Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Sumez]

Finally caught up to this thread again!

Congrats on the 1LC, Myco. I really need to pull myself together to get that, but then again, I still don't have a NG3 1CC. What should I go for first? I'm still really far behind on my NES backlog, too, which brings me to:

did you end up liking zen: intergalactic ninja? that one has a steep price tag and looks like it dips into some pt unpleasantly cruel design, and i never see it talked up by anyone but the average collectors, who tend to barely play what they buy.

Picked that up recently. If you're fine with cart only you can get a "decent" price with some patience. The biggest challenge for me was getting one without a too insane customs fee on top of it. Since you're US based, you should be able to snatch up one much cheaper than I did.

I trusted it since it had the Konami logo on it, but I still have yet to play it. Will give my thoughts on it if/when I get around to it. I still have waaaaay too many NES/FC carts in my backlog, and it's going a bit slow right now as I'm working my way through the Dragon Qu..Warrior games.

[kitten]

wow, yeah, zen actually isn't as expensive as i somehow had it in my head. thought it was one of those $100-at-minimum games, looks like i could get ~$60 and a nice copy w/ some patience. still steep for what it looks like, but i'm getting antsy to finish mopping up any US collecting i can get done now before prices go even more insane. that and i'm also really antsy to play more and more classic action almost constantly :[ lol

the gb version looks like dogshit, though. even if the nes game is bad, at least it's got some bonkers technical prowess, but that gb game looks borderline euro. shares 3 staff in common with the gb skate or die and dracula densetsu II - who i always mentally catalogue as being this one particular group/team. a lot of the games that share staff with those titles seem to run on the same engine (also included: tiny toons babs' big break, akumajo special, contra gb) and are very distinct from the totally superb team that worked on batman: tas, cave noire, and nemesis II.

quick q for everyone in the thread - are the turtles games on gb any good? they seemed okay and i never picked them up out of apathy. kinda weird considering my huge enthusiasm for the gb and how frequently these seem to be library staples!

[Blinge]

Tight Controls Define This Retro Homage To Ninja Gaiden

May be of some interest to those here.
The death of games journalism is only present in a minor way here but it's still enough to frickin tr-trigger me.

[Sumez]

quick q for everyone in the thread - are the turtles games on gb any good?

I picked up Turtles III: Radical Rescue a couple of years ago, interested in it because it's more of a platformer, with a similar vibe to it as the original NES TMNT game, which I hold very dear.

Of course, it's nowhere near as good as that NES game, but it's at the very least an interesting little title, having a mild "metroidvania" approach to it, though it's pretty limited to the extremely simple understanding of the concept where beating a boss somewhere will open up an area somewhere else on the map.
The game is short and plays well enough, but the boss battles are incredibly boring. Worth playing if you can find it cheap.

[BIL]

i'm very curious how frequently players (self included) subconsciously react to little programming peculiarities like those in metal storm and shatterhand without even consciously recognizing they're doing it to shake off little things like that.

Dyed in the wool tyre kicker, here. I like knowing what's going to break under pressure and get me (or my character) maimed/killed. To that end I'll always be turning up things like DDII's input drops.

I'm pretty sure most of us who play these games with any sort of performance mindset will tend towards this approach. I was dreadfully amused to see HG101 cite poster boy of input timber rot Holy Diver as having "superior controls to Castlevania III," the other day. That's the opinion of a spectator, not a player.

Tight Controls Define This Retro Homage To Ninja Gaiden

May be of some interest to those here.
The death of games journalism is only present in a minor way here but it's still enough to frickin tr-trigger me.

Seemed pretty innocuous to me from a skim, tbh.

[kitten]

Tight Controls Define This Retro Homage To Ninja Gaiden

May be of some interest to those here.
The death of games journalism is only present in a minor way here but it's still enough to frickin tr-trigger me.

focused on not just reliving the past but also improving on it

uh-huh

portals that transform the world from 8-bit to 16-bit and add backtracking and puzzles for more layers of complexity

yep, those sure sound like improvements

The game has an upgrade tree for things like defense and the number of shurikens you can hold and other abilities you gain along the way like gliding and grappling hooks

*blood begins to leak out of my ears*

why do all of these retro homages always read the exact same in their pitches and always end up being sloppy, stakesless, "metroidvania" trash?

