Szycag's Game Boy 8-bit Shmups thread (DONE!)

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:12 am

Ed Oscuro wrote: When I started playing it, I liked the GB Color ports of Raiden (DX, playing on a GB Pocket)

You mean R-Type DX, dontcha?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:33 am

Yes, I do! Nice catch there.

I don't think Raiden on the GB would be a pretty thing - although isn't Trad on the Game Gear?

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:51 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:
Turrican wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:The SGB's hardware is said to be exactly the same as that of the GB, but running 2.4% faster. I know about the supposed slow-downs on the SGB - well, I've heard of them and not sure if I haven't seen them myself. I'm not entirely convinced they exist, but it's certainly possible. If just the CPU ran faster but everything else was the same speed, errors become more likely.
CPU running faster equals faster games? I cannot really say, my european SGB was total 50hz crap, so it actually played stuff slower than normal...
Yeah, it would.

Not necessarily. I know a lot of older home computer titles were coded to use the CPU's clock speed to determine how fast to run the game, but I'm not sure how much that trend carried over to other mediums. For example, if you play Metal Slug 2 on MAME with the CPU overclocked to 200% the game doesn't run twice as fast (though slowdown is eliminated), so the Neo-Geo must not have had CPU-dependent game speed. It's been a long time since I used a real Super Game Boy, but I never noticed any games running faster on it than on the handheld. A 2.4% increase in speed isn't huge, but it would be pretty obvious, wouldn't it?

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:46 pm

Ed Oscuro wrote:Yes, I do! Nice catch there.

I don't think Raiden on the GB would be a pretty thing - although isn't Trad on the Game Gear?

No, but a "TATE" version of Raiden came out for the Lynx.

http://www.atarihq.com/reviews/lynx/raiden.html

I wouldn't agree w/ the reviewer in that it's as good as they say, but certainly the best shmup on the system (besides the repetitive Gates of Zendocon or the TOO HARD for it's own good Zarlor Mercenary).

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:39 pm

It's been 6 days since the last game. More Please!

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:45 pm

Szycag, we waiting!

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:50 pm

Yeah the thread's been around almost three weeks, I should have been done by now

I'm not as dedicated as Rob I guess. Later tonight I will play some catch up.

Sonic R · Post by **Sonic R** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:56 pm

P_HAT wrote:Szycag, we waiting!

Yes we are waiting

No rush take your time and enjoy your games!

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:33 am

All the 3/10's

30. Centipede (Color)

I was thinking this was an exclusive but it's the exact same as the version in Millipede/Centipede just with color added. Maybe I'll say more when I get to that one (not much further) up the list. But what a ripoff eh? If they're gonna just add color and do nothing else, they could have least put on Millipede too? 3/10

29. Space Invasion

This is a boring unlicensed ripoff of Space Invaders. There's an official Space Invaders for Game Boy Color that adds more depth to the original game, so no real need for this. For some reason there's a continue screen so you can continue at the level you died at, even though all the levels looked pretty much the same, maybe they change at wave 50 or something, but I don't care to play that long. 3/10

28. Taiyou no Yuusha - Firebird GB

Irem Presents...! This weird scrolling mech game probably based on some anime I've never seen. Might be fun if I could tell what was going on with the story, but I doubt it. Didn't seem to get that challenging, even a few levels in, probably one for the kids. I liked some of the bosses. Most of the work seemed to go into the story strips. The worst part, there never seems to be that much to shoot. I could be missing out, but I just didn't give this one much time, admittedly. 3/10

27. Yar's Revenge

2600 fans should be pleased because here's a version of Yar's to take on the go, and probably one of the only remakes of this game to surface. I'm not much of a 2600 fan though. Sorry. There are 250 levels, with a password for each, so obviously there's more here than what the 2600 version had to offer, but the core gameplay and look is for the most part intact. There's some tacked on story parts that aren't the least bit interesting. It's nice that there's a version of this game to take on the go, but I doubt this version would win over any new fans to the game, meaning you might as well stick with the 2600 version. Wonder how rare this cart is... but yeah, the people who could potentially enjoy this game, I don't have to recommend it to, because they likely already want it. 3/10

louisg · Post by **louisg** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:43 am

Yarrrr matey.

