Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[it290]

Another point on the 'does someone have to be competent to write about a game's playability factor' question, here, is the distinction between a critic and a historian. BIL, I accept your argument that one should be competent and versed in order to satisfactorily critique gameplay; however, what Parrish et al mostly proclaim themselves to be are historians—a claim that is largely rendered moot in my opinion by the fact that they will repeatedly harp on their perceptions of a game's successes or failings, whereas an actual historian would rely upon contemporary reactions and expert opinions, leaving their own judgement out of the equation.

[BIL]

The issue I have with all those Retronauts types is their clear Nintendo bias. It often feels like every first party Nintendo thing is just a clear work of unforeseen genius and everything else, except where exceptional, just is. Granted they've gotten better about it, but the brand whoring is pretty apparent. I was actually listening to an episode earlier today where they were discussing emulation/FPGA options, and Parrish (who is as much a Mac dweeb as a Nintendo dweeb) interrupted Porkchop Express (of MisterAddons fame) as he was explaining the MiSTer's display output options (you know, actual useful information) to digress at length about some DTP-centric CRT monitor he owned that just happened to match the output resolution of a G4 Powerbook or something. It was pretty infuriating and I have to tip my hat to Mr. Porkchop here for not losing his cool in the situation, as it really had nothing to do with the podcast's ostensible topic.

Blimey, even better - cash incentives.

It all seems like the ghost of EGM. And unlike my games, I very much prefer EGM remain in the past, occasionally revisited for sentimental purposes. The best scrolling action games - the Rygars, Saigos and Daimakaimuras - remain as cutting-edge and vital as ever; the snarking hacks that once intermediated between them and their adolescent audience are now redundant. If I need to know whether a game of 70s through 00s vintage is worth picking up, there's google, and emulation, and places like this.

There's a line in that video, paraphrasing: "Capcom and Hamster re-releasing their arcade classics." That's shoddy work; you and I know what he (hopefully) meant, but a historian must reflect the record at all times. Now, clueless zoomers and lazy boomers may think Hamster are a developer of arcade games, as opposed to an exceptionally valuable licensee and emulation specialist of.

It's clear these guys aren't much for "gaming" - they use every ancient trick in the book to liken mere engagement with the likes of Rygar to grueling torture, while shamelessly abusing the wonderful FC instalment's forgiving side, the very picture of casual nostalgia tourists - and "historian" is not a title given to the slipshod. It seems they are very much the nostalgia merchants kitten identified them as.

Must be the iconic combination of red spandex and DEM STIFF PECS （＾w´ ）

Actually wait, was Karnov buff? I can never tell if he's meant to be a fat tubby bastard, or a classical strongman, who tended to be less cut (as they are today, opposite bodybuilders), but by no means fat. Hmm. There's an interesting subject for a 1UP.com article

Oh he's definitely a chubby little fucker. Look at dem titties.



I mean I know he looks different across other games and representations. Maybe this is Karnov in his later years after he went all Robert De Niro in Rsging Bull.

I missed this yesterday. Yeah, I get the feeling that's Karnov after all those royalty checks started piling up, and he could afford to quit the All Eurasian Strongman Classic circuit. Usual story, athlete quits without dialling down that high-calorie diet.

How about KARNOV II, where YOUNG KARNOV travels time to get his older, tubbier self back in shape for the coming apocalypse?!



YOUNG KARNOV looks like a pretty Bad Dude!

[Sumez]

Just catching up on a couple of "old" posts. You can't talk about old console hardware without me dropping in with annoying "well ackshually", apologies in advance!

The 16 bit consoles always kind of surprise me with how harsh their sprite limit really is. Anyone who's goofed in Lunar Magic knows Super Mario World has almost zero slots for enemies. Even Gunstar Heroes only creates the impression of a dozen guys dogpiling you, it doesn't literally do so.

The SNES has a pretty solid sprite capacity, with the bigger limitation on your creativity being
1. All sprites need to fit into one of two sizes defined by your video mode settings, so if you want effecient small sprites like projectiles, all non-small sprites are confined to a single larger size, which should probably still be small enough that the largest sprites will be made out of multiple ones, this can quickly become a bit wasteful if not managed well.
2. All* sprite graphics memory is limited to two 128x128px tables. Fine for most cases, but a big limiter if you want very large individually animated sprites for things like a beat'em up.

The MegaDrive doesn't suffer as badly from those two limitations, even though its overall sprite limit is slightly harsher, with only 80 memory slots against the SNES's whopping 128.
The SNES can display 34 8px sprites on a scanline, which is more than enough to fill out its 256px horizontal resolution. In fact, the SNES has no problem covering the entire screen in sprites if you want to - you're only going to run into issues once they start overlapping. And even if you do want to really push the hardware, most games will be completely fine for introducing a bit of flicker on less essential sprites (like particle effects, etc.). It still takes a lot for the SNES to reach the levels of flickering that were completely common and accepted on the NES.

Keep in mind Lunar Magic is still designed around the Super Mario World engine, and doesn't really represent the capabilities of the SNES
I think it might also be the software responsible for a lot of people out there confusing the term "sprite" (as a graphical hardware entity) with in-game assets handled by the game's code. The latter is limited entirely by software, so it's not really indicative of anything other than how many objects the designers of Super Mario World figured it would be relevant to maintain on screen at any time. In theory you can easily have an object table with over 1000 slots, even if they won't all be possible to draw on the screen on the same frame, and I've even done so myself in a small shmup prototype I made a couple of years ago.

They decided to put the bulk of extra RAM toward color depth and music, which is always what moves mainstream AAA games.

Both graphics RAM and CPU RAM can be allocated pretty much to the developers wishes on both a SNES and a MegaDrive. It's true however that they both opted for a fixed 4bpp palette on sprites, and it might be possible to imagine that they'd be able to pull off other things graphically if they hadn't, though I'm not sure how that works exactly. It's definitely not RAM related.
As for music, that runs on its entirely own subsystem on both consoles, and isn't really affected by the rest of the hardware, and at least the SNES has a crapload of freely allocated RAM accessible to the CPU that allows programmers to do all kinds of crazy things in their games - it's hard to imagine ever running out unless you're using the entire address space for massive buffers. It's definitely not an area where the SNES cheaped out


*) Graphics memory can quickly be reallocated from one scanline to the next, so at the very least you could have dedicated graphics for a HUD not interfering with on-screen characters

[Sumez]

Adventure Island 4 is pretty good, not sure why you'd be apprehensive about that.

