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Post by Xeogred on Mar 1, 2019 19:25:04 GMT -5
I'm not sure about the quality of some of the back-ports, but Sonic the Hedgehog 1-2 on the SMS are amazing! Tons of new levels and drastic changes, they're both practically brand new games and work really well. The controls, graphics, music, everything holds up real nicely. Probably the cliche' recommendation for this thread, but yeah seriously... any fan of the classic Sonic games that hasn't played these, definitely needs to check them out. They've aged a lot better than the Game Gear ones to me too.
I never knew they existed until just a few years ago, so there's no nostalgia talking here too. Played them both and had a blast.
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Post by Ex on Mar 1, 2019 21:25:43 GMT -5
Probably the cliche' recommendation for this thread It's not cliche to me at least, I've not played any of the Sonic entries on Master System. I plan to give them a go this month.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 2, 2019 15:51:56 GMT -5
I beat not one, but two games last night! That's a pretty good start. First, let's start with Danan: The Jungle Fighter. I was very tempted to put the game down at the start. It kinda feels janky all the way around. But once you get used to the odd controls, it works okay for the most part. You take control of the titular Danan, looking to avenge the death of your adoptive pop Jimbo. You get sucked into stopping a ritual from legend about an ancient evil and... yeah, you've never heard any of this before. That being said, there are some light RPG elements here, so if you explore, you can level up, raise your max HP, and all that jazz. I never really used the animal helpers at all, but I just read toei's entry over on HG101, and apparently the healing monkey would have been useful. Well, if the game weren't so easy. I mean, you could screw up, but chances are, you'll have at least an elixir in your possession most of the time if you happen to get in trouble against the bosses. Even the last boss is pretty pitiful: I found a spot to just move close and keep stabbing, and for quite a while, he repeatedly missed me before finally changing up his pattern. By then, it was too late. See ya later, "ultimate evil". You probably need to work on your strats when our Tarzan-esque fighter can take you down without really blinking. You've actually got a lot of mobility, which strangely adds to the feeling of weirdness. The physics are just odd in that way. Also, you're armed with a dinky knife, so you don't have much attack range. But in keeping with everything else, the range is actually a smidge more than what it looks like, and hit boxes also extend from enemies a bit more than you'd expect. You'll need to adjust, but once you do, it's fine. I liked the game well enough, although I think it was much too short and "off" to be some sort of instant classic. More of a deep cut, in that while it might not be great, it's still an above average time. I'll award Danan a 6/10. The other game I played through was Aladdin. So I'd actually played a bit of the game before, but not stuck past the first stage. See, the game starts you out in an auto-scroller where you're jumping hazards trying to escape from the guards. Then you're on the rooftops with the princess, and I'm like, "Is this it? Just auto-scrolling stuff? Eh." I moved on, but guess what? It actually turns into a Prince of Persia-esque platformer. Now we're talking. While this never actually gets amazing, I did find myself quite enjoying it overall. Throw in a few magic carpet rides (duh!) and a fight against Jafar, and you've got a pretty solid little game here. It follows the movie quite closely, as well, and I found the graphics quite charming. Even though I don't care for the SMS sound chip, the ending music even sounded pretty nice in spots. All in all, if you want an easy-ish PoP game, or liked the movie (I do, although I haven't seen it in a long time), then give this one a go. I'd say... 7/10. Good, not great, but worth your time.
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Post by toei on Mar 2, 2019 18:56:10 GMT -5
Sarge I was gonna recommend Aladdin to you, but you got ahead of me. I've played a bit of Monster Land. It's an interesting experiment - adding significant adventure /arpg elements to an arcade platformer - but I'm not sure it works. The timers are really tight and you only have one extra life, as far as I can tell. I would have preferred a longer, continuous adventure in the vein of the later Monster World games rather than a game where you die and start over a bunch of times but still have to worry about picking up coins and buying equipment (though you can't really grind for coins, since you don't have the time). I'm still interested in seeing more of what the game has to offer. I think I've made it to Stage 4 or 5 so far.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 2, 2019 19:37:30 GMT -5
Interesting. The Master System version never came out over here, but the Game Gear version looks to be the same game, although obviously chopping off a lot of the play field. I actually own this one boxed! I picked it up some time last year, and that's probably where I remember the auto-running sequence from, and also probably why I didn't stick with it: I was really just making sure the games I bought worked.