[Sumez]

Aside from the obvious stuff you pointed out, it's always painful to me when people use terms similar to that line:

transform the world from 8-bit to 16-bit

Do they even know what those terms mean? And since they obviously don't, what exactly do they think they mean? I'd assume it has something to do with the number of colors used, but it really could be anything that fits their agenda.
Anyway, the game still looks pretty cool. Just don't compare it to Ninja Gaiden because it has a ninja.

[BIL]

Oh, that stuff. I was expecting more "NINTENDO HARD" trash talking of the game's inspirations, tbh. As soon as I see the ol' wounded animal / "2 short 2 hard" routine, I (to quote a great man) "look away with a moment of being freaked out."

I don't expect the brutal minimalism of NG et al from modern action games, so none of those features surprised me. The reporting on them was a little offputting, but that's a given. Still fairly mild by that site's standards.

I liked the creator's recognition of jump-cancellable attacks, that's promising. Obviously not for every sort of sidescroller, but certainly appropriate to NG-styled ones. The ability to earn another jump by killing something in mid-air sounds fun too. Having played a ton of NGII myself recently, he certainly sounds like a fan... and that game's combination of high speed, high precision, walljumping and fucking massive guns really doesn't have many close equivalents, while it's certainly got its share of flaws to iron out (toothpick sword, mainly). So yeah, the modern concessions to nonlinearity aside I didn't find too much objectionable there.

[kitten]

if we want to just talk about the journalism being horrendous -

You jump in tight arcs and grapple up and down walls with even more consistency than the classic games that inspired it.

- statements like this always make me furious. these kinds of people have never actually put any investment into classic action games, which almost always have tighter controls than these modern garbage heaps taking inspiration from so many sources they don't know how to make their game. willing to bet there's a completely unnecessary addition of slippery & unreliable inertia into the jumping controls due to the admitted super meat boy influence (super meat boy is a superb game, imho, but its influence has been poison), as there are in so many other modern "retro" tributes, as well as considerably less readable & more poorly-programmed hit detection.

there is a vibe from people covering modern stuff with classic inspiration that suggests they genuinely believe controls & design have unilaterally improved across the board and that classic designers had no idea what they were doing. "castlevania would have been better if they had programmed the jump better," etc. total nonsense like that that shows an astounding lack of a grasp on anything about design. i watched a hollow knight review a few months back where the reviewer goes on at length about how mario had a "binary" jump and that hollow knight's addition of a jump that went higher if you pressed the button down longer was revolutionary brilliance. seriously, listen to this idiot, i link to probably the funniest timestamp. this guy got 200k+ reviews and probably makes his living on his videos.

[Sumez]

Why would you even compare it to Mario if you obviously haven't even played Mario? I mean, stuff like Ninja Gaiden or Contra you could probably get away with for a majority of your audience. But surely at least 80% of those feisty YouTube commentators are likely to have actually played Super Mario Bros.

[BIL]

there is a vibe from people covering modern stuff with classic inspiration that suggests they genuinely believe controls & design have unilaterally improved across the board and that classic designers had no idea what they were doing. "castlevania would have been better if they had programmed the jump better," etc. total nonsense like that that shows an astounding lack of a grasp on anything about design. i watched a hollow knight review a few months back where the reviewer goes on at length about how mario had a "binary" jump and that hollow knight's addition of a jump that went higher if you pressed the button down longer was revolutionary brilliance. seriously, listen to this idiot, i link to probably the funniest timestamp. this guy got 200k+ reviews and probably makes his living on his videos.

