Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BIL]

For Rolling Thunder style games I've always used the term "spy action". It seems fitting with every game in the genre, even when spies is not the theme.

Off the top of my head, here's some more or less notable games that I feel are fitting.

Rolling Thunder 1-3
Elevator Action Returns
Shinobi
Shadow Dancer
Code Name: Viper
Ninja Five-O/Ninja Cop
Sly Spy
ESWAT
City Hunter
ThunderJaws if you're open for some kusoge
Rough Ranger if you're really into kusoge

I'm sure I forgot a bunch, but overall it really is a genre I wish we'd seen more of. Huntdown definitely touches on a lot of the same core elements IMO but I can see why you wouldn't really want to throw it into quite the same box. On the other hand I wouldn't throw Mystic Warriors or Sunset Riders into this category either. They are similar, but much more frantic action games, veering closer on the Contra side of things.

Honestly, despite the more simplistic level design, the original Elevator Action fits well. With its slow and methodical action that still requires a constant overview of what is going on, and the occasional quick reaction and decision making. Bionic Commando has elements of it too.

They're at the very least predecessors to this subgenre, aren't they? Nichibutsu's Cop 01 and Green Beret had to played by Rolling Thunder's authors as well.

Add to your list Taito's Crime City, which always gets forgotten despite being one of the best. Konami's Surprise Attack too. If you're into Famicom, Mottomo Abunai Geka and Dead Fox are likely only two more of them.

Which brings the question - why not including the whole 2D Shinobi series? Megadrive ESWAT? And Sunsoft's City Hunter?

Taito's excellent Thunder Fox (not Thunder Jaws!) kinda fits here too, imo, at least in hybrid terms. It's basically Rolling Thunder's tiered stages and mild stealth meets Ninja Warriors' crowd mowdowns. Despite the rampaging pace, it's in decidedly more methodical mode than pure run/guns like Contra.

Great game, at any rate - the versatile moveset is a highlight. Your tier-switch jump is an invincible flashkick going up, and a crushing stomp going down, with a bread & butter jumpkick for mowing through zako, and a healthy supply of guns. The MD version is awful, capturing the bare chassis but none of its speed or overkilling joie de vivre; has to be AC or nothing.

Blue Homie finds out the hard way about TF's intersection of Rolling Thunder and Ninja Warriors

Spoiler

I almost think of Son Son, Psycho Soldier and Mr. Goemon as their own weird little micro-genre. The last doesn't autoscroll, but if you've played the previous two, it'll be instantly familiar. I wonder if there are any more? They feel like a quaint little diversion between single-screen platformers and the more sophisticated sidescrollers that became de rigeur from the mid-80s onward.

Check Face's Hany on the Road. A guy I follow mentioned it together with yours the other day when pointing out that this was just released:

https://www.weatheredsweater.com/skator-gator

Ha, totally forgot about Hany On The Road. I can't recall if I checked it out after its stablemate Hany In The Sky. Cheers, will give it a look! Gator game looks cool, interesting to see a modern take.

[BloodHawk]

It could be that the version on Namco Museum Switch is that hybrid middle version. You see the title screen of the new version (notice there are animated henchmen at the controls of the computers), but the Stage 1 music is the track from the old rev.

I played around on MAME and can confirm the Switch version of Namco Museum definitely uses "Rev 2" for enemy placement (I think Rev 3 in MAME = "Final" but I am not sure). I haven't paid much attention to the sound or music though so I can't confirm if those are from a different Rev.

Now that I have been focusing on Rolling Thunder over the last week, I am surprised at how much it has grown on me. I had very little knowledge of it previously, so the first time I opened it up I felt it was just another old action game with stiff controls. After practicing and learning the first few stages though, the flow, pacing, and action feel really good. I am almost to the point of being able to consistently finish the first loop on 1 credit and I am eager to keep learning, which is unusual for me as I typically hate games where a lot of memorization is required.

[BrianC]

Did the US mostly get the final rev? Most of the videos I have seen of it show the final revision with the 150 second timer. Atari Games handled distribution, but made no changes to the title screen, which still has the Namco logo.

[Sumez]

They're at the very least predecessors to this subgenre, aren't they? Nichibutsu's Cop 01 and Green Beret had to played by Rolling Thunder's authors as well.

