Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BryanM]

NES Works guy dissed Arcade Rygar, so I had to play some Arcade Rygar. Feel like I've made a little progress with with it; I'm more of a running to the right kind of guy, and this is more of a killing motherfuckers kind of game. Keeping the screen clean dramatically lowers the difficulty, and I guess is kind of mandatory if you don't want nine million swoopers swoopin' in your face. Still, I don't wanna be no garbage man: my heart longs to see the screen scroll at all times~

I can see why it gets such a bum rap from people I guess. If you're not decent you'd only get like 20 seconds of playtime for your coin. Anti-games journalist mode.

This is why it breaks my heart we never got any great belt-scrollers for the Neo Geo, although I guess SNK was late enough to the party that belt-scrollers were already mostly out of style by then.

It's amazing Street Fighter 2 was so good it created an entire console basically dedicated to it. But I guess it's also lamentable that it gobbled up all the oxygen in the room during this golden age. How much different might our history have been if it never came out.

One game that I don't think a single real arcade game ever tried to provide: an arcade style jRPG. Time limit, nearly pure game like the ancient cave in Lufia games. I don't think anyone was insane enough to try to make one of those?

[BIL]

I've no idea who that is; what'd he say about it? I'm pretty sure you'd need to be a total shitbird to diss AC Rygar. Not liking it because it's too hard I can get, but even with its 1HKOs, that's one of the most formally airtight sidescrolling action/platformers I can think of. It's also one of the most generous, paradoxically... compare its firepower and headstomps and i-frames to Green Beret dude's nightmarish stab-and-sometimes-shoot mission! (I love GB too, it's the stoical method Castlevania to Rygar's more fast n' loose Ninja Gaiden)

Here's a 1CC primer and a Normal survival nomiss to set you up for LEGENDARY VICTORY

I've not heard of many disliking the AC original either... in my experience, it's usually the much easier-going ARPG-styled NES game that gets written off. Which again, I get arcade fans being aghast, but it's fine for what it is. Depends where you hang around I suppose, I don't venture far into normieville.



^^^ Thats ME last time I was in NORMIE TOWN, they attack me cuz I white I swear I ain't call em shitbirds or nothing (■｀w´■)

Worth noting that the latter was explicitly marketed as an original game for the Famicom, with its own JP subtitle "Hachamecha Daishingeki." Gets me HARD BUTTMAD when people call it "the NES port" or "NES version." See also Bionic Commando! More like THE RESURRECTION OF HITLER, numbnuts!

[Air Master Burst]

One game that I don't think a single real arcade game ever tried to provide: an arcade style jRPG. Time limit, nearly pure game like the ancient cave in Lufia games. I don't think anyone was insane enough to try to make one of those?

I think Capcom's D&D games, Cadash, Gauntlet Legends, and maybe stuff like Gaiapolis or Legend of Valkyrie are as close as you're likely to get.

ETA: Also the Dark Seal games might fit the bill.

[BIL]

WHOA ITS BEAUTIFUL (■｀w´■) Plus HAWT protip from THA REAL GAYMERZ: those beastman jenga things are treats (zip em up for TECH BOUNS) or traps (beastman orgy toppling down!), set in stone. Even when you're learning the stages, though, getting in TECH BOUNS proximity will cause the would-be gangbang to miss you by a mile while you whack the treacherous cunts! So you won't eat shit simply for SHOWIN GUTS and GOIN FOR TEH GOLD Many such amenities throughout this fine TECMO production!



"UNCOVER THE 'MARK OF HOKUTO' OR YOUR ASS GON BE FUCC" - Early NA poster blurb



DARKNESS BOP action to make "SUPER MARIO" SHIT HIS BRIEFS - "" ""

God, what a surreal thing to wake up to ITT. This is what I get for shirking church, Bryan!

Anti-games journalist mode.

Cracking aphorism Reminds me of the little cafe down the road in our quaint sea-side towne! This time of year, seagulls get really rude with customers dining outside, so the owner has these two absolutely horrific dragon kites hovering over the establishment in the balmy sea breeze. Seagulls are clever bastards! They know not to try!

You'd think a games journo would have comparable cognitive capabilities to a poor little bird - shadows on the ground, that's trouble! -
but then this happened!

[Sengoku Strider]

Jeremy Parrish is, in fact, probably the most historically knowledgeable gaming journalist there is. I don't think there's anyone with a better understanding of context, lines of influence and how things fit together during the 80s-90s. His Segaiden series might well be the only English language deep-dive into the SG-1000 library and its history out there. I haven't come across any Japanese sources that thorough yet either. I also can't think of anyone else who has taken as serious a run at the Virtual Boy.

But he's also the guy who started the "Bloodlines is a better Castlevania than Super IV because the whip isn't as long" thing, so he is not without crimes to answer for.

=============

Man, there is one thing I'll say for that Rockman Mega World slowdown, it sure makes the Yellow Devil easier. I beat him clean on my first attempt, and I wasn't even at full health. I haven't fought him in a decade to boot.

[BIL]

A moving resume, but data =/= insight. (■｀w´■) ESPECIALLY in a battle amongst spergs! If your Sperg Force™ is unrefined, unfocused, lacking conviction? Forget it. You'll end up like that poor bald dude in Scanners. The bald dude on the right, I mean. Viewer's right. With the glasses.

I'd call Bloodlines superior to IV, but I'd say the same of CV1, CVIII, Rondo, X68k and Dracula XX. It's nothing to do with the whip length. It's nothing do with flexible jumps, either. X68k, easily a frontrunner of this set - the likable but hamfisted PS1 conversion isn't a true substitute - demonstrates neither is an issue. My problem is IV trading down to a notable softer, bumpier, candlemeat-driven mode of twitch/method action, with a longer runtime which only gains do/die tension in its endgame's proliferation of 1HKO traps. It's a bigger investment of time for less consistent pace.

I hasten to add, the series' most maturely mellow, brooding OST, and the Odyssean journey from bleak wilderness through the outsizedly fiendish outer defenses, into a disarmingly phantasmagoric castle with vile depths and evilly alluring peaks makes it the obvious Artsy Quiet Kid of the traditional Dracula set, and that it'd be pretty tasteless and myopic to call IV a Bad Dracula, as opposed to a less razor-sharp one. Good for long dark winter evenings with a Loop 2 start for a bit of added pep.

