BIL wrote:Interesting coincidence! I was revisiting the FC version not long ago myself, along with that of another infamous licensed NES sidescroller, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Both have subtle differences (primarily to do with level order) which made me wanna investigate, despite having few positive memories of them from childhood rentals.
Suffice to say Predator fared MUCH better than the genuinely busted-to-fuck Hyde. Nothing I'd rave over, but I liked the knowing meanness of its platforming - that scorpion in the first stage ain't no Gimmick zako, but the way he'll slowly but surely find his way down the footholds to you via gravity and homing AI alone is just precious. The physics are undeniably slippery, but they felt appropriately matched to the action for the most part. Unfortunately the copy I was looking at was pretty pricey for what it was, so I left it after five (small mode) stages in. I'm a fan of KLON's Devil Hunter Yoko MD sidescroller, could definitely sense a bit of the same edgy talent here.
i didn't know they did yohko until looking at that list i linked, a couple days ago (i think i'd read it long ago, but not made the mental connection). i've been trying to pick that up since you recommended it earlier in the year (i've also been looking to pick up dahna, which i'm fully prepared to be disappointed by and know what i'm getting myself into), but an opportune auction never matches up with when i've got a proxy shipment going. it's a pretty contested and rarely listed little game that keeps having little flares in price, but i'm confident i'll get it for under 6k if i play the waiting game.
i've played the nes jekyll & hyde up to its good ending, but never given the fc version a shot to see the differences. i found the game, as a whole, was... surprisingly playable? i think the AVGN episode from
ages ago cemented its view in the eyes of popular gaming as one of the worst games of all time, but it's quite frankly probably not even in the bottom one hundred on the famicom. that's not to mention that it's better than most western games released for the console
and not even that weird or difficult once you understand the basic rules & mechanics. still utter kusoge and nothing i'd recommend, but it's so easy to do so much worse.
edit: and oh god, the stat bar calling the grenade "PINE"
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/sAxq41c.gif)
Technically not Engrish, or even inaccurate assuming Ahnuld is indeed rocking vintage frags, but marvelously offbeat regardless.
you've also got the "Mc.Gun," which is funny in its own right. given the oddly proper grammar, "pine," and tone-deaf usage of dutch saying "whomever," i have to seriously wonder if it was localized by a native japanese who was in his final year of an english writing class or something. it feels ever so subtly off in the way a native english speaker would not screw up.
i feel like if predator had been a bit more polished that it could have been something genuinely decent, but there's some basic stuff that kinds sucks the wind out. i mean, why do you need to fight that predator sub-boss who just jumps in place while you shoot him a dozen times so many times over the course of the game? why is your punch unable to be performed while crouched, even though most enemies are beneath its hitbox (this could have been interesting, tbh, but definitely just felt like a weird & arbitrary restriction)?
still an interesting little title, regardless, though! i doubt we're the only two people here invested in the famicom enough to get something out of it.
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in other news! i've got another recording up:
teenage mutant ninja turtles II: the arcade game (nes) - solo 1cc
this has basically been the year of me starting to grasp and understand belt scrollers a lot better with getting multiple 1cc's under my belt, and TMNT II had long remained one that i'd considered in the mess of brain dead button mashers that people enjoyed purely because of the novelty of the license. i'd played the actual arcade game in multiplayer with friends a few years before, and it only felt enjoyable on those merits. a few stabs at trying to beat the nes game felt like it was impossible to understand how to tackle some of the situations, and i'd be prompted to continue within the first two or three stages and then put off from ever finishing it. my presumption was that understanding required too much nuance specific to the game, and that this was how beat 'em ups chose to be difficult - by obnoxiously idiosyncratic boss patterns that required study and hordes of goons that would just wear you down by getting unavoidable, cheap hits in.
having gotten a bunch of 1cc's under my belt in the genre, now, however, i decided to give this one another spin the night before last and found myself grasping it well enough to get all the way to the final boss on one credit - which was kind of a feat considering i'd lost a life in both of the two starting stages. suddenly, a large portion of the game clicked. i understood why enemies moved certain ways, i understood the basics of zoning and manipulating their AI, and i understood the most effective ways to dispatch the majority of them. bosses still felt a little incomprehensible as to when they'd counter attack and slightly unfair as a result, but as long as i could mitigate the stage, i could get to them with enough health for my mistakes not to completely bite me in the ass.
then, upon defeating krang and facing shredder, himself, i promptly lost both of my remaining lives by being killed with his instant kill attack, one death right after another. awesome. i then also burned all my continues (which start you with only 2 extra lives) trying to beat him and failing. i felt pretty damn aggravated. i looked a little bit up of another player giving it a go, figured i could get this shit done, and then booted the game back up last night and recorded the above run - a pretty darn clean 1CC, and on my 2nd serious attempt, too. feel like i've finally gotten somewhere with this genre in being able to bang a quick one out on a game i've only got loose familiarity with!
i still think that this isn't a particularly good game and tends to get talked up way over what it is, but i can respect it as decent and definitely had some fun with it. much different from my previous take, where i was a lot harsher! although overcoming my ignorance only turned what i viewed as a bad game into a decent one in this particular instance, i feel it's more representative on the whole of my ability to finally enjoy and discuss the merits of this genre on the level of an actual enthusiast, versus someone who just really liked bare knuckle II. i'm very pleased about that! i've always been a bit frustrated that i could not relate to why people liked many of the games in this genre to the extent that they do, with the rare exception or two that i got a quick grasp on.
as mentioned in the video description, if you end up playing this yourself, realize that there are some kind of significant version differences in how extends are awarded. the NES version awards one for every 200 points and awards a single point for every enemy, meaning you're extremely unlikely (without milking those little gobbly robots in the fight with the baxter) to see a 4th extend during the game and have only 6 total lives to work with. the famicom version, on the other hand, gives enemies a variety of point values and offers an extend for every 20k points. watching a competent play by a
japanese player reveals their score to be above 13.5k by the end of the shredder fight, giving you
nine total lives to work with over the course of the game, possibly even ten (killing fake shredders awards a whopping 1k points and can be milked, though is a bit risky). also keep note that enemies killed by level hazards (exploding barrel, fire hydrant) don't count toward your point value, which is a little bit lame - it's fun to use them.
i feel i could get a nomiss on this game down if i just understood how in the bleeding heck to fight krang without getting my shit stomped. he seems to randomly decide to do his attack that can interrupt your jump kicking, and whether or not there is a safe interval feels incomprehensible. i'd love to be told it's decipherable, but i'm not seeing it. when flailing around on him on my previous attempt at the game (i had to fight him 4 total times before exhausting the credit reserve), i'd have some stabs at him where i'd barely die once, and then ones in the video where he flat-out sucks up two of my lives, and i have no idea what made the difference in terms of my input. i don't really have a desire to go back to this one for anything other than a casual two player romp in the future, but i would like to know if he can be reliably manipulated or if you're just at the mercy of his routine deciding to spontaneously punish you. to be fair, quite a few of the bosses felt like this, but you could always do well enough in the stage to be able to get through what hits they'd get off, anyway.