Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BIL]

Aha, there it is.

Says unavailable for me. Maybe I could region-swap, but I dunno. I could also just go buy it on my xbox 360.

Ah WTF. It said that for me too, but I figured it was because I live in the UK currently. Some bullshit if its availability really is in question.

I decided to fire up some Ninja Warriors Once Again, after not having played for a while. I'm trying to learn any other character than Ninja. Been working on Yaksa and figured I'd pick Kunoichi this time. She's supposed to be easy to use, right? Big mistake. Got absolutely clobbered on Stage 1 Noob Breaker boss. I regularly get beat there with Yaksa too. Figured, "maybe I'm just shit and rusty at the game. Let me quickly swap over to Ninja." Beat him no problem, then no-effort cleared until the Stage 5 wall stopped me. So I can practice Kunoichi and Yaksa and still play like shit, but I pick up Ninja and immediately am steamrolling.

Working as intended. The beauty of the SFC game and remake alike is, you can totally master one character, and be completely and utterly in the dark about how the rest even play, let alone how to use them. Always a mark of vivid character variety, and in this case, they're even well-balanced! Some are more technical than others (Ninja and Yaksha occupying roughly opposite ends of the scale), but all are brutally effective in learned hands.

So does anybody know how to level up my Kunoichi game? I already know the theory of Yaksa. She's just slow and high execution compared to what my scrub ass is used to. Ninja was a perfect fit for my play style, with how I could zip around the screen and spam invul states using throws and nunchucks. The level of disrespect you can show the Stage 1 Boss as Ninja is hilarious. Just go nunchuck apeshit whenever he tries to do anything. That doesn't work with kunoichi though, and yaksa seems to get most of her boss damage off juggle combos using zako.

Kunoichi's come up ITT before, I guess my main advice is to treat her as a grappler character. Her disadvantage isn't a lack of power, but a lack of reach, especially compared to Ninja's gorilla beatinz. You want to counteract Kunoichi's stubby PPP with aggressive jump-ins; both jumpkicks, as well as superjumps, which are ofc 100% invincible.

Typing on fumes atm, but for a quick primer, this may help illustrate. Total disrespect from Ninja, ofc. Oh also, my very basic quickstart guide - might elucidate a few things.

I've seen footage of the SNES version's stage 1 boss and they really upgraded that motherfucker for the Once Again version. Stage 5 boss looks easier on SNES too.

On SFC, Jubei is so helpless vs Kunoichi's crouch P spam, you could probably kill four of him at once (as memorably put by Vanguard). He got a huuuuge upgrade in OA, now if you try that, he'll do this:

HEH... NOTHIN PERSONNEL... KID (■｀w´■)

Spoiler

Not my footage, my pride compels me to say. Here is a better idea of how to approach him as Kunoichi, which may provide further illustration. EDIT: Oh! And a Stage 5 Hard demo, too. Warning, might be crap, just posting what I got from my last dalliances with Mad Murder Machinery. It's a game for life, not just Christmas!

Edit: I bought Assault Suits Valken because it was on sale. First impressions: music is sick. Extra materials include a full game guide with artwork.

Excellent choice, Valken is classic through and through. Don't forget to level up the punch! The devs themselves called it underrated back in the day, haha. Let it charge all the way before letting rip, super solid all-purpose weapon.

Are there any games that are like that, where you hit start and can swap to another character right there? Doki Doki Panic/Friday the 13th kind of have a swap system, but not one that generous. And of course Megaman is almost the same thing... Castlevania 3 or Wai Wai World of course...

Serei Densetsu Lickle does this really well. Rather than merely changing weapon or shot type, each of the four characters has their own distinctive handling model. None of CVIII's waiting around, either (US Trevor + Grant being a killer setup otherwise, balancing a safe midrange attack with an agile fragile stabber; JP Grant is a bad joke by comparison).

Mild caveat that the BGM switching may drive you psychotic, or alternatively, prove that you were psychotic all along. I don't really notice it when at the controls, but watching replays I'm suddenly "Oh, so that's how that feels." Put on your own SIKK FUKKEN BEATZ if need be, game's quality through and through.

By OG mainman Rockman dude, coincidentally, whose name I can never recall offhand - not Infanune, but rather, the guy hardc0re RockManFans say got ROBBED BLIND by Inafune. 3; These peeps will also LOL LMAO violently at the Mighty Number 9 fiasco!

[Sima Tuna]

Aha, there it is.

Says unavailable for me. Maybe I could region-swap, but I dunno. I could also just go buy it on my xbox 360.

Ah WTF. It said it for me too, but I figured it was because I live in the UK currently. Some bullshit if its availability really is in question.

I decided to fire up some Ninja Warriors Once Again, after not having played for a while. I'm trying to learn any other character than Ninja. Been working on Yaksa and figured I'd pick Kunoichi this time. She's supposed to be easy to use, right? Big mistake. Got absolutely clobbered on Stage 1 Noob Breaker boss. I regularly get beat there with Yaksa too. Figured, "maybe I'm just shit and rusty at the game. Let me quickly swap over to Ninja." Beat him no problem, then no-effort cleared until the Stage 5 wall stopped me. So I can practice Kunoichi and Yaksa and still play like shit, but I pick up Ninja and immediately am steamrolling.

