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Rainbow Islands is pretty overrated i have seen quite a ton of footage of this game and i really don't see the appeal with this and it seems way too cryptic and precise to get the good ending the original was pretty cryptic but this one kicks it in overdrive also not much of a upgrade of visuals despite using the more powerful M68000 chip comapred to the original using the Z80.

Bubble Symphony aka Bubble Bobble II is a far surperior and more faithful arcade sequel to the first Bubble Bobble game.

parasol stars also looks to be pretty cool too.

The appeal of RI is a balance of extreme firepower to pinpoint precision, underpinned by relentless rising pressure; a technical intensity rarely approached by other platformers, and frankly, other run/guns and sundry hard scrolling action. It's an uncommonly full-blooded adaptation of STG aggression and risk to the more open-ended, manual-scrolling platformer.

Mitsuji's creation of an equally immediate, compulsive, and unmistakably akin game with a completely unrecognisable system isn't to be viewed as a lack of fidelity. This is the very best sort of sequel. Not taking anything away from Symphony, it's great too. As is Memories, and Parasol, despite its console limitations. It's a super solid series, and RI is simultaneously the most unique, yet emblematic of the lot; that's one hell of a trick to pull off.

Graphically, with the heaping screenloads of shattered rainbows, exploding stars, and spiralling vanquished enemies wiped out in droves by both - I don't know who could ask for more. Unless you despise violent cute 'em ups, eg, you're a closeted flamer! Glorious controlled carnage; near-unmatchably cathartic payoffs for skilled operators. The PCE-CD port would be an excellent junior version, if only the sheer visual overload didn't cause ugly (and dangerous) sprite breakup. Though it's also much easier, so it about evens out.

It's an exceptionally good game. Whether that makes it overrated or whatever, IDGAF. 90% of English-speaking arcade game commentary is clueless vapid shite anyway, tbh.

Like I wouldn't trust this shitbird with a cup of fuckin coffee

EDIT: Wait. WTF. Are you watching videos and forming opinions of entire series based on that? I know I took a dump on this thread's entire genre back on page 1, but that's an internet war crime bro.

Nothing like the ultra clueless "ARCADE GAMES ARE POORLY DESIGNED GARBAGE THAT ONLY EXISTS TO EAT YOUR MONEY" bullshit, right? Yeah, some of them are (yes, that's you, fucking evil Same! Same! Same! 1P version! I still love you for some strange reason~), but every time I see this said it just makes me think that whoever said it is just clueless. Or maybe they got too used to typical modern No Skill No Problem!™ games.

I don't know, I love the fact that I can put my digital money into Kyuukyoku Tiger or Garegga and know that the game is going to completely beat the shit out of me if I am terrible.

Thats exactly what i do that watch plenty of videos of a game or i play these games myself for a extensive amount of time to judge a game.


rainbow islands is not a bad game but bubble symphony looks way more appealing to me. it looks way too cryptic

I feel the same about certain uncommonly arcade-mean home ports like Daimakaimura MD (and, although it's comically inaccurate due to the 3:4 crash zoom, MD Kyuukyoku Tiger) - little carts that whoop asses off the machine like they gettin paid.

And indeed, there's badly-designed arcade games, just like there's badly-designed everything. Imagine the woman of your dreams but she insists on rubbing your nutsack raw with a cheese grater, or playing Gradius III - god fuckin damn you'd run a mile Doesn't mean you join a fuckin monastery, or play Revolution 60 or whatever other godawful shite! GET BALLS Just kidding a Gradius III broad sounds amazing. Probably whip out a pull-start strapon though.

tbh I'm mostly annoyed at our man down under's claim of ACA stuff almost never leaving Japan, Hamster should threaten to sue.



Something I've come to appreciate relatively recently, is the communal spirit these classic Japanese arcade games were designed around. Druaga and Ishtar are the big, iconic examples, with patrons famously filling out questbooks for others to consult. But it's much the same with action games, STGs, puzzlers etc... I think a similar thing occurs today with Miyazaki's Dark Souls et al. Lots of stuff one player won't realistically find, but an entire netplay-enabled community? Odds go way up.

I'm reminded of one dude, I think he was a WR-class Mushi Futari player, who stressed that his runs weren't merely "his," but the result of everyone in his circle chipping in. And another dude who recounted 80s Game Centers, pre-internet, where you'd have "the Salamander otaku" "the Darius otaku," etc, guys who'd nailed down a favourite game and you'd hit up for dem tips.

