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Post by Xeogred on Mar 5, 2018 22:19:30 GMT -5
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Post by Ex on Mar 5, 2018 23:57:59 GMT -5
18. Space Hunter | Famicom | 1986 | 4/10Space Hunter is a Japan-only Famicom action-adventure developed and published by Kotobuki System Co., Ltd. (Kemco) in 1986. The plot takes place in the future after a devastating nuclear war has brought humanity to near extinction. In order to survive, humans have created cyborgs to help them persist. Cyborgs have been sent to other planets to colonize them and retrieve mined materials. However a cyborg named De Gaulle has started a cyborg uprising against the human masters. De Gaulle is launching nuclear missiles towards Earth from a secret location. A teenage female cyborg named Altiana vows to stop De Gaulle, and prove to the humans that not all cyborgs are rebellious. And so she begins to travel through the solar system, finding and destroying De Gaulle's minions, until De Gaulle is forced to reveal his secret location, and thus Altiana can kill him as well. Space Hunter's gameplay begins with a map of the solar system. Altiana may choose any of six planets to visit in any order. Once on the planet, Altiana explores maze-like mines beneath each respective planet's surface. (These maze-mines are side-view.) She does this seeking entrances to lairs, hoping said lairs will reveal either equipment upgrades, or one of De Gaulle's head minions. (Inside the lairs the view is overhead instead of side-view.) Once Altiana finds and kills a boss minion, a self-destruct sequence activates, and Altiana must work her way back to the planet's surface as a timer runs out. If she escapes successfully, the planet explodes and Altiana visits the next planet. After destroying all six planets, a secret planet is revealed, thus Altiana finds De Gaulle's hidden base. When Altiana visits it, she must find and kill De Gaulle, escape the timer again, and witness his hidden base planet explode. Afterwards the game is won. The controls for Space Hunter are interesting. Altiana cannot jump, instead she has a jetpack. The player must maneuver Altiana through open spaces by thrusting her up in the air, and controlling her continued descent. This changes on only one world, a water world, where the player makes Altiana swim using flippers. The only real difference there is Altiana floats upward instead of sinking downward (controls are reversed basically). Altiana's base weapon is a bomb which explodes in a sideways torrent of flames (a bit like Bomberman's). But she can find other hidden weapons that are easier to use. However finding said weapons isn't easy at all. Each planet's maze-like interior consists of many lair entrances, some of which are totally hidden. Only by systematically searching every lair can Altiana find required power-ups, as well as that planet's boss minion's location. Most lairs are simply empty, but the contents of a lair isn't revealed until all its enemies are dead. So to search a lair, Altiana must risk death every time. In that regard it should be noted that Space Hunter is HARD. Hard for many reasons. First would be the maze-like interiors of the planets themselves, getting lost isn't an issue thanks to a rudimentary in-game map. However, the map only shows Altiana's general location, not the exits from screen to screen. Furthermore the map doesn't indicate which known lairs have been searched. (The best bet is to use graph paper and mark off which lairs have been searched, as well as mark the exits screen to screen for the more complicated planets.) Altiana has a life meter, but enemies are always attacking. As soon as you clear a screen of enemies, leave and return to that screen, all those enemies are respawned. Killing enemies drops either "power" refills (ammo), or sometimes life restoratives, or nothing at all. Enemies move in erratic patterns and most of them shoot at Altiana. This is made worse by the fact that enemies and their projectiles travel through walls like ghosts. Altiana cannot move through the same walls, so escaping enemy onslaughts can be infuriating. And although Altiana has a life bar, her invincibility window is practically non-existent. That means aggressive enemies (and especially bosses) can drain Altiana's life bar in a matter of a seconds sometimes, far faster than the player can react. When Altiana dies, it's instant game over, no continues. There is a continuously updated password system, so the player doesn't lose all their progress. But having to re-navigate complex mazes to reach a boss the player just died to, over and over again, will quickly grow aggravating to say the least.