Maybe AC Rygar's screen-length whip is what knocks it down a peg in his eyes? I'm surprised to hear a Bloodlines advocate, of all things, would dislike that game. Rygar and Green Beret before it are arguably the font of the entire traditional Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden series, plus their dozens of celebrated close contemporaries from Natsume, Sunsoft, Aicom and co. What's the line of argument, that hitpoints = better games? I'd argue that a game working in 1HKO format is a far sterner barrier to clear, even if makes the casuals bitch.

[Herr Schatten]

Why does my head always want to group Rygar and Karnov? The two games neither look nor play anything alike. They are not even from the same company.

[BIL]

Must be the iconic combination of red spandex and DEM STIFF PECS （＾w´ ）

Actually wait, was Karnov buff? I can never tell if he's meant to be a fat tubby bastard, or a classical strongman, who tended to be less cut (as they are today, opposite bodybuilders), but by no means fat. Hmm. There's an interesting subject for a 1UP.com article

[kitten]

parrish is a tourist. steps ahead of your kurt kalatas, miles behind a lot of posters on here for anything other than trivia. he's probably still really buddy-buddy with cifaldi, who is someone more interested in archiving ancient game informer scans than playing games. i think the idea we need game "historians" just goes to show modern culture's incredibly dire ability to process any art that isn't happening in the immediate moment. everyone on that side of the field isn't interested in games being played, they're interested in them being "remembered" and you can watch their enthusiasm fade out and the excuses for piss-poor play stack up to the ceiling when they're asked to *play*, which is... what you do with a game.

the thing that i find really upsetting about them - why my opinion is angry rather than "ah, they're harmless" - is that they soak up a lot of cash and attention and have their fingers in a lot of pies. they really proudly laud themselves as some of the most committed people to games and gladly take the positions that pay for that, but in doing so set the future with their agenda (frank can't even get through most games without save-stating and actively advocates emulator tools for any old games, for example). it's not even a matter of elitism, it's a matter of "this is how the games were meant to be played as intended in their natural environment and by the developers." but that doesn't matter to them, what matters to them is an edifice to their childhood and adolescence built to the moon.

it's enough to justifiably make anyone angry.

also i just remembered i was on final consideration for a writing position for parrish before i quit writing and he snubbed me right in the last round. it's Personal, Mother Fucker

[BIL]

I once contacted Frank Cifaldi as to whether SNK40th's glaring bugs might be fixed. It's a good selection, but the emulation is tatty, to say the least.

I was a little taken aback to hear that the collection, then under 2yrs old, was now unfathomably ancient, and would never, ever be updated.

At that point and with a bit of further reading, I came to more or less the same conclusion as you: these people aren't serious archivists. They're nostalgists. There's a gulf between the two fields. One's a hard discipline with exacting standards. The other is a hazy indulgence. "Hazy" and "indulgent" are the dead-last words I would associate with quality action games, of the sort stranded on SNK40th.

And so that was that! Here's hoping Hamster rescue a few more titles from that collection.

[Rastan78]

Must be the iconic combination of red spandex and DEM STIFF PECS （＾w´ ）

Actually wait, was Karnov buff? I can never tell if he's meant to be a fat tubby bastard, or a classical strongman, who tended to be less cut (as they are today, opposite bodybuilders), but by no means fat. Hmm. There's an interesting subject for a 1UP.com article

Oh he's definitely a chubby little fucker. Look at dem titties.



I mean I know he looks different across other games and representations. Maybe this is Karnov in his later years after he went all Robert De Niro in Rsging Bull.

[BIL]

Good gravy! The man have NUFF BUBS



I know there's some Turkic imagery at play here, but what an odd character design for a fairly high-profile game. Maybe that was the point... his DECO Trilogy partners in crime do include CHERUNOBU, whose nuclear controversy factor (censored to "Atomic Runner" in the West) JoshF once likened to an earthquake-themed superhero being called "Haitiman." >_> Fuckin DECO

[Sengoku Strider]

the thing that i find really upsetting about them - why my opinion is angry rather than "ah, they're harmless" - is that they soak up a lot of cash and attention and have their fingers in a lot of pies. they really proudly laud themselves as some of the most committed people to games and gladly take the positions that pay for that, but in doing so set the future with their agenda (frank can't even get through most games without save-stating and actively advocates emulator tools for any old games, for example). it's not even a matter of elitism, it's a matter of "this is how the games were meant to be played as intended in their natural environment and by the developers." but that doesn't matter to them, what matters to them is an edifice to their childhood and adolescence built to the moon.

I'm not sure this critique quite works. The most vocal advocates I know for emulation are talented players, who use save states for hardcore practice. I don't know how many Western record chasers aren't using MAME or Shmuparch for older games without quality re-releases containing practice tools. And I say this as someone who hasn't had an emulator on his computer since 2008 and thinks it's generally kinda skeezy and devalues the art.

I also think you're unfairly conflating people. Parrish appears to buy every game he's studying in-box, and plays it on original hardware (or reasonable analogues). Unless it's something absurdly unobtainable or expensive, in which case he borrows it from someone else; either way he'll usually show it on camera. He has regular gameplay streams (ie. Gintendo, where he drinks while he plays), so he's not hiding away from anything.

But I also don't think this criticism is relevant. Nobody expects a baseball historian to be a home run champ. A film historian doesn't need an Oscar-filled IMDB page. And thankfully military historians aren't required to conquer nearby countries to prove their bonafides. Because these aren't equivalent skill-sets. Being willing and able to dig through game credits, track subcontracted developers even when uncredited, go through archives, exhaustively trace the origins of individual gameplay elements and their coalescence into genres and subgenres, and produce disciplined professional work around this on a weekly basis for years is no small feat.

I'm not sure anybody was writing about Wings of Madoola and its place in the legacy of Metroid, but once he picked up the gauntlet suddenly multiple retrospectives appeared. Or picking apart how much the Legend of Zelda was cobbling together elements of Tower of Druaga and Hydlide, or even acknowledging how huge and influential Druaga was in the first place.