Add to your list Taito's Crime City, which always gets forgotten despite being one of the best. Konami's Surprise Attack too. If you're into Famicom, Mottomo Abunai Geka and Dead Fox are likely only two more of them.

Which brings the question - why not including the whole 2D Shinobi series? Megadrive ESWAT? And Sunsoft's City Hunter?

Megadrive ESWAT was the one I had in mind. I haven't played the arcade version, and wasn't aware they were different. City Hunter was in the list you quoted, and Dead Fox is the same game as Code Name: Viper
I wasn't even aware of Mottomo Abunai Geka, so thanks for pointing that out. Looks quite inspired by Green Beret, but also rather janky, is it worth tracking down a copy?

Surprise Attack I only discovered quite recently when it was featured at Arcade Superplay Expo, played by Aquas. I haven't played it, but it looks like a lot of fun. In fact, BBH played Crime City at the same event, and I regret having forgotten both on my list, they definitely qualify!

IMO the rest of the Shinobi series (at least the "Super Shinobi" games) don't really have that tactical spy action feeling at all. They are much more straight up action games despite the intentionally slightly clunky controls.

[Sima Tuna]

Usually when I think of TACTICAL SCROLL ACTION games, I imagine titles that fit into muh bullet points. One of the most important of which is "constrained damage-dealing." Oft represented by some kind of ammo counter or limitation on your more powerful weapons. Green Beret definitely seems like it would qualify as an early example in the genre. I wonder if it's the first? 1985 is pretty early. IMO, I agree that Shinobi games after Shadow Dancer don't have the same tactical feel as the first game. Shinobi 3 in particular, while containing limited ammunition, allows your character to be so powerful and scroll through levels so quickly that it undermines any chance for "tactical" scrolling. Even without kunai, you can run, double jump and dive kick motherfuckers.

Huntdown doesn't have plane switching as such, but the way you use platforms to shift lines of fire is extremely similar to how plane-switching was used in other scrolling games. I don't think plane switching has to always be a requirement for these games, only a sense of using different angles tactically to confound enemies. And you can hide in the background in certain spots, or take cover behind objects. My feeling is that Huntdown modernizes a lot of spy action gameplay while retaining that creamy nougat center of "satisfying but limited weaponry, slow, careful scrolling and dense, often puzzle-like enemy formations."

Tactical Scroll Action games are to run and gun as Ikaruga/Radiant Silvergun is to shmups, dood.

[Sumez]

Huntdown definitely retains the same primary focus on the horizontal line of fire between you and the enemies, which I think is very defining of this style of games. It's a more frantic game for sure, especially during boss battles, but not as much as Sunset Riders or Shinobi 3.

Elevator Action has Green Beret beat by 2 years, and although the two games are very different in their style, Rolling Thunder could be seen as almost a combination of them both. Although Elevator Action has gimmicks of its own that makes it stand out, the pure gunplay of knowing when to duck, jump or get out of the way as you precisely time your limited bullets is definitely very emblematic of the same TACTICAL ACTION.
It also allows you to incapacitate enemies by jumping into them, which is one thing I really loved Shinobi doing over RT's contact damage.

[Ghegs]

I wasn't even aware of Mottomo Abunai Geka, so thanks for pointing that out. Looks quite inspired by Green Beret, but also rather janky, is it worth tracking down a copy?

WTF, I'm pretty sure I've gone through the Famicom library at least three times with different sources, but somehow that has never registered even as a blip on my radar.

It does look way too simplistic, though. I looked through a playthrough on Youtube, and the way the game has, in addition to the side-scrolling stages, a top-down driving stage and shooting gallery stages, coupled with how you can switch between the default gun, machine gun and hand grenades with the Select button, actually made me think it's like a (very) poor man's version of Gun-Dec/Vice: Project Doom. And the whole game has like three music tracks, with the same one being used for every single stage. And hey...it's developed by Micronics.

[Bassa-Bassa]

They're at the very least predecessors to this subgenre, aren't they? Nichibutsu's Cop 01 and Green Beret had to played by Rolling Thunder's authors as well.