Working as intended. The beauty of the SFC game and remake alike is, you can totally master one character, and be completely and utterly in the dark about how the rest even play, let alone how to use them. Always a mark of vivid character variety, and in this case, they're even well-balanced! Some are more technical than others (Ninja and Yaksha occupying roughly opposite ends of the scale), but all are brutally effective in learned hands.

So does anybody know how to level up my Kunoichi game? I already know the theory of Yaksa. She's just slow and high execution compared to what my scrub ass is used to. Ninja was a perfect fit for my play style, with how I could zip around the screen and spam invul states using throws and nunchucks. The level of disrespect you can show the Stage 1 Boss as Ninja is hilarious. Just go nunchuck apeshit whenever he tries to do anything. That doesn't work with kunoichi though, and yaksa seems to get most of her boss damage off juggle combos using zako.

Kunoichi's come up ITT before, I guess my main advice is to treat her as a grappler character. Her disadvantage isn't a lack of power, but a lack of reach, which you want to counteract with aggressive jump-ins; both jumpkicks, as well as superjumps, which are ofc 100% invincible.

Typing on fumes atm, but for a quick primer, this may help illustrate. Total disrespect from Ninja, ofc.

I've seen footage of the SNES version's stage 1 boss and they really upgraded that motherfucker for the Once Again version. Stage 5 boss looks easier on SNES too.

On SFC, Jubei is so helpless vs Kunoichi's crouch P spam, you could probably kill four of him at once (as memorably put by Vanguard). He got a huuuuge upgrade in OA, now if you try that, he'll do this:

HEH... NOTHIN PERSONNEL... KID (■｀w´■)

Spoiler

Jubei: "oh, you're approaching me?"
Kunoichi: "I can't beat the shit out of you without coming closer."
Jubei: "oho! Then come as close as you like!"

*cue 10 panels of Kunoichi's kunai stab Ora oras hitting nothing because Jubei is fully invulnerable whenever he wants*

I did a couple more runs and performed better this time. I made it to Stage 5 boss with Kunoichi on a single life, so that Jubei advice will definitely see some use soon. I'm going to have to practice mode the fuck outta that fight. I don't know how I did it with Ninja. I bet I credit fed this one.

For Kunoichi-specific tech, I figured out that the shuriken is helpful for damaging bosses and annoying enemies on the other end of the screen. Those little blanka dudes with the claws have trouble dealing with shuriken. Stage 1 boss can't avoid them either unless he's blocking. The sword flip (down+attack in the air) is essential tech for Kunoichi. I figured out that you can vortex enemies in really interesting ways by varying sword flip, super jump, jump kick and d+jump kunai stab. All of these can hit the opponent meaty when they're standing up, and you can do a different chain out of each. You can do a d+jump kunai stab into down jab sword combo. Or go with a meaty superjump on their wakeup into throw. When jumping, you can wait to see what the computer is going to do and then either standard kick or sword flip behind them. Sword flip traverses the screen quickly too, so as a mobility tool it's not bad.

Her forward throw gives a lot of screen travel but damage seems very low compared to Ninja. The hair throw has a good arc but hitting behind you isn't always useful.

I guess sword flip was the bit of tech that helped me the most. I ended up using sword flip as Kunoichi's answer to Ninja's dash elbow. A way to cross out the peons while closing distance and also mixing up more dangerous opponents when they're waking up.

Ninja Saviors is seriously so fucking cool. How many action games out there feel like fighting games when it comes to the depth of the systems?

[Bassa-Bassa]

Are there any games that are like that, where you hit start and can swap to another character right there? Doki Doki Panic/Friday the 13th kind of have a swap system, but not one that generous. And of course Megaman is almost the same thing... Castlevania 3 or Wai Wai World of course...

As with basically anything Westone, I always liked Aoi Blink on the PC Engine. It gets around the problem of avatar swap looking like a kind of magic by always displaying the whole three characters at your disposal and having them going in a silly formation, which adds to the game's charm. And the available characters do vary depending on the stage. Clearly built after Monster Lair's basis, it obviously never gets as intense or demanding and makes you explore a little bit in exchange, but the short stages and tight controls work well enough for arcade lovers.

[velo]

Kunoichi's come up ITT before, I guess my main advice is to treat her as a grappler character.

But I play every character in the game as a grappler character...

For Kunoichi-specific tech, I figured out that the shuriken is helpful for damaging bosses and annoying enemies on the other end of the screen. Those little blanka dudes with the claws have trouble dealing with shuriken. Stage 1 boss can't avoid them either unless he's blocking. The sword flip (down+attack in the air) is essential tech for Kunoichi. I figured out that you can vortex enemies in really interesting ways by varying sword flip, super jump, jump kick and d+jump kunai stab. All of these can hit the opponent meaty when they're standing up, and you can do a different chain out of each. You can do a d+jump kunai stab into down jab sword combo. Or go with a meaty superjump on their wakeup into throw. When jumping, you can wait to see what the computer is going to do and then either standard kick or sword flip behind them. Sword flip traverses the screen quickly too, so as a mobility tool it's not bad.

