Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[BrianC]

The Gun.Smoke in the PS3/360 Capcom M2 comp seems to be well emulated, as well. That one has tate (IIRC) and the JP version too.

[Stevens]

I feel like even more of a dick () asking this than I ordinarily would, because not only do more people need to play AC Gun.Smoke, but you've also done me the honour of using my "Contains monster genitalia and/or religious imagery" STG Content Advisory Icon as your avatar - but I'd prefer to keep forum-canonised shmups to the main chat forum for now.

Haha. No worries man.

Been playing Trojan and Xain'd Sleena too.

Trojan I've played on and off over the years. Love the quick stages and setting. Could live without up to jump, but it comes with the territory.

Xs I never played before today. Initial feelings are good, but need more time with it.

[BIL]

Haven't played enough of Trojan (AC or FC) to have more than a generally positive impression of its Spartan X-esque, but I looove the post-apocalyptic city gladiator theme. Sword and shield! Bone and steel! Among my favourite sidescrolling takes on the classic Road Warrior/Escape from New York theme that dominated mid-80s JP pop culture via Hokuto no Ken.

Argh, MY BACKLOG IS SO BIG but coincidentally I recently picked up longtime on/off favourite Mazin Saga (MD), which marks at least three scrolling combat games in my library to feature 1) ruined cityscapes and 2) the always cool ROLY POLY MAYNE. The third is Crude Buster (MD) ofc:



I wonder where that design came from - it screams classic 70s Tokusatsu. Ninja Gaiden II (NES) has a very similar enemy too. Mazin Saga is licensed from Go Nagai, whose work is of course no stranger to ghoulish post-apocalyptic antics!

Hmm. Maybe it's not a roly-poly but an armadillo?

WARNING Sexy Evil Armadillo Woman

Spoiler

[drauch]

There is the classic gif that has circulated throughout the years that features a similar critter that one of the baddies turns into. From the amazing Kikaider:

*Edit* nevermind, you posted it while I was, haha!

[BIL]

Great minds etc etc! ;3 Was trying to recall the series! Episode title is "MAJUU ONNA?! PINK ARMADILLO" But when I googled the first result was "hentai classified as double penetration"

[Stevens]

I can see the manufacturers name on that truck. If you look closely I think it says Tonka.

Diving further into what my childhood had to offer me I played a little Renegade. or as I like to call it "The Warriors".

Spent some time with Kid Niki too. Always thought Data East was behind this one, but young me didn't know the difference between publishers and devs.

I am not at all surprised Irem is behind this one too. The hit box on your sword is huge, particularly at the 5 o'clock position. Hit detection is also top notch, which makes Vigilante even more of a head scratcher in that department.

I had played it a bunch as a kid and much like Spartan X the bosses are on the easy end of the spectrum. The challenge again comes from the stages themselves which unlike Spartan are far longer affairs.

At least there is a countdown so you know how far to the boss.

[BIL]

On the subjects of childhood favourites, localisation and Renegade - I always find it a bit unfortunate that despite so many of Kunio's Famicom games making it to NES, the indomitable scrapper himself was inevitably airbrushed out. Mr. K, Alex, Sam, Crash Cooney... I had no idea as a kid that these were all the same character with his own little universe, even though I could intuit the games were by the same people. With River City Ransom enjoying a cult following as it is, and the fairly generic Lee brothers firm favourites from the era, I wonder if Technos might've fared better in the West with their real mascot (and his entourage) intact. Or if not Technos, at least Kunio himself? Total vanishing act once the SNES hit. I'm still caught off-guard by the occasional SFC/GB title I've never heard of.

Maybe giving mascot status to a brawling juvenile delinquent with a knack for face-shattering violence (even one with a heart of gold who hospitalises chumps strictly in the name of justice, or sanctioned sport!) wouldn't have flown as well outside of Japan, haha. We do like our vigilantes old enough to vote (or collect social security! Paul Kersey tactical vengeance action game pls! the "used car" item is pricey, but deploy it in the right area and the mooks will flock to it for easy dispatch!).

Or might Technos have gotten an early in on the 90s' "RADICAL TUDE" zeitgeist? Then again... Kunio's sort is more the antidote to gratuitous snark. I'm a grown-ass mayne and I'm already imagining our young roughneck earnestly asking Sonic if he's been eyeing his bird, not liking Sanic's response much, then caning him with a lead pipe and kneeing his balls until the furry creep collapses in agony before a hail of mounted punches renders him comatose - all while Knuckles dials 911 in horror at the street price of idle sass in Tokyo's meanest ward! Definitely a potential bad influence on the youth!