Add to your list Taito's Crime City, which always gets forgotten despite being one of the best. Konami's Surprise Attack too. If you're into Famicom, Mottomo Abunai Geka and Dead Fox are likely only two more of them.

Which brings the question - why not including the whole 2D Shinobi series? Megadrive ESWAT? And Sunsoft's City Hunter?

Megadrive ESWAT was the one I had in mind. I haven't played the arcade version, and wasn't aware they were different. City Hunter was in the list you quoted, and Dead Fox is the same game as Code Name: Viper
I wasn't even aware of Mottomo Abunai Geka, so thanks for pointing that out. Looks quite inspired by Green Beret, but also rather janky, is it worth tracking down a copy?

Likely not, I remember it just decentish and, being a FC game based on a cult series, I guess it's in the expensive side. I played it long ago anyways and, as the genre is not exactly populated, it came to my mind easily. It's "Deka" (=detective), btw, my mistake!

And sorry as well for not realizing that City Hunter and Dead Fox were already in your list. I mistook Codename Viper with Vice Project Doom, haha. Didn't know that Dead Fox had a US version, but being Capcom, it likely even preceded the Japanese release.

It's hard to set the boundaries when discussing subgenres, I think. Crime City could well be a borderliner like Thunder Fox - it even has a 2P mode, which kind of goes against a very tactical approach, though it still is clearly based in Rolling Thunder/Shinobi scheme. I like it more than both, Shadow Dancer and ESWAT but I also prefer Contra-likes over Rolling Thunder-likes, so there's that. I quite liked MD Shadow Dancer, by the way, very simple, but tight and well though-out for a 1CC approach and nothing like the PCB game.

[Sumez]

Dead Fox / Code Name Viper is a game that's easy to sleep on for sure. I think it nails the Rolling Thunder formula better than the actual FC port of Rolling Thunder does.

[BrianC]

Dead Fox / Code Name Viper is a game that's easy to sleep on for sure. I think it nails the Rolling Thunder formula better than the actual FC port of Rolling Thunder does.

It's possible that both games actually share staff since both were programmed by Arc. However, neither game has credits.

[Sima Tuna]

Huntdown definitely retains the same primary focus on the horizontal line of fire between you and the enemies, which I think is very defining of this style of games. It's a more frantic game for sure, especially during boss battles, but not as much as Sunset Riders or Shinobi 3.

Elevator Action has Green Beret beat by 2 years, and although the two games are very different in their style, Rolling Thunder could be seen as almost a combination of them both. Although Elevator Action has gimmicks of its own that makes it stand out, the pure gunplay of knowing when to duck, jump or get out of the way as you precisely time your limited bullets is definitely very emblematic of the same TACTICAL ACTION.
It also allows you to incapacitate enemies by jumping into them, which is one thing I really loved Shinobi doing over RT's contact damage.

Another element of tactical scroll action which Huntdown adheres to is limited movement. Sort of like limited damage dealing, this is another way the game uses restrictions to force you into a more strategic play style. Think about the difference between movement and shooting in Eswat vs Contra with a spread shot. It's not just that the former is slower, but the reason its slower is down to deliberate design.

Huntdown, in both movement and shooting, adheres to spy action tenets. You can only fire in two directions, left and right. You can dash in only three ways and there is a cooldown on dashing and very little invul upon dash. You can only dash forwards on the ground. In the air, you can either dash straight down (goomba stomp) or down-diagonal. You have no double jump or any other movement tech to extend your jump beyond down-diagonal dashing, which extends your jump horizontally only a tiny bit (still necessary to master.) You can kick enemies away when they get close, but only the weakest of trash mobs can actually die to the kick damage. So it's mainly a positioning tool. You can't kick bosses at all. You also cannot run in any way, and default movement is too slow to escape enemies. The game forces you to deal with them. Melee enemies will attack you through cover while gun enemies fill the horizontal screen space with trash you have to avoid. And explosives are a massive wild card, throwing AoE death everywhere. Your limited tools are put to the test of managing this chaos and I feel like that's the basic idea of every TACTICAL SCROLL ACTION game.

I don't think I've played original elevator action yet. I definitely should though.