The most annoying difficulty aspect though, is the fact that some bosses are only able to be damaged by particular weapons. And some of these weapons only exist in hidden lairs. That means the player must always bomb every section of every screen (like every tile), trying to reveal the hidden lair entrances of each screen (if any exist - you don't know until you blow). It's very much like trying to burn every bush in Zelda. Should the player miss one of these hidden-but-required weapons, and then kill the boss of that planet, the player is screwed going forward. That's because the planet explodes after killing it's boss, and therefore that required hidden weapon also explodes. Which means Altiana is then out of luck because she can't kill a future boss, due to not having said hidden weapon required to defeat it. Yep, the player must restart the whole game and try again. I had to restart Space Hunter three times due to this insanity. I finally gave up and just checked a walkthrough, because I wasn't going to spend a dozen hours exploding every square inch of Space Hunter's rather large worlds. By the way, do you want to extend Altiana's health bar? Hope you like clearing and searching every lair you come across, because that's the only way to do it. Also special weapons require "power" to use. If you run out of "power" while fighting a boss, that means the particular weapon you needed to kill the boss no longer works. Tough luck!
The spartan graphics certainly don't help sell Space Hunter either. This game's pixel work is minimal, sloppy, and hardly inspired, with barely any animation to speak of. The same goes for its "music". There's only two tracks. One track plays during the title screen and also plays during the side-view sections. A different track plays during the overhead "lair" sections. And that's it. Both of these "music" tracks are short and loop quickly, and they're not especially well composed. You will quickly grow tired of hearing these same two short tracks over, and over, and over again. Sound effects? Barely even there. The interface itself half consists of English, and half Japanese. You will find lots of notes in lairs that say things in Japanese only. Good luck with that if you don't speak Japanese, because as of the time of this writing, no English fan translation exists.
I have a theory about Space Hunter. Metroid released in Japan on August 6, 1986. Space Hunter released in Japan on September 25th, 1986. I believe that Space Hunter was rushed out the door by Kotobuki System Co., Ltd. as an obvious Metroid-inspired ripoff. I say that because Space Hunter seems like a game that a couple dudes made in a week, but also steals many of Metroid's core ideas. Being rushed, Space Hunter's coding just "feels" sloppy. (I came across various bugs while playing.) The theme of Space Hunter; lone space female warrior searching maze-like alien environments to kill renegade bosses; is hardly different than Metroid. You have to find required power-ups to succeed, you even have to escape time explosions, etc. Sound familiar? The problem really is that Space Hunter isn't even remotely in the same league of quality as Metroid. Not even close. That said, Space Hunter is worth playing for the Famicom-curious, for a half hour or so. I don't recommend beating Space Hunter however. Value your limited lifespan more than that dear reader. I only finished this game out of pure scholarly interest. Take it from me, there's far more aggravation than fun in this crusty ol' space oddity.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 7, 2018 22:52:00 GMT -5
Well I just finished up a Knife only run with Chris in REmake tonight, getting the last trophy. My new platinum. I will consider this entry MASTERED. I love how beating the game on Invisible Enemy mode rewards you with a personal message from Shinji Mikami at the end, so awesome. Invisible Mode was pretty easy though, since you can do it on Very Easy... haha. Did that with Jill. Ran the Knife Only on Very Easy as well with Chris since he can take more hits than Jill. Real Survival Mode was the true test though, auto aim is disabled (the original didn't have this anyways), it sets enemies health/damage to the Hard level equivalent, chests are NOT linked which was crazy and awesome, and there's barely any ammo/herbs/ink ribbons anywhere. Every single ink ribbon spend to save really mattered, so it was tense as heck. It's really the Mansion 1 part that's the toughest though, since you're so low on items and zombies are everywhere. The Residence is fairly easy, Caves aren't bad, and Mansion 2/3 with the Hunters isn't that big of a deal since they're easy to get around. Labs are a cake walk and only take me like 20 minutes when not saving Jill/Chris or doing the second Tyrant fight (save Rebecca/Barry). I love how this game is like a Metroidvania in a lot of ways. I could probably draw out the entire game now, got speedrun strats down (didn't even plan on it but I did the entire Knife Only run with Chris tonight, took about 3:30hrs or so) and yeah... one of my favorite games of all time, but now I've effectively kind of destroyed it and will probably need to take a 10 year break from it so it's fresh again someday, haha. Kind of a bummer RE4 HD doesn't have a platinum, but maybe that's best for my sanity. Getting the platinum for RE5 was fun, but I think these are the only two I'll get for the RE's. So I lost track somewhere, but I think I beat REmake 4-5 times in a week. Two Jill speedruns, Chris Real Survival, Chris Knife Only, then had to replay some stuff for some misc trophies. Realistically I had about half the trophies already from beating it twice before on the PS3 (imported a Japanese version for a physical copy, it's all English!), so I did have a LOT of the misc work and whatnot already done. I just felt like giving REmake a replay again after going through RE2... then I was possessed. But now I'm free again.
