Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[FinalBaton]

It's been a while, but the way I remember doing it is charging straight forward and then right after hitting the slight "dip" in the terrain, doing a jump + slash.

Thanks Obscura, I'll give it a go!

A real sore spot in the game design, that bit. Even as a little kid I knew it was fucked. It does feel good to execute though!

Here's my usual approach - there's at least a couple other ways to do it no-hit, but all require rehearsal and tight execution. Apologies for the extra-crummy 240p, back then I didn't even have the sense to hit 480p. Basically, I reach him with the POW sword, then somersault into range. He'll target the ground, and you can nail him before he adjusts his aim.

It's actually tougher to no-hit in the MD port, since POW sword doesn't carry over between stages (AC = easy, just grab the one behind the st4 boss, Lago). No guarantee the st5 carriers will give you one. Only mentioning because I was drilling MD like a motherfucker, aiming to record a 1LC to complement my AC one... until I realised the JP ver can't actually be one-lifed. When you reach the boss rush Ouroboros it won't spawn, forcing you to suicide off the edge (or let the timer run down). I can't even remember the method now.

BIL I so wish I had the POW sword for that bit. lol. I'm playing the NTSC/U cart here
That AC run of yours looks dope. Stylish onslaught... I'll check the whole thing now

[BIL]

Ah, crap, I should've noticed the "Pause" bar in your screenshot! I'm up way too late here, thought you were playing the AC version. I'll try to recall my surefire MD method... I suspect it involved the saucers. The POW sword will do the trick there too, IIRC, but it's random whether you'll have it or not.

Here's a GIF of the jump point (AC, should work on MD too):

Spoiler

I still love that port, in spite of its rough edges - 90% of the time, stuff works interchangeably between home and arcade, a real feat back then with the AC game still relatively new. It being such an early years attempt for the MD adds further charm. But it really starts struggling in stage 5, where the complexity and difficulty of execution shoots up just like on AC. The inverted gravity drill room in particular gets all jammed up by the MD's bulkier hit detection. Much harder to make it look as good as the AC there.

Thanks, I was about to say, I was enjoying that run myself. It was actually my third attempt of the evening, I remember vividly because we were all discussing AC vs MD in another thread, and I wanted to show off... but I got owned by the crummy Ouroboros ride, twice! And on that third run I not only took a hit in the drill room... I got blasted in the face scrambling not to fall off Ouroboros. The PS1 port actually fixes a lot of those issues, the ride is nowhere as lethally glitchy there.

[Obscura]

Oh, you're playing MD (I should have figured that out on my own, with the "Pause" text on the screenshot)? I don't know if my method works there, I've only ever played AC.

(And yeah, the method in the BIL gif is how I did it).

[Jonny2x4]

Just cleared Contra III: The Alien Wars on Hard Mode.

Nice handling of the hive!

In response, the Earth Government sends out the Contra, consisting of Bill Rizer, Mad Dog (or Jimbo and Sully if the manual is to be believed, but the Contra continuity is one massive clusterfuck, normally the second player would be Lance Bean but he has been replaced by Mad Dog now, even though Lance appears in the credits for some reason), and the unnamed helicopter pilot, to repel the alien threat and strike at its very heart.

Lore corner! The JP timeline is dead simple, something the ending photographs reflect. Bill & Lance embark on a mantastic voyage from AD 2633 to 2636 killing aliens over three games (Contra/Super/Spirits). Someone decided the NES games had to take place in the 1980s, which led to all sorts of bullshit when III's highfalootin' future world rolled around, and amusingly enough forced the SNES staff roll to quietly scrub the dates off the photos.

Pretty much this, except they also scrubbed off the date in the arcade versions too. In the JP version of Super Contra, you can see 2634年 displayed on the attract sequence, whereas the EN version just leaves the game dateless.

Bill and Mad Dog are actually the same guy. The other guy, Lance, is actually Scorpion. In terms of name changes, it goes like this.

