Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Bassa-Bassa]

Granada, El Viento, and Ex-Ranza put WolfTeam head and shoulders above any other Telenet-affiliated dev, imo. Arcus Odyssey and Final Zone are pretty nice, too. Talking about the MD/X68k versions. Nothing comes close to Granada's particular fusion of arcade discipline and home computer balls-out.



Riot's MD Vapor Trail is very solid though.

*yeah, I'm counting Ex-Ranza. Way too idiosyncratic not to. ala New Corp, Toyota-san is another OG arcade vet who plowed that experience and expertise into super-refined home hardcore.

Indeed, Ex-Ranza was especifically by the people who had made Granada (as a huge part of Wolf Team stayed to make Tales of Phantasia). Most MD Wolf Team games (and all their X68000 titles) were actually made in the years they went totally independent, for what it's worth. I didn't dislike Sol Feace either and Neugier, though can't remember much of it.

I was told recently that The PC88 VA version of R-Type, which nobody ever played even in Japan, was by Telenet (Riot?). Not too bad, but the system was able of much better things.

[BIL]

Oh yeah, totally forgot Sol Feace! Solid hori. I remember Perikles saying the Genesis cartridge revision runs better than the unfortunately flickery Mega CD rev, but I've such a fondness for the latter system and all its foibles, I happily picked it up.

[Bassa-Bassa]

The X68000 ver is the one I liked better, as usual.

[Sengoku Strider]

Not "the West", I'm afraid. Here in Europe we didn't care about JRPGs until Final Fantasy VII (unless you call Secret of Mana and the likes RPGs), and I think Australia was not different. Despite Master System's moderate success, the Phantasy Stars were basically ignored here until PSIV.

I'm sure I've read in a couple of places that the first Phantasy Star was the best selling game for the system, unless you count the Alex Kidd pack-in numbers.

[BrianC]

Also, the "Granada X" mislabel actually fits the X68000 version better. It still has that oft misread stylized logo too.

[BryanM]

All this talk about action rpgs and how they do the inverse of the old arcade style snowballing power up systems (which punish players that suck at the game and also punishes players that are good at the game.) made me want to try playing EVO Search for Eden without evolving. Which is almost like trying to play a Mario game without jumping.

... it took me up to the first real level with any threat of dying and the first death to realize I was being an idiot. Having the movement speed of a slightly motivated slug is far more crippling than having the damage output of a wuffle bat or having endurance at the level where every hit is like being hit in the head with a real bat.

Though in my imagination, it can still be a boss rush game.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I'm sure I've read in a couple of places that the first Phantasy Star was the best selling game for the system, unless you count the Alex Kidd pack-in numbers.

More than likely those were places just referring to countries with English as the native language, which in Europe are a total of two.

Also, the "Granada X" mislabel actually fits the X68000 version better. It still has that oft misread stylized logo too.

That might be the only one I'd go with the MD version, mind. It plays a bit better and the redesigned main sprite looks also better, but I never actually spent enough time with either, so I don't know if there's stages missing like with Thunder Force II.

[Lander]

Ah, the summer of '69. I mean '96. Our LAN group having gradually absorbed SR50, in an unlettered ~YO DAS IT MAYNE~ fashion over three years of id/Raven obsession, the bunnyhop bakudan didn't emerge so much as explode; its air-to-ground massacre less an idea whose time had come, more one who'd enjoyed a leisurely drag in the waiting room, before kicking the door in and putting both barrels through the heads of the frictionally-challenged. Anno Lepus had commenced! Some say it never really ended, as brilliant, bewildered ol' JC found circa QIII Arena's initial, hobbled form. Friction is for the birds, maaan!

It was a more subtle thing for my lot, seeming to creep in so gradually as to be unnoticeable - possibly due to an extended term in the frictional-but-still-breakable lands of Counter Strike. Ultimately leading to an excellent I Know Kung Fu moment on returning to Quake Live after its Steam release, where passing the hop test skill bracket map with honours was suddenly as natural as walking.

And, bless JC's savant heart for trying to fix that which was broken, but it certainly never ended. To this day QL is packed with full-blooded Vadrigar who'd rail ya soon as look at ya and the boomer shooter indie boom is getting serious mileage out of those old movement functions now the sacred texts are but a click away, replete with the sheer feat of engineering willpower that is purposefully if-never-ing a Correct solution.

