Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[kitten]

it looks like i'm going to hate it and could copy and paste a lot of my momodora criticisms (this time with the additional criticism of skill trees, leveling, etc.), but i can't say for certain until i give it a go. still waiting on a physical release for it! i mostly only buy digitally if i'm somewhat confident i'm going to like it and want to support the developers (and also aware of it before it gets a physical release), and that's not happened since night in the woods.

theeere's also a few instances where it's both cheap enough and unlikely enough to get a physical release that i just decide to give it a spin, e.g. something odallus that i think i got for a dollar in a bundle or blaster master zero when i was desperate for something to play on my recently purchased switch. more and more often, lately, i'm happy to wait for a physical version.

[Strider77]

Hollow Knight's aesthetic alone is a deal breaker for me.

Everyone is talking up Dead Cells enough so I'm almost tempted.... almost. I generally hate procedurally generated levels and rouge likes (I even cringe at that name, rogue likes). Still highly skeptical.

I dunno.... not all, but alot, of this new stuff just screams "Hot Topic presents retro pixels". It can be pretty off putting.

There are things like Cursed Castilla and Super Hydorah that are quite the opposite though and I was very satisfied. The visuals and gameplay were on point.

[Immryr]

weird, i think hollow knight's aesthetic is amazing. it was the main thing that made my try the game as i'm generally super weary about modern indie "metroidvanias".

i wouldn't lump it in with all the wannabe retro stuff either.

[Vanguard]

good job!! i gave this one a shot and then gave up really quickly after a single attempt left my thumb sore for a couple of days. i finished, but i think i died once or twice. i gotta know, didja use autofire? doesn't look like it. my thumb's base is tensing up just thinking about how fast you gotta mash for reasonable DPS T_T

No autofire. I'll always mention in my video descriptions if I used anything borderline cheaty.

I generally hate procedurally generated levels and rouge likes (I even cringe at that name, rogue likes).

Dead Cells is not a roguelike.

[kitten]

No autofire. I'll always mention in my video descriptions if I used anything borderline cheaty.

was it any stress on your thumb? man, it kills mine. i can hit decent mashing speeds, but sustaining them for that long will quite genuinely hurt/ache for days.

i think i mention autofire when i use it with the exception of some PCE games, since it's built into the vast majority of controllers, anyway. i don't even have a capable controller for the sfc.

Dead Cells is not a roguelike.

officially, the creators use the term "roguevania," which is just... eugh

[opt2not]

It’s just a term for the millennials to understand persistent death.

[Vanguard]

was it any stress on your thumb? man, it kills mine. i can hit decent mashing speeds, but sustaining them for that long will quite genuinely hurt/ache for days.

Yeah, a little bit. Even on hard mode, Majuu Ou isn't especially difficult, so it didn't take too many tries. The only section that ended more than one attempt was the crumbling bridge section in the ice area.

Button mashing isn't something I enjoy and it's not a skill I respect. I always prefer a cap on firing speed or built-in autofire. I'm a bit of a purist though, so I'm more reluctant than I should be when it comes to using things like external autofire and romhacks.

officially, the creators use the term "roguevania," which is just... eugh

That is grotesque but I'll take it over further abuse of the word "roguelike."

It’s just a term for the millennials to understand persistent death.

The problem is that roguelikes are a well-established genre going back nearly 40 years. Whatever terminology you want to use, Rogue, Adom, and Angband are clearly the same type of game while Spelunky, FTL, and Dead Cells are clearly different from them. There are some similarities, but much greater differences. A good analogy would be if someone released a new FPS and said that it drew inspiration from shmups, and then all of the clueless games journalists in the world decided that first person shooters are shmups, and pretty soon it becomes unnecessarily difficult to discuss or find information on autoscrolling 2D shooting games because most people using the term shmup are talking about Call of Duty.

While I'm on the topic, it's also annoying that people are using the word "procedural" to mean "randomized." All randomized content is procedural, but not all procedural content is randomized. Procedural content isn't necessarily different every time, which is the significant thing about level design in roguelikes and roguelites and such. Daggerfall's world is procedural, they didn't build all of that by hand, but it doesn't change between playthroughs.