[BIL]

But I also don't think this criticism is relevant. Nobody expects a baseball historian to be a home run champ. A film historian doesn't need an Oscar-filled IMDB page. And thankfully military historians aren't required to conquer nearby countries to prove their bonafides. Because these aren't equivalent skill-sets. Being willing and able to dig through game credits, track subcontracted developers even when uncredited, go through archives, exhaustively trace the origins of individual gameplay elements and their coalescence into genres and subgenres, and produce disciplined professional work around this on a weekly basis for years is no small feat.

I most definitely expect competence from anyone who'd write about a videogame's quality, its playability. These aren't historic matches or battles viewed in hindsight, nor are they even passive viewing or listening experiences ala film / music. If it becomes apparent someone's threshold for engagement with a game - or a kind of game - is especially low, their credibility will suffer in any enthusiast's eyes.

In fact, if their incompetence is severe enough, it may serve as a kind of endorsement - for example, "too hard!" has long since become personal code for "substantial," and "too short!" for "no filler."

Anyway, because your original response was to me - a reassurance that far from cocking an eyebrow at Parrish's credibility. I should trust in his journalistic bonafides - I decided to look up the video Bryan mentioned. As is Bryan's wont, I figured he had playfully exaggerated. "I'd better not be walking into an HG101-grade shitfest full of geriatric casual gamer cliches!" I half-jokingly thought.

(I walked into an HG101-grade shitfest full of geriatric casual gamer cliches)

Thus spake Jerry, AC Rygar is "agonisingly long" (~30mins a credit), "pretty mundane," full of "cheap hits," and designed to "gobble quarters" - a curious charge for a game that boots the player off after their third credit. Once you've cleared three stages, you've seen "all it has to offer." (I actually cracked a smile at that last one - it's so barefacedly dishonest, with even the most generous interpretation)

The NES verison, meanwhile, is "totally fair," we're informed to footage of Jerry eating spreadshot after spreadshot while damage-sponging through a miniboss to narrow victory. He later calls the AC game a "mindless melee arcade platformer," opposite the NES's "fully-fledged ARPG" - another improbably letter-perfect bit of farce I couldn't help smiling at, our intrepid reviewer's ever-growing lifebar soaking yet more damage, as he scampered up a rope to that next sweet dopamine hit.

NES Rygar, as played by Jerry, looks almost tactile in its damage sponging - I'm imagining mopping up a hot, saucy plate with a thick slice of crusty white bread after a satisfying meal at the local Italian place. I know this feeling from certain Compile STGs, with their signature "body ram" burst invincibility, but never did I suspect it was hiding in such plain sight here!

The AC's signature stomp n' bounce, a vital source of invincible frames - a novel element many journos infamously fail to grasp to this day, cf Souls "PREPARE 2 DIE" hysteria - barely gets a look in, via a very late comment on its far less integral NES equivalent, which we are told is "weird," with no further comment. One faintly hopes the "weirdness" or distinctiveness might be followed up on - perhaps with a note that the onslaughts it facilitates attack/evasion of, in the Arcade game, are AWOL here? But no.

Similarly nil mention goes to the AC's powerups and their massive expansion of the player's offensive suite. What kind of loser bothers surviving a whole agonising three minutes to see powerups? Indeed, no detail beyond "run/jump/hit" is ever given of the AC game, I'm guessing because Parrish played it for five minutes, looked up a FAQ to clock the number of stages, then called it quits. Instead, we're given a similarly oilslick-deep comparison to fellow landmark Rastan, because the player sprites look similar, and that's about it.

He concludes with another generous serving of fried air - NES Rygar may have less stages, but they are "more interesting" (ie they don't kill Jerry when he blunders into things), and they reward players' "sense of spatial awareness." By this, he does not mean the level designs themselves do interesting things, spatially; rather, he is referring to the various logs and chasms you pass by early on, which you should return to once you are equipped to traverse them. Backtracking, an arcade action fan's delight.

We end on resounding applause for the NES game's evolving beyond its "shallow" arcade predecessor, offering instead a "large virtual world" for the player to explore at their leisure. "Leisure" and "Shallow" are key words here, as we're informed AC Rygar "sucks," and its appeal lay exclusively with narcissists desperate enough to weather its herculean (30min) runtime for local bragging rights. Jerry does not do bragging, maaan! Talk about toxic masculinity. He's all about exploring those "large virtual worlds," brah, while getting shot in the face repeatedly.

What about those who couldn't care less about braggadocio, who simply find this intense, no-frills mode of action game enjoyable in its own right? Daft question - they're not watching or reading Jerry's work, unless that rascal Bryan tricked them into it first. Up this page, I half-jokingly wondered "Why would anyone trash AC Rygar?" I should've appended: "...assuming they're not a generic nostalgia casual about as compatible with the notion of recreational challenge as a bucket of bacon grease is with a flamethrower?"



Hard scrolling action games are my passion (he typed with a granite murderface - you like what you like! and I'll be doing this stuff until I fall off my chair). I've not seen another sidescrolling action/platformer from the 80s or 90s, period, with Rygar's particular balance of intensity and generosity. It's an uncommonly fair game, not just by arcade but even console standards. I genuinely don't know what cheap hits he's talking about; there's certainly nothing here as monstrously unfair as the sixth stage of Castlevania, a game he appears to lionise.

When I detect cheapness in a title I dig, I don't pretend it's not there. I single it out, warn others who might be considering a purchase, then seek to neutralise it as much as possible via practiced technique. See, again, Castlevania's sixth stage (and most definitely its second loop catacombs). Sometimes, it's just too much, and I have to concede the product is busted - caveat emptor. I always expect at least a little; designing compellingly tough games for an enthusiast niche without ever overstepping the line isn't easy. Learning to survive Rygar required absolutely nil, I was genuinely surprised - particularly as a latecomer (2019).

It's also a marvelously finessed action game, again by standards far beyond its own time. The GIFs seen above make Jerry's footage look like shit, true, but they are no choice promo cuts, only utterly mundane snapshots of typical runs. AC Rygar, by its nature, demands you marshal the character's superhuman mobility merely to survive, in not just aggressive but frequently creative, multi-tasking ways. Mindless? Get your eyes examined.