Original name = NES "nickname" = SNES "descendant"
Bill = Mad Dog = Jimbo
Lance = Scorpion = Sully

For some reason Mad Dog and Scorpion became separate guys from Bill and Lance in Contra 4 thanks to a convoluted retcon, but it doesn't amount to much since the 4 heroes are all just palette swaps of the same guy and the game only allows up to 2-players (apparently they couldn't properly implement their planned 4-player mode into the game).

By the way, Bill's and Lance's last names are mistranslated. They're actually supposed to be Bill Reiser and Lance Biehn.

[electricgrave]

I feel like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania are about the same difficulty-wise, meaning you'd probably spend about the same amount of time trying to 1CC either one. Both are pretty manageable, but then have similarly unforgiving latter stages where if you don't have a specific subweapon You're Gonna Have a Bad Time. E.g., Castlevania's Death is utter pain without 2-3x holy water or, at the very least the cross, and the section of Ninja Gaiden's 6-2 with the jetpack dudes begs for the spin slash. Neither situation REQUIRES those subweapons, but they are made far easier with them.

However they also differ significantly in this way: the difficulty of Ninja Gaiden's stages 5 and 6, aside from the one standout situation mentioned above, is more evenly distributed among several tight platforming challenges, whereas the toughness of Castlevania's stage 5 is more like a brick wall with its boss fight and the preceding Hallway of Doom. I mean Stage 6 and Dracula himself are plenty tough, but overall the challenge in Ninja Gaiden is more dynamic and makes for a richer game.

There's also years of difference between the 2, of course NG is going to be a bit...better? You can't compare the 2 on the same level, it's not fair. Also CV is easier than NG in the later stages, specially with combos milking for extra lives, of course the same could be said about NG extra life re-spawn in 5-2 I believe, the ruins stage before Malt. What I mean is you can amount a lot of extra lives casually in CV before Dracula's bridge (you're gonna need it for practice if you haven't gotten there before) making it easier to handle in the long run.

I can reset the score in CV and work my way half way through the second loop. If NG had such I know I couldn't manage due to NG score table and time constrains being more restrictive. Another not so fair comparison but worth mentioning.

[kitten]

More of this stuff
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pi ... platformer

was dropping by to post this if no one else hadn't - a rare enthusiasm hit me after watching the video and i actually backed it rather than waiting a year or two for the inevitable physical printing with an alternate cover. incredibly slick & readable pixel art with some very snappy looking action. i'm worried about it being a metroidvania, but it seems to be able to be completed fairly linearly and might not suffer toooo much from it. if anything, it seems to at least be a visual treat.

[FinalBaton]

the moveset in bushiden looks cool. hopefully the enemy placement will allow the player plenty of opportunity to use it. I'll be keeping an eye on this

[copy-paster]

I feel like kinda want to buy PS2 just for Contra: Shattered Soldier.

This game looks sick and has brooding aesthetic. I take this as true sequel of Hard Corps, which means rote memo fest rip. Played it few times when I was kid, and thought this game was way too hard until I cleared first stage after trying lots of times hahaah. Good stuff.

[Sumez]

It's absolutely the true sequel to Hard Corps, and relies a lot on memorization (but contrary to popular belief, I don't think the game ever really requires it, most attacks are telegraphed well enough that a genre savvy player would realise what's coming up).
It's a super good game, and IMO easily better than The Hard Corps.

[kitten]

i feel like shattered soldier has a very r-type vibe going on in more than just the oppressive atmosphere it carried. the learning curve feels similarly laced with a potently addictive combination of gradually increasing your general skillset and memorizing each creative solution to every new setpiece (which i think is what leads to some people considering something like r-type a 'puzzle' game). though there's not something as ingenious as the force pod to learn to manipulate, the weapon set and multi-faceted shot-locking leads to a very similar, hands-on approach to learning it.

they're both really excellent games because they're not at all strictly rote memorization, there's a lot of experimenting and execution, too, and they're implemented really symbiotically into the pacing. i think what they do is incredibly hard to pull off and i admire them both a lot for it! i think rote memorization is not necessarily a bad thing (though i often criticize it) and can even be really good when done in tandem with an incredible learning process.

i don't really consider shattered soldier a spiritual successor to hard corps, because of this (though i think i may have previously done so). they both kind of carry their own really unique purposes and i can really understand someone loving one and hating the other. one of the reasons i've considered contra my favorite series for so many years is because how distinct a lot of titles are from each other, honestly - it's surprisingly excellent at reinventing itself.

