arcade-imperfect for the win: quality 'interpretations'?

[Skykid]

Guevara is way better in its FC incarnation IMO. Blistering, tactical, no-holds-barred long haul upscreen murder march.

Just gotta ignore the unlimited lives and forget about score, since they buggered that up real good (inexplicably).

[BIL]

Doesn't the FC version boot you out with a Game Over and "See You Next" after a few credits?

EDIT: nope, I'm wrong. I must've confused it with FC Ikari III, which has a strikingly similar continue screen (pretty sure FC Guevara, Datsugoku and Ikari III shared personnel). Three credits on FC, free play on NES. Led to one of those quality HG101 proclamations. "ITS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FINISH"

[Skykid]

Pretty sure FC Guevara is free play too. Just press start and keep going from the spot you died.

[Stevens]

Ikari III

Loved on the arcade cab with the LS 30 - in a full nelson? No problem!

Now after watching a bit some thoughts:

After the enemy being tricked by "false information" Ralf - who now looks like the love child of Michael Biehn and Sylvester Stallone - wants to start the rescue.

OK great - but grown up me is wondering why you jump out of helicopter with no gear?

[drauch]

why you jump out of helicopter with no gear?

I don't see the problem.

[Skykid]

OK great - but grown up me is wondering why you jump out of helicopter with no gear?

To up the manliness to 11 you go in unarmed.

[BIL]

OK great - but grown up me is wondering why you jump out of helicopter with no gear?

With the aid of a little headcanon, the FC version resolves both the boys' and the commie scumbags' lack of gear!

1] the commie scum are broke as fuck, hence their wacky "ransom president's daughter" plot
2] Ralf and Clark roll up in a tank full of GUNS & AMMO, ready to fuck their shit up Yankee Imperialist Scum-style
3] The enemy's very last rocket, powered by jenkem and catfood, lands on Ralf and Clark's tank

...

A BRAWL LIKE HELL ENSUES

I highly recommend FC Ikari III. It'll perplex at first, but everything clicks once you realise it's as much a topdown shooter as a brawler. Those pussies that run past without fighting? Bonus waves. But for the love of god, read my st2 ninja midboss workaround.

[Stevens]

HEY! I found Ralf and Clarks less cool younger brothers!



It's almost like SNK knew it was dog shit and rather than put their flagship 80's action heroes in they created the generic brand red and blue guy.

[BIL]

FC Datsugoku is pretty good imo (seems like most of SNK's in-house FC ports benefited from the transition), but it's a case of killer engine / mediocre direction. The combat has a wicked sharpness, with a split-second between landing a knockout blow and getting floored yourself. There are also a couple of excellently twitchy boss battles involving grenades!

Problem is the crowd design is entirely too reliant on the "two dudes run in from offscreen, projectile attack and run away" pattern. There's a couple of absolute bullshit cheapshots from motorcycle dudes, too, but at least those can be easily worked around. You'll be seeing those hit n' run duos the whole game.

A talented editor could whip up something really special here (get those fucking bosses into the stages FFS!), but it's still pretty neat as-is. If it were nearer Ikari III than Guevara in price it'd be an easy rec for violence-loving FC enthusiasts... a much harder sell as it is.

Macho as fuck, ofc. Starts off all NAM-1975 "DO I HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE HELL AGAIN???" but sure enough, by the end your dude is chomping a stogie and riding into the sunset with a random busty honey. YEAHHH

[copy-paster]

PCE Salamander comes to mind. Boy that game makes arcade version plays like Zing Zing Zip.

[Sumez]

I'd file PCE Salamander under superior port, rather than quality via imperfection.

[MintyTheCat]

my pce collection, though getting close to 100 games, is still sadly lacking in konami stuff, minus the essential chi no rondo. they're always highly contested and really hard to get cheap! this is of course a must-get, eventually.

You definitely want to get a copy of Gradius 2 on the PCE as it's very well done

I quite like Jackal, Guevara, Heavy-Barrel and the two Gradius games on the FC./ I have not managed to play Salamander on the PCE or FC as yet though as I've been working my way through the Gradius series.