Oh yeah, I've seen much the same over the years, and I could understand detecting a whiff of it from this piece.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, though (I've a fatal tendency to do this... see dear ol' "licking your feet or snapping at your throat" Edmans), "even better than" read okay enough to me. It shows some respect and acknowledgement for past works, more than I'm used to seeing. (ie none ) Going "Wahhh! CV demands a modicum of tactical awareness and won't let me takesy-backsy my cretinous panic hops! Nintendo Hard!" is another thing entirely, ofc.

I'm heading out the door but even if I weren't, I don't think I could take whatever gems of insight lurk in that timestamp just now. I will report back!

[Blinge]

if we want to just talk about the journalism being horrendous -

You jump in tight arcs and grapple up and down walls with even more consistency than the classic games that inspired it.

- statements like this always make me furious. these kinds of people have never actually put any investment into classic action games

Its saving grace is that it says "even more" consistency.
Implying that this is a great feat of engineering to improve on something that was already good.

there is a vibe from people covering modern stuff with classic inspiration that suggests they genuinely believe controls & design have unilaterally improved across the board and that classic designers had no idea what they were doing.

Haha, yeah. That's totally a thing.
Whispers of the vibe here and there.
Today's article could claim plausible deniability at least.

That's not to say you can't have a well done retro throwback, Raise your shovels to the sky.
And raise your cups in a toast?
Maybe. I'm not that far into Cuphead.

[kitten]

take my hyperbole with a grain of salt, i am definitely on a hair trigger with these kinds of people. i find them (both designer & journalist) beyond exhausting after years of blowhard talk with increasingly longer & worse games. even before turning around on ninja gaiden, in a mere heartbeat i would have taken the ~6 hours of cursing frustration it took me to beat it the first time so many years ago repeated from the beginning and in its entirety over the even-longer period of total fucking ennui that playing almost any single one of these modern retro homages tends to inflict on me.

i feel like anyone with a shred of modesty or genuine love for these older games would talk about how they hope they can reach the level of these classics or that their design will pay proper respect, but it just immediately shoots into how it's better, and how it's better is always just throwing in a bunch of modernisms that near-inarguably would have made any of these classics considerably worse.

oh boy, a new ninja action game! i can't wait to watch the trailer and...

*euro-chiptune fires up*

maybe it's just a bad choice of composer and-

Spoiler

*faint sound of alarms in the distance*

Spoiler

*klaxons firing on all cylinders*

Spoiler

*eyes glaze over, all life from expression fades*

i feel like i've gone on this exact cycle literal dozens of times at this point, especially since kickstarter became a big thing and we got to watch all these designers try to do their own pitches. i used to have so much optimism for stuff like this, and then used to give it the benefit of the doubt, and now just finally realize it is almost definitely going to be bad and will be a grueling waste of my time & money if i actually go to confirm it. what's the best case scenario, here, after the passive ability tree, backtracking, puzzles, non-linearity, frequent checkpoints (which appear to be powered up by the upgrades if you look at the gif), unlockable gear, currency collecting, cutscenes & dialogue, and 'humor'? i mean, none of these things are necessarily damning, but they sure add up.

here's a quote from the dev from another interview, if you're doubting the hubris and need more confirmation - "It's hard to go back to Ninja Gaiden after the playing The Messenger, in my opinion."

reviewer here (lol it is jeremy parish) is also no better -

Ninja Gaiden worked in large part because it matched its ruthless difficulty with fast, accurate controls,

ah, yes, agreed. go on...

but The Messenger puts even that 8-bit masterpiece to shame.

i hate being so damn cynical, but it's the same story over and over and over again. when i made the previous posts, i had no idea of the trailer or second interview, but it feels like it didn't take prescience to figure out the dev thought he was hotter than all those old classics he apparently loves so much and that anyone interviewing him is going to be damn happy to buy into that idea. if the guy had just said he was a big fan of the game and wanted to toss a little inspiration in, sure, but there's the proof he thinks he's actually made ninja gaiden obsolete.

[drauch]

Haha, a friend actually repeated most of The Messenger's quirks to me just last night because he knew it'd infuriate me. So tired of 'character progression' and XP and retro pixelz. 'Metroidvania' has become a very dirty word.

