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Incline Arcade Adventures - reviews of various arcade games (and may be some for home consoles too)

Do you need a quick guide for emulation and links for game roms ?


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Lutte

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All arcade games are basically coin suckers, how else would've developers made money ? 40 minute games taking 40+ hours of practice to complete it without failing

It really depends. Not all arcade shmups were coin munchers if all you want is a 1cc. Getting good scoring is a different beast altogether and takes a shitton of practice.
1CC any of the Darius, bar maybe G-Darius, isn't a 40 hours long feat, unless you're literally new to shmups in which case it may very well take 40 hours for 1ccing one of the many routes the games provide.
On the other hand, some people, including me, will never have the will to complete a 1cc 2-all of Ketsui (game with a second loop after winning the first run of all stages + true end boss encounter stuff). It's still fun to play and fail it though.

I'd argue the best approach to shmups gaming on a PC is to reset to start when you lose all lives. Don't save state, don't continue. don't throw more virtual coins in MAME (when emulating). Don't. Just accept the loss and restart.
For the purpose of just achieving a 1cc rather than scoring elite shit, shmups are about getting a decent early routing planning and survival right. Keeping enough resources to last the last stretches when you fail some of the more insane stuff. You need to perfect the parts you were failing. Using continues goes against that. Even using save states for whatever level you lost on is wrong. It helps you see the latter levels but doesn't really teach you how to perfect the parts you were failing and is a waste of time. I've 1cc quite a few shmups while mostly failing the latter parts because I had enough lives and bombs accumulated from the first half.

Also, watch super players play on jewtube. In many arcade cultures, watching other people play played as much importance as practicing, when you lost and handed the 'cade to someone else you were observing others fail and win. It's not like being spoiled in an average modern simplistic single player game, it's part of the culture.

Jaimers's channel is great for the huge amount of shmups he covers.


Watching people like these won't make you like them, but will dramatically improve your play nonetheless. Player skill is important, but knowledge acquired about ideal ideal routing and strategies and good moments to use resources and play survival is key.
 
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Silentstorm

Learned
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Apr 29, 2019
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As for me, i just say that people should play shumps however they like, no need to worry about scores or 1CC's, just play them until they stop being fun, that being said, 1CC does give an extra challenge and people practice a lot to do it but it's not required.

Also, what about Metal Slug, that series is hard but so damn good!
 

Sjukob

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Shock Troopers 1997
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First arcade shoot'em'up I've played. The story is your usual stuff: some power tripping evil guy - leader of the gang called "Bloody Scorpions" kidnaps scientist and his granddaughter to use her as a leverage against old man and force him to create a drug that will make super soldiers out of the terrorists, so they can rule over the world and, of course, you have to stop him. There are 8 playable characters and an impressive amount of stages - 16 (I've read that if you decide to change routes you also have to beat additional level, so that adds 3 missions for 19 levels in total, I've never changed routes on my playthroughs) that are devided in three routes (jungle, mountains, valley), although there are no bonus rounds at all, coop supports 2 players.

The differences between characters are not substantial enough for me to write a detailed description of them, so I'll give you a quick rundown. The four defining parameters for characters are: standart weapon, movement speed, special weapon and terrain specialization. The first three are pretty simple: there are two standart weapons in the game - M16 and double barreled M16; movement speed is self explanatory; special weapons seems to have mostly visual differences, but some deal more damage and some characters carry more special ammunition. Terrain specialization works like this - the more skilled the character is for work in certain terrain, the more health you will recover between missions (indicated by the amount of medals on the stage select screen), this varies heavily between everyone and you can get either no health restoration at all or some pretty big boosts. I will go into details as we move on, but for now I want to say that character select screen does really poor job at providing information, because the only two things it shows to you are: character portrait and their special weapon picture.

The asskickers
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You are also given a choice to either go alone or form a squad of three men, you can say it's like a selection of difficulty, lone wolf being the harder one, obviously. If you choose lone wolf mode your character would have a bit more of special ammunition, but still way less than a team of three, you will also heal way less between missions (terrain specialization), health doesn't restore by itself in this game and items that heal you aren't common here. So avoid lone wolf mode, unless you want to challenge yourself. As for team battle mode, 3 characters share the same life bar and ammo for any non standart weapon that you pick up and you can switch between characters at any time.

