Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[Steven]

I actually met that guy last year. I had no idea who he was or what he had worked on, so I checked online when I got home and found out that he worked on Metal Gear 2, among other things. If I'd known about that, I would have interrogated him about it! He's a cool dude for sure.

[BIL]

One of those dudes who's not as widely-acclaimed (at least hereabouts) as Sakimoto or Namiki, but when you look into his catalogue you realise he worked on like a dozen of your favourite OSTs.

MG2 has a killer soundtrack... Konami were truly on fire on all fronts in the late 80s/early 90s epoch; arcade, consoles, and PCs alike. This is one of my go-tos when I need to concentrate on something, can loop it forever tapping my foot all the while.

[copy-paster]

NG1 no death run get.

Constant failed run at 5-2 and 6-2's trickiest jumps, mastered the slash cancelling for Demon. That notorious 5-2 jump is bullshit if you're going for 1-hit run, and I somehow find no death runs for NG1 and III are equal. Anyways I've finally got this main R2RKMF mascot clear, the last time I played NG1 was in 2021 iirc with clutch 1CC.

Probably a good time to derust NGII these days, the way "Ryu options" works is interesting you could use it as aggresive boss speedkills with precise placement and good subweapon use, this might be the hardest to do no death run too so much pitfalls and that snow/ice slippery gimmick is bad.

[BIL]

Nice. Added along with your NG3 US+JP runs to the No-Miss Collection!

I'd agree on NG1 and NG3's no-misses being quite comparable, despite their playing very differently - biggest distinction being NG1/5.2's helljump (aka EDMANS BANE ), and NG3's climactic firewheel gauntlet.

A High-Up Place For Dying, aka EDMANS BANE:

Spoiler

Also concurred on NG2 punching above its weight, where 1LCs are concerned. For a basic 1CC, the copious score 1UPs will see any competent player with nine lives in stock before long. And while Ryu's nerfed swordbox is an annoyance, the Options can erase screenloads of enemies with an ease unheard of in NG1/3.

However, the combination of NG1-fast velocity and NG3-aggressive patterns makes it fiendishly easy to get wanged into a pit for a split-second's hesitance. Act VII is quite the nailbiting climb to the top, I love it.

Edmans come home 3;

Spoiler

[Sima Tuna]

Damn I love those song titles.

[Steven]

Oh shit, I need to do my Out Zone review! The PC version is sort of super-busted-but-not-entirely-super-busted as of right now, sadly, but I guess I can just take terrible and blurry low-res pictures of the game running on my Astro with my shitty camera on my shitty prepaid phone that will almost certainly turn out so bad that you can't see what's going on and call it good or something.

That's how they did it back in the day, which is how screenshots became known as screenshots, so I guess it will feel More Authentic™ if I do that way.

[BryanM]

Tried some of the Valis games. Seem to fit easily in the unfortunate valley, that space between something that requires no attention and all of your attention.

The art is fine, unfortunate they couldn't put more into the game part of the game.. More happens in 10 seconds of Rastan than an entire Valis level...

[Sumez]

That sums up my experience with Valis as well.

[Sima Tuna]

I need to play Rastan and Volgarr the Viking. They both seem pretty cool.

[BEAMLORD]

Here's a nice surprise. M2 are bringing back Assault Suits Valken with an uncensored and fully translated re-release with some nice features:

https://www.gematsu.com/2023/02/assault ... for-switch

Switch only at the moment.

[BIL]

Will grab that sight unseen if it comes to PS4, their Contra and Castlevania collections have saved me a lot of cart slot wear lately. Anyone who's not played Valken (or only played Cybernator) and likes heavy machine action should jump on it, it's superb. Remember to level up the Punch weapon, FFS!

[Lander]

Yeah, Valis seems more for the Seifuku enthusiast than the R2RKMF connoseiur. Hero Quest Video Guy was able to one-credit one of the PCE CD versions within a few tries with 1ups to spare, whereas Rastan has been keeping his broadcasts fed with warm-up content since forever.

What a mighty game Rastan is.

[Steven]

Relevant and true commentary on the recent Valis collections:

Maybe they could try actually making a good Valis game before attempting to milk the franchise.

Valis = generally nice music and terrible everything else. MD Valis 1 Reiko fight is one of the worst-designed boss fights in pretty much anything that isn't Tatsujin Ou.

[BryanM]

I think they "tried" doing that, with the porno game...

I always grouse about what they did to Shining Force, making a bunch of non-Shining Force games with the lead artist being a hentai artist (at least it was a decent one). I always assumed the Valis franchise didn't deserve that, but now I'm not so sure..

Like with Majin Tensei or Internet Explorer, it'd be better to just remake and rebrand everything.

