Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Randorama]

I was looking for a game similar to Crazy Climber, though the view should be isometric. Am I hallucinating arcade titles, by chance?

Fire Trap?

https://youtu.be/P-WsL0KcCYY

Yes

Thanks a ton. I kept remembering that it was a Konami game, so there was no way that I could find it in databases.

[Rastan78]

Glad to help. I would've been really surprised if you said no, it's actually a different isometric view Crazy Climber clone lol

The actual developer was called Wood Place Inc. and was started by a former Nichibitsu staff. I guess that would explain the obvious similarities to Crazy Climber.

[BrianC]

I've been going down a bit of a Famicom Disk System hole recently after having acquired a Twin Famicom and Konami's Arumana no Kiseki has captured my interest. Not sure to what extent it's been discussed in the thread previously, but it's basically Konami's unofficial Indiana Jones game mixed with pseudo Bionic Commando elements. More a puzzle platformer in many respects than a true actioner, but the production value is there and the game is pretty interesting and fun. Blimey if the hook mechanics aren't a total bitch, though... there are many sections where it's incredibly fiddly to get to where you need to go which makes the traversal kind of a pain. I feel like I need to grasp the mechanics a bit more before I can truly rate it, but an interesting game in any case.

Arumana no Kiseki's mechanic is similar to the one used in Roc 'n Rope, an older Konami arcade game. Oddly enough, Tokuro Fujiwara was responsible for both Roc 'n Rope and Bionic Commando.

[BIL]

I was looking for a game similar to Crazy Climber, though the view should be isometric. Am I hallucinating arcade titles, by chance?

Fire Trap?

https://youtu.be/P-WsL0KcCYY

Yes

Glad to help. I would've been really surprised if you said no, it's actually a different isometric view Crazy Climber clone lol

The actual developer was called Wood Place Inc. and was started by a former Nichibitsu staff. I guess that would explain the obvious similarities to Crazy Climber.

Rad. Hadn't heard of that one myself.

[Marc]

How FUCKING good is Elevator Action Returns though.
I've picked up every Taito AA release on Switch, but even so, between EEAR, Layer Section, Rastan, Darius Gaiden and Bubble Symphony, the Egret is tremendous value.

[Steven]

How does Elevator Action Returns on Saturn compare to the arcade version? I might do something really stupid and buy an F3 and the cartridge, even though I know I shouldn't lol. I found a sealed copy of the Saturn version in town recently and it was about half the cost of just the arcade cartridge, and that's not even counting the F3 itself. That Saturn copy is gone now, though.

[Marc]

How does Elevator Action Returns on Saturn compare to the arcade version? I might do something really stupid and buy an F3 and the cartridge, even though I know I shouldn't lol. I found a sealed copy of the Saturn version in town recently and it was about half the cost of just the arcade cartridge, and that's not even counting the F3 itself. That Saturn copy is gone now, though.

It's been a while, but buggered if I can remember any differences.

[it290]

How does Elevator Action Returns on Saturn compare to the arcade version? I might do something really stupid and buy an F3 and the cartridge, even though I know I shouldn't lol. I found a sealed copy of the Saturn version in town recently and it was about half the cost of just the arcade cartridge, and that's not even counting the F3 itself. That Saturn copy is gone now, though.

It's damn near identical.

[Sumez]

How does Elevator Action Returns on Saturn compare to the arcade version? I might do something really stupid and buy an F3 and the cartridge, even though I know I shouldn't lol. I found a sealed copy of the Saturn version in town recently and it was about half the cost of just the arcade cartridge, and that's not even counting the F3 itself. That Saturn copy is gone now, though.

Last time I saw the Saturn version for sale, it cost ten times what I paid for my arcade cartridge. So I'd say if you can find the Saturn version cheaper, it's probably a good deal in terms of money spent. But personally I'd much rather play the game on arcade hardware, mostly because I'm not too fond of optical storage media for video games, and especially not Saturn CDs. The moment someone releases a new port of the game not tied to the Egret Mini, the Saturn release will be superfluous.