It's natural that Jerry would have nothing to say about any of this - why would anyone devote more than the most banal, interchangeable observation to a game so cruel as to lock you away from its "virtual world," condemning you to thirty whole minutes of "mindless melee?"

"Maybe if you engaged your mind, you'd notice the melee isn't so mindless at all" is my usual thought, and typically I leave it at that. Don't track dogshit in to the house is my personal policy for this thread. What passes for valuable, debatable insight in casual spaces will barely tread water in niche, enthusiast ones, and what will typically ensue - as here - is a painstaking analysis of utter vacuous shit.

We also get an unsourced claim of FC Ninja Ryukenden being a separate project from its AC counterpart - not because they were in development simultaneously by differing divisions at Tecmo, as has been confirmed via staff interviews, but because Nintendo demanded this. No source is given, only a caveat from Parrish himself that he might be talking nonsense - it's just a theory he likes. Great history!

Similarly flubbed is the nature of FC/NES Rygar itself. "Almost an original sequel?" It has its own subtitle, in Japan. "Hachamecha Daishingeki / Legendary Great Charge." I'm unsure if Jerry's going for a Burgercentric "Didn't happen in Burgerland? DUN CARE LOL" approach - which would still suck balls, mind - or not.

I'm not sure anybody was writing about Wings of Madoola and its place in the legacy of Metroid, but once he picked up the gauntlet suddenly multiple retrospectives appeared. Or picking apart how much the Legend of Zelda was cobbling together elements of Tower of Druaga and Hydlide, or even acknowledging how huge and influential Druaga was in the first place.

You're leaving me freezing cold here. When were these writings published? Everything you just mentioned was boilerplate discourse on this forum, SelectButton and HG101's ca.2005, to name a few places. It makes me wonder if Jerry was trawling the same places around then, or maybe a bit later on, once the website went tits up?

As an aside, I noticed a lot of "for its time" and "better things to come" speech in that video - the usual nostalgist stink I get from these quarters. They don't discuss games as they are, in the present, but as they were, in the past - a past leading to the glorious future of even bigger, more EXPLAWESOME virtual worlds for Jerry and his lik to explore! Rockin'! Zzzzzz.

[kitten]

I'm not sure this critique quite works.

He has regular gameplay streams (ie. Gintendo, where he drinks while he plays), so he's not hiding away from anything.

i don't have a problem with the existence of emulator tools or particular uses for them, though i think even skilled players are a little too quick to abuse them and miss some of the game's fun and natural learning curve by going right down to rotely memorizing every segment (see: speedrunners who see a game and then "want to run it" and skip straight to this). i'm just saying cifaldi and a lot of company (not parrish in particular, but it's common of these types) literally cannot defeat older games without them and encourage the active use of them to enjoy the games while characterizing lives/continues/etc. as archaic products of their time.

i'm pretty sure even parrish says that if you think it's more fun, just do it (his skill is low, he doesn't beat a lot of games before speaking about them with authority), but there's a lot of psychological pratfalls to cheating that deprive people of better experiences and gear them up to improper play mindsets. there's no direct analogy, but you see parallels in just about every form of media, especially these days - criticism becomes a meta and the individual ability to comprehend and interpret meaning is compromised by mass dilettantism. appreciation and more profound thought are cheapened by the desire to have a culturally "correct" opinion. you can watch parrish or any streamer/online personality whatsoever actively compromise their potential by giving in to the lowest common denominator's urge to never commit to true love for something. it's all about stopping short and playing up that you got further (e.g. in appreciation/understanding, not 'further in the game') so that the bar lowers and everyone feels a hollow accomplishment in their mediocrity.

not to go all baudelaire, but... the modern day and age has really ruined love for so much art and for artists to create meaningful work, themselves. it is always up to the artist and viewer to determine for themselves what matters, but without ever challenging or bettering oneself, you settle. and you settle lower and lower until you're but as sediment among the sediment, and the sediment becomes as plaque and the deeper layers all that more difficult to penetrate. this is a big part of why children are excited by new things and adults aren't; you aren't born with the desire to settle, you *learn* that. the more we hook people at younger ages into broadly metastasized comprehension of art (or, really, anything) the more they immediately attract themselves to adults who have settled and advertise themselves as our thinkers. hence any teens' obsession with 'breadtubers' and streamers and their lack of direct engagement with anything.

not that i think that culture should revert to more primitive ways, necessarily (in fact, i would argue it doing so is exactly what is happening without art being more properly valued by people in positions of cultural power, which is just creating a really fucking weird tribalism), but that we should really more empower people to get more hands-on and individually thinking about everything. learning resources need more artist commentary and critic commentary needs to be from people who challenge themselves more. criticism is useful and should be encouraged, but "critics" need hold a much, much higher duty to themselves properly portray art as intended and hold themselves to higher standards if we're to find any use in them at all. instead, they're more like arbiters of settling. it's "snobbish" to give a fucking shit about goddamn anything at all because it's not "inclusive." inclusivity only matters for the availability of resources, not for the availability of validation for lower forms of thought. if you're 'dumb and bad' you should get chided as such by your peers, not become some sort of populist champion. "the elite" should be be not lowered, but everyone elevated to that position (which is tricky, because the elite wanting to stay an exclusive club leads to their inevitable undermining and lack of existence - usually by the "actual elite" becoming stupid and fat and rich and the masses somehow asking for that because it's what they think they want and they want to celebrate the idea someone can get there). if you don't want to put in time and effort, don't resist being called dimwitted.

calvin & hobbes itself is often an intellectual low bar people love to refer to to stop themselves from really thinking (not watterson's fault, culture is a monster as i keep trying to illustrate lol), but this strip is a really great example of why people revile academia, now, and how our post-war elite insulated themselves from being taken seriously. intellectualism just became an insular club where the "in" became advanced signaling over actual thinking (sound familiar?).



it's sadly really easy for this kind of memetic humor to supplant thinking and become what idiots who don't want to clear bars celebrate (or these days, "post"), too, though. probably part of why watterson quit making public art.

