted to say, FUCK RALLY KING.
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Post by kyouki on Jan 3, 2010 7:13:19 GMT -5
The actual show is getting kind of boring this season, because Arino has gotten better and better at games. It was hilarious watching him falling down the same pit over and over and never learning from his mistakes. Now, he is pretty impressive. He finished Shiren!!
It has gotten to the point where I like the little skits more than the main feature.
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Post by Mr. Faptastic on Jan 3, 2010 7:15:37 GMT -5
If you don't like Rally King, there's alway Rally King SP Don't remind me. And then Guadia Quest after that? Eugh.
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Post by PooshhMao on Jan 5, 2010 11:29:13 GMT -5
Great article about an interesting set of games. It spurred me to persevere through the games I didn't like (as you might have guessed, Rally King and Gaudia Quest) Playing Haggle Man 3 right now and liking it very much. Yes sir. GunDeal in the second game is also very welcome, since the DS probably has the lowest shmup-to-release ratio of any console ever and it's very capable of doing them well too
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Post by brianc on Jan 5, 2010 17:36:43 GMT -5
the DS probably has the lowest shmup-to-release ratio of any console ever Not really. For some reason, handhelds never got huge amount of shmups. NeoGeo Pocket color only has one shmup, Cotton. Game.com lacks good games in general. GG, GBA and GBC also lack in shmups (but not in good games). Wonderswan only has a couple shmups. DS at least has Geometry Wars Galaxies, Big Bang Mini, two Space Invaders Extreme games (three if Z DSi counts as a seperate game), another Space Invaders game, two Nanostray games, Ketsui DS (JP), shmups in the Game Center CX games, some JP exclusive DSi shmups, and shmups in the Konami and Namco DS collections.
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Post by totally5664 on Jan 6, 2010 10:51:29 GMT -5
Good article. Anyone who is a Haggleman fan should check out this blog entry by Ray Barnholt on 1UP. www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8980433It has Haggleman development art, character portraits, and comics. This is a must see. As far as I know this is the only place on the web to find these images.
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Post by Mr. Faptastic on Jan 6, 2010 11:50:50 GMT -5
Haggle Man deserves, nay, NEEDS his own game. Seriously, if they expanded Haggle Man 3 into a full-sized game, I wouldn't think twice about spending full retail for it.
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Post by PooshhMao on Jan 6, 2010 16:22:18 GMT -5
Well into level 3 now - almost finished it - well beyond red block breaking ability, but then fell and died.
The game's flawed though, the gear system especially, in that it becomes a hassle (i was kinda tempted to use 'haggle' there) to switch between your abilities after you start gaining them.
There's little reason to keep the 3-shot gear after you gain the 4-shot one, and you very frequently need to switch between other gears occupying the same slot to pass obstacles anyway.
A lot of the gears should've been made permanent enhancements.
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Post by muteKi on Jan 9, 2010 2:39:18 GMT -5
On the section about Mutekiken:
"It's also for the fictional MES-3000 system, which is meant to be an equivalent to the Sega Mark-III/Master System, although you don't really get that vibe from playing it."
Looks to me more like it's supposed to be the SC-1000 (or what might be considered the "Sega MkI") given the simplistic sprite colorings. Easy mistake though.
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Post by Discoalucard on Jan 9, 2010 10:55:35 GMT -5
No way, the SG-1000 has MUCH worse coloring, plus terrible scrolling.
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Post by muteKi on Jan 9, 2010 12:07:26 GMT -5
Mmm, maybe so. Still, (I guess like you seemed to suggest) I don't know any Master System games that looked like that.