[BIL]

i hate being so damn cynical, but it's the same story over and over and over again.

Nah I get you. We'll see, I guess.

[Arasoi]

.

[kitten]

i really dislike rockman 7 as a game and found the fc demake to actually be a pretty big improvement, though that's with the caveat i still very much consider it a fangame.

rockman 8 is one of my favorites, on the other hand, and i found the demake really unnecessary. i've never understood why 8 is so maligned given it very obviously has more love, effort, and polish put into it than 7 or R&F. a lot of the criticisms with it are often unrelated to it as a game and i frequently see comedically superficial complaints - the most recurring of those is that people really strongly dislike rockman sounding 'girly' and going back on almost killing wily in the previous game.

[Arasoi]

.

[soprano1]

I love Mega Man 8's 32-bit 2D sprites and all. Gameplay wise it's pretty fine. But fuck Frost Man's JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE.

[__SKYe]

It's a fast moving thread alright.

transform the world from 8-bit to 16-bit

Do they even know what those terms mean? And since they obviously don't, what exactly do they think they mean? I'd assume it has something to do with the number of colors used, but it really could be anything that fits their agenda.

I'm also guessing they do not mean the CPU.
In all honesty though, when I hear/read this I always assume they're talking about not only the improved colors and better audio, but perhaps more importantly, the shift towards longer and (somewhat) easier games, with increasingly present RPG mechanics, etc.
This is just a generalization of course, as there are short and hard games in the 16-bit platforms, but the trend started there.
So basically, when they say "transform the world from 8-bit to 16-bit", I assume they mean that their game is bigger and better than you'd get in an 8-bit game.

there is a vibe from people covering modern stuff with classic inspiration that suggests they genuinely believe controls & design have unilaterally improved across the board and that classic designers had no idea what they were doing. "castlevania would have been better if they had programmed the jump better," etc. total nonsense like that that shows an astounding lack of a grasp on anything about design.

It's also a thing with many people, where they cannot comprehend that games can have significantly different jump mechanics and all still be tight and fun to play (ie. anything that is not acceleration-based like Mario is imperfect, and only exists because the devs couldn't do better).
Which leads to my second point that many people also do not (or cannot?) distinguish from a non-standard mechanic programmed exactly as intended (eg. Castlevania and Makaimura's committed jump), and a bad one due to the devs being unable to program what the designer had in mind (eg. any game with a buggy jump ).

i watched a hollow knight review a few months back where the reviewer goes on at length about how mario had a "binary" jump and that hollow knight's addition of a jump that went higher if you pressed the button down longer was revolutionary brilliance. seriously, listen to this idiot, i link to probably the funniest timestamp. this guy got 200k+ reviews and probably makes his living on his videos.

I don't know what is sadder: that he never actually played Mario, or that he honestly believes that nobody has ever programmed variable jumps into a game before 2017.

i hate being so damn cynical, but it's the same story over and over and over again. when i made the previous posts, i had no idea of the trailer or second interview, but it feels like it didn't take prescience to figure out the dev thought he was hotter than all those old classics he apparently loves so much and that anyone interviewing him is going to be damn happy to buy into that idea. if the guy had just said he was a big fan of the game and wanted to toss a little inspiration in, sure, but there's the proof he thinks he's actually made ninja gaiden obsolete.

It certainly makes him look like a bit of a prick (to me at least), but I guess marketing also plays a part here -- I mean, his answers rub the people who actually played NG(s) through the wrong way, because they (we) know that NG's simplicity is quite underrated and bigger isn't always better, but for people who never actually cleared NG (or even played it, for that matter) it probably just sounds like that game is cool, since it is like a more modern retake on the classic ninja action.

I love Mega Man 8's 32-bit 2D sprites and all.

Agreed, though MM's voice is pretty bad.

[soprano1]

Agreed, though MM's voice is pretty bad.

Yeah, needs an undub. Or just play Rockman 8.