Anyhoo, this camaraderie is sadly alien to a lot of us outside of Japan, at least in-person; so I don't think there's any shame in asking about RI's gem system, or Garegga's rank, etc etc. Or even looking up a FAQ, if you just want to get going. Chances are the designers wanted you to know this stuff, and you're arriving a couple decades or so late to the party. It's not like looking up spoilers for a movie or something.

As for RI though, I don't remember it being too cryptic - just very unforgiving, with all that firepower at your control, yet the gem system requiring you to make precision shots with precious little room for error. I find BB's item spawning a bit more perplexing, tbh.

Some games, like walking sims, maybe you can determine if they're good or not just by watching footage of them.

But for arcade games, in my opinion of course, you do have to actually play them. How a game "feels" to play just isn't communicated via footage. You can watch footage of Saboten Bombers, Mr. Driller or Vendetta. You can say, "yeah, that looks alright." But you won't feel THE HEAT (kono PRESSURE da) until you're sitting in the thick of the shit! Until you've accidentally blown your ass into the stratosphere from spamming bombs in Saboten, how can you understand when someone tells you the game is exciting? The game doesn't look particularly thrilling. How can you know the thrill of Joust if you've never had a fucking asshole bird land on your head and murder you when you thought you were safe?

Arcade genres used to be the games that were easy to understand. Now, with the advent of gaming "journalism" and walking sims, arcade games are sometimes less approachable. Because you do have to... Actually play them.

This is very inconvenient for my wallet tbqh. It would be nice if I could watch a short video of every arcade game and instantly know which ones I like. But I can't. I do have to play them myself. Plenty of arcade games I thought I would like bounced right off me (Gunnail). Others that I didn't particularly think I'd enjoy stuck to me like glue (Thunder Dragon 1, Raiden 1). You can make educated guesses about stuff like Cave and maybe be right (since all their games are off a fairly comparable quality,) but many arcade brands have such wild variation in quality between titles that you can't tell until you play.

Emulate dem thangs first, bro! I wouldn't have a fraction of the library I do if I couldn't ROMZ it up.

...this would've been for the best, admittedly, but fuck it it's too late. I tell myself "you might get ran over or shot, think of the fousands your family will make!"

I had this confirmed - IN PAINFUL FASHION - when I finally decided to give Hamster a chance, after the PS2 Oretachi Gesen fiasco. "OH WOW THESE R GOOD + CHEAP n' SPACE EFFICIENT" I said "Also, Ikari n Dogosoken n TANK n Psycho Soldier are bussin, so surely, their contemporary and fellow SNK icon Athena will be too"

Athena is fucking godawful Worst game I'd bought in fifteen years. Depressed me just to see it on me dash And that is how I learned, buying bad games, even cheap and tiny ones = God's punishment on mankind 3; IDGAF if it's on sale for 300jpy, unless it's something of lordly SHUMPS REPUTE like Thunder Dragon 2 or TGM (or Gunnail >_> trap15 mah man) I'm gonna rom it up first.

*some really cool dudes like Janet love Athena, and it's fun watching them systematically demolish it, grabbin' up SHAWEEET GEAR and woodchippering stages and bosses in a blur of feathery wings and fiereh blades - but man. The underlying game is so goddamn jank and fundamentally blasphemous, I can't see myself putting the time in. Christ, WTF were they thinking with that left-scrolling camera? "JUST DONT EVER BACKTRACK LMAO" I guess! Good luck with that >_> Probably supposed to watch a bro eat shit whle writing down where the treasures are, huh.

lol Kyuukyoku Tiger on MD is an absolutely hilarious game. On the arcade version I'll just coast through the first half of the game with no problem, and I'll even run right up to some of the bosses and pointblank them without autofire, but on MD FUCK NO!!!!! Too busy cowering in terror at the bottom of the screen and game overing on stage 2 or 3! On its default difficulty MD K Tiger is a vicious and sadistic game that far surpasses the arcade version's difficulty. What a crazy game. I need to go buy a copy!


I don't like going to arcades, and for no reason other than the price, as 100 yen per credit (or 200 yen per credit on any Gradius game at Mikado! lol play that shit on ACA 5 times and it's already going to be cheaper!) adds up very quickly when you are still an inexperienced (or bad/low level, if you prefer) player like me, but I have been trying to go recently, and I've seen some pretty cool stuff, like that guy that counterstopped Slap Fight. I talked to him for a little bit and he told me about his experiences counterstopping the game and stuff, which sort of encouraged me to go for the counterstop on the MD port. Still might go for the stop on PCB, but it's WAY easier with autofire than without, and I don't have autofire on my New Astro City, and even Slap Fight gets pretty nasty once you get to loops 7 and 8. Those bullets become extremely fast, to the point where a Same! 1P comparison is not unjustified!

