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Post by VectorX on Jul 12, 2013 8:09:39 GMT -5
^What do you think of Legendary Wings? I enjoyed playing that in the arcades back in the day. ... RE this thread topic: Currently playing Vectrex Sundance, Same here, along with Zantis
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Post by TrekMD on Jul 12, 2013 8:24:28 GMT -5
Nice collection wyldephang! I just added a few more to my collection as well.
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Post by wyldephang on Jul 12, 2013 14:12:52 GMT -5
^What do you think of Legendary Wings? I enjoyed playing that in the arcades back in the day. I like that it's not brutally difficult, but like all scrolling shooter games, it poses an inherent challenge. Since there can be a lot of enemies on the screen at any given time, the game benefits from having a two-player mode, making those hazardous areas more manageable. Also, the soundtrack to the NES version is very memorable; it was composed by the same person who programmed music for Mega Man.
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Post by wyldephang on Jul 14, 2013 3:21:29 GMT -5
Tonight, I finished Kirby's Adventure on the NES. The difficulty began to ramp up toward the end, and it was nearly impossible for me to navigate through a stage without running into enemies along the way. I was preparing myself for a tough boss battle with King Dedede, the primary nemesis of the franchise, but was surprised when he fell pretty easily. It turns out that Dedede was but the first in a series of three back-to-back boss battles; no sooner had I set my controller down than I was thrust into the second phase, a side-scrolling bit where Kirby fights a luminescent orb while careening through space. The orb battle is similar to the R-Type or Gradius boss fights: difficult at first, but quite manageable once the attack pattern is memorized. The final phase was a bit more challenging; once again, memorization was the key to victory. I was low on lives and dreaded the idea of restarting the battle from the beginning, but I lucked out in the end and managed to time my kill shot perfectly--think of Luke Skywalker nailing the Death Star with a well-placed proton torpedo. Overall, a great game and a surprisingly robust ending for an NES game.
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Post by gliptitude on Jul 17, 2013 21:14:08 GMT -5
I just got my first NES homebrew in the mail today: Battle Kid 2.
It is a nice polished game with good graphics and more character too it than I was expecting. But it is very difficult! Actually I would still be playing it at this very moment, but I got so frustrated I had to shut it off. AND I'VE BEEN PLAYING IN EASY MODE, which requires the character to wear a pink suit. ... Easy mode gives you three hits before you die and all the other difficulty modes you die instantly!
... Finally got a chance to try out the 2 player mode on Sundance when I brought my copy over to a buddy's house last night, (I got them a Vectrex for their wedding present last year). He was a good sport, but the game kind of requires that you spend some time alone with it to learn how to play. So he wasn't very good competition.
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Post by VectorGamer on Jul 18, 2013 9:12:49 GMT -5
Last night I got one of my MAME cabinets back up and running after being down for about a year. So, last night I played some Megattack UniWarS Ozma Wars
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Post by VectorX on Jul 18, 2013 11:00:06 GMT -5
Last night I got one of my MAME cabinets back up and running after being down for about a year. So, last night I played some Megattack You ever try the kind of quasi-sequel of that of Challenger? It was really a big step up from Megatack.
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Post by VectorGamer on Jul 18, 2013 13:05:03 GMT -5
Last night I got one of my MAME cabinets back up and running after being down for about a year. So, last night I played some Megattack You ever try the kind of quasi-sequel of that of Challenger? It was really a big step up from Megatack. I played it briefly at Richie Knucklez Arcade a couple of years ago. I couldn't grasp as to what you were supposed to do in the game and therefore didn't spend much time with it at all.
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Post by VectorX on Jul 18, 2013 13:30:36 GMT -5
Shoot the rings, and when the blue ship comes out and stops moving, you dock with it on its right side and you'll get bonus points.
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Post by wyldephang on Aug 14, 2013 15:38:42 GMT -5
I've been bouncing back and forth between two games in my spare time. I started a playthrough of Crystalis on the NES and managed to get further into the story than I've ever been before. I'm sure that I'll complete a more detailed write-up at a future date, but for now, I'll say that Crystalis has exceeded all of my expectations. I knew the gameplay was fast and responsive, but the story whisks forward at a good pace and manages to keep the player interested without losing him or her in lengthy dialogue. The other game with which I've been occupying my time is Shining Force II, one of my recent acquisitions. The enemy AI has been improved and will actually preempt my moves on the battlefield. Most of the character classes have carried over from the previous game, but there seems to be more varieties of ways in which characters can develop. I've had a lot of fun with it.