Thing to know about her flip-slash is that it can be done *right* after a jump, near to the ground. Shuriken is useful in juggles. You can see both in BIL's gif:

Spoiler

IIRC you can also do similar combos to that off of her hair throw (hair throw -> flip-slash -> stab -> shuriken).

You can walk-in grab Jubei for free at the start of the fight, when he first jumps into the foreground, so hit him with your best shot then. After that, I honestly have my best luck running away as much as possible and focusing on his henchmen, with every character (except maybe Raiden, who doesn't have an "away" to run to). He'll take enough damage from thrown enemies, meter bombs, etc. I'll punish if he whiffs a jump kick or something but I avoid going on the offensive. Not exactly expert tech no doubt but it gets it done safely.

Odd and probably unhelpful tip for Stage 7 that I only figured out recently is that if you leave the last health pack, it's still there (way over on the left) during the boss fight, having somehow traveled down with the elevator.

[BIL]

Kunoichi's come up ITT before, I guess my main advice is to treat her as a grappler character.

But I play every character in the game as a grappler character...

Indeed, they all are - well, with the technical exception of Kamaitachi, who can't grapple per se, and is the nearest to a pure striker. Even he gets good crowd control off his odd CQC, though:

Boof!

But it's especially important in Kunoichi's case, with her stubby reach and vulnerable PPPs. Katanas look flashy, but they're slow to fire, and lack oomph. Projectiles are nice for the occasional assassination at range, but of limited use versus crowds. And you can't expect to catch multiple enemies in her PPPs the way you can Ninja's. Or even Yaksha's, whose reach is yet shorter than Kunoichi's, but is offset by extreme speed and generous i-frames:

She can do a lot more than this, but unlike Kunoichi, you won't die for not doing it

Versus crowds, Kunoichi's trick is to keep enemies floored and in wakeup. Her front slam lacks damage, but it's one of the games' (plural intended ;3) single best tools for aggressively manhandling enemies. A lightning-fast, crowd-flooring bulldozer that'll have multiple targets cornered for batch disposal in a split-second. It's so goddamn fast, you can break it out mid-PPP, if an escape is looming. And even if backstabbers interfere, you can promptly scruff 'em and power-shovel them into the floundering pile. Her short reach and low collateral don't matter when the targets are waking up to facefuls of PPPs and Katanas, and while the damage is middling, it'll rack up exponentially.

SFC footage, but unlike her radically different Flurry game, it's 1:1 to Once Again. The immediate defusal of a hideous situation - three Shinobus and a Kage - with a quick bulldozer off jumpkick is especially important; so is the bulldozer mid-attack, to get the recovering bruisers safely re-flattened. One of my favourite things I've ever caught on record.

This is really what I mean when I say she has to be treated as a capital "g" Grappler. Authoritative striking is contingent on good manhandling, to a harsher degree than Ninja and Yaksha. Of course, grappling is a massive asset for them too, and key to unlocking their full destructive potential.

All this neatly leading into Kunoichi's Flurry, which is the single most destructive attack on SFC, and pretty high up there in Once Again, in addition to becoming utterly invincible. I hated that change at first, but I rapidly understood why they'd done it. With OA's vastly bigger crowds, and much fiercer boss support, an interruptible Flurry would simply never be worth it. Instead, it's meant for maximum audacity; superjump into the heart of the scrum, demolish a priority target as his buddies haplessly attempt to interfere, exeunt via same. Who is ninja? YOU IS NINJA

Odd and probably unhelpful tip for Stage 7 that I only figured out recently is that if you leave the last health pack, it's still there (way over on the left) during the boss fight, having somehow traveled down with the elevator.

Haha, I noticed that too. My headcanon has always been that the Elevator Basement Ceiling Explosion™ was so radical, it created a high-pressure vacuum that dragged the HP restore down with it. It's legit a huge help, imo; nice having that safety blanket if things go south during a rather hectic battle. If I'm feeling TRVE HARDC0R3 (or just Natsume apologist ) I'll deliberately nom it before entering the elevator, for the authentic Ultimate Bio Weapon danger.

Blimey, Neo Kage's out soon isn't it? What an adrenaline shot Natsume have been to current-gen R2RKMF. As they were always gonna be!

[Sima Tuna]

Yeah, I can't wait for the new Shadow of the Ninja. Every one of Tengo Project's remasters has been an absolute treat. Hearing that Go Nagai's doing the art is a cherry on top. I already like that game on NES (even if I'm shit at it,) so a new 32-bit visual style with extra modes/characters (all tengo project remasters have these) will be a blast. I could easily imagine it ranking as my second favorite of their remasters. Just below Ninja Saviors, of course.