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Post by anayo on Mar 8, 2018 9:49:06 GMT -5
So I lost track somewhere, but I think I beat REmake 4-5 times in a week. Two Jill speedruns, Chris Real Survival, Chris Knife Only, then had to replay some stuff for some misc trophies. In the first paragraph of your post I was thinking, "Does this guy speedrun?" Looks like I guessed right. You put any of your runs on twitch or youtube? I often enjoy watching speedruns of games I might not ever personally sit down and play.
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Post by toei on Mar 8, 2018 14:16:59 GMT -5
Finished Spellcaster (Master System). It's a side-scroller / adventure game hybrid. The first half or so is relatively cool, while the second suffers from the kind of flaws you'd expect of both genres in the 80s; annoying enemies, confusing level design (the pyramid maze), generally unpolished action and lots of trying to talk and show things to people at random in hopes of advancing the story. The two compound each other; in a normal adventure game, that kind of thing can get irritating, but it's a lot worse when you have to backtrack through an annoying level back and forth every time you want to try talking to a different person. And I don't know if it's due to the translation, but parts of the story are so under-explained as to make no sense. This could also be due to the fact it's based on an anime OVA, but I doubt it, as it doesn't seem very faithful to it from what I've seen (in typical SEGA fashion, though this is often a good thing). The spell system is pretty novel, too, though I ended using basically nothing but the healing & flying spells, but it makes no sense that the energy to use spells must be obtained by killing enemies - you can never just restore it like you would with MP in any other game. I was always running out. You can walk around back and forth and just farm it out for a while, but it's a drag. Despite all the negative points, it's still one of the more interesting Master System games. While I'm fond of the system itself and what it can do, it just doesn't have much of a library. There is basically no third-party support, and Sega was more of an arcade company at the time; its console software division didn't really get it together until the Genesis, with a few exceptions.
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Post by Ex on Mar 8, 2018 14:23:22 GMT -5
Nice Beat Toei! I've often considered playing Spellcaster, but stuff like "unpolished action and lots of trying to talk and show things to people at random in hopes of advancing the story" puts me off. I respect you for putting up with that and soldiering on. Are you gonna play the (hopefully superior) sequel?
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Post by toei on Mar 8, 2018 14:38:07 GMT -5
Nice Beat Toei! I've often considered playing Spellcaster, but stuff like "unpolished action and lots of trying to talk and show things to people at random in hopes of advancing the story" puts me off. I respect you for putting up with that and soldiering on. Are you gonna play the (hopefully superior) sequel? Yes, I plan to. I've had two sessions with it in the last few fays, and while I kind of suck at it, I like it so far. It's got a pretty different rhythm from other late-80s sidescroller, because everything is done with projectiles and they often need to be charged up to be effective. You even switch between them depending on your needs - it's almost a shmup. Weird bit of trivia: according to the game's Japanese wikipedia page, the game isn't technically a direct sequel to Spellcaster; instead, it's called Kujaku-Ou 2 because it was made at the same time as the second Kujaku-Ou OVA. Of course they're still two Sega games sharing the same character and some gameplay elements, so I'm not sure that changes anything. There are also two NES adventures games based on the same series. I've started dabbling with the first; the opening is similar to Spellcaster's, but then it diverges completely. Both are theoretically based on the same OVA, which I'm also probably gonna try watching at some point (it was dubbed into English as Spirit Warrior, though it doesn't look too hot). I should also mention that the adventure segments in Spellcaster have some really cool art at times. Some of it was drawn by Rieko Kodama, and some by the character designer who created Sonic (Naoto Ohshima).