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Post by toei on Mar 2, 2019 19:40:02 GMT -5
The reduced view would probably make the auto-running part a lot more annoying. All of the game, actually.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 2, 2019 20:18:12 GMT -5
That chime sound effect in Alex Kidd in Miracle World... YEOUCH!
Anyways...
Like NES beat em' ups, it's really basic and 90% of the time you might just be doing jump kicks to enemies as they appear on and off the screen repeatedly. But yeah I was pretty impressed with it. I've always heard bad things about the SMS version of 2, but now that I'm looking at it I'm wondering why I ignored it. Looks completely fine to me. I can see how enthusiasts aren't too happy with the music downgrade though.
Maybe I'm thinking of my reaction to Streets of Rage on the Game Gear... I'm not touching that one.
I'm hoping I get that 8bitdo Genesis controller sometime soon this month. I want to hit up Aleste and Streets of Rage 2 for now.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 3, 2019 22:53:41 GMT -5
Knocked out Spellcaster. Will talk about tomorrow. It was decent enough.
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Post by Ex on Mar 3, 2019 23:03:03 GMT -5
Tonight I made it through three of the zones in Sonic The Hedgehog Master System version. Saved at the beginning of the fourth zone (Labyrinth). So far this has been a mostly enjoyable platformer.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 4, 2019 13:14:09 GMT -5
Let's talk about Spellcaster for a bit. As toei 's article points out, this game is actually a heavily-localized version of a game based on the Peacock King manga/anime. It takes the form of an adventure game coupled with a side-scrolling platformer. While I applaud the game's ambition in combining the styles, it honestly lacks any depth and often contains some frustrating backtracking. So how does the side-scrolling hold up? Well, it's not actively bad, but Kane moves sluggishly, especially with his jumping, which can cause some unfortunate deaths. Enemies can (and will) ride you right down into pits. They also tend to come in large waves, so progress can be very halting, especially in later areas like the Pyramid, which also happens to be a very large maze full of dead ends. You'll want to explore it, though, as there are four (!) upgrades to your character, two permanent attack and defense boosts each. To go along with the title, though, you definitely have access to a lot of spells. This range from your boilerplate attack spells (some of which are useful and some of which are meh), to a healing spell, or even the ability to fly. This one finds importance later on, and that particular section might be the most frustrating of the game, since getting hit will send you plummeting to your doom. It can be hard to recast in time before you hit the lava. Most bosses are quite simple, though. Between your healing ability and just offensive power in general if you've been exploring, you can tank nearly anything. And even if you can't, the game is awfully nice with checkpointing. Get through a section and you'll continue there, and if you reach a boss, you can continue right there, with full health. There is no penalty for dying, other than realizing that your magic power does not get refilled. So if you're in a tight spot already, it might be better to just take a death instead of wasting precious casting ability. Localization falls into the bin you'd expect from the time: it gets most of the points across, but not always the finer details. There's also a bit of a plot oddity if you die to a certain boss, but I don't want to spoil that. Let's just say that it could use a retranslation overall. It sounds like I'm overly hard on the game, but I still think overall it will give an above-average time. I think I'll give it a 6.5/10. It has enough going for it to rise above the failings of both of its modes, but it still doesn't really excel. This isn't an ActRaiser in disguise or something. (Side note: I did try a bit of Mystic Defender after this, but I'm not sure how I feel about that one yet, either. It feels a lot more arcade-y, which has positives and negatives.) (Second side note: I also finished Ninja Gaiden, but I've got lots of work to do, so talking about that will have to wait!)
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