I would devide roster like this:

1) Loki and Jackal - average speed, standart M16. Jackal is the protagonist of the game and boyfriend of kidnapped girl, if he's not on the team you will miss a couple of romantic cutsceenes, he seems to have the overall best skills at terrain navigation and will heal your team regularly, he also carries the biggest amount of special ammunition - 15.

2) Milky and Marie Bee - fastest speed, standart M16. Any of these two with shotgun is about the most devastating thing you can unleash upon enemies, they allow not only for easier maneuvers but also for easier melee, I will explain later why you might want that. Marie Bee seems to be pretty bad at healing the party.

3) Maru, Big Mama, Southern Cross - slow speed, double barreled M16. Make sure you take one of these with you, the game isn't very generous with weapon pick ups and characters with standart M16 can ger overwhelmed easily by bulkier enemies, not to mention that bosses are huge bullet sponges, so you will really thankful to have somebody with stronger standart weapon. Maru's special weapon seems to be the deadliest in the game, but he's overall the worst character to heal your party. Big Mama carries the least ammount of special ammunition - 8.

4) Rio - garbage, slow and carries a standart M16, his special weapon isn't outstanding either.

The strategy seems pretty simple to me - make sure your team overall matches the terrain, pick somebody with double barreled M16, pick one of the faster girls (optional), last character can be anybody that will heal your team the most in chosen scenario.

Big Mama is bringing the heat
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As far as gameplay goes it's a top down shooter, you can move and shoot in any of 8 directions, if you hold fire (autofire button is not needed here) you can strafe and shoot; you can also dodge, which makes you completely invulnerable for a short time. If you get close to enemies you can melee them, killing them that way gives you various bonuses, most of the time you will get a crystal that raises your score, but sometimes you can get health, weapons, red crystal that clears the entire screen or yellow crystal that makes you invulnerable for a short time. My problem is that game seems to imply that you will melee your enemies, because it's kind of stingy with items, but who would want to fight up close in a shooting game ? Also melee attack is not a 1 hit kill and stronger enemies can take several of them, not to mention killing stronger enemies in melee doesn't lend you bigger rewards, it is still rng heavily skewed towards score raising crystals. It's really unfortunate that game doesn't allow you to go crazy with stronger weapons, because shooting is really satisfying here, there a good amount of gore too (which is disable by default, so make sure to visit settings first) and you can shoot off chunks of enemies bodies, set them on fire or even explode them, though it seems random and sadly doesn't really work with explosives. The weapon loadout is faily standart and should be well familiar to you, there are: machineguns, miniguns, flamethrowers, rocketlaunchers, shotguns, fire railgun and fire rocket launcher; nothing crazy, but as I've said it feels good to shoot them.

The flaming tornado of justice
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There are 16 levels for you to complete, but you only need to finish 6 to beat the game. At the beginning you are given a choice of which route you want to take - mountains, jungle or valley, each of them features 5 unique levels and the final stage is similar for all, additionaly you can switch routes after beating stage 3 (or 4, sorry I forgot which one exactly), but there's no real reason to do that, because your party is likely to be better suited for terrain that you started with. Jungle route seems to be the intended one, as it is the most graphicaly impressive (more explosions and more variety between stages) and there are more unique encounters than on other routes, it's also the easiest route to take; mountains are the hardest to beat, because there is stuff that restricts your movement and it features the biggest amount of flying enemies (I will explain this later), it's also the only route where you can find power up that boosts your speed (there is one in valley route and jungle doesn't have any); valley is about water, you are going to be swimming on boats, moving through cannals and sewers, I say it's the most balanced route difficulty wise.