[BIL]

I liked Squire's comparison of Hard Corps and Shattered Soldier a while back. Beyond their shared post-III boss/setpiece-obsessive format, HC has higher highs and lower lows. There's nothing in SS quite as nervily brilliant as Motherfucking Dr. Crab™ or Claw Bahamut, nor anything as appallingly dull as that fucking jungle boss. Relic Jellyfish Form (superb) and Mission 2 Bikers (sweet Jesus why) come close on both ends, but it's generally more middle of the road.

Which works out fine since the charge shot and aim lock mechanics give it a consistent demolition potential, only rarely eclipsed by hard stops/pattern loops. I claw my face off in boredom watching anyone take more than one lap to completely dismember and execute Mission 4's Angry Jetski Mecha. And you shouldn't hide from the raining grenades of Mission 3's Contra III troop carrier redux. Stand strong and ram charge shots straight through 'em into his fuckin eye, then enjoy his brutal death animation. WHAM! Into the wall and burning. (SS has some phenomenally satisfying death animations - no Mr. Heli, I'm afraid you're not the Mission 1 boss! Mind your head, Super Robot Yokozuna Jr! Sorry about your hamburgery fate, conveyor belt minelayer, but the BGM is not "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST" for nothing!).

i think rote memorization is not necessarily a bad thing (though i often criticize it) and can even be really good when done in tandem with an incredible learning process.

I'm okay with it in III/HC/SS's better examples, where once you know How Not To Die™, there'll usually be some performance element you can build onto that. There's an entire subgenre of stuff like this, ofc, albeit where the threat is generally not death but dishonour (Super Shinobi, Vampire Killer, Alien Soldier).

III's my favourite of the Nakazato trilogy for having the most consistent level of performance-augmented design, though it's undeniably reliant on the finicky C+C glitch. As well as another vital element, randomness that remains a threat no matter how much you've rehearsed. All of my favourite HC/SS stuff involves this... besides the classic Dr Crab/Claw Bahamut, Jungle Spheroid Bros low angle bullet rain is underrated - that thing is wickedly mean, and not just because of the stat bar cutting down on reaction time! And as godawful as his transition phases are, even Jungle Boss has a solid hit in his Gemini Laser.

edit: I realise now, all my favourite HC stuff tends to provoke/punish the slide.

Spoiler

^ its beautiful

[Sumez]

i don't really consider shattered soldier a spiritual successor to hard corps, because of this

I feel like most of what you said could be applied to Hard Corps, though

[kitten]

I feel like most of what you said could be applied to Hard Corps, though

eh, no? hard corps is a considerably looser game in a lot lot of ways. the pacing is (often) much faster and more frenetic and a lot of the more out-there design is kind of band-aided with how much the slide can be used to mitigate when something gets out of hand (it can occasionally reduce a boss with complex patterns to just a few timed slides while damage dumping). many of the weapons or characters can also drastically affect how a setpiece should be handled, too, which - by leagues of difference - removes it from shattered soldiers' tendency to design each new bit with one or two particular approaches being ideal.

shattered soldier can be a little plodding, but it is very, very crafted & deliberately paced while hard corps has much more of a free-wheeling attitude that i wouldn't put anywhere near comparing to something like r-type. hard corps can be really punishing, but i feel it's a lot more immediately accessible and requires less of a totally dedicated mindset to get through (even a scrub can squeeze a 1cc off with brownie, but holy shit is SS going to make you learn it for even an a-rank). i quite possibly prefer hard corps to shattered soldier, honestly, but i feel they both scratch a different itch.

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also, i finally got around to assault suit leynos, the assault suits leynos remake for the ps4. it's... frankly surprisingly good? i like it a lot. both the classic and arcade modes are worth playing and the arcade mode has an almost entirely remade level that is highly evocative of a couple of stages from valken. very classically designed and reminiscent of ps1-era doujin stuff and an easy recommendation to fans of either of the original assault suits games.

