Retro Gaming Thread

I remember having a lot of fun with The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang way back when so I decided to play through it again. Overall it doesn't hold up as well as I remember but it does do some things very well.

The idea behind the mechanics is great. You've got your melee spin attack, your long-range hat toss and your jump. You've got to make use of all three to make effective progress, and when you hit your groove it's actually quite fun. However, there's definitely a bit of a learning curve and, especially at the beginning, it can be tricky to deal with aggressive enemies. You start out doing pathetic damage while enemies can drain your life bar pretty quickly. This is countered with the exp/level up system, where you get an additional life bar and added attack power with every level you gain. Unfortunately, that means if you're having trouble in an area you're better off just grinding the same screens over and over until you gain a level or two, which definitely hurts the flow of the game. It is satisfying when you can lay waste to enemies that once gave you a hard time, though. The boss battles tend to get a bit drawn out, especially since most bosses have a habit of refilling their life and getting a speed boost once you beat them the first time.

You can also buy cards that perform a variety of effects in battle, but except for the life-refilling one they're mostly useless. Your money is better spent on hat upgrades, and once you get the best hat you'll find yourself spending money on cards you don't need just to prevent your money from maxing out at 999G. Oddly, the last stage has no shop yet includes enemies that drop lots of money, so you're likely to beat the game with 999G you'll never be able to use anyway.

I love the graphic style, which is cutesy and features a lot of great sprite work (the python bunnies are a personal favorite, see vid at 1:18:45). Having said that, the graphics themselves are a bit simplistic looking and lack detail. There could definitely be more variety in the environment tilesets and, heck, in the environments themselves. The dialog text boxes use an annoying dithering effect instead of a transparent color which is kind of annoying, and there's no way to speed up the text display speed either. The music, like the graphics, is charming but not as polished or impressive as a lot of other SNES games.

The game itself is also really short. There are only a handful of stages and, if it wasn't for the grinding and the restarting from a save point when you die (which could lead to losing chunks of progress), you'd be able to beat the game really quickly. Still, once you're sufficiently powered up it is pretty fun to play. Despite its flaws, it does enough right that I kept wanting to continue playing. There are a few details that help it stand out. Your life bar is represented by tomatoes, which are also your life-replenishing item (because... you're a vampire?), while enemy life bars are represented by garlic (you also fight several variations of garlic-based enemies). Enemies have levels just like you do, which helps you plan how much to level up (NPCs will sometimes tell you what level a boss is before you reach him). There's also one part early on where you get launched high into the sky (see vid at 8 minute mark). While you soar you hear a tense jingle which slows down and introduces a drum roll before smoothly segueing into the BG theme as you land on a cliff. I don't know why, but I love that shit. This game is just begging for a modern sequel, one that refines the control, balances the mechanics and polishes up the presentation. It isn't quite the gem I remember, but it's a solid and entertaining (if brief) action-RPG romp.

Played some Super Double Dragon yesterday, and it doesn't hold up well.

Some of the graphics look pretty good (I always like neon signs in my games). You've got a decent variety of moves with a punch combo, kick combo, grabbing punch combo, grabbing kick combo, counters, a jump kick and some really fun to use weapons (the nunchucks are great). The music ranges from decent to forgettable, with a few remixes of tunes from the original DD. Once in a while they'll throw in a nice touch like a punching bag you can use to damage enemies (but which will also hit you if you're not careful).

But man, oh man, does the game get boring. You are constantly fighting the same enemies again and again and again and virtually nothing changes. One of the most important strategies for survival is simply to scan every enemy that appears for a knife and staying out of their way when they throw it, since it drains a tremendous amount of life. The enemies aren't particularly interesting either, with a particularly lazy one being a palette swap of the player character. There's only so many times you can watch a pink-shirted guy with swords walk on-screen before you start to question whether this is really worth your time. Unless they show up late in the game, there was no Abobo and no whip-wielding ladies either.

This game really needed a greater variety of enemy types that need to be approached with different strategies, more interesting environments that have an effect on the battles, and deeper fight mechanics. Heck, the NES original had RPG elements with unlockable moves that made it WAY more fun to play than this one. Pass.

A really great find from @Ryanz:

Ryanz said:

Click to expand...

They did a lot of brilliant, beautiful stuff with the NES. I have tremendous respect for people who can do amazing things under extreme limitations.