[WelshMegalodon]

The problem is that roguelikes are a well-established genre going back nearly 40 years. Whatever terminology you want to use, Rogue, Adom, and Angband are clearly the same type of game while Spelunky, FTL, and Dead Cells are clearly different from them. There are some similarities, but much greater differences. A good analogy would be if someone released a new FPS and said that it drew inspiration from shmups, and then all of the clueless games journalists in the world decided that first person shooters are shmups, and pretty soon it becomes unnecessarily difficult to discuss or find information on autoscrolling 2D shooting games because most people using the term shmup are talking about Call of Duty.

Forget Brianna whatshername, this shit is the real Gamergate right here.

[kitten]

A good analogy would be if someone released a new FPS and said that it drew inspiration from shmups, and then all of the clueless games journalists in the world decided that first person shooters are shmups, and pretty soon it becomes unnecessarily difficult to discuss or find information on autoscrolling 2D shooting games because most people using the term shmup are talking about Call of Duty.

there was even a little of that on here...

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61751

Forget Brianna whatshername, this shit is the real Gamergate right here.

the gg thread scares me a bit, but i've wanted to put my two cents down somewhere on here for a while. i'm going to spoilers tag this one for those interested and ask that if you want to respond, just shoot it to pm -

Spoiler

i wish gamergate had been about how gaming was being eroded by a myriad of forces and not so focused on trivial shit like "those fucking sjw's got my loli titty slightly less exposed in the localized version of bravely default." mild censorships (rampant throughout the golden days of gaming) frequently became the focus of gaming injustice and anything murdering design got glanced over or unrecognized. things became a culture war that militarized virtue so much that each side views the other - and anyone on their side who isn't pure enough - as some sort of radioactive outcast. there were so many friends at the time i couldn't even talk to about the value of classic game design without getting vibes i was being seen as a gator. why? because everyone became convinced that difficulty was ableist and that "accessibility" (as if a game being too hard or complicated is like a hospital without a wheelchair ramp or something asinine) was the literal most important value of game design.

i ended up straight losing friends over this stuff, even though i fundamentally and largely agreed with a lot of their arguments about the importance of representation and the difficulty that marginalized people faced in breaking into gaming on all levels (and i'm even a queer socialist with ptsd, an sjw shoe-in if you've ever seen one lol). but, you know, at the same time i felt appalled by the harassment going on, i sure as fuck didn't think that spontaneously made people like zoe quinn or anita sarkeesian important thinkers. nuance was gone, though, and everything became a political battle. i completely ducked out of giving a shit once one of my close friends at the time became fiancee to one of those terminally obnoxious twitter dipshits that just goes after low-hanging fruit all day. finds gamergater, quote tweets them with an added, tedious "dunk"/insult, repeats a dozen or so times a day. sometimes they get lucky and a bigger fish on the other side like ian miles cheong actually responds to them and they suddenly get ten times the attention.

watched as yet another very classic bully got propped up because he was able to tell which way the wind was blowing for the acceptable targets of bullying. the really funny thing? like many of these Champions of Discourse, it was a straight white male ally (who even played call of duty like 8 hours a day) who just knew how to spout the rhetoric. as long as you show fealty to the right thinkers, it doesn't matter what side you're on, you can shoot straight into a couple thousand sycophantic followers that think your ideological purity is some sort of protective shield.

nothing suffered more because of gamergate than games and games criticism. i can hardly write a single paragraph about misogyny in a game i otherwise very much enjoyed without it being seen as sjw brain death that's poisoning my entire thought process by some and the only good paragraph in the whole article by others. content and quality no longer matter to readers - just signaling. as gaming drifts further away from making games and further toward creating more social/metagaming experiences (complete with hyper-manipulative dlc, lootboxes, achievements, infinite content, etc.), the lack of meaningful critics only enables this rapid descent to pandering to a lowest common denominator instead of delivering a fucking video game. rather than integrating a political or social idea into your criticism as an ancillary element, it's now all about that.

like, genuine blessings that sumez posted that video for steel assault. i start to believe things like that can't even exist, anymore! but that's not the hot topic of discussion in the gaming world and won't ever be again. this feels like the only forum left on the planet that will talk about the actual substance of video games in a meaningful capacity, even if i often find myself in stark opposition to many of its users' politics.