Amazon has the preorder page up. I never preorder anything, but I might do it this time. I didn't regret buying the physical for Pocky and Rocky Reshrined. Some day I will dig into that game more.

In non-Tengo Project gaming, I fired up Steel Assault for a few minutes, which was long enough to confirm I am ass at this game. I'm not sure it's entirely my fault though... Flailing through the first couple levels (and dying a bunch,) I think I figured out why this is so hard for me. I had the default visual filters enabled+screen shake, and that combined with the color scheme for backgrounds + bullets made it really hard for me to see anything that was hitting me. I turned all of these effects off, but it's still kinda hard to see bullets at times. I'm just not sure how much of me sucking ass at Steel Assault is due to me lack of skill, and how much can be blamed on the green/blue background mixed with green/blue bullets. It was seriously making my eyes hurt. That's one problem older games tend not to have. I suck shit at Contra, but I can usually see a bullet before it hits me. They don't blend into the background. Blazing Chrome's bullet visibility wasn't too bad either, from what I remember. And of course, Ninja Saviors is great about providing strong visual feedback for anything that could damage you.

[cfx]

Yeah, I can't wait for the new Shadow of the Ninja. Every one of Tengo Project's remasters has been an absolute treat. Hearing that Go Nagai's doing the art is a cherry on top. I already like that game on NES (even if I'm shit at it,) so a new 32-bit visual style with extra modes/characters (all tengo project remasters have these) will be a blast. I could easily imagine it ranking as my second favorite of their remasters. Just below Ninja Saviors, of course.

Amazon has the preorder page up. I never preorder anything, but I might do it this time. I didn't regret buying the physical for Pocky and Rocky Reshrined. Some day I will dig into that game more.

Just note that this is ININ, and that SLG is also releasing it, which could mean that ININ version may not come out until who knows when.

The Japanese website confirms a physical release, not from ININ, but currently just scheduled for "summer" so isn't yet orderable anywhere. It does have English language supoprt, assuming ININ doesn't force them to remove it.
https://www.natsumeatari.co.jp/kage/

I know which version I'm buying.

This will probably be my favorite of their games. I have Wild Guns and Ninja Warriors and like them both a lot, but I think I like this game more based on the NES version. I never owned an NES but got to try out many of the games many years later, and the only two of what I played that I truly liked were this and Shatterhand. I'd love Tengo Project to tackle that one too.

I didn't buy Pocky and Rocky because I tried to but never liked the Super Nintendo original so didn't think this would change my mind.

[BEAMLORD]

Just a heads-up in case you missed it, Sima, but most bullets in Steel Assault can be cancelled with your whip. The only bullets you can't cancel are the multicoloured flashing ones (if remember correctly). Of course, that might not help if you can't see them

That's one thing to be said of Steel Assault, though - as good as it looks, everything pops so hard, it can be a little eye-searing. Still, I like it a lot, one of the best modern R2R games in recent years.

[Sima Tuna]

Just a heads-up in case you missed it, Sima, but most bullets in Steel Assault can be cancelled with your whip. The only bullets you can't cancel are the multicoloured flashing ones (if remember correctly). Of course, that might not help if you can't see them

That's one thing to be said of Steel Assault, though - as good as it looks, everything pops so hard, it can be a little eye-searing. Still, I like it a lot, one of the best modern R2R games in recent years.

Thanks. Yeah, I was definitely having a senior moment. "Damn, these visuals are so FAWKIN SICK my eyes can't take them!" I had all the retro effects on because they looked cool. But once the game started moving, I couldn't keep track of anything. I didn't know that about cancelling bullets. I'll have to remember to swing the whip around like a madman.

Just note that this is ININ, and that SLG is also releasing it, which could mean that ININ version may not come out until who knows when.

Hmmm. It didn't look like any kind of special/limited edition though. Just a standard release. Well, "August 30th" certainly sounds like a placeholder date to me. But I just figured we'd get more info as summer came closer to its end.

Shadow of the Ninja is a cool game. I played it on the 3ds NES virtual console, back when that storefront still existed. What were the other Tengo Project upcoming speculated games? I know Shatterhand has been mentioned. Shatterhand would be very much in line with Tengo Project's brand.

[Stevens]

I should go back to Steel Assault, I've never quite gotten a 1 CC. Last phase of the last boss multiple times, just could never quite seal the deal.

[cfx]

Hmmm. It didn't look like any kind of special/limited edition though. Just a standard release. Well, "August 30th" certainly sounds like a placeholder date to me. But I just figured we'd get more info as summer came closer to its end.

Shadow of the Ninja is a cool game. I played it on the 3ds NES virtual console, back when that storefront still existed. What were the other Tengo Project upcoming speculated games? I know Shatterhand has been mentioned. Shatterhand would be very much in line with Tengo Project's brand.

