Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BrianC]

I actually liked the Adios Amigo thing when I first heard it on SNES and had no idea that he originally said something else, especially given the humorous nature of some of the other bosses beginning and end dialogs.

[Sengoku Strider]

I find those transparent Spectrum sprites so charming... like a slight step up from Tiger LCD display, real "make a dollar outta fifteen cents" tech. Far from the sweet spot of the Famicom, and Gunpei Yokoi's famed "lateral thinking with withered technology" philosophy, but a neat curio at least.

I don't think it gets all the way to a dollar with that 15 cents TBH.

My thing with the Spectrum is that it's not really a prisoner of its technological moment like it may seem. Even putting aside superior Japanese consumer technology of the time, the UK still had better options.

The BBC of all organizations had led the charge in Britain's home computer market. In 1981, the year before the Spectrum came out, they released the BBC Micro.



The Micro saw multiple iterations during the 1980s, and could handle an awful lot in capable hands.



Granted, it cost double what the Spectrum did. But going back to that spare change analogy, I'm not sure the Speccy's goofy display tech gave you 50 pence to the Micro's pound:

[BIL]

Caveat emptor

"Make a dollar outta fifteen cents / Ain't got a dime but I ride, and pay the rent" - Clive Sinclair, "Ghetto C"

That said, my rich buddy had a Micro, with a PSU converter so it wouldn't asplode and everything. We thought it was shite compared to our boring ol' NESes with certified ARCADE-HAWT 2P ACTION like Guerrilla War, Contra and Double Dragon II, all of which remain certified mahfuckin bangers to this very day, as do dozens of other first-rate FC/NES titles. I'm sure killer Euro PC action stuff did exist, but it's hard to care when I'm knee-bazookaing buddy off the roof in the great FC fighting game nobody knows about, Double Dragon II Game B.



YEEEE THATS FUCKEN HAWT

TRAPPED IN PURGATORY / A LIFELESS OBJECT, ALIVE

Spoiler

Oh man that's evil. Look at the intestinal tissue forming its root! And the skeletal wings along its back! And that brutal "third eye open" borehole! Dude thats METAL AS FUCK, now let's hit em up with CONSUMER PC POWWA

KNEEL BEFORE THE HORROR

Spoiler

Is that a crusty cumsock Wait - where are the buttons on your shirt? Did you steal my orange out of the fridge, asshole?!

[Sengoku Strider]

That said, my rich buddy had a Micro, with a PSU converter so it wouldn't asplode and everything. We thought it was shite compared to our boring ol' NESes with certified ARCADE-HAWT 2P ACTION like Guerrilla War, Contra and Double Dragon II, all of which remain certified mahfuckin bangers to this very day, as do dozens of other first-rate FC/NES titles. I'm sure killer Euro PC action stuff did exist, but it's hard to care when I'm knee-bazookaing buddy off the roof in the great FC fighting game nobody knows about, Double Dragon II Game B.

I don't think that one's even a contest. The NES dunked all over anything the UK had, including the UK NES. Which was famously mishandled by Nintendo who didn't go with a European distributor to distribute in Europe. Then tried to charge £50 for Urban Champion while C64 & Spectrum games topped out at like £10. All of which goes a pretty long way to explaining why the Spectrum could succeed against Mario.

Those poor kids got what they paid for though.

[BIL]

Oh god.

With these conversion devs (according to anecdote) commonly going to the arcade, watching/photographing the games, then going home and creating facsimiles from memory, I like spotting the details you can tell caught their eye... in that GIF's case, AC DD2's distinctive fist-to-floor crouching/recovering frame, shared by all player-sized characters. It's a classic bit of sprite art from the genre's most august name.

But then you've got the kick knocking enemies down, instead of staggering them. :/ That's not how DD2 works, AC or FC.



Ahh, fuck. Maybe they were so brutalised by the hardware, they couldn't even afford a grapple state. For all I know, these were battle-hardened killers accustomed to rinsing DD2 on their lunch break, doing what they could under barbaric conditions. Gems like FC DD2, meanwhile, came straight from Technos themselves, as did Guerrilla and Contra from SNK/Konami. I'll withhold further comment.

