Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Shoryukev]

You weren't fooled by the green Firebrand on the box?

Lmao I forgot about they did that with the first game. What is it with the trend of western box art ruining everything?

[soprano1]

Lmao I forgot about they did that with the first game. What is it with the trend of western box art ruining everything?

It started with fear of xenophobia against Japanese looking art, then because it was cheaper to let some cheap artist make something for US/Europe.

[kitten]

Yup, that's me.

nice to see you again! hope life has been treating you well

EDIT: I've got the same problem as FinalBaton! I had my childhood NES modded too

that does provide a dilemma! i've still not rgb modded any of my consoles. i am thinking about taking your advice and getting a converter for my tv, though. someone kind-of nearby is giving away a 32" trinitron (i'm using a 24") and i might get a box for that. it's that later, semi-flat screened one with the grey box. probably won't be long after that i'm looking to RGB mod my famicom and a few other consoles. mostly, i just want to be able to get good audio AND video out of my genesis without too much finagling. i'll survive without RGB on everything else for a while. probably.

maybe.

[FinalBaton]

Do eet kitten
The Genesis is a manly console and it fully deserves that you unleash it's POWER OF DESTRUCTION! So please get a SCART cable for it and a converter asap At least do it for me I breaks my heart to see someone playing Genny and not getting slammed by it's TITAN-ESQUE BRUTE FORCE.

VISUAL SHOCK! SPEED SHOCK! SOUND SHOCK! NOW IS TIME TO THE 68000 HEART ON FIRE!

[Shoryukev]

I used a 32" trinitron for a long time (about 5-6 years until I decided to open it up and RGB mod it and I failed LOL), they are pretty awesome sets! If you ever need help with setting stuff up or don't know what you need to make things work we're more than willing to help.

Dammit I need a copy of Alien Soldier!

[kitten]

alien soldier is one of those games that is so damn expensive that i'm occasionally tempted to get my first repro

http://page13.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/a ... r186924846

was going to say "actually, wait, there's a fairly cheap cart up on yahoo auctions," but if you look at this seller's history, he's sold multiples of these. claims it is genuine in the description, but somehow sells one like every month? hm, gee, that's not suspicious at all. fucker has a negative feedback with someone calling him out as selling chinese knock-off shit, too.

there's an asshole (edit: sorry, correction, multiple assholes) that does this with recca copies, too. guy has been driving me nuts as i've been checking auctions for that game for like a flipping year, at this point. you can really tell recca copies are bootleg because of the printing used on the label - does that thing most bootleg labels do where it makes certain colors too bright.

http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/au ... enlargeimg

that distinctive, bootleg, over-saturated blue

VERY common tactic by these guys is to artificially damage the back sticker on the cart, because so few people care about the condition of that sticker and it makes it seem authentic

[BrianC]

I got my Alien Solder on Play-Asia a long time ago (for Christmas instead of a Wii one year). Wasn't cheap, but they were usually very good about condition of their used games. The Saturn games I ordered from them were virtually scratch free with spine card. I haven't ordered used stuff from them for awhile, though.

That is some annoying crap with fake games on ebay. Crap like that is one reason why I have flash carts.

[FinalBaton]

Agreed. Stumbled onto a complete copy of JP MD Battle Mania 2 on ebay for $40 and got excited for 2 seconds before thinking "waiiiiiit a minute". Of course it was a repro. But it didn't say so ANYWHERE on the product page! (had to check the seller's feedbacks and saw comments about "quality repros"). Now that is really dishonest

[Shoryukev]

I don't have a huge problem with most repros, but trying to pass it on as a real cart is bullshit. I might be a minority but I'd prefer a repro over a flashcart, there's just something about having individual cartridges for each game that I feel is part of the gaming experience. Most of what I own for repros was never available in my region so it could never be an issue down the road of someone pretending it's real and asking a fortune for it (Holy Diver repro in a regular gray NES shell as an example). I just bought a Dracula X SNES repro yesterday or I'd be able to say "all" in that statement. At least it's in a cheap snap-together shell and has a label that isn't even glossy LOL.

