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Post by toei on Dec 13, 2018 15:42:07 GMT -5
Thankfully my job is good about giving us time off, and paying us for that time. So I'll be off starting 12/22 and return to work 1/3. I have family obligations to attend to during that time, of course. But I hope during that span I can finish my final two chosen Data East games for this event. Heavy Barrel shouldn't take very long, and I'm very much looking forward to Dark Lord. According to HLTB, DL takes about 8 hours to beat. Doable! Yeah, Dark Lord isn't super long, and IIRC, most battles are scripted, so it doesn't get tedious quickly like most NES RPGs.
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Post by Ex on Dec 14, 2018 0:06:43 GMT -5
I decided to go ahead and finish Heavy Barrel tonight instead of waiting.
98. Heavy Barrel | NES | 1990
"Heavy Barrel" is an overhead shoot 'em up developed and published by Data East in 1990. "Heavy Barrel" on NES is actually a port of an earlier Data East arcade title. One or two simultaneous players take on reams of bad guys, tanks, and robots in a effort to stop terrorism. Yes, terrorists have seized an underground nuclear missile silo. Players must infiltrate the installation, and eliminate the leader of the terrorist army, before they can launch the nukes. To stop the terrorists, players can use the powerful weapon 'Heavy Barrel'. The problem is that 'Heavy Barrel' has been disassembled. Players can find the parts to 'Heavy Barrel" during missions, giving them unprecedented (limited by a timer) massive firepower.
+Nice clean graphics with little flicker.
+Solid two player co-op shooting action.
+No nonsense pick 'up and play controls.
+Treasure chests on the battlefield!
+The 'Heavy Barrel' gun itself would make Rambo get a chub.
-The OST is decent but very limited.
-Level designs have very little variety.
-Enemies, bosses, stage elements etc. are repeated too often.
-Beat the first mission? You've basically seen the whole game.
-The last boss is disingenuously difficult.
"Heavy Barrel" falls right in line with games like "Commando" or "Ikari Warriors" on NES. If you've ever played those, you know what's going on here. You move around, you shoot, you throw grenades, one hit kills you. The only unique aspect is that there are treasure chests on the battlefield (the game calls them lockers). Red soldiers drop keys, and players pick up the keys to open the chests. Sometimes chests have ammo, grenades, or a different gun to use. But sometimes chests have pieces of the 'Heavy Barrel" gun inside. However, "Heavy Barrel"'s core gimmick - building the 'Heavy Barrel' gun itself - doesn't go very far. The gun is fun to maraud with, but it takes a long time to build, and then it doesn't last very long at all. The gun comes across as an afterthought rather than a core gameplay mechanic.
That said, if you enjoy run of the mill overhead shooters, "Heavy Barrel" on NES could be worth playing. (It's certainly worth playing co-op.) But keep in mind the repetitiveness. This game only lasts about a half hour - and the difficulty is mostly fair - but it still seems to drag halfway through. The issue is the distinct lack of variety in enemy, boss, and stage designs. You'll be seeing palette swaps of everything far too soon and far too often. Couple that aspect with a last boss that is a bit ridiculous*, and you're not exactly looking at a stone cold classic here. Still, there are plenty of other NES overhead shooters that are far worse than "Heavy Barrel". This is a competent if unambitious arcade port. So if you're a fan of the genre and platform, give the ol' 'Heavy Barrel' a shot.
Ex's time to beat: 28 minutes Ex's rating: 6/10
*I think the developers imagined two simultaneous players fighting the last boss while wielding two 'Heavy Barrel' guns each. That's the only thing that makes any sense.
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Post by Sarge on Dec 14, 2018 17:05:21 GMT -5
That sounds about right for Heavy Barrel. I don't remember it being actively bad, but it doesn't really do a lot to set itself apart. I think it certainly bests junk like the NES Ikari Warriors, though, and probably also has a little more polish than Commando.
By the way, I looked up the C64 version of Karnov, and it looks positively awful. It looks like the same company did the ports for the C64, Speccy, and CPC, and they're all super choppy. That's a shame, given that the C64 was very much capable of smooth scrolling.
