Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[mycophobia]

checking out the Surprise Attack manual, which appears to be bilingual

https://ia600604.us.archive.org/20/item ... k_text.pdf

the 遊び方 and Play Instruction sections mention the bonus quiz, but only the english one says anything about a dip switch, and also is much more brief, assuming that you know what questions are and how to move a lever.

Furthermore the dip switch settings listing shows a setting for bonus stage on/off, but on the jp side it just says SW4は未使用。or Switch 4 not used.

I reckon it's another one of Konami's accommodating american arcade operators' general predisposition towards Getting The Player The Hell Off The Machine, otherwise considering the bonus quiz as essential to the experience. at least they didn't also make this regional version insanely hard

[BIL]

Furthermore the dip switch settings listing shows a setting for bonus stage on/off, but on the jp side it just says SW4は未使用。or Switch 4 not used.

Aha, that explains a lot about the ACA's regional DIPs. Sounds like the JP board indeed lacks the skip functionality. Thanks for looking it up!



Oh shi

Man I wonder what the Bat Quiz was gonna be, earlier in Surprise Attack's planning. Maybe it'd have rewarded a working knowledge of Cesar Romero and Eartha Kitt's filmographies? West n' Ward knowledge a given, ofc. Or maybe it'd be all about the '89 film, encouraging players to buy tickets to brush up! Bone up, I mean.



Quizzes about telemetry and other applied mathematics fun probably the classier move. Still incredibly annoying either way!



These men are not here to play twenty questions! More like TWENTY ROUNDS TO THE DOME (｀w´メ)



Still, I could go for a dev interview about the station layout and neat gyroscopic projectiles, etc! It's a very considered production, in addition to its Moonraker x Die Hard or perhaps MOON HARD style. Check out the onboard greens, you need your food in that wasting zero-G environment!

Actually speaking of Bond, it reminds me a bit of Outland (1981) too! Another space outpost gunfight spectacular feat. SHON CONREH.

[mycophobia]

Huh, I didn't know SA was gonna be a Batman game. Interesting that Atari put out a similarly kinda methodical run-and-gun (though far worse) when they had their go at the property.

[BIL]

I wonder how famously elusive Hitoshi Akamatsu felt at the outcome, haha. Dude surely loves his movies, going by Dracula's heavy film motif, and Indiana Jones-modelled whip. OTOH, Surprise Attack is, like Dracula, an original to be proud of in its own right.



Pure blockbuster bravura and adrenaline! "YOU AND WHOSE ARMY, PUNK?! OH FU-"

[Randorama]

All this talking of Konami's cinematic games led me to finally wrapping up this (rather long) love letter to Konami's Aliens. Easy-peasy? Yes, even the US/EU versions, though both have increasingly difficult revisions. Absurdly atmospheric even if aliens look...psychedelic, rather than scary? Oh, absolutely, the OST is possibly one of Konami/Kukeiha Club/Adachi Masanori's finest. R2RKMF? To fanatical levels: always to the right (OK, aside the FPS stages), and you kill the most lethal MF's in the galaxy. Xenny, my new toy xenomorph, approves this post!

[Lander]

In spirit of the thread's original conceit: Did anyone catch the Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound trailer that snuck into the Industry Wankathon 20XX (Game Awards) pre-show?

Seems to be a Return2Roots of 2D hard platforming made by the Blasphemous team, starring new face Kenji Mozu instead of series staple Ryu. Gameplay looks fast and tight, a bit like early-game The Messenger with the focus on bouncing off enemy hit/hurtboxes. Nice pixel art as well.

I'm conflicted; good to see the francise alive, and 2D dedicants deserve some love after all this time. Cool to see some signature swordplay in the animated part (that Helm Splitter animation curve is bang on,) but retention of TEH RAEG theming from NG3/RE isn't very inspiring. Ryu was always aggressive in the 3D games, but there's a distinction between Fights like a Demon and Angry Boi that I feel has been missed.