I'm not a huge fan of contact damage in games generally. I think it adds more to the game when you create some other system which approximates the effect (if you really must have it) but doesn't actually qualify as "contact damage." A lot of bosses in Huntdown have a super fast attack they will do if you get close to them, sort of like the famous machine gun boss in Metal Slug, with his knife slashes. That at least teaches players to stay away without allowing for some of the more obnoxious design elements that come with contact damage. I love the mega man zero games, but sometimes a bullshit flying enemy will just plow into the tiny screen space from offscreen faster than any human could ever react to it, and you'll take damage unless you knew it was coming.

[Udderdude]

Dead Fox / Code Name Viper is a game that's easy to sleep on for sure. I think it nails the Rolling Thunder formula better than the actual FC port of Rolling Thunder does.

Don't forget to use this patch, unless you want to play the whole game with his viper hanging out. http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3740/

[Randorama]

Tactical Scroll Action games are great, though they are definitely a short-lived trend of the late 80's/early '90s (with the occasional throwback).
I'd say that together with the Cabal-esque single-screeners, they form a nice if heterogeneous sub-set of "kick-ass arcade-style action bonanza".

A full list of these titles could become a veritable "bucket list" for anyone who wants to 1-CC hardcore (but doable) action games, I think.
I'd add the Contra-esque sub-genre, but some of the relevant titles are rather though, attrition-centred challenges (...the Slugs, I mean).

[BIL]

Dead Fox / Code Name Viper is a game that's easy to sleep on for sure. I think it nails the Rolling Thunder formula better than the actual FC port of Rolling Thunder does.

Don't forget to use this patch, unless you want to play the whole game with his viper hanging out. http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3740/

Excellent work. That'll definitely make his death animation less embarrassing!

[Sengoku Strider]

This must be my favourite secret genre or something, because I played the heck out of Crime City & Thunder Fox when the local convenience & department store had them. And I've always liked OG arcade Shinobi (and when I later discovered it, Shadow Dancer) better than Revenge. Which is a decent game but for the life of me I can't understand how it became the default "you gotta get this one" Genesis action game, aside from the fact that it was on all those 4 in 1 carts so everyone did, in fact, get it.

IMO the rest of the Shinobi series (at least the "Super Shinobi" games) don't really have that tactical spy action feeling at all. They are much more straight up action games despite the intentionally slightly clunky controls.

Revenge features some stages that are more wide open and less deliberate & linear than those of its predecessor. But at the same time, it does still use the double jump as a plane shifting mechanic. Vertically, as in the very first stage, and into the back ground as well:

Dead Fox / Code Name Viper is a game that's easy to sleep on for sure. I think it nails the Rolling Thunder formula better than the actual FC port of Rolling Thunder does.

It's been a long time, but from what I remember it did it better than the arcade RT as well. It's weird that a Capcom game that well made has had such a low profile.

[BIL]

^ Also the later highway stage, imo a really interesting use of tier-switching. Keep yer eyes peeled, or suffer the ultimate irony of your Japanese ninja master invading Detroit, destroying a T-800 in single combat, then getting ran over by a Toyota!

Revenge was the Genesis's first real arcade-calibre killer app. Golden Axe and Ghouls n' Ghosts had excellent conversions around the same time, as did Strider a bit later, but this was a home original with the cinematic presentation, first-rate soundtrack and spectacular, difficult action of the marquee cabs.

Viewed dispassionately, its camera tracking is poor, at times unacceptable. This is particularly unfortunate given its membership of what I term the Assault Course subset, where an unscathed, accurate player is monstrously more powerful than one who's taking bumps and missing shots, with experts turning what novices perceive as arduous treks into 9000MPH woodchipper massacres.

"Snake, he's armored everywhere except his visor! Dodge his strike, then use the shuriken!"

Spoiler

"...or, yeah, you could just cut him in half. That works."

Castlevania Bloodlines, Alien Soldier, and its own direct sequel Shinobi III are three more examples. Unfortunately, while CV sticks with Green Beret's tried and tested player/screen ratio, and AS enforces its screen borders at all times, Revenge frequently plonks Joe in the middle of huge, eight-way scrolling stages full of offscreen threats who'll pelt him mercilessly.