The Saturn version is a perfectly great way to play the game though, the only issue with it as far as I'm aware is that it fails to dim the light when you shoot down lamps for some reason. I'm pretty sure the gameplay/scoring implications of doing it still work like they should.

EDIT: Just checked video footage of the Saturn port, and from what I can tell, the light dims just fine. I thought I remembered people talking about that, so not sure what the issue was then.

[Randorama]

Query: what's your opinion on Teddy Boy Blues's approach to scrolling?

I have intuitions that it qualifies as a "special single screener", action type of game, but it could also be considered a platformer with a possibly unique approach to scrolling and a pioneering approach to scoring.
I'll try to summarise, just in case:

1. The character moves in stages as closed spaces. If the character keeps moving into one direction and goes beyond one boundary, he will pop up at the opposite boundary (e.g. after reaching the right boundary of a stage, he will pop up at the left boundary);

2. The character shoots with a machine-gun of sorts. Hitting enemies (...all quite weird creatures) turns them into small larvae-like entities that must be collected within 2-3 seconds, or will turn into flies "eating up" the time bar (i.e. missing the larvae will reduce the allotted time to decrease and may cause a deadly "time over" and the loss of one life). However, collecting the larvae-like entities quickly (i.e. half a second or less between each larva) will start a score chain (100 points to 1k, then 1k to 10k max).

Some acquaintances of mine (...the male parent and his older brother, an ex-arcade owner) have this burning desire to pigeonhole the game into a genre/category, but I think that it is a perfect, early example of how videogame genres inherently overlap rather than cleave at the boundaries, so to speak (OK, "videogames tend to be hybrid genre-wise", in plain words).

Also, a couple of "Hello I am a newbie gimme romz please!!1!" questions:

1. Are there other games using the same scrolling mechanic?
2. Is this perhaps the first game with "chain" scoring system? (Eat that, shmups!)

[Steven]

How does Elevator Action Returns on Saturn compare to the arcade version? I might do something really stupid and buy an F3 and the cartridge, even though I know I shouldn't lol. I found a sealed copy of the Saturn version in town recently and it was about half the cost of just the arcade cartridge, and that's not even counting the F3 itself. That Saturn copy is gone now, though.

Last time I saw the Saturn version for sale, it cost ten times what I paid for my arcade cartridge. So I'd say if you can find the Saturn version cheaper, it's probably a good deal in terms of money spent. But personally I'd much rather play the game on arcade hardware, mostly because I'm not too fond of optical storage media for video games, and especially not Saturn CDs. The moment someone releases a new port of the game not tied to the Egret Mini, the Saturn release will be superfluous.

The Saturn version is a perfectly great way to play the game though, the only issue with it as far as I'm aware is that it fails to dim the light when you shoot down lamps for some reason. I'm pretty sure the gameplay/scoring implications of doing it still work like they should.

EDIT: Just checked video footage of the Saturn port, and from what I can tell, the light dims just fine. I thought I remembered people talking about that, so not sure what the issue was then.

The Saturn version is significantly cheaper in Japan than it is overseas. Normally runs in the 20000~30000 yen range. Most games are like this, actually; I picked up a SuperGrafx for what is roughly equivalent to $150~$180 USD a few years ago, but they were in the $400~$500 USD range at that time on ebay. SuperGrafx is actually significantly cheaper than the Master System (not Mark III) here.

TLDR ebay losers are trying to rip you off.

[Sumez]

1. The character moves in stages as closed spaces. If the character keeps moving into one direction and goes beyond one boundary, he will pop up at the opposite boundary (e.g. after reaching the right boundary of a stage, he will pop up at the left boundary);

I think this is described a little confusingly. What happens isn't that the character exits the boundary on one side, rather the camera follows him infinitely, and never stops anywhere. The game scrolls in all 4 directions, but likewise, the stage also repeats infinitely on both axes.
What I guess is a little unique about Teddy Boy Blues is the fact that the stage is only a very tiny bit larger than what you can see on screen (I haven't measured but I'd imagine it measures exactly 32 background character tiles on each axis), so while this sort of scrolling might seem unusual, it is actually how any 2D game with a hardware scrolling mechanic would behave if the programmers didn't load in new background graphics whenever you scroll the screen.