[Randorama]

Let me inject a bit of terror into the thread...

Kitten, have you ever heard of Ian Bogost? If not, please avoid at all costs (re: spoilers).

A bit more on-topic: does anyone like any of the Capcom quartet of Mega Twins, Nemo, Wilow, Midnight Wanderers?

I am also trying to play Bonse's adventure, but I find it somehow quite depressing in atmosphere (..so it is well-designed) and game mechanics (...and this aspect is not well-designed). Any thoughts?

[mycophobia]

I really like Midnight Wanderers. Great art/music and basically plays like Daimakaimura Lite, in the sense that you have some degree of control over your direction while in the air, and while it has the constant enemy respawns the enemies themselves are slower and less aggressive. I honestly kind of prefer it to Daimakaimura.

[Strider77]

it's also annoying that people are using the word "procedural" to mean "randomized."

Dead Cells is procedural isn't it?

[Strider77]

Double post, my bad.

[MommysBestGames]

I am also trying to play Bonse's adventure, but I find it somehow quite depressing in atmosphere (..so it is well-designed) and game mechanics (...and this aspect is not well-designed). Any thoughts?

I've played a lot of Bonze's adventure via the Taito Legends 2 collection a few years ago. I actually loved the atmosphere!
But yes it was depressing.
Everything was so strange and odd. I think the music and sfx lent a lot to it too. The music was surprisingly creepy. And later on being in the hell sections filled with blood and hopping on parts was pretty wild.
I think gameplay wise it felt a little clunky, but as long as you could throw your prayer beads fast it was good. There were too many cheap hits which dragged the whole thing down. But the originality and interesting atmosphere outweighed those problems for me. I think I'm going to play more to refresh.

[Sumez]

Bonze Adventure is B-tier Taito, but I always enjoyed it a lot. The PC Engine port is really spot on.

While I'm on the topic, it's also annoying that people are using the word "procedural" to mean "randomized." All randomized content is procedural, but not all procedural content is randomized. Procedural content isn't necessarily different every time, which is the significant thing about level design in roguelikes and roguelites and such. Daggerfall's world is procedural, they didn't build all of that by hand, but it doesn't change between playthroughs.

This is semantics, really. I get what you're going at, but by the typical definition of random stuff in video games, I'd qualify Daggerfall's world as being randomly generated. So is all the "fluff" inbetween the locations that were set in stones by the developers in other huge open world games, such as Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. They just did it during development, rather than runtime (though I wouldn't be surprised is some things, like tree branches etc. are still generated runtime).

Procedural basically just means that the randomness is applied by algorithms that makes something coherent and ideally playable, rather than just white noise (the simplest example would be just using randomness to line up predesigned rooms like Rogue Legacy or Binding of Isaac does). Though, to be precise, procedural just means it wasn't put together by an actual person.

[Stevens]

Since it isn't a secret how much I love Spartan X I attempted to get into TNWA several months back. This ended in failure. Try as I might I just couldn't justify playing it over SX, so back to it I went. Seeking something similar but new has led me (surprise) back to Irem's stable.

Haven't played it yet, but from watching the attract screens I think I am in for a treat with Ninja Spirit.

[BIL]

I liked what little I tried of Bonze Adventure/Jigoku Meguri's PCE port, good to hear it's solid. I adore the chibi-downcast tone, reminds me of a Japanese folk-horror to Toaplan's chubby Tolkienesque Wardner. For a trilogy of stubby yet ghoulish (and no-nonsense) sidescrollers with solid 16bit ports, see also IREM's Hero Tonma. A much blastier game than appearances might suggest, that one. Got a real "R9 on foot" vibe once you're kitted out.

