Sumez:
1. Agreed that the description was a bit confusing, but I was thinking of enemies' behaviour as well and I was thinking that the stage is "bounded" for one specific reason. Let's see if I get this one straight:
Enemies move within the stage freely, and generally follow certain loops unless you actively engage them. For instance, the ninja-like fellows on ST 1 keep going downward unless you kill/attack them (...if I recall correctly). When you force the stage background to repeat, they appear again from the top side and go downward again. In a sense, they are "forced" to remain within the stage and if they go off the screen because of the camera's focus on the player, they re-appear on screen by following a given trajectory.
Of course the precise explanation is [insert your explanation here], but I kept thinking about the stage design without thinking about the fact that the stage actually repeats infinitely, simply enough (a rather "duh, obviously so" moment
).
2. Re: genres, you say "it's a fairly straight action platformer", but yeah, "action+platform" was the point of contention.
Male parent was for the "action with funny camera", older brother of the male parent for the "platformer repeating levels", me for "action+platform with unique scrolling mechanics". They are convinced that "single screener" games somehow form a genre, too, and that games can either be platformers (e.g.,
Bubble Bobble) or action games (e.g.
Rolling Thunder), but not both
3. Re:
Pac-Man...ah-ha, yes! Ironically, I was sifting through
Pac-Man games in the time between my post and your post
Though in Pac-Man I'd say that we have a prototype of the mechanic: eat the power pill, get X seconds to eat up Ghosts and get more and more points as a result. I was thinking that the chaining mechanic in
TBB is perhaps closer to shmups (think of
Don Pachi), though, for the following reason.
In the Pachis and similar shmups, the chain starts once the character sprite hits an enemy and lasts half a second or so, unless the character sprite extends it by hitting one or more enemies (or destroyable background/etc.). In
TBB, the chain starts when the character sprite collects the mini-enemies after killing them, but seems to otherwise follow the same rule.
I mean: if you collect one mini-enemy, wait 1 second or so, then collect another mini-enemy, you get 100+100 points. If you collect enemies within an allotted amount of time (i.e. "chain"), you get 100+200 points (more for more mini-enemies).
So, in both games (types), the chain is based on repeating one action (killing enemies/collecting enemies) to extend the chain time, rather than on doing one action (eating up enemies) within a given interval of time (as in
Pac-Man...well, the "classic" ones: I never played any Pac game released in the third millennium!).
4. Ah-ah, thanks. My NES/FC knowledge is really tiny, so of course I didn't know it.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.