|
Post by Ex on Jun 19, 2019 0:22:08 GMT -5
Man I dropped the ball on my involvement with this Club Retro, seeing as it's the 19th already, and I've only beaten one Irem game so far. I guess because said game was so terrible it knocked me out of the Irem loop for a minute. Nah what's really going on, is I've channeled my inner Sarge and am engaged with too many games at once right now. I'm technically playing Fallout: New Vegas, Yoshi's Woolly World, Nostalgia, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night presently. Which is a silly amount of games to juggle, I admit. All the same normally I'd hit up some short Irem goodness during my downtime at work, but I've had zero downtime at work lately. Maybe things will slow down next week long enough to let me squeeze in a short Irem title or two. We have about a week and a half left in June, it could happen...
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Jun 19, 2019 12:18:31 GMT -5
What are you talking about? I never do that. *ahem*
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jun 19, 2019 14:14:11 GMT -5
I may not be completely done with this theme, either. I've got two prospects I might get to before the month is over.
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Jun 19, 2019 17:16:45 GMT -5
Let's be honest, I think most of us noticed that Irem's output was never really spectacular or anything. And I'd say that's been a fun learning lesson in itself with these monthly themes tackling one main company and look forward to more. We dug in and didn't walk away with much gold from this one. I certainly took the easy route just playing some more R-Type and Metal Storm, but what can I say, we all have our tastes and nothing else was really jumping out at me. Disaster Report was looking pretty cool to me, but by the end of it Ex summed it up that it was quite a mess and not worth it.
Irem were a powerhouse in the sci-fi/tech bio horror graphics department, but a little more focus in other areas would have gone a long way.
Overall, I'm not saying I'm writing them off forever or anything, but yeah.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jun 19, 2019 17:25:55 GMT -5
I gotta give toei a gold star on this theme, he really came through and dropped some super informative stuff. His contributions certainly made this thread a whole lot deeper. Before anybody walks away from this particular Club Retro theme, they really oughta play through the arcade versions of In the Hunt and GunForce II first. 100% IMO yeah, but I personally really enjoyed those two back in the arcadia of my youth. The work trip I thought I had coming up this week got postponed to next week. That means I may have time to squeeze in a quick Irem game tomorrow and Friday. I'm still legit interested in these, and haven't tried them yet: Armed Police Unit Gallop Blade Master Mystic Riders Perman
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jun 19, 2019 17:43:58 GMT -5
EX- If you like Cotton, you'll like Mystic Riders. Very similar. It doesn't seem nearly as hard / rigid as irem's other shooters, either - supposedly it was made by another team than most of them. Perman was my rec, so I hope you'll like it. Keep it mind that it's important to grab all the power-ups and bonuses in the levels because they help out during the board games. And yes, it's super easy, but considering how memorization-heavy almost every other Irem game is, that was a big relief for me. I don't think Irem knew how to do hard in a way that I found compelling at all. Gallop is overly harsh and as usual with Irem I'm not a fan of the controls, but it's a cool concept so maybe you'll dig it. Personally I think I would like it if your ship wasn't so unwieldy. It just seems like a really annoying way to boost the difficulty. Blade Master is the worst fantasy-themed beat-'em-up ever made. It's incredibly dull trash. It's the worst Irem game. I'm dead serious. As a matter of fact, I was going to post a dare to anyone to actually finish it after I tried to do so (again) early this month, but I forgot. Not because it's hard - you can credit feed all you like - but because of how massively boring the gameplay is. Not only does it not have throws, which is the main reason I tend to like weapon-based beat-'em-ups a little less than the fists-and-kicks type, but it doesn't even have combos. You just repeat your single attacks over and over. And it's so long. It's the worst. Xeogred Definitely true overall, but I'm glad I played Perman and Ken-Go, at least. I actually found that second one interesting enough to write a HG101 article about it yesterday. I would have done Perman, too, but the sequel doesn't seem to be my style (it's mostly a top-down action game, kind of slow and confusing). I also enjoyed researching Irem's history, and their close ties with Capcom and SNK. I think they started out as an interesting company - Moon Patrol is really damn good for a 1982 arcade game, and while the original arcade version of Spartan-X / Kung-Fu Master is too hard for me, it's a pretty cool game, and it's a really important game in the history of action side-scroller and beat-'em-ups. I really wonder how they would've turned out if they hadn't fired Tsujimoto, and he hadn't created Capcom? One of the companies we have coming up is RED Company. I'm fairly certain everybody will be able to find something they like there, since they designed games like Gates of Thunder (which is quite above-average) and Lords of Thunder. Their profile is unique, too - they were set up from the start as a game and anime design company, rather than a full-fledged developer, so they would (and still do?) design games and have other companies make them.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jun 19, 2019 20:53:21 GMT -5
One of the companies we have coming up is RED Company. I'm still on board with RED, for sure. But I don't recall what month we allotted to them? The rest of this year looks like this IIRC: July = Brand New Deja Vu August = White Whales September = Superhero September October = Horrorble Games (alternatively Horror games) November = Arcade Shmups December = Unfinished Business Did we decide to replace one of those? Or was RED a 2020 theme?