Anyway, sore fan syndrome aside, could be good?

~Edit~

Oh, mad late. Put that down to winter hibernation
Wildly off-tone from the established narrative as well, from the look of it - I was trying to be nice, alright?

While we're hating on new old stuff: I loathe that Pacman but it's Eldritch Horror is now an officially-sanctioned concept and soon-to-be-metroidvania.

Can we not just let the abstract circle be an abstract fucking circle, rather than take an irony-poisoned axe to all the nice simple things that were cherished BITD? Fuck's sake.

And no, you don't get a free pass for introducing what might be the first original metroidvania traversal powerup in decades. Now scram!

Strider 2013 anyone?

I enjoyed that at the time, though that was before appreciating the classic series, getting an Osman clear, and taking a ticket for the enough metroidvania already christ queue.

Seems to be lost to time these days anyway, console releases aside - I tried revisiting it on Steam last year, only to find that it hasn't booted for anyone post ~202X thanks to a rogue Windows update another victim of Capcom's then-anemic PC port division.

[Daytime Waitress]

Pacman but it's Eldritch Horror is now an officially-sanctioned concept and soon-to-be-metroidvania.

Megacorps wielding shitposts was not the late-stage capitalist dystopia that any of the cyberpunk lit of my young adulthood prepared me for.
Maybe I read the wrong books.

[BrianC]

While not to the same extent, don't forget that Namco already did creepy Pac-Man with one of the enemies in Baraduke.

[Lander]

Reality managing to out-insidious fiction, is there any more effective horror than that?

Baraduke's purple people eater lands a bit differently for me; a gribbly monster that happens to look like Pac, with comfortable referential wink-nudge margin.

Shadow Labyrinth comes off more like a Bomberman: Act Zero to my eye - embracing edge for its own sake, without any room for ambiguity. This is -the guy- and you should be -afraid-!

[mycophobia]

the slowdown near the end of Surprise Attack is soo annoying. my inputs keep gettin ate on the crusher stage, which is greatly simplified by getting to the actual crushers ASAP and just crouch-walking nonstop through them but if you're missing jumps and stuff you miss the timing...

come on Konami. Sega never bit off more than they could chew with their hardware in Shinobi and Shadow Dancer, they're always silky smooth. dial it back a bit huh

[mycophobia]

got the clear for the first time in years by now, but im gonna keep working towards no miss/no mover fuel. one thing that is baffling is that in this spreadsheet the Gamest WR for Surprise Attack is listed as 1,534,820??? that's like more than double the points of a no miss/no mover fuel/all perfect trivia run right? where the heck are all those points coming from

[mycophobia]

oh the rocket launcher guys that guard some of the bombs respawn if you don't defuse their bomb. so prolly lots of milking since they're worth 1000 points a pop. also the stage with the fan at the end and the stage with the unique big machine gun dude enemies are each worth substantially more than the 20K life bonus at the end of the game, so worth spending whatever lives you have doing those over and over. or maybe there's some other super lucrative milking spot to spend lives on, idk. well that answers that

[BIL]

After I invent time travel and send Ahnuld to make IREM fix Holy Diver's controls at gunpoint, I will keep him busy hunting down the ten million arcade games whose WRs involve entire convoys of milk trucks.

Congrats on reacquiring the clear! I guess Konami had some slowdown left over from Gradius III and Paro Da. I noticed the command interpreter can get a bit screwy on jumps when going from crouched shots to standing. Promptly whacked on autofire since (IIRC?) the jumps are set height anyway. I hope I didn't make this shit up, ah no here we go.

I noticed an unfortunate control ding: firing from crouch, then standing and walking forward will disable your jump inputs for a splt-second. Lead to a "WTF? Dammit!" death in the rather intense inverted spacewalk. If you need a jump immediately after a crouching shot, hold [down/forward], then jump out of the crouch-walk. You won't have the momentum of a running jump, but it beats getting kneecapped. [EDIT: and then he said FUCK EM >w< and busted out the autofire]

It's hardly a gamekiller, but it's the kind of thing that makes Shinobi the unrivalled king of this sector, imo. No glitches or weirdness I can recall, and an ultra-smooth OTG shot.