So since you can always see most of the stage at any given time, it really does feel a bit like a single screen platformer. I'm not sure the scrolling mechanism says much about it genre-wise, it's a fairly straight action platformer, and doesn't feel like much of a hybrid to me.

2. Is this perhaps the first game with "chain" scoring system? (Eat that, shmups!)

Well, Pac-Man exists
I wouldn't be surprised if there are earlier examples too, though.

[Sumez]

1. Are there other games using the same scrolling mechanic?

A very different style of game, but the first thing that comes to my mind is Devil World on the NES/FC. It's especially unique though, as you don't control the scrolling, and are actually confined by the edges of the screen. Instead the eponymous devil will change the scrolling direction as you play, forcing you to react accordingly.

[Randorama]

Sumez:

1. Agreed that the description was a bit confusing, but I was thinking of enemies' behaviour as well and I was thinking that the stage is "bounded" for one specific reason. Let's see if I get this one straight:

Enemies move within the stage freely, and generally follow certain loops unless you actively engage them. For instance, the ninja-like fellows on ST 1 keep going downward unless you kill/attack them (...if I recall correctly). When you force the stage background to repeat, they appear again from the top side and go downward again. In a sense, they are "forced" to remain within the stage and if they go off the screen because of the camera's focus on the player, they re-appear on screen by following a given trajectory.

Of course the precise explanation is [insert your explanation here], but I kept thinking about the stage design without thinking about the fact that the stage actually repeats infinitely, simply enough (a rather "duh, obviously so" moment ).

2. Re: genres, you say "it's a fairly straight action platformer", but yeah, "action+platform" was the point of contention.

Male parent was for the "action with funny camera", older brother of the male parent for the "platformer repeating levels", me for "action+platform with unique scrolling mechanics". They are convinced that "single screener" games somehow form a genre, too, and that games can either be platformers (e.g., Bubble Bobble) or action games (e.g. Rolling Thunder), but not both

3. Re: Pac-Man...ah-ha, yes! Ironically, I was sifting through Pac-Man games in the time between my post and your post

Though in Pac-Man I'd say that we have a prototype of the mechanic: eat the power pill, get X seconds to eat up Ghosts and get more and more points as a result. I was thinking that the chaining mechanic in TBB is perhaps closer to shmups (think of Don Pachi), though, for the following reason.

In the Pachis and similar shmups, the chain starts once the character sprite hits an enemy and lasts half a second or so, unless the character sprite extends it by hitting one or more enemies (or destroyable background/etc.). In TBB, the chain starts when the character sprite collects the mini-enemies after killing them, but seems to otherwise follow the same rule.

I mean: if you collect one mini-enemy, wait 1 second or so, then collect another mini-enemy, you get 100+100 points. If you collect enemies within an allotted amount of time (i.e. "chain"), you get 100+200 points (more for more mini-enemies).

So, in both games (types), the chain is based on repeating one action (killing enemies/collecting enemies) to extend the chain time, rather than on doing one action (eating up enemies) within a given interval of time (as in Pac-Man...well, the "classic" ones: I never played any Pac game released in the third millennium!).

4. Ah-ah, thanks. My NES/FC knowledge is really tiny, so of course I didn't know it.

[BIL]

The Saturn version is a perfectly great way to play the game though, the only issue with it as far as I'm aware is that it fails to dim the light when you shoot down lamps for some reason. I'm pretty sure the gameplay/scoring implications of doing it still work like they should.

EDIT: Just checked video footage of the Saturn port, and from what I can tell, the light dims just fine. I thought I remembered people talking about that, so not sure what the issue was then.

The broken lighting effects were in the el cheapo Taito Memories / Legends PS2 version. VING's Saturn port is a beaut, just like Bubble Symphony, Mizubaku Daibouken and Metal Black (MB is bugged on Legends too, dohoho - bomb refocus mechanic is broken).