So rather than getting stuck into the course and its targets, you have to memorise around these foibles, first. Annoyingly, while Shinobi III demonstrates some awareness of camera concerns with its AS-style player offset (and just like AS, exposes the Achilles' heel of this approach, the FOV whiplashing wildly any time you're required to rapidly pivot, say when dodging boss fire - mercifully rare in both games), it repeats exactly the same mistake of huge eight-way stages full of offscreen snipers.

The shock of the new atomised the preceding three paragraphs, years before Revenge and SOR et al became multi-cart fodder. And tbh, "sub-optimal FOV" is a pretty decent rap sheet for killer apps of bygone days. It's not like Revenge is Night Trap or anything, you can do some rad stuff once you know the ropes. The Shield magic is a big help in that department. Shinobi III, despite similar visibility barriers and a few too many autoscrollers, is an even better demolition course, with its superbly athletic movement and attacks. (the hidden six button mode, given its proper pride of place by M2 years later, is a must)

I almost consider DeadFox more of a Namco game than a Capcom one, haha. As Brian says, it was developed by ASW right after their FC Rolling Thunder, making it feel like an unofficial fan sequel given major label backing. Bit like M2's MD Gauntlet.

[Randorama]

[...]This must be my favourite secret genre or something, because I played the heck out of Crime City & Thunder Fox when the local convenience & department store had them.[...]

Oh yes, mine too. I played these two titles to nausea, and to this day I often listen to their OST's when I am in the mood for VG music (both are on Zuntata's digital archives or something). Well, I 1-CC Crime City for nostalgia's sake, from time to time (Thunder Fox, I need to recover the skills).

Speaking of secret genres: Birru-sensei, do we have an official name for Mercs and the likes? I'd say that Kiki Kaikai and other titles with close-range attacks form a slightly different genre than "pure" titles like Mercs or Guevara (which, in turn, may be one of the handful of "rotato stick" games).

[BIL]

Offhandedly, I just refer to Mercs et al as topdown run n' guns. I'll always append SNK and DECO's loop lever titles (Ikari, its sneaky ROMhack Heavy Barrel) as "rotary topdown" - the interface really does create a different experience, but ultimately they're the same kind of game to me.

Shock Troopers is a good example of a red-blooded topdown kill 'em all with Kiki Kaikai-style slashing (really Shinobi-via-Slug style, ie proximity automelee). UPL's Vandyke is my idea of a true "topdown slasher" - there are others, like Namco's Valkyrie games, as well as outright "topdown brawlers," ala perennial odd ducks SETA's Mokugeki aka Downtown (aesthetic kin of Sega's Tough Turf in the "fighting salaryman" field). Cool premise, alluded to in its Japanese title "Witness:" playing a random-if- hardass Joe who stumbles across a mafia/cop deal, and has to retreat across the mean streets... which are, of course, infested with enraged thugs and burly hookers!

Better-known is Ikari III, which honestly, I consider quite bad (weak moves, bad camera, half-hearted aesthetic - ala its stablemate Datsugoku, SNK's Famicom reinterpretation is far nicer). Blatantly un-Ikari, whatever one's opinion of its quality. Guevara is the real deal - Koji Obada's true third and final entry in tactical rotary topdown. Not without a few dings, but handily superior. The later Search And Rescue, meanwhile, didn't involve Obada-san, but is far and away SNK's finest entry, imo. A phenomenally well-done arcade game in general, having that elusive balance of generosity and rigour also seen in Crime Fighters 2.

I think of Hard Scrolling Action, this thread's raison d'etre and joie de vivre, as best represented by three primary spokes: Sidescrolling, Beltscrolling, and Topdown (with a healthy degree of slack for historic orphans, ala Cabal, and a natural allowance for non-scrolling but equally classical 2D, ala Bubble Bobble... and as I always say: if it's badass action that could run on a Famicom, and you've got good posts about it, I'd rather see 'em than not! ala "coinop roguelike" Cave Noire, and "coinop RTS" Herzog Zwei).

Bullet/enemy herding, a comfortable constant across all forms of Hard Scrolling Action.