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Post by Ex on Dec 14, 2018 21:37:26 GMT -5
I looked up the C64 version of Karnov, and it looks positively awful. Somehow I'm not surprised. It's typical when I look up games lauded by C64 enthusiasts, said games often turn out to be junk. Nostalgia-bias is a helluva drug. I'm sure there are some truly good C64 exclusives, but I've not found many.
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Post by toei on Dec 14, 2018 21:48:32 GMT -5
That sounds about right for Heavy Barrel. I don't remember it being actively bad, but it doesn't really do a lot to set itself apart. I think it certainly bests junk like the NES Ikari Warriors, though, and probably also has a little more polish than Commando. By the way, I looked up the C64 version of Karnov, and it looks positively awful. It looks like the same company did the ports for the C64, Speccy, and CPC, and they're all super choppy. That's a shame, given that the C64 was very much capable of smooth scrolling. I just looked up a video. You weren't kidding. Karnov jumps and he just kind of hangs in the air for several seconds, get down a few pixels every half-second. It's painful to watch.
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Post by Sarge on Dec 15, 2018 0:25:40 GMT -5
Somehow I'm not surprised. It's typical when I look up games lauded by C64 enthusiasts, said games often turn out to be junk. Nostalgia-bias is a helluva drug. I'm sure there are some truly good C64 exclusives, but I've not found many. That being said, Mayhem in Monsterland looks pretty slick. And I have played some nice C64 games. But I do think there's also a bit of nostalgia goggles from the other side of the pond on a lot of these old microcomputer games. The C64 was a great little system, though, and I've learned a bit more about that SID chip. While I like a lot of the NES compositions more, the SID chip had a lot more versatility.
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Post by Ex on Dec 15, 2018 0:40:09 GMT -5
the SID chip had a lot more versatility. Yeah, it's a rather awesome chip. There also exists a hardware synthesizer that uses a real SID chip. It's called the Elektron SidStation. Unfortunately back when I wanted such a thing I couldn't afford it. Thus I wrote my own SID emulator VST thirteen ears ago.
I'm sure the C64 has some decent games, but it's got nothing compared to the NES or even Master System libraries IMO.
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Post by Sarge on Dec 15, 2018 0:53:02 GMT -5
I definitely agree with that. Most of the C64 can't even touch the best of those libraries, outside of maybe some of the RPGs being pretty decent in their 8-bit CRPG crustiness sort of way. I still entertain the notion of eventually playing through Phantasie on there. It also got quite a few of the Gold Box games.
EDIT: I played through the SNES version of Fighter's History. Unfortunately, it defaults to easy and doesn't give you a "real" ending. Wish I'd known that before. Whatever. While it isn't Street Fighter II, and takes obvious inspiration from it, it certainly didn't deserve Capcom's lawsuit any more than the other imitators of the time. What's here is surprisingly solid, too. It definitely feels like a fighting game of that time, the hit detection seems pretty solid, and while the roster isn't quite as colorful as SFII, it gets the job done. I'd say this deserves at least a 6.5.
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Post by Sarge on Dec 15, 2018 20:25:38 GMT -5
Tried out a couple of Data East SNES games. The first is Death Brade, which is basically a sort of wrestling game except against what looks to be Greek mythological monsters (and others). It was... eh. I never felt like I could get the grapples quite right, requiring a ridiculous amount of pounding on the buttons to be semi-successful. The other was Sengoku Denshou, which is a port of the Neo Geo game, which feels aggressively average as well. Pity, because I really like the Neo Geo game.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 15, 2018 21:09:25 GMT -5
Heavy Barrel looks neat... with graphics like they could have been ripped straight out of Contra, haha. I don't know if I've ever played any of those overhead NES shooters actually.
That sucks about Death Brade, Sarge. Glancing over the scarce images on GameFAQ's I was thinking maybe it was a hidden beat em' up. Afraid I can't really get into old wrestling/grappling games.
Fighter's History looks worth a look.
Glancing over their list again and I saw toei saying good things, but this Glory of Heracles series looks really neat. Specifically 3-4 on the SNES. toei compared them to Dragon Quest which I can easily see, but I get some good FF4/FF5 vibes a bit from them too. I'm not sure I'm in the mood for a JRPG right now or have the time but I think these will definitely be on my radar now.
I quickly glanced over their GameFAQ's list again thinking I'd recognize more stuff, but I guess they did a lot more older arcade games I'm not familiar with.
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