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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 23, 2018 13:01:14 GMT -5
OK, my CD came in today. Surprisingly even though it was designed for Windows 98, it installs and runs just fine in Windows 10. It is a combination between a screen saver and a "game", you control Athena by pointing and clicking to destroy enemies (there's only one type). The goal isn't actually to kill the enemies, though, but rather tear up your desktop. Once you've destroyed 60% of it, you reach a new level and a new weapon. You start off with just kicks (and I think the fireball) but then graduate to swords and other weapons. There's no life meter so there's no way to lose. It's nothing exciting but it's a remnant of that weird late 90s era of Windows where there were all kinds of applications that let you "play" with your computer, when that was still a novelty. I zipped up all of the contents of the CD, which you should be able to use to install. It includes whatever other software (crossword puzzles?) were on the disc. www.hardcoregaming101.net/athena_desktop_warrior.zipAnd here are a few images
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 22, 2018 13:23:13 GMT -5
I've talked to the developer of Ultionus before (we covered this and his other game in the Retro Indie Game book). He had a specific style of game in mind, and that's what informed both the character design and the game itself...but it's also patterned very heavily after a style of European game that very few people, especially Americans, have nostalgia for, and therefore have a harder time tolerating. Plus, broadly speaking, in any media, if a heavily sexualized character is at the front and center, it's usually indicative of a poor quality product that's used to titillate above everything else. If the game itself is good, that's usually excused to some extent, but Ultionus doesn't quite have the quality to back that up. When you do something like that, you're always going to draw a certain audience in and then alienate a different audience. It's what he wanted to create and that's fine, but that doesn't mean people are going to want to buy it.
Anyway, he didn't leave the dev scene after Ultionus, he created Mystik Belle, which was released last year on the PS4. It's much less overt on the sexualization but ultimately had similar criticisms - it's patterned after a very specific European computer design that's not really very popular outside of that very specific niche (in this case, Spectrum games a la Dizzy). It's a cute game, though.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 22, 2018 10:39:49 GMT -5
To be honest I'm much more annoyed by games like Spike Chunsoft's "remake" of One Way Heroics, that adds an embarrassing amount of childish animesque innuendos and sexy stereotypes to make otaku happy, rather than seeing a bit of nude skin in a game.
This is kind of one and the same though - there's an expectation in the Japanese mid-tier marketplace will have things like that shoved in there, because it helps it stand out, so it will increase sales. That's kind of true to non-Japanese markets, but there's also a pushback, primarily from people who find it alienating that it's put in constantly in places it doesn't really belong. So it's more of a case that a larger publisher stuck that in at a revision rather than up front. That's neither here nor there when it comes to Senran Kagura, it wears what it is pretty proudly. I was fine defending this series as goofy, cheesy fun but was also much happier when it didn't ask the question "is it okay to sexually assault your player characters?" EDIT: Hey, you know what, I'm willing to give this censorship stuff a try.... let's start with this topic. Why hasn't it been locked yet? It was obvious from page three that its gone nowhere good. Honestly I would've been issuing warnings and locking things down the minute "pedophilia" started flying. Of course, I would also implement this rule immediately. Fight fire with fire, right? Resetera banned discussion of this game (along with other similar games) because these threads always trend in the same direction. Someone defends "free speech", someone else says "oh yeah what about kiddie porn", the other person says "well yeah that's OK" and it casts an aura of grossness over the entire forum. I don't want to be that strict to ban talking about specific games but my finger is also much hovering over the "lock thread" button at this point.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 19, 2018 14:49:04 GMT -5
LOL all games popup soon or later. I always wondered why people are so obsessed by roly poly titles. Athena for 5$ is no longer available. I ask if someone here bought it to share a dump please. I didn't because it didn't seem like it was actually a game, more like a screen saver or something (and also concern whether it would even work on anything but ancient Windows). EDIT: I found another listing and just went for it. Might as well. Will report back when it comes in.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 16, 2018 21:35:25 GMT -5
If you think censoring something like Senran Kagura is ok, what's your defense for why Grand Theft Auto shouldn't haven't been banned back in the day? You can beat hookers to death, was Jack Thompson right all along about "murder simulators"? If you think removing sexual content is fair game I'm not seeing the argument for cherry picking sexual content over violence, why shouldn't Doom be way toned down? Sony's own God of War 3 featured both graphic violence and sexual content, where was the outrage then? And like I said, were old Joe Lieberman and Jack Thompson right about Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto all along? I see this take achingly often, and it's a false equivalency. The argument against violent video games was that it would turn regular kids violent. Except, violence is not normalized in society. Everyone knows it's wrong, except for psycho/sociopaths. On the other hand, sexual harassment is a very, very prevalent fact of life for many, many women. And it's been in the spotlight lately, since we have a president accused of sexual assault, and an alleged rapist now on the supreme court. Unlike "violence in video games" narrative, this isn't a chicken-and-egg scenario - while violence has been a part of video game language since the beginning, so you could kind of argue that it teaches young kids violent behavior, sexual groping is not - it's pretty "new", outside of old PC games. Video games don't teach people to do this, but it is already built into society, especially in the way that we're trained not to believe women. This is what rape culture is. But when games start popping up that are permissive of it...it's very easy to see why a platform holder thinks it's a bad look. At least, that's my assumption, because at this point Sony's actual rationale is up in the air.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 16, 2018 10:24:04 GMT -5
What on Earth is going on at Sony that it took them THIS long to realize it was a problem, enough that the game needed to be delayed? Same with Omega Labyrinth - the game was already localized and then it was canceled, one would think that would've been more of an issue before all of that work was completed.