[Bassa-Bassa]

The Shining Force games they made after the Saturn, while still not really Shining Force in any aspect, didn't have Tony as the illustrator actually. That was other Shining games starting with Shining Tears, where they indeed wanted a reboot for the series, which anyway had always touched other genres ever since its beginning. And the porno Valis game had nothing to do with Telenet, it was an extemporary chapter (spinoff?) by a small company which bought the franchise once Telenet was over because why not.

I don't think there could ever be a good Valis game and still be Valis. The shallowness, uninteresting mechanics and flow is just part of its essence. As I just read on another forum, there's a very recent try to do something else with the formula. You never know:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2018 ... _Wisteria/

[BryanM]

Hrm... everything else says Telenet licensed it out and published it as one last desperate hail-mary the year before everything ended. :thinkingemoji:

I try to keep my perspective in mind. I can't stand playing Contra today, but I had a lot of fun with it as a kid. And apparently some enjoyed these Valis games back when they were first learning to play video games.

Shining Tears

It's been awhile so I checked its art again and man it doesn't look anything like a Shining game. Or anything in particular.

Fantasy art seems especially easy to tell when there was passion or at least some attention/research was put into something versus a soulless husk drawn by a tired salary man. "Yeah this guy knows what gorgets are... because I can see them!"

[Bassa-Bassa]

Yeah. He was hired for another four games, so it seems Sega was happy with the sales at least.



I wonder.

My memory failed, yeah, Telenet was technically dissolved the year later. It's not that they really cared about Valis or any other by then anyway.

The Valis series was popular because, as computer games, they somehow succeeded at blending some of the dynamism, visual qualities and immediateness of console action games with an anime-like story and presentation, a field where Telenet really shined thanks to some truly respectable chara designers and animators. When the series made the jump to consoles (particularly the PC Engine CD), they emphasized the anime part thanks to the new audio capabilities, which was more than welcome by many as anime was the main thing most Japanese kids cared about. I don't think the games themselves were ever considered too enjoyable beyond the cutscenes even by those.

[velo]

I need to play Rastan and Volgarr the Viking. They both seem pretty cool.

I really enjoyed Volgarr and one of these days I'll circle back and try for the good ending (it feels replayable, though I haven't gotten around to it), but it was kind of a dick move not to put checkpoints before boss fights. That frustration stopped me cold a couple times. It's great though... if it looks like something you'd like, you probably will.

[BryanM]

I always wondered if Rastan's damage routine was intentional or not. How hitting something while you're in the air seems to cleave through enemies for about 20x damage. The bosses are completely different to fight if you stay on the ground, and I've always had a hard time believing they intentionally meant to let you slaughter the bosses in 5 literal seconds, before they can even finish winding up their first attack animation.

boobprincess.png

This one at least is one of the girls from Fault!. It would have been really weird if he sexualized the men and werewolves like this.

There's nothing wrong particularly about making a pervy game, just don't slap another franchise's name on it and don't be utterly half-assed about it; it only hurts the game you're trying to make and the franchise you've already invested into. I know the suits don't see it that way though, "name recognition = monie" is the closest thing to human thoughts they can have. Not a single thought of creating something that may or may not turn into its own franchise with its own fans.

Phantasy Star Idola is probably the poster child of SEGA's shallow cynicism. The character art of its extended cast always made me feel like one of the robots from the Westworld series: "It doesn't look like anything."

... a little bit more literal, now that I can't link their page I used to use to demonstrate this. Due to the game being dead. And not popular enough to have earned itself a comprehensive wiki, like other games got.

ONGEKI on one hand, a hill of crap on the other...

The Valis series was popular because, as computer games, they somehow succeeded at blending some of the dynamism, visual qualities and immediateness of console action games with an anime-like story and presentation... I don't think the games themselves were ever considered too enjoyable beyond the cutscenes even by those.

Competition on these platforms was pretty low and what the customers were looking for there was different than what consoles offered, yeah. Lots of us westerners look at PC-98 games and the like, and think they look absolutely amazing. (Dithering, man.) But how they usually play is...

Well, if you have a game that's mostly about art, making sure everyone can see the whole thing is a way to go.

[BIL]

I always wondered if Rastan's damage routine was intentional or not. How hitting something while you're in the air seems to cleave through enemies for about 20x damage. The bosses are completely different to fight if you stay on the ground, and I've always had a hard time believing they intentionally meant to let you slaughter the bosses in 5 literal seconds, before they can even finish winding up their first attack animation.

Pretty sure it was, at minimum, noticed and deliberately left in - rather like the Boss Rush Knockback™ glitch that spawned this thread almost a decade ago, when it made an easily-enraged autist shit his pants in fury. (the devs had noticed it and thought "Hmm, cool!" Not only leaving it intact, but canonising it in the subsequent two games )

PCE Ninja Gaiden "fixes" the comically fast woodchipper speedkills you can do on bosses via Jumpslash. Result: the boring bosses (ie 90% of them) that die in .5s on FC now shit up the place for a whole unbearable minute. It's god-awful.

