I'm badly drunk and suffering from Cheeto Dust Radiation, apologies if this rambles.
Stay in school, kids!
copy-paster wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 2:45 pm
late but R2RKMF 2023 recap:
Personal fav achievement: Ninja gaiden 1 and 3 nes nomiss, metal slug 2 turbo max overclock nomiss
biggest screwups: haven't played metal slug x and 4 very much
goals for 2024:
slug 1, x, and 4 nomiss
ninja gaiden 2 nes nomiss
trying to get atleast one beat em up 1cc since I'm really suck at these games when it comes to 1cc, my current interest is either zero team or PuLiRuLa
You'll nail MS1/X/4, I've no doubt; much less painful than MS3.
Crime Fighters 2 (use Boomer) might be a good choice for 1CC, only thing is, it has a second loop. But it's one of the best-designed (hard but fair!) arcade beltscrollers I've ever played. Even the loop's totally reasonable, unlike its ridiculous predecessor and its dumb Boss Revenge stage! Just a great time in general.
EDIT: Zero Team is a great choice too, though! Drunk is clearing up
That's another I'd recommend in the same spirit as CF2.
For 2023, I guess I'm happiest with my
Shinobi Non Grata nomiss. Not a hard clear, tbh - like so many first-rate console originals, it's more about performance than raw survival. So many Flawless Victories and Katana Finishes missed.
It's more that I actually played a new R2RKMF in the year it came out.
Being as much into older games as newer ones, and there being so many more of the former, I tend to put new releases off forever. Currently enjoying Dark Souls III (2016) thoroughly.
I also finally played a bunch of other recent-ish highlights. Biggie was undoubtedly Tokuro Fujiwara's utterly superlative
Kaettekita Makaimura / GNG Resurrection, which led to a run of some of my favourite posts ever ITT. Inti's
GrimGuardians (GalGuardians? I never nailed down WTF it's called) was a good time, as well. Didn't finish the latter's
Gunvolt III or
Luminous Avenger II due to a lack of time - but as expected, having blind-bought 'em after Jack's endorsements, hyper-refined hardcore! I'm a terrible Rockman participator, and an even worse Rockman-adjacent one, but I do like 'em.
I'll be getting back to these.
Also took a stand against my shameless
Nihon Chauvinism and gave some Western-developed gems their due.
Huntdown genuinely blew my socks off. While after Stevens and Tuna's endorsements, I knew to expect quality, this is truly
Elevator Action Returns Once Again. Jump in blind if that name means anything to you, it's astounding! Genuinely funny game too, 2000AD fans will adore it. I likewise knew
Tanuki Justice would excel, on Sumez's recommendation - but again, it's the kind of quality you have to experience firsthand. If that game had appeared on PCE/Saturn, it'd be fapped over nowadays.
This also led me to try out WonderBoy Bobi's earlier
Aggelos, which comes with absolute recommendation for fans of oldschool sidescrolling ARPGs. Finally, it was great to see SriK and co's
Steel Assault get a PS4 release!
Finally, I never got around to writing up
Super Cyborg, but only because it's already well-attested to ITT. As a hypothetical third FC Contra, it's absolutely worthy of Umechan Team's mantle. IMO, it's worth regarding in the same light as Hideyuki Falco and Nobuya Nakazato's respective arcade/console successors.
This was also a notably killer year for reference-standard home releases of 80s/90s vintage works, thanks to ever-stalwart M2 and Hamster.
Horror Story finally got its definitive home translation via
ShotTriggers/Arcade Garage, and
Arcade Archives had an absolute raft of classics, capped off by the epochal
Mystic Warriors (roll on Violent Storm!). Stalwarts
Wild Fang, Rolling Thunder 2, and
Splatterhouse instantly come to mind, as do
The New Zealand Story and
Jigoku Meguri - but I was just as happy to see the scrappier proto-Leynos
Finest Hour, which I left at the brink of a 2ALL. Gonna nail that one down this year, methinks.
Runark and
Tank Force both impressed, with full-blooded celebrations of hardcore Technos beatdown and Bombermanesque tactical topdown shooting. I was also reminded of the absolute utter hardcore that is
Grobda! A game that'll last you a lifetime; the National Battling Association is not for the faint of heart or tactical acumen.
Keeping to Plasmo's main forum tradition, favourite posts from others goes to
Lander's Taromaru writeup. Thank you for fighting the good fight for misunderstood idiosyncrasies, brother.
There are other favourites, like copy-paster's MS2 Turbo NoMiss, but as mentioned, Cheetos Radiation saps my attention span.