Haven't played it yet, but from watching the attract screens I think I am in for a treat with Ninja Spirit.

You will love stage 4 aka Spartan X In Hell. (for the most part it's The Legend of Kage In Hell)

A five star game, bumped down to four and a half by an atrociously poor rote memoriser right before the end boss. It can be worked around (no spoilers), but the preceding 95% is so goddamn good it remains a must-play even if left there. A singularly harrowing descent into wuxia hell, with an appropriately menacing necro-feudal aesthetic. Note the US version (Ninja Spirit) is a bit toned down from the JP (Saigo no Nindou), though still pretty damn hard.

The PCE port's 1HKO "arcade mode" is a worthwhile Black Label. Wickedly intense by console standards, but won't brickwall quite as cruelly as a few points in the arcade. Has the same stupid end memoriser unfortunately, actually it's fucking worse (but the workaround is simpler to execute).

[Stevens]

You will love stage 4 aka Spartan X In Hell. (for the most part it's The Legend of Kage In Hell)

Kage with more teeth were my thoughts when I reached stage three the first time. It has the classic Irem "Don't you even think about stopping or I'll murder you post haste". Granted Spartan X and Vigilante (sigh - could have been so much better) have it too, but with the life bars the feeling of impending doom is not nearly as noticeable.

Also the hit box on your sword is insane.

[BIL]

Also the hit box on your sword is insane.

I know right. Push the button and something dies, particularly POWed up with a couple shadow bros in tow. And even then, the monstrous MAX firepower feels perilously matched to the teeming zako and regular heavy killers.

The POW chain's swing attack deserves a bit of explanation - it's much simpler to execute than its appearance suggests, and it also has a minor but potentially dangerous glitch. Incredibly useful in the first half of stage 3 (rice field) - standing attack mows through rifles and their nasty low shot. Nailing rifles in front, then hitting [up] to cleave the air clean of leaping katanas while bringing it slamming down on would-be backstabbers is too goddamn satisfying. Super tactile, like a wuxia action windscreen wiper! Mind the ogres though! (or to give them their awesomely foreboding official name, "Ghost of Fugitive Warrior.")

[Marc]

Love Ninja Spirit, got heavily into it when I first discovered MAME - previous exposure was the not-bad-for-the-time C64 port. Managed stage V I think, but something I've always meant to go back to. Great, great soundtrack as well.

[Randorama]

Mycophobia: Midnight Wanderers is one of those games i enjoy playing on a periodical basis. I think that it is fairly easy, since it has a slow pace and gives you quite a bit of freedom (re: your discussion of jumps). I always wondered what the artistic inspiration was: it feels very Bede-ish (i.e. the art looks more like a Franco-Belgian comic than anything).

Bonze's adventure: I tried this many moons ago during a cold, dark winter...so I felt rather depressed by it, at the time I am trying to understand how to play it, but I feel that Krakemboh's inertial movements are a pain in the ass. Still, having a Taito game to discover, in 2018, is wonderful news.

BIL: The Legend of Hero Tonma is ace! I am deeply partial to Irem, but I really adored this game, back in the day. I must play it again, though, as I cannot recall much else

[Vanguard]

Haven't played it yet, but from watching the attract screens I think I am in for a treat with Ninja Spirit.

You really are, there's nothing quite like it. One thing worth noting in Ninja Spirit is that you can safely touch enemy sprites as long as they don't hit you with an attack. So you can, for example, bait out an attack from one of the stage 3 giants and then safely run through them during the long delay before they can attack again.

This is semantics, really. I get what you're going at, but by the typical definition of random stuff in video games, I'd qualify Daggerfall's world as being randomly generated. So is all the "fluff" inbetween the locations that were set in stones by the developers in other huge open world games, such as Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. They just did it during development, rather than runtime (though I wouldn't be surprised is some things, like tree branches etc. are still generated runtime).