Nobody expects a baseball historian to be a home run champ. A film historian doesn't need an Oscar-filled IMDB page. And thankfully military historians aren't required to conquer nearby countries to prove their bonafides.

this is a really, really stupid correlation. everyone should expect a baseball historian to be able to comment meaningfully on the play of a professional and their strength - likewise should a game historian understand how to play a game. in video gaming, there's no shortcut to learning from playing other than maybe extensive review of high quality play, which they also usually don't do. film historians and critics similarly don't (or shouldn't) stop short of completing a film and understanding the context and history of it to create meaningful commentary. lotte eisner, one of the most lauded critics of all time, had specialty in german film and survived the holocaust to talk substantively of the presence of populist sentimentalism in films of the time period and how that inevitably became nazi propaganda (e.g. from the sentiment in fritz lang's 'metropolis' - [translating roughly from german] "the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart," which was written by someone who became a notable nazi [not lang, himself], to how 'triumph of the will' eventually got made and we lost many of the great artists and thinkers around that time), which tore through and more or less destroyed german expressionism in film.

historically, our archivists and curators and thinkers and critics have all been people deeply, deeply involved in the things they're involved with on every level, from being friends with people making and playing the things to being producers and managers to being present for major historical events that shaped the things (e.g. i really think it's important for a modern day game historian to have actually participated in game center culture and not just played the legend of zelda a lot when he was 8. high bar, i know). for games, developer interviews are rare, as well as watching developers play - study often has to be independent and your theory has got to be backed up by reality. one of the serious problems with gaming as a medium is how broad and wide theory becomes because gaming is becoming less and less complete works of art and more and more giant, towering messes of incomplete theory by lazy theorists spurred on by critics (who are also lazy theorists). one of the reasons i love this thread is that action games - and older and simpler games, in general - managed to apply theory straight to the pavement and become something. aaaand they're now seen as just another theory stepping stone, a small step on the way to truer and truer art like *gesturing at the numerous piles of genre dogshit that are now unavoidable*. it's enough to make my blood boil.

a culture once existed that actually refined these things and had them stand on their own, the artists of the time rapidly consuming everything else done in their genre to create truly superb and refined things. we just don't have this any more.

edit:

i should really also mention that in addition to artists of the time of Classic Scrolling Action rapidly consuming, digesting, and thinking, there were no "elite" other than the dedicated and the budget and team size needed to make the big, "true" art of the time was actually within reach by up and coming lovers of the form. it was a really amazing and special time period for video games, both for artists and consumers. probably couldn't have happened without a culture logistically condensed enough (GROLIOUS BUBBLE ECONOMY NIPPON).

also, bil's above post is pretty illustrative of some of what i've also talked about. i think we're mostly on the same page. great takedown of bad writing, analysis, and examination.

[BIL]

I don't know who I'm madder at - Bryan, for tricking me with a box propped up by a twig over an issue of EGM (Aieee!), or you, for inadvertently branding my post with the dread Edited timestemp! GRRR! All my posts arrive as-is, there are no typos to be caught! >_>

Either way, you're looking at SHUMPS FORUMS MADDEST MAN (■｀w´■)

<333 ;3

[kitten]

fuck you, you just got me with it, too ;___;

[BIL]

Now I feel worse!

At least you got the more professional EDIT: in though! The unsigned timestamp-only, there's no comin' back from that one. GG

[BryanM]

Expectations of the poor doughy games journalists has always been cruelly high around here. At most all they can provide is "here are some things that exist, if you're interested go find out more for yourself." No one can do a deep dive on literally every game that exists, and no one would care but those deeply invested already, who don't need no commentarians. Anyone who has the basic decency to not slap a freakin' number on something is already stepping over the bar.

The example I always like to give is The Muppet Show versus American Karaoke Idol. First episode of The Muppet Show, a lady did a dance. Like it, hate it, think it's pretty, think it's boring, that's all for you to decide for yourself. Karaoke Idol, you have these authoritarian assholes nitpicking and judging every little thing about a freakin' karaoke performance.

Most words are like the clucking of chickens, opinions on entertainment perhaps most of all. Easily ignored, unlike bro science and assorted bullshit on material conditions.

It makes me wonder if Jerry was trawling the same places around then, or maybe a bit later on, once the website went tits up?

Since it was bad enough to make me a little sore, I knew it'd make you absolutely pizzle'd.

Context for why we're even talking about this guy in the first place: he's spent years presenting the post-Atari crash console market by.... going through every game released, sequentially.

Notably absent: arcade games.

One benefit of this method, besides some thoroughness, is it creates a bit of immersion with the timeline, reliving it a bit in a way. So games that were quickly surpassed have a moment to shine against their contemporaries.

Not everyone will be into everything, and I'd be a hypocrite since my interest in standard sports games based on "real life" NFL/NBA/MLB is overall a big fat zero.

Anyone ever make that "realistic" baseball game I always talk about? Where you're sitting in the dugout and spacing out in the field for 98% of the game, like what playing the game is like in real life?

As is Bryan's wont, I figured he had playfully exaggerated.

I'm seriously not kidding about learning how to eat trees. You'll want to at least have a rough grasp of the method if you want to live through your 60's.

.... fuuuck. Chopping down branches in mah 60's... You'll want to do a little strength training as well.

[Rastan78]

Hearing Parish's thoughts on Rygar AC vs Rygar NES had me thinking. Often when people look at art and media through a historical lense they like to see throughlines. Because the NES game has certain ARPG or "metroidvania" elements it can be seen as a progenitor of the the type of immersive experiences that more gamers crave today. It's not that far of a stretch to draw a line through Rygar NES all the way to Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, Horizon or other critical darlings and mega successful contemporary games. Meanwhile ultra pure arcade style experiences like Rygar AC can be seen relatively as evolutionary Neanderthals. In hindsight rather than going down a dead end, Rygar NES was taking the first baby steps toward a bright and shiny future full of light RPG elements and leisurely exploration.

You can see the same phenomenon in something like art history. How could a northern Renaissance master like Breugel be essentially discarded for 300 years before finally gaining appreciation? Partly because you can't draw a direct line from his work to the next big thing in the way you might be able to draw such a line between his Italian contemporaries and later Baroque styles.