The only real disclaimer I have is try to stay away from the chinese stuff, since they often use PCBs that are too thick and will ruin your system by slowly spreading the pins out......and don't pay an arm and a leg for basic stuff. Someone making most Genesis repros is just flashing a chip and slapping a label on a shell, not worth $40 IMO (I paid $15 for DracX btw).

[BIL]

Repros I'm okay with, provided they're clearly marked and make no attempt to deceive. I think they could actually be a good thing these days, given how god-awful prices are. I miss the days when I could treat this as a hobbyist adventure, not a twisted vice. 3:

Counterfeiters though, I'd sooner see do a fuckin backflip off a carpark into a woodchipper. Feet first. Unforgivable.

[BrianC]

I was trying to find a video of the emulation of Ninja Gaiden 1-3 in the Xbox Ninja Gaiden, but YouTube's lame search wouldn't find one (would be extremely surprised if there wasn't one). I heard the versions in the Xbox Ninja Gaiden are actually based off the inferior SNES versions?

[BIL]

It's been years, but I seem to recall noticing the distinctively darker-hued SFC sprite in pictures of the Xbox game's unlockables, and being instantly turned off (I was yet to get back into older consoles, at the time).

Ninja Gaiden Black supposedly has the arcade game instead, much more interesting given its lack of a straight port... however, now I'm wondering if it's actually the Lynx version or something. More investigation required. edit: looks like Ninja Gaiden Black ports the arcade game proper, cool. I picked it up ages ago looking forward to that.

[Mortificator]

It's a really good brawler, the only downside being that the bosses are pushovers.

Also, I had to laugh at the comment on the video you linked to from someone who seems to have misheard the Black Sabbath song...

For starters, they got rid of any references to the Star of David (mainly due to the fact that it was used as part of a cult), and of course, the removal of "I Am Man" which was used by the Road Warrior-esque bosses.

[BrianC]

Ninja Gaiden Black supposedly has the arcade game instead, much more interesting given its lack of a straight port... however, now I'm wondering if it's actually the Lynx version or something. More investigation required. edit: looks like Ninja Gaiden Black ports the arcade game proper, cool. I picked it up ages ago looking forward to that.

I doubt they would use the Lynx version since Temco didn't do that port themselves. It's not a bad version, but it's missing two stages and enemy behavior is less aggressive. It's better than a lot of the computer ports, but could have been better. The developers didn't even program a proper ending. The ending was replaced by one of the earlier cutscenes and an "END OF GAME" message.

I have the Wii VC Arcade version of Ninja Gaiden AC. It seems to be a good emulation, though I heard it still has the copyright edits.

I don't think the poster misheard the song. "I Am Man" is referring to the in game track, not the song it rips off. Reminds me of that one Simpsons episode with "In the Garden of Eden" from "I. Ron Butterfly".

[BIL]

Maybe he is actually IAMS MAN ("you know how dog food tastes?! it taste just how it smell!! delicious.")

Should've said earlier, regarding Alien Soldier - M2's PS2 compilation (Sega AGES Treasure Box) is superlative. 240p display, sprite limit and slowdown toggles (not that AS was ever particularly affected by either, but the options are great to have), and you get Gunstar and Headdy on the same disc (with overseas versions of all three games, for M2's usual completist approach). I had this disc for years before getting into the MD, and never considered parting with it afterward. The manual is fat as hell too!

[NYN]

I can confirm your assumption about Ninja Gaiden for Xbox.
Vanilla's got the SNES trilogy, altough funny enough it is required to unlock them in succesion and separatly by collecting golden scarabs. And Black has the Ninja Ryukenden coin-op, slightly altered to refrain from infringement.

Woah. I finally did contribute something. Back to leeching of then.