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Post by Ex on Mar 8, 2018 17:31:21 GMT -5
Yes, I plan to. I've had two sessions with it in the last few fays, and while I kind of suck at it, I like it so far. It's got a pretty different rhythm from other late-80s sidescroller, because everything is done with projectiles and they often need to be charged up to be effective. You even switch between them depending on your needs - it's almost a shmup. Weird bit of trivia: according to the game's Japanese wikipedia page, the game isn't technically a direct sequel to Spellcaster; instead, it's called Kujaku-Ou 2 because it was made at the same time as the second Kujaku-Ou OVA. Of course they're still two Sega games sharing the same character and some gameplay elements, so I'm not sure that changes anything. There are also two NES adventures games based on the same series. I've started dabbling with the first; the opening is similar to Spellcaster's, but then it diverges completely. Both are theoretically based on the same OVA, which I'm also probably gonna try watching at some point (it was dubbed into English as Spirit Warrior, though it doesn't look too hot). I should also mention that the adventure segments in Spellcaster have some really cool art at times. Some of it was drawn by Rieko Kodama, and some by the character designer who created Sonic (Naoto Ohshima). Wow now that's a quality post man! Lots of great info I didn't know. As for this: "There are also two NES adventures games based on the same series."What games are they?
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 8, 2018 18:10:00 GMT -5
So I lost track somewhere, but I think I beat REmake 4-5 times in a week. Two Jill speedruns, Chris Real Survival, Chris Knife Only, then had to replay some stuff for some misc trophies. In the first paragraph of your post I was thinking, "Does this guy speedrun?" Looks like I guessed right. You put any of your runs on twitch or youtube? I often enjoy watching speedruns of games I might not ever personally sit down and play. Nah haha, no pro or anything. I just got some of the strats down from videos and knowing the game a lot on my own over the years. I think the best run I got was 2:05 something with Jill and saves. You have to beat it under 5 hours for a Samurai Edge (pistol) and then under 3 hours for an Infinite Rocket Launcher, so those were the main goals. I couldn't use these in my Real Survival or Invisible Mode playthroughs though. For the Knife Only run, it's pretty much essential to speedrun and try to avoid all enemies as possible but it's tricky. This guy is one of the best sources on RE speedruns: www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgCscKFAj06xNYG9jTH8Rw
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Post by toei on Mar 8, 2018 18:11:34 GMT -5
Yes, I plan to. I've had two sessions with it in the last few fays, and while I kind of suck at it, I like it so far. It's got a pretty different rhythm from other late-80s sidescroller, because everything is done with projectiles and they often need to be charged up to be effective. You even switch between them depending on your needs - it's almost a shmup. Weird bit of trivia: according to the game's Japanese wikipedia page, the game isn't technically a direct sequel to Spellcaster; instead, it's called Kujaku-Ou 2 because it was made at the same time as the second Kujaku-Ou OVA. Of course they're still two Sega games sharing the same character and some gameplay elements, so I'm not sure that changes anything. There are also two NES adventures games based on the same series. I've started dabbling with the first; the opening is similar to Spellcaster's, but then it diverges completely. Both are theoretically based on the same OVA, which I'm also probably gonna try watching at some point (it was dubbed into English as Spirit Warrior, though it doesn't look too hot). I should also mention that the adventure segments in Spellcaster have some really cool art at times. Some of it was drawn by Rieko Kodama, and some by the character designer who created Sonic (Naoto Ohshima). Wow now that's a quality post man! Lots of great info I didn't know. As for this: "There are also two NES adventures games based on the same series."What games are they? Thanks! I've been researching the series as I'm considering writing an article about them. It mostly hinges on how much I like Mystic Defender in the end, because I don't really enjoy writing in depth about games I don't like. The NES games are called Kujaku Ou 1 & 2. They've both been fan-translated (romhacking.net, you know the drill.) They have some RPG elements, too - in the first game there are turn-based fights, but levels are fixed (you level up once per chapter I think), and I think the second even has first-person dungeons (I haven't played it yet). I'd slept on them before, but this guy named snark released a string of translations for NES adventure games a few years ago that I'm gonna be checking out when I have more time.
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