[Vludi]

lol Rygar was a classic here and I bet anywhere with an arcade scene, don't take that guy seriously, some people just don't get (nor want to get) arcade/action games and only approve of the popular "influential" ones like Castlevania, Contra or Ninja Gaiden, probably without much reasoning or even enjoyment behind it, they are "important games" before they are "good games".
I don't think modern gaming is completely devoid of arcade-like gameplay though, some action roguelikes for example replicate the overall structure and experience in a pretty decent way (despite some differences like the randomness factor), I think these players are more capable of enjoying old arcade games, rather than the "immersive non-linear cinematic masterpiece world" kind of player. This is a proper game analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5C1Uj7jJCg

[BIL]

Since it was bad enough to make me a little sore, I knew it'd make you absolutely pizzle'd.

A kind of nostalgic anger for all those futile - if amusing - dunks on poor old HG101 3;

Like I used to love slamming their Taromaru "It's poorly balanced because it has bullets!" shitpiece. "It's not poorly balanced you numbskulls, you have a shield that blocks literally everything!" I'd sneer. Then I realised... it is poorly balanced, if you're a human dumpster who wants to see pretty picture and move on to next product *burp*

It might even cause you to *gasp* DIE

Hardcore Game: PREPARE 2 DIE YOU PORKY-ASS MUHFUCKA (｀w´メ)
Hardcore Gaming 101: OH PLS GOD NAAAOOOHHH I HABE FAMRY (;｀w´;)
Hardcore Game: What the fuck? (◎w◎;)

I'm seriously not kidding about learning how to eat trees. You'll want to at least have a rough grasp of the method if you want to live through your 60's.

.... fuuuck. Chopping down branches in mah 60's... You'll want to do a little strength training as well.

NGL I gave up on the "BRUH, THATS X-TREEEM" plate-chasing once I realised so many of the strong old gym dudes I know were needing back surgery and shit in their 50s, while the hardass wiry dockworkers were still killin' it in their 80s. Switched to pullups/etc and only moderate free weights for the coming Exploding Varmints Future. Hit up grandpappy for gun maintenance lore while I was at it. >_>

They won't take my rice bowl easily Bryan! (・｀w´・) See they don't yours either (｀w´メ) Yeah, I know. (˘w˘) Rice? Lucky to have fuckin millet bro. Gotta dream big, though!

Hearing Parish's thoughts on Rygar AC vs Rygar NES had me thinking. Often when people look at art and media through a historical lense they like to see throughlines. Because the NES game has certain ARPG or "metroidvania" elements it can be seen as a progenitor of the the type of immersive experiences that more gamers crave today. It's not that far of a stretch to draw a line through Rygar NES all the way to Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, Horizon or other critical darlings and mega successful contemporary games. Meanwhile ultra pure arcade style experiences like Rygar AC can be seen relatively as evolutionary Neanderthals. In hindsight rather than going down a dead end, Rygar NES was taking the first baby steps toward a bright and shiny future full of light RPG elements and leisurely exploration.

Was delighted to find Dark Souls is pretty much Faxanadu via Devil May Cry, recently. I'd had a blast with Bloodborne last year, but that one being more explicitly modeled on DMC-style Hard 3D Action, and having exactly the Weird Fiction tone I enjoy, I knew I'd be at least entertained. DS1 is the real goddamn thing though A world of soaring, knowingly inexplicable grandeur and biblical dangers.

I'm gonna put some time aside this January for DSIII, have even been enjoying DSII in the meantime. I tend to like a spirited black sheep; the floatier handling made me wince at first, but pardon that, it's got some fiery venom of its own, as well as a real purgatorial sense of longing and ennui.

All of which made the whole "PREPARE 2 DIE" / "U ain't never seen hardcore like this before!" craze even more hilarious. Like yeah, dude, you went to the wrong hood and got smoked. Ever try going [left] at Castlevania II's opening town? Oh hell no! As with the old stuff, there's this unspoken, underlying rule: Brush up on your fundamentals, because all the GRINDAN in the world won't help if you keep running face-first into enemy blades / fire pits, etc!

I love that mode of ARPG, ala Faxanadu/Olympus/Zelda II - I never really thought of it as antagonistic to a pure arcade ethos, the way stuff like outright JRPGs and open world sandboxes might be. But then again, with how demanding and willfully spartan (muh virtual world!) AC stuff tends to be, I think just about any easier-going game type would've quickly won the mainstream's affections.

lol Rygar was a classic here and I bet anywhere with an arcade scene, don't take that guy seriously, some people just don't get (nor want to get) arcade/action games and only approve of the popular "influential" ones like Castlevania, Contra or Ninja Gaiden, probably without much reasoning or even enjoyment behind it, they are "important games" before they are "good games".

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's pure HG101, nothing new to see here... and you know, bless them, they know their audience. This thread is that proverbial wrong hood that they, to their credit, seem to stay out of, much as we do theirs.

Sometimes tribal warfare is simply inevitable without a policy of distance.

I don't think modern gaming is completely devoid of arcade-like gameplay though, some action roguelikes for example replicate the overall structure and experience in a pretty decent way (despite some differences like the randomness factor), I think these players are more capable of enjoying old arcade games, rather than the "immersive masterpiece cinematic world" kind of player.

I've always noticed a healthy crossover between fans of the nicher modern stuff and classic arcade fare, particularly STGs and fighters but also beltscrollers, puzzlers and the like. The way I see it, gamers with an affinity for streamlined, uncompromising hardcore will seek it out, whatever some casual journo tells them to like. As with stuff like the Souls games (meaning the fans who really engage with them, not the "prepare 2 die" memelords), I don't think of those games' fans as all that different from our circles.

[Rastan78]

I'm gonna put some time aside this January for DSIII, have even been enjoying DSII in the meantime. I tend to like a spirited "black sheep" entry; the floatier handling made me wince at first, but pardon that, it's got some fiery venom of its own, as well as a real purgatorial sense of longing and ennui.

Oddly enough DSII ended up being my favorite. Not that I'd say it's objectively the best of the ones I played through. I'd have to give that to DS1 or Bloodborne. Somehow II is the one I played the most by far and have the fondest memories of. Sure it traded out the compressed intricacy of DS' vertically stacked dungeons for a more sprawling series of semi linear sandboxes. It was a refreshing change and lent each area a more distinct sense of place IMO. That's the thing that gave II its own identity for better or worse.

