The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Thread (NEW)!!!

[BIL]

Just to clarify, stealing bootleg booze out of the speakeasy's ceiling, dropping it on morbidly-obese glass-chucking patrons, and blasting them all to kingdom come is something that actually occurs in this game. Right before you death-race a bunch of mansized sewer rats, get a lift from a fish (not a dolphin this time), and solve NYC's CHUD infestation.

[EmperorIng]

It was nice to discover that playthrough of Annet Futatabi with sorta-translated subtitles and learn, after all these years, how thoroughly blown the fuck out Zigfried was - his plan undone because he is a major fucking moron, got outsmarted by Earnest fucking Evans, and then he starts WW2 in full-on damage control mode.

On the subject of a better game, there are too many silly fun moments in El Viento to properly list. Like being ambushed by Al Capo- I mean VINCENTE DEMARCO, MAFIA KINGPIN's tank in the back alleys of New York, blowing up midgets and mohawk fat punks in the aforementioned speak-easy, or watching dozens of yellow-jumpsuited mooks awkwardly falling to their death with every small explosion on a giant airship floating over Detroit.

[BIL]

And the whole Lovecraft & Friends thing too! I wonder how that got in there... totally offhand, I'd guess one of the devs was really into his weird fiction - nothing out of the ordinary for upstanding young chaps of more bookish persuasions, ofc, but I do wonder how well-known HPL & co was in late 80s Japan. There's that badass JP-made Necronomicon pinball game for Saturn too.

Regardless, it's absolutely special how the game keeps that thread going through all the utter batshittery going on. I guess the plot is most compatible with The Dunwich Horror? El Viento is clearly a tribute to the rare HPL affair where our protagonists take the fight straight to the nefarious old ones, and basically TOTALLY PWN them with a combination of magic bollocks and skull-shattering violence! After first taking down that DIRTY CHEATING MUHFUCKA Mii-go and his lousy shell game, ofc!

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Spoiler

"YARR! I BE ONE O' THEM NAUTICAL-LOOKIN' NEGROS ol' HP warned ye of! An' now, I'll a be takin' care o' - WAIT! NO! DONT BUMP ME, FOR FUCK'S SA-" (the recording cuts off with deafening explosion; anime lolita is in custody and pleading self-defense)

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Spoiler

GIMME SUM FUCKEN CHEESE LMAO

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Spoiler

I DON'T EVEN WANNA KNOW YOUR AGE / IT'S ENOUGH YOU CLEARED MY DOLPHIN STAGE

[drauch]

Was going to nap but now I'm TOO PUMPED. The mouse! Dear god. THANKS BIL.

Didn't realize there was a video out there with annotations for Annet! I'll give that a run later. I must know! I basically just tried to listen to what little I could understand during the ending wedding ceremony where Earnest and Annet get all mushy for a second, but then Earnest blows it. Ohhhhh, Earnest! Weak in the knees? I'll be here all week, folks.

And to contradict my mini-review of Futatabi, here's HG101 with some wonderful info:

"The extreme level of challenge is clearly to mask the fact that there just isn’t much game here." -Mega tuff!

"the game’s so frustrating most players probably won’t take it beyond the first stage." -Proved ya wrong on that one, Kurt!

[BIL]

I just noticed the mouse's eyes are going in opposite directions, holy fuck lmao... and now I'm wondering if he and all the other Fucked Up Animals under that speak-easy are meant to be corrupted fauna, ala that woodchuck of unnerving expression in The Colour Out Of Space! I was thinking they were just impressed with Annette's speed and wanted to see whose crouch-dash was the best.

Ah HG101. No matter your game, they will provide a retarded comment on it! :3 Here's a recent favourite I unearthed, a few months ago. FC Ikari III is LIKE A ROARING LION SEEKING YOUNG SCRUBS TO TEAR APART

[drauch]

I just don't get how you can do a bunch of research on the game, but at the same time not. You've got the world of the internet! Longplays everywhere, people with more experience, etc! But nah, IMPOSSIBLE.