I bought Crisis Zone (images 3-6) from one of the many retro game shops in Osaka not knowing much about it and I was pretty impressed. Not just by the clever background scrolling tricks, but by keeping the action fast even while it seemed like there was a lot going on.

Battletoads (image 8) had some great effects, along with just being an all-around brilliantly designed game. I'd swear that the ship zooming towards and away from the screen during the intro uses Mode 7. There's some great wavy distortion on the smoke in the inferno level, multiple layers of background in several levels, levels so fast the NES could basically claim to have "Blast Processing", AND tremendous gameplay variety between levels. My personal favorite design gimmick is the first boss, played from the perspective of the boss himself along with red monochrome robo-vision and a visible (and dynamic) targeting system. Freaking brilliant.



I have that Kid Dracula game, too (image 11). It's one of several later generation, polished, and genuinely fun Famicom games that might just be a little too easy for their own good (like Wai Wai World 2 or Splatterhouse Wan Pak Graffiti). Really charming game. The trickiest part for me was answering the Statue of Liberty's trivia questions, since my Japanese wasn't (and still isn't) very strong.



Funny to see a Dizzy game up there (image 10), since it was often Camerica that pushed the NES in ways we didn't usually see in officially licensed games. The Camerica games had some outstanding musical tracks with some truly unique instrumentation.


I have Days of Thunder (image 13) but I must have never played it because damnnnn that looks good. I mean, I get that the track is basically a canned animation and you just move your sprite but that is legitimately smoother than Stunt Trax FX.

Super Spy Hunter (image 16) blew my mind way back when. That track rotating effect alone is probably more impressive than any individual effect I've seen in Crisis Force. And to think it wasn't even developed as a Spy Hunter game! Despite only being given that connection for name recognition after the fact, it actually seems to suit the IP really well.

...Holy shit, that Gaiapolis image (image 18)... I've never even heard of the game but I don't think I've ever seen the NES do multiple layers of a background moving at different speeds while overlapping each other. That shit is off the hook.

How many of these are there... 93???

I wanted to contrast a good retro game and a shitty retro game yesterday.

I started with Batman Returns for the SNES. It's a more than competent beat-em-up that has several redeeming qualities and is generally pretty fun to play. The graphics are great, with big, detailed sprites and suitably dark and Gothic backgrounds. There are some points where most of the area is bathed in shadow, except for light coming in from the windows and illuminating the wall and your sprite... nice. There's a lot of attention to detail, too. When civilians are running past you you can bump into them. I'm a sucker for little details like that. I actually laughed when some terrified civilians and a clown thug got out of an elevator together, since it forced me to imagine a really awkward elevator ride. There are multiple layers of foreground and background scrolling which occasionally is relevant to the action, such as when a crowd of penguins observing you from the sidelines unleashes a torrent of fireworks at you.

There are a lot of nods to the movie, too. You get to fight that organ grinder guy as a boss, and he does use his hidden machine gun. One of the Penguin's attacks is jumping up and biting you on the nose. There's even an in-game scene where the Snow Princess is startled by bats released by the Penguin, causing her to fall off the building to her death. When you encounter the thug holding Selena Kyle hostage, you can re-enact the scene from the movie by firing your grappling hook into the wall behind his head and pulling a chunk of concrete onto him... great touch! You get a few digitized screens of the movie during cut scenes which are decent but not great. It does respect the source material and I thought that added to the immersion.

I really like the combat, too. Punching is satisfying and you can reduce the risk of putting yourself in danger by throwing batarangs that stun foes, leaving them open for attacks or grabbing. And you're definitely going to want to do a lot of grabbing. You can continue to punch a grunt you're carrying, throw him over your shoulder, slam him into the ground, and even (in some areas) toss him into the background where he might smash a window or break a fence post. And if you manage to grab two enemies at once (not all that difficult since you can move while holding an enemy) you can slam their heads together. Feels good. You've also got jump attacks (including a glide), a life-consuming special move, consumable test tubes that damage everyone on screen, and a defensive block. There are a few levels that get rid of the environment's "depth" in favor of straight 2D action, including occasionally awkward platforming (and required familiarity with your grappling tool). On the bright side you fire automatic batarang projectiles every time you punch. There's also an out-of-nowhere Batmobile level that isn't terribly fun but includes a decent pseudo-3D wavy road with dips and hills.