Especially given what I paid for it, AI4 is an aggressively underwhelming game. I always think "old" metroidvania style games are interesting to explore, especially for the unique things they often try that are rarely seen since. AI4 doesn't really do any of that, and especially for a NES Adventure Island (which famously can get incredibly tough) game it's absurdly easy, never doing anything to challenge the player at all, but at the same time it's also super short.
I wouldn't recommend it at retail price, much less the price is actually goes for nowadays. If you're just gonna emulate/pirate, it's cute to spend the hour or two it takes to check out the entirety of it, but not really worth returning to.

But he's also the guy who started the "Bloodlines is a better Castlevania than Super IV because the whip isn't as long" thing, so he is not without crimes to answer for.

The sounds like a perfectly sound statement to me.
Super IV is a very fine game, but generally seems to mostly be the popular choice among people who aren't particularly fond of Castlevania in the first place.

The issue I have with all those Retronauts types is their clear Nintendo bias. It often feels like every first party Nintendo thing is just a clear work of unforeseen genius and everything else, except where exceptional, just is.

As much as Nintendo bias is a very real and very common thing, you gotta give Nintendo credit for, well, most of the time actually doing that thing you mention. Few other video game companies have been on the forefront of quality video games as consistently as Nintendo has.
From genre-defining cornerstones like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. over unique masterpieces like Super Metroid, to industry leaders such as the Zelda series and hell, every single Mario game ever.
They are popular and succesful, so of course it's inviting to try to take them down a peg, remind people that other great games exist in great quantities. But when it comes to high profile triple-A gaming, I'd take a cutesy gameplay-focused romp from Nintendo, a company that still believes video games need to be fun to play, any day over whatever bland messes companies like Ubisoft and all the rest like to push out.

[Air Master Burst]

The problem with the "nostalgia tourism" types is that they don't often realize how many shit games we all played back then due to lack of other options. You usually got whatever you heard was cool or whatever had the coolest commercial/pictures/description on the back of the box.

Everyone ended up with some shitty games in the 80s and and early 90s that we played anyway because it's just what we had, but nostalgia for shitty games don't make them any less shitty.

Basically every kid I knew had TMNT1 and Battletoads, and there's a ton of nostalgia for both those games, but they're both steaming piles compared to actual good titles of that era that almost nobody even heard of at the time.

Caveat: it's certainly possible this was different in places outside the US, this was just my experience at the time

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Super IV is a very fine game, but generally seems to mostly be the popular choice among people who aren't particularly fond of Castlevania in the first place.

It nails the aesthetics, and it's much more forgiving than other Castlevania entries... mostly because it eschews a lot of the elements that made Castlevania feel like Castlevania (the stiff jumping, the limited attacking direction, both of those really make you "commit" to your actions). I think it's nice to have an entry that's easymode Castlevania in terms of how it handles, but I can understand vets who were super fond of CVI and III might not like it.

Even Bloodlines is quite a bit more forgiving than previous entries what with diagonal jump whipping, and basically everything in Eric's hilariously OP moveset including fully invulnerable superjumps.

Basically every kid I knew had TMNT1 and Battletoads, and there's a ton of nostalgia for both those games, but they're both steaming piles compared to actual good titles of that era that almost nobody even heard of at the time.

Fortunately I think most of us here appreciate the games for what they are and aren't nostalgia-blind to their faults.

Battletoads is actually a pretty neat game I think, it's got a ton of detailed environments and the action is demanding while the controls are good enough to handle everything. But it's also way, way too difficult for the average person, with sections basically demanding perfect execution due the checkpoint use everywhere. A few years ago I would've agreed and told you it sucked because it's just too damn hard, and I still think it's a game that could've used a level select, infinite continues, or whatever. You're just not going to appreciate the game unless you're good enough to memorize all the crazy hazards, but if you really invest time to get good at it... it's pretty fun. But holy hell is it demanding and I don't recommend it for anyone unless they're wanting a masochistically hard game.

It was also a buggy mess when it was released, with a softlock in Rat Race that can randomly trigger (that forces you to RESET THE GAME 30 minutes into it). It's also clear none of the development team actually were good enough to beat it in co-op as the US version released with a bug that made the second last level impossible in co-op (the second player is too slow to outrun the orb). Many of these apparently got fixed in the European/PAL version, and there's a bug patch for North America/NTSC that can be used to address these.

Snake Rattle 'n Roll (NES and Genesis) is a much better game overall I think. It's easier to get a handle on since the mechanics aren't changing every other level, and it's way more fun in co-op since there's not like a million platforming levels where friendly fire CONSTANTLY gets in the way. Definitely a much better example of a RARE game with good difficulty balancing.

[BrianC]

I can understand vets who were super fond of CVI

I can't imagine anyone super fond of Gordo 106.

[Sumez]

I think this thread maybe clashed a little too hard on Jeremy Parish for his "NES Rygar is better than arcade Rygar" statement. I didn't bother watching the full video, but I found the part where he calls it a lengthy tedious slog. Unfortunately he then also falls into the "it's designed to gobble up quarters" pit, which is absolutely not a card I ever want to see anyone claiming to be an authority on video games to pull, but otherwise I think people can be forgiven for not seeing Rygar as anything too remarkable. I know I sure didn't back in the days.