[Licorice]

Just completed the "quest mode" of M2's Gauntlet for the Megadrive, also confusingly known as "Gauntlet 4", for some reason in lieu of a perfectly apt title (perhaps as a spoiler guard?) revealed in the credits - Gauntlet: The Castle of Succession.

Another game I played due to Bil's terse description. Puzzle action indeed.

Elaborating further, the way the player progresses through dungeon floors feels like a tile puzzle. Mostly due to the fact that each dungeon is made up floors, each a clever arrangement of the same set of tiles as any other, plus an additional gimmick tile specific to the dungeon. These include traversable tiles with various rules (e.g. no-magic, no-shot), destructible walls, non-destructible walls, trap tiles that remove non-destructible walls and manipulable teleporters. The enemies too, are quite tile-like, basically flood filling all points they can reach from their generators, but also kind of magnetized towards the player character. Killing one enemy shifts all the others, giving a visual effect similar to a moving tile puzzle. Only ranged enemies and certain mimics differ in behavior, the former only moving towards the player till they're in range to attack, and the latter trying to escape the player. The result is that even in the small, the player is constantly configuring the dungeon floor such as to create a favorable arrangement for them to move through unscathed. All that said, it's still, fundamentally, a top down character action game, not Tetris.

There are 5 dungeons of 10 floors in total, the first four of which can be completed in any order. Each ends with a fight against a dragon as a boss, each being more or less the same, differing only by the attacks available to them and their ferocity (and also perhaps by color? I forget), depending on the order in which the player challenges them. The final dragon has the additional gimmick of being invincible, with the player being able to earn a short time window in which they can deal damage, by temporarily disabling 4 seals. Personally, I found the bosses difficult, but surmountable after a bit of save state practice gave me a sense of rhythm for the action. Watching other people's runs on YT after the fact, I could see that there are pixel perfect safe spots, but unless abusing those, I can't imagine no-damaging the dragons. Especially so as you fight each one (except the last) on the corresponding dungeon's movement affecting gimmick tiles.

Quest mode has character building. Players accumulate XP (IIRC called EP) which they can use to increase stats individually, and gold which they can use to buy equipment, which also increases stats, or provides a particular gimmick. 80% of the player's character building will be keeping up with the scaling (every subsequent dungeon seems to have stronger enemies, and also gives more XP and gold), and, in my experience, by the end I had 3 out of 6 stats maxed and all equipment purchased anyway. The other 20% is prioritization and economizing along the way. Notably certain equipment (float ring, mirror ring) and certain stats (speed, since the camera affects teleporter behavior, and high speed lets the player race the camera) open up different paths through the levels, giving the player tactical advantages beyond the simple numbers race. I'm not sure quest mode can be played multiplayer, but there are a number of possibilities of specialization if so.

The final screen showed my play time as 7 hours 20-something minutes, and my number of deaths as 7, which doesn't include the dozens of times I died practicing the bosses, and the time I spent on that (although it does include each inevitably failed first attempt). There seems to be no penalty for death? I did notice one time after I died, I lost the various stat bonuses gifted for defeating the dragons, but it was more of a nuisance than anything as I simply took the shortcuts back to the top (or bottom, as the case may be) of the dungeons to pick them up again.

As an arcade port, I can't say much, as I never played the original, neither did I play the arcade mode available here. Nor the record mode, for that matter. I trust it's all faithful, or at least very much so in the spirit of the original, as the game is by M2. Certainly you could feel a lot of care went into the quest mode.

I like the visuals. For some reason, they remind me of the first Warcraft game. The music is excellent, the fire dungeon theme sounding like a proto-Radiant Silvergun, another puzzle action game, of sorts, with which this game shares a composer.

[BIL]

One of the coolest backstories of any port ever; M2 were bedroom coders at that point, and big fans of the arcade game. Their unofficial X68000 port was so good, Tengen bought it from them and the rest is history.

As with every MD game bearing Hitoshi Sakimoto's name, it's truly worth playing just for the OST. Insanely good even by his stratospheric standard. Transparent Obstacle (Wind Tower) is a career highlight. The works of his it reminds me most of are Mahou Daisakusen and Shippu Mahou Daisakusen's OSTs - I often find myself having bizarre Gauntlet flashbacks during those, haha (as if the shared D&D aesthetic wasn't enough).