Bloodreign · Post by **Bloodreign** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:49 am

Thanks for leaving us in suspense so long.

I like Centipede normally, this one though didn't click right with me, the Space Invasion game doesn't look too good, the Taiyou game I've honestly never tried. Yars Revenge is the best of this recent lot, still didn't care too much for it.

Keep them coming Szycag, you can make it through the entire list.

ubersaurus · Post by **ubersaurus** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:21 am

I loved Yars for game boy. It gets really rough further on into the game, where you don't have any barrier shield to form a zorlon cannon from. You have to steal it from passing drones. At this point there's also no neutral zone to protect yourself in, and a lot more trying to kill you.

So although it starts out like the 2600 original, it changes up after a while into it's own game. Still one of my fav GBC titles, and one I used to play a lot.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:51 am

I should have looked up some codes for the later levels. Good to know there's more to it, but I dunno if it would affect my personal score much.

Aleanil · Post by **Aleanil** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:53 pm

IMO, the color detracted from Centipede quite a bit. I always ended up concentrating on the bright shiny things and dying -_- I spent piles of time on the monochrome Centipede/Millipede and Galaga/Galaxian for GB though. Especially Galaxian, loved that game.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:09 pm

4/10 ftw

26. 1942

So apparently this is supposed to win me over because you can print out your scores with the Game Boy Printer. Nice try but no deal. Urgh those stupid Kamikaze planes, and the hardly ever changing backdrops. I was surprised to see some bosses in some of the stages! But they were huge pushovers. This game, unlike many of the games I've placed lower, has the unique ability to hold your attention for about five minutes, but then you see there's hardly any reward to push forward. You can put in passwords like every seven or something stages if you dream of someday seeing the end of the game, but surely you're not that pathetic. 4/10

25. Battle Unit Zeoth

You're a big mech doing big mech things like floating around and dodging mines, or ascending/descending through little mazes that are over before they started, with little enemies popping out at you. So yeah it's kind of an assault suits thing going on, the odd numbered stages play ok, but the even numbered ones just test your ability to hover back for cover and dodge the pokey little turret things. I can't stress this enough, keep that four shot thing and don't get the laser, I can probably safely say don't get anything besides the super powered up weapon you can acquire in stage 1. It cuts through most bosses in like 10 seconds so you won't even have to learn the patterns really. This game is bad but teetering towards average. 4/10

24. Millipede/Centipede

Did you know Centipede was made by a woman? Yeah, that's all you need to know. 4/10. NEXT!

23. Namco Gallery 3 (Sky Kid)

Sky Kid is challenging, you have to pick up that little bomb thing and bomb the objective, which it tells you at the beginning of each stage. I hate the controls, you have to do this little circle back thing to dodge bullets with any effectiveness. I think it's just a mess, but it was more challenging to me than most of this stuff. In addition, the other three games included on here seemed crap. So probably not worth your time to own this cart. 4/10

Bloodreign · Post by **Bloodreign** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:27 am

Gotta disagree on that Sky Kid one, I find the game to be quirky fun, but not to be taken seriously. The real thing that hurt the game is that the loop button would launch the bomb, bad if you're looking to destroy a base's center section for the big end of level bonus.

The rest of these games deserve their rating it seems, though I'd give 1942 a 5/10 for trying. Sky Kid, 7/10 at least.

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:25 am

The only one of this batch I've tried is Boring Unit Zeroth. I guess Metal Warriors style action on the GB was too much to hope for, but I dared to dream.