I think his basic description of the game is very close to the general common consensus - it definitely feels incredibly long for the style of gameplay, and repeating the same types of enemies for 30-40 minutes of entirely straight forward scrolling stages can easily feel like a slog for someone not sitting down trying to learn how to deal with every situation in the game. I don't think it would be too radical a statement to imagine a hardcore 20 minutes would have been a really nice fit for a game of this style.
I'm going to make the assumption that his statement is merely based on a lack of actually giving it a chance, rather than a general misunderstanding of arcade action games - and even then, I can see Rygar being a bit of a specific flavor that doesn't necessarily appeal to everyone. If your knee jerk reaction to a video game echoes what you generally hear other people say about it, it's easy to accept that as a fact and then never give it more chances beyond that, and I think that's what is going on here.
Of course, if you want to label yourself a gaming historian, you should probably be self critical enough to translate that into a more neutral, diplomatic statement ("compared to the NES game, the arcade game sticks to the same basics throughout every stage") instead of a straight up bashing of the assumed intentions of both creators and players of said game, but this is hardly something people around here is any better at approaching.

It's not even about hardcore vs. casual for me, I'd say casual puzzle mobile players or casual tabletop game players are still getting more streamlined gameplay, challenge and agency compared to more "hardcore" games on PC/Consoles with lots of dead time and cutscenes. It's more like some people want to ditch traditional game structures as much as possible, trying to turn video games into an overly passive literary media, where traditional gameplay and challenge are seen as primitive or immature, so you have to "fix" this primitive gameplay with "complexity" (bloat) and "variety" (gimmicks).
As for Dark Souls I haven't tried it properly yet, but I enjoyed Sekiro a lot.

Probably one of the most problematic narratives I see among "tourism gamers" is when focusing on gameplay becomes perceived as straight up braindead. I've more than once seen situations where it's being likened to watching a shitty movie merely for the action scenes, when in all honesty I'd say a more apt comparison would be the straight opposite. Sort of parodied in Yahtzee's review of Psychonauts, in which the intelligent people who see video games as a canvas for an interesting narrative are the ones who appreciate the game, while the dum-dums who just want to shoot stuff will hate it. As if having an interesting setting somehow excuses the video game that still makes up 95% of the experience for being asscrap.

As much as you'd think classic gaming is on a healthy rebound with all the indie games we see nowadays embracing that, there's also a very strong counter-movement where anything that's not the AAA industry's idea of passive player involvement is for nostalgic dummies.

[BIL]

I don't expect much from EGM alumni, but unfortunately for Jerry, words have meaning. He consistently refers to AC Rygar as "mindless." You couldn't pick a more farcically off-base claim. On one hand, you have the relentless pace and risk of sudden death making complacency lethal from the outset. On the other, a simple but powerful and finessed toolkit which must be marshalled to deal with same, in ever-increasingly complex layerings of enemy and terrain types.

His secondary claim, that it is repetitive, hinges on this. That it's a numbing slog that shoots its bolt by Round 3, the remainder a stultifying holding pattern.

Either Jerry is a superhumanly cold-blooded operator unfazed by Rygar's most hectic scenes, or he's been dealt a stiff beating in the early going, and has concocted a brew of sour grapes to explain - totes historically! - why there was never anything of value here to begin with.

I can see Rygar being a bit of a specific flavor that doesn't necessarily appeal to everyone.

This is certainly true - it's a deliberately primal sort of sidescrolling action/platformer, one that relies on layering individually simple but collectively harrowing formations and terrain. Showing the consideration you have to the Arcade game's particular style is already a leagues better-balanced critique than the EGM-calibre guff Jerry shat out here. Unfortunately, Jerry trades only in sneering reductive contempt. It's like my old EGM collection back home in my closet has come to life and its flapping at me through the Youtube.

RE: "NES Rygar is better than arcade Rygar," I'm not moved to disagree, necessarily. It's certainly better if you're looking for an ARPG. On the other hand, I could just as uncharitably rap its toothless facsimiles of the Arcade's rushing hordes and harrowing terrain, perfect for nostalgia tourists like Jerry, of little interest to those seeking a brisk, engaging game in the here and now. Crossing over to the FC's home turf, I could even argue that the Arcade game's upgrade system, earned via "XP" much like in any ARPG, is more meaningful than the FC's, not merely upping the damage you deal, but giving you significantly better ways to deal it - a nearly fullscreen piercing shot, a reliable vertical attack, and a lethal, endlessly-chainable stomp tied to generous i-frames.

You might even call the FC's relatively primitive action and character expansion "mindless," or very near it, with world design of little note opposite bigger, more complex efforts like Zelda II, The Battle of Olympus, and Dragon Slayer IV. I know I consider it a relaxing ramble, first and foremost. I just don't shit all over it for that. The mechanics it inherited from the AC game are just as snappily feedback-laden here, even if there's nowhere near as pressing a need to master them, and while the map won't blow your mind, it won't frustrate either.

As I said a page back, this is why I personally don't track mainstreamer dogshit into the thread, no matter how farcical and worthy of a blast from the power-washer it may be. Wut! You're telling me a random games journalist is a poor writer, an even poorer critic, and exudes a cancerously poor taste in games?! Whoaaa! No that's, that's about what I expect tbh.

(you are of course correct I'm being a bit harsh here ;3)

[Sengoku Strider]

Blimey...I see you've all been busy since I've been gone. Fortunately it means you've saved yourselves 27 agonizing levels of my own orotundity by carrying out most of this discussion's built-in back & forth already.

A couple of things:

A lot of this wasn't implicit in what I was saying, because I don't attach any kind of fundamental determinative quality to INTERNET GUY X having a particular opinion; I take it more as information from a point of view other than my own, and judge it on the context the writer has. Particularly as an INTERNET GUY X myself, with opinions which I frequently revise over time. (In hindsight, avoiding that rapid fire code in Darius Gaiden for years as a 'cheat' was certainly a mistake. It's actually the hidden fun code). That said, when there's a common established consensus I don't get, that's when it might be time to start challenging things. Because hey, maybe there's a really good reason why the Layer Section soundtrack gets plaudits that I'm completely missing.