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Post by wyldephang on Oct 28, 2013 1:51:27 GMT -5
I'm at the midway point of Donkey Kong Country Returns (DKCR) for the Wii and feel I've played enough of the game to review some of its features. This review will mainly appeal to anyone who owns a Wii or a 3DS, or simply remembers the Donkey Kong Country series for its excellent SNES titles.
First, the aesthetic is very reminiscent of earlier DKC games; the atmosphere and the soundtrack have a familiar vibe that is accessible to longtime fans. The graphics preserve the cartoonish charm of the series, and yet never fail to be visually stunning at every turn. Small details like a lightning bolt exploding in the night sky, rain, or a swaying boat enhance the pleasure of admiring this game for its exterior polish. In the modern era, game studios will often wash out the colors in the interest of "realism." So, many modern games tend to have a drab aesthetic that more closely resembles a mound of cigarette ashes than anything we're likely to encounter in the real world. DKCR, on the other hand, is loud and colorful, a definite throwback to its 16-bit roots.
The gameplay adheres to the classic DKC formula for the most part: you navigate Donkey Kong and his partner Diddy through the levels, picking up bananas, tokens, and 1UPs. Occasionally, you'll have the opportunity to ride one of the animal steeds, or commandeer a minecart. The difficulty ranges from condescendingly easy to brutally hard, but most of the spikes are attributed to poor controls. This is actually where DKCR slumps. While the original DKC controls were fast and tight, DKCR feels a little sluggish and unresponsive; I always need to anticipate Donkey Kong's moves before I perform them in the game. The default control scheme is begging for improvement, too. Running and jumping is simple enough, but one of Donkey Kong's most vital moves in the DKC series, the forward roll, has been crippled by the obligatory motion controls. Donkey Kong's roll (and Diddy's cartwheel) had always been mapped out to the B button; in DKCR, the player needs to shake the Wii Remote to perform the roll. The move allows Donkey Kong to travel with more speed than his normal run, and it gives him an extra range of mobility as he's able to jump-cancel out of the roll. But because the move in DKCR is performed by shaking the Wii Remote, it's difficult to time it and be precise. Sometimes, I find I'm not shaking the remote vigorously enough for the game to register my command, so Donkey Kong will run off a cliff or bump into an enemy. Most people would attribute this to user error, but try to understand my perspective: When in the history of video gaming has it ever been necessary to shake the control pad during gameplay? Do any of you Vectrex gamers throttle your controllers while playing Berzerk or Scramble? The feeling is very unnatural; when you combine this flaw with difficult jumps and unforgiving level layouts, you can imagine that a lot of trial and error is involved. A lot of deaths, too.
Luckily, extra lives are very abundant in DKCR. You pick them up in levels and bonus stages, and if you're really low on lives, you can always purchase them from any of the Cranky Kong shops stationed throughout the island. It's relatively uncommon to die from enemy contact because Donkey Kong and Diddy are both able to absorb an extra point of damage, and an item from Cranky's shop stacks one more hit point on top of that. Instead, the bottomless pits are what will rack up the death counter; unless you can adapt to the motion controls, you won't get much mileage out of each of your lives. Yet, there will always be a way to replenish them. If you're absolutely stuck on a level, the game will mercifully offer to complete it for you. I've taken advantage of this on two occasions because the level design was causing a lot of frustration. Amazingly, the computer guided me along a path I would have never guessed possible based on the layout. Players have the option of replaying those skipped levels later.
Aside of these complaints, DKCR has been a lot of fun to play, and I can tell it's a definite step in the right direction. It's too early for me to give it a rating, but as of now, I'd probably place it somewhere beneath the original 16-bit titles, which were more responsive. I would especially recommend the 3DS version as it addresses my No. 1 complaint about the controls. (In the handheld edition, Donkey Kong's rolls are performed with the press of a button. There are no gimmicky motion commands, just classic platforming fun.) I'll update this review as necessary.
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Post by VectorX on Oct 28, 2013 10:42:29 GMT -5
If you're absolutely stuck on a level, the game will mercifully offer to complete it for you. That's a nice feature to have! Back to the Atari 2600 for me, what with playing Escape from the MindMaster and Megamania lately.
