Club Retro 2018: Natsume November
Nov 8, 2018 2:02:20 GMT -5
Post by toei on Nov 8, 2018 2:02:20 GMT -5
I'm gonna say, though, that S.C.A.T. is a legit shmup. I played it a bit more and made it to the Level 3 boss. I'd rate it at about Trouble Shooter/Battle Mania's level (but not BM2's). But man, the sheer cruelty of not even giving you a checkpoint for a multi-part boss like that after such a long level. It's just asinine.
Mitsume Ga Tooru is definitely not bad, either, and I bet all the NES Mega Man fans here will like it. I wish the weapon upgrades were permanent, though, because the basic weapon is just weak. I like to have more control over my character normally (crouching/ducking especially is hard for me to do without), but within its limits, it's pretty well-designed. Those other weapons make the boss battles go by much faster, though I still feel that those I've fought have too much HP. There's a part in Level 3 where I just don't know what to do, tough. There are sections of the ceiling that come down and you have to jump from platform to platform while they're up, but the third section has this huge gap that doesn't seem jumpable. I know you can throw your ankh or whatever and jump on it, but the timing seems extremely finicky and I wonder if that's actually what they expect you to do there. I might just end up watching a let's play to see how to get past that part.
EDIT - Just read the hardcoregaming101 article on S.C.A.T. It's a good one. Some things I learned: the composer used to work for Konami, including on Contra NES, so Xeogred's ears didn't lie; and the game was apparently much harder in Japan in various haphazard ways, similar to what Sarge was describing with Power Blazer. Also the characters are only Arnold and Sigourney in the US version. The whole "turning protagonists to Arnold Scharzenegger" thing was definitely a Natsume US marketing tactic and not something the developers came up with. Oh, and the PAL release is called "Action in New York", which is both super generic and pretty misleading (you'd expect yellow cabs and pizzerias, not jetpacks and spaceships).
Actually, I learned a third thing: the original arcade cabinet of Forgotten Worlds featured a special rotating device which let you control the game with ease, rather than assigning that function to regular buttons like the console ports. Must have been much easier (and more fun) to play. Looks like this (seems like you rotate the fire button):
Mitsume Ga Tooru is definitely not bad, either, and I bet all the NES Mega Man fans here will like it. I wish the weapon upgrades were permanent, though, because the basic weapon is just weak. I like to have more control over my character normally (crouching/ducking especially is hard for me to do without), but within its limits, it's pretty well-designed. Those other weapons make the boss battles go by much faster, though I still feel that those I've fought have too much HP. There's a part in Level 3 where I just don't know what to do, tough. There are sections of the ceiling that come down and you have to jump from platform to platform while they're up, but the third section has this huge gap that doesn't seem jumpable. I know you can throw your ankh or whatever and jump on it, but the timing seems extremely finicky and I wonder if that's actually what they expect you to do there. I might just end up watching a let's play to see how to get past that part.
EDIT - Just read the hardcoregaming101 article on S.C.A.T. It's a good one. Some things I learned: the composer used to work for Konami, including on Contra NES, so Xeogred's ears didn't lie; and the game was apparently much harder in Japan in various haphazard ways, similar to what Sarge was describing with Power Blazer. Also the characters are only Arnold and Sigourney in the US version. The whole "turning protagonists to Arnold Scharzenegger" thing was definitely a Natsume US marketing tactic and not something the developers came up with. Oh, and the PAL release is called "Action in New York", which is both super generic and pretty misleading (you'd expect yellow cabs and pizzerias, not jetpacks and spaceships).
Actually, I learned a third thing: the original arcade cabinet of Forgotten Worlds featured a special rotating device which let you control the game with ease, rather than assigning that function to regular buttons like the console ports. Must have been much easier (and more fun) to play. Looks like this (seems like you rotate the fire button):