Unless it included a masturbatory proto-Myspace post from the lead dev, complete with auto-analingual credits sequence demonstrating 1000x more effort than the porting job itself. In that case they can eat shit.

C64 Ninja Spirit is a good example of an attempt that had no hope of replicating the PCB mechanics, but finds its own niche and does well at it. Neat little sprint-paced sidescroller with some credibly shooty action. The awesomely thick, gloaming take on Masahiko Ishida's evilly pulsing OST helps, too - outdoes the otherwise definitive PCE version on that count, haha.

[Udderdude]

With these conversion devs (according to anecdote) commonly going to the arcade, watching/photographing the games, then going home and creating facsimiles from memory

You really have to wonder just how these arcade ports would look if the Japanese companies handled the ports themselves rather than shelling them out to the lowest bidder. Too bad the hardware just didn't exist over there at the time. lol

[BIL]

Cut to a weathered old map of 1980s Europe, its sellotaped legend peeling and fluttering off in the breeze, to reveal the territory's true name: MICRONICSVILLE

("OMFG HOW U CAN DIS ROVABLE SIR CLIVE!!! ITT ELITIST PRICKS111" calm down lads! even Micronics managed the odd non-kusoge! )

[Udderdude]

The ZX Spectrum didn't even have hardware sprites. Or sound. Or anything, really. Micronics had a whole NES. What's their excuse? lol

[BIL]

I suspect they just flat-out sucked, tbh - I used to think they were either bone-idle, or actively malicious, but you can tell they've as much of a signature style as Umechan Team or Miracle Kidz... it's just soul-crushingly fuck-ugly and piss-weak. Where Umechan means shredding firepower and booming Maezawasplosions, and MK timelessly invigorating bug-eyed street violence, you can count on Micronics for Babby's First Colouring Book pastels, boner-wilting *paf paf paf* audio, and Straight Outta Gertie The Dinosaur framerates

(and to be fair, some excellent FC boxarts - but don't any of you be tempted, unless it's their one decent game, FC Kyuukyoku Tiger! if I see FC Ikari in your collection, I'll be forced to kill you, and then myself )

Honestly I'd enjoy an interview with those shitbirds as much as I would any legendary kamidev - in particular, I wanna know if Capcom, SNK and Taito (the biggest sponsors of this brief, ugly terror campaign against console gamers) finally told them to fuck off and stop destroying their IPs, or if Micronics simply asked for more money... and also if Shin Nakamura had to hold them at gunpoint while they coded Sonic Wings

[Sengoku Strider]

The ZX Spectrum didn't even have hardware sprites. Or sound. Or anything, really. Micronics had a whole NES. What's their excuse? lol

Someone with a better technical handle on this stuff can correct me, but to my understanding the Famicom only had 2K of RAM (as an aside, that DD II gif above is actually for the deluxe 128K version of the Spectrum). It also had no hardware scrolling; it took well over a year for a game that wasn't fixed screen to appear (Devil World with its janky bi-axial scrolling, followed by Xevious, both in fall 1984).

My suspicion is that Micronics got so much work because they could be contracted incredibly cheaply and didn't miss deadlines, but also were able to deliver completed projects on base carts with no little to no enhancement in terms of additional RAM or mapper chips. That would explain the choppy scrolling & simple music. I'm guessing it was also a very small team - quite possibly a single guy - which both explains why they could be hired so cheaply, and had such weak spritework (programmers who are also good artists and sound designers are a rare breed).

Whatever critiques one wants to throw at Micronics, they had more pride than to charge money for artwork like this though:



I can't get over the vomiting alien. He just looks so depressed to be there.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

The ultimate tragedy of Micronics - for me, at least - is that they quashed the dream of a good Ghosts 'n Goblins port in particular. Even if a solid NES port of that would have probably been reduced compared to the arcade version, I love NES aesthetics, and it would have been great to have that alongside the Contras, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania. It's a shame.