[BrianC]

I find it hilarious how Mega Man's VA pronounces Bass like the fish rather than the musical term.

[Jonny2x4]

"Metroidvania" and "Nintendo Hard" are two terms I've always disliked. Metroidvania in particularly because not only of how dumb it sounds as a genre nomenclature, but also because how inconsistent the meaning is from person to person. Originally it was just a nickname for Symphony of the Night and all the later Castlevanias that copied its format. Then it was used retroactively on any 2D side-view game set in a free-roaming world like the Monster World series, which I suppose is probably more convenient that "2D exploration action game" or something verbose like that. But then it's used for any game with an explorable level design like the Metroid Prime and Dark Souls series. WTF?

As for "Nintendo Hard", I've first seen it used in TV Tropes and I always assumed they made up the term (since they always make dumb cutesy-sounding nicknames for every cliché and archetype in existence), but apparently there was a deleted Wikipedia article from the early-to-mid 2000's describing the use of that term (the current version of the article is not the same one) and TV Tropes is not that old of a website (so I'll forgive them for assuming they coin them). It carries the wrong implication that Nintendo games were ridiculously hard when it's usually third-party NES games that were difficulty and even that tends to be overstated (just look at all the scrubs that always spout the meme that the NES Contra is impossible without the 30-lives cheat).

Ninja Gaiden worked in large part because it matched its ruthless difficulty with fast, accurate controls,

ah, yes, agreed. go on...

but The Messenger puts even that 8-bit masterpiece to shame.

Christ! Every time I think I've seen Parish write the most stupidest statements ever, he always manages to surprise me. To think that I used to look up to his gaming writing back in my teens.

Anyway, that new Ninja Gaiden clone seems to have such an ugly sense of aesthetic based on the screenshots here. Why does the shopkeeper look like Orko from He-Man? Even the naming choice seems bleh. "The Messenger" sounds like the title of a Jonathan Blow walking sim, not an action-packed 2D side-scroller.

[Blinge]

Spoiler

*eyes glaze over, all life from expression fades*

Good lord, I laughed.

You thought it was a tight, linear Ninja Gaiden Tribute but..

Spoiler

It just casually reveals itself to be 16 bit, huh.
okay.

actually if i'd known it was another metroidvania i probably wouldn't have linked it here at all. I saw potential in that kotaku preview

Edit: Had to include more trigger bait - that title!
http://nichegamer.com/2014/03/17/the-fa ... ft-konami/

[BIL]

You thought it was a tight, linear Ninja Gaiden Tribute but..

Spoiler

Should be "IGAvania" tbh. A few of those are actually very good imo, typically the ones where he had less control or none at all.

[Blinge]

But Bloodstained will be good, right?.... right? =/

[BIL]

Dracula's castle beckons for you...
And perhaps none but that bright and
glaring moon can say whether IGA will bungle this like every other console game he's ever directed.

(yo, fuck, just recalling SOTN's intro gives me fuckin chills. It's not been nearly the two years I need between revisits though)

Tell you what though, the motherfucker has always known how to run a deli section. Times like this I miss home!

[Jonny2x4]

Edit: Had to include more trigger bait - that title!
http://nichegamer.com/2014/03/17/the-fa ... ft-konami/

lol at the mental gymnastics the author tries to pull off to justify the unwarranted title. Yeah, IGA made Castlevania a household name according to him. It's not like the series had a dozen entries across several platforms prior to SotN or anything.

I completely forgot Bloodstained was even a thing. Last I heard they fired developer Inti Creates (of Mega Man Zero/ZX and Azure Striker fame) for some reason, despite the Kickstarter prominently advertising their involvement.

[WelshMegalodon]

Hey, it's circlejerk time!

why do all of these retro homages always read the exact same in their pitches and always end up being sloppy, stakesless, "metroidvania" trash?