Out of curiosity, have you played Chippoke Ralph Daibouken / The Adventure of Little Ralph (PS1)? New Corp. were diehard game center vets, Rastan being one of their favourites - the tombstoning downthrust is an unmistakable nod, and just as devastating as in Taito's landmark. Aspects of Wonder Boy (dem plums) and Makaimura (lethal Arremer-esques) will jump out, too - super solid deadly action platformer. Pardon the daft FTG boss duels, I consider it part of that gen's home-original triple crown, alongside Taromaru and Sin & Punishment.

Ah, more misty-eye-inducing integrity from the old guard

I recognize it from somewhere, but don't think I've played it. Will have to check it out; watching a bit of footage, it has shades of that old 2D platformer X-factor where intentionality in little things like pickup placement and sound effect make all the difference.

All this talk about action rpgs and how they do the inverse of the old arcade style snowballing power up systems (which punish players that suck at the game and also punishes players that are good at the game.) made me want to try playing EVO Search for Eden without evolving. Which is almost like trying to play a Mario game without jumping.

... it took me up to the first real level with any threat of dying and the first death to realize I was being an idiot. Having the movement speed of a slightly motivated slug is far more crippling than having the damage output of a wuffle bat or having endurance at the level where every hit is like being hit in the head with a real bat.

Though in my imagination, it can still be a boss rush game.

Brave. EVO always looked pretty busted from a balance perspective, and that's before accounting for the attrition factor, or the interminable 4-second MIDI loop slowly driving you mad

[BIL]

Speaking of late 80s Taito!



After a rare reprieve in last month's The New Zealand Story, the agonising ACA pricktease continues with Jigoku Meguri aka Bonze Adventure. Always loved the look of this one, a kind of kitchen sink Genpei Toumaden - rather than facing the horrors of JIGOKU as KAGEKIYO the undead killing machine samurai, you're just some frumpy monk dude chucking prayer beads. Bit like Wardner's chubby little Dover to Makaimura's Arturias of Legend, I suppose!

RANNING WIZ ZA DEVIRU

Spoiler

Anyhow, I remember Rando posting about it so that's an instant ping on me radar Will have to give it a quick recon, but I'm quite happy to see it all the same! One day they'll get to Rastan and Rainbow Islands. Probably the same day I get ran over by that garbage truck.

[Udderdude]

The caps0ff guys should be in the credits for extracting the C-Chip ROMs .. lol.

[Bassa-Bassa]

That didn't serve to get a glitches-free emulation on Mame anyway, right?

[Udderdude]

Before, the respawn points were almost entirely guesswork, and some caused the game to crash.

[BIL]

Oh wow. I'd heard of Bubble Bobble's MAME/bootleg woes, back in the day, but I'd no idea about JM/Operation Wolf/Volfied et al. This is particularly exciting!

I still wonder how Hamster pulled off Zero Team. Then again, they also had the world's first accurate home version of Contra via Gotch, after even M2 screwed up the 3D stage emulation. Ninjas, I suppose. Nihon still killin' it.

Popped back to say, I'd totally forgotten about this week's ACA Don Doko Don! Which is pretty nice, but then all Taito single-screeners are, at minimum. Love the multi-stack mechanic on downed enemies. It's on your ass, if one wakes up on you! But otherwise, you're free to scoop up a whole stack of the buggers, then unceremoniously dash 'em against the wall. Bit of Fairyland avalanche brutality, too; whack a baddy out of the air, and he'll KO any comrades he falls on.



In a rare musical mis-step for Taito, I find the BGM a little overpowering. It's quality work, but would be more suited to a rousing R2RKMF hack 'em up. Speaking of which, it's clear they're in a Namco/Taito/Other groove at the moment, so here's hoping for Rastan, finally. I still maintain they'll put out fucking Nastar first.

I've spent the week since Grobda's release getting beaten into shape. What a game. Intricacies abound. I think this'll be the subject of DBPS02, though when I wrote 01, I'd been playing Saigo regularly for 2+ years, and learned a hell of a lot. So, bit early for that. Still, a very similar kind of action... the interaction of player and enemies is superbly finessed.

[Lander]

After a rare reprieve in last month's The New Zealand Story, the agonising ACA pricktease continues with Jigoku Meguri aka Bonze Adventure. Always loved the look of this one, a kind of kitchen sink Genpei Toumaden - rather than facing the horrors of JIGOKU as KAGEKIYO the undead killing machine samurai, you're just some frumpy monk dude chucking prayer beads. Bit like Wardner's chubby little Dover to Makaimura's Arturias of Legend, I suppose!