I almost understand why this was done, but without any official comment from Sony, it leaves everyone else to fill in the gaps. If you want to come out against sexual harassment - which this SEEMS to be - then do it.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 8, 2018 11:16:41 GMT -5
Huh. I had no idea that, even for a while, there was a whole bunch of Zelda clones that only came out in Japan (to be fair, I'm ignorant of a good chunk of pop culture - I'd never even heard of the 'six degrees of freedom' shooter genre existed until Digital Foundry did an episode on the recently re-released Forsaken). The only other game I know from that particular era of games based on the original Zelda was Golden Axe Warrior on the Master System. Can you give me a few examples of other Zelda clones on the NES/FDS, since I don't really know where to start? If I'm gonna be reviewing Neutopia, I may as well do what I can to properly contextualise them now that I know that I don't know enough. Thank you for pointing this out to me. Adian no Tsue is a Zelda clone but they tried to make it educational. Seiken Psycho Calibur was already mentioned. Dandy: Zeuon No Fukkatsu, Silviana, Valkyrie no Bouken, and Cocona World probably count. Marchen Veil is arguable but its presence on the FDS is undoubtedly due to the popularity of Zelda. Kalin no Tsurugi feels more like an ARPG Dragon Quest. Borfes and the Five Evil Spirits is a good one for the MSX, outside of the slightly more well known Golvellius. Dragon Quest was also pretty popular at the time so some games take influence from that. That and you could argue that some of these titles take some influence from Hydlide or Ys too. Anyway, Zelda clones were everywhere in Japan but very few of them made their ways overseas. Neutopia was not only the most blatant but was the only one really known to Americans (well, Golden Axe Warrior too, but that came later and was actually more obscure despite being a Sega game).
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 8, 2018 11:03:56 GMT -5
These weird licensed things came about because the licenses were typically very cheap, and there was usually at least some name recognition for it. The past week, the Youtube channel Folding Ideas did a video on the PS2 American Tail game, even though it came out nearly 20 years after the movie.
I remember reading about The Lone Ranger for the NES in Nintendo Power and then renting it when it came out. I even thought it was a weird license because I'd never seen it and it hadn't been on TV (at least in my area) for years. I had to ask my mom about it. Some things KIND OF made sense, like Gilligan's Island and Knight Rider, since they were in re-runs, but that one was strange.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 8, 2018 10:55:55 GMT -5
A little late to the party, but I should note that the rewritten Star Soldier articles were featured in The Guide to Shoot-em-ups Vol. 1, though they haven't been posted on the site. Many of the updated Compile ones have been, though.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 1, 2018 11:28:08 GMT -5
I heard the 32X version was considered better (due to having an extra world over the others). [/div] Is it collectibility or actual content why that version is also pretty expensive (seemed to be listing at like $50 loose when I checked years ago). [/quote] Collectability. The 32X version has some redone visuals but I think they look worse.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 30, 2018 22:12:39 GMT -5
Crysis. First was revolutionary, the rest seemed to have missed the point.
I'd debate Rocket Knight Adventures in that the SNES Sparkster is pretty good, but the rest, yeah, not so much.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 30, 2018 20:40:40 GMT -5
The PC version of Blackthorne has a totally different (and IMO better) soundtrack than the SNES version.
When you're talking recent games though, there are a ton, since they typically benefit from higher resolutions and framerates, assuming they weren't hardcoded for something lower.
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Weird 2
Sept 29, 2018 10:25:05 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Sept 29, 2018 10:25:05 GMT -5
If I have a question regarding how to get this game working. I have the disk image, which boots up just fine. However, whenever I try to make a party, the game seems to freeze. Judging from the article, I should be able to bypass that problem by just picking the party that's already recorded on the disk image. However, when I try to load a save file, it says: 登録されていません (not recorded). Any idea what the problem could be? This is the disk image I used (I think), give that a shot: www.hardcoregaming101.net/weird2.zip
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 27, 2018 9:57:17 GMT -5
I think that Dinosaurs one is the only one they didn't patch out.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 18, 2018 9:06:30 GMT -5
Thanks all, the articles have been updated. It's not technically complete either - I did want also to write about the (really bad) spinoff book, plus the canceled games and upcoming (maybe?) sequels. I'd also written profiles on all of the races and their ships, that I never quite finished, but those should be up someday.
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