I'm dreadfully hobby-absent atm, all I've managed to do is not write up Riot, which I 1LCd three fuckin times. 1 because run sucked, 2 because I suddenly realised the ACA port's sound seems... fucked up tbh, the Laser is straight-up white noise. Third I whacked on the ACA Bass Muffler, which makes the game sound underwater but at least not painful, and got a 2hit run that coulda should woulda been a no-hit. Which I'm kinda happy about, except the goofy last boss's RNG gave me two bullshit lucky escapes while I tossed my cookies all over the room like an assclown. I don't know how or why he did that, making the run a bit less illustrative than I like. Crumbs!

Easy game, but what a fuckin blast. I'm gonna ask trap if the ACA sound seems boned to him, his PCB 1CC sounds nicer even if the SFX/BGM balance is still off.

[Searchlike]

Played some favorites after a long time away from video games.

Did my first no-miss in FC Contra from the Anniversary Collection. Played until loop 4 before game over. I think boredom was the main factor in killing me rather than difficulty, though. Still love the game, but I won't be going for successive loops again any time soon.

I also recorded myself playing Umihara Kawase, my favorite game, for the first time after said long break. The first couple of minutes were spent remembering the controls, so it's not an extremely compelling watch, but the good old muscle memory came back soon after—like riding a bicycle.

https://youtu.be/gZnQztp4X0E?feature=shared

[BIL]

Hey, good to see you again! Yeah FC Contra is the definitive Hard Gaming Mac n Cheeze.

[Searchlike]

Oh, right! Where are my manners? Hi, long time no see. Hope everyone's in good health.

Looking forward to exploring the thread a bit further to see what kind of sidescrolling gems I have missed. Can't believe Gimmick! got a sequel. Hope it's at least half as good as the original.

[velo]

the unique big machine gun dude enemies

How do you even kill those guys (from the front)? Feels like an act of god every time I manage to get one. Does your bullet have to hit at a certain height or does it have anything to do with the animation they're in, or both, or what...

[mycophobia]

How do you even kill those guys (from the front)?

you dont afaik. i always get em when they're turned around

[BurlyHeart]

Considering I'm not super fond of metroidvanias and prefer run'n guns, which of the Turrican games are worth playing?

I'm having a hard time trying to figure which collection is worth buying (Flashback vs Anthology 1 & 2)

[Herr Schatten]

Turrican II is the best of the bunch. The first one is more of the same, but with more jank. Both are worth playing for their soundtracks alone.

The console Turricans (and T3, being a port of Mega) are much more linear and much less unique. Ultimately, they are okay-ish run'n'guns on systems that host much better examples of the genre.

[Sumez]

Considering I'm not super fond of metroidvanias and prefer run'n guns, which of the Turrican games are worth playing?

I'm having a hard time trying to figure which collection is worth buying (Flashback vs Anthology 1 & 2)

Mega Turrican!
Turrican aficionados don't consider it much of a real Turrican, but as a fellow arcade gamer I think you'll find it has enough of that series' unique DNA to feel distinct enough without being straight up annoying to play like the earlier Turrican games. For my money, it's by far the best of the series.

[velo]

The console Turricans (and T3, being a port of Mega) are much more linear and much less unique. Ultimately, they are okay-ish run'n'guns on systems that host much better examples of the genre.

This is the catch: Super Turrican 2 and Mega/T3 are the more arcadey ones, and I think they're together on one of those collections, but T1 and T2 are more loved and more distinctive, Eurojank notwithstanding. I first played them on the Flashback collection and had a good time with them.

Super Turrican 2 catches flack for swiping so much from Contra 3, but the grappling beam mechanic is way too much fun.