Metroidvania gives you free reign to combine somewhat intense real-time action with RPG, sandbox, and collect-a-thon elements (i. e. muh longevity), making it the most universally marketable "retro game genre" for today's audience. And as you've mentioned in the past, it also gives the creator a pass to be careless in level design and throw in a bunch of toys. It's not hard to see why a struggling indie dev would find such a safe choice attractive.

Do they even know what those terms mean? And since they obviously don't, what exactly do they think they mean? I'd assume it has something to do with the number of colors used, but it really could be anything that fits their agenda.

Both the Apple ][ and PC Engine Supergrafx ran on 8-bit CPUs, so your guess is as good as mine. It doesn't help that those terms are carelessly tossed around even here.

Maybe your level cap jumps from 255 to 65535.

i watched a hollow knight review a few months back where the reviewer goes on at length about how mario had a "binary" jump and that hollow knight's addition of a jump that went higher if you pressed the button down longer was revolutionary brilliance. seriously, listen to this idiot, i link to probably the funniest timestamp. this guy got 200k+ reviews and probably makes his living on his videos.

I suspect you're playing right into his hands by linking that video here, because he can't possibly have overlooked such a fundamental mechanic by accident. It isn't uncommon for YouTubers to miss stuff like this on purpose to stir up negative attention and get people making corrections in the comments section.

Just your usual fishing for views, nothing more.

there is a vibe from people covering modern stuff with classic inspiration that suggests they genuinely believe controls & design have unilaterally improved across the board and that classic designers had no idea what they were doing. "castlevania would have been better if they had programmed the jump better," etc. total nonsense like that that shows an astounding lack of a grasp on anything about design.

Could it be because all the people who played these games back in the day did so when they were eight years old and idiots? Or perhaps because the people buying these are likely to be similarly dumb eight-year-olds with no perspective?

I have this theory that most of the people designing these "retro tributes" are like game journalists in that they weren't good enough at programming to get legit tech jobs. The games they design end up coming out like this because their lack of ability and discipline prevented them both from understanding how games from their vaguely defined "retro" period worked and from having enough creativity to sell a game based on good design alone.

Andrew Greenberg is an Ivy League graduate. So is Jordan Mechner. Even Horii Yuuji spent his undergrad career at Waseda, albeit as a Humanities major. Nasir Gebelli had years of Golden Age game design under his belt before coming to Square. What are this guy's credentials?

It's also a thing with many people, where they cannot comprehend that games can have significantly different jump mechanics and all still be tight and fun to play (ie. anything that is not acceleration-based like Mario is imperfect, and only exists because the devs couldn't do better).
Which leads to my second point that many people also do not (or cannot?) distinguish from a non-standard mechanic programmed exactly as intended (eg. Castlevania and Makaimura's committed jump), and a bad one due to the devs being unable to program what the designer had in mind (eg. any game with a buggy jump ).

This is probably it.

Going "Wahhh! CV demands a modicum of tactical awareness and won't let me takesy-backsy my cretinous panic hops! Nintendo Hard!" is another thing entirely, ofc.

Blaming perfectly serviceable mechanics for their own lack of attention? No, I don't think they're particularly different at all.

As for "Nintendo Hard", I've first seen it used in TV Tropes and I always assumed they made up the term (since they always make dumb cutesy-sounding nicknames for every cliché and archetype in existence), but apparently there was a deleted Wikipedia article from the early-to-mid 2000's describing the use of that term (the current version of the article is not the same one) and TV Tropes is not that old of a website (so I'll forgive them for assuming they coin them). It carries the wrong implication that Nintendo games were ridiculously hard when it's usually third-party NES games that were difficulty and even that tends to be overstated (just look at all the scrubs that always spout the meme that the NES Contra is impossible without the 30-lives cheat).

This is what happens when history is written by Internet comedians catering to edgy teens and the incompetent writers trying to leech off their audience.

Imagine what would happen if sex ed was taught like this. "Don't you know that if a girl doesn't have a hymen she's not a virgin? You have to make her bleed with your massive schlong the first time you have sex! Also the more people she does it the more loose her- " oh wait

[Blinge]

Man TV tropes is the worst.