Overall I really enjoyed Batman Returns and kept finding things to be impressed by. It's got a few frustrating parts (the bosses can be pretty cheap and the insta-death pits are agonizing) but it was engaging and rewarding throughout.


To be continued...

So, after the refreshing lark that was Batman Returns, I followed it up in the most logical way... with Batman Forever (SNES).

For context, here's my background with the game:
Rented it with friends as a teen. Was baffled at how terrible it was. Literally unplayable.
Bought it used for a couple of bucks at some point. Played it for a few minutes to see if it worked. Still legitimately surprised at how stunningly awful it was.
Watched the BF speed run in this year's AGDQ. Recognized that although it is every bit as awful as I remember it, there is an underlying system that can be grasped and exploited.

So I went into the experience with an open mind. I was going to give it the old college try and not give up the moment it got annoying. I even remembered some of the mechanics (like firing your grappling hook straight up) which I knew would save me a lot of guesswork at the beginning.

Now I can't describe this game any further without first addressing how strikingly ugly it is. It was released at a time when Mortal Kombat was very popular and in fact the game is based on the MK engine, with digitized character sprites of live actors. They lack detail and animate goofily. Batman in particular looks just awful, with so few colors he looks like a poor-quality monochrome photocopy. Look at this screen shot:


See that guy in the half-purple suit standing in front of that lady? That's TwoFace, and he has a credited make-up artist. Somebody was paid and credited to use presumably professional make up techniques to transform an actor into a believable comic villain, only to have it end up as a pixellated grey smear. It boggles my mind. And don't get me started on the backgrounds. I swear, there were times where I could count 4-5 colors in the entire background. Everything is dark and murky and depressing, there are screen-blocking foreground elements that obscure your playfield, and there are gameplay-essential visual cues that are hidden to all but the trained eye. Just terrible all around.

Oh, and the music is shit. Terrible composition, terrible instrumentation. Just terrible.

Anyway, in the first level I made short work of a few enemies, ascended via grapple to a 2nd-floor room and... I was stuck. There was a closed door on the right, a solid wall on the left, and I couldn't go back down. My buddy mentioned that this game was familiar to him, that he really liked this game and played it a lot as a kid. I reset the game and we started a 2-player co-op run, increasing our chances of figuring out how to progress. Now before you start a level, you are shown the gadgets you will be bringing with you on your mission.



Two of them are fixed and two can be selected from distinct lists. NONE of them come with a description of what they do. NONE of them tell you how to use them in battle. Instead, they come with bizarre and completely unhelpful "stats". Why? I knew going in that I needed Mortal Kombat-esque control inputs to use the gadgets (not that the game ever tells you), so I experimented with a series of standard move inputs, but none of them seemed to do anything. I searched online for a moves list, which I found. Still couldn't use the gadgets. Neither my friend nor I could figure out how to get the button inputs to work. At one point I guessed that we might have accidentally switched the "controller type" setting in the option screen to "B", but this was hard to confirm because we could only access the screen by resetting the game (which we didn't want to do) and because there is no description of what the difference is anyway! In fact, there's no controller map at any point. They never tell you what any of the buttons do. Unbelievable.

...And believe me, you can't just fumble with the controller and figure it out. For example, to fire your grappling hook straight up instead of the default angle, you have to press select (yes, SELECT is your grapple button) and, in the fraction of a second before it fires, press and hold up. It is ridiculously unintuitive, and that goes for every move in the game. That room I originally thought I was "stuck" in? I had to hold R and tap down to jump through the floor, a technique that I was later required to use in a room that gives no indication there's a floor below you. Sometimes I felt like I found a way to semi-consistently throw enemies, only to later find an alternative way that may or may not work better. It feels so sloppy and uncomfortable, it's legitimately a chore to play.

But we didn't want to give up! We abandoned our gadgets altogether (grapple notwithstanding) and just punched/threw every enemy we came upon. Eventually we started to recognize patterns that allowed us to progress. If we reached a dead end, it probably meant there was still an enemy somewhere we had to backtrack to dispatch which would open the exit. We were able to slowly but steadily make progress. When we beat the first level, I was actually psyched... it was a new personal best! Progressing from screen to screen was dull, but doable. Which brings us to the loading screens. Despite being a cartridge game, it has very frequent loading screens between parts of a level. There are MULTIPLE POINTS where you wait through a loading screen before finding yourself in an ascending elevator. That's it. There are no enemies, nothing to fight, nothing to avoid, just an elevator. Followed, of course, by another loading screen. They do this three times. The only other time I've seen that same "sandwich unskippable pointless shit between two loading screens" technique was in Sonic '06. Sonic '06!!! I honestly could not imagine this many bad design decisions being made unless that was their actual intention. It's baffling.