[Licorice]

Transparent Obstacle (Wind Tower) is a career highlight. The works of his it reminds me most of are Mahou Daisakusen and Shippu Mahou Daisakusen's OSTs - I often find myself having bizarre Gauntlet flashbacks during those, haha (as if the shared D&D aesthetic wasn't enough).

Nice. I considered the aesthetic resemblance, in terms of palette mainly, to Mahou Daisakusen, but the musical semblance went unnoticed.

This is the bit of Sortie I was referring to as proto-RSG. Very obvious IMO.

One of the coolest backstories of any port ever; M2 were bedroom coders at that point, and big fans of the arcade game. Their unofficial X68000 port was so good

Was that ever released?

[BIL]

AFAIK no, at least not officially. Wouldn't surprise me if it's still out there somewhere, if you know what I mean. Would be so neat to see a private archive "mysteriously leak" somewhere years down the road, haha.

EDIT: Actually mentioned on this wiki page.

[Sumez]

The broken lighting effects were in the el cheapo Taito Memories / Legends PS2 version. VING's Saturn port is a beaut, just like Bubble Symphony, Mizubaku Daibouken and Metal Black (MB is bugged on Legends too, dohoho - bomb refocus mechanic is broken).

Oh crap, my bad! Disregard everything I said.

Sumez:
So, in both games (types), the chain is based on repeating one action (killing enemies/collecting enemies) to extend the chain time, rather than on doing one action (eating up enemies) within a given interval of time (as in Pac-Man...well, the "classic" ones: I never played any Pac game released in the third millennium!).

I wanna say Pac-Man still kinda qualifies because you can chain multiple power pellets together - but it's still different of course, because a similar situation would be that every ghost extends your combo chain. I do struggle to think of any games earlier than 1985 that do that!

[velo]

So, in both games (types), the chain is based on repeating one action (killing enemies/collecting enemies) to extend the chain time, rather than on doing one action (eating up enemies) within a given interval of time (as in Pac-Man...well, the "classic" ones: I never played any Pac game released in the third millennium!).

I wanna say Pac-Man still kinda qualifies because you can chain multiple power pellets together - but it's still different of course, because a similar situation would be that every ghost extends your combo chain. I do struggle to think of any games earlier than 1985 that do that!

The golden age Pac-Mans reset the point values when you grab another power pellet, so you can't chain them like that. I believe Pac-Mania is the first one that lets you chain power pellets for bigger bonuses. Pac-Man 256 (released in the third millennium) does extent your power-up time every time you munch a ghost. Most (maybe all) of the other maze games don't work that way. Not any of the older ones, I'm pretty sure.

I guess you could count multi-hops in Super Mario Bros. as a kind of chaining system, if you stretch a little.

[BryanM]

I just wanted to pipe in to mention arcade Rygar on the highest difficulty switch is kind of a parody of itself. At first I thought they hand placed spawns, but seeing how the later stages were a cakewalk compared to the first until around level 9 or 10, it's obvious they just juiced up the respawn rate. I really hate when games just adjust a couple variables and call that "difficulty". DeathSmiles really suffered from that kind of lameness, which is still a shame in my estimation. (I still think the castle siege stage is the best ShmUp level I've ever played in any game.)

I gave some time to Wally Bear and The No Gang and Yo! Noid this month. I think they're helpful as a detox from you know, stuff being good or decent.

The line between kusoge and junk is remarkably thick. The difference between being bad or flawed in a memorable and entertaining way.... And then there's slowly prodding toward a hole you'll have to jump over seven seconds from now. Which will reward you with minutes of slow prodding should you fall into it. There's more heart-pounding action at the threat of being eaten by the first goomba in the original Super Mario.

[BIL]

I just wanted to pipe in to mention arcade Rygar on the highest difficulty switch is kind of a parody of itself. At first I thought they hand placed spawns, but seeing how the later stages were a cakewalk compared to the first until around level 9 or 10, it's obvious they just juiced up the respawn rate.