[BIL]

Thanks for confirming! Interesting, so they actually altered the AC game specifically for NGB. I was wondering if they'd used some copyright-revised version from BITD. Should've known better! Ahh... Japanese gaming in the eighties. ¦3

I'm genuinely surprised they went with the SNES versions, for the original Xbox release. Surely FC would be easier to emulate/port? Then again, I vaguely recall remember Itagaki saying he'd never actually played any of the earlier NG titles when he first added Ryu to the DOA games. Maybe he just assumed mo bits = better game, or at least not unbearably hideous "polka arrange sound" game. D:

[Mortificator]

I don't think the poster misheard the song. "I Am Man" is referring to the in game track, not the song it rips off. Reminds me of that one Simpsons episode with "In the Garden of Eden" from "I. Ron Butterfly".

Wow, with a name like that, the guys at Tecmo gave exactly zero fucks about copyright.

The composer has some talent, though, the stage 1 & 5 themes are catchy.

[trap15]

He sure does, it's Mikio Saito (aka Metal Yuhki). He's done a hell of a lot of games and pretty much always rocks it. He pretty much pioneered the orch-hit-heavy arcade soundtrack IMO. Notable samples:

Raiga: Strato Fighter - Rolling Laser
Wild Fang - Stage 3
Riot - Stage 4
Thunder Cross II - Heavy Metal Bomber

[NYN]

Thinking about it, I never finished NG coin-op on Black. Even with credit feed the final stage quartered me and ultimately I let the buzzsaw seal it.
What do you fellas think about the game though? I'd be interested to know.

Sweet enough, I just found the piece of music that is playing when it's picked, but before it starts up.
Was looking for it for some time.

Secret Ninja Music

I wonder if this is a remix made for Black or that's what was playing in attract mode.

[Shoryukev]

Should've said earlier, regarding Alien Soldier - M2's PS2 compilation (Sega AGES Treasure Box) is superlative. 240p display, sprite limit and slowdown toggles (not that AS was ever particularly affected by either, but the options are great to have), and you get Gunstar and Headdy on the same disc (with overseas versions of all three games, for M2's usual completist approach). I had this disc for years before getting into the MD, and never considered parting with it afterward. The manual is fat as hell too!

I will be on the lookout for this, thanks BIL! This game just looks incredibly badass

[Blinge]

Man this little minigame in Shovel Knight's Specter of Torment add-on is super fun.

https://youtu.be/c7ldMkweQts
( also he's rocking the fancy alucard style armour+animation )

The obstacles come in random chunks so you have to adapt accordingly each time. It's harder than it looks but is frustrating and very addictive at the same time.

Edit: Now with prime scrubtalk from steam community!

Spoiler

The first problem is that there's no clear way to tell just how high Specter Knight can climb up a wall before he falls off. As a result, it's hard to know when the right time to jump is.

The second problem, and the far bigger one, is that the controls are unexplained and frankly unintuitive. Specter Knight would regularly flip off of a wall to his redeath when I was trying to jump off, and I have no clue why. After an hour of the tower climbing minigame, I still don't know if tapping away from a wall does anything.

This results in a frustrating play experience, particularly when combined with the little 'gotcha' moments scattered throughout the tower, like that second drake or all the places where you'll climb a wall if you're holding forward when it'd be a bad idea to do so. I've finished it, and I'm certainly not going to do it again for that lousy reward, but if I run into similar issues with gameplay in the main stages I'm probably just going to leave a negative review and move on. I have way too many games to play to deal with a platformer with poor controls.

I'd like to record a no death/no items run for the whole game, every character. However as the levels are chosen from the map screen and it saves when you return to the map; I'm not sure whether to record it stage by stage or throw the whole run in the trash if I die once at any point.
What says the task force?

[GSK]

Brave Wave is putting out remastered versions of the classic NG soundtracks--NG AC and the three FC games, supervised by the original composers--and it seems they've included all the arcade tunes that were removed from the XB/Wii re-release. I suppose they think no-one is going to give a shit and I don't think they're wrong.