[BIL]

As the forum's #1 Micronics Appreciator , I will always say one thing for them (for him?): they at least tried to stick to the basic stage layouts, in stuff like Ikari and Dogosoken. If nothing else, you can push [start] and get underway with arcadey promptness.

Unfortunately, those two play like shit (Ikari's soul-destroying attempt at tactical rotary shooting via eight-way dpad), or play marginally better, but are comically underpopulated (Dogo's biblical hordes amounting to a zako every couple screens) - but then this is where good designers know to deviate and tailor the project to its machine, ala the marvelously life-affirming precision blitzkrieg of FC Guevara.

(to be fair, even if Micronics had the design nous, there's no way in hell their coding could've supported that kind of speed, fluidity and onscreen activity. it'd still have sucked less though!)

They also did genuinely contribute some worthwhile new ideas (Ikari's much-needed close-quarters knife, something I wish the AC game itself had, and its neato helicopter hijacking; Dogo's importing of a complete ARPG system that could've potentially proved an intriguing black label to the AC's slash-or-die). But again the chassis is too weak and the whole thing collapses in the starting grid.

Their apex, FC Kyuukyoku Tiger, has its bugs, but largely neutralises their innately weak performance (it still chops - ha! - along, but at a marginally peppier clip), while again sticking close to the AC's slow-burning stage design, for a port that's actually just about recommendable to fans of Toaplanesques and FC STGs (that's and - not one of the other!).

Also rad boxart.

The ultimate tragedy of Micronics - for me, at least - is that they quashed the dream of a good Ghosts 'n Goblins port in particular. Even if a solid NES port of that would have probably been reduced compared to the arcade version, I love NES aesthetics, and it would have been great to have that alongside the Contras, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania. It's a shame.

Def the biggest outrage of their FC catalogue >_< It'd be a bit easier to accept, if Capcom themselves had delivered a stellar Daimakaimura, as they did with FC 1943 (playing that after Micronics' 1942 must be the STG lover's equivalent of autoerotic asphyxiation - obligatory warning, don't do it lads, you don't wanna end up like poor ol' Dave Carradine, CAUGHT FAPPIN IN PERPETUITY ). Even a merely competent effort ala Capcom's own Tatakai no Banka and Senjou no Okami would've been worth having around for that customarily rad box.

I do wonder how much of the excellence seen in Capcom and SNK's followups was directly motivated by damage control. It's a silly notion, on one hand, but then the phoenix-like redemption of stuff like Guevara, Ikari III and Datsugoku (the latter being an inherently weaker game, but still worth mentioning in the same company as a consummate arcade-plus port) is kinda fanciful too.

[Herr Schatten]

Someone with a better technical handle on this stuff can correct me, but to my understanding the Famicom only had 2K of RAM (as an aside, that DD II gif above is actually for the deluxe 128K version of the Spectrum). It also had no hardware scrolling; it took well over a year for a game that wasn't fixed screen to appear (Devil World with its janky bi-axial scrolling, followed by Xevious, both in fall 1984).

Directly comparing the specs of consoles and contemporary home computers can be a bit misleading. RAM actually isn't all that important for consoles, and they traditionally have relatively little of it, because it essentially only has to hold the values of a few variables. They can just pull code and data directly from the ROM anytime, at no cost at all, while the home computer has to keep everything it needs in RAM: code, assets, you name it. Hardware sprites also make a huge difference, as software sprites can eat up a lot of cpu time with all the necessary clipping and masking that's going on.

The home computer that's closest to consoles in terms of architecture is probably the C64, which has both hardware sprites and hardware scrolling. It also supports ROM cartridges, even though they didn't get much use due to being costly back then. Some modern games do use them, though, for example Sam's Journey, which is quite nice.

[Udderdude]

The home computer that's closest to consoles in terms of architecture is probably the C64, which has both hardware sprites and hardware scrolling. It also supports ROM cartridges, even though they didn't get much use due to being costly back then. Some modern games do use them, though, for example Sam's Journey, which is quite nice.