[kitten]

i imagine quite a few people here are familiar with power blade for the nes, and perhaps some of the story behind how it was originally power blazer on the famicom, a surprisingly different game originally developed by natsume for taito. when it came over here, it got changed significantly in localization, and there's a really interesting story straight from the horse's mouth about that that a lot of people seem to overlook over here.

what makes this title particularly interesting - and at least tangentially relevant to the thread, despite not being a conversion from arcade - is that the localization changes were frankly immense and damn near turned it into an entirely new game. far more than regional modifications ala the noticeable differences between something like castlevania 3 and akumajou densetsu, this game was pretty much completely overhauled. many people often say that power blazer isn't worth your time but that power blade is quite good, and having been a fan of power blade for some time, i recently picked up power blazer and sat down to play the both of them last night.

power blade is definitely a huge improvement. not only does it add some basic quality of life improvements like being able to grab ladders easier or actually see what the boss's health is, but it even fixes some basic programming problems the original game had with hit detection. one particularly curious quirk of power blazer was that the collision for your feet hitting the ground was absurd, and that you could inch yourself a couple of pixels off a ledge, be unable to duck, and then turn around - and fall. the hitbox for your feet is completely absurd. watch the below GIF for an example of what i'm talking about: i reach the edge of a ledge, turn around, and come back. then, i go one pixel further and turn around... i fall in the pit and die.



pretty ridiculous!!! the hit detection on the boomerang also seems to be shaped up in power blade, as well, and there's some other useful changes like switching the power-ups to readable icons instead of giant letters. in the original power blazer, you collected the "G" power-up to increase your "P." you then collected the P power-up to upgrade it to the red boomerang. why does P not upgrade P? why??? there was also an N power-up, to revert it from P to the original boomerang. power blade gets rid of the N altogether, as it's pretty much useless, and generally makes everything way easier to understand. it also adds the ability to throw more than one boomerang at a time and to throw in multiple directions.

in general, the original power blazer feels almost like an incomplete game. aside from the spotty hit detection (moving platforms are significantly smaller than they appear to be, this is also fixed in power blade), the game's pacing seems a little bit off, too. you need to collect icons from enemies to power-up, but they're rare drops... aaaand you need to be powered up to even face some enemies without taking huge risk to the short range or poor damage output. there are large segments of the game with just platforming hazards, and they have a severe trouble mixing it up and using both hazards & enemies in interesting dosages (yet another thing shaped up by power blade).

one of the only times i've ever seen western influence turn a classic game out for the better, to be honest. power blazer feels like a misguided rockman knock-off (even down to one of the levels using that prominent yellow/blue contrast that so many FC rockman games took advantage of), power blade very strangely turns the game into something more resembling a genuine natsume action game, like shatterhand or kage. i feel like you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who prefers power blazer, which really only has some slightly better visuals to its advantage. and, well, i guess it's quite a bit harder, even if it's bad about going about that.

power blazer didn't do too well, as far as i can tell, and when making the sequel, natsume seem to have been told by taito to make a sequel to power blade, not power blazer. that got released in both territories - over here as "power blade 2," and then in japan as "captain saver." both releases are pretty rare, but i've been after the jp one for ages. duke nukem on a hoverbike on a clamshell case - and it's a natsume action game? sign me upppp.

[BrianC]

I remember seeing Power Blazer previewed in NP with the original graphics. I wondered for years what that "Mega Man like game" previewed in NP was. I wasn't until fairly recently I found out it was the original JP game that was localized as Power Blade.

[Specineff]

Just wanted to thank you for that link, Kitten. A great read.

[kitten]

^ brian, if you're a huge rockman fan, power blazer might still be worth giving a shot. it's a very flawed game, but it's not too shabby - it's just that it feels totally outdone by power blade, which kind of loses the rockman knock-off flavor. it helps that power blazer has a snazzy clamshell, cool manual, and is quite cheap. i recorded nomiss play of both games tonight and should have them up, tomorrow. ended up using a couple of the game's e-tank equivalents on the final boss in power blazer, but didn't feel like running through the entire game again just to do a run entirely without them. final boss ain't that hard and i'd done him without health recovery on other runs, i just choked a little on the timing of his pattern and wanted things over with.

the "N" power-up looks almost exactly like the other two power-ups you're meant to scoop up without thinking and pops out of enemies just as spontaneously, and that thing can make the bosses total nightmares if you pick it up at a bad time and overwrite the other power-up. i had quite a few restarts where that dang thing screwed my entire run up. i didn't want to deal with the stress of potentially picking one up on accident/having it fly straight into me late into more runs, so the run i ended up sticking with as the recording is what it is.

^ specineff, no prob! pretty interesting stuff, huh? normally i don't give much of a toss about western localization tales, but this is a rare instance where the game came out both way different and noticeably better, which gives this story a lot of richness. credit for originally linking me the tale goes to dire51, a friend of mine whose history with classic game admiration & preservation goes way back.