Procedural basically just means that the randomness is applied by algorithms that makes something coherent and ideally playable, rather than just white noise (the simplest example would be just using randomness to line up predesigned rooms like Rogue Legacy or Binding of Isaac does). Though, to be precise, procedural just means it wasn't put together by an actual person.

Procedural content is content that is assembled by an algorithm rather than a human being. Randomized content is procedural content that uses a non-static, non-human-controlled factor (such as the current time) to modify the algorithm's output so that it can produce varying results. A hypothetical white noise level generator would still be procedural content. It would also be randomized content if it produced different white noise each time it was run.

Yeah, it's possible that Daggerfall's world was created using RNG, there's no way of knowing. What's significant to the end user though, is that it's not handmade and it's the same every time you play.

I'm not trying to be pedantic for the sake of being pedantic here. Static procedural content carries different implications from handmade content (there's probably lots of content, there's probably lots of repetition, content's quality will likely range from mediocre to bad, etc) and randomly-generated content also comes with different implications from static procedural content (memorizing stage layouts and enemy placements shouldn't do much good outside of this playthrough, difficulty and scoring potential are likely to vary quite a bit between playthroughs, etc).

[Sumez]

When you're a computer, the difference between random and, uh, procedural in a consistent/static manner? is basically non-existant. The only difference between the two is that one has a pre-programmed seed, while the other does something like you said, ie. taking the seed from the current time, or some kind of user interaction.
The take-away here is that the result of one is still as predictable and/or non-predictable as the other. Something I'd say qualifies as random.

Minecraft is considered random, but if you manually input the seed of a world you have gotten before, you will get completely the same world again. Rogue Legacy randomly generates the castle whenever you enter it, but you can pay the gatekeeper to make the castle stay the same as your last visit. It would take a second to hack Daggerfall to make every area different every time you visit them.

My point is just that I think it makes sense to use either term, and I would be cool with people doing it.

[Stevens]

Still need to tighten up stage three, but I think I have a general idea - sickle for the first part, sword for the second and bombs for the boss.

I will now (after many many many deaths) call the first part of stage three easy. My managing of the monks towards the end needs some work though - I've seen too many runs come crashing down because of a poorly timed jump. The sickle glitch has also reared its head a few times, but less the more I play.

Not sure anyone does this genre better than Irem. I love Taito and while Kage is good Kuri Kinton (the only thing they have resembling Spartan) is shit.

[BIL]

For the marsh, I like to bunnyhop to keep momentum while wielding the sword. Ninjas and dickwolves will be held at bay, and the monks can be baited into throwing their staffs diagonally which leaves a nice gap to hop through and leave 'em behind. Getting too high up makes the wolves harder to deal with, stopping to kill the monks risks being overrun by zako.

I usually let the boss reach screen center, then jump-rope from one side to the other while firing the chain downward. This'll damage him and suppress his rifle backup in one stroke.

[Stevens]

You feel pretty powerful bunny hopping with the sword and sickle - like a freight train of death. Shuriken when powered up are nice and visceral.

I'mma try the sickle for the boss. Thanks.

[Stevens]

Lots of practice on stages three and four.

Last few full runs have gone as follows:

No miss first two stages, make stupid mistake and die immediately on stage three. Credit proceeds to go down in flames. Load save state - no miss to stage four. Ugh.

As far as stage four goes I got the first part down pretty well - run, carpet bomb, and when those sword guys show up jump high but not so high you cling to the ceiling.

Keeping at it, but I've noticed I do best when I keep my sessions to 30 minutes or less.

[BIL]

Stages one and two don't even register on the difficulty curve, really. st1 is a fine kickoff, destructive and brief, so I don't mind much. I'd love it if you had to actually platform across the broken wall, but I just do it for fun+style points.

Stage 2 is the curve's only real cold spot. Provided you don't tie yourself up with a needless, grenade/wolf-baiting jump, you can motor along the floor pretty easily. I think the second half should've dispensed with the ground, forcing you to actually use the branches wuxia-style. But again I just do this anyway, haha. Maintaining momentum from branch to branch while swatting away would-be grenadiers is good fun and actually fairly tricky.