One of my friends ran into Kamui at Mikado and Kamui taught him how to play Garegga, for that matter, and I've been hoping that eventually I'll run into Kamui as well. No better person to learn from than quite literally the best in the world.

Anyway, fortunately The Full Extent of the Jam offers some great advice; go to Youtube and find a great run of your game and copy the shit out of it!

One of the great happy accidents of that gen Either that, or they knew exactly what they were doing, turning one of Toaplan's milder verts into a nonstop nose-to-nose bulldogging rush. And those explosion SFX and guitar/drum sounds nuke the AC version, too. The bomb's screen-juddering smack was one of my first real "holy crap!" moments, as a little kid... years later I revisited, sure I'd exaggerated it a little. Nope, that thing looks like it's trying to escape the monitor, almost Ketsui bossplosionesque.

I also love how KT's most famed doppelganger, Raiden, ends up practically standing in for Tiger on MD. With the subtly milder (though by no means de-fanged) difficulty, MD Raiden genuinely feels more like a KT port than Treco's madcap 3:4 affair. Wonderful carts both, and perfect illustrations of the charm "arcade imperfect" can possess.

I remember the first time when I dropped a bomb on MD K Tiger.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

"Oh fuck!!!! What is happening?!? Am I equipped with tactical nukes or something in this version? This game is more insane than the arcade version already is!"

Yeah, MD K Tiger is awesome. God damn is it hard by default though! I'm always hiding down there in the corner desperately trying to kill stuff with the diagonal shots from the blue spread and then some helicopter comes out of nowhere and fucking pointblanks me. Good shit! I think I'm going to go play it a bit tonight!

I wouldn't call Rainbow Islands overrated, Fukio Mitsuji still kept the spirit of Bubble Bobble going in RI (it is a sequel after all, and the man did not like making the same game twice), it still used counters for special items, not to mention you really had to work hard to get the silver doors in the boss rooms (Better get those gems in order son, or you get nothing but a fat diamond, and no special item). RI Extra upped the ante even more, feeling harder, giving one hell of a challenge as the harder worlds of Darius related, and Fairyland Story related enemies bombard the first two levels of the game, but the best part is, the items in the bonus rooms can be manipulated to what you want them to be. It all depends on getting the gems in order, but the item in the room also depends on what color gem you pick up before the boss. That's right, you can get the Big Book of Continues in World 1 if you know which gem corresponds to it (Don't try that shit in the Mega Drive version, as it still uses the vanilla RI standard for the secret items, and the Big Book of Continues does absolutely NOTHING, you still have a credit limit, even with the damned book, which in the arcade version LETS you continue in Islands 8-10).

http://tech.quarterarcade.com/tech/MAME ... spx?g=1386 Lines 61-158 explain a LOT about Extra, and item manipulation and what each colored gem delivers in the secret rooms.


Overrated for vanilla RI or Extra? HELL NO! Bonafide classic for a reason.

Dangun Feveron was one of those games that I had poor first impressions of. First couple of playthroughs, wasn't impressed at all. Looks as bland and generic as things come. Nothing particularly special. Would've probably left it at that, if it wasn't made by Cave.

But eventually the thing opened up like a flower on subsequent playthroughs, especially once you've memorized it, and it's one of my favorite games now. I wonder sometimes how many games that are out there that are like this.

DeathSmiles was kind of the inverse; very arty, and on paper had some good ideas. Lots of us here thought it was good when we couldn't play it. While it has one excellent stage, that I might think is my current favorite SHMUP stage, the rest of the game was D- to C tier.

I don't think this is exclusive to games, either. You have to jump into the pool and swim around a little to be very very certain you don't want to be eaten by crocodiles or whatever.



Action RPG's back then seemed to have a tendency to be that way. More time put into powerups and rpg systems, but not much into basic fundamentals.

Hell, not even particularly back then. Hellgate London was shiiite as a shooter, lots of indie action RPG's are subpar at the action part.... I think part of the reason, besides how much content the damn things need over lean minimalist arcade games, is that they might be made by people not into arcade games. Hellgate was certainly made by people who never made a shooter before.

