btw his name is written with a "w" instead of a "v" for anyone wanting to find more about him and his work (you should!)
about Xevious:
i really suck at this game - but it has forever a place in my heart
i'll never forget the first time i played the arcade machine and the rotating plates approached me: i couldn't believe my eyes, cause it was so damn beautiful (me being raised on the likes of Galaga, Phoenix and Moon Cresta)
professor ganson wrote:
Agreed, but it could get messy with remarks like
It was a very lazy remark. I just don't feel creative enough to give a more respectful impression, without overusing the words slow and tedious. Maybe I could criticize Xevious for popularizing the ground shot, but not sure if it was the first.
33Zombie Nation
Silver Surfer's hitbox meets Rampage meets Splatterhouse. There's no way to capture the clutter of this game in a screenshot. Half of the scenery will explode into various bullet-colored debris. Strange, but also unplayable.
Yeah, but I don't care if you respect him (though I dig it)...actually that's what's left over of my old toaplan avatar.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
Not anymore, they just put out a big box set with el topo and holy mountain in it (and a few other things I haven't bothered to watch yet.) Yup, time to finally throw out those old video tapes!
Rob: Yo! Not trying to disrupt your thread! Please continue!
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
CMoon wrote:Not anymore, they just put out a big box set with el topo and holy mountain in it (and a few other things I haven't bothered to watch yet.) Yup, time to finally throw out those old video tapes!
Rob: Yo! Not trying to disrupt your thread! Please continue!
Not trying to further derail (sorry Rob) but the recently released box set is wonderful. Buy or Die!
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
professor ganson wrote:
Agreed, but it could get messy with remarks like
It was a very lazy remark. I just don't feel creative enough to give a more respectful impression, without overusing the words slow and tedious. Maybe I could criticize Xevious for popularizing the ground shot, but not sure if it was the first.
You could mention flaws specific to Super Xevious FC like the odd progression system where you have to enter clouds to proceed to the next area and the area with clouds that hides enemies (which your screen shot shows off very well).
Last edited by BrianC on Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
31Alpha Mission
The other type of generic shooter with a button for ground targets and cryptic power-up/down tiles.
3/10
30Galg
Galg wants you to collect 100 parts to defeat Dragg (2nd screenshot should say 99 parts... that is, remaining). I'll guess Dragg is the one boss in this game, and these parts seem to appear at a rate of 1 per stage. The game is pretty hard for someone accustomed to newer shooters, but not in any way I find appealing and that song needs to stop looping.
29Parodius
Horrible, barely playable port. For some reason the Parodius series has trouble being ported to any system without immense levels of slowdown. The system can't handle four options. Even going without (and what fun is that?) the game seems to run at half the speed of the Da! I remember. A few stages I hadn't seen before, can tell why they were removed.
Rob wrote:29Parodius
Horrible, barely playable port. For some reason the Parodius series has trouble being ported to any system without immense levels of slowdown. The system can't handle four options. Even going without (and what fun is that?) the game seems to run at half the speed of the Da! I remember. A few stages I hadn't seen before, can tell why they were removed.
3/10
That looks like the censored PAL version. If I remember correctly, the girl in the screen on the very left is wearing much less clothing in the JP version.
Rob wrote:Yep, I went for the PAL version to see if they'd change anything. When the first leg appeared I thought it was going to be a man.
Yeah, I didn't notice any differences other than censorship between the NES and FC versions. They appear to be running at very close speeds. The NES version does seem to run slower than other versions of Da!, though it seems to be faster than the GB one, at least as far as ship speed.
Last edited by BrianC on Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
28Argus
Argus does so many things wrong. It's got the button to shoot at ground targets, it won't let you enter the top half of the screen and it has a Top Gun-difficult landing sequence at the end of each stage (!!?). I can't hate it because there's something satisfying about lobbing a ground shot at the boss' core for the one-hit kill.
Landed!
4/10
27Bee 52
Free moving horizontal shooter where you take pollen back home to fill up a honey jar. It requires a lot of backtracking since you can only visit three flowers at a time. Interesting experiment but too tedious to replay.
That looks like the censored PAL version. If I remember correctly, the girl in the screen on the very left is wearing much less clothing in the JP version.
She's wearing a pantsuit on the Japanese box cover...
Rob wrote:28Argus
Argus does so many things wrong. It's got the button to shoot at ground targets, it won't let you enter the top half of the screen and it has a Top Gun-difficult landing sequence at the end of each stage (!!?). I can't hate it because there's something satisfying about lobbing a ground shot at the boss' core for the one-hit kill.
Landed!
4/10
I don't remember this "landing" shit on the arcade version. The arcade one was very enjoyable, very fast and manic for the time.
That looks like the censored PAL version. If I remember correctly, the girl in the screen on the very left is wearing much less clothing in the JP version.
The Famicom/pal-NES Parodii are identical and both have the dancer in the suit. Likely not because of censorship, but because of lacking graphics capabilities of the hardware.
It's the arcade/PCE/SFC versions that have the burlesque dancer you're thinking of:
This is getting all the more interesting now that we're getting to games that one would be likely to play. Nice to know this about the Parodius port. Ports of (proper) verts are obviously going to suck on NES; not so obvious for the horis.
That looks like the censored PAL version. If I remember correctly, the girl in the screen on the very left is wearing much less clothing in the JP version.
The Famicom/pal-NES Parodii are identical and both have the dancer in the suit. Likely not because of censorship, but because of lacking graphics capabilities of the hardware.
It's the arcade/PCE/SFC versions that have the burlesque dancer you're thinking of:
oh ok, sorry about that. I wish I played that far when trying the game out. The GB one has the burlesque dancer, which had me confused. Edit: I thought I remembered reading somewhere that the GB b/w version was censored, but I compared the JP and EU GB versions. The dancer looked the same in both.
The HG101 article on Parodius was misleading with this line describing the NES version, "This actually came out in Europe - although the Vegas girl's outfit was changed significantly".
From what I tried, aside from the slower ship speed, the GB version seems to be much smoother than the NES version with less slowdown.
Last edited by BrianC on Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
we're getting to games that one would be likely to play.
Actual popular games should be arriving shortly. (well, aside from Parodius)
26Macross
Every stage is basically the same - space to hideous green backround to clam-shaped tile boss. Things just keep getting faster, which gives it a decent amount of twitch dodging. You can tranform into different ship types, but the middle option is the only way to go (other two: very slow, huge hitbox - died shortly after switching in screen 3). This was done a lot better in the SNES Macross game.
4/10
25Silk Worm
A bland, fairly decent game with bosses that die within 3-10 seconds. Playing as the Jeep is funny (meant in the laugh at sense) and also not-so-much shmup.
24Star Soldier
Not quite as good as Vanishing Earth.
4/10
23King's Knight
Square taking RPG game design to the shooting genre. You can shoot away a lot of the landscape for hidden power-ups, stairs to underground lairs, etc. Dying as one character switches to the next and a completely different stage. Also annoying is the size of the hitbox when the characters join up after surviving the first round.
22-20Twinbee / Stinger / Twinbee 3
Cutesy Xevious-style games that sadly contain about the best scoring system on the entire list. As the games get closer to Pop'n a slow shift is noticeable to the very easy + nicer graphics. The challenge/gameplay is never great to begin with so the better backgrounds to look at are a welcome enough sacrifice.
Turrican wrote:Reviewing all the Twinbees in one shot, Rob? That was kinda lazy. I mean, Stinger even has friggin' hori stages.
The horizontal stages make little difference aside from making the 10,000 pt. bells easier to get, as if anything in the game needed to be made easier. I honestly see little difference in them.