It's like Rygar's final boss. Casual spectators go "Wahhh! Lame!" as an adept player steams into the room, armed to the teeth, and *womps* him on the dome for an instakill. Anyone who's finished Rygar on a life knows just how fucking good that feels, after ~30minutes of nonstop near-death peril. Sometimes the best thing a boss can be is an exclamation point on what went before.

OURYYAAAAAAAAAH



Hwaaa...

(Psyvariar scrubs who call the games "short" go here too - your dick is short, homie! l2score!)

"Mistakes into miracles" is kinda true with game design, computers being unable to say "wait WTF r u doin." See also Onimusha creating Devil May Cry and by extension the entire character action genre via its goofy juggle glitch, and SFII's glitchy cancels doing the same for modern fighting games. An auld beloved discussion on this feat our patron saint / long-absent king Edmond The Mad.

[Lander]

I should probably check out Volgarr sometime too; I saw it during its period as an indie darling and didn't think much of it outside of being a solidly brutal action platformer.

Looking back with post-Rastan eyes, there are a ton of homages all over it. Case in point, the pyramid theme has a very familiar musical motif at the start

I always wondered if Rastan's damage routine was intentional or not. How hitting something while you're in the air seems to cleave through enemies for about 20x damage. The bosses are completely different to fight if you stay on the ground, and I've always had a hard time believing they intentionally meant to let you slaughter the bosses in 5 literal seconds, before they can even finish winding up their first attack animation.

I always assumed it was intentional, since plunging in with an almighty leaping strike for maximal chop momentum seems like a very barbarian battle technique.

If a glitch - intentional or not - it's one of the most thematically-resonant ones I've ever seen, and fits comfortably on the advanced controls shelf alongside the high jump and backswing hitbox.

"Mistakes into miracles" is kinda true with game design, computers being unable to say "wait WTF r u doin." See also Onimusha creating Devil May Cry and by extension the entire character action genre via its goofy juggle glitch, and SFII's glitchy cancels doing the same for modern fighting games.

Not to mention good old from Quake defining the era's FPS locomotion zeitgeist with his flagrant disrespect for diagonal aerodynamics.

Not even slow and sneaky Garrett from Thief could avoid Carmack's vector length legacy, to my great joy upon booting it up years later and inadvertently engaging the hup hup muscle autopilot once more

One of my great ambitions in game development is to someday commit a glitch of that magnitude; a harmless little optimization that inadvertently opens the door to brave new worlds of high-level play.

[Bassa-Bassa]

There's nothing wrong particularly about making a pervy game, just don't slap another franchise's name on it and don't be utterly half-assed about it; it only hurts the game you're trying to make and the franchise you've already invested into. I know the suits don't see it that way though, "name recognition = monie" is the closest thing to human thoughts they can have. Not a single thought of creating something that may or may not turn into its own franchise with its own fans.

Unlike Phantay Star, I don't think the Shining games had enough fans in Japan to make the suits think about them in the slightest. Indeed, I believe Sega's maneuvre in the PS2 era was a try to turn a lesser-known series there into something really popular a la Sakura Taisen, hence their interest in picking a famed illustrator.

[Sengoku Strider]

Unlike Phantay Star, I don't think the Shining games had enough fans in Japan to make the suits think about them in the slightest.

It was actually the other way around. Shining Force caught the Fire Emblem wave; Force I & II and the Langrissers sold incredibly well for the Mega Drive. Meanwhile, Phantasy Star IV was the only game in that series to crack the top 20 on the platform. It's why you saw 5 Shining games on the Saturn, but zero Phantasy Stars except for the re-release collection; Shining was Sega's rpg standard-bearer in Japan. But after the Saturn the team behind the series, apparently pissed at Sega's handling of Shining Force III, jumped ship and became Camelot. So Sega had to try different avenues with the series.

Phantasy Star had a much higher profile in the West. In Japan, the Mark III was an afterthought behind the Famicom & PC Engine which was only on the market for 3 years, and was discontinued a year after Phantasy Star came out. Even the US got 5 years of Master System games. Phantasy Star II was well received in Japan, but didn't make the same impact as it did internationally. In the West it was still one of the very first console rpgs on the market (I think only Phantasy Star 1, Miracle Warriors & Ultima Exodus and Dragon Warrior on NES were out at the time) and it looked very advanced by comparison. But in Japan it was up against Dragon Quest III & Final Fantasy II, and so didn't seem quite as exciting and innovative.

[BIL]

"Mistakes into miracles" is kinda true with game design, computers being unable to say "wait WTF r u doin." See also Onimusha creating Devil May Cry and by extension the entire character action genre via its goofy juggle glitch, and SFII's glitchy cancels doing the same for modern fighting games.