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Post by wyldephang on Oct 28, 2013 15:07:20 GMT -5
If you're absolutely stuck on a level, the game will mercifully offer to complete it for you. That's a nice feature to have! Back to the Atari 2600 for me, what with playing Escape from the MindMaster and Megamania lately. I was almost ashamed to take the easy way out. Never in any of the earlier DKC games does the computer offer to hold your hand and literally walk you through the level. Then again, I never felt the feature was necessary in the other games. They were difficult, but if I died two or three times in a level, I was bound to memorize the patterns eventually. I beat DKC when I was a child, maybe eight years old, so it was perfectly doable. In DKCR, it's not the patterns that cause the player to fail, it's the design of the levels combined with the poor controls. As I said, I've literally walked off a cliff trying to jump-cancel out of the roll. One time, Donkey Kong failed to jump because he was in the middle of another animation; I mistimed the move and flopped off the side of the platform and into the cold embrace of a bottomless pit! I have some other complaints, too, regarding Donkey Kong's hit box, but they're mostly minor. Overall, the 16-bit games were better, but tell me what else is new. On that note, it's good that you're getting back into the Atari 2600. It doesn't get much more classic than that. I'd love to own a 2600 or 7800 one day.
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Post by VectorX on Oct 28, 2013 15:37:57 GMT -5
I was almost ashamed to take the easy way out. If the controls make it too difficult, there's nothing wrong there, especially if you played it when it was originally released and you were able to beat it with halfway decent controls (if not even better than that). On that note, it's good that you're getting back into the Atari 2600. It doesn't get much more classic than that. Yep. Just been doing some wiki stuff, so that got me to dig stuff out so I could make sure the memory is fresh and keep the mistakes to a minimum (if not be flat-out zero)! I'd love to own a 2600 or 7800 one day. Man, the 2600 is one gigantic library you'll have to be familiar with! (But of course, you already know that too )
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Post by wyldephang on Oct 29, 2013 2:20:18 GMT -5
Every Monday night, I drive to my cousins' house to play Nintendo 64 and Wii games. Usually we'll play a wrestling game and Super Smash Bros., but for the past two weeks, the oldest one has been going to bed early. So, I've been gaming with his younger brother. Our game of choice was Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, a rail shooter for the Nintendo Wii; we finally beat the last chapter today. Some of you may know that I'm a Resident Evil enthusiast. I was introduced to the series in 1996 when I was ten years old, and I've been following it ever since. Darkside Chronicles is essentially a retelling of two previous Resident Evil games (RE2 and Code Veronica) with a third storyline thrown in for good measure. In the beginning, the players control Leon and Krauser, U.S. agents on the hunt for an infamous drug lord; they're investigating a lead in a South American village when they're ambushed by zombies and thrown into a fight for survival. Sometime in the midst of the action, Leon explains to Krauser that he has encountered these monsters before, and he begins to retell the events of Resident Evil 2, Leon's first canonical Resident Evil game. It is at this point in the game that the scenario changes, and the players act out the events of Resident Evil 2 as Leon remembers them in an extended flashback sequence. Later, the same kind of flashback occurs for Resident Evil: Code Veronica; through both scenarios, the gameplay remains identical though the characters and enemies change. Weapons and items picked up in the course of one level will carry over to the next chapter. By the end of the game, my cousin and I had a handgun, shotgun, crossbow, grenade launcher, Uzi, and a magnum pistol in our shared inventory. We were well-armed, and could even upgrade our weapons in between missions. The game is straightforward and fun, but I do have some complaints. First, the primary storyline that develops between Leon and Krauser seems like filler material, and it never manages to justify itself as a standalone part of Resident Evil canon. Outside of Darkside Chronicles, this South American mission is largely forgettable, and I imagine it was just a vehicle to carry the weight of the other stories. The scares become highly predictable after the first chapter, and the game is saturated with such a high amount of cinematic motion blur that it's very easy to become disoriented. Even the targeting reticle, of all things, is subject to motion blur! Other than that, the wobbly camera was a major annoyance. Anytime an enemy appears, there's a quick jolt and the camera starts to sway prominently. I think this is supposed to simulate the psychological effects of fear, but in a rail shooter, when precise aiming is required, shaking the camera is an absolutely fatal mistake. There really was no reason to employ such cinematic tricks, not when far better rail shooters like The House of the Dead have done well with a stable camera. Overall, the campaign lasted us about six to eight hours of gameplay. It was fun, but I disliked how Capcom took liberties with the storytelling of RE2 and Code Veronica, and I still can't overlook the distracting motion blur. Darkside Chronicles is a passable rail shooter adaptation of Resident Evil, decent for a non-mainline game. Then again, with Resident Evil 6 butchering everything I loved about the series, the mainline games aren't exactly carrying the greatest reputation anymore.
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