- - - - - - - - - -

edit: my plays for power blazer and power blade are up.

[Herr Schatten]

Thanks, kitten. That was a really interesting read, even though the guy is annoyingly full of himself. I find it quite amusing, though, that on one hand he seems very proud of his supposed ability to asses quality, but on the other hand he suggests that Indy III NES is a good game and refers to that bitch Lucas's perpetual dicking around with his old movies unironically as an act of "refinement".

[kitten]

yeah, he's an egotist & total hack and the whole thing reads like a pitch for how competent a businessman he is (more in common with the japanese businessmen he loathes than he'd like to admit), but there's a lot of valuable info. i have an extraordinarily low opinion of western devs from this time period and his attitude prevailing is part of what led to the death of classic gaming. being glad that he added non-linearity & keycards to a solid action game is enough a sign by itself that he's about as astute as a doornail without the other stuff!

i wish that he had elaborated on how much his office was programming & doing art and how much was re-developed by the guys over at natsume. there's some very good changes that suggest the original team was involved, but some of the redrawn background art (particularly for area 2) is outright incompetent and suggests a much lazier hand in things.

[BrianC]

Thanks, kitten. That was a really interesting read, even though the guy is annoyingly full of himself. I find it quite amusing, though, that on one hand he seems very proud of his supposed ability to asses quality, but on the other hand he suggests that Indy III NES is a good game and refers to that bitch Lucas's perpetual dicking around with his old movies unironically as an act of "refinement".

There are actually two Indy IIIs on nes. One is like a choose your own adventure with mini stages and the other one is a port of that crappy pc game. Neither is great, but the one captain nintendo worked on is actually the better game.

[Sumez]

Is that the Software Creations one? Because I can hardly imagine it being worse than the Ubisoft one, and Software Creations have been known to make a few awesome things.

[BrianC]

Is that the Software Creations one? Because I can hardly imagine it being worse than the Ubisoft one, and Software Creations have been known to make a few awesome things.

I think so. The Ubisoft one (the port of the crappy PC platformer) is definitely the worse of the two. The Taito published one is the better of the two.

edit: The Ubisoft game isn't a port of the crappy PC platformer, it's a port of the Gameboy port of the crappy PC platformer. I was mistaken about the mini stages. Some are too long to be called mini. The Software Creations version has fighting similar to Karateka or Bruce Lee on C64.

[orange808]

Karateka on C64 is an Apple // port.

[BrianC]

Karateka on C64 is an Apple // port.

Yes, but that was not the point. The point is that the fighting in the Software Creations Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is similar.

[Jonny2x4]

I know right Highrolla Kockamamie, Vermon Cataffy...

I always had a soft spot for Sheik Toxic Moron from Laser Invasion.

now I'm wondering if "Red Falcon" was a reference to the Red Army Faction. Although a quick lookup suggests the name is in JP too, albeit exclusively referring to the army under the aliens' control.

I was under that impression too at one point. The JP flyer and instructions for the original Contra arcade game leaves the evil organization nameless (as did the attract sequence in Super Contra), whereas the EN flyer and instructions actually refers to the bad guys as the "Red Falcon Organization". However, they did mention the name in JP magazine coverage at the time and possibly in the operator's manual too if the transcript on Game Kommander's site is any accurate.

At any rate, even the JP versions were just inconsistent over the nature of "Red Falcon", since Konami's plot synopsis for the arcade version nd the opening for the FC version refers to Red Falcon as an individual character.

I nominate Konami's Jackal, which is doubly interesting because not only is the arcade original different from the NES release, the Famicom Disk System version is also notably different from the NES one.

iirc the fds game is more like the arcade game (i seem to recall it basically being one extremely long stretch, like the arcade game, rather than the distinct levels that the nes game is broken into).

The FCD version is broken into stages too. The main difference is that the NES version has both, vertical and horizontal scrolling, whereas the FCD version is strictly vertical, so the level designs between the two versions are different. The NES version also has an extra stage at the beginning.

The weird thing is that it's often believe that FCD version came out first and the NES cartridge was a later revision, but according to Famitsu's preview of the game, the NES version apparently came out first.
https://twitter.com/chou_nosuke/status/ ... 8237248512

Nekketsu Koko Dodgeball Bu: PC Bangai Hen (PCE) - i'm not sure how much this differs from the arcade version, but i'm bringing it up because it fucking rules. i'm pretty sure that story mode is unique to it and that the arcade mode is also quite different.