Not to mention good old from Quake defining the era's FPS locomotion zeitgeist with his flagrant disrespect for diagonal aerodynamics.

Not even slow and sneaky Garrett from Thief could avoid Carmack's vector length legacy, to my great joy upon booting it up years later and inadvertently engaging the hup hup muscle autopilot once more

Holy fuck, yeah, that's the perfect example to round out Onimusha and SFII!

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!

I should probably check out Volgarr sometime too; I saw it during its period as an indie darling and didn't think much of it outside of being a solidly brutal action platformer.

Looking back with post-Rastan eyes, there are a ton of homages all over it. Case in point, the pyramid theme has a very familiar musical motif at the start

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.

[Sima Tuna]

I never heard of that game. See, this is why I read this thread for game recommendations. So many years of playing vidya and yet I never heard of something awesome.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Unlike Phantay Star, I don't think the Shining games had enough fans in Japan to make the suits think about them in the slightest.

It was actually the other way around. Shining Force caught the Fire Emblem wave; Force I & II and the Langrissers sold incredibly well for the Mega Drive. Meanwhile, Phantasy Star IV was the only game in that series to crack the top 20 on the platform. It's why you saw 5 Shining games on the Saturn, but zero Phantasy Stars except for the re-release collection; Shining was Sega's rpg standard-bearer in Japan. But after the Saturn the team behind the series, apparently pissed at Sega's handling of Shining Force III, jumped ship and became Camelot. So Sega had to try different avenues with the series.

Well, I was talking about the PS2 era context. The MD Shinings were indeed fairly popular... among MD users, which were very few there at their time. Saturn Forces came so late that failed to make an actual impact, whereas Wisdom and Holy Ark had not been particularly successful either (didn't even Phantasy Star Collection sell better than either? Would need to check.) Phantasy Star on the other hand, in addition to the low-profile Generation remakes, got its Online iteration in those years, which Sega wanted to establish as one of the DC's flagships, targeted at the general public, not just hardcore fans, and, to some degree, it succeeded, that's why I infer that Phantasy Star was better known in Japan in the 2000's.

Phantasy Star had a much higher profile in the West. In Japan, the Mark III was an afterthought behind the Famicom & PC Engine which was only on the market for 3 years, and was discontinued a year after Phantasy Star came out. Even the US got 5 years of Master System games. Phantasy Star II was well received in Japan, but didn't make the same impact as it did internationally. In the West it was still one of the very first console rpgs on the market (I think only Phantasy Star 1, Miracle Warriors & Ultima Exodus and Dragon Warrior on NES were out at the time) and it looked very advanced by comparison. But in Japan it was up against Dragon Quest III & Final Fantasy II, and so didn't seem quite as exciting and innovative.

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.


Ed. Grammar.

[BryanM]

It was pretty apparent SEGA didn't give a crap about RPGs. The mentality I guess was quantity over quality, a tactic followed by more than a just a few companies in history, not just Telenet. miHoYo is such a weird exception to that, where they built games to make a profit to make bigger and better games. (The reason why is obvious - it's not owned by suits. But by gamer otaku nerds who understand the f'n product.) That Atlus is able to pump out so many games proves they could have kept those franchises alive.

... I always wanted to play Beast Wrestler as a kid, tempted by the magazines. But after seeing it in action the other day, that's a dream I'ma giving up on.

Anyway, the nadir of SEGA is probably SEGA Heroes, which is still a notch above Square's All The Bravest, at least. (Go take a peak at it if you wanna feel like barfing.) FYI their current attempt at profiting from nostalgia is a Yoko Taro mobile game called 404 Game RE:SET. It features anthropomorphic girls allegedly based on old Sega games, like Outrun, Afterburner, and Virtua Fighter. These days it's not uncommon for companies to staple Yoko's name onto to something as mostly an advertising gimmick... and that's kind of sad. (Big coinflip if there will be any of the signature mindfuck apocali.) There should be more than a couple designer names weirdo gamers know, you know.

Sega mobile arcade or whatever, where they tried selling people old emulated games, had to have bombed hard.. Gotta make content if you're gonna sell content..

Ah, and to cap my contribution to this digression, I always forget that Thunderblade is in the cult classic SOS music video.

[velo]

I should probably check out Volgarr sometime too; I saw it during its period as an indie darling and didn't think much of it outside of being a solidly brutal action platformer.

It's a deadly infinite-retry indie sidescroller but it also has the makings of an replayable start-to-finish arcade game, with iirc the best ending only achievable if you finish under a certain number of deaths. I like that it works either way, whereas Cuphead for example (not to single it out) doesn't much lend itself to a "run".

[Bassa-Bassa]

I always put apart Wolf Team's games from Telenet's. It's like if they wanted to amend everything that was wrong with the latter's approach, at least if you skip El Viento's sequels.

[BIL]

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.