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Post by Dais on Jan 10, 2010 0:14:53 GMT -5
I'd like to thank you for writing this article with the proper perspective to appreciate these games (although I feel it's honestly silly to point out how the games are not as good as essentially unimpeachable classics like Super Mario Bros and Contra). still, great article. (you should mention Door Door in the Haggle Man bits, as well as the various blatant Mega Man references. You might also point out that destroying multiple enemies with door flips is the key to racking up a lot of points - I was greatly surprised to earn a 3 life bonus in Haggle Man 2 on level 3 of the second loop. Although that risks exposing the scrolls, repair and clock powerups. And the boss, of course) also the mascot in Rally King SP is that of the fictional magazine (Larry T. Bird). Who I think it's based after some dog/fox character in an early Japanese game magazine, often seen on the covers....might have even been Famitsu. Guadia Quest also accomodates the player in other ways that were unusual (although not unprecedented) for the time - money can be kept after dying by converting it to precious metals, there's a spell to increase the chance of an enemy drop (and tell you if an enemy has something), the weapon accuracy/attack power system is obvious and intuitive, there's a "run" spell that works anywhere, you can cast a spell to totally stop battles on the overworld, etc (not to mention that the story itself is a pretty clear parody on various JRPG tropes, with the heroes murdering other races and breaking a peace treaty via their silent protagonist nature, then later getting rewarded for it) argh, maybe I should just write my own article on the game some time... Well into level 3 now - almost finished it - well beyond red block breaking ability, but then fell and died. The game's flawed though, the gear system especially, in that it becomes a hassle (i was kinda tempted to use 'haggle' there) to switch between your abilities after you start gaining them. There's little reason to keep the 3-shot gear after you gain the 4-shot one, and you very frequently need to switch between other gears occupying the same slot to pass obstacles anyway. A lot of the gears should've been made permanent enhancements. when I first played Haggle Man 3, I was like "fuck yeah", pumping my fist at the thought of tackling a new semi-linear platformer with Metroid-like qualities. Huge levels, catchy music, getting new abilities, etc... after finishing it, I'm pretty sure it's my least favorite game in the bunch. I was thoroughly bored by Cosmic Gate while doing the challenges, but in playing it again, I began to really appreciate how the game is structured - the warps, power up drops and asteroid zones all have a specific flow that you can choose to interrupt at your leisure. Rally King infuriated me the half dozen times I tried it. I thought other people were right when they said that it was one of the worst parts of the game. Then I took some time to experiment, finally learned how to successfully pull off drift boosts (far easier than I thought it would be) and cleared the challenges quite easily. Rally King SP took the shortest time of any set of challenges to clear - I'm pretty sure I cleared them all on the first try. When it came time to finish the games themselves, I had very little trouble - once you figure out how to drift boost, steer through water hazards and avoid other cars, the games are actually pretty fun. Meanwhile, the more I played Haggle Man 3, the more I realized that the game quite intentionally features some of the worst things from both that era and the genre - grinding for money to buy necessary power ups, enemies who are only challenging in that they can knock you into bottomless pits (which still kill you even if there's platforms on the screen below you), those god damn birds, etc any way, in completing the games, these are the only cheats/aids I ever used: -Cosmic Gate warp to level 64 (after playing through nearly the whole game one night, then being very tired the next) -Reverse order repair trick in Haggle Man 1/2 (which I eventually stopped using in 2) -Rapid fire in Star Prince -Countdown boost in Rally King/SP I suppose you could count the secret Arino boss battles for powerful equipment/Guadias in Gaudia Quest, but I don't. The final one is a lot more challenging than the final boss, even with a Guadianip or two. ugh, wish I had more time to write...
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Post by blackdrazon on Jan 10, 2010 17:45:29 GMT -5
As irritated as I was at Haggleman 3's retrieval of pit-pushing birds from the crypt of 80's gaming, I was more annoyed at the series of barrier trees. Some days I don't have any trouble with them, while other days I and a friend of mine (who, when we were kids, was so good at rapid tapping that Arino's lauding of the skill made me laugh every single time) would get murdered by them every time they closed up. It was like getting the Super Missile in Super Metroid just to have the first green door you open slam shut on your neck.
Level 3 cuts back on both of those idiocies in favour of block puzzles that didn't bother me as much as it seems to everyone else, so in the end I suppose I made my peace with the game.
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Post by Smithee on Jan 11, 2010 0:00:40 GMT -5
I was playing this today, and I can't beat the 200,000 score for the last challenge on Cosmic Gate. What a bummer, guess I'll try later.
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