[kitten]

my hagane play is up, complete with a bunch of commentary in the description. i think i play through the game pretty snappily without avoiding encounters. i tend to stop and wail on most enemies and don't skip the opening or ending, but my run time is about equal (tiny bit shorter than most) with people backflipping through most of the stages and 5 to 15 minutes less than most of the average ones! i get a couple of bosses down really quickly and tend not to dawdle or screw up significantly on any of the platforming.

Argh, MY BACKLOG IS SO BIG but coincidentally I recently picked up longtime on/off favourite Mazin Saga (MD)

oh, hey, i just won an auction for this one and will be seeing it in my next batch of pick-ups! thought it potentially looked a little weak as a beat 'em up, but the animations are so damn smooth i had to have it and see for myself.

[Sumez]

Official Holy Diver reprint/first western NES release because I don't know.

[kitten]

whoa!

that's pretty wild! i want that pin that comes with it.

- - - - - - - - - -

edit: just recorded a nomiss of ninja gaiden! yay! been meaning to do that for ages for this thread. i spent a completely embarrassing amount of time practicing before hitting a nomiss - i kept having an odd death on the run, always by careless behavior around pits! probably spent 3 or 4 entire hours doing warm-up before calling it quits yesterday and then banging this out on my first attempt of the day. isn't that about how it went for my first time? i'm too lazy to look back through the thread. i'm seriously a bit ashamed at how long it took me to warm back up.

this is the first recording i got jitters on, too! i play like a newborn baby against jaquio and get down to like 5/6hp on both forms from sheerly anxious play. you might not believe it from how bad my play is going to look, but i've done no damage fights against them multiple times. there are actually quite a few mistakes on the run, but aside from what was just mentioned i feel i do a good job of quick recovering and not looking totally gobsmacked at something out of place. accidentally ended up on the stage 4 boss without whirlwind slash for the first time in ages and almost forgot how to fight him!

anyway, should be up tonight or tomorrow morning! i don't know how to format my own videos and have to have my roommate do it! maybe i'll bug her at work for what i'm supposed to do

[Ghegs]

Whoa, Irem's handing out licenses again?

I already have a legit Holy Diver, but that does look good. And the R-Type stuff looks damn nice too, and I don't have a SNES.

[BIL]

I'd be mildly interested in the Holy Diver if it fixed the FC cart's input bugs. As much as I dislike revisionism in games of HD's vintage, that's a genuine damage case. I'm writing this from a comfy chair atop no-miss mountain so you'll pardon me if I chortle at claims "its not that bad rofl" - bitch, the shoddy controls are so ill-suited to the merciless difficulty, your nervous system will rewire itself to compensate. One year on and I still feel the neural pathways firing up just watching footage.

because I don't know.

1] Import cachet! Is all exotic n' shiet
2] X-TREEM reference to beloved elder metal star in title! Many such cases in player/enemy names! How many can you spot?!
3] "OH LAWD ITS HARDER THAN CONTRA" hype!

I've already resigned myself to never selling my FC copy no matter how the price creeps up. True to its \m/etal roots it's a thing straight out of hell. The devil has all the best stage and weapon designs, but his coding is a shitshow.

oh, hey, i just won an auction for this one and will be seeing it in my next batch of pick-ups! thought it potentially looked a little weak as a beat 'em up, but the animations are so damn smooth i had to have it and see for myself.

You're right about the animations - in both the beltscrolling and 1v1 modes, down to the goddamn title screen, they are unbelievably good. The pixel art is superb, too.

As far as the beat 'em up content goes, it's decidedly nearer Bare Knuckle 1 than 2, but I finally realised that's no bad thing. It's simple, fast and wickedly cut-throat (and it runs with none of BK's slight chop).

It'd probably play better with a stick than a pad, given how important the double-tap dash is, but I never hold that against console takes on arcade genres (I plan to build custom sticks at some point, ala Ex_Mosquito's badass creations). The handling on the dash is excellently progressive - the initial input is sensibly loose, and you can literally run circles around enemies once it's going. You can even deliberately hold [up/down] against a screen edge to immoblise yourself with the dash still active, if you're waiting for the right moment to rush in.

Importantly, the dash and its associated attacks aren't panaceas... even the basic green grunt will punch your lights out if you're blithe about approaching them. The standing 3hit combo with options for a fast knockdown boot (far), a crowd-flattening throw (close+forward) or a stabbing flurry (close+neutral) holds its own.

The 1v1 segments are a bit silly, but awesomely satisfying all the same. There's a bit of over-memoriser in one bit I've seen, a stage 3 chase sequence... but I decided long ago to be more forgiving of the odd memo-lapse in otherwise solid action games. If I kicked 'em all out, I'd be without gems like Ninja Spirit (ninja pit is unforgivable), Bucky O' Hare (lava run...) and dozens of others. Was offered a nice deal on a NOS copy and thought fuck it, I've been regretting not picking it up for years. It's a nice little game from the four stages I've seen so far, and a sincere console effort at a classic arcade genre.