Sam's Journey comes on 4 floppies as well. There's a ROM version, but it's not required to run the game. Probably easier to deal with than swapping floppies, though!

[Jeneki]

If we're posting computer screenshots, surely we can't leave Apple out of the fun:


Apple][ was where I learned to program as a kid, so I know what causes the wonky blocks of color to appear in images like that. Won't get too technical but lets just say colors don't always play nice with their neighbor.

[BrianC]

Dithering! Yay! Used more often in older computer games, but sometimes rears its head on consoles, as well.

[Sumez]

Someone with a better technical handle on this stuff can correct me, but to my understanding the Famicom only had 2K of RAM (as an aside, that DD II gif above is actually for the deluxe 128K version of the Spectrum). It also had no hardware scrolling; it took well over a year for a game that wasn't fixed screen to appear (Devil World with its janky bi-axial scrolling, followed by Xevious, both in fall 1984).

My suspicion is that Micronics got so much work because they could be contracted incredibly cheaply and didn't miss deadlines, but also were able to deliver completed projects on base carts with no little to no enhancement in terms of additional RAM or mapper chips. That would explain the choppy scrolling & simple music. I'm guessing it was also a very small team - quite possibly a single guy - which both explains why they could be hired so cheaply, and had such weak spritework (programmers who are also good artists and sound designers are a rare breed).

2kb is more than enough for any basic arcade-like game, and also plenty for more advanced things. The only thing you'd really need more RAM for on NES would be stuff like crazy visual effects that require buffering a lot of data, or large worlds with persistent changes, such as how SMB3 uses onboard RAM to allow breaking blocks on a stage even though you can scroll backwards through it.
Keep in mind a console like the NES only needs RAM for any persisting changing value. All ROM data is accessed as instantly as RAM is on a modern PC.

And the NES/FC absolutely has hardware scrolling, it's one of its most defining features, and its primary advantage over almost everything else for home video games at the time. It's not complex to use either, it's literally just writing the X/Y scroll values to a register. It'll take a lot more legwork if you want to freely scroll more than two full screens in *both* directions in the *same* scene, but that's also the reason very few NES games even do that (looking at SMB3 again, even that doesn't do it).

I agree that Micronics were probably the cheap workhorse, and that was the only reason they were used. But they were probably cheap only because they were a small inexperienced team able to get quick results. Adding mapper chips to an NES cart rarely does more than allowing for more program and graphics data, which through variation alone can make a game look much prettier, but it doesn't improve any technical issues like scrolling or audio quality (unless we're talking the like 10 or so games that have expansion audio, of which only three are notable), that's all down to shitty programming.
Also, lots of Micronics games did use mappers. Games like Athena, Ikari, and GNG are all UNROM, and their ROMs are about four times as big as a mapper-less NES game. Though paired with a RAM IC for the graphics data instead of a mask ROM, that might actually make production of those circuits cheaper than a mapperless game with two ROM chips, I'm not completely sure. But it did give them a lot more to work with than, say, Super Mario Bros. had.

[BIL]

Adding a bit of anecdote to Sumez's customarily knowledgeable post - I know next to nothing about tech - Ikari and Thundercade appear to use the same mapper as Contra and Jackal.

EDIT: And 1942 seems to be on the same mapper as its in-house avenger, 1943. I know they're the whipping boy par cliche, but I suspect Micronics really were just that bad.

On FC at least. Maybe homie was poundin' that bubble-era coke, and cleaned up a little for the next gen, as accounts got thinner? They have a few surprisingly competent projects to their name (Atomic Robo Kid Special MD, Sonic Wings SFC), and even their duds (Raiden Densetsu SFC) are merely bad, not outright criminal. Perikles likes their SFC Acrobat Mission, albeit with the caveat that one of its two weapons is bugged.

[Udderdude]

As far as I'm concerned, Spriggan Powered and Acrobat Mission are the only two decent games/ports they ever made.