Zweihander · Post by **Zweihander** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 4:08 pm

I'm gonna have to disagree on Battle Unit Zeoth, I'd say it's at least a 6/10. Well, if you're going to review Solar Striker, you'd better give that sucker at least an 8/10, or I'll have to take your credibility with a handful of salt. :/

ubersaurus · Post by **ubersaurus** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:23 pm

Sky Kid is amazing. At least the NES version was, and from your description the GB one is the same

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:25 pm

Sky kid is primitive but also good for the time. It kinda strikes me as being like Viewpoint - had it really been a workable design for manic shooting it would be considered a breakout title in the genre. It isn't, though, so it wasn't.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:59 pm

Mortificator wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:
Turrican wrote:CPU running faster equals faster games? I cannot really say, my european SGB was total 50hz crap, so it actually played stuff slower than normal...
Yeah, it would.
Not necessarily.

We're only talking about the GB here. It is a simple special purpose CPU with some integrated sound generation functions. It apparently isn't strictly limited (I don't want to say "bottlenecked") by other components running at different speeds. The observed speed increase of SGB games is 2.4% and that happens to coincide nicely with the stated frequency increase.

I know a lot of older home computer titles were coded to use the CPU's clock speed to determine how fast to run the game,

That's not quite the term I'd use. I would say that older home computer titles (and many early arcade games) are not tied to a clock, so an increase in the CPU's operating frequency means that the game chugs along at an increased rate as well.

For example, if you play Metal Slug 2 on MAME with the CPU overclocked to 200% the game doesn't run twice as fast (though slowdown is eliminated), so the Neo-Geo must not have had CPU-dependent game speed.

Well, I can't talk from definite experience about programming classic systems, although it seems to me that it's silly to talk about a single external clock as these systems had multiple parts each with their own external oscillator chip determining their core frequencies. It seems more likely to me that on a closed system like the Neo Geo they attempted to get the maximum performance out of the main processor during each clock cycle. Some of the "limit" might be derived from the fact that the main CPU only can achieve so much before it must interface with the rest of the system (sound CPUs, video system, RAM & ROM, and so on). Or it could be as you theorize and there is an overall "clock" (although I think that's doubtful that was needed given that the Neo Geo is a closed, non-upgradeable system with known parameters that can be programmed to known limits). In any case, the Neo is certainly not directly comparable to the SGB as the SGB has essentially one main part.

On newer games the system utilizes a real-time clock to keep the game synchronized with where it should be. That's why you get a game jumping about when you're playing multiplayer over a slow connection, or why a game will do much the same when you're playing on inadequate hardware - the game wants to render the next frame not where it should've been at frame 2 out of 60 in a second, but rather at where it is right now, one second later (of course, if your machine is that slow, you won't see the situation as where it should be the instant it appears onscreen, but rather where it was when rendering started).

Also, remind me not to make crazy semi-related posts like that @_@ I don't mind talking about it, but this is a Game Boy thread, after all.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:25 pm

I dig the arcade version of Sky Kid too... and I doubt the GB plays too much differently....

TKGB_Mental_Gear · Post by **TKGB_Mental_Gear** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:35 pm

szycag wrote: 24. Millipede/Centipede

Did you know Centipede was made by a woman? Yeah, that's all you need to know. 4/10. NEXT!

You don't like games made by women (if there are anymore)?

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:44 pm

Look, how just awesome are those stills of Zeoth. Gorgeous.

Now take your time machine, buy the game in 1991, and play it on the original "Dot Matrix with Stereo Sound" grey marvel. You won't see any of that, just a messy, messy blur.

Cool chart szycag, keep up!

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:45 pm

The Millipede/Centipede thing was a joke, I didn't imagine I had to give a huge explanation for these. A girl made River Raid, too... and River Raid is pretty good.

All this 4/10 stuff is obviously playable, but just aren't my personal favorites... I'm not dismissing these at all. I'm just not a big fan of scrolling left, for one. Did Rob even do Sky Kid in his NES thread, or was that part of his no ports thing?