[Sumez]

Agree to disagree on Hard Corps.
I felt that Shattered Soldier was the immediately much more approachable game, where I'd usually grasp each stage after having played it only once. I don't feel that frantic description of Hard Corps either. Rather the game is mostly a series of boss battles of which like 80% or more can be reduced to anticipating specific patterns and dealing with each of them in a very planned and meticulous manner, usually as simple as exploiting various safespots. Shattered Soldier is completely the same in that regard, but something about it made me feel the boss fights are overall a bit more entertaining. The games definitely share the same gene for high-octane absurdity via their visual presentation though.

[Blinge]

Oh man I popped in Ninja Gaiden for a casual play.
I want to hate the game but i can't.
1cc'd again.

No-miss up to the cliff which I screwed the pooch on.

I also had a hilarious death on the very final door of 6-2.
The green ninja that spawns next to the health pickup followed me to the edge of the stage and knocked left into the last pit.
If i'd just waited a bit, that wouldn't have happened.
CHOO CHOO

Oh yeah no damage Jacko fight. very satisfying.

edit: HAH! lets ruin all that with a later attempt in which I'd been hit twice by jacquiaio, then two extra fireballs stayed on screen for the remainder of the fight until I died.
I didn't know that could happen.

[mycophobia]

hell yeah get that no miss

[Durandal]

Playing through Hard Corps rn (currently at top routes) and the amount of trial 'n error involved in learning boss patterns has induced the greatest amount of "fuck this game" ragequits I've had for a game in some time. It's not even difficult to execute the strategies involved, but it's painful to learn because all the telegraphing is in Japanese, and because the game is 85% boss fights the issue is exacerbated even further
the triple megazord bot is the perfect example of this: robot pulls back to the left behind the screen? that means it's going to jump all the way to the right and you should've known that you had to move all the way left up the robots' dick. robot fires a continuous straight horizontal laser beam? that means he's also going to swing it around up and down and that you should again get into hugging distance with the robot. robot flies upwards off-screen? that means it's going to swoop down and that you should have moved to the other side of the screen in advance. robot fires projectiles all the way up in the air and a crosshair appears? obviously they are going to come down and if anything cinema taught us it's that standing in a sniper's crosshair is going to get you killed, but no, the crosshair is the safespot

at some point you end up resorting to sliding whenever the boss does something new because the i-frames lend you the greatest chances of survival because you often have absolutely no reasonable idea what to expect
imagine my surprise when after my jetski platform allowed me to slide around the water and then transformed into a motorbike, you discover at the last moment you can't slide while riding a bike

hard corps' presentation is better felt when you're watching it on youtube, not so much when you're playing it yourself
jungle omni-bot makes me want to kill myself

[Obscura]

I managed to beat Hard Corps on every route a very long time ago and I have no idea why I inflicted it on myself, I enjoyed very, very little of it. It just isn't a very good game, simon-says no-pacing-boss-rush memo-trash nonsense.

Constellation boss is pretty much the only thing I remember fondly.

[FinalBaton]

I like Hard Corps.

But then again, I'm someone who loves memorizing lots of stuff in games.

Yes, even in action games.

(I'm weird, I know.)

[BIL]

I love The Hard Crops but yeah, it's got directorial issues. Some baffling elementary errors on display alongside intermittent flashes of brilliance.

Spoiler

^ I like to pretend they've got a force field so it's not just a pretty cutscene. 3;

Nakazato got too tied up in novelty instead of focusing on a tight, replayable course. A talented editor could undoubtedly marshal its content into something great with minimal alterations. It's the glimpses of potential, the irrepressible cyberpunk joie de vivre and a handful of outstanding setpieces/bosses (annoyingly scattered to the ends of its four paths) that keep me coming back to it.

Durandal, you might like the JP version more (assuming you're not playing it already). I grew up with the US one and aesthetically still prefer its screaming instant deaths, but the learning curve got fucked up. Absolutely nothing varies besides the hitpoints, so a JP no-hit clear is equally as difficult. You just won't be bleeding powerups and lives all over the shop getting there. A lot of stuff that's questionable in JP is unavoidable weapon-stealing bullshit in US.

