|
Post by Snake on Jul 19, 2023 18:32:22 GMT -5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Arcade (replay, Over continue limit rules)
Thought I could do pretty well on this, but later rock soldiers and especially The Shredder sucked out the life and the quarters away. Especially when Shredder does that one-hit kills of a mini turtle laser spray. Still, graphics and cartoon faithful vibe holds up very well!
7/10.
|
|
|
Post by spanky on Jul 28, 2023 6:37:03 GMT -5
Gradius (NES via NSO, Never beaten legitimately)
A little late for the Famicom 40th, but I thought I'd take a stab at this. At first I thought "oh, if I have trouble, I'll just use the continue code." Several continues later it became "well, I guess I'm just going to have to use the Konami code." For what it's worth, I think the game intends you to use the Konami code as uses of it are limited and you have to earn charges by beating the Big Core bosses so you have to use them kind of strategically.
This is a pretty stellar port for 1986, especially compared to all the Micronics stuff that had come before. The screen quickly becomes filled with fast moving bullets. There is some heavy slowdown when things get too hectic, like with the tentacle brain monsters, but honestly, you will welcome it. Gradius is a lot of fun when you're a completely powered up death machine but maybe a little too daunting after a stray bullet tags you and you are reduced to nothing. Is it possible to beat the game without any powerups? A very quick Youtube search doesn't show any zero power up playthroughs for this one.
|
|
|
Post by spanky on Jul 29, 2023 20:08:05 GMT -5
Life Force (NES, Never beaten legitimately)
Used the 30 lives code. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. Despite the instant respawn, this game is more difficult than Gradius. In the ultimate insult, I lost my very last life at the very last barrier during the escape sequence and got the bad ending. Regardless, it's a tremendous experience but I'm really not cut out for SHMUPs.
|
|
|
Post by alexmate on Sept 12, 2023 8:06:51 GMT -5
Hotline Miami (PC) Undoubtedly a great game. I technically got to level 9, but computer crashed after level 8 and didn't save. Game is just too hard for me.
Ghostbusters (Genesis/MD) Emulator kept glitching and I wasn't really having much fun playing it. May return to it at some point.
|
|
|
Post by spanky on Sept 14, 2023 19:18:31 GMT -5
Rush'N Attack (NES, Beaten with Game Genie)
I've attempted this several times and have never made it past the second stage. So I decided to throw on the Game Genie and power my way through. It's an arcade action game with a military theme. Though it probably more in common with Kung Fu rather than Contra as far as gameplay. You only come equipped with a knife and 95% of your standard foes seem to be equipped with non-working rifles and the other 5% have a pistol they'll chase you around with. Enemies either blindly charge you or attempt to jump kick you and you mainly try to control your space in a way that allows you to handle the jump kicking enemies without getting overtaken by the ones that just run. It's pretty fun but the controls are a bit touchy and you may find yourself jumping into enemies accidentally. It's not bad but definitely lesser Konami.
|
|
|
Post by alexmate on Oct 13, 2023 4:24:09 GMT -5
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (Arcade, timer: 1hr 9 mins)
Completed, but over the quota of continues to qualify. Really good game with smart graphics and RPG-lite elements. Music a lot of people like, but it is forgettable.