I think we might have passed another level or two. It's hard to keep track because everything looks so similarly bleak. Eventually we just gave up. We still had continues left, but there was no point. My friend insisted that if we had been able to figure out the gadgets it would have been a lot more fun... I have my doubts. If I had to say something positive about Batman Forever, it would be the reflection of your characters' faces in the information monitor. That's a decent effect. And the bad guys all seem to have their own unique names, which is a great idea and provides some laughs. Other than that, easily one of the worst games I've ever played. I'm thinking top 5.

Szlia said:

Tanoomba what's up with the big Batman Returns review without mentioning the amazing music! Some of it is reorchestrations of the Danny Elfman score for the movie, but I believe some of it is original like the crazy circus music that is played during a train level ( I have not played it since the time of release so I may be wrong).

Click to expand...

My bad! The soundtrack is indeed awesome but I was playing with the sound turned down low so as not to interfere with the PC gaming going on at the same time.

pharmakos said:

Original Wiis are super easy to mod dude, mine is where I do all my retro gaming.

WiiBrew only hardware needed is an SD card.

Click to expand...

Do you still need to use the Wiimote when you start up the system? It infuriates me that I need working batteries and two candles (sensor broke) just to select a game from a menu that I'm going to play with a controller anyway.

I've never beat the second quest of the original Legend of Zelda, so I decided I would give it a good go.

I played through the first quest again to get a good feel for it, and after having played the Zelda Randomizer I kind of had a new appreciation for it. Some of the flaws stood out more, too. The rooms that go dark in the dungeons are a momentum killer as you have to go through 2 pause transitions to switch to your candle, use it, and go back to your previous item. That shit drives me crazy in the later levels. It also bugs me that when you continue after dying, you only start with 3 of your total heart containers filled. If you're in a dungeon, this can mean grinding for hearts before a boss which can feel like a chore.

Having said that, the controls have always been super tight and the gameplay demands it. I don't think I ever realized as a kid how arcade-like TLOZ felt, especially in battles with DarkNuts. The sound design is outstanding; besides the timeless and epic BGM tracks, the sound effects are really endearing. Even all these years later, there's a tangible sense of accomplishment as Link gets stronger.

My previous (fairly brief) experiences with the second quest led me to believe it was a simple remix of the first quest, with dungeon entrances in new places and stronger enemies introduced earlier. What really surprised me is how many more tweaks they added. Dungeons now contain several walls you can walk through, some of which are one-way. There are now red and blue skull bubbles in dungeons; the red ones make you unable to use your sword indefinitely, while the blue ones restore that ability. It actually adds a puzzle element to battles where you're already juggling many variables. I'll admit, after the first couple of dungeons I cheated and checked a labeled map. I saw these odd stairway entrances in the middle of empty stretches of ground and tried bombing them open but that didn't work. Tried the whistle and... yup. There are a bunch of new entrances you can only uncover by using the whistle in seemingly random places. I also found an old man in a dungeon who demands "LEAVE YOUR LIFE OR MONEY", forcing me to sacrifice a heart container or 50 rupees. Obviously I'm not going to give him a heart container but I also just bought my second piece of meat after buying the candle, the arrow and the blue ring, so I'm low on funds. This also happens to be the first dungeon where I encounter the "I BET YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE MORE BOMBS" guy, so I've got some grinding ahead of me.



Still, it's surprisingly playable by today's standards. It's WAY more demanding than the first quest (you can't casually get through these DarkNut battles), but that's what makes it all the more satisfying. I haven't beat the fourth dungeon yet and I feel like my familiarity with TLOZ is being pushed to its limits... and that's while cheating!

Oh, and the dungeon maps spell out "Zelda"


On the one hand, I feel like checking a pre-labeled map might be depriving me of part of the experience. On the other hand, not having to randomly explore everywhere and try everything frees me to focus on the mechanics and strategize heart container collection/sword upgrades/item purchases. There's no dead time; it's always do or die. It's also still a lot of fun decades after its release.