[Sumez]

I was looking for some super pro Earnest Evans ragdolling GIFs, but the internet has let me down today. This is the best I can get:



BIL, are you a bad enough dude to unleash this biblical horror?

[Deadliar]

BIL, are you a bad enough dude to explain what the hell that boss is‽

[BIL]

The tragedy of Earnest Evans is a lot of its content actually looks kinda fucken rad (and, as seemingly always with Wolfteam, the tunes are superb - having Sakuraba on speed dial didn't hurt their appeal... oh, and they usually had pretty slick boxarts + cutscenes, too! Needed to work on your fundamentals, chaps!). I really dig that boss's shimmying about as he blasts flames all over the joint. Looks like some kinda mutant truffle who was chilling under that pile of coal until Earnest's dumb ass bumbled along. Probably thought he was about to get captured and eaten by our freakish, marionette-like protagonist!

Retsuprae's Earnest Evans Box Set is my usual go-to for EE footage. I'll give it a rewatch because I remember the fish boss being, again, genuinely kinda cool! And outright nightmarish, when you combine a mercilessly aggressive underwater monstrosity with Earnest's already brain-damaged motor skills!

[Sumez]

Once again, you may think of speedruns what you like, but I really love this demonstration of everything the game has to offer -
including missing invincibility frames and "intense physics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GWUA2M37lM&t=403s

[BIL]

Whatever anyone might think of speedruns in general, their ability to mine gold from the least appealing games cannot be denied. Behold, SNES Timecop at AGDQ 2013! Don't skip the intro narration - I'm dying here all over again.

[Sumez]

Will western Genesis/MD carts fit into a Japanese MegaDrive without any physical modding of the case (similar to what you need for the vice versa)?

[BrianC]

Will western Genesis/MD carts fit into a Japanese MegaDrive without any physical modding of the case (similar to what you need for the vice versa)?

MD carts have a tab on the side and model 1 MDs have a thing that holds the carts in place. I read that the Model 2 Megadrives remove this thing, so US carts should fit. The US Sonic and Knuckles cart has the tab, so it fits into a JP model 1 MD.

[BIL]

Recorded a fast n' loose El Viento clear, to cap off my revisit. By total coincidence, this is the second MD sidescroller in as many weeks (after Crude Buster) that I've been drawn back to by a random mention in this thread, and both involve a deranged videogame NYC.

Too bad Combatribes never got an MD port, that'd be the perfect excuse to fire it up for a trilogy. Not that you need an excuse to dig your hulking avatar's knee into a fallen punk's spine, smashing his face into the sidewalk until he's ready for the post-apocalyptic Manhattan meat mart - but it would be all poetic, like!

CB and EV are also two semi-impulse pickups that I'm glad I went with BITD. Both have their rough edges, but they mightily compensate with 1) absolute dedication to oldschool 2D violence and 2) impressive creativity. Neither plays like any other brawler or sidescroller in my library. I've objectively better examples of both genres on hand, sure, but it's nice to enjoy a quality oddball now and then. Good for the ol' critical faculties / immune system.

I did a brief skim for shared staff between EV and Ex-Ranza, but turned up nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some influence, though... Ranza fans will notice lots of little mechanical parallels, like st3's barrels vs Ranza's st2 boulders (optional tools that can take down heavies quicker, if you're willing to play around with the simple soccer-esque "bump to move" interface), and EV's st4 pipelines which serve as both obstructions and the means of clearing a path once the vulnerable point is shot (totally recalls Ranza's st2 turrets).

Also GENEROUSLY CHUNKY PIXELSPLOSMS I glanced at the back cover while MIRIN the JP boxart and was amused to see that, far from trying to hide the chunky outrage, one is given pride of place in the center screenshot! Ranza's are tastefully refined, but the same enthusiasm for screen-rocking pyro is unmistakable. When something major blows it really fucken goes!