I say, it's the missing link between Bonk and Air Zonk!

[BIL]

That fuckin alopecia gene had to make its way to the golden cyber future somehow. :[ Good job PC Denjin sorted it out with his monofilament quiff

EDIT: Ahaha, oh shit. A scintillating & bloodening jolt to the stodgy "Tour of Hell" translation from Herr Stormbird:

Jigoku Meguri (Hell Patrol), better known as Bonze Adventure was announced for March 23.
https://twitter.com/famitsu/status/1629 ... by2pstAAAA

JYEAAAAA BOYEEEEE

[Bassa-Bassa]

Before, the respawn points were almost entirely guesswork, and some caused the game to crash.

Yep, but I remember some annoying glitches after those fixes. As soon as stage 1, even. Would need to check again.

[Stevens]

Shinobi Non Grata - WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUUUU?

Soon I hope.

[Kino]

That might be the only one I'd go with the MD version, mind. It plays a bit better and the redesigned main sprite looks also better, but I never actually spent enough time with either, so I don't know if there's stages missing like with Thunder Force II.

MD Granada in fact has an extra stage, at the expense of the X68000's brief inconsequential "bonus stage".

I'd give it the nod over the X68K original, solely off the strength of the blaster upgrade in stage 2. Damage buffs aside, movement is infinitely more satisfying in the MD port due to it's inclusion. Not to mention it allows for some nifty unintended shortcuts such as this.

[BIL]

The MD ver also puts the cutscenes telling the tale of GRANADA (somebody calls it GHOST OF SOLDIERS or GOD OF AFRICAN CONTINENT ) and pilot SURVIVOR LEON in the manual for XTRA hardcore factor There's no room for relationships, there's just ROM to hit it!

FR that MD intro text+BGM is a holy miracle of Engrish Pretty neat seeing lovable REFRECTA doing its crazy-ass thing in the X68k intro, though! Only those who happen to see it know the truth!

[Sengoku Strider]

Okay, how the fuck are you supposed to beat Mandara? The bastard ends every no-miss run I attempt.

It always goes the same - I run up to it so my magic can hit as many statues as possible. Back up, throw shurikens, get it down to like 2 statues and get crushed. Then the next life the rank has dropped, so this strat works flawlessly.

Every place I look, all I see is people doing this nonsense:



But I refuse to believe having Joe Musashi get slapped around by collision boxes for 8 seconds is what Sega intended for players to do.

[mycophobia]

Okay, how the fuck are you supposed to beat Mandara? The bastard ends every no-miss run I attempt.

It always goes the same - I run up to it so my magic can hit as many statues as possible. Back up, throw shurikens, get it down to like 2 statues and get crushed. Then the next life the rank has dropped, so this strat works flawlessly.

Every place I look, all I see is people doing this nonsense:



But I refuse to believe having Joe Musashi get slapped around by collision boxes for 8 seconds is what Sega intended for players to do.

it's doable, see here:

https://youtu.be/K0u31_Jw8IQ?t=481

i used autofire for that section and it was super tight but it's possible to do on the first pass

[Sengoku Strider]

i used autofire for that section and it was super tight but it's possible to do on the first pass

You're not kidding that was tight! Even your bounce-offs seemed like they were just a few pixels above the ground to minimize stun time. Is there any way to do it without magic? You'd figure there should be.

[mycophobia]

i used autofire for that section and it was super tight but it's possible to do on the first pass

You're not kidding that was tight! Even your bounce-offs seemed like they were just a few pixels above the ground to minimize stun time. Is there any way to do it without magic? You'd figure there should be.

without the bounce trick i sincerely doubt it. and even doing the bounce trick without bombs looks tricky as hell

https://youtu.be/wNJ1IjBxDX4?t=1324

[velo]

Okay, how the fuck are you supposed to beat Mandara? The bastard ends every no-miss run I attempt.

It always goes the same - I run up to it so my magic can hit as many statues as possible. Back up, throw shurikens, get it down to like 2 statues and get crushed. Then the next life the rank has dropped, so this strat works flawlessly.

Every place I look, all I see is people doing this nonsense:



But I refuse to believe having Joe Musashi get slapped around by collision boxes for 8 seconds is what Sega intended for players to do.

This is one of those cases where I'd love to know how the devs and testers were playing it in the office.