ININ's page previously didn't talk about a physical release at all. It still doesn't, but has a preorder button that does lead to the game on Amazon and various stores in Europe.
https://www.iningames.com/games/shadow- ... ja-reborn/

Then SLG has a regular edition that's still limited as well as one with extra junk, and also PS4 versions which don't exist for retail:
https://www.strictlylimitedgames.com/co ... ystation-5

I was thinking of what they did with Cotton Reboot and some others where the ININ version would not ocme out until sometime after the SLG version, but who knows what they're doing now.

The date is likely a placeholder for now either way given the game only has the "summer" date in Japan, so there's not yet any concrete date for even the digital versions to be available. The Steam page for the game still only says 2024.

Summer may be a delay from the initial announcement, as the release date chart on famitsu.com still shows it as spring 2024 instead.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

I've got to agree that Steel Assault's visibility (and telegraphing in general) is really rocky. Ultimately the game is fantastic, but it makes for a couple of very unpleasantly thorny first runs - even going beyond a lot of shots just blending in with the background, I think there are a ton of boss and midboss attacks that don't intuitively or logically follow from what their telegraphs suggest. As gorgeous as the game is, your first few playthroughs of it really feel like pure trial and error, but once you've memorized what each fight is asking you to do, it does come together incredibly well and is full of exciting, dynamic scenarios (my favorite is probably the ascent in the flooding room near the end of stage 3 where you're fighting the sniper robots from your grapple lines).

I think my best run on arcade mode got me up to the final boss's last point of health. So I really need to go back and nail the game down sometime, haha. There being no health pickups in the last stage and a half or so, and the game's final shield running out just as you enter the last boss fight are tough to deal with.

[cfx]

I took a look at Steel Assault as I had only played it briefly before and didn't remember about the graphics.

For me, the issue is that the intensity of the colors is too high; it sort of looks like an overdriven CRT. I have the CRT filter on, as I find it worse without the scanlines. I don't have the blur filter on which I think looks like garbage and makes everything hard to see as well. The colors are so bright it hurts to look at it. Maybe that isn't true for people who aren't really old like me.

I'm not sure how to fix this. I will try black level or something...I hate having to change the monitor settings for a single game.

I have a similar problem with Fight'n Rage. None of the in-game settings make any sense in terms of the game's color and gamma. It looks like it has black crush no matter what I do. I've turned the fake HDR setting off which helps some but doesn't really fix it. Maybe I just don't understand how to set that game up, but the defaults definitely are not it.

[Sima Tuna]

I took a look at Steel Assault as I had only played it briefly before and didn't remember about the graphics.

For me, the issue is that the intensity of the colors is too high; it sort of looks like an overdriven CRT. I have the CRT filter on, as I find it worse without the scanlines. I don't have the blur filter on which I think looks like garbage and makes everything hard to see as well. The colors are so bright it hurts to look at it. Maybe that isn't true for people who aren't really old like me.

I'm not sure how to fix this. I will try black level or something...I hate having to change the monitor settings for a single game.

I have a similar problem with Fight'n Rage. None of the in-game settings make any sense in terms of the game's color and gamma. It looks like it has black crush no matter what I do. I've turned the fake HDR setting off which helps some but doesn't really fix it. Maybe I just don't understand how to set that game up, but the defaults definitely are not it.

Fight 'n' Rage has a similar issue, I agree. But the reason visibility doesn't bother me as much in Fight 'n' Rage is the sprites are very large, chunky and projectiles that damage you are rare.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with old eyes who can't handle Steel Assault. I tried turning all the visual effects off and still ran into the blue/green issue with bullets blending into backgrounds. Sometimes the enemies blend in too and it can even be hard for me to tell what is a platform. None of this has ever been a problem with older run and guns.

[cfx]

Fight 'n' Rage has a similar issue, I agree. But the reason visibility doesn't bother me as much in Fight 'n' Rage is the sprites are very large, chunky and projectiles that damage you are rare.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with old eyes who can't handle Steel Assault. I tried turning all the visual effects off and still ran into the blue/green issue with bullets blending into backgrounds. Sometimes the enemies blend in too and it can even be hard for me to tell what is a platform. None of this has ever been a problem with older run and guns.

You are right; it doesn't really hurt the gameplay in Fight'n Rage. I just would like to make the game not look like it's running on a broken monitor.

I just went through a bit of the beginning of Steel Assault, but I had the same issue identifying platforms. There's that section not far in where you have to go up to a platform because there is a hole in the ground too wide to jump over, and I could not see the ledge sticking out from the building. I just started shooting out the grappling hook in all directions until it locked onto something.

Somewhere along the way it seems like many game developers forgot one important rule for 2D game graphics, especially for a game like this that can move at pretty fast speeds: make the backgrounds lower contrast and darker than the characters and bullets!

Fighting game developers forgot this too. Look at most any older Capcom or SNK 2D fighter and its backgrounds, and then look at their newer games. I don't remember which year's game it was now, but one of the early King of Fighters illustrated this point--early screenshots of the game had full color bright backgrounds, and these screenshots are on the back cover of the AES cartridge case. The actual game has the typical for the era much more monochrome backgrounds so you can actually follow the action.