I'm genuinely surprised they went with the SNES versions, for the original Xbox release. Surely FC would be easier to emulate/port? Then again, I vaguely recall remember Itagaki saying he'd never actually played any of the earlier NG titles when he first added Ryu to the DOA games. Maybe he just assumed mo bits = better game, or at least not unbearably hideous "polka arrange sound" game. D:

If he said that, he was bullshitting--he worked on Tomoe, that's probably why they used that version and not the FC originals.

[BIL]

I see, thanks... normally I'd assume I'd mis-remembered a quote, but it's hard to know with that cantankerous ol' cookiepuss. I could see Tomoe being the result of devs very disinterested with their work, at least. What a frowsy little comp! >_< (I'm probably being a little hard on it, admittedly. I think Super Mario Collection's BGM is pretty awful compared to the FC games' too, though at least it generally looks presentable. I don't think Tomoe has any major engine screwups either, unlike SFC SMB1/2's brick breaking fiasco. Combining NRIII's sensible damage scale with NGIII's more exciting enemy/item distribution was nice, at least)

That is great news about the FC trilogy getting a proper OST release! Way overdue... the only earlier soundtrack I know of is that awful quasi-arranged album, which tends to "arrange" songs by sustaining random discordant notes over them.

[kitten]

i think i'm going to give up on trying to do rocket knight adventure's hard mode, at least for now. maybe as something in the far-off future. one-hit kills turn trivial portions of the game into the hardest segments and some of the hardest segments into a grueling, repetitive routine where you're constantly playing it safe instead of doing daring quick kills and having reckless fun, as the game intended for you to have. it's just too sterile for me to wring any serious entertainment value out of it. i only tried one more time to do it yesterday and just burned out. maybe if the game were shorter, or gave you continues to practice it...

instead, i spent a decent chunk of yesterday playing MAPPY-LAND for the famicom. it's a tose-developed game, who i ordinarily despise, but i thought it was kind of cute and had a bit of fun with it. seems to retain elements from the arcade original mappy (which i've not played) while progressing mappy's life. you fall in love, have a kid, dress up as santa claus, etc. very old arcade game sensibilities. feel like the famicom already had a great 3rd party game like this in hudson's rather nifty 1984 title, nuts & milk, though, which makes this coming out in 86 feel rather behind the times.

if you've never played nuts & milk, i strongly suggest booting it up via an emulator and giving it a brief shot - amazingly smooth controls and visuals for the first third-party game (yes, it's the very first!) for the famicom. didn't really appreciate this one until i'd played all the other shit released around its time. really puts the glut of ports of games like door door and chack 'n pop to total shame in how competent it is compared to them and how it tends to predate them by a full year or so. blows my mind door door is still somehow fondly remembered in japan despite its famicom port (the one everyone remembers) being a full year after nuts & milk, which is highly and obviously superior. throughout 84&85, the famicom's 2nd and 3rd year, basically the only decent games were by hudson - wasn't until 86 we started to get really cool stuff and companies like konami giving it their all. you really don't understand how much games like gradius and akumajou dracula completely altered the landscape of home console gaming without delving into early famicom in earnest.

right, anyway, mappy land. enjoy some screenshots -




the game had some kind of neat objectives, at times, that took you on little stage detours and made it feel slightly more advanced than a usual old single-screen arcade game. although stages still progressed linearly, you'd sometimes go on detours rather than the usual exits on later loops to grab an item and end up in a new stage. you can run into trouble if you're credit-feeding like i was, as sometimes you'd need a torch from a previous level to see the platforms inside the cave areas, which would have items you'd need to progress. the game generously features a stage select for if you run into this type of trouble, though. each loop changes up objectives and stage designs (as well as sometimes adding stage detours). my favorite level is probably the one where you can fly around on a balloon and kill ghosts with some kind of sound ray, usually topping the level with collecting a cross to get past a vampire cat. i wouldn't say that this plays well at all as a scoring game, which is likely its intent, but that it plays fairly acceptably as an early, linear action game.

my favorite part is when it scrolls the enemies and mentions what stages they are in, leading to this silly engrish -

[FinalBaton]