Maybe it's that after the first one everything had clicked for me as far as understanding building a character, tactics, coop and all that, and I could just blaze through the game having fun. I like taking an early weapon all the way through the game so I did my whole first run at launch with a broadsword (or something like that found very early). BB I did with only the starting heavy axe. Love how they dont force you to constantly pick up and drop/sell loot as if your playing Borderlands or Diablo.

Also at the point of II coming out no Souls fatigue had developed in me yet. Thoroughly enjoyed BB and then by DSIII I was starting to fall off. I kinda feel about Souls games like I do about Psikyo. I love them, but there's enough similarity that I don't feel the need to dig deep into every single one of them.

[Vludi]

I've always noticed a healthy crossover between fans of the nicher modern stuff and classic arcade fare, particularly STGs and fighters but also beltscrollers, puzzlers and the like. The way I see it, gamers with an affinity for streamlined, uncompromising hardcore will seek it out, whatever some casual journo tells them to like. As with stuff like the Souls games (meaning the fans who really engage with them, not the "prepare 2 die" memelords), I don't think of those games' fans as all that different from our circles.

It's not even about hardcore vs. casual for me, I'd say casual puzzle mobile players or casual tabletop game players are still getting more streamlined gameplay, challenge and agency compared to more "hardcore" games on PC/Consoles with lots of dead time and cutscenes. It's more like some people want to ditch traditional game structures as much as possible, trying to turn video games into an overly passive literary media, where traditional gameplay and challenge are seen as primitive or immature, so you have to "fix" this primitive gameplay with "complexity" (bloat) and "variety" (gimmicks).
As for Dark Souls I haven't tried it properly yet, but I enjoyed Sekiro a lot.

[kitten]

i've done a lot of thinking re: "souls fans" and how adjacent they are in what they're interested in to "classic gaming" fans. i quit during dark souls 3 and have totally lost interest in anything fromsoft is doing (but probably had over 2k combined hours in the previous games). i think, ultimately, there are too many differences in both structure and mentality required for play despite some obvious crossover ground for me to consider them properly intersected.

the thing about souls games is that they are 1. really fucking long 2. not actually very well-designed, ever.

they're like super-sprawling theory experiments (esp elden ring lol) more than they are tightly refined anything at all and i think that really makes them distinct. while you might take to one with a similar mentality, the lack of any intent whatsoever given to marathon play and the increasing lack of attention to structure begins to make it more akin to playing more modern wrpgs with some dungeon crawler seasoning and an actiony-enough interface. from software, i think, are more ideas people than they are design people, and they usually get it right the first or second time (king's field [IIjp], armored core, demon's souls & dark souls) and then go deep, deep down theory holes and never actually complete what they're making and make it way the fuck too big to ever even really begin to consider how the design could possibly look if they were to stop for fucking moment and pull the drawstrings together.

i-frame dodge, in general, is a huge band-aid to making anything have to comprehensively work and tends to reduce all the varieties of combat into pretty strict, rote nonsense that occasionally involves clever kiting and spacing. the presentation is superb, that they're a little spicy is often nice and enticing, but they're way too unsure of what they are to be all that great. more for particularly grungy rpg players than action gamers, imho, despite the cross appeal. not considerably more (sometimes much less) of The Olde mentality than, say, a great many ps2 (and quite a few ps1) games.

[Sima Tuna]

I think people who make money on being authorities on retro games should be able to play retro games at least kinda well. You don't have to be a god, but at least try to play it without abusing cheat features when you're playing for an audience. Practice is practice, but you don't get endless do-overs when it comes time for The Big Game, do you? You get your one shot to make it count. You practice one way and you play another way. When you play, you play without any assistance.

Now, my standards for retro game playing aren't high. But show some basic familiarity with the game and its systems, yeah? Don't Dean Takahashi it up, get a game over on stage 1 and say some shit like "yeah the game is amazing! Buy your copy using my affiliate link on Strictly Limited Special Offer Time Only Today Act Now Deluxe!

Anyway, now that I've shat on other people for playing games badly, it's time for me to talk about myself playing games badly. Thank fug nobody pays me money to play them.

Got my story mode credit feed clear on Pocky and Rocky: 30th Anniversary Hyper Fighting. Overall a fun game. The last boss felt quite a bit easier than the Stage 4 and Stage 5 bosses. Unlocked free mode of course, so now I can actually start to play the game as it was meant to be. Weird as hell they locked the main mode off like that. And they call it "free mode" rather than "arcade mode."

I also did some credit feeding on Tenchi Wo Kurau II/Warriors of Fate. I initially thought this game was fucking impossible. Previous attempts to play the title inevitably ended with me ragequitting on a continue screen, as I bemoaned my complete lack of skill. But I picked Zhang Fei this time and decided to stick it out. I'm starting to see some strats emerge. The game is definitely brutal, but I can see ways it can be made easier. Certain enemies seem totally unable to deal with being thrown/knocked off the screen and then kept in a button mashing loop (where you mash punch offscreen and they keep walking into it.) Your superjoy takes almost no hp to use, so you can pop it constantly if you need to. Health drops are fairly frequent too, so I was able to get through a few screens without dying just by spamming superjoys and chaining hp pickups. Which is like, zero fucking execution strategy. But it works, somehow.

Health items also stay onscreen forever. If I could marry a game mechanic, this would be The One. I love it when scrolling games leave the powerups there forever. Just let me decide if I want to grab it, save it, whatever. That Peking Duck stays fresh no matter how many asses you kick!

Boss are brutal. Some of them are vulnerable to y axis scrolling, as per beat em up 101. I couldn't really tell you which are and which aren't, because the names in Tenchi Wo Kurau II are hilariously mistranslated/localized in both versions of the game. I am very familiar with the Three Kingdoms story, but it's still impossible to tell which particular mass of muscle I'm beating to a pulp is which literary character. The game's naming is jargon, at least with the roman characters. I don't read kanji. Anyway, bosses have that Final Fight quality. If you lock them down, they go down easy. But if you let them do things, they'll take a life from you in one combo. Each boss tends to have a ton of minions too, which is the aspect I find most difficult in fighting them. The minions are dangerous as hell, and can take a life off you as fast as a boss will.