A funny other example I stumbled on some years ago when I tried various PS1 games on a PS3 to see what they looked like. I found Zanac Neo totally unplayable when played on a PS3 on a 1080p display. That game has some bright backgrounds and all kinds of flashing bullet effects, plus pretty chunky pixels. Played on a PS3, my brain can't determine shapes or objects, it just becomes a psychedelic mosaic of bright colors. The game really needs scanlines, and possibly a full CRT mask, to make it somehow make sense.

[Sima Tuna]

I went back to examine a video of the game, to see if I could narrow down my exact problems with Steel Assault:

https://youtu.be/suUdq2otd8A

So, this is Iconoclast's 1cc. I think stage 1 visibility is... Ok. It's not the best. I think there's too much movement from sources that cannot harm the player, such as the very aggressive rain effect and raindrops/explosions which obscure enemy attacks. But at least, the enemies in the first stage are RED, and the background color scheme is BLUE. So that makes sense. That's just good, sensible design as you would expect to see. After all, who would want to make the enemies the same color and shade as the background? I'm sure this game would never do that... (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS)

Okay, so now we're inside the hotel and the background is lit with red emergency lights and the enemies are the same red enemies from before. Their bullets are red too. An important point with Steel Assault is most bullets seem to be either red or flashing red/yellow/green. This is important because red, green and yellow backgrounds are very common... Which means that the flashing bullets which flash R/Y/G will blend into the background 1/3rd of the time. But ok. At least the inside of the hotel is kinda dark, so the bullets can pop out a little.

Inside the train, again the enemies and bullets are red. The train has red trim. The boss is black with red trim. Bullets from the boss flash red/yellow/blue. The sky behind the boss is blue. The boss is red. Okay okay, it's still not that bad. I can still train myself to make out what is happening. At least the strafing run uses bright yellow on a floor of a totally different color.

Stage 2 is where Eyeball Hell truly starts for me. First, we have an aggressive rain effect that puts motion into something that cannot harm you. The background is green, brown and blue. Platforms are green, brown and white. The yellow dog enemy fires green projectiles on a green background. The floating red bug thing travels along the same trajectory as the raindrop effect when diving and explodes in a green explosion.

I want you to watch how the Stage 2 miniboss spawns. Watch that hand coming up out of the water. Did you see it clearly before it touched the platform? The boss' hands are brown and green on a brown and green background, and they have a very thin black outline. With the movement of the rain, I find this boss' movements with its hands particularly tricky to follow. The fire the boss shoots is easy to see but the movement of the boss itself against the background is not.

Now the forest is on fire, so the background is red, green and with the continuing hard rain effect pushing from right to left. The red bug enemy flies in and fires a red projectile against the red background. Well, it's a R/G/B flashing projectile, but both the red and green are background elements and the rain effect is sort of blue... As is the night sky if you scroll far enough up. On the log ride, more red bugs fly over and either fire flashing projectiles or explode in green explosions against the green mossy background. It's worth pointing out in the flaming forest scene that the background is incredibly busy. I get it-the pixel work is breathtaking and it is beautiful indeed to see such carefully-rendered burning forests. But the background has so much movement happening in it which has ZERO RELEVANCE TO GAMEPLAY.

Chainsaw Robot Dog is cool. I like this boss design. The boss is green, yellow and red. The background is a burning forest and a burning house. The background is green, orange and red. The background is constantly moving, plus it's raining in the main layer, which makes it hard for my eyes to see the Boss' tells.

Waterfall section seems fine, except for the flying red robots now have blue jets against the blue waterfall background. >_> At least the robots with the flamethrowers are displaying proper contrasting color design. The waterworks section looks good. I like how enemies don't appear out of nowhere and immediately do something and there are no obnoxious screen effects or overly animated background... Except there are waterfalls in the foreground for some reason. Whatever, it's fine.

Chapter 2 Balthasar Kline giant worm boss is a big mass of colors and movement. The middle (yellow) segment seems to be constantly spazzing out, which again is annoying because it's not a relevant segment to the fight. When the boss comes in at a similar angle to the rain, the movement can be obscured. The clouds are also constantly scrolling, so basically the whole screen is a mass of colors and shit happening. Most of which can't hurt you. The boss is red and yellow, while the background is blue and purple, so A+ contrasting colors are on point. The movement is what fucks me over here. Just way too much movement.

Stage 3 red enemies red background. Fuck, I lost all will to continue. All these words to explain my vision is bad, also please stop putting same-color projectiles on same-color backgrounds. The game is visually impressive to look at in abstract, but makes me feel like throwing up when I play it.

[Ghegs]

Very happy to hear I'm not the only one who can't get into Steel Assault, simply because my 40+ year old eyes aren't compatible with it.

[Sumez]

I hear Kage itself got a... DS, I think, sequel, which a few trusted peeps here thought was good. Always meant to look into it. Maybe that one's worth a try?