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jun 20, 2019 11:21:01 GMT -5
Ex Apparently it was for some time next year. --- Meanwhile, I beat one of my two remaining irem prospects yesterday, Taiyo no Yusha Fighbird (NES). As if to prove that Irem's insane difficulty balancing swings to both extremes, I can say without hyperbole that this might very well be the easiest game on the NES/Famicom, and one of the easiest games ever made overall. Although, to be fair, GDRI thinks it was subcontracted to Japan System House / JSH. Either way, it's a vertical shooter based on an anime series involving a giant robot (the weirdly-named Fighbird, neither a fight-bird nor a firebird). There are 3 phases to each level; first, there's a part where you have to do some kind of task along the way, like destroy all the destructible things with a B on them, or grab all the green things. If you miss some, the level just loops over until you've got enough, though there's also a time limit. Then you get to play as a larger fighter jet or spaceship or whatever for a while in another looping level; this time you just have to press Start or Select when it tells you to transform into the giant robot, for the final part of the level, which doesn't loop and has a boss. The robot walks rather than fly and fires beams from a sword (and later a gun); seeing a video of that is what made me want to play the game, since shooters where you play as a walking character like Elemental Masters are my favorite. There isn't a ton of playing to be done, though. There are barely any enemies at all in this game. Usually they come one at a time and die in one shot. On average, a full 10 seconds will pass before you see another, where you just move forward automatically, with nothing to do. Sometimes the wait will be a little shorter, sometimes even longer. You have a lot of health and keep getting restoratives and extra lives. The bosses are all as easy, too - one of them can actually be beaten without taking a single hit by just staying in place and firing charged up beams at it three or four times. What I initially didn't realize is that the two characters you can choose between in the beginning correspond to difficulty levels. I picked the older kid to the right the second time around, and it does feature slightly more enemies, and fewer healing items. There are still very few enemies, and it's still probably the easiest shooter ever made, but they tend to come in twos instead of alone and the wait between them is shorter, though mostly just in the beginning for some reason. And that's it. I was really tired yesterday after spending hours doing tests at the hospital, so playing this was kind of relaxing. It gave me a chance to think about various things in between enemy waves. But unless you just want to relax to some NES graphics and music, it's probably the most boring thing. It's a ghost town of game, there's just nothing in it. There's also a GB game by the same title, though it's a case of same name, different game (which is especially common when it comes to licensed game, since the license is all the marketing departments care about). Too basic to be bothered with, though.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jun 20, 2019 17:45:20 GMT -5
The last Irem game I wanted to finish was Ninja Spirit. I went with the PC Engine port because it's set by default to a much more forgiving PC Engine Mode. You can (usually) take a few hits instead of dying instantly, though some things still one-hit kill you, power-ups apply to all weapons, and there are now checkpoints immediately before boss battles. You also seem to move a bit faster in the port, regardless of whether you set it to Arcade Mode or stick to PCE. All those changes result in a very different game; instead of a sluggish memorization fest that goes to hell as soon you get hit and have to go back to the latest checkpoint without your power-ups, you have a very short, weirdly-balanced side-scroller with pathetic bosses and an awful final level. I'm referring to the infamous "fall" segment here, where you have to navigate between a bunch of ninjas in mid-air that you can't hit from above and you can't see them coming at all. Note that they still kill you instantly in the PCE port. I had to actually grab a paper & pen to take notes because my mind couldn't memorize it all; I'd write things like "4 ninjas to the right, begin moving right, 5th ninja, then 4 ninjas to the left..."
So yeah, it's a decent-ish game that way, but it's still lackluster. The weapon system is cool - you have 4 weapon types you can switch between at any time - and it invented the power-up Ninja Gaiden 2 stole where you have shadow versions of yourself mimicking your actions. I'd give two stars to the PCE version. There aren't a ton of side-scrollers like this on the console, so it might have been worth playing back in the day, though I'd place behind Legendary Axe 2 (and 1, obviously).
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Jun 27, 2019 17:50:57 GMT -5
So, before this theme is up, what's the best game y'all would recommend playing that I might not have tried yet? Assume that I've covered the easy-to-reach NES stuff like Metal Storm.
Also, if you want to feel a bit insecure when it comes to Ninja Spirit, well... it got run at SGDQ this year.
|
|