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Post by Sarge on Sept 4, 2020 15:09:45 GMT -5
I love Gunstar Heroes, but I'm pretty sure a few folks around here don't care much for it. It's not a terribly difficult game on the normal difficulty, especially if you spam lightning + homing. I've made it a point to use other weapons to up the challenge in my more recent runs.
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2020 15:21:00 GMT -5
Xeogred Sunset Riders was even 4-players in the arcades, which was pretty much Konami's trademark in that era. There are a couple of "spiritual sequels" (Mystic Riders and Cowboys of Moo-Mesa), but for some reason neither is half as good.
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 4, 2020 15:39:56 GMT -5
Capcom did have Street Fighter II which did gangbusters, but if I had to guess beyond that I wonder if Konami had more games and success in arcades in comparison? I know SEGA did really well in the arcade scene.
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Post by Ex on Sept 4, 2020 15:44:47 GMT -5
I wonder if that's why I fall off Gunstar Heroes. I personally found GH to be considerably overrated. I don't mean from a technical perspective -Treasure were great at the technical stuff- rather a game design one. I enjoyed GH's GBA sequel Gunstar Super Heroes considerably more than the original. I've coin-fed my way through the first four or five of them. I thought MS1 and MSX were cool. But really the sequels are so similar they all just blur together. Way too much sprite reuse with no significant innovation to speak of. But all that sprite work remains highly impressive to this day.
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 4, 2020 15:50:16 GMT -5
I think that's a good point about Metal Slug. With such a simple formula, the novelty wears off after you've played an entry or two. I'm pretty sure I liked MS1, MSX, and maybe MS2 the most myself. But yeah if you asked me to look at random pictures of them all, I'd fail to put them in order. I still want 6 NES Contra's though.
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2020 16:34:56 GMT -5
Capcom did have Street Fighter II which did gangbusters, but if I had to guess beyond that I wonder if Konami had more games and success in arcades in comparison? I know SEGA did really well in the arcade scene. My understanding is the 4 arcade giants of the Japanese scene in the early and mid '90s were Sega, Capcom, Konami and Namco. Namco was probably a bit behind in the early '90s, but they went hard into 3D shortly after and became Sega's main arcade rival, which is also why all their big 3D arcade titles became some of the biggest early Playstation titles (the Tekken series, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis - direct answers to Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA and Virtua Cop, all of which came first). Capcom had a bunch of fighters and beat-'em-ups beyond Street Fighter 2, though, so I'm sure they were doing great in the early '90s. The hits dried up on the arcade fronts later on, though, once 2d fighters weren't that popular anymore and beat-'em-ups had died. Likewise, Konami were at their best in the early '90s, probably had a bit of a lull, and I guess Beatmania was huge later on.
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 4, 2020 16:54:02 GMT -5
10/10 post toei, cool history lesson. I guess it is easy to forget about Namco somewhat when just thinking of the early 90's, but before and after that era I can see how they were doing good for sure. Some of those franchises (Tekken and Ridge Racer) outliving Sega's. I always think of Konami and Capcom when it comes to the big licenses that probably helped them hit the market over here, Konami especially with their hands in Simpsons, X-Men, TMNT, etc.
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2020 17:31:03 GMT -5
10/10 post toei, cool history lesson. I guess it is easy to forget about Namco somewhat when just thinking of the early 90's, but before and after that era I can see how they were doing good for sure. Some of those franchises (Tekken and Ridge Racer) outliving Sega's. I always think of Konami and Capcom when it comes to the big licenses that probably helped them hit the market over here, Konami especially with their hands in Simpsons, X-Men, TMNT, etc. One thing I remember being surprised reading is that the first Japanese arcade giant was actually Taito, in the late '70s and early '80s. Space Invaders was a huge craze over there (and an international hit), and for a while, they were the leading arcade developer & publisher in Japan. But by the '90s I can't imagine that they were still doing that well, since I can't think of any major Taito hit from that period. Maybe they had some big games in Japan that I don't know about, though. Personally, I'd say their downfall was quality. I just don't find their games to be as good on average as the output of those 4 other companies. Also, I don't think you can judge the success of a Sega franchise by its longevity. When Sega was Sega, they were always trying to move forward and create new series and games, and didn't care to keep their existing series going for longer than they had to. People complain about that a lot on the Internet, but I think it's the right attitude. I personally find it sad that Nintendo's biggest games are still whichever Mario and Zelda came out last, a hundred million years after the first games in each series.
