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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jun 9, 2019 11:01:11 GMT -5
Xeogred
Have you tried R-Type Dimensions? As I recall you can play with a more forgiving continue system. And Holy Diver is, indeed, kind of bad. It's a game that deserves to be dead and buried, but the "collectors" and YouTube dorks keep resurrecting it.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 9, 2019 12:23:01 GMT -5
Xeogred
Have you tried R-Type Dimensions? As I recall you can play with a more forgiving continue system. And Holy Diver is, indeed, kind of bad. It's a game that deserves to be dead and buried, but the "collectors" and YouTube dorks keep resurrecting it. Hmm, Infinite Mode does respawn you instantly in a level, so that's neat. Maybe I'll grab this bundle on a sale or something. The new graphics/music look pretty average though haha, glad you can switch to the original stuff.
For the R-Type World rom I have though, there's a dip switch to turn on invincibility. Just tested it and it works nicely. Doesn't look like R-Type II has this though from what I have. This is the first time I've started looking at these dip switch options actually, pretty cool stuff in there.
Good quote on that graphics toei . Irem definitely excels in that area, but sounds like they forgot other areas of development in a lot of games.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 9, 2019 13:41:56 GMT -5
I still like Holy Diver, even as I admit its flaws (the ungodly difficulty chief among them).
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 9, 2019 13:50:11 GMT -5
Just knocked out Super R-Type. Defaults to Easy, used save states and took about 32 minutes.
The graphics are top notch as expected and this OST is awesome! The slowdown is pretty severe though and changes depending on the weapon you favor, the blue laser spread shot slowed most of the game down to a crawl haha. I'm usually tolerant of a lot of slowdown but even I have to admit, it's pretty extreme here and wasn't something I remembered much. The final level was super uninteresting and I think another original one not from the arcade version of 2. This level is just one straight hallway with no obstacles at all except for all the enemies pouring in from above and below. An interesting level would have been nice. It's funny how you can one shot some bosses with the fully charged up shot in their face. Overall, this is still a cool SNES shmup I'd say and worth checking out.
I got to level 3 in R-Type III and yeah, this game is brutal and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Production wise it seems really top notch and is a 1994 title. It's cool to see a console original R-Type and this one lets you select from three different option/pod types. I stuck with the classic weapon selection. Right off the bat, I hate the first level because it's chalk full of super FX effects that are more annoying than cool and this level just seems super long. Has a lot of the moving level parts too, like you're traversing by a huge starship. The R-Type series seems obsessed with these levels and I've never liked them much. But the second level had even weirder crap going on, like unbreakable walls that only acid drops from the ceiling can break for you to get through, then there was this one wall that I had no idea how to break down... except for letting my pod clip through the wall just enough to hit the weakpoint so it would blow that wall up. Not sure if that makes sense, but I'd be shocked if that was intentional, because I don't think you can get past it without a pod. There was some big weird unique enemy monster near this part and I thought, maybe he has to eat up the wall for you to get through, so I tried keeping him alive after loading a save state... and he did nothing for the wall. The way level 3 starts off, I can just tell it's going to be one of those moving level types again that'll probably annoy me. But I might pick it up again and beat with save states, lol.
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Post by Ex on Jun 9, 2019 14:08:03 GMT -5
At this point I've got 2.5 hours in Disaster Report, which means I'm about halfway done I guess.
I've been pretty impressed with the level and scenario designs in this game, it can definitely have you feeling tense at times. Or pissed when a concrete beam falls out of nowhere and crushes you to death.
This is far from a polished experience, but I honestly can't recall playing anything quite like this. The closest thing would be Disaster: Day of Crisis, but that came out after Disaster Report, and is much more gamey than this.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 9, 2019 14:09:32 GMT -5
Your description of the game has me very intrigued. I actually did hit up the retro game store about twenty minutes away in the hopes they might have the game. No dice. I'm actually okay with no combat and lots of exploration platforming and whatnot.