I certainly haven't thought of Parish as any kind of Living Tribunal of Cosmic Gaming Judgement since he 4.5/10'd Ultimate Ghouls n' Ghosts on PSP back in the day (or, I mean, ever for that matter). On the other hand, in googling to refresh my memory as to what that score actually was, I came across this ancient NeoGAF thread as top result. Wherein since-busted child pornography enthusiast Amir0x and the NeoGAF Dogpile All-Stars savage Parish with their characteristic "I hope he gets AIDS" level of toxic relish:

Official Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins (US) Thread (Special Guest Jeremy Parish)

...though the teenagers in the room do eventually appear to provide a more mature counterpoint. But it reminds me that these charges of 'You fraud, you're just masking your own lack of reflex and manual dexterity with claims of excessive difficulty' are in no way new with him. But in both the UGnG & Rygar examples, he provides a rationale for what he's saying. Ordinarily, I'm quite content to discard those types of opinions myself. Anyone who lived through the "THIS ISN'T NEW I HOPE THE PROGRAMMERS DIE AND EXPLODE SNARK SNARK LOL LOL" era of gaming journalism circa 1996-2008ish remembers embarassing reviews like this, which surely burned a karmic mark of shame into their family name for generations:

Spoiler

Imagine literally writing that you credit-fed a game 4 times then published a full 2-page spread review declaring it "impossible."

But with Parish, there's a (lengthy) track record wherefrom I know that's not his viewpoint. He's championed enough difficult games over the years for me to know he's looking at how a game is difficult, not purely grousing about the fact that it is. In that Rygar video he's not reviewing the Rygar arcade game, just throwing in a couple of brief remarks about the NES game's source material. I'm not familiar enough with the arcade original to know whether I agree with him or not, but he does at least state that he's concerned with repetition and cheap hits, and I know from his past material that he doesn't simply get upset at an arcade game for being difficult. Like, going through console arcade ports from 1984-86 has put him through the grinder on a lot of stuff. I might well end up thinking he's wrong in this case, but I have no reason to believe he's wrong in bad faith, which I think is the crux of the whole matter here.

But at the end of the day, I don't really concern myself much with that. It's the opinion of one guy I sometimes agree with and sometimes don't. As a guy who thought Shenmue II was a sublime soul-shifting experience (and even likes the 3rd one), I'm very much in the category of some-people-will-think-this-guy's-opinions-are-loopy myself, so I'm hardly going to get hung up on it. They have their nervous system to address and I have mine.

Really, I've just learned a lot of interesting little facts (and I guess some big ones) from watching his chronology series, a gauntlet I'm glad he picked up after life stuff put an end to Dr. Sparkle's exploits. It's not like there's some huge log jam of people exploring Compile's involvement with Hustle Chumy.

I don't know who I'm madder at - Bryan, for tricking me with a box propped up by a twig over an issue of EGM (Aieee!), or you, for inadvertently branding my post with the dread Edited timestemp! GRRR!

Beating the digital persona-deflating edited stamp is like the QTE mini game of this forum. I've barely dodged some edited-10-or-more-times brands of shame in my brief but verbose time here. The way this forum deals with images is murder.

EDIT: It was Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins, not Ultimate Ghouls n' Ghosts, and Parish only has one R.

DOUBLE EDIT: Missed a Parrish.

[BIL]

In that Rygar video he's not reviewing the Rygar arcade game, just throwing in a couple of brief remarks about the NES game's source material. I'm not familiar enough with the arcade original to know whether I agree with him or not, but he does at least state that he's concerned with repetition and cheap hits

Jerry unfortunately relies on the stock overstretching of "repetition" to mean "if you're not showing me new, shiny things and places with sufficient regularity, effectively providing me with an interactive movie, I'm bored."

It's an old reductionist trick, very useful for writing off entire genres of nuanced, carefully-arranged games like Rygar and Giga Wing. It could theoretically cover just about any game tightly designed around a small, well-honed set of mechanics. Racing games, like Sega Rally, and golfing games like Neo Turf Masters, for example. All you do is steer and brake! All you do is putt and drive! That's all you ever do! To say nothing of FTGs, brawlers, puzzlers... see the trend? Suddenly, all of arcade gaming is dead wood, in need of a big Virtual World™ culling - the finding of pleasure in tightly, deliberately focused game spaces cynically swerved around.

I'm guessing by "cheap hits," he blundered into something that escaped his notice and died. That's what happens if you approach Rygar mindlessly. Otherwise, and keep in mind I'm the guy with a pornographically-detailed Ninja Pit expose in his sig, I have no idea what he's talking about. I'm being bone-dryly literal, there: I don't know where these cheap hits are even supposed to be, because Rygar is notably insistent on telegraphing. Cheap shots would seriously fuck with the mellow of a game like this - fast, precise, 1HKOs - and I'd most definitely call it out for that.

and I know from his past material that he doesn't simply get upset at an arcade game for being difficult. Like, going through console arcade ports from 1984-86 has put him through the grinder on a lot of stuff. I might well end up thinking he's wrong in this case, but I have no reason to believe he's wrong in bad faith, which I think is the crux of the whole matter here.

This simply appears to be the usual laziness I've come to expect from mainstream reviewers of arcade games. If it's out of character for him, that's a shame, but it's certainly in keeping with my experiences.

[Sima Tuna]

That review for Giga Wing is some Dean Takahashi levels of trash game "journalism." I like it when a review proudly exclaims both that the game is impossible to beat without credit feeding, but is also "only" five stages. Or "only" an hour long. If it's so short then why are you so bad at it? If it's so impossible then why are you mad it's short?

Replayability is a feature which doesn't exist in Video Game Journo world. Credit feed and then the game is done! You "beat" it because you got to the credit screen. The DSP mentality of game clearing.

Big ups if the same type of game "journalist" also praised Ikaruga despite it being hard as balls. Because, well, I dunno, game journalists loved Ikaruga for SOME reason. God only knows why.

[Udderdude]

River City Saga: Three Kingdoms in 2 days. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1013 ... _Kingdoms/

[BryanM]

If I had to point at things that are kinda cheap in Rygar, it'd be pretty modest honestly. The sprite palettes being at a similar luminosity to the backgrounds makes for cohesive art, but also makes things blend in together a lot. I don't like the first bullman fight having a meatwall of so many damn rolly-pollys. The iguanas sometimes stick their tongues out a second time much faster than anticipated, that's very tricky and rude of them. The sea eels have a very subtle telegraph everyone will miss the first time they get ganked by one.

