Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BIL]

No one else on the Shinobi hype train yet huh? I'm gonna be spending a while just trying to get the normal mode clear, but man the melee mode makes it incredibly fun in the best possible way. Don't sleep on it!

No Switch here, sadly, but I've awaited that one's release with interest. Wanted an AGES Shinobi disc back on PS2! There's quite a backlog of M2 stuff I'll have to catch up with (Virtua Racing, Gain Ground, and I think House of the Dead 1 & 2 are getting released too? EDIT: nope! ta GSK for correction).

[it290]

Virtua Racing and Gain Ground are absolutely brilliant. Haven't heard anything about HoTD but I'm certainly on board if that happens!

[Sumez]

I bought the Shinobi port back on the X360. Does the new port add anything to the game outside of the usual M2 polish and said "melee mode"?

[BrianC]

No one else on the Shinobi hype train yet huh? I'm gonna be spending a while just trying to get the normal mode clear, but man the melee mode makes it incredibly fun in the best possible way. Don't sleep on it!

Still trying to decide what to play next (and wasting my time putting games on minis), but I did buy it from the JP eshop. I did however put the AC Shinobi on the Genesis and SNES minis (not that I would play that over the Switch version).

Backbone did the 360 Shinobi? They are usually hit or miss when it comes to emulation. Aside from the melee setting, M2 also added a more where Joe wears a white costume and can take extra hits. Pretty much easy mode, as far as I can tell.

[Sumez]

Yeah definitely not a sign of quality, but I don't see any apparent issues with the game on the most basic level.
I don't know a lot about it though, to be honest.

[BrianC]

One thing of note is that most recent versions removed the Marylin Monroe posters and changed the colors of the spider man ninjas. The switch has the latter change, but changed the posters to Altered Beast posters instead of outright removing them (they were also removed in M2's Wii version).

[Ghegs]

* Limited-use sub-weapons feel a bit meh, I'd rather be able to switch between the main weapons than have a cannon that cheeses past bosses

I think it'd heavily mess up the game balance and make the player way overpowered. As it is, most of the time it feels like you're a bit underpowered since you can't create a setup that's perfect for all situations, and I think that's the better option of the two. It'd be a fun alternate mode though, as long as the enemy patterns are also adjusted so rapid switching between the weapons are required.

And The Ugly
* Holding fire to lock aiming is a bit awkward compared to Valken's approach

Yeah, I'd really like there to be a separate button for this. I've played the game for many, many hours over the years and I still sometimes start moving too early after holding the fire button down, making the gun's angle change and forcing me to re-adjust.

[it290]

Backbone did the 360 Shinobi? They are usually hit or miss when it comes to emulation. Aside from the melee setting, M2 also added a more where Joe wears a white costume and can take extra hits. Pretty much easy mode, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, that's about it for extras, although there's also a stage select when you start the game (in case you want to practice later levels), and a 'secret' indicator you can turn on that lets you know whether you qualify for the special bonus that you get for not using projectiles... which is pretty useless because obviously you'll know if you threw a projectile.

edit-oh, and of course you get online rankings for the various modes and the ability to switch the region you're playing.

[BIL]

Aside from the melee setting, M2 also added a more where Joe wears a white costume and can take extra hits.

Nice nod to the Super games. I hope you lose your powerups accordingly!

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Working towards a Metal Slug X clear and have started making it to the final stage (which is certainly tough, though I don't think it's as extreme of an increase in difficulty as the final stage from the first game - it's certainly hard but feels like a logical increase from stage 5, for the most part). Still working on properly learning the tougher parts of the stage (the beginning sandbag gauntlet and the alien corridor before the final bosses) but I do have a few questions for anyone here who's extensively played the game.