Eh, didn't even knew that game existed kitten! I have played straight "Mappy" on my oldschool multicart (which is pretty cool btw, it also has Goonies 1 on it) so I'm familiar with the way of getting around levels. This one is way more colourful however, and some of the tunes are pretty good! And objectives seems different too

Also gotta mention that from your screenshots, your CRT seems to handle the NES's composite signal beautifully. Very vibrant colours and it looks fairly balanced, looks like your model is well calibrated
Those later Trinitrons have very good comb filters in them

[kitten]

it handles sfc really damn well, too, imho. i always struggle playing gimmick on a different tv because of how much this tv gets the greens right and how much other tv's tend not to. also, not sure if that person is still giving away that 32" they took the listing down and didn't respond to a phone call. if i'm stuck with this 24" it's hardly awful, though, i really do love it

did you know your brain & eyes are wired to be able to notice differences in greens more strongly than any other color? magical

[FinalBaton]

Yes indeed! haha. Here comes Magical-kitten

I think you should hold unto (and cherish)that 24"! Looks like a really good one. Besides, maybe that 32" didn't look as good!
(you can still shop for other sets of course. but in the meantime, you have a killer one, so that's good!)

Is yours an FS120 by any chance?

[BIL]

I'd like to record a no death/no items run for the whole game, every character. However as the levels are chosen from the map screen and it saves when you return to the map; I'm not sure whether to record it stage by stage or throw the whole run in the trash if I die once at any point.
What says the task force?

Either works tbh. Seamless warts n' all runs have more performance value, imo, knowing the player had to keep it together over a long duration. But stage-by-stage is probably better from a more optimised, walkthrough sense.

i think i'm going to give up on trying to do rocket knight adventure's hard mode, at least for now. maybe as something in the far-off future. one-hit kills turn trivial portions of the game into the hardest segments and some of the hardest segments into a grueling, repetitive routine where you're constantly playing it safe instead of doing daring quick kills and having reckless fun, as the game intended for you to have. it's just too sterile for me to wring any serious entertainment value out of it. i only tried one more time to do it yesterday and just burned out. maybe if the game were shorter, or gave you continues to practice it...

That's very roughly how I feel about Bucky's hard mode. When it's good it's great (I like the sheer terror of Green's aerial bombardment setpiece, scurrying along trying to avoid a bullet in the head or tumbling straight into a chasm) - but lots of stuff just goes completely off-kilter. The way I see it, both games' XTREEM modes will always be there for a rainy day.

[kitten]

Yes indeed! haha. Here comes Magical-kitten

I think you should hold unto (and cherish)that 24"! Looks like a really good one. Besides, maybe that 32" didn't look as good!
(you can still shop for other sets of course. but in the meantime, you have a killer one, so that's good!)

Is yours an FS120 by any chance?

oh, i have no intention of getting rid of this 24", even if i replace it as the living room CRT. i'd find something for it.

how would i tell if it's an FS120?

I'd like to record a no death/no items run for the whole game, every character. However as the levels are chosen from the map screen and it saves when you return to the map; I'm not sure whether to record it stage by stage or throw the whole run in the trash if I die once at any point.
What says the task force?

i've still not played shovel knight more than once because of how exhaustingly long it is. there were a number of good things about it, but i really feel like yacht club could not help but to bloat the game in ways that really placed its design out of the generation it was intending to imitate. definitely a better imitation than most modern stuff, though! it's definitely not as utterly abysmal as something like oniken or odallus.

That's very roughly how I feel about Bucky's hard mode. When it's good it's great (I like the sheer terror of Green's aerial bombardment setpiece, scurrying along trying to avoid a bullet in the head or tumbling straight into a chasm) - but lots of stuff just goes completely off-kilter. The way I see it, both games' XTREEM modes will always be there for a rainy day.

i mostly agree, but i think bucky's infinite continues and extremely frequent checkpoints make it easier to deal with and much less grating. they both mostly trod over the design, i just think bucky's trods slightly less and is a bit more congruent with its principles, even if individual segments sometimes become unexpectedly nightmarish to an extreme greater than in rocket knight.