Fighting regular enemies isn't that hard, their projectiles are slow and they don't shoot a lot of them, so you wouldn't have too much problem avoiding them with your dodge, the realy difficulty here is that your mistakes accumulate in the long run, as I've said earlier health only restores between stages and only if your characters match the terrain, health items are pretty scarce here, you can take about 8-10 hits before dying and you blink after taking a hit (invulnerability window). That whole terrain stuff seems a bit random to me, on some stages characters will provide healing on others they won't, even if they seem to be specialized in the area that you chose. There are not many non-standart enemies for you to fight, the most notable battle is probably a pair of ninjas at a bar that only appears on jungle route, but most of the time you are just shooting regular terrorists, it's a shame because enemy variety isn't small, it's just that most of them are barely used, though you are unlikely to be bothered with that, because game is short and everything explodes. The most annoying ones are flying terrorists, they move fast and can shoot you from point blank not giving you chance to react to their attack.

The bosses are hard and this is where game difficulty jumps significantly. Developers had a simple idea, restrict player's movement (not on all bosses though), make bosses shoot more projectiles than a gang of elite enemies and give them a fuckload of hp, seriously the bosses are damage sponges, they don't die that fast even if you throw a good amount of special weapons at them, it really is too much for the amount of shit they shoot at you; some of them have several lives too, like first you blow a gigantic tank that blocks 60% of screen and relentlessly spams you with chaingun, rockets, energy weapons and flamethrowers and then you have to beat it's driver, who isn't as dangerous but still can take a while to go down. So, save special weapons for bosses, there's no real reason to use them on regular enemies, because characters with double barreled M16 will plow through everything anyways and don't forget to use those double barreled M16 on bosses, otherwise you're going to have a really bad time.

Flamethrower is best used on a boat
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The plot is explained to you between missions, after completing one you get to watch a cutscene, there is also a cutscene that is shown as demo before starting screen, but you can safely skip it. There's lots of broken english in this game, seems like devs were translating the game on their own, if you took time to look at the game's poster you could've noticed the example of it. There are a couple of lines between missions that vary depending on which character you have selected, there are also endings for each character that are shown as pictures.

We haven't talked about presentation, haven't we ? It's fine, the graphics are nothing mindblowing and even plain at times, but they do the job well, the animations are fine and I've never felt like they were badly done, unfortunately most bosses are reused and are just palette swaps of each other; characters are generously animated, but for some reason most of the weapons show as standart M16 in their hands, only rocket launcher and railgun change the display, was it so much of a trouble to draw various weapons ? Especially when they drew so many variations of ending screen. Music is good, mostly consisting of loud rock tunes, but it's not something you will remember for long.

The game's biggest strength besides catchy action is variety, depending on the route you take you get to go through various obstacles, ride bikes, climb mountains, shoot different weapons and defeat some unique enemies, the big roster helps at spicing up gameplay too.

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Overall, Shock Troopers while not being mindblowing is still a very solid and enjoyable game that provides a good variety of scenarios, it's short and intense, so you won't get bored.

There's another Shock Troopers game called "Shock Troopers 2nd squad", I initially planned for this review to cover both games, but it didn't happen. I heard that 2nd squad was a dissapointing follow up, but I still decided to give it a go... My thoughts ? It sucks. The graphics got worse, there are less characters with more variety (different weapons and stats), but there's less "character" in them, difficulty went from manageable to "fuck you, lol" enemies kill you in 2 hits and there's way more shit on the screen and shooting feels worse. I stomached it up to level 3, but after that I decided that I will not be playing it anymore. See it here for yourself if'd like.

Additional stuff:

More screenshots, warning they are big
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Gameplay videos

 
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Sjukob

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I keep uncovering something new and cool every day, yesterday I learned about OpenBOR. Send help, I can't handle all this incline alone. :negative:
 
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Damn, I actually wanted to include Shock Troopers in this thread. I think it's one of the best "super trooper" arcade games apart from Metal Slug series. Just as you mentioned, there is a lot of levels and it can be replayed many times. The blood/violence is available through service mode, and it really makes the difference in the presentation. The second part feels weaker, the graphic looks worse and the number of enemies makes it really hard and unfair. As for the soundtrack, it's one of the most memorable one when it comes to SNK games. A mix of jungle/techno with a nice wall of guitars makes a great background for the carnage which is happening on the screen.


OpenBOR looks fun at the beginning, but the quality of the games is very varied. I liked the Night Slashers X, which is an original arcade with more monsters and new moves. Playing the classics is the first step, since you will be mostly catching references from other titles, because making good sprites/sounds/music from the scratch isn't a priority in the projects which you will be able to run.
 

Silentstorm

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Oh yeah, what about Golden Axe:Revenge Of Death Adder?

That's a great game that doesn't get enough love.

Ninja Baseball Bat Man has a really amazing title and it's pretty fun.

Elevator Action Returns is an example of a sequel done right and it's amazing.

And what about just bloody awful arcade games or very flawed ones, like Bomb Jack Twin?

NO, NOT BOMB JACK, that one is a classic, i am talking about the much less known sequel Bomb Jack Twin that has cute graphics:
bjtwin_scr01.gif

And has many great animations, but it's just really really HARD!

Seriously, this game is the very definition of a quarter muncher, before you know it, the screen will be full of fast and hard to dodge enemies and it's hard enough you can't play for long or find yourself enjoying the game due to how blatantly cheap it is, the worst part is that during the very brief moments where the game isn't being a jerk, the game is really fun and feels like it could have been a wonderful sequel.

Honestly, part of me still wants to see Bomb Jack Twin get a port on PC(or Switch since it seems to get everything) but where the developer gives an option to make the game a bit more balanced.
 

Sjukob

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Kung-Fu Master 1984 and Renegade (Nekketsu KĹŤha Kunio-kun) 1986
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So I wanted to go back and see how beat'em'up genre has started and these games are it's prime roots.

The first one - Kung-Fu Master, you play as Thomas (very fitting name for asian martial artist) and beat the crap out of some thugs that abducted your girlfriend.

High action Kung-Fu by 80s standarts
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I could've stopped right there, because the game is incredibly simple, but it wouldn't be fun to read without me talking about game's quirks, right ? Thomas can kick and punch, these attacks are controlled by separate buttons; as for movement, you can walk, crouch, jump and it's a 2D game, so you can only move left or right. The game's goal is not just rescuing your girl, but also getting as many points as possible, kicking gives you less points but has more range and punches aren't as safe to use, but reward you with more points. Majority of enemies die in single hit and just charge in blindly trying to grapple you, which prevents you from doing anything unless you shake them off, some punks carry throwing knives and run away if you try to approach them. Enemy spawns are randomized and the game generously spams you with hordes of them from both directions at once, to finish the stage you have to beat the boss, they aren't anything special save for the last two, 4th boss can only be damaged with crouching attacks and the last one randomly blocks your attacks.

4th boss tries to look cool until he gets punched in the nuts
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The game is very punishing with it's difficulty, you just can't fuck up, make one mistake and you're dead. Missed a single thug that managed to grab you ? Well, a couple more closed in a drained 1/3 of your life before you shook them off and while you were busy with them, another guy threw a knife in your face draining 1/3 of your life too. After some practice I managed to beat first level without dying, but at the second level I said "Fuck it" and began using save states. There are 5 stages in total and if you don't die the game can be finished in 10 minutes or less, but as you would expect it's hard to do so, if you die the floor starts from the beginning. At the second floor you will be spammed with snakes (that cannot be killed), dragons and bombs, each attack drains half of your life bar, you also notice that you can't jump forward unless you've been walking for some time, making dodging snakes just annoying. At 4th stage there are butterflies that fly and come at you from every possible direction, you can't win a fight with them, just run away and try to take as little damage as possible. Once you beat the game you are shown a screen of Thomas and his girl hugging each other and then the game starts over with increased difficulty, get your highscore to new heights kid.

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Renegade is whole other deal. It plays like your familiar beat'em'up (it's Double Dragon's father after all), but at the same time it gives a big finger to the habbits that you developed playing games of the 90s, it's like Double Dragon but even more grounded. This game might feature the heaviest graphical edditing done for western audience, Japanese version is about some kid protecting his friends from bullies and western one features your standart street fighting with thugs, also the endings are different. When I launched the game for the first time I couldn't even understand how to attack properly; you can walk, run and jump in X,Y,Z axis as usual, but you have 2 buttons for attacking - one for attacking to the left and one for attacking to the right. So you have to press the correct button depending on which direction you are facing, if you face left and press left attack you will punch, while right attack will deliver a turn around kick. It might be pretty confusing, because protagonist faces whatever direction he pleases, just forget about the visuals and remember this: you are actually facing the same direction you are moving. Yeah, you don't have total control and can't turn your back on enemies if they only approach you from one direction. The game's fighting system is surprisingly deep for it's time, I'll just give a link to the movelist so you can see for yourself, it's almost like Denjin Makai, but without special moves. It's pretty hard too, there are less enemies, but they are stronger and smarter, it will take you some time to understand controls and figure out AI in this game, at first it might seem ridiculous, but eventually you will figure out how to cheese even bosses.

Protagonist looks just like Jean-Claude Van Damme
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After some pratice (something like 10 or more attempts) I figured out how to play and beat the game no problem (at least the first three levels). My advice is to spam jump kick, because it does a lot of damage and is safe to use 98% of the time. Kicks in general are way to go in this game, because their range and damage is greater, if you try to punch several enemies at the time you're likely going to get hit inbetween your attacks. This is especially true for bosses, it's pretty pointless to try and punch them, they will always counter attack you inbetween your hits. You can't even grab them until their health drops really low, but I guess it's fine because if you grab someone you can just beat them to death without letting go. You can take quite a lot of hits before your health bar is depleted, so the game isn't that punishing until you get to the last stage. What you have to keep in mind is the timer, as you only have 2 minutes to beat each level and that means you can't play too defensively.

Protagonist demonstrating the awesomeness of the jumping kick
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Each level besides first one features various gimmicks: bikers that try to run you over in second level, all enemies (besides boss) wield weapons in the third one and the last level is... special. Surprisingly, developers accounted for such gimmicks and gave enemies different stats and AI. On the first level there's nothing bizzare and thugs have more health and decent combat skills (I mean how often they dodge your attacks, how they reach to your approach and what do they do if you try to run at them), there's also quite a lot of them. On second level to compensate for dealing with bikers you fight less enemies overall, though their stats and skills remain the same as in previous level. On the third level you only fight girls and they all carry weapons, but their health is really low (some will die in just 1 jumping kick, others in 2) and they can't put up much of a fight, except that fat bitch who's the boss on this level. She likes to ram you whenever you miss an attack, I found out that the only real way to deal with her is to use wall jump kicks. On the last stage game deisgn get's pretty much thrown out of the window, because everything kills you in one hit. Probably some jerk off cunt that was thinking about ways to make players spend coins thought that it was funny or clever, oh well you can be cheap too, just use save states. At least enemies there are pretty slow and suck at combat, but the boss constantly tries to shoot you and of course his bullets pass through his buddies no problem. The level is not actually that hard, but the idea is completely retarded and it's an obvious attempt of cash grab. I actually like first level the most, combat system is deep enough for you to have fun without any gimmicks even if you're mostly spamming jump kicks.

Of course, in the end you get to kiss a girl, though I have no idea because she doesn't appear anywhere except ending
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The game loops after you beat it allowing you to rack up your score if you care about it, I have no idea how many times you're allowed to beat per 1 coin though.

As for graphics and music, they are nothing special, but I think they are alright for a game this old. The game has a tendency to lag, especially on second and third levels, but it's not as bad as Double Dragon.

Overall it's a pretty nice game and very short too (4 stages in total and each one has a 2 minute timer), I like it way more than Double Dragon, there's no coop but I think hardware couldn't really support it at the time. Initially I had troubles running the game properly (it crashed on pause, save, load and fullscreen), but later I found an actual good version of game's rom on some site that doesn't even load properly and was able to beat the game without issues.

It was an interesting course for me and now I have an idea of how the earliest beat'em'up games were played. I say Kung-Fu master can be safely skipped, but Renegade is pretty cool game with combat system that even surpasses beat'em'ups from the 90s (like Konami games, for example), though not an easy one to get into.

Gameplay videos

 
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Sjukob

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Ninja Destroyer Unkillable Cat Silentstorm
Based on what I wrote above, should I continue with 80s games, like Double Dragon or something or will I just get fucked in the ass ?

Golden Axe:Revenge Of Death Adder?
Ninja Baseball Bat Man has a really amazing title and it's pretty fun.
Elevator Action Return
Yeah, as I've said these will come eventually, no platformers or similar shit, though. I don't like such games.
 

Unkillable Cat

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I am well familiar with Renegade on the Amstrad CPC, as that platform got a decent conversion of the game. IIRC the controls there are even weirder because it only has one fire button.

The Amstrad version is also more mature. Dead enemies leave puddles of blood, and once you beat the game the player character grabs the girlfriend's ass.

The Amstrad (and other 8-bit platforms) also has two 'sequels' in the form of Target: Renegade and Renegade 3: The Final Chapter but I'm unsure of whether they ever got arcade releases. The former is alright, but the latter is absolute dogshit as he travels through time to save his girlfriend.
 

Sjukob

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Well, I checked Renegade follow ups and they look like something that is made for gameboy if it was in color. I don't think I'll ever play games of 8-bit era, they are too primitive for me. And I also don't really fancy playing 16-bit consoles, games for them still seem like a massive nosedive from arcades, though some look interesting and charming (I want to try out Demon's Crest eventually) and maybe I'll get to them in some time, but arcades are definately first in the line.

I also dislike how some games that were made for arcade cabinets got sequels made for home consoles, the first Splatterhouse despite being a really old game looks alright even now, but it's sequels for sega mega drive are just bleh, worse in every way.
 
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I would play first Double Dragon, since it had so much influence and it isn't very long, thanks to powerful elbow strike ;).

The sequel was rushed, a typical slam dunk but lacking the polished feeling of the original. And the third part, The Rosetta Stone, which was not made by the original team. The game, where you needed to put coins into the machine to buy faster attack moves or special moves, and other things like for example weapons. So it is famous for introducing microtransactions, but everything else is just bad, and doesn't feel like Double Dragon. The only good version of the game was on Amiga, excellent smooth animation and music.

 

Unkillable Cat

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I don't think I'll ever play games of 8-bit era, they are too primitive for me.

You will be missing out.

I'm not saying you'll be missing out on something major, as the 8-bits also have their fair share of crap titles, but there are titles from that era that still hold up, even today. This goes for beat'em-ups as well as other genres.
 

Batman

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I wasn't in a condition to read all the posts about the games, but I want to say that I still play MAME games and I Have a lot of Rom's in my collection folder. Still playing Metal Slug, Marvel vs Capcom, Virtua Racing, and some more games. I love MAME games and I love to see more reviews for more games and I will continue reading these reviews when I will have more free time.
 
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Silentstorm

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Well, like everything, it depends, i still like Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man along some others, but yeah i typically ignore the 8-Bit era of arcade games.

Probably doesn't help that many of them have either been surpassed or the franchise kept on with better games, Space Invaders?

Who cares when Space Invaders Extreme is a thing?

Heiankyo Alien, the percursor to Pac-Man?

Yeah, whatever, Heiankyo Alien 3671 exists and it's awesome.

Pac-Man?

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ and 2 are a thing.

Robotron 2084?

Geometry Wars says hello, or the many other twin-stick shooters out there like Tesla VS Lovecraft.

Even Galaga kept on being a series and has games that surpass it such as Galaga'88 or Cosmo Gang The Video.

I CARE far more about the beat'em ups since the arcades got a lot of them that either got bad ports or never left the arcade until a long time passed and since the genre died mostly down, no one has really managed to surpass them, that and Bubble Bobble like games, kinda suprised that indies aren't going for those, that game, Rainbow Islands, Snow Bros, Tumblepop, Bomb Jack and Rod Land were pretty fun, dunno why one screen platformers of that kind seem to be so ignored.
 

Sjukob

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Well, I'm afraid I won't be writing review for double dragon either, the game lags like hell and a lot of people reported similar issues. Developers of emulators say that this is due to hardware limitations of the past and original laged just as hard. May be I'll tolerate the lag, but I don't guarantee anything, I remember that me and my friend played this game on genesis and even completed