-Is the wavy bridge setpiece especially prone to randomly fucking you over? I usually have a relatively easy time there but have had a few attempts where I got an awkward formation of soldiers + missiles and blew it. It feels like it should be a fairly doable bit, and it feels to me like my deaths there were pretty avoidable, but watching replays online I see way better players than me waiting at the start of the bridge until all the enemies and missiles stop spawning. I don't really like the idea of basically pausing the game for a minute every time I get a run that far, but is the bridge really that volatile that it's not worth going for?

-Are there good strategies for the final bosses that don't involve saving up all your grenades and going on a bombing spree? I'm still getting the hang of that strategy, it seems like the obvious safest way to handle the powerful UFO enemies, but I don't really want to have the whole run hinge on a plan that leaves the entire run hinging on being able to do the final alien corridor perfectly.

[BIL]

I was playing MSX a month or so back, but broke off after getting consistent 1LCs to stage 6 in favour of some new (to me) games. It's actually the last of the Nazca/SNK trilogy I need to no-miss, figured I'd deal with the traditional MS endgame hell-spike later.

I'd always assumed players waiting at the bridge were doing so for score... maybe there's something I'm missing, but I felt pretty confident about it too. The opening platform hop w/ mortars is much nastier imo, until memorised.

I remembered Hagane talking about the last boss, specifically the deadly black UFOs, and looked up some posts. iconoclast (1LCer) wrote a nice post on his method. Though stocking up on grenades is indeed highly recommended, there's some further detail that might be useful.

[it290]

Nice nod to the Super games. I hope you lose your powerups accordingly!

Nope, you remain powered up in this mode IIRC. It's only two hits though, not a bunch like in Revenge/3. White Joe->Red Joe->Dead Joe.

[BIL]

Ah ok, that's a decent compromise

[BulletMagnet]

White Joe->Red Joe->Dead Joe.

Ah, that lost Dr. Seuss classic.

[GSK]

There's quite a backlog of M2 stuff I'll have to catch up with (Virtua Racing, Gain Ground, and I think House of the Dead 1 & 2 are getting released too?).

HOD 1&2 are remakes by a Polish company, nothing to do with M2. That same company is also remaking Panzer Dragoon & Zwei and the little they've shown of the PD remake does not inspire confidence.

[BIL]

Fuck. TBH, not bothered about HOTD2, PD or Zwei, happy with their DC/SS versions... but it'd be nice to get arcade-perfect HOTD1 someday. Or even just arcade-comparable, ala the PS2's Virtua Cop Rebirth.

[__SKYe]

Finally got around to properly playing Return of Double Dragon (SFC) and got a very rough 3~4 credit clear. There's a fair bit I want to post but it's pretty late so I'll delay it until tomorrow.
I'll just remark how incredibly polite the enemies are when you are holding one of them.

[Marc]

No one else on the Shinobi hype train yet huh? I'm gonna be spending a while just trying to get the normal mode clear, but man the melee mode makes it incredibly fun in the best possible way. Don't sleep on it!

Picked it up last night, had literally ten minutes on it. It's been absolutely years since I've played it properly, and even then I think it was probably the PCE version. It's fast, closer to Rygar than Rolling Thunder! Glad of the save states on this one, I'm sure I remember bosses after the first one being almost dependent on memorisation? Need to finish up with RT and this will be the next one I get stuck into. Thanksfully I just picked up the Hori Split Controller, which makes playing stuff like this on the go far more viable.

[it290]

I don't think any of the bosses really require memorization, although the third one can be a bit of a pain if you don't know how to take out the spinning Buddhas (just continually jump and throw shurikens at the first and second level, basically). Mostly the bosses are about spacing (st2 helicopter can easily be defeated without any dudes coming out if you don't let the door scroll onto the screen) and being able to nail your shuriken height precisely.

[Sumez]

Both of those sound pretty much like memorization XD

[it290]

I mean... I guess? They have patterns, yeah, but it's not like any deviation will result in instant death, and there's also some RNG involved. You can survive on reaction. It's not R-Type or Ikaruga.

[Sumez]

I'm pretty sure the spinning buddhas will 100% kill anyone who doesn't know the boss beforehand. And probably a few times, too.