Same for the boss, who's a bit pointless on the ground but feels like something outta friggin Ninja Scroll fought up top. The game's most bangin', dick-swingin' BGM largely salvages things. Hardest ninja bassline outside of the Shinobis.

st3 terrifies at first with the raining death on all sides and total lack of refuge, but it's very repeatable with practice. st4 is where the really nasty stuff begins, the second floor in particular is a total motherfucker with its samurai/spike setups. POWx3 shuriken are a good idea for cutting through samurai here, IIRC. It's been a while though, so take that with a pinch of salt.

I like to hop over the st4-1 samurai, too. Main threat is getting kneecapped by a rear-spawning chain ninja while approaching them, so I bunnyhop-carpetbomb and try to watch out for a worst-case pincer spawn. It's rough stuff. If you can get the jump-over and keep advancing, the samurai won't survive long.

The rest of the game isn't a linear increase, but it's far harder in peaks and certainly never less deadly than st3. stages 6 (stage 3 in hell) and 7 are meat grinders requiring careful plotting, the latter featuring the execrable pit, an act of bullshit so risible it's entirely reasonable to just call it a day there. The kind of absolute pratfall I'd sort of like to see dev commentary on, yet fear what I'd learn. For now I just headcanon it to a last-minute coin trap, it's less depressing than someone thinking it was a good idea.

[Vanguard]

Lots of practice on stages three and four.

Last few full runs have gone as follows:

No miss first two stages, make stupid mistake and die immediately on stage three. Credit proceeds to go down in flames. Load save state - no miss to stage four. Ugh.

As far as stage four goes I got the first part down pretty well - run, carpet bomb, and when those sword guys show up jump high but not so high you cling to the ceiling.

Keeping at it, but I've noticed I do best when I keep my sessions to 30 minutes or less.

On stage 3 I like to use the sickle and do high jumps over the giants. Don't have to clear them, just have to bait out one attack and they'll be dead before they can try again. I've tried both the sword and sickle in the swamp and, while both work, I prefer the sickle. Constantly short hop to try to bait the monks into jumping or throwing their staves. High jumps should generally be avoided here as they can leave you helpless. Be wary of monks spawning in tree branches. If you get the flame shield powerup and rush through the rest of the stage, you'll still have it for most of the boss fight. I like to use bombs while repeatedly jumping over the boss and also making sure to cover the rifleman spawn points. The sickle works as a more defensive alternative.

Staying on the floor is preferable over the ceiling in 4-1. Short hop over the sickle guys' attacks. When a samurai shows up you can stop moving and shower him with bombs before he can reach you, though I don't think that's really necessary until stage 7. If you short hop you can bait them into jumping over you, or you can do a medium jump at close range to bait out an attack. You can jump to the ceiling to bait them into following but I'd rather not deal with the ceiling ninjas. In 4-2 you can't avoid crossing the ceiling so I prefer using bombs to deal with the ceiling ninjas, though you're usually fine crossing the ceiling as long as you don't stop running. The samurai are only capable of high jumps so let the ones in the spike pits harmlessly sail over you. Sometimes you'll have to stop and wait for a good opportunity, watch out for the spear guys at the bottom while you do so. One yellow ninja drops a screen-clearing item and you'll want to use that opportunity to quickly cross over. I use the sword in 4-3, but it's pretty easy regardless of what you do. You'll definitely want bombs for the boss.

Stage 5 is a bit of a memorizer but overall it's probably the third easiest stage. Before you have a route down just take it slow and look before you leap.

[Obscura]

Stage 3 first part, I stick with chain, and don't even try to kill the giants. Just jump over them and keep moving.

In the swamp, I actually like high-jumping. Nearly constant fairly high jumps, constantly up+sword with POW as an anti-wolf umbrella, unless there's a staff coming my way, which I'll deflect with one down+sword.