[Sengoku Strider]

2kb is more than enough for any basic arcade-like game, and also plenty for more advanced things. The only thing you'd really need more RAM for on NES would be stuff like crazy visual effects that require buffering a lot of data, or large worlds with persistent changes, such as how SMB3 uses onboard RAM to allow breaking blocks on a stage even though you can scroll backwards through it.
Keep in mind a console like the NES only needs RAM for any persisting changing value. All ROM data is accessed as instantly as RAM is on a modern PC.

Yeah, I think this is one of those things I only have a shakey foundation on; my one semester of 1st year CompSci education didn't cover any of this stuff. I just went and looked deeper into it, and even the MMC5 only added 1k of RAM.

And the NES/FC absolutely has hardware scrolling, it's one of its most defining features, and its primary advantage over almost everything else for home video games at the time. It's not complex to use either, it's literally just writing the X/Y scroll values to a register. It'll take a lot more legwork if you want to freely scroll more than two full screens in *both* directions in the *same* scene, but that's also the reason very few NES games even do that (looking at SMB3 again, even that doesn't do it).

This is another one of those things I've long been confused on. The way I understand it, the system basically loads in an extra row of tiles off screen at one end, then has another off screen row on the other side for the scrolled area to disappear into. But if this is hardware function based, why would those Micronics games be so much jankier than everything else?

[BIL]

If I hop into a Formula 1 racecar that costs more than most people could make in ten lifetimes, with movingly superb steering, braking and suspension control, I'm still gonna launch it into the stands and enter history as motorsport's most prolific mass murderer: The HIGHWAY KILLER. (The Theme Of Highway Killer)

It's entirely possible Micronics were just similarly unqualified (but affordable).

Even in one of their best efforts (Acrobat Mission SFC), there's two weapons, and they fucked up one of them.

[Sumez]

This is another one of those things I've long been confused on. The way I understand it, the system basically loads in an extra row of tiles off screen at one end, then has another off screen row on the other side for the scrolled area to disappear into. But if this is hardware function based, why would those Micronics games be so much jankier than everything else?

Yes, the NES has enough onboard RAM for two full screens of background tiles, which allows you to load in new rows or columns of tiles off-screen, long before they actually scroll into view, giving the illusion of potentially endless stages.
I can't really think of any decent, or even a far-fetched explanation for why a game should have choppy scrolling. I can give an explanation for why a game like Karnov restricts scrolling to only one axis at a time, which makes that one incredibly awkward, but scrolling in a single direction is as simple as it can get.
What's a particularly bad example from Micronics' library? I'd love to try to look at the code and see if I can find an explanation.

[BIL]

FC 1942, Tiger Heli, and Ikari all perform hideously. So does Thundercade, which didn't get a Japanese release. Even their best FC title, Kyuukyoku Tiger, still has their distinctively choppy motion, just at a more tolerable, less slideshow-stuttering clip. KT might be particularly interesting, implying as it does that they knew there was a problem and seemed to attempt a fix.

[Rastan78]

Doesn't scrolling in two directions rely on the MMC on the cartridge?

The PPU RAM has space for two name tables and attribute tables. The typical use for two sets of background graphics is to aid in scrolling. One of the more impressive capabilities of the NES compared to earlier consoles is that it can scroll smoothly one column or line of pixels at a time, even though its graphics are tile based. Many NES cartridges can be wired so that the graphics pages can be mirrored horizontally or mirrored vertically. When the pages are mirrored vertically, scrolling the game horizontally becomes easier. Likewise, when the pages are mirrored horizontally, scrolling the game vertically becomes easier. Games that scroll both horizontally and vertically like Metroid or scroll diagonally like Bionic Commando typically have hardware to allow for fast mirroring changes in software.

[Sumez]

I looked into the 1942 code, and it's just incredibly dumb.

Basically, it uses a 16 bit variable to store the current scroll value in terms of game logic, and uses the upper 8 bits to control the visible scroll on the video chip. Now, that part actually makes sense because it's essentially the equivalent of having decimals in your values, allowing finer adjustment than full pixels - basically what speedrunners call "subpixel movement".