I thought it was fun, but mostly in a "hey I got the game for $2 somewhere, and it was fun to try out" kinda way. It's no Saigo No Nindou at all, not even close

I guess so, since integer parts and fractional parts are all the same to the machine whether they're handled explicitly inline, or hidden away behind a friendly fixed-point number datatype with associated subroutines to handle algebraic ops.

You're correct. When you're coding a game in 6502 assembly, it's all just ones and zeroes anyway. Two bytes can represent a 16bit number, or it can be an 8bit number and a fraction with 8 bits of precision - to the computer it's all the same thing, and it all depends on how it's utilized.
What's even more beautiful is that negative values work the same way. "10011011" can be 155 or -101 depending on what you need it for - math operations will work completely the same for both.

[Sumez]

on Steel Assault

I think my best run on arcade mode got me up to the final boss's last point of health. So I really need to go back and nail the game down sometime, haha. There being no health pickups in the last stage and a half or so, and the game's final shield running out just as you enter the last boss fight are tough to deal with.

There are no health pickups after stage 2
Here's my arcade run from nearly three years ago now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjkcy5_CHOk
Fantastic game really, and arcade mode is a great challenge. But the game desperately needed an "intermediate" mode that doesn't constantly refill the player's health. And a practice mode for giving players a better chance at approaching the forced 1LC that is arcade mode.

I didn't really have a problem with bullet visibility - I can understand why you'd immediate feel that on your first attempt at the game, but you very quickly start learning what to look out for.
I also turned off every post-processing filter immediately after turning on the game - I can't stand any of that fake CRT look. CRTs look great when you're actually playing on a CRT. Playing on a picture of a CRT is just an awkward abstraction no matter how accurate it's replicated.

Neon Inferno is quite busy graphically too, but at least in that game, bullets are huge, lit up, and extremely visible. I can't wait for it to be finished.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I also turned off every post-processing filter immediately after turning on the game - I can't stand any of that fake CRT look. CRTs look great when you're actually playing on a CRT. Playing on a picture of a CRT is just an awkward abstraction no matter how accurate it's replicated.

Playing on a raw upscaled picture of the original graphics is even more of an awkward abstraction than fake CRT, though. It's universally assumed that upscaling pixel art digitally is the natural thing to do with it and precisely games like this are reminding us how wrong is that. (The best part anyway is that you can play Steel Assault at the native resolution with legacy hardware).

[BryanM]

Skimmed a chunk of the four documentary on Mario 64's invisible walls. With such PTSD and persisting rage, I couldn't not know. And now that I know, it only makes me angrier.

It didn't have to be this way. Those gaps on the hanging sections that will randomly drop you and those walls in places where you really, really want to jump through are particular kaizo fuckery.

I think the one over the sand pit is the one I hate the most - I love cutting that corner so, so much. Saves so much time. But I can't. Invisible wall. Might fall into the sand and die. So I have to slowly walk on the stupid platform. Like an animal.

... argh.

One thing I always found curious about a lot of games is how they separate the visual and collision layers. I don't really get it, seems like twice the work that only encourages janky misalignment with what you see and how the world works.

[BIL]

Ultimate Mario 64 Thread ;3

My current favourite collision boner: For Konami, It Was Tuesday. TLDR: volcano eruption overwrites ur dynamite hitbox, puts lava directly in ur fucken faec :O

[Sumez]

One thing I always found curious about a lot of games is how they separate the visual and collision layers. I don't really get it, seems like twice the work that only encourages janky misalignment with what you see and how the world works.

Every polygon shouldn't be a collision layer. You can compare it to not really wanting pixel-perfect collision detection on your STG ship. You generally don't really want the same fidelity on collisions as you have on your visuals. Both for performance reasons, but also just to make the game feel smooth.

[Lander]

Collision checking against a big mesh of triangles gets expensive quickly; GPU ability to draw a shitload of them has somewhat outpaced CPU ability to reason about an equivalent quantity, so simplified versions good enough to 'fool the eye' are employed to make the whole process tractable.

In some cases, the simplification is nice overall, since - for instance - it's easier for a player to reason about collision between a simple'n'cheap capsule blob and the rest of the world, even if they don't realize they're doing it.
Though it's a case-by-case thing. Gameplay-critical stuff like hit/hurtboxes, and the world itself, would ideally be 1:1 with the visuals for the sake of fairness.
Since it's a pain in the ass to manually decimate every mesh, there are tools to do it automatically within given accuracy / density bounds, but removing any form of precision immediately disqualifies it from being correct. Human error only worsens the situation.

In a truly ideal world, we wouldn't be representing complex surfaces via discretization to polygons. The whole game world would be an infinitely precise multidomain field function that the renderer and simulation could query for the pieces of data they care about, curves would actually be smooth, and everything would be accurate to the nearest floating-point error. If only.

[BryanM]

The dynamite thing in Devil World is definitely the kind of jank I'd expect to find all over it. From the very first seconds I ever gave it a go.