Rating: 7
|
|
|
Post by Woody Alien 2 on Dec 2, 2023 15:24:34 GMT -5
Super Cyborg (Steam, cheating)
Put here preemptively because this game is a Contra clone and as such is absurdly difficult, probably even more than the original NES game. So I'm using the cheat codes to select the starting level and/or to gain 40 lives, so that at least I can see other areas past the 3rd one. I do like retro stuff but I never even cared for Contra! And why did you even buy this game, you ask. Well it was sold at a very cheap price during sales, then it has some nice graphics with acid colors and weird twisted enemy designs, plus in general it generally had positive reviews... I do enjoy it besides its frustrating nature.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Dec 30, 2023 8:48:32 GMT -5
Evolution: Dino Dudes (Jaguar/Switch)I'll consider the Atari 50 Jaguar games fails. This is a port of The Humans which apparently actually did start out as a Lynx game before moving to computer platforms. In another documentary failure, this fact is not mentioned at all. It's sort of like a mix of The Lost Vikings (which came later) and Lemmings with your varying number of interchangeable cavemen working to reach the level exit although only one needs to get to it at least from how far I got. It's okay, but it feels like padding to include it. Fight for Life (Jaguar/Switch)A mostly crummy 3D fighting game that was also the last game Atari released for the Jaguar. It technically was released without being fully finished as the company went bankrupt and more or less shut down. Francois Yves Bertrand, the designer and programmer, managed to get the company to give the team a bit of time to get it to a releasable state but they had to make cuts. Of course none of this info is included, and I found it in this interview. The game itself is somewhat similar to Virtua Fighter as Betrand had been a programmer on it, and I believe him when he says that internal problems harmed the game. Tempest 2000 (Jaguar/Switch)This and Aliens vs. Predator are arguably the absolute marquee titles for the platform. At the time, a slightly tweaked version of Tempest was revelatory for its fans, but I don't think it really holds up per se. Giving that regular Tempest looks so much better in the collection, a blocky variation that's arguably too visually busy doesn't hold up as well. I might give the recent 4000 a shot sometime though. Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy (Jaguar/Switch)It's not the absolute worst horizontal shooter to ever see release, but it's very poorly designed. The levels feel and may actually be made up of a few seconds of content looped for what feels like an eternity, and the bosses are ridiculously spongy. The single hit deaths do not help either. This is a deeply embarrassing game to launch along side the console and the only one available as a purchase.
|
|
|
Post by personman on Jan 1, 2024 15:38:50 GMT -5
Only had a small handful games slip through the cracks this year. Otherwise I finished everything else I set out to start which I'm happy with.
Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions (PSP, abandoned at a road block)
Listened to a podcast about this one's story at the end of 22 and it motivated me to check this out for myself and got it running on my Steam Deck. Was liking it at first but as anyone who played this game can guess I got to Weigraff and hit a wall. I just don't think any of my characters are set up to deal with him and all the strategies I read to cheese him call for skills I never thought to learn. There no means to go back and grind to unlock said skills so it felt like I was just plain stuck. Starting over would be like a few hours progress and that really turned me off, this is the kind of granular stuff is usually not my thing cause it feel like theres just too many ways to make a mistake but I think I'll come back to it eventually.
Wild Arms 3 (PS4, got distracted)
Start of the year I was inspired to start sitting down with some JRPGs and wanted it to be my focus this year. I was going to start with one of my favs from the PS2 period since I grabbed this for cheap when I first got my PS4. I was on board with this one since as a Southwesterner Wild Arms has always resonated with me thus being a nice nostalgia trip, even if the dialogue is WAY worse than I remember lol. However the Metroid Prime remake released out of the blue and I dropped this once I got to the third dungeon or so. I will get back to eventually just for how much I enjoy this game's vibe alone but for now it will have to wait.
Jet Force Gemini(N64, got distracted)
Not sure what spurred me on to get started with this but I when I loaded up the N64 games I wanted to have on my Steam Deck I just up and dove into this one. I remember seeing this a lot at demo kiosks when I was in 6th grade and had always been interested in it. Parents disallowed it so I had to wait till way later to play it in earnest where I never finished it. I believe at one point it just cock blocks you from challenging the final boss till you save all the koala bear people and that killed it for me. None the less revisiting it I found it to be a decent time despite the awkward controls and the music is really great. It's one of those weird growing pain games for certain though, like the book on third person shooters hadn't really been written yet, dual control sticks were still really new (actually I don't recall if the Dualshock was out yet) and while platforming and item collecting isn't the games focus it still has some Banjo Kazooie DNA in it which is just really bizarre feeling today. Its interesting.
This'll sound petty but I got up to the point where you control that hideous potato dog and just couldn't stand the CONSTANT noise the thing makes. It turned me off of playing it for the time being plus the Battle Network collection released which I was looking forward to.
But yeah a lot better count than last year where I think I failed on like 12 games? lol
|
|