It's very different. PCE version is a sort-of cross between the AC and FC version, similar to what they tried to do with Double Dragon II on the PCE. It has the graphics and four-member format of the AC version, but characters now have individualized life bars and power shots like on the FC version.

[Kino]

Gussun Oyoyo (Series - Multi) - haven't touched this, but it's a pretty common favorite over in japan and doesn't get discussed a lot, over here. had a particularly good game center cx episode that made me pick up the first sfc game, which i've not gotten around to, yet (just got it a week or so ago). the giant bomb article has some deets. i think most of these installments are pt cheap!

Positively phenomenal series of action-puzzlers. Closer to Solomon's Key than Sutte Hakkun; which is to say less 'easygoing' than many of it's ilk. As to be expected from those magnificent bastards at Irem.

There's a fair amount of misinformation about the series out there (thanks, HG101 ), so here's the truth on how the console ports stack up.


Super Gussun Oyoyo (SFC)

Underwhelming. Music takes a hit, playfield is squished due to the lower resolution, game seems to run at 50% the speed of the arcade. Bunch of new SFC-exclusive levels are interspersed with the arcade campaign, for a grand total of 60 stages. Most interesting thing this port has going for it is the level editor, but I'd much rather they'd have included it in a better Gussun game. Luckily for Banpresto, they redeemed themselves with SGO2 & ZGO.....

Gussun Oyoyo (PS1)

Xing's crack at it. Now this is more like it. Arranged soundtrack, added voice acting, polished-up character portraits, faithful recreation of the arcade's 40 stages, plus Xing threw in 14 additional stages designed to make you fling your DualShock across the room. HG101's incessant whining is somewhat justified for once; on any difficulty other than Easy, your only hope of beating Stage 45 is to pray for favorable RNG. Oh, and Stage 52 is literally unbeatable if you don't have a Bubble in stock. Best of luck, soulja.

Gussun Oyoyo S (Saturn)

The quintessential Gussun experience. Mostly the same as the PS1 port, only with tons more Emily artwork, new voice samples, 20 added stages (bringing it to a whopping 74 stages, for those keeping count!), and some minor tweaking w/r/t bomb inertia and block ratios. Not sure why reviewers deem it significantly 'easier' than the PS1 port, you still have to contend with stages 45 & 52. The Saturn-exclusive levels won't pose much of a threat to your 1CC, but they're quite nice to have nonetheless. Marathon runners only need apply. (Multiple sources state that the 2000 'Maruan Series' PS1 re-release is identical to this, but none of the PS1 rips I've encountered seem to bear this out...)

[BIL]

Sheeit, bookmarked. (second time bookmarking this thread, actually! bahaha) Been meaning to give the series a look, but authoritative commentary was hard to find.

[BrianC]

HG101 also neglected to mention that, telling from youtube videos, the PS1 and Saturn versions of Zoku Gussun Oyoyo have different levels.

[Despatche]

It should be noted that some games are not even meant to be related to the arcade version at all. Strider Hiryu FC and Ninja Ryukenden FC have absolutely nothing to do with the arcade games.

Notice Black Tiger listed! I had no idea an NES port was planned - I wonder how far along development was? Would have been really interesting to see what an NES take on that game would have looked like.

edit: Only revealed screenshot as far as I can tell: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lostlevels/7045322533

Looks like the Tatakai no Banka port. Probably would have turned out like that.

I'd file PCE Salamander under superior port, rather than quality via imperfection.

Correct. See also: Slap Fight, Same! Same! Same!, etc.

[BIL]

It should be noted that some games are not even meant to be related to the arcade version at all. Strider Hiryu FC and Ninja Ryukenden FC have absolutely nothing to do with the arcade games.

There's also NES Bionic Commando and Rygar, which share the arcade versions' overseas titles, despite being original games. They were much more accurately marketed as new projects in Japan (Top Secret: Hitler no Fukkatsu and Argus no Senshi: Hachamecha Daishingeki).

Which leads to GB Bionic Commando, which is the third game of that title in US, but the first in JP, and is a remake of Hitler no Fukkatsu in any case.

Looks like the Tatakai no Banka port. Probably would have turned out like that.

Shame it never made it out, FC Tatakai is some good Sensibly Dangerous flatland slashing. Coulda used a second loop.

[To Far Away Times]

Definitely better than the arcade versions:
Contra - NES
Bionic Comando - NES
Punch Out - NES
Gradius III - SNES

Debatable:
Darius II/Sagaia - Genesis


Not sure if it counts since it was released before the Arcade version:
Thunderforce III - Genesis