shmups.system11.org

Yeah, the Jetpac and DK ports are more fun than the game itself.

I did read that page a few days ago, but I don't really get it. What exactly is the timing supposed to be for the drift, and at what point and with what timing are you supposed to make the gear shift? Like I said, the only way I've actually been able to get drifting to work is just by holding both gear buttons down.

Not so much a mechanic as the entire game's design/concept being completely flawed.
Banjo-Tooie IMO manages to walk the line where it approaches this kind of design, while still being fun to play.

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure that you keep accelerate held down constantly, turn slightly into the corner you want to drift, then just flick straight down to Reverse and instantly back to Drive.

I think one foot slips off the line now and then with Tooie.. Nearly every level gives you a 'NO' of some kind so you eventually have a huge list of things you can't do. I find it's almost tooie much.

Yeah, it's very much on the line, and I know a lot of people don't enjoy it. But I loved the game, so that's gotta count for something. I can't stand DK64.

The problem with DK64 is really that levels are too big for the collectibles it has, and the fact that there are various items you can only pick up with certain Kongs which you can't switch to on the fly requiring you to backtrack and repeat the level until you get to the area with the item you want with the right Kong.

It's just too tiresome or boring, sure, there are games where backtracking isn't bad, the whole metroidvania genre runs on that, but those games usually have less backtracking or are much faster to play and collect everything than DK64.

I guess there is such a thing as too many collectibles, sure, the game still has it's fans, but more and more i see people disliking it and it's not hard to see why, collect-a-thons can and have worked, it's just that a good collect-a-thon seems to require short fast levels that are just fun to make the backtracking feel fun and not like a punishment, the player shouldn't have to constantly walk for minutes or do various things just to collect every little damn thing.

Any game that makes you shoot power-ups to change them. I encountered it in Side Arms last night and it made me realise that I don't think I've ever played a game where it was a necessary or enjoyable mechanic.

I just brush my thumb from reverse -> drive, in a flick motion on pad, dragging my fingers over the buttons. It's really, really quick. In the arcade, it's just a quick slap down/up motion.

I've never been good at the drift, but the boost and maintaining top speed are pretty easy for me.

I could never quite figure out the timing on it either. Funny for a Sega game - a few years later we would get OutRun 2. Ain't no better drifting than that:D

Reading how some people here of all places have trouble pulling off the moves in Crazy Taxi baffles me almost as much as back when I read in a thread at Sega-16 forums that some folks couldn't clear Sonic because they couldn't get past Labyrinth Zone

What really ruined, in a sense, Crazy Taxi was that stupid jumping mechanic they introduced in the second game.

I completely agree about what MM said about the new iterations of Ys; it's a shame, because I consider Oath and Origins to be fantastic games.

And while speaking of Falcom, I can't say that it has 'ruined' the series for me, but the dating elements and the overload of shounen and 'harem'(is that it?) tropes, combined with the now greatly simplified - one could even say dumbed down - quartz system introduced in the first Trails of Cold Steel has been very off putting. I know it's going to be very hard to match the overall level of excellency in both storytelling and characterization that defined the Trails in the Sky trilogy (games that I hold in the same high regard as the aforementioned Ys games), but in Cold Steel the bar is set way too low.

Here's hoping that the sequels have somehow addressed these issues.

Ohh boy, this one is a doozy since it's about a beloved classic, but i HATE the top down sections of Contra III:The Alien Wars.

Oh my God, i don't know what it is about them, but i just find them boring, the whole game becomes uglier and they somehow make me feel dizzy and sick, not even kidding about that, when the game is just a 2D platformer, it's a wonderful game, but my God, the top down sections just ruin this game for me and they're my biggest problem with this SNES classic.

I don't know if anyone else feels like this or if it's just me.

Labyrinth is kinda ass, and I can see people just flat dropping the game right then and there.
It's maddeningly slow and has more spikes than any level before or since in the game, including Scrap Brain [which is at least above-water, so you're not about to get hit by something you've already seen go up and down twice and not be able to avoid it anyway].
Sonic's under-water control really sucks, and you've got breathing [admittedly, air is fairly plentiful here, so it's not a huge issue].

it's just not fun to play


Never did care for 'em myself.

I thought everyone universally hated them. Can't recall ever hearing anything positive about them. They were truly horrendous.

Those sections always get a lot of hate.
Here's the deal though, they play well and aren't really bad at all. They just aren't as great as the rest of the game.

I hate this too but not enough to hate 1943.

Inertia is the ultimate deal breaker mechanic for me in shmups. I will instantly delete your demo or whatever if there is inertia, won't attempt to play.

On a different note Dante's Face broke the DMC reboot for me. The gameplay was actually not bad.

Having to wait for powerups to change between different states is a way worse mechanic than shooting it to change it, though.

When I was first starting out I absolutely hated that too, but nowadays I can usually feel the rhythm of the power up rotations in games like Raiden. Doesn't bother me so much now.

I'll never be fond of it, but I find it far lass of a deal-breaker that games based around shooting that require me to stop shooting in order to grab the power-up I want.

I think my main problem is that i really do feel dizzy and sick playing them, i don't know what it is, there's just something about the graphics and the way that the camera turns around that gets to me in a way most games don't for some reason and it ends up making the stages feel that much worse for me.

And it sucks because otherwise the game really is good, great even, but those top down sections just makes me want to play another Contra game instead, and i know it's not the only Contra game with those sections, but honestly, the other games don't make me feel that way and neither do games that are entirely top-down either.

Konami just did something with Contra III's top-down stages that gets to me in the same way that games like Portal do, except the stages are also the least fun in the game and there isn't an evil funny AI talking to make things easier to get through.

Wasn't there a GBA version of Contra 3 with the top-down sections removed? It might be worth checking it out, though I imagine corners were cut everywhere else given the console.

Yeah, it adds in some stages from Hard Corps. It might sound cool, but it's not done well.

Wait what!?

If that's the case then hell yeah

Hollow Knight: Long sections of repeated pogo jumps over spikes. Not that any of the sections are too difficult by themselves, but I'm playing the Switch version, and the left analog stick on the Joy-cons is ill-suited to such things. Fortunately there's little of it that's mandatory to actually beat the game, but I can't imagine there are a lot of people who would even dare attempt Path of Pain using Joy-Cons.

The GBA port of Contra 3 is really, really bad from what I've read. Just play the Japanese version of Contra 3 and use the level skip cheat to bypass the crappy top down stages.

The auto-firing in Area 88 was really bad, but could, fortunately, be bypassed if you had a turbo controller of some kind.

Given the console? Most of the issues were due to bad porting decisions, not the GBA itself. The GB b/w version of Contra Spirits actually did a few things better, despite being on less capable hardware (though it's still a flawed port). Personally, I don't get the hate for the overhead levels. I like them quite a bit, myself.

There are still some limitations that are due to the GBA itself I would say, such as slightly lower resolution and the lack of buttons to cover all of the original game's actions.
I also recall some GBA ports such as the Super Mario World one having washed out colors on purpose because the console has no backlight, and maybe this game has that too.

That said, I don't think all GBA ports are necessarily downgrades. I really like the GBA version of Yoshi's Island for example.

Haven't played that, but the GBA FF ports are really nice, too.

Stay away from the Contra III one though.

The "virtual joystick" mouse aiming in Nex Machina.

Just put a crosshairs where I'm pointing, guys. It doesn't give me any special advantage over someone playing with an analog stick.

All this method does is make my shooting feel like aiming a water hose in the dark, and takes me out of a game where I should have rock solid pinpoint controls.