Spoiler

(I've found a reliable indicator of quality in hard 3D action to be the presence of herding mechanics; is the game mechanically crisp enough that you can? And is the design sufficiently challenging that you should? ala DMC or Bloodborne, if the answer to both is yes, I'll be encouraged to stick around)

The last page or so is a great illustration of the thriving variety found within those spokes. Castlevania and Contra are an easy illustrative pair; you could argue neither is part of the same genre at all, despite both being iconic "sidescrolling action." Keeps things simple and productive to associate 'em at a broad level, I find. This nearly decade-old thread originally allowed the former but not the latter, believe it or not! The obvious notable absence here is the original Hard 2D Action: STGs. But there's an entire forum for those.

[Sima Tuna]

Speaking of forking subgenres, I've been trying to figure out in my brain if we can consider Mega Man to be part of "spy action." I mean, it's fucking Mega Man, so obviously a lot of people's first reaction will be to say "no" because it's a famous franchise. And it has more of an emphasis on platforming that most tactical scrolling action games. But it still limits you in a similar way to those games. However, another issue complicating matters the forking of mega man games into other genres. I don't think the X series could ever be considered restrained. The zero series even less so. They really don't limit your scrolling speed or movement at all. But the original Mega Man games have two-direction fire (left and right,) three bullets on screen at a time (limitation of damage output) a strong emphasis on positioning and ammo for special weapons (which usually cover some of the angles your normal fire can't reach.) Mega Man doesn't have plane changing, but it forces you to line up shots and pseudo "lane change" with platforms to avoid damage. So it seems to me that Mega Man 1-6 are at least close in design to the principles of Tactical Scroll Action . I will admit, however, that the existence of the Charge Shot in later games seriously nerfs any tactical considerations, since a charged shot is nearly always optimal in every situation. So maybe Mega Man 1-3 would be the most "tactical" of the games.

What do you think?

[Sumez]

I think the thought is ludicrous

The freedom of platforming that pretty much defines the series is, to me, the exact opposite of the tactical espionage gunplay action you get in Rolling Thunder and its ilk.

[BrianC]

I actually played Rough Ranger on a cab at a roller-skating rink a long time ago. Even back then I thought it was kitschy and this was before I was more familiar with the AC Rolling Thunder. Funny thing is that Capcom actually distributed it in the US.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

I love the mega man zero games, but sometimes a bullshit flying enemy will just plow into the tiny screen space from offscreen faster than any human could ever react to it, and you'll take damage unless you knew it was coming.

I'll springboard off this. I replayed Mega Man Zero, the first one, for the first time in years last night (discovered the series around a decade ago, fell in love with it) - I definitely enjoyed it, but not as much as I did at the time. There's a lot of spottiness and sloppiness to its design, largely centered around the unfortunate GBA screen resolution - it's very fond of placing enemies in awkward locations that you're sure to walk or jump into, even if you're playing slowly and cautiously. There's even one segment where the challenge is based around jumping down to moving platforms, over a death pit, that you can't actually see due to the tiny screen space. There are a decent number of excessively flat levels without either interesting terrain or enemy types, too, which see you just milling through flat areas while mowing down uninterestingly-placed grunt enemies (this isn't the norm, thankfully; a majority of the game's stages are solid - though it never really reaches full excellence, maybe in part because of the screen space issues).

The bosses are similar - they're generally solid, but some of them have telegraphing issues, either because they tend to attack from out of your small field of view, because some windup animations don't logically connect to the attack they precede, or both. This is exacerbated by the game's awkward retry system (if you game over on a stage, you fail it and are forced into the next, encouraging frequently loading from save files so you can maintain a life buffer in order to properly learn stages - this whole element was ditched in the sequels), which makes all the game's awkward bits of design stand out worse.

I still like the game overall though. Zero is a joy to control - easily one of the best-feeling protagonists in a sidescrolling action game, outstripping MMX's great dash-jumping and wall-climbing, which elevates the game's sometimes-middling stage design and makes the sloppy moments more tolerable. Furthermore, most of the game's flawed elements are straightforwardly mitigable through memorization - which isn't my favorite balm for such things, but the stages do become fun challenge courses to tear through once you've learned each individually, even if the act of getting there is excessively bumpy. I wouldn't call MMZ1 great, as I did years back, but it's enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to revisiting at least MMZ2 sometime soon.