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Post by Ex on Jun 9, 2019 14:21:57 GMT -5
Sarge Yes there's no combat at all so far. The few people I've met in game have either joined me in attempting to survive together, or were already dead from the earthquakes. Although I saw someone get shot by a shady government(?) agent, so there's some nefarious stuff going on in the background. This is very much a "show don't tell" type of plot portrayal. So far I've spent my time trying to escape the earthquake zone with others. It's all about navigating dangerous disaster scenarios, and utilizing whatever you can find to overcome them. Like using a firetruck ladder to cross a ravine, or taking advantage of a tipped over building to climb as a ramp. This game has multiple endings as well, and I've been picking up on the tells. You often have the option to do something selfish, or be unselfish. I'm guessing the less selfish you are, the better ending you'll get. For example the girl I rescued, I always let her go down ladders ahead of me, so she doens't have to worry about me looking up her dress. Or leaving cash in registers in evacuated buildings, stuff like that. The game pays attention to weird details. Puzzles can be interesting, as the inventory system allows combining items to create new items, stuff like that. I'll say that when I first started playing Disaster Report, I thought it was freaking terrible. But the longer I play it, the more interesting and complex it becomes. I'm not sure if I'd call this a hidden gem yet, but it's definitely a wholly different experience. For example, I don't know any other game that let's you save your progress at drinking water fountains.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 9, 2019 15:36:36 GMT -5
Were Irem allergic to Sega? Barely did anything with them.
I looked up Rocky Rodent on SNES... yikes.
Looks like the bulk of their titles are arcade, NES, MSX, and TG16 for the older stuff.
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Post by toei on Jun 9, 2019 16:12:36 GMT -5
Were Irem allergic to Sega? Barely did anything with them.
I looked up Rocky Rodent on SNES... yikes.
Looks like the bulk of their titles are arcade, NES, MSX, and TG16 for the older stuff.
As far as I can tell, Irem may actually not have made a single game for a Sega console. The Master System ports of Vigilante and R-Type were probably just licensed to Sega, since Sega published them, and either programmed by Sega as well, as they often did at the time (Yuji Naka programmed the Genesis Ghouls 'N Ghosts port, for example, not anyone at Capcom), or contracted out to a third party. The Saturn port of In The Hunt was done by SIMS and published by Imagineer. And I think that's it? So it seems Irem never actually developed or published a game on a Sega system, just licensed games to them or a third-party publisher on a few rare occasions. It's probably the same for whatever Irem game you see on the MSX, X68000, or other computers. There is a distant business link between the two companies that I came across while doing a bunch of research into their history on Japanese wikipedia, though. The company that owned and operated Irem for most of the '80s and '90s, Nanao Electric, specialized in manufacturing CRT screens at the time, and the screens on Sega's first three taikan games, ie the elaborate, "physical" cabinets for Hang-On, Space Harrier and OutRun, were made by Nanao. They probably did so for other arcade companies as well, even as those companies competed with their subsidiary Irem in the arcade market.
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Post by Ex on Jun 10, 2019 9:39:31 GMT -5
So I just spent an hour writing a big ass review for Disaster Report, then using the preview pane caused this forum's amateur hour code to freeze into an unrecoverable state, and I lost the whole fucking thing. Considering said review was for Disaster Report, a game itself full of nefarious and awful programming, that irony does not escape me.
Anyway, I am not about to write all that stuff again, sorry guys. The really short thoughts...
I did, in fact, beat Disaster Report last night. On one hand I deeply respect Irem's ambition here; this was a very forward thinking and innovative concept. On the other hand, Irem's botched development proved habitually inept. Technical shortcomings consistently undermine the entire experience to a highly detrimental degree. (This is the only PS2 game that has ever crashed on me, as in the PS2 itself froze up.) From a bird's eye view Disaster Report looks like an interesting and entertaining game, but after slogging through the entire experience ground level, I can assure you it isn't. There are large portions of this game that are the exact opposite of interesting and entertaining. The awful camera and abysmal framerates especially guarantee a bad time. Certain scenario designs were just painful to endure regardless of the lack of technical prowess. I do NOT recommend this aggravating unpolished turd to anyone. I'm sad to report that "Disaster Report" is in fact a disaster.
Ex's time to beat: 6 hours and 15 minutes (no walkthrough) Ex's rating: 4/10 -
I have zero interest in playing Raw Danger next, instead I'll hit up some Irem arcade titles for the rest of the month.
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