But yeah, it's not memorization in the sense that you need to re-enact specific patterns or whatever. You just need to "know the tricks".

[mycophobia]

its super hard to do the spinning buddhas on your first life without using a glitch. you'll probably die once or twice and rank them down before you beat them, normally at least.

Success in Shinobi does require memo but thats mostly in the stages and not the bosses

[Stevens]

I'm pretty sure the spinning buddhas will 100% kill anyone who doesn't know the boss beforehand. And probably a few times, too.

But yeah, it's not memorization in the sense that you need to re-enact specific patterns or whatever. You just need to "know the tricks".

I remember on the SMS - the only way to beat them (on your 1st life) without game overing was to get the knife and avoid all other upgrades. Gun's and default stars rof was too slow.

[bottino]

I remember on the SMS - the only way to beat them (on your 1st life) without game overing was to get the knife and avoid all other upgrades. Gun's and default stars rof was too slow.

https://youtu.be/LYWwzUQ5PY4?t=787

You have to be fast and very precise, but it's definitely doable.

[Stevens]

I remember on the SMS - the only way to beat them (on your 1st life) without game overing was to get the knife and avoid all other upgrades. Gun's and default stars rof was too slow.

https://youtu.be/LYWwzUQ5PY4?t=787

You have to be fast and very precise, but it's definitely doable.

Whoa. I never thought..

Also that face at the end was definitely NOT in the North American release.

[BIL]

For what looks like a generic military-themed shmup it's got a lot of clever design, like the machine gun always being locked straight forward to allow strafing on a secondary weapon while the primary is multidirectional. Don't be fooled into thinking the pinging sound is like other shmups though, the machine goes does work even on the large tanks! Some stuff though genuinely won't take gun damage in which case it doesn't make a sound at all when hit (the s2 boss statues)

The vertical-locked MG is indeed a bit of design genius - I wish more topdown action had adopted it. Twinkle Tale (MD) switches from free shot to locked shot for its boss battles, which is welcome, but Jackal always seemed to have the best plan here. I particularly like how you can fire both the MG and launcher simultaneously, allowing cool multitasking like sniping the st2 boss's rockets while fending off its crowd.

Came across an interesting precursor to Jackal's 8way/Fixed hybrid: Irem's Youjyuden aka Heroic Episode (1985), whose first stage is Commando-style with bizarro Jackal controls. The 8way is the weaker rapid attack, while fixed is a heavy bomb. Amusingly, the statue turrets here are accordingly immune to the 8way, instead.

Seems pretty cool, has a customarily sharp Arcade Archives release. Turns into a conventional Xevious-esque STG from stage 2, dunno if it returns to the ground ala Nichibutsu's Ninja Emaki at some point. I really hope Emaki shows up on ACA sometime, given how many of their titles are on there. Also WTB Jackal itself.

EDIT: aww hell yes, Youjyuden alternates ground/air stages. Liking this one's instant Commando/Xevious pace and cute chibi-mythical aesthetic.

I wonder if we'll get Mystic Warriors at some point. They nailed Detana Twinbee (and earlier Kaitei Daisensou), so speaking of Konami and Irem, the 90s are looking promising on the technical front at least.

EDIT2: can't believe I forgot to note Commando itself in the 8way/Fixed category!

[BrianC]

Youjyuden surprisingly made it to the west with an odd name (Heroic Episode) that is likely a direct translation.

[BIL]

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised! It seems like a really neat lesser-known from Irem's pre-RType days. Cute game too, always liked what I saw from Perikles's posts on it. Especially the dragon's goofy little pout:

Lovely flyers too. MYTHOLOGICAL TYPE SHOOTING GAME

Spoiler

Spoiler

[it290]

Also that face at the end was definitely NOT in the North American release.

Pretty sure that's in all versions of the game? Definitely in my US copy at any rate.
Also, on the arcade version, I'm pretty sure that the Buddhas go down in fewer hits if you're powered up.