[FinalBaton]

I love The Hard Crops but yeah, it's got directorial issues. Some baffling elementary errors on display alongside intermittent flashes of brilliance.

Spoiler

^ I like to pretend they've got a force field so it's not just a pretty cutscene. 3;

Nakazato got too tied up in novelty instead of focusing on a tight, replayable course. A talented editor could undoubtedly marshal its content into something great with minimal alterations. It's the glimpses of potential, the irrepressible cyberpunk joie de vivre and a handful of outstanding setpieces/bosses (annoyingly scattered to the ends of its four paths) that keep me coming back to it.

Durandal, you might like the JP version more (assuming you're not playing it already). I grew up with the US one and aesthetically still prefer its screaming instant deaths, but the learning curve got fucked up. Absolutely nothing varies besides the hitpoints, so a JP no-hit clear is equally as difficult. You just won't be bleeding powerups and lives all over the shop getting there. A lot of stuff that's questionable in JP is unavoidable weapon-stealing bullshit in US.

(nice dodgin' in that gif!)

Yeah I feel pretty much the same as you do regarding the game. I think it hits some very high marks, but also some very low ones. Overall I think it's a good game, and I personally love it

[Jonny2x4]

The other day, I've managed to clear all 16 decks of Higemaru and kept going until losing all my lives on Deck 20 (which is a repeat of Deck 12, since the game simply loops over Decks 9-16 at this point). The last six decks are quite intense. You have to be quick on your reflexes and pick a new barrel as soon as you throw the previous one since the pirates can catch up with you very easily. The non-destructable objects are pretty useful for this reason, since they can be used as barricade too. The infinite bonuses cheat is not really that useful , unless you really want to obtain a high score, since you end up losing all your acquired lives if you're not too careful. Really tempted to play through the Famicom sequel.

[kitten]

just finished doing everything there is to do in assault suit leynos for the ps4! man, heck, the more i played it, the more i liked it - and i was already liking it almost immediately. it's pretty great, honestly! they more or less took the original and remade entirely in valken's spirit, right down to stage 7 (in arcade mode) being an incredibly direct homage to a couple of particular valken stages.

it controls almost identically to valken minus a few small changes and i'm so, so, so glad they stuck with a classic control scheme. a huge part of the fun of valken is fine-tuning your aim on the fly and then getting a lock down, and it would have been a radically different game if they'd have gone in a different direction. i really feel like these devs understood the appeal of the assault suits series quite well beyond the control, as well, there's a really good mixture of cinematic flair and hard action.

arcade mode is the meat of the game and significantly revamps the original with a hefty dosage of additional atmosphere in addition to quite a few new enemies and objectives. though there's a little bit of dead air and streams of too-easy zakos, the pacing is still pretty tight and i'd say the game is only about 40 minutes long on a decent run. some score-based unlocks provide cross-playthrough benefits, but they're largely minor aside from a few that increase the score of the basic zako and allow you to start getting better weapons a bit quicker on subsequent plays.

choosing 'hard' for your difficulty setting adds some much needed bite for a seasoned player, as hits will gradually reduce the maximum size of your lifebar and add punishment for lazily tanking hits. for those that feel that arcade mode is a bit too cinematic, classic mode (combinable with hard, if you choose) hews much closer to the original's simpler presentation and higher difficulty and can (minus a long ending/credits roll) be blown through in under 25 minutes - even with the load times! it lacks some of arcade mode's better moments, but it's still quite good and offers much more chaotic action.

though i feel the game doesn't quite hit valken's level of superb quality, it is hardly obsolete and even has a few advantages. being rewarded for playing well with new & better weapons across a single play is frankly much better than the exhausting upgrade chip management in valken, and the analog stick helps you hit difficult angles a lot more easily so that you can focus a bit more on the delightfully weighted sense of movement.

i even found myself warming up to the hideous deviantart-collab-looking aesthetic as i played, largely because it's surprisingly good at conveying a sense of depth & scale. some lighting effects can feel a bit overused or distracting, but they're a bit of fun, as well, and i never found them distracting from incoming projectiles or getting in the way of the game's very clean & readable hitboxing.

you can find this for under 20 bucks for a physical copy on ebay & amazon, and i really suggest nabbing it.