My #1 complaint about the game would be the freakin' eyestrain, honestly. It's kind of silly my most effective runs involve using an eyeball strategy that prioritizes things that are easier to miss seeing over those that aren't. Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park: "Did I kill all of them? I don't sense any movement, but..."

[Stevens]

That review for Giga Wing is some Dean Takahashi levels of trash game "journalism." I like it when a review proudly exclaims both that the game is impossible to beat without credit feeding, but is also "only" five stages. Or "only" an hour long. If it's so short then why are you so bad at it? If it's so impossible then why are you mad it's short?

Replayability is a feature which doesn't exist in Video Game Journo world. Credit feed and then the game is done! You "beat" it because you got to the credit screen. The DSP mentality of game clearing.

Big ups if the same type of game "journalist" also praised Ikaruga despite it being hard as balls. Because, well, I dunno, game journalists loved Ikaruga for SOME reason. God only knows why.

Giga Wing is beatable sans reflect mechanic too. Roo did it a few years back.

[Air Master Burst]

Somehow that Giga Wing review is more embarassing than the Mobile Light Force rebrand covers I got LOOKS from the cashier for purchasing back in the day. Poor Gunbird deserved better.

[kitten]

Particularly as an INTERNET GUY X myself

the weight of the criticism toward jeremy is because he isn't "internet guy x," he's maybe the most lucrative and lauded person in all of "retro game appreciation." if he were on this forum we could give him a licking and toughen him up in good faith. but he's not, he's invincible and untouchable and the number one authority to many, many people. i would like to hold anyone in that kind of position to at least the standards we often hold ourselves, on here, just to fucking enjoy ourselves.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Giga Wing is beatable sans reflect mechanic too. Roo did it a few years back.

Mostly as a "fuck you" to that review and a couple others that claimed the game was impossible. THE GAMER IN ME WAS TRIGGERED. Your hitbox is tiny, you have a ton of bombs, you have multiple legitimately powerful ships, how the heck could anyone find the game unfair with reflecting when the only seriously bullshit attack in the game that requires a bomb or reflect is the rush of giant golden enemies that fire giant aimed spreads before the S5 boss (only ever no bomb, no reflected through it once through pure luck and desperation)?

I guess I should thank them for the inspiration? Except they're terrible reviews, so no. :V

I've been meaning to see if I can do it with Sinnosuke or Isha too but I've had no luck so far with them. ;w;

[it290]

As much as Nintendo bias is a very real and very common thing, you gotta give Nintendo credit for, well, most of the time actually doing that thing you mention. Few other video game companies have been on the forefront of quality video games as consistently as Nintendo has.
From genre-defining cornerstones like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. over unique masterpieces like Super Metroid, to industry leaders such as the Zelda series and hell, every single Mario game ever.
They are popular and succesful, so of course it's inviting to try to take them down a peg, remind people that other great games exist in great quantities. But when it comes to high profile triple-A gaming, I'd take a cutesy gameplay-focused romp from Nintendo, a company that still believes video games need to be fun to play, any day over whatever bland messes companies like Ubisoft and all the rest like to push out.

I mean, yes, that's a given (although I happen to think Super Metroid is fairly overrated, albeit enjoyable). Just, as someone who has listened to scores of Retronauts episodes, there's a certain obvious fetishism in Parish's voice when he talks about Nintendo stuff that makes it clear that he considers them in a unique and vaunted category, which in my mind also embodies a preference for Nintendo-esque design principles, which, as we know, are great, but there are plenty of countervailing philosophies in game design which can produce equally unique, fun, and interesting works—and Nintendo tends to slant towards accessibility and immediacy of reward, which are fine things on their own but pretty counter to a lot of the things this forum tends to enjoy. And in Parish's case, it's not just Nintendo first-party stuff, but anything released on a Nintendo system that gets the edge, as evidenced by the fact that his 'works' series has largely focused on Nintendo systems 'til now, even including the Virtual Boy (?). I would never take him down a peg for having preferences like that, but if you're attempting to do a historical analysis of videogames holistically surely there are more rational approaches to take?

And 'every single Mario game ever' is a pretty bold claim. Nintendo seems more than willing to me to shovel out borderline crap with a Mario license as long as it meets certain QA and branding standards...

[BIL]

If I had to point at things that are kinda cheap in Rygar, it'd be pretty modest honestly. The sprite palettes being at a similar luminosity to the backgrounds makes for cohesive art, but also makes things blend in together a lot. I don't like the first bullman fight having a meatwall of so many damn rolly-pollys. The iguanas sometimes stick their tongues out a second time much faster than anticipated, that's very tricky and rude of them. The sea eels have a very subtle telegraph everyone will miss the first time they get ganked by one.

The inaugural roly-poly onslaught is pretty demoralising the first time you see it, and realise just how much shit this game will put onscreen at zero slowdown - but stand firm and attack, and they'll never get close to you. It's not like one will suddenly hop your shot and overhead you, like a Castlevania fleaman (who can only attack in groups of three or so). That's not in their job description! They're basically the huggy dogpile runners from Spartan X, if that game's Thomas had a fuckoff massive bludgeon to kill them en masse at fullscreen distance.

Bullman tends to have lots of security because you're meant to do this to him, but note you can always just bash the fuckers down or hustle past, if things go to shit. (note ALSO the roly-polys being harmless while emerging from the ground, allowing you to gain ground and prime position with impunity! Rygar, a game of fine details! )

Hey look! :O TECMO even teach you the Bullman TECH BOUNS!

Be merciful to all God's creatures: a friendly crab teaches geometry

Spoiler

Iguanas are cruelly stranded and refuse to lick butt, paying dearly for their arrogance! Beggers can't be choosers!

FUCKING TONGUE MY SWEATY BUNG YOU ARSEHOLE-LICKING TROGLODYTE (■｀W´■)

Spoiler

The sea eels, I'm drawing a blank. You mean the waterfall thingies late in the game, lurking in the rapids? That's pretty far in, but yeah, definitely borderline there. I actually spotted the first one - I knew there'd be something complicating that crossing - but I got womped by the primitve but rather sudden attack itself.