That was clearly by design, with the manual suggesting OPs raise the difficulty over time as players learned to survive longer. It's expressly a game of rules, one that rewards not just reflexes but keen observation. They could make the basic runner dudes randomly hop to intercept your jumps, or make the wyverns randomly divebomb you, or stick enemies in deliberately impossible-to-contend places, among any number of other wacky things, but why fuck with the loyal punters?

Given what a meticulously-designed game this is, I don't think it's any great tragedy that its upper difficulty tiers simply reel in the deliberate slack between enemy waves, with the player expected to marshal their extreme firepower and mobility, along with everything they've learned in previous difficulty tiers. It's not like Easy/Normal left bare patches in need of more spawns, and it's not like those spawns aren't already plenty dangerous as-is.

I really hate when games just adjust a couple variables and call that "difficulty".

Have you blown out Easy/Normal/Hard already or something

I gave some time to Wally Bear and The No Gang and Yo! Noid this month. I think they're helpful as a detox from you know, stuff being good or decent.

I mean they are shit games, certainly. TBH I prefer to watch other people play those.

The line between kusoge and junk is remarkably thick. The difference between being bad or flawed in a memorable and entertaining way.... And then there's slowly prodding toward a hole you'll have to jump over seven seconds from now. Which will reward you with minutes of slow prodding should you fall into it. There's more heart-pounding action at the threat of being eaten by the first goomba in the original Super Mario.

I'm gonna echo Patchy-kun here and say that "kusoge" is a fad word to be avoided.

I think Holy Diver is a kusoge. Very expensive, unforgettable, sits on my shelf, I'll never play it ever again. I could explain the distinction between it and a merely subpar game, but that'd require a modicum of effort and elaboration on my part, and I'm a lazy hipster cunt, so I'll just huck out that zany Japanese "shitgame" word and bask in my own smug gust.

Like a movie or an album or a book, if a game is deficient in some noteworthy fashion - a poignant, or ironic, or tragic failing - that's plenty of material for a reviewer to work with. If it's merely a shoddy, second-rate piece of work, that too is quite describable.

Maybe it's just my innate distaste for crowds talking, here.

[Squire Grooktook]

Spawn rate is a very different bag so far as "adjusting variables per difficulty" goes, opposed to the usual of just increasing enemy health. Heavier spawns actually affects how you move through a fight, as opposed to health which just makes shit take longer.

Also while I'm here, mecha pilot WIP concept

Spoiler

Plan is to have a little animated expressive portrait on the HUD ala Aleste 3. A full animated cockpit view in the style of Arcana Heart's console sidebars would be nice, but dunno if I can afford all that animation on the budget I'm planning for this (maybe sequel material).

[BryanM]

And I'll grasp to my claim that kusoge is a highly technical term until the day I die. I've watched way too many snooty youtube video essays on the subject to not have a very specific definition of the word: a game with a high amount of deviancy in some aspect(s) of the game that is clearly not productive for the purpose of acquiring profit. Subtly.... is not an aspect the subgenre.

If you're one thing, you can't be another. Kusoge is where all real work and artistry in video games can happen, because it's the only place where anything can be any different, fundamentally. It's not a bad thing.

Who the fuck needs another reskin of Super Mario, Street Fighter 2, Dragon Quest, etc. We need another couple pigeon dating simulators.

It just feels wrong to call a game about the author's smelly foot fetish or whatever as "experimental" or "artistic".

... that blue foliage on green grass of Stargazer, man...