Spoiler

(FUCK! I shoulda held my ground instead of jumping like a weenie! But those heavy turrets will slap the shit outta you if you're not careful, and this one had his beady eye on me!)

Besides the aforementioned sense of individuality in their stage designs (lots of "one time only" mechanics and enemies, often tailored to specific setpieces), their overall handling feels familiar to me, too. There's the similarly forgiving approach to collision damage, the charge-metered super weapons that demand surprisingly deft handling for maximum carnage, and the (maybe a little unfortunate in EV's case) willingness of bosses to spam the player with sometimes unavoidable but individually near-harmless projectile flurries. On that count, I'll always maintain EV would play more congruously if Annette were piloting some sort of agile mech, with the scenery adjusted appropriately - but I hate talk of what might've been, so whatever. I'd rather just fire up Ex-Ranza!

Also, as I hope the replay shows, 95% of the game you shouldn't actually be sponging damage. I like to play as if the massive lifebar is a half (sometimes a third) of the size. ;3

Ranza is undeniably (and expectedly) the more successful game, but whether EV had any shared authorship or not, it's something I'd recommend for fellow fans of GAU's masterpiece of technical destruction.

[drauch]

Beautiful run. Goddamn, I love this game. Next time I give it a shot I definitely need to use the dash a lot more. Certainly learned some new tricks. It looks like a different game than the one I played! Really wish that aircraft level was a bit longer though. So explodey! Not enough dudes flying to their doom!

[EmperorIng]

Well they might not share staff but IIRC Wolf Team, Gau (and Tri Ace) were all developers at Telenet before some decided that a lifetime of making Brownings* was too awful to conceive and formed their own companies/groups.

Great fun to watch the run, too. You were in love with that dash maneuver!

*dramatic reenactment of my playing Browning:

Spoiler

"Don't mind these tiny bits hovering around you nonstop and chipping away your health"

"We couldn't come up with a good boss design so here are some circles that shoot erratically hoping to finish your remaining health off."

"Ok we found a boss but we're lazy; instead of IT moving, YOU can move around him. Hope you don't die or run out of your one timer here or else you can do this shitty boss gauntlet all over again, lol! Also we suck at programming so please please hold down and double-tap to change direction, thx"

[BIL]

Ta chaps

Beautiful run. Goddamn, I love this game. Next time I give it a shot I definitely need to use the dash a lot more. Certainly learned some new tricks. It looks like a different game than the one I played! Really wish that aircraft level was a bit longer though. So explodey! Not enough dudes flying to their doom!

I always make sure to give the last one a proper sendoff, after allowing him a sec to accept I've gained unassailable tactical position

Years ago when first playing that stage, between the extreme pace and the hapless flying goons' green jumpsuits, I couldn't tell WTF they were - actually thought they were supposed to be more Lovecraftian goo beasts who'd unceremoniously hijacked themselves a warplane! Then this time around, I noticed that the game's actual Shoggoths, far from the dread amorphous juggernauts of ATMOM, seem harmless even to touch. Maybe something in that sewer infected the poor buggers! Fungi from Yonkers, perhaps?

Browning

Oh man, I so wish this had been even a middling mecha sidescroller. The running animation is rad, but just about everything else is very bad!

[drauch]

Oh my god, had never dicked around with Browning before! Skipped ahead in this longplay and stumbled upon this insanity: https://youtu.be/L-ZSLZJeUJs?t=13m26s

Looks fun!

[Sumez]

Well they might not share staff but IIRC Wolf Team, Gau (and Tri Ace)

Didn't Tri Ace split from Wolf Team after making Tales of Phantasia?

Kind of funny they'd split away from that group to pursue an eternity of making cliche JRPGs right at the same time when said group would change focus to only produce cliche JRPGs for the rest of their time.

[Sumez]

What are people's thoughts on Ristar in here? Probably one of the biggest "B-tier" titles on the MegaDrive, it's always been heralded as an amazing underdog - but usually in the same communities that will highlight Sonic 2 as the epitome of the MegaDrive, and typically back in the days when people still had the misconception that Sonic Team was the most talented development studio at Sega. I see it mentioned less often nowadays, and I'm curious what people's impressions are around here, where Sonic doesn't get a lot of recognition compared to the other greats on the system?