Anyways more games in a couple hours I think.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:58 pm

Turrican wrote:Look, how just awesome are those stills of Zeoth. Gorgeous.

Yeah those skyscrapers in the first screenshot are a marvel of pixel art

NOT

I bet they give the GB vertical banding like whoa, too.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:58 am

5/10, halfway to the good stuff!

22. Joust/Defender GBC

Obviously not able to have arcade accurate controls on a Game Boy, but looks pretty similar to the arcade one. On the small screen it's gonna feel cramped no matter how you look at it though. This was probably a fine way to take Defender on the go in the GBC's day, but the size of the GBA's screen probably better accounted for games like this. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably spend more time playing Joust on this pack. Still a good conversion for both games, as good as could be I'm sure. 5/10.

21. Mercenary Force (Tenjin Kaisen)

Turrican said this is the best fun I'd have with this feature. It's certainly the most unique game on this list. This just didn't amount to a stellar score for me. It still comes highly recommended though. Turrican's Game Boy thread goes really in depth on this game so I'll link that later but give it a brief summary now... you recruit several kinds of mercenaries which all have different kinds of shots. It'll take a lot of trial and error to find a team that's just perfect for you. The gameplay area as you can see is pretty cramped. Stuff moves slow enough that you have time to arrange your units just right to move through the terrain and attack the enemy. You have some kind of combined force attack which is that fire thing... and erm there's some others. There's shops along to way to stock up on more mercenaries and such. See if I could make a master list of stuff the Game Boy has to offer, this would definitely be on it... it's just not the type of game I go seeking out. Is it a hidden gem? A hidden curiosity maybe. 5/10.

20. Project S-11

This game is about 90% presentation and 10% well... everything else. That's not to say I didn't have fun with it. This is just what happens when a tech team like Paragon 5 sets out to make a full original game. Their heart is definitely in the right place. The water looks great, the volcanos actually look hot as you can see the steam swelling around them. There's even this sort of lava gun your ship has; if you hold down B at it's full power it will shoot out to the far reaches of the screen but it'll slowly fizzle down and bubble over, making some kind of garden hose effect. The effect is nice but in practice it looks kinda silly. Some nice tunes being pumped out too, but that's a given from a team like this. If only the gameplay was robust as the rest of the game. Still worth your time, it's not like GBC had that many original shmups... at the time it probably would have been a nice score for $20, but I'm sure the price quickly went down. Cheers to Sunsoft for putting this one on shelves at least. 5/10

19. Space Invaders (Taito Super Game Boy version)

This is one of the few games that actually has SNES code in it that can be executed with a Super Game Boy. I want to say the only one... I could very well be right. My emulator didn't support that of course, so I can only show you the game running in regular SGB mode and not the other "arcade mode" option. This is pixel-for-pixel Space Invaders, guys. If you're a Taito collector I'm sure you would want this in your collection. But it offers no more, no less. 5/10.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:10 am

You don't like games made by women (if there are anymore)?

Fantasy Zone was I believe.

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:13 am

szycag wrote:5/10, halfway to the good stuff!

22. Joust/Defender GBC

Obviously not able to have arcade accurate controls on a Game Boy, but looks pretty similar to the arcade one. On the small screen it's gonna feel cramped no matter how you look at it though. This was probably a fine way to take Defender on the go in the GBC's day, but the size of the GBA's screen probably better accounted for games like this. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably spend more time playing Joust on this pack. Still a good conversion for both games, as good as could be I'm sure. 5/10.

I disagree on the GBC Defender being cramped. The GBC Defender used small sprites to prevent the game from getting too cramped. It's no more cramped than the arcade version. It's a fine port of the game and far better than the b/w GB version, which, if I remember correctly, was a bit cramped.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:16 am

BrianC wrote:I disagree on the GBC Defender being cramped...

It's a fine port of the game.

I don't deny that. Just when I play Williams games I guess I want them on a big bright screen. Cramped is a bad word maybe.