The only other enemy I can think of that takes the piss slightly are those creepy Black Lagoon fucks who hop, then Falcon Punch across the screen. It's very easy to miss the hop, with all the excitement of the ANTPOCALYPSE they debut in - and with their speed, you'll quite possibly eat it while dealing with something else. That said, it's just as likely they'll come up short and you'll reap free intel. And again, as with the Eels, maybe a sharper/cooler head than mine would see 'em coming and survive with a quick attack, a sure solution. Another borderliner, I'd say.

(the vine whip dudes are technically sound - they stop, then unfurl their strike with more than acceptable deliberation - but unfortunately glitched. Don't try headstomping them, it won't always work. Sometimes you'll drop straight through and they'll enjoy a free bump or even whip. Thankfully, this is the one and only instance - it'd have seriously damaged the game, if more enemy headboxes were compromised. The stomp can sometimes work on them, but it's never worth the risk, given you only encounter them in places with plenty of breathing room)

As I say, I always expect a little cheese in these cutting-edge, white-knuckle action games - it's not easy, designing on the edge for an audience of seasoned diehards, and a little colouring outside the lines is going to happen. Rygar is remarkably even-handed, considering its near-unremitting intensity, and even with its slim 1HKO margins of error, its mobility and firepower allow admirably creative, flexible escapes from near-certain doom. It's a model example of stricture promoting generosity - it really wouldn't work otherwise. The Jerries of the world (thought we'd gotten rid of them after the war tbh) can't merely soak up bullets and claws to the face, flat-footedly blundering their way along, the way they can in the milder FC instalment. They need a fair deal, or else they'll run away and write pissy articl - oh.

Well, anyway. Can't please everybody. I would wager, had it allowed hitpoints ala the FC game, the likes of Jerry would stick around a bit and appreciate the subtle interplay of enemy and terrain types. Training wheels are very much a thing I believe in, provided they're labeled as such.

My #1 complaint about the game would be the freakin' eyestrain, honestly. It's kind of silly my most effective runs involve using an eyeball strategy that prioritizes things that are easier to miss seeing over those that aren't. Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park: "Did I kill all of them? I don't sense any movement, but..."

I sympathise, genuinely - I'm typing this through a 90% detached right retina that'll hopefully get lasered into shape at the end of August. Weirdly, despite the left one being about 10% fucked, I can type and game ok... I guess it's compensating.

Still, I'd give some consideration to motion blindness, or as I like to think of it, panic blindness. The trick to Rygar, and similarly elemental scrolling action (lots of STGs) is, once you've absorbed enemy behaviour, you don't have to watch them as closely. That flying gremlin wafting his way onto my six, I know I can juke him with a casual tap of the stick or button, letting me focus on the blue butthumper closing in from the front. You also begin to tune out a lot of superficially threatening but tactically harmless visual noise. It's a very mastery-oriented game!

The PCB instruction sheet even recommends arcade operators debut the game at Difficulty 1/4 (Easy), before gradually cranking up to Normal or 2/4 as players get hooked by the state-of-the-art action. Te clever coonts! Approached mindlessly, it'll bust you out like your name is Jeremy!

[Sumez]

No idea what Jeremy Parish said about Ultimate GnG (can't be bothered right now, sorz), but honestly it's not that great of a game. Even in the fixed-up Kai version it had a hard time maintaining my interest. And I might be the biggest GnG series shill around these parts.

Fwiw I think arcade Rygar is a much better game than the NES/Famicom one. Although the latter might appear to have more to offer on the surface, it doesn't stretch far beyond that surface.
Rastan78 made a really good point I think, in how NES Rygar might feel more "relevant" to the modern video gamer mindset, due to how you can draw a line from the things it does through multiple evolutions of the video game medium up until today, where the arcade game could cynically be argued to be more of an evolutionary dead-end.
NES Rygar might appeal to people looking to old games for things they recognize in games today, and find it to be an interesting curiosity for the steps it takes along that road - and at the time of course, the game felt bold and experimental for those same reasons.

But also for those very same reasons, arcade Rygar is an infinitely more interesting game to me. The NES sequel feels like a game that awkwardly tries to do a lot of things that have been done better many times since, anywhere inbetween Faxanadu and Dark Souls. It's a curious game to look into, and it's not like it isn't fun to play either - but the original arcade game feels like almost nothing else. It's such a unique style of full-on action game that I would have loved seeing explored further.

[Sima Tuna]

I didn't like Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins, although I never played Kai. One thing that annoyed me about psp gng is Arthur's size relative to the screen and the game world generally. Zones feel a lot more cramped. Both Arthur and enemies take a larger part of the screen up in sheer bulk, which makes levels claustrophobic even without adding projectiles into the mix. I found some foes needlessly obnoxious to deal with because of the small relative screen size. Certain patterns seemed undodgeable. The smaller screen size hinders platforming too. There are more blind jumps because the screen is zoomed in too far to show the next platform.

My favorite ghosts and goblins game is probably still GnG arcade (jp), because of the wiggletron animations for all the characters. Not to mention the hilarious flying burrito SFX.

[Sengoku Strider]

he's maybe the most lucrative and lauded person in all of "retro game appreciation."

Nah. Love him or despise him, that would be the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Parish is a YouTuber with 65k subscribers. Sure he's got his fingers in other pies, but none of those are all that big either - Retronauts gets maybe 40k listeners, which is why it is "Made possible by listener support through Patreon." He's dwarfed in reach by guys like Scott the Woz (1.7 million subscribers), Metal Jesus Rocks (880k subs), The 8-Bit Guy (1.38 million), or Lazy Game Reviews (1.6 mil). If Mark Bussler ever wanted to start up Classic Game Room again he would be way up there too. Parish is not even close to the top of his own particular niche in retro; Gaming Historian laps him multiple times over with 933k subs.