I don't know if the scroll speed ever changes in the game, but in the first stage that I tested, the speed is $C0, ie. it subtracts $C0 each iteration, the equivalent of 3/4 pixel. This means it'll scroll a pixel three times, then skip one, then three times, skip, etc. Once again, this isn't 100% smooth, but as smooth as you can do this scroll speed at hard 60fps pixel graphics with no interpolation, and it's completely common in games of the time.

Well, except from one major difference.

The scrolling doesn't happen every frame, it happens every 3 frames. Which means, in practice the game scrolls a pixel ever third frame, until the skip in which it waits six frames for the next scroll.
You'd get the exact same overall scroll speed at a completely smooth rate if the game would just scroll a pixel every four frames!


So my first instinct was to attempt fixing that. Lower the scroll speed to 1/4 pixel, and just execute that every frame. And that's when the real issue occured to me.
The whole god damn game runs at 20fps.


In short, there's no excuse for this outside of incredibly incompetent programmers.

[Sumez]

Doesn't scrolling in two directions rely on the MMC on the cartridge?

No, the NES is perfectly capable of scrolling in two directions. But off the bat it comes with the caveat that on one axis you have to insert new rows on the same addresses that appear on one side as the ones that are disappearing on the opposite side. This means you'll have visible artifacts along one edge of the screen, which are much more obvious when playing on a screen that doesn't have the same amount of overscan as most old CRT TVs had. SMB3 has those artifacts very clearly, but due to how much data it loads in at a time, they are much bigger than they need to be. Kirby's Adventure is an example of that handled much more cleanly.

When the character is moving on both axis on the same frame, this approach also potentially creates a host of other problems that can be very difficult for the programmers to deal with, due to how background palettes are handled, but that's getting even more technical, and it's something SMB3 also cleanly sidesteps by never scrolling more than two screens vertically, meaning it only ever needs to load in new tiles horizontally. What matters here though, is that none of this is restricted by the hardware, and is all up to clever programming.

It is however possible for cartridges to add extra RAM dedicated to addresses used by the graphics chip for background tiles, which lets them fill out the entire address space used by the NES - which is actually designed to freely scroll horizontally and vertically across four full screens, making multi-directional scrolling a billion times easier to program. That might be what you're thinking of, but in practice it was only ever used by very few games, Gauntlet 2 probably being the most notable example. In fact, I don't think Nintendo ever made cartridges doing it, it's almost exclusively bootlegs and unlicensed games that made use of this feature, even though it's inherent to the NES.

Furthermore, having tiles mapped to cartridge space also means cartridges are actually free to use bank switching logic on BG tilemaps, which can be used to make some super impressive full screen animations. by switching out the complete background layer on a frame-by-frame (or even scanline-by-scanline) basis. But the only PCBs ever made with this feature are recent homebrew mappers. It's kind of crazy how much (intended) potential on the NES was left untapped in licensed games.

[BIL]

Superb reportage, marked for index. Thanks for looking into that!

Spoiler

^^^ FC scrolling action eyedrops, handy after heavy Micronics exposure

[Udderdude]

Masterpiece vs. Mustardpiece.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm a little sad I never had an NES as a kid. I started with SNES, so I've had to discover games like Contra as an adult. I still find it extremely impressive how tightly-designed some of those NES games were. Ninja Gaiden and Contra in particular. The NES also has one of my favorite games: River City Ransom/Nekketsu Story. An open-world action rpg brawler on the NES? Unthinkable. That it could be amazing, even more so.



Still better than a lot of modern open worlds.

[BIL]

RCR is a treasure. One of those brawlers that'll always put a smile on my face - it's so uproariously brutal and mean-spirited yet cute! Technos/Miracle Kidz had a priceless mastery of chibified brawler violence, with their pouting, snarling, bug-eyed expressions, inimitably grainy, heavy *BAP-BAP-BWAP* hit SFX, and Kunio-vintage stagger/knockdown/ground-pound action.

Its world is a model of ARPG balance, too. Big enough that sprinting from one end to the other feels like a significant journey, let alone taking a relaxing amble through, but not so massive that going for short, deadly Hard runs is at all an issue.