[Sumez]

I'd be mildly interested in the Holy Diver if it fixed the FC cart's input bugs.

Five bucks the people releasing this probably aren't even aware of those issues.

[BIL]

Ye I know

[kitten]

It'd probably play better with a stick than a pad, given how important the double-tap dash is

i've never gotten too used to using a stick and grew up with tons & tons of playing kirby super star as a kid, so i'm pretty well-adjusted to double taps on a pad. i really like double-tap inputs for beefy attacks :B my SoR2 play is absolutely full of grand upper spam.

btw, what is an "NOS" copy? i've seen you use this a couple of times and must be unfamiliar with the acronym.

[BIL]

Nitrous oxide or New Old Stock. You know those occasional auctions for a shipping carton full of brand new Duck Hunts, etc? That sort of stuff.

[kitten]

ah, yeah! i'm familiar with the term, just not used to seeing it abbreviated. i've started to develop a weakness for mega drive boxes and grabbed a pt nice complete copy that i'm looking forward to. i usually skip boxes & extra material for licensed games, since it's usually just boring art straight from the show, unless i'm really fond of the source material.

[FinalBaton]

Wow! didn't see that Holy Diver cart coming.
I knew retro-bit had put out licensed developper-centric carts a few months ago(Jaleco brawlers cart, etc), but didn't know about this one.

The box and cart are beautiful, and it wasn't ever released here so... I might get this one

[kitten]

well, my ninja gaiden run is up! along with a usual summary of my opinions and play in the comments. already commented on bits of my play a few posts up.

glad to have finally done this one for the thread! i wish my capture card made NES games look better, but ninja gaiden is already kind of an ugly-lookin' game and it certainly did it no favors :X might continue to fiddle with settings.

[Stevens]

After a smattering of side scrolling offerings I am still at Kid Niki. Stage five on a credit so far. Difficulty ramps up a bit but should be a doable 1CC.

[__SKYe]

After a smattering of side scrolling offerings I am still at Kid Niki. Stage five on a credit so far. Difficulty ramps up a bit but should be a doable 1CC.

Much like mycophobia, I've played through the arcade JP version before (credit feeding, not 1CC), and also gave up on any plans to 1CC this anytime soon.
I can deal with the fact that the final boss' final form is tough, but it was the bubbles one that made me quit for good.

Much like it's been said, you have to know that:

Spoiler

You need to time it out, while avoiding those random bubbles, which I didn't even know it could be done.

Totally ruins the game, in my opinion, as it is quite good otherwise.

well, my ninja gaiden run is up! along with a usual summary of my opinions and play in the comments. already commented on bits of my play a few posts up.

Congrats kitten, will watch it later.

[drauch]

Been goofin' with Hagane a bit after all the talk since I never put much time into it. Lovely game and all that, naturally! But one thing that kinda irks me is the abrupt ending on the stages. There never seems to be any sort of finality, and quick succession would be totally fine if it was going for something like Alien Soldier, but even then the transition just seems off. Dunno! Totally worthless viewpoint that doesn't affect gameplay, but maybe it's just the movie lover inside o' me that rattles me bones! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[kitten]

Congrats kitten, will watch it later.

ty!! curious if bil is going to put this on the OP with the other runs. wasn't expecting anyone to necessarily watch it, but i figured my play might be informative to a few in the thread curious of how i play these types of games given my talk. money-where-my-mouth-is, etc.

i did ultimately become a bit fond of the game via this thread and got turned onto other greats, so i'm hoping having my runs up for posterity does something positive. i originally came to this thread after seeing others who knew what they were talking about and could back it up, so i try to add back in the same way i'd appreciate if i was once again just reading through.

i feel like one of the highest bars for entry for enjoying a wide berth of classic action games isn't the difficulty barrier but the lack of people who similarly understand them to relate to or read about, honestly! if i gleaned some good information from here, i'm sure others do, as well, and i'd like to be another voice. i had a pretty wide array of action games under my belt, but a pretty ignorant take on NG - my ideal would be for someone else offput by the game to see me moaning, watch my turnaround, and then similarly realize a value being present.

[__SKYe]

I'm sure he will -- there aren't that many runs there, and I think it's always good to have several different playstyles for comparison.

i feel like one of the highest bars for entry for enjoying a wide berth of classic action games isn't the difficulty barrier but the lack of people who similarly understand them to relate to or read about, honestly! if i gleaned some good information from here, i'm sure others do, as well, and i'd like to be another voice. i had a pretty wide array of action games under my belt, but a pretty ignorant take on NG - my ideal would be for someone else offput by the game to see me moaning, watch my turnaround, and then similarly realize a value being present.