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Post by Sarge on Sept 5, 2020 17:23:15 GMT -5
I think I know why I don't care for Mystic Warriors as much as Sunset Riders, and it comes down to how many shots you can have on screen at once. It feels like your shots get quite unresponsive because of the bullet limitations, and as such it doesn't feel as fluid. With just a few tweaks, the game absolutely would have been my jam. I hesitate to call this a run-and-gun, but I guess it does fit. It's Konami's arcade adaptation of G.I. Joe. It's more a Cabal-like, except you're constantly moving forward, making it more of a rail-shooter Cabal. Unfortunately, outside of the neat scaling for the time and the very colorful, ridiculous setpieces and graphics, it's a fairly one-note affair. Run forward, shoot stuff. There's not even (as far as I could tell) a good evasive move like Cabal or Wild Guns gives, which makes the gameplay feel a little technique-less. Still, I'd bet with four players, it was received at least decently well, although by '92 I'm pretty sure G.I. Joe's star had waned quite a bit. (Or maybe not. I wasn't aware that a Series 2 cartoon run went from 1990-1992.)
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 6, 2020 16:26:29 GMT -5
Super Turrican (NES)
1h24m
Yep, this is Super Turrican on the NES, all made by one man, Manfred Trenz.
A very unique NES game for sure. This is apparently a redux of elements and levels from both Turrican I and II. Manfred Trenz being one of the original creators. The design ethos of this one is definitely more like the early Amiga Turrican's and very European for sure. All the levels are labyrinth's with a lot of verticality. Reward for exploration is sparse, as you'll maybe find another power up box for weapons, health, or a shield, or just find more collectible orbs like typical coins that give you an extra life when you get a hundred. That said, out of the dozen or so levels here there were really only two where I had to backtrack a bit and find some kind of odd path to continue on, so it was never a huge issue. There were some linear levels, interestingly enough not from left to right, but vertical stages that went up a lot. The scrolling and scope of these levels is immensely impressive for the NES. I definitely take issue with how far over you need to be to get the screen scrolling though, it's definitely way more than the usual and depending on the enemy types in a level, you might have to slowly take a few steps at a time while constantly blasting your weapon so you take out enemies that immediately spawn close to your face. The spreadshot was my favorite weapon per usual, though I figure the two other types maybe dealt more damage to bosses. Some of the bosses, including the final boss, were comically spongey... the final boss took forever, not due to difficulty, but just had way too much dang health. There wasn't a boss every stage and sometimes they were even just in the middle of the level which was interesting.
The controls are kind of complex. By holding down the fire button and standing in place for a bit, your weapon becomes a single stream that you can manually aim. But you'll need to often hold down this button while moving to run and jump further. The platforming is weird and tricky at times but wasn't a huge issue. You'll just see a lot of having to jump out from one platform only to maneuver back to where you were a story above, platforms often stacked in the same lane. Holding down and pushing start puts you into the Samus ball mode, which seems to give you invincibility too in most cases... I took advantage of that during one boss. Pushing start by itself will use your Break/Finite power up that makes your attacks stronger for a bit. I'm not sure how you got more of these in the levels, but I usually had 1-3 to use at a time. Select pauses the game...
Hardcore Turrican fans say this is one of the better ports of the Amiga games, like I said above probably because it's extremely European. What's fascinating is that I'm playing Gunlord X right now which a lot of people say is basically Turrican 4 in everything by name. That game absolutely plays just like this one and the earlier Turrican's. Enormous levels with a lot of ground to cover. I'm admittedly not always in the mood for this kind of thing, but I was now so I figured it was a good time to give this game another shot and I'm glad I did. Besides the weird screen scrolling though, I also didn't like the lack of checkpoints, because these levels are so huge and it's easy to die in some scenarios. Some stages might even have some instant death pits. Gunlord X respawns you right away if you have a few spare lives and I prefer that for sure. At least in Super Turrican here, I appreciated that enemies didn't seem to respawn when you're traversing these huge maps. So you can take a breather if you need to backtrack some.
I will forever wonder though, the Turrican and or European style is this weird midpoint between purely linear action and a Metroidvania's. I like this game, Gunlord X, and the later Turrican's (Super Turrican 1-2 SNES and Mega, I believe these were probably Japanese/Western influenced in ways), but I always feel like this formula is on the cusp of being something greater. I mean, maybe a Turrican that was a straight up Metroidvania could have been awesome, or there could have been more here to discover at this juncture between styles. Who knows...
Unique game for sure but probably not for everyone.
Chris Hulsebeck is well known for his music on the series, but I have to give huge props to what Manfred Trenz did here since he scored this one personally too. It's got a different flair from both the usual Turrican and NES norm in general.
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