The first breakout clone I made was garbage, solely because you could move the paddle at infinite speed with the mouse. I was thinking of it more like hitting a tennis ball against a wall in real life, your hand moves as fast as it wants to in real life, so! But since I hate breakout games, I wasn't familiar with that basic requirement of the game: the paddle has to have limited speed. Since it was just was crap I threw together in a couple days that I didn't care about, it took me about a decade before I spared the thought on the thing and realized what was wrong with it.

This is something I've come to appreciate with AC-styled (meaning single-sitting) games; taking each as a "course." The most directly applicable are OFC racing games. Sega Rally 1995 - everyone loves it, in arcades, pubs, and airport boarding lounges alike. But you're not going to get everything it has to offer out of your first day, or week, or probably even month with it. You need to learn the course, and how to apply your vehicle to it, before you experience the movingly finessed edge-of-adhesion lines that earned Mizuguchi and co their laurels. Even then, you'll be merely an adept amongst masters. So we keep coming back.

STGs are no exception - in fact, they're very near racers, with no need to invoke avowed hybrids like Kingdom Grandprix and Cloudphobia; Dangun's aggressively lean, mean speedkiller ethos is an easy example.

Batman (FC) is another. Amongst thoroughbred sidescrolling action, it's notably ornery. Bats has a shade of "cinematic" heft, and his weapons are harshly situational, extra muscle memory necessitated by [start]'s active role. But in the context of an assault course - a short, punishing gauntlet of superhuman ninja athleticism - it surpasses the crisper yet relatively detached Ninja Gaiden and Kage. Bats' loving-animated glutes flex with tangible might, powering his way up towering shafts and through body-shredding gears; meddlers gashed at range by preselected arms - a bullet to the head here, a rocket in the nuts there - and crushed at pointblank by the good ol' Bat-Mitts. Experts will combine those with the enemy hitbox cancel, punching clean through foes with unbroken advance.

This touches on the element of volition, again with racing games being an obvious, but by no means only exemplar - the furied waveshredding Dangun shares with Recca and Thunder Dragon 2 another, a furiously-revving feedback loop, beckoning the performer to redline and the edge of obliteration.

There is also the element of RNG, which in this context I think of as a garnish. None whatsoever can be bland. Too much can spoil. Just enough will insulate the course with a layer of volatility, further guarding against rote. Daimakaimura and Ninja Spirit are my desert island sidescrolling action for this reason, nailing a rare balance of consistency and chaos.

This isn't alchemy. Sunsoft's second FC Bats game, Dynamite Batman, roughly fits this model - but its character/course setup is nowhere as well-calibrated, enforcing rote drudge far too often; a middling effort, salvaged by admirably beefy GFX and the talismanic Naoki Kodaka. But these days, when I come across a game that's not immediately engaging for whatever reason - bit bumpy, bit obtuse - I keep this POV in mind, in case it's another FC Batman or Sega Rally or Dangun, as opposed to a mediocre Dynamite Batman, or outright non-starter, ala something I've long since forgotten.



Namco's Dragon Buster (1984, two years before Athena) is an interesting case. Objectively, its handling is almost as jarring, right down to a similarly obtuse jump (and what many call the first-ever doublejump). But between the genuinely invigorating movement speed (it's ridiculous) and bite-sized dungeon raids, peppered with midboss duels decided in victory or death before the BGM can finish slamming into gear, it's a jank I'm more than willing to wrangle under control.

"You're a DARGON BUSTER, a kind of medieval exterminator! You sprint around catacombs mowing down skeltens and wyverns then u find the dargon and chop he mahfuckin head off 4 he loot" Aight, cool! Jank Wranglers, advance!

"You're a loli moeblob, you stagger around breaking blocks like Nelson Mandela in a thong until you find a weapon that doesn't suck, then you do it some more" Oof! "But the dudes who memorised the prison blueprints do the most badass escapes ever, even finding pants!" Oh ok, I'll just watch them then.

The bricks being treasure chests is indeed pretty much the most dogshit thing. It makes sense if you're making a lifesim mining minigame or something, but is way outta place in this genre. Just use chests or the mario style question blocks >_<

Aesthetics are a bit of a problem, too... game's a bit complicated for the youngest ones, but it looks like it's trying to be Pooyan or something.. "World of Forest", c'mon try a little more bro~

... also being able to one-shot bosses is...

I need to take an hour to try out Psycho Soldier one of these days, now that I remember it exists. Man, having way more games than time I want to spend on them is so different from the 90's, it's like we're on a different planet. I played Last Bible all the way to the end back then, man...