Lots of more modest retro channels have him beat handily:

Game Sack (277k)
SNES Drunk (254k)
My Life in Gaming (210k)
Nintendrew (352k)
Pat the NES Punk (241k)
John Hancock (124k)
Top Hat Gaming Man (118k)

Heck even Sega Lord X has 122k, and his whole channel's dedicated to a company who've been defunct as a first party for 20 years. (His stuff is enjoyable though, I like it).

I'm sure I could dredge up tons more, Parish is a guy who's mainly just known from starting up Retronauts during the halcyon years of 1up.com when they had everybody - Luke Smith (who went on to head Bungie), Shane Bettenhausen (Sony Developer Relations), Demian Linn (Ubisoft Narrative dept.), Che Chou (Hearthstone Esports lead at Blizzard), Dan Hsu (Sony Senior Partner Alliances Manager), Garnett Lee (gaming venture capital investor), James Mielke (Q? Entertainment, founder of Bitsummit) etc. etc. etc. After 1up went down, he went to US Gamer which never made a huge impact, and I don't think Parish has had a really prominent role since.

If you wanted to pin the tourist label on anyone, Metal Jesus & John Hancock strike me as the standard bearers for that sort of thing. "Hey, I bought these piles of rare things in mint condition so I could stuff them in storage. Here's a list of hidden gems that I played once for 25 minutes 12 years ago. I have no idea what an FM Towns is."

Just, as someone who has listened to scores of Retronauts episodes, there's a certain obvious fetishism in Parish's voice when he talks about Nintendo stuff that makes it clear that he considers them in a unique and vaunted category

He's aware.

[Sima Tuna]

If you wanted to pin the tourist label on anyone, Metal Jesus & John Hancock strike me as the standard bearers for that sort of thing. "Hey, I bought these piles of rare things in mint condition so I could stuff them in storage. Here's a list of hidden gems that I played once for 25 minutes 12 years ago. I have no idea what an FM Towns is."

I've been saying that for years. Metal Jesus plays a thing for five minutes, says "it's cool" and then slaps HIDDEN GEM on the title. Every fucking game gets the hidden gem moniker from him. 5/10 knockoff jarpigs running at sub-20 frames on the PSP get a seal of approval from Metal "hardcore retro hoarder" Jesus.

If you ask him to tell you anything about a game or how to play it then he can't. The only genre I've seen him passionate about are racing games. I bet his videos would be a lot better if he limited himself to primarily talking about those, since it seems like he bothers to actually play that shit. Most of his videos are about collecting rather than playing games. Even the "hidden gems" videos have more of an aura of "buy and hoard these now while they're cheap so you can flip them later!!!"

Hell, a lot of these retro "gaming" channels are just collecting channels that bill themselves as gaming.

[BIL]

Shane is an estimable arcade respecting homie from way back. Fond memories of the other late 90s / early 00s EGM crew, even if they could get a bit whiny at harder stuff like Shinobi and DMC3 they had some passion.

The rest sound like fine gentlemen - for me to piss on (■｀w´■)

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

I didn't like Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins, although I never played Kai. One thing that annoyed me about psp gng is Arthur's size relative to the screen and the game world generally. Zones feel a lot more cramped. Both Arthur and enemies take a larger part of the screen up in sheer bulk, which makes levels claustrophobic even without adding projectiles into the mix. I found some foes needlessly obnoxious to deal with because of the small relative screen size. Certain patterns seemed undodgeable. The smaller screen size hinders platforming too. There are more blind jumps because the screen is zoomed in too far to show the next platform.

My favorite ghosts and goblins game is probably still GnG arcade (jp), because of the wiggletron animations for all the characters. Not to mention the hilarious flying burrito SFX.

I think it's one of the best games in the series, though I would only really recommend the Kai version. It does make major rebalancing changes to enemy layouts and density that make the game feel better overall; I think the original release was balanced around the larger amount of HP you get in the lower difficulty modes, whereas Kai feels tuned around the player only being able to take two hits.

[kitten]

Nah. Love him or despise him, that would be the Angry Video Game Nerd.

i felt as i picked the word 'appreciation' that i should have chosen something else and kind of dismissed the niggling sensation in the back of my mind that that was inadequate to express what i meant to. the other people you're talking about don't actually have any hand in academic discourse or direction (well... direct influence, at least, usually... things are starting to get really muddied). jeremy does. he's not an entertainer, but he is beginning to fill the same vacuum - that you're comparing him to those people reinforces what i'm trying to suggest: he's not a "historian" or "curator," he's "a guy," yet he purports to be a lot more and is given power and privilege unusual to a person who is mostly just "a guy."

my understanding of parrish's power and ability is from having been previous invested in that sphere; as i mentioned, i almost wrote for him. i was friends with a lot of people in that tier of academic or """"""""""""""""intellectual"""""""""""""""" discourse who directly interacted with a lot of these people, could trace where what trends of thought originated from as they became big. i was on the 'queer' side, we had an uneasy alliance where we hated them and they realized the winds of political discourse were blowing in our direction in such a way they needed to express a hollow fealty to our popular agendas to cement their future positions. i maybe sound more frustrated with him than i actually am, my real disgust is toward the cultural decline, which is kind of both no one and everyone's fault. blame starts becoming pointless, i suppose, but the result is still... aggravating lol.

those other people (metal jesuses and etc.) are so bleak that i don't want to think about them :[ i've seen their garbage and giving them mental real estate is painful.

[Sengoku Strider]

i felt as i picked the word 'appreciation' that i should have chosen something else and kind of dismissed the niggling sensation in the back of my mind that that was inadequate to express what i meant to. the other people you're talking about don't actually have any hand in academic discourse or direction (well... direct influence, at least, usually... things are starting to get really muddied). jeremy does. he's not an entertainer, but he is beginning to fill the same vacuum - that you're comparing him to those people reinforces what i'm trying to suggest: he's not a "historian" or "curator," he's "a guy," yet he purports to be a lot more and is given power and privilege unusual to a person who is mostly just "a guy."

my understanding of parrish's power and ability is from having been previous invested in that sphere; as i mentioned, i almost wrote for him. i was friends with a lot of people in that tier of academic or """"""""""""""""intellectual"""""""""""""""" discourse who directly interacted with a lot of these people, could trace where what trends of thought originated from as they became big.

