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Post by Ex on Jan 7, 2018 22:58:20 GMT -5
The NES original Batman absolutely still holds up. Brilliant game. It's interesting to go and see how much the cutscenes changed from the prototype to the final version: tcrf.net/Proto:Batman:_The_Video_Game_(NES)What was your technique for beating the Joker? I laughed, remembering that I knew some of these technical tricks when I was kid. It is weird when you start playing a game you haven't played in twenty-odd years, and stuff starts coming back to you. I find it amazing my brain would bother remembering stuff like that.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 7, 2018 23:17:33 GMT -5
The longplay out there has my strategy. It's pretty much jump forward to avoid his shot if he decides to shoot it, and land at just the right spot in front of him to punch the crap out of him. It's always touch-and-go, and it usually takes me a while after I haven't played it in a long time to get the rhythm down again. You can get hit by a lot of other things, but you do not want to get hit by the gun shot. Pretty sure that takes off three health.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 7, 2018 23:35:18 GMT -5
Wow, those prototype scenes are really cool. I dig the wider shots. I can't see a reason noted for the changes, maybe space concerns? Glad they made Joker a boss fight though, not actually fighting him would have been lame indeed.
My strategy is similar to what Sarge describes. Immediately jump forward to dodge his first shot (and yes they take 3 hit points), and then I kind of just tanked it staying in the middle spamming him with the batarang. I kept ducked and eventually kind of figured out the spacing between him and the lightning bolts. Then I'd just jump over him when he changes sides and duck to dodge bullets. Not too bad, the third boss seemed crazier and harder to figure out to me. Not too bad if you have full health and lots of ammo though, Joker had more health than him I think.
I guess "Firebug" is the bodyguard before Joker? Looked like Shredder, lol.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 8, 2018 1:20:48 GMT -5
1. Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Genesis) 2. Darkwing Duck (NES) 3. Batman* (NES) 4. Journey to Silius (NES)* = replay (bit more serious than the hilarious English localization of Blaster Master?)(The Engineer, huh...)Some might know that this was originally intended to be a Terminator game. A quick one I've been meaning to hit up for awhile now. Journey to Silius was a discovery probably a decade back or so thanks to the internet and looking into all things Sunsoft and their music. Easily some of Naoki Kodaka's best composition work next to Blaster Master and Batman, the music in Silius is incredible. And everything else is in top form courtesy of Sunsoft's excellence on the NES. Journey to Silius is basically a mix of Contra meets Mega Man. There are five stages and each sub boss directly before the main boss will drop a new weapon power up, that you can change to by going into a Blaster Master styled inventory screen. Your advanced guns all use up ammo, but ammo drops from enemies are very frequent. What's not frequent? Health drops, through my whole run I only saw health drops from enemies... twice. And the second time I grabbed one I laughed at how it restored like half a hit point. Checkpoints are fair though. A game over will throw you back to the beginning of the level, but there are unlimited continues from what I saw, unlike the case with Blaster Master. Difficulty isn't bad at all and a lot of the bosses were pretty easy if you're good with jumping in Mega Man and know how to time 2-3 shots in one line of fire. The final boss in this was easy to break, just like the one in Blaster Master. I used the grenade launcher and shot at its face, while the boss kneeled down trying to punch me and never moved again... so I just easily kept jumping and shot him in the face a bunch. The platforming is a little wonky though and especially noticeable in the final level stage 5, which is an auto scrolling level with lots of platforming, falling blocks and platforms. Sometimes you magically make a jump that you visually should not have, but you kind of just clip up to the top of the ledge. The falling was really weird at times. I enjoyed this level but no denying it was a little finicky. Overall a very simple run and gun platformer with amazing graphics and music. I had fun with this but the game does leave a little to be desired, it seems like a brief short effort and is pretty bare bones. But then again Batman is as well for the most part. It just seems like with a few extra levels or something else this game could be a lot more and bigger in scope. Maybe losing the Terminator license made development a little troublesome and they had to scramble a bit. Who knows. I still highly recommend it for run and gun genre fans. Very easy to knock out within an hour.