Incoming hot take

Skyrim and generally Bethesda's "dumbing down" of the RPG experience...
... went a long way to democratising Western and computer RPGs, taking it out of the exclusive sweaty nerd world, and putting it into people's living rooms.

This is the triumph of Skyrim.

Put downs of Super Castlevania IV and SotN?

Well, you're gonna expect that in a thread like this. I love both of those games.
Anyone think Rondo is overrated? I don't.

Eh, easy targets, particularly being mainstream darlings. I love em too! Not despite IV being the moody unathletic goth kid of the trad set, or SOTN being an unabashed toybox / vacation resort, but because of that.

Anyway I



IMMA KILL YA REAL SLOW



oh nm lmao ( )

I live to see another day!

Morrowind and KOTOR were trailblazers here, both of them got solid Xbox ports back in the day that actually sold well.

Of course, Bioware and Bethesda were always the classic "you're dumbing down my CRPGs!" companies back in the day for old-school graph-paper-and-spreadsheet blobber nerds (most of these people currently swim around in the cesspit of RPGCodex). You want to see some petty vitriol, ask an Ultima/Wizardry fan about Baldur's Gate.

I feel like putting down Super Castlevania IV was the hipster take back in the early 00's when Rondo was relatively unknown. It was the nerd street cred response. And Super IV's been fighting an uphill battle ever since.

Super IV is too mainstream, I guess. I didn't play either of them until many years after the SNES and PC Engine were long obsolete, and Super IV instantly became one of my favorite games, and I make sure to play through it every year. (Whereas I've only played through Rondo twice). Super IV has one of the most lived in game worlds I've ever seen. That atmosphere... whew. And the soundtrack. What an unforgettable experience. One of those evergreen titles for me.

Coincidentally, Super IV shares a lot of the same strengths as SotN.

Yeah I'll give you that one.. but if Morrowind blazed a trail.. Skyrim built the frickin' motorway. Xbox OG had a far lesser install base than Skyrim's casual appeal across two generations of consoles, multiplatform.

Yeah, I missed the train on Morrowind, but I watched a friend play it for a few hours and I knew the tides were changing. My first experience with a true western RPG was Oblivion, and I was hooked.

So we have Jarpigs, Sarpigs and now Warpigs.

Warpigs are the bestpigs.

I aged out of Jarpigs. Some of the old ones are still alright though. The Chrono series and the PS1 era FF games are still awesome, carried in part by some historically good OSTs. Mostly before the anime influence could really take form. Once you get to voice acting, and the anime-isms start becoming really prominent, that's where I check out.

I play a shitload of baldur's gate 1 and 2. Whenever I'm feeling in the mood, I break out a new character, new class combo whatever, and get going on a new run. Super fast text speed with infinite party customization. I'm also a big fan of kotor 2.

Final Fantasy has always been heavily influenced by manga and anime, at least since Nomura started working on them. Remember, this is the same dude who keeps naming those Kingdom Hearts games.

And CHRONO TRIGGER? That game is as anime as it gets! They even got the fucking Dragon Ball guy to design the characters!

The anime influence was always there in there but, in my mind, the level of annoying anime-isms is way worse in modern JRPG's than something like Chrono Trigger.

Could be due to technology issues, but I much prefer the imagined voices I had for the characters in Chrono Trigger rather than what's in FF XIII or Kingdom Hearts or whatever.

Shitty voice acting is shitty voice acting, anime-inspired or not. I don't know what else constitutes an "anime-ism" exactly, but every single major Jarpig of the classic era has an incredibly anime-ass plot and characters. They basically evolved in parallel from that point on; consider franchises like .hack, or Sword Art Online, or even Pokemon.

Also consider that the prevailing style of anime back in the early 90s was a lot different (you would probably consider it less annoying) than what it became by the end of the 90s, and Jarpigs always just did whatever anime was doing.

The average WRPG may or may not be better than the average JRPG, but the top 5% of JRPGs, the ones which are worth playing, annihilate the top 5% of WRPGs, it's not a contest at all. I understand that stuff like this is outright physically painful to listen to, but fortunately none of the games like that have good gameplay that might tempt a sane human into playing it.

I'd take Fallout 1, Baldur's Gate 1, and maaaaybe VTM Bloodlines over the best Jarpig ever (probably some obscure ass MegaTen game?). You can add Jagged Alliance 2 and OG X-Com to that list if you consider either of them RPGs.

If you count immersive sims then Jarpigs don't even crack my top 10. I love some of them dearly (Earthbound and Dragon Quarter are probably my favorites), but they just don't engage me on the same level as a proper Warpig.