__


Edit: I played through the first level of Yo! Noid since I got the thought into my head that the lack of action was a contributing reason to why it sucks (there are ten to twelve enemies in it depending how you count) but the fact liminal games can be tons of fun made me doubt it going in. There's so much more going on and not going on and conflicting elements that undermine what other elements are trying to do, than just that. Writing an essay on it is easy. While talking about Street Fighter 2 feels like saying "I like ice cream. Ice cream is yummy."

deficient

I do think crowd opinions on "quality" is worthless. (The worst would be like reddit letting everyone review how they feel about every single one of your posts. What a great idea!) One of the best examples is on MyAnimeList: One of the series there is rated like 3/10 or whatever, and I have no idea why, on an objective measure. Who cares if it's two minutes long an episode, that's how long it has to be. It provides exactly what it says on the tin, not one thing less and not one thing more. If ever there was engineered perfection, this was it. If it was a screwdriver, I would be like "it screws and unscrews screws. A+." People who think it's "trash" shouldn't be reviewing it, they should be reviewing Hello Kitty or My Dragonball Academy or whatever.

Ocarina of Time being held up as the second coming of christ because "10 is the highest number"... sigh. Authoritative nonsense. I've long since blocked review scores off of websites outright with uBlock wherever they appear. I can poke around at something for a few seconds and figure it out on my own. I don't need other people to tell me what to think (I have youtube for that!); I can tell I'm on board with, say, Industrial Strength Magic within two sentences.

Numbers, man... you take all the intangibles that something has to offer and you reduce it down to a number. It's a cudgel for lazy people used to lazy thinking. "Kusoge = shit game" is such a wrong way to look at things as well. It's like mutations in living organisms, right? Most mutations will fuck things up. There's a reason your arm bends like that. Of course most things won't work out. But eventually something freaking amazing comes from all that experimental bumbling around. Wild shit like eyeballs.

As a numb freakin' robot, I live for those moments.

Heavier spawns actually affects how you move through a fight, as opposed to health which just makes shit take longer.

Added health on bosses does just make things take longer. On zakos? It dramatically changes how much threat accumulates onto the screen. When done with mindfulness flipping some numbers around can make things very different. Heavier spawns can just as easily just make shit take longer.

Not in stage 1 Rygar, though. It's a great training montage that'll expedite the development of one's Rygar brain, where you'll come to see a patch of ground almost half an inch long is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

[BIL]

And I'll grasp to my claim that kusoge is a highly technical term until the day I die. I've watched way too many snooty youtube video essays on the subject to not have a very specific definition of the word: a game with a high amount of deviancy in some aspect(s) of the game that is clearly not productive for the purpose of acquiring profit. Subtly.... is not an aspect the subgenre.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Sometimes people make bad products for no greater reason than incompetence, or laziness, or some other personal failing. Sometimes they ignore fundamental design principles for much the same. Badly-made games certainly do themselves no favours on the commercial front. That's not some guarantee of artistic integrity.

If you're one thing, you can't be another. Kusoge is where all real work and artistry in video games can happen, because it's the only place where anything can be any different, fundamentally. It's not a bad thing.

This is why I consider it a silly word, or at least one deranged into uselessness.

"Kusoge = shit game" is such a wrong way to look at things as well. It's like mutations in living organisms, right? Most mutations will fuck things up. There's a reason your arm bends like that. Of course most things won't work out. But eventually something freaking amazing comes from all that experimental bumbling around. Wild shit like eyeballs.

Just "bad game" or "flawed game" does fine there, I've found.

[Squire Grooktook]

youtube video essays

[BryanM]

This is why I consider it a silly word, or at least one deranged into uselessness.

And as a poser internet guy, I'll try to ignore the perverted things people try to do to the english language.

It's not enough to be "bad", one has to be bad in a way that's entertaining or memorable. Sometimes that's extrinsic to the game itself: Seeing the nude midgets in Heroes of the Lance as the nude midgets that they are, completely changes the game. "Pee pee doo doo, it is a bad game" is nuthin'. It's the clown dropping his pants and dancing in his underwear.

Any particular game in Action 52 is a turdlet below notice. Combined together into their gimmick of having a lot of games though? It captured the mind. Once. But make an Action 58, and you're a hack fraud back to being a turdlet again. A million game systems have been released with dozens of brand new games with no more depth than a single screen of "big fish eat small fish". In the end, kusology is a mythology we create for ourselves.