Agreed, seeing proper-and-honest discussion of these games is pretty damn motivating. Reading other people's thoughts/tactics on how to get past some difficult (or seemingly so) area has made me rethink some games I had previously dismissed as well. That and the 'cooler than I gave it credit for' posts, like BIL's on Crude Buster and Double Dragon I & II, which actually made me play them in earnest (and yours in Kunio-kun FC, for example).

And the Task Force™'s avatar wall on the front page is also a pretty nice motivator as well.

[BIL]

ty!! curious if bil is going to put this on the OP with the other runs.

Fuckin absolutely! Just catching up on the thread since your update. Spent what energy I had after getting home on a dick joke then crashed. All updated. Excellent review in the description, will give a proper watch soon.

[Stevens]

Does anyone know if Kunio is easier than Renegade? My first reaction is yes, it might be.

I've never cleared Renegade in my life but I've come close. 1st credit in Kunio I got to the end of the 2nd loop on my 1st life.

Given a bit of thought to your Technos theory BIL and I think there might be some truth to it. Not sure Americans in the 80's would have dug a bunch of school kids. Video games mirrored the movies - Contra and Mercs were Schwarzenegger and Stallone vehicles and I'm sure we could list at least a dozen more.

We liked our heroes with big pecs/tits/guns, which brings me to The Combattribes. A Technos brawler with decidedly non school kid characters.

Made with the American gamer in mind? Thoughts?

[BIL]

Combatribes certainly channels The Warriors from the very outset, with the lineup of crazy gangs. My favourite are probably the Neo-Nazi SLAUGHTER TROOPS (they ain't flashy, but they're packing brutal heat!) and their Brockenman ripoff leader SWASTIKA, who the OST helpfully informs us is CYBORG - just like his Kinnikuman inspiration! Also, it could easily be the omnipresent influence of Hokuto no Ken, but I get a bit of Streets of Fire in the colourful yet vaguely dystopic city, too - the leader of the THE SLASH STREET SCREAMERS is even nearer Willem Dafoe's character than Haggar was to Michael Pare's. Sledgehammer fight!

Spoiler

"Pretty cool, huh? RRRRRRRAAAAAAAH!"

No matter its influences, Combatribes will always reign supreme on sheer beltscrolling brutality for one reason: Inescapable Face Smasher.



Fuuuck it's primal. Some parts, you just can't toughen up! Your eminently shatterable lower maxilla is one! Little Annoyed Hell Omake: much as I consider Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 the apex of AKI's wrestling odyssey, it lacks No Mercy's similarly mean "grab fallen homie's head, make sure the ref ain't looking, then fuckin bash it into the floor like you're bustin' open your piggybank." Closest thing is the full-mounted beatdown that outright breaks chumps into submission. Kunio would approve!

What Ninja Did Next (MASSIVE THE NINJA WARRIORS AGAIN SPOILERS)

Spoiler

[__SKYe]

Given a bit of thought to your Technos theory BIL and I think there might be some truth to it. Not sure Americans in the 80's would have dug a bunch of school kids. Video games mirrored the movies - Contra and Mercs were Schwarzenegger and Stallone vehicles and I'm sure we could list at least a dozen more.

We liked our heroes with big pecs/tits/guns, which brings me to The Combattribes. A Technos brawler with decidedly non school kid characters.

Made with the American gamer in mind? Thoughts?

The high-school delinquency theme is/was very much Japan only (was pretty popular in 80s manga), and I definitely agree that the re-design of the Kunio games were made with the idea that Westerns wouldn't like/identify with the game's theme otherwise.

As (I believe) has been said before, only one of the Kunio games reached the US/EU in a somewhat similar format, and that was River City Ransom (at least the only one I can think of, right now), but even then, it was still re-designed slightly to appeal more to westerners (the high-school uniforms were replaced, for example). All other games in the series were either completely re-designed (eg. Renegade) or didn't get released overseas at all.

I guess Technos realized early on that, that theme wouldn't fly with the western world, and the shift to American themes had more or less started with Double Dragon, in that DD was already designed with American culture in mind from the very start. Combatribes just takes it a step further (or sideways, taking similar inspiration from a different movie).

[mycophobia]

After a smattering of side scrolling offerings I am still at Kid Niki. Stage five on a credit so far. Difficulty ramps up a bit but should be a doable 1CC.

That final boss, man....good luck. I got to where I could 1CC up to him and gave up, there's just too much luck involved imo.

[Vanguard]

Official Holy Diver reprint/first western NES release because I don't know.

Interesting! It'd be great if we get a bugfix out of this, but that seems unlikely. I'd settle for some quality scrub tears.