[Sima Tuna]

Zero 2 and 3 definitely tightened up the level design from Zero 1, although the GBA's tiny screen size is unfortunately an issue I remember encountering in at least one level of Zero 2. But each Zero game felt less bullshitty than the last, generally, culminating in Zero 3 being my favorite mega man game. Probably ever. But it's absolutely not tactical scroll action. More like 2d Bayonetta, with how free, fast and powerful Zero feels to control. Phoenix Magnion is one of those bosses I'll always remember, because that was the moment (for me) when the Zero games folded their hands and said, "thou shalt not pass until thee learneth mine game mechanics." I still see people in "the current year" complaining about the boss. But he's utterly trivial once you know how to play.

Spoiler

You have to learn to fire uncharged shots while holding a saber charge. His gimmick is he teleports behind you, nothin' personnel kid, every time you try to attack him. But after doing this, he is vulnerable to attack. Vergil does almost the same exact thing in Devil May Cry 3. So you fire off an uncharged shot as bait, to get him to tele. Then hit him with a charged slash. Boom, easy fight. A lot of MMZ game fights are like that. If you can play, then they're usually ok. But I definitely agree that MMZ1 has some wack-ass stage design.

[BEAMLORD]

I became a man today and sent the Jaquio packing for the first time. The final stage of the boss rush ain't too bad, that was my first time dealing with it. It was not a 1cc, but I can see the way - I no-missed until stage 5, and am slowly but surely ironing out the kinks in my stage 6 approach.

Edit: Shit, I almost forgot, ditto for Castlevania NES too, cleared that yesterday for the first time. An ignominious clear, it took about an hour and a half to get the best of Dracula. My arse cheeks are still burning with shame.

[BIL]

Welcome to the task force! Please select an avatar for the front page roster, or if you prefer, one can be assigned, almost certainly from the Cho Aniki games.

[BEAMLORD]

Hah, in that case, I'll get on it

[BIL]

My arse cheeks are still burning with shame.

Another signal clear! Soon your arse will burn with AMBITION EDIT: excellent pick

[Udderdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenevrURCrM

Oh yes. It's finally getting localized. The sequel to Gotta Protectors coming on April 14th.

[dojo_b]

Anyone vibing on Elevator Action / Rolling Thunder -style fare should consider the recent stealth platformer Master Spy. The main (significant) differences are a focus on evasion and a modern "hardcore-casual" checkpoint system with short hard levels and infinite lives. The levels are cool though, good for a more deliberative, carefully-rehearsed style of platforming; and everything oozes genteel superspy style, right down to the swank interiors, overwrought security systems, and sweet surf-guitar soundtrack.

[Sengoku Strider]

I became a man today and sent the Jaquio packing for the first time. The final stage of the boss rush ain't too bad, that was my first time dealing with it. It was not a 1cc, but I can see the way - I no-missed until stage 5, and am slowly but surely ironing out the kinks in my stage 6 approach.

Edit: Shit, I almost forgot, ditto for Castlevania NES too, cleared that yesterday for the first time. An ignominious clear, it took about an hour and a half to get the best of Dracula. My arse cheeks are still burning with shame.

Two first class belt notches. Castlevania I actually somehow beat in a weekend rental back in the day. But Ninja Gaiden I & II were borrowed off friends and I could never beat either, despite countless after school hours spent on them. Including the first time I ever literally threw my controller at the TV...after stewing with the choice for a while, ultimately deciding it was the right call, and went for the yeet. I was then immediately terror-struck that I had chipped the glass (I hadn't).

One day I'll get a Famicom and go for it again. I vow that my titanium gravestone will be laser-etched with the words "Beat the original Ninja Gaiden Trilogy legit. And 1CCed the arcade game too." So that future generations crawling across the blasted black-glass surface of the post-apocalyptic Earth will know that once, there was a golden age in which men could become legends, and once again find hope.

Anyway, if you beat CV, go for Castlevania III next (I mean, sure, play II first but it's dead easy if you know how to get past the Angry Video Game Nerd parts). CV III I thought was an order of magnitude harder than the original, mainly because of how tough the Dracula battle is - and its troll-ass restart checkpoint in the Western version. Also because my friends and I were convinced that Alucard was the best partner because of his spreadshot, jump-skipping bat powers and general badassery. Little did I know he was secret hard mode.