I have to admit to giving basically zero thought to modern games. One of the things I found really essential to Mario 64 was the verisimilitude - if level geometry is visible, it really exists and it's something that you can touch. You'd think that wouldn't be so special, but it's really the minority of games. Most games feel more like those old PC adventure games or Playstation 1 era jRPGs, with a picture as the background and a walkpath on top and nothin' else to'em.

Baldur's Gate 3 gives you a dozen ways to take on a goblin camp, including smearing poop on your face, and the Dragon Quest Monsters Joker engine won't let you jump onto a small ramp from the side. Just being able to throw shit around in Duck Season makes it feel like we're living in some kind of sci fi make-believe story...

[Steven]

There is going to be a Golden Axe cartoon thing. Uh... that is not what I expected to discover when I read the news this morning.

[BIL]

The dynamite thing in Devil World is definitely the kind of jank I'd expect to find all over it. From the very first seconds I ever gave it a go.

Shitty collision detection is par for the course in a lot of Konami's mid-to-late 80s PCBs, and this game's preposterously massive enemy projectille / enemy falling scenery hitboxes are no exception. But a bug where enemy projectiles hijack your own attack's hitbox is genuinely pretty novel. I'd love to see similar (unintended) examples, if anyone has them.

Sounds like some hilarious status effect. Like Berumondo chucking a Holy Water at a sneaky fishman and nuking himself into the drink, because the Necromancer up top was doing his 2x middlefingers w/eat pussy sign taunt.

When I was trying to figure out if the item RNG had any logic whatsoever (it apparently doesn't!), I was surprised at the number of Japanese commenters who said something along the lines of "the volcano stage had infamously unfair hit detection, sometimes you got totally screwed." Then I thought, well, at least a few were reminiscing about playing it on cab. They couldn't reload a savestate ad infinitum to see it's not bad hit detection, per se. It's actually very accurate hit detection! It's just temporarily disloyal.

What a ballsy move, Hamster picking this for their Konami return last year. I mean it's certainly memorable. Even the usual "US is quarter-munching garbage, JP is alright" Konami adage isn't especially accurate, because JP/EU is effectively a different game built on the same engine and assets.

[BryanM]

There is going to be a Golden Axe cartoon thing. Uh... that is not what I expected to discover when I read the news this morning.

... my research on this subject has brought me to a dark place. Comedy Central was the first red flag, and things only got worse from there. I expect something around the level of the G4 Space Balls Animated Series, here.

I kind of get it with the Sanic revival, but I don't know if Golden Axe is worth reviving. Let alone like this.

Not exactly a lot of world building or consumer emotional attachment put into the series. Rastan 3 is in the same vein, better than the 'Axe games, and ultimately turned out to be just as disposable as a franchise...



Edit: It really sounds a lot like my ideas of how to make a Ghostbusters reboot as awful as possible. Those ideas were: A talking cat. A blonde girl that swoons over the apathetic male lead. An obese black woman who walks around holding a plate of pancakes and every time she gets screen time she pours syrup on them and says "who wants some pancakes?!"

I really don't like this, johnny. It feels like someone dressing up like a clown and dancing on my grandpa's grave.

[Steven]

G4 Space Balls Animated Series

I didn't know this even existed. It has admittedly been around if not more than 20 years since the one time I have seen Space Balls, but that is not something I would have expected... much like this Golden Axe thing. Of course, I don't think we had G4 where I am from anyway.

I kind of get it with the Sanic revival, but I don't know if Golden Axe is worth reviving. Let alone like this.

Well, at least Sega announced a while ago that there will be a new Golden Axe game, so at least there is that. I do wonder whether or not this cartoon makes more or less sense than naming the game Golden Axe, with an e on the end of axe, naming the main dude Ax Battler without the e on ax, and then having him fight with a sword.

[BIL]

I always thought you could make a pretty decent Boondocks beltscroller. Them AZN cats know how to animate a kick in yo chest. PRESS BUTTON REPEATEDLY to STOMP EM IN THE NUTS

I'm talking a proper early 90s JAMMA job though, not whatever godawful Flash garbage they'd have slapped together by the time the show rolled around. 3;

I do wonder whether or not this cartoon makes more or less sense than naming the game Golden Axe, with an e on the end of axe, naming the main dude Ax Battler without the e on ax, and then having him fight with a sword.

Incidentally, I recently learned "The Lord Of King" isn't Engrish, but a decent translation of that game's overseas title "The Astyanax" (lit. "Lord Of The City," contextually "High King / Overlord"). Greek has such a rad sound to it.

Well, it's kind of Engrish - "The Lord of Kings" would be better. But the intent is sound. I used to wonder if they'd meant to say "The Road Of King." Lord/Road being a common boner BITD, eg Vic Viper's bff, Road British. Also, the arcade game and its FC interpretation both take place on a nice contiguous yellow brick road to death or glory.

Anyway, for a second there, I wondered if "Ax" was deliberate punning on Sega's part; but maybe not, as "Anax" is the "King" part, prefixed by "Asty-" or "City."

My only hope for the project is that they blag First Blood sound effects again, get sued, and Sammy is forced to sell Viewpoint to Hamster.