So...as someone who's in academia when he's not wasting inordinate amounts of time on the internet, and who's taught new media courses which involve a lot of video game material, I can tell you nobody knows who he is in that world, unless they happen to be familiar with US online games journalism on the side. He doesn't have a single academic publishing credit, or even citation that I can find.

It's not an elitist thing or that the type of archivist work he's doing isn't of any value, it's just that academic writing in general is typically focused on addressing problematics, and that applies equally to writing about games. Epistemic ramifications of intermediality, representations of violence in digital spaces of contested capital, virtual renditions of gendered politico-cultural agency, that sort of thing. I find it kind of dreary to be honest, which is why I'm not involved in it, but every once in a while you do stumble across a gem or two like “AW FUCK, I GOT A BITCH ON MY TEAM!”: Women and the Exclusionary Cultures of the Computer Game Complex.

The relative fairness of Rygar's difficulty or the novelty of its level design aren't of much relevance to that sort of work (I'm sure it would be to a college game design program) - though I guess an inventive author could wring an extended argument about mediated suffering, representational dominance and the predations of the techno-industrial complex in 1980s bubble economy Japan out of it. But the truth is that games like Genshin Impact are way more relevant to the type of thing they're trying to do.

I did get a kickass essay from a student about temporality in Persona 4 that I still have on my hard drive though. I might've given that guy the highest mark I've ever handed out.

The rest sound like fine gentlemen - for me to piss on (■｀w´■)

Mielke seems like a cool guy. Bit Summit is the major Japanese Indie dev con, and he's been very involved in the Japanese indie scene over the years in general. Q? Entertainment was Mizoguchi's thing after he left Sega, and he was also at Q Games (no connection) which is Dylan Cuthbert (who is a genuinely nice fellow) of Argonaut/Star Fox fame's Kyōto-based studio.

I knew Che on another forum outside of the 1up thing a decade ago, and he was a good dude who was definitely down with the shmup scene and respectable gaming in general.

[Sumez]

I'm not really familiar with any of those YouTube people, but I recognize some of the names due to how often they show up in "recommendations". At least a few of them I might have seen a couple of videos of out of curiosity, and every single time I've only been jaded by how ridiculously superficial and uninformative (frequently misinformative, too) these guys all are. It's like they shoehorn themselves into stuff they think can get them more hits, and then they read up on the Wikipedia article, maybe doublecheck some Mobygames credits, and then they paraphrase all of that in a video that reeks of them not actually having any kind of insight of their own.
This is the primary reason I never watch any "genuine" classic video game content on YouTube, it's just incredibly superficial and seems to target primarily a demographic that's interested in video games, but come in with a blank slate knowing next to nothing. Makes sense for a younger generation who didn't grow up with these games, but for anyone else it's hollow fluff and awkwardly twisted versions of history we're already perfectly aware of. I want to walk away from an informative video with a sense of my interest being piqued and maybe even having learned something - not with a consistent feeling that I could have educated them on everything they brought up.

As for the Metal Jesus guy, I've never seen any videos - the thumbnails and dumb clickbaity titles alone is enough to keep me away, but Sima Tuna's description seems to fit a large swathe of these YouTube channels.

It's worth keeping in mind in this context that YouTube is very much its own niche sphere. A very, very large and influential one, sure, but it's still its own thing, and it represents kind of a bubble. And by that I don't mean that YouTube is just a fad that's gonna disappear in a few years, but as a platform it's constantly changing in the type of content it "rewards", and content creators are constantly influencing and competing with eachother. It's as fluid as any other medium, and probably a lot more so, too, so it's hard to use any available metrics to determine any general trends. That would be like trying to determine the overall popularity of a pop song from the 60s vs. one from 2020 by comparing youtube hits.
At least Jeremy Parish and AVGN transcend the current YouTube niche, having established an audience outside of those confines, though I'm sure at least a couple of the other mentioned people have done similar.

Also worth noting, that for all the hate Hardcore Gaming 101 gets here, it's still a much more informative source on classic video games than probably all of those channels put together. A lot of details on semi-obscure games weren't really readily available anywhere before Kalata and his crew decided to cast some light on them.

[BIL]

The rest sound like fine gentlemen - for me to piss on (■｀w´■)

Mielke seems like a cool guy. Bit Summit is the major Japanese Indie dev con, and he's been very involved in the Japanese indie scene over the years in general. Q? Entertainment was Mizoguchi's thing after he left Sega, and he was also at Q Games (no connection) which is Dylan Cuthbert (who is a genuinely nice fellow) of Argonaut/Star Fox fame's Kyōto-based studio.

I knew Che on another forum outside of the 1up thing a decade ago, and he was a good dude who was definitely down with the shmup scene and respectable gaming in general.

Milkman and Che were in the 90s-00s EGM crews I mentioned. ;3 Former had the gumption to reference Soukyugurentai ca 2000 (re the estimable Silent Bomber being it and Metal Gear Solid's lovechild - not an inaccurate take at all!), the latter just about surviving Shinobi with dignity intact. Much love for the DC and its heavily arcade-informed library before, during and after its blessed little run.

These guys are all ok in my book, particularly Shane who's always appreciated his Thunder Forces and Raidens. They could be a little milquetoast at times - they all loved Gradius V, but characterised it as an utter nightmare you'd be lucky to complete without Free Play, when it's really quite generous to newcomers or prodigal fans (like I was in 2004).

But that's quibbling... there was a decided lack of the "LMAO ALL U DO IS [engage with a meticulously well-honed suite of mechanics in tight, challenging and compellingly escalating courses], WHO FUKKIN CARES," something I came to associate far more with casual fansites like HG101 et al, and was frankly surprised to hear parroted 1:1 in Jerry's Rygar video.

Now if my old EGM bros were to turn around and start churning out the same generic boilerplate arcade-bashing sawdust, I'd have to express disappoint. But that's another thing entirely!