(And of course the root idea of Action 52 is actually pretty great. GameCenter CX did pretty alright with it. It's a pity it's not often done. The shoot'em up in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is a quick throw away thing... and they seriously had the budget for one guy to spend a few weeks on making it have depth closer to the level of a Galaga.)

One of the problems that keeps me up at night: How do you make the absolutely worst Super Mario level?

At first it seems obvious and one would have to be a moron to ask such a question: make it an underwater level. Make it a mindless back and forth brick maze where you have to travel across 50% of the level's tiles to complete it. Disable the pause button if you can. Make the timer aggressive - maybe even make it literally impossible to beat by one second. There, done.

That's exactly the mindlessness I've been railing against here! Nothing is ever that fuckin' easy!

It can't be the worst level because if nobody plays it, it hasn't done it's job of inflicting suffering correctly. You have to have a little bait on the hook. The true answer is unknowable, a vast wilderness to wander around in.... I strongly suspect the worst level isn't a water level at all. So unintuitive.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Sometimes people make bad products for no greater reason than incompetence, or laziness, or some other personal failing. Sometimes they ignore fundamental design principles for much the same. Badly-made games certainly do themselves no favours on the commercial front. That's not some guarantee of artistic integrity.

You can't make any good shit without first making a lot of shit. Digging through heaps of trash looking for treasure isn't for everyone, I know. Not everyone has an adventurous heart. They just want to go to the restaurant and get served a hamburger. Safe. Predictable. Transactional. Boring.

>should also mention that kusoge doesn't just apply to fighting games -- any kind of "so bad its good" game applies

>To me a kusoge has always been a game that isn't just fun despite how bad it is, it's a game that's fun because of how bad it is.

Here's some people with joy left in their hearts~

[BIL]

There's no denying it, I lost the joie de vivre of bad games hunting at some point. I still enjoy BBH's research (one of our legitimate doctors of bad gaming), but for personal use, it's tricky enough finding good games to begin with - particularly among arcade stuff that can demand hours to even get competent at. Even stuff I rate highly - Ikari, Saigo no Nindou, Metal Slug 3 - will typically have one or two things I'd dearly love to have seen heavily edited or cut entirely.

I'm a big fan of Rubble Saver (GB, aka The Legend of Star Saver). It's sort of a Ranger X-styled mecha rampage - plays with a controlled stutter that feels like it's being faxed to the GB in realtime from an office somewhere in early 80s Tokyo. Lots of fever dream aesthetic incongruities, heartbreaking little OST, surprisingly violent nonstop action. It's a distinctive game, I always recommend it to tolerant sorts.

Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden Shadow, Operation C, Gargoyle's Quest and TRAX all school it in formal action terms, offhand. Undoubtedly many others do, too. Still, I've no regrets having them all on my shelf with it. I'm sure some would call it a "kusoge," and tbh I would call them insufferable hipsters. There's nothing so bad it's good about RS in my book.

(on that tangent - while movies of this sort are legion, I've never quite believed games can work the same way, due to the unfortunate matter of their needing a player; I'll watch a bad game, sure, but I won't play one - life's fleeting enough as it is)

RS has a Famicom counterpart, Miracle Roppin or something... now that one I could never get into (I tried, having been offered a lovely NOS copy a few years back). Hopes of a big-screen take on the lovely GB cart will go dashed! Where the GB one has a sturdy controllability, Roppin just skids all over the damn place. It's also missing the gritty dot matrix machine designs, instead having an antiseptic day-glo Fisher-Price look. Coded by Micronics, IIRC, never a good sign.

I passed on it. I'm sure it, too, would be referred to as "kusoge" by our learned hipster friends and, again, my eyes glaze right over at the dearth of useful information.

[Squire Grooktook]

Janky garbage fighting games can be kiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda fun with a friend. Guffawing wantonly at bizarre happenings and discovering silly, abusive strategies towards eachother can be worth a laugh and dumb, improvisational fun.

Honestly kind of the same with bad movies/anime. Can't imagine "so bad it's good" content actually being fun without friends to laugh along with.

Anyway for the most part though agree with BIL though. I barely have time for good games these days, let alone bad ones. And liking things "ironically" is for cowards.