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if you'd like to see my play, i recorded a 1cc/nomiss of classic mode played on hard difficulty! i play pretty dang quickly and have a nicely trimmed down run with only about 23 minutes of play time (2 minutes are the ending cinema), but i frankly could have gotten it under 20 with a little more effort and memorizing what loadout i wanted each stage.

part 1
part 2

keep in mind that both parts are actually of the same continuous play (check the score), it's just that ps4share only stores 15 minutes at a time. classic mode is much more difficult than arcade despite the significantly reduced boss health bars and hard difficulty's healthbar changes really force you into some highly aggressive play.

ah, man, what a good time.

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edit: i was looking around at what else was uploaded and geez louise, my run of leynos appears to be (by considerable margin) the best play on YT.

i was chattin' w/ palazzo about the game and was immediately very saddened to learn that dracue went under not too long after it came out. w-why did no one else play this? ah, man. they didn't deserve that at all. find a modern game i like and the dev went under... it feels like you just can't make a classic game, anymore. i want to play gunhound, now! does anyone know if the physical jp psp version of ex will play in english on a US console?

[kitten]

ahhh, heck! thanks to a little advice from blinge, i changed my ps4 recording settings and managed to record:

assault suit valken 1cc, arcade mode, hard difficulty

bonus stage 1 no-damage superplay

i really shred the game up in this play, tbh. though i could have compacted the length quite a bit, i go for several of the optional objectives with some seriously destructive efficiency and feel it works as a good compliment to my no-nonsense run through classic mode.

this game is great!

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edit:

assault suit valken 1cc, classic mode, hard difficulty

went ahead and recorded a new classic mode play so it would be in a single video, too. this one is slightly better than the other, though there wasn't really a whole lot to improve upon. i guess i could avoid boarding the little helper buddies in stage 2 to save a minute or two, but the points boost is nice.

[BIL]

Thanks for the detailed writeups + replays! Won't view the latter too much, I'm still yet to open the copy I got at release. No PS4, sadly. This is a frequent scenario for me.

[kitten]

i'm curious to hear what you think whenever you get around to it! it genuinely feels like an era-misplaced classic, and i don't say that lightly. went ahead and did yet another run of classic to see how fast i could go. minus around 30 seconds of footage before play starts and after the final boss kicks it, this is only a few seconds over 20 minutes of play. i could definitely push it under 20 with a couple of more runs, but i think i need to know when to put it down and start something else - this was meant to just be a brief stop in a myriad of titles on the top of my modern backlog i want to clear out before getting back into my much better, older games backlog.

[Sumez]

I'm still yet to open the copy I got at release.

Same. I just have way too many PS4 games in my backlog

[Marc]

Me also, and this is one of them. I loved Valken, the MD game not so much which is probably why I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

[Strider77]

w-why did no one else play this? ah, man. they didn't deserve that at all.

I did, twice even. I bought the import on release then the American when it came out. I devoured this game, twice on both releases. I played the hell out of it actually. That was what I did with my Christmas that year (the import released around then). Both modes on all difficulties etc.

The OST arranged by Hyakutaro Tsukumo is fantastic also. I have alot of nostalgia for the original but prefer Valken for obvious reasons these days, so I was quite stoked for it.

[Immryr]

i was chattin' w/ palazzo about the game and was immediately very saddened to learn that dracue went under not too long after it came out. w-why did no one else play this? ah, man. they didn't deserve that at all. find a modern game i like and the dev went under... it feels like you just can't make a classic game, anymore. i want to play gunhound, now! does anyone know if the physical jp psp version of ex will play in english on a US console?

oh, i didn't know they had gone under, that really sucks. the psp plays in japanese on a uk console, i imagine it's the same on a us machine. this has definitely reminded me i need to get round to playing ps4 leynos. i played both (all 3?) versions of the demo then just kind of forgot all about it.