It's very annoying that they aren't all together in one collection.

[1KMS]

Super Turrican 2 is the only one with a decent camera. It took the programming wunderkinds until 1995 to figure out that it's preferable to see more space ahead of you than behind you in a side-view game.

I'd try Gunlord and Ultracore before Turrican 1 & 2. Maybe Hurrican also. Kommander was a fan. It features stage designs by THE hardcore superplayer, Schlauchi.

https://www.winterworks.de/game/hurrican

[Herr Schatten]

I'd try Gunlord and Ultracore before Turrican 1 & 2.

Turrican 1 & 2 ondoubtedly have their flaws and, admittedly, are an acquired taste, but Ultracore is a terribly designed, nigh unplayable piece of junk. Gunlord is solid, although I'd be hard-pressed to name any area in which it actually excels its inspiration.

[Randorama]

Re: Surprise Attack. I believe that there is also some extra source of milking connected to the final boss. Perhaps players can trigger a double KO on the last form, get the points and repeat the stage.

I remember trying to milk the huge dudes on Stage 7-1 but I didn’t get the impression that you could squeeze 700k points or more, out of them.

N.B. I never scored more than 650k+ points or so after a 1-CC, so I imagine that the milking bits may be really heavy, to reach 1.5 M or higher.

[BurlyHeart]

Thank you for all your help re the Turrican games! It's of great assitance.

Flashback (with Turrican, Turrican II, Mega Turrican, and Super Turrican) seems like the best deal, and if I really dig the games, then I'll consider going for the Anthology.

[mycophobia]

Re: Surprise Attack. I believe that there is also some extra source of milking connected to the final boss. Perhaps players can trigger a double KO on the last form, get the points and repeat the stage.

I remember trying to milk the huge dudes on Stage 7-1 but I didn’t get the impression that you could squeeze 700k points or more, out of them.

N.B. I never scored more than 650k+ points or so after a 1-CC, so I imagine that the milking bits may be really heavy, to reach 1.5 M or higher.

I don't think double-KOing the bosses works because you don't get any points for them until the score tally screen comes up.

My thinking for how the Full Milk would go for this game is that the player would find a really efficient spot to scroll one or more rocket launcher dudes off screen and then go back to kill them again, and again, and again, for every non-boss stage in the game. In stage 1 alone you turn 4100 points into over 20K doing this. Then on the most lucrative stages one spends their excess lives doing that until time runs out for all available lives.

It's the worst kind of monotonous milking, where there's basically no challenge in actually doing it. Like it's an interesting puzzle to figure out just where the most efficient spots are in each stage to kill the same dude(s) over and over again but actually doing it is incredibly tedious and difficulty-free.

[Randorama]

Mycophobia:

OK, I checked and the huge dudes on Stage 7-1 are worth 3k each, so milking those in a very efficient manner might allow players to rack up considerable amounts of points...but yes, it sounds like really tedious stuff. It actually makes sense to me because this is one of those Konami games in which the designers simply didn't care about score and score mechanics, as far as I understand. It could be worse: the two arcade TMNT games allow players to milk points by destroying projectile weapons like boomerangs (1 point per boomerang). I guess that milking in this manner may be entertaining to some people: players can face the challenge of checking how many respawning enemies' they can kill, before running out of time. Not for me, though.

I am half tempted to recover the 1-CC, too, but I definitely would bypass the quiz stages. Ironically, I memorised all the answers when I played this as a kid (it's 70 questions or so, so no big deal). I admit that I listen to Red Thunder (i.e. Stage 7-1's BGM) at least once per stage, by the way.

[mycophobia]

i've worked out how to no-mover fuel the whole game now; i nailed down the timing on the upside down stage's rocket thrusters and the 7-1 machine gunners are surprisingly vulnerable when landing from a jump. final boss still sucks but if i can get those first three hits in then that's the hard part done. once i can get that credit where i dont die then i can call this game done