I played it a few times back in the days, and aside from the amazingly beautiful visuals it never grabbed me. It felt gimmicky and annoying. But I'll admit that I probably never took the time to really get into the controls either.

[Turrican]

it is 2018, and there is time for...

Xenocrisis, a new arena shooter for the Megadrive:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16 ... escription

[BrianC]

I played it a few times back in the days, and aside from the amazingly beautiful visuals it never grabbed me.

Interesting choice of words.

[Sumez]

I almost wrote "pun unintended", but I wasn't sure if it even appeared as a pun

[Deadliar]

Ristar is ok. It's very much just another mascot platformer game. Ristar is above-average quality, with above-average visuals and above-average music.

That's about it. I'd rate it 7/10, but a solid 8.5/10 if compared to other, similar games.

Definitely worth playering.

[Stevens]

I think what Deadliar said sums it up pretty well.

Thoughts on Dynamite Heady?

^^Secretly hoping for dick jokes.

[EmperorIng]

Didn't Tri Ace split from Wolf Team after making Tales of Phantasia?

Kind of funny they'd split away from that group to pursue an eternity of making cliche JRPGs

Maybe, my sense of chronology is fuzzy on the subject of these staff changes. They definitely all got out of Telenet while the getting was good, since by the mid 90s Telenet was just publishing pure shit (Exile: Wicked Phenomenon comes to mind - awful even BEFORE the "Vic Ireland touch."). As opposed to their usual milieu of BROWNING shit.

And while in hindsight they may have sputtered out a bit, but Tri-Ace at least gave the world several solid action/rpgs (Star Ocean 1/2, Tales of Phantasia - and maybe Radiata Stories if you like the game ) and one masterpiece (Valkyrie Profile) at their peak. How many dev groups can claim they've made a masterpiece, after all??

[BIL]

Fresh outta dick jokes but here's Phimosis Lad from Contra The Hard Cocks (wait - fuck!) to remind us all, wash your junk you filthy fuckin animals!

[null1024]

What are people's thoughts on Ristar in here? Probably one of the biggest "B-tier" titles on the MegaDrive, it's always been heralded as an amazing underdog - but usually in the same communities that will highlight Sonic 2 as the epitome of the MegaDrive, and typically back in the days when people still had the misconception that Sonic Team was the most talented development studio at Sega. I see it mentioned less often nowadays, and I'm curious what people's impressions are around here, where Sonic doesn't get a lot of recognition compared to the other greats on the system?

http://kelexo.thedailypos.org/imagefest ... ation1.gif

I played it a few times back in the days, and aside from the amazingly beautiful visuals it never grabbed me. It felt gimmicky and annoying. But I'll admit that I probably never took the time to really get into the controls either.

Ristar is fun, if not particularly hard up until like the last third of the game.
It's really good looking, it's got fantastic music, and sometimes, you can get through without landing on the ground by grabbing things for ages and it feels amazing. There's not much else to say. It's got a water level that's not annoying.
probably the most annoying thing for me is the memory test bit, which I keep screwing up because I'm stupid and don't have much of a short-term memory

but the real highlights are the fantastic graphics and sound [well, music -- Ristar's multi-channel sfx playback is famously awful]

[kitten]

i keep meaning to replay ristar and get the good ending, i picked up a loose cart this year (jeez louise the complete MD copies of this are nuts and his fingers look so goofy i just didn't want to pay triple the price) and have been saving it for a day where i'm in a good enough mood to enjoy it, but a dull enough mood to enjoy its kind of sedate difficulty.

[Squire Grooktook]

Nice El Viento clear BIL! I've only booted up the game once for 5 minutes, before the slight jank had me put it on the shelf for a while. Will probably revisit soon when I have time!

Also that King in Yellow poem recital had me crying.