I'm also quite fond of its Jidaigeki-themed sequel Downtown Special, which put an interesting spin on RCR's "street gang ARPG" concept. You're free to explore Japan at will - it's essentially a large collection of arenas, with many different terrain conditions - steep slopes, strong currents, cramped alleyways, slippery ice straight outta Super Dodgeball, etc. Quite a lot of secrets to ferret out - hidden shops, areas, shortcuts, and so on.

The major difference is, your targets aren't waiting at set turfs, but are roaming the map just like you - so you have to actively chase them down (a snap, with the handy map screen), never knowing exactly where you'll end up fighting. Just like RCR, it's very much a Bring Your Own Difficulty game; if you end up on a particularly disadvantageous arena, or if you're beaten up and run into your targets en-route to an inn, you're free to track them down again. They'll trash talk you for running away just as if they'd beaten you, obviously.

Has some rad new combat mechanics, like DBZ-esque speed bursts that can put fist to face from across the screen, ninja magic to create lethal tornados out of anything not nailed down, and a goddamn fart that's a fullscreen AOE. Takes a while to charge up and doesn't do much damage, IIRC, but it's good when you need a reset. Even in 1P games, you're given a reasonably capable AI partner, adding a nice bit of tactical flexibility to solo runs. Weapons are even more ridiculously brutal - get the first wheelbarrow you come across, and keep it, thing's a monster.

Only problem is the language barrier; just like RCR, while the game progression is simple enough to follow, the shops and menu screens have a ton of text. There's a very decent fan translation I used a couple years back, and I think the EN version of the Kunio World Collection (SW/PS4) has it in English, too - I'm not fond of the PS4 version though, feels slightly input-laggy.

Despite growing up with a NES, and it holding many fond memories, I'm militantly anti-nostalgic when it comes to putting time/money on my hobbies. Older stuff isn't "retro" to me, any more than classic cinema or music produced countless decades before I was born is. It's all gaming, here specifically, the august and ongoing institution of Hard Scrolling Action.

I'd felt but not truly understood this until ACA Athena, of all things... a cheap, space-efficient, high-quality release of a famous game I'd always missed out on? Sure, why not! I'm having a helluva good time with ACA Ikari and Dogo and TANK, after all!

HOLY FUCK THIS IS HORRENDOUS, THE CAMERA IS GONORRHEA ON WHEELS, AND THE STAGE DESIGN HAS ME BREAKING ROCKS WHILE BEING WHIPPED LIKE SOME SORT OF LOLI NELSON MANDELA

Worst game I've bought in fifteen years, and the first I bought totally blind in the same period. Deleted the goddamn thing, I'd have refunded it if I could. I tried to like it too, believe me! My favourite Korean superplayer badass Janet loves the game, or at least is really goddamn good at it - here he is demolishing his PCB of it. It's actually fun to watch.

The learning process though, that is the game itself, with that busted-ass camera, and horrendous hop/skip/jump mechanics, and screens upon screens of blocks to chip through? Unfortunately, I don't think Athena is a good game. Nor is The Wing of Madoola, which now I think about it, has some eerie aesthetic similarities. Panty Kenshi = Cruise Control For Classic? Not on my shelf sonny. Gimme big buff dudes in they briefs TYVM

Psycho Soldier is a much better outing for the character, and fortunately it's much easier to associate with SNK's later exploits. Sailor uniform and Kensou and all.

(I have a similar relationship with AC Datsugoku, which I road-tested after the above fiasco and passed on pending further evaluation. Big style! Bigger problems! Can't believe how much cool FC stuff isn't in the AC one!)

And that was when I understood, I'm not so much a collector as a selector. I'll go to bat for the NES as a first-rate scrolling action machine. Not for its time, or for its hardware - no caveats, no nostalgia, if you dig MD/SFC/PCE or their arcade contemporaries, you will find a goldmine on FC. Discovering stuff like Metal Storm and Gimmick was absolutely mind-blowing, they were basically new releases to me. The stuff I'd enjoyed as a kid might as well have been, too. I didn't know WTF I was doing with them. It's always a good time to get into this console.