However! I had a very fun time playing Warriors of Fate. It went way up in my personal estimation of its quality. Combat is highly technical and very deep. Zhang Fei is my favorite because of all the different throw chains and combos you have using him. His charging punch is also very strong in certain spacing situations.

[Air Master Burst]

Dark Souls 1 is a true masterpiece until you finish Anor Londo, and then you realize how quickly they ran out of time and money.

Dark Souls 2 plays a lot better, but it doesn't have nearly as captivating of a world, which is half the appeal.

Dark Souls 3 is fine I guess, although the changes to poise really annoyed me as a solo-only PVE player.

Demon's Souls is better than any of them, and Bloodborne better still.

Hot take: King's Field IV is the best Souls game From ever made.

Hotter take: The first Otogi is the best game From ever made.

(Caveat on the last two, I haven't played Elden Ring or that Sekiro game yet.)

[BIL]

Otogi is indeed bussin, I loved the throwback vibes (intentional or not) I got from BB's Moonside Lake. I've always loved these guys ever since the PS1 Armored Cores, just glad to see them still going tbh. Never finished Otogi II but I was liking it... the trailer still gives me a friggin boner with the wolf bro going "WRRYYYAAAAAAAAAAR," holy fuck what a mood those games have.

I like taking an early weapon all the way through the game so I did my whole first run at launch with a broadsword (or something like that found very early). BB I did with only the starting heavy axe. Love how they dont force you to constantly pick up and drop/sell loot as if your playing Borderlands or Diablo.

I enjoyed seeing the basic Club gets an S-rank strength bonus and is good for pretty much the whole first loop. Nice practical moveset, hurts most things bad regardless of element, and the backstab animation never gets old. Hard rabbit shot to the neck, stiff kick to the inside knee, than *WHAM* a coup de grace that sends the target's heels to the back of their head

What I was actually expecting DSII to get wrong, based on its rep, was the mood, the tone. I thought it'd go for some clueless X-TREEEM "totes badass" medieval bloodbath. In hindsight, knowing Shadow Tower bro was involved, I'd have been less concerned, but at the time I was (still am) relieved to see it kept to DS1's sense of high fantasy gone to ash and ruin. Some nice creepy moods in there.

I've always noticed a healthy crossover between fans of the nicher modern stuff and classic arcade fare, particularly STGs and fighters but also beltscrollers, puzzlers and the like. The way I see it, gamers with an affinity for streamlined, uncompromising hardcore will seek it out, whatever some casual journo tells them to like. As with stuff like the Souls games (meaning the fans who really engage with them, not the "prepare 2 die" memelords), I don't think of those games' fans as all that different from our circles.

It's not even about hardcore vs. casual for me, I'd say casual puzzle mobile players or casual tabletop game players are still getting more streamlined gameplay, challenge and agency compared to more "hardcore" games on PC/Consoles with lots of dead time and cutscenes. It's more like some people want to ditch traditional game structures as much as possible, trying to turn video games into an overly passive literary media, where traditional gameplay and challenge are seen as primitive or immature, so you have to "fix" this primitive gameplay with "complexity" (bloat) and "variety" (gimmicks).

True, that's a better way to phrase it. Arcade games themselves are arguably "casual," in a way, with the "grab a handful of coins and kick ass" model a lot of the most acclaimed ones went for. It's really the lack of flab that defines these games... whether you're casual or hardcore, there's nothing distracting from the game, just hit [start] and go go go. Whatever prowess you've got to offer is in your bones, not your save file or account or whatever.

As for Dark Souls I haven't tried it properly yet, but I enjoyed Sekiro a lot.

DS1 is really good for unwinding with, imo. Easygoing game with a moderate level of intensity, and an oldschool ARPG (Faxandu/Ys)'s focus on precise combat, plus some really entertaining interconnected map design. DSII and BB both do things I like more (trickier stage design, and much nastier bosses, respectively), but DS1 as a whole is the one I'd recommend wholeheartedly. Especially good if you want a break from more intense stuff, quite contrary to its silly "prepare to die" marketing.

I totally forgot to mention Sekiro, I'm planning on playing DSIII, that and Elden Ring next year when I've got the time.

i've done a lot of thinking re: "souls fans" and how adjacent they are in what they're interested in to "classic gaming" fans. i quit during dark souls 3 and have totally lost interest in anything fromsoft is doing (but probably had over 2k combined hours in the previous games). i think, ultimately, there are too many differences in both structure and mentality required for play despite some obvious crossover ground for me to consider them properly intersected.

I'm jaded and resigned at this point, but just seeing a reasonably-sized fanbase that can take a beating in their stride, even see it as a learning experience, is enough for me to give my blessing. I know they're small beans in the grand scheme of things, but I wasted so much time trying to get passionless chumps with heaving textwalls explaining why it was AKYSHUALY the game's fault back on their feet... this thread was literally started from one of those attempts.

I'll probably always try, at least a bit - "Struggle is the spark of life, no?" - but y'know.

Now, my standards for retro game playing aren't high. But show some basic familiarity with the game and its systems, yeah? Don't Dean Takahashi it up, get a game over on stage 1 and say some shit like "yeah the game is amazing! Buy your copy using my affiliate link on Strictly Limited Special Offer Time Only Today Act Now Deluxe!

What kills me is, as kitten mentioned, the race to the bottom. If these jokers included a disclaimer, to disabuse their audience - "I'm shit at these games and I don't give a fuck" - I wouldn't have a thing to say to them.

[kitten]

along those terms i absolutely agree it's at least something

[it290]

The issue I have with all those Retronauts types is their clear Nintendo bias. It often feels like every first party Nintendo thing is just a clear work of unforeseen genius and everything else, except where exceptional, just is. Granted they've gotten better about it, but the brand whoring is pretty apparent. I was actually listening to an episode earlier today where they were discussing emulation/FPGA options, and Parrish (who is as much a Mac dweeb as a Nintendo dweeb) interrupted Porkchop Express (of MisterAddons fame) as he was explaining the MiSTer's display output options (you know, actual useful information) to digress at length about some DTP-centric CRT monitor he owned that just happened to match the output resolution of a G4 Powerbook or something. It was pretty infuriating and I have to tip my hat to Mr. Porkchop here for not losing his cool in the situation, as it really had nothing to do with the podcast's ostensible topic.