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Post by Ex on Jan 8, 2018 10:24:07 GMT -5
The only way I know of to beat the Joker that works for me, is to stand next to him and punch him as fast as possible. Just pure brute force and hope you get lucky. Granted, that was a long time ago. I might be able to batarang him to death these days. >Journey to Silius Good review, and as I said over in that other place; I love the OST. Especially this track. I looked at my records, and the last time I beat JtS myself was in 2015. These were the notes I left myself: Journey to Silius is a rather tough run 'n' gun platformer with a futuristic theme and great music. Seriously the music in this game is wonderful and some of the NES's best. A lack of extra lives, rare health restoratives, and limited ammo for your weapons aren't much help against the onslaught of aggressive robots and perilous pitfalls throughout. While the player is given unlimited continues, these continues force the player back to the beginning of the current stage each time. Thanks to tight controls, a pounding OST, and huge bosses to fight, one may find enough personal impetus to see this journey's end. I guess JtS is harder than I remembered!
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Post by toei on Jan 8, 2018 11:59:17 GMT -5
Man, this Journey to Silius track is awesome.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 8, 2018 12:48:08 GMT -5
I guess it wasn't TOO hard coming out of Batman haha, but yeah. Still isn't super easy. The giant warship boss was a pain and seemed like pure luck when you had to go underneath it while ducking and hoping those blue flames don't randomly decide to hit you.
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Post by Ex on Jan 8, 2018 15:47:50 GMT -5
I'm interested to see if you end up beating Batman: Return of the Joker on NES. That game has absolutely astounding graphics for its platform. But holy hell is it HARD.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 8, 2018 16:22:02 GMT -5
That game starts hard, but gets easier in my opinion. If you can make it through that blimp stage, you're (mostly) golden.
You know what? I might give that one a go again after I finish Phantom 2040.
EDIT: Aaaand it's done.
So, for those that don't know, this was based on a short-lived cartoon series. It's also, if you squint really hard, a bit of a Metroid clone. You choose stages on the overworld, but you can backtrack to other areas, and some of them even change a bit depending on your actions. Phantom has the Metroid-style somersault jump as well, and a pretty cool grappling hook that is tough to use, but very useful (and necessary). You'll upgrade the length on it, find items that reduce your weapon energy usage (of which there are many), get powerups like shields and whatnot, pick up the equivalent of Mega Man's E-Tanks and W-Tanks... there's a lot going on here.
On top of that, the game actually has a branching storyline. Your path can lead to quite a few different endings depending on the path you take. I haven't taken all the paths; I followed a walkthrough so I'd only have to go through once.
The real question, though, is how good is it compared to Super Metroid? It's... well, it's good, but doesn't hold a candle to it. The game's areas are labyrinthine and confusing, and there's no map here to help out. Worse, much is hidden behind breakable walls, or progression takes the form of gate puzzles. While Super Metroid also has its gate puzzles, those are gated by interesting abilities. Here, it's just destroy a machine to open a gate.
Enemy variety is a problem, too. You'll take out a few forms of humans, and a lot of mechs. It's nowhere near as diverse as you'd like. And the graphics are serviceable, but not amazing. It reminds me of most other Western-developed games at the time (not sure why, but the Sega CD Terminator comes to mind. Music is hit and miss, but there was one track I liked a lot.
I'd also note that all those E-Tanks the game hands out (along with lives if you poke around as well) are very necessary. You're going to take a lot of hits, with the only way to alleviate it is a limited-use, easily-missable Shield item, or a damage reducer that is very well hidden. Most spots, you can mostly brute-force your way through if you know what you're doing. You can particularly do this if you've upgraded your weapons significantly.
Really, the biggest problem with the game is that it gets close enough to Super Metroid to draw those comparisons, but that lack of polish really doesn't help it compare well. There are a few areas where you really start to get in to the groove, but then you get knocked right back into some less interesting layouts again. I'd recommend it if you're desperate for something else in the Metroid style, but if you haven't for some reason played Super Metroid (or Demon's Crest), then go do that first. With the vague guides out there, expect this to take 8-10 hours if you're trying to be thorough. (The longplay can't be trusted!) I'd give this puppy a 7/10.
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Post by Ex on Jan 10, 2018 12:44:27 GMT -5
"8-10 hours if you're trying to be thorough." WOW that's a lot of meat for a licensed platformer. I had no idea that game was as complex as it is, nor that it's a "metroidvania". Thanks for the review.
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