[Sengoku Strider]

Hmm, that sounds like a rare design fumble from one of 80s Sega's arcade A-teams. Won't lose any sleep over it though. Thanks!

[mycophobia]

making you almost have to take a death on the first attempt is probably just their bullshit way to balance out the crazy amount of extends the game gives you. i prefer the more evenly difficult AC Shadow Dancer in that regard

[BIL]

Excellent deets, indexed.

It bugs the fuck out of me when arcade action titles make Rank-downing suicides mandatory. I'd genuinely rather they pull some godawful rote memo bullshit like Saigo's Ninja Pit, than force the avatar to randomly keel over at some point in the rousing coinop epic. Just totally un-aesthetic.

I'm a bit more forgiving with STGs, which have always existed on the event horizon, and sometimes do genuinely interesting things with death (YGW, Border Down). For more conventional examples like Phelios, though, I still hate it.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Didn't Shadow Dancer force you to cast a magic as soon as stage 2 to pass an enemy without getting hit?

[BryanM]

It seemed like some cheesy bullshit that'd require save states to get enough trial-and-error in to find the solution, so I tried it myself. It's hilarious the number of hits required to kill them goes -1 every time you die.

I found a series of inputs that seems to work every time they're performed almost perfectly. 8 HP statues, no autofire, tons of wearing out my controller's buttons.

... fuck, instead of writing out a guide by itself I'll include an AVI first...

... okay it's 10,000 MB per second for AVI, so I have a 21.4 MB mng file instead. Whatever the hell that is. I'm really hungry, but I'll try to figure out how to convert this bullshit...

...so hungry...

... alright that took less than half an hour, I was expecting it to take so much longer. I'll write the guide while it's extracting....

Something that's very important to keep in mind when coming up with any strategy here, the #1 priority is to hit the higher statues as much as possible. The ones on the ground will die long before the others do, the only statue that matters is the last one. Minimizing downtime is essential - if you start the stage by firing while on the ground you've maybe already lost. You neither move right nor jump in the air while you do that.

The Approach

Hold right until your guy starts moving, then immediately jump to the right and hit the middle and bottom statue. Pause briefly, and hit the middle statue again. PERFORM THE NINPO IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS HIT LANDS WHILE STILL IN THE AIR. Be a couple steps away from the frontmost statue, it can hit more times the closer enemies are to you. (At least the ones you can hit, as the ones in the fourth row way above the top of the screen require the full eight hits to kill). The optimal position for safety to be about your character's width away or slightly closer from the frontmost statue. Then retreat to the left.



This is a rough estimate of the sphere where the statues will take 4 damage from the bomb.

The Retreat

Move left for a bit, then right a little.

Getting bumped wastes time. But so does moving left! And moving too far left will have a little bit of downtime where the second row of statues aren't spinning, due to the added travel time to your shurikens. I get the most consistent results by having the right side of the _HA sign lined up between the sword hilt and your ear.

MASH

Mash the shoot and jump buttons together. MASH THE SHIT OUT OF THAT FUCK.

There's really only one thing else you might do during this phase, and that's if you undershot your positioning, you can move yourself forward a little bit while in the air to correct it. If you overshot your position, well... hope things will work out, somehow? Also note you can correct your position if you get bumped too far back from the first bump. You can survive one more bump if the left side of the _HA sign is between your sword and ear. Moving forward is crucial to save some attempts.

You should get bumped once during this phase.

The Final Statue

A little tricky, but you have to stop mashing the jump button when the last statue hits the ground. Or your shuriken might fly over his head, which wastes precious microseconds. (Getting bumped while in the air also knocks you back further.)

The final bump should happen here. Your balls should be nearly on top of the electricity thanks to your superb positioning skills. It's important to resist the urge to press down and crouch, that will make your hitbox bigger and maybe kill you.

... so does shooting while standing.... and jumping.... all these things make your hitbox wider as well. Maybe not as wide as ducking. I'll need more research to know for sure...

-----

And now the file's done cooking. ... a 500 MB Avi file. For thirty seconds of button mashing. There really feels like there should be a vastly more efficient way to turn 18.4 MB of beautiful PNG files into an absolutely horrific, greasy awful AVI file...

Here's the greasefire. Youtube processing somehow made it even worse.


... But yeah, without Ninpo it's impossible without exploits. There isn't remotely close to enough time.

[BIL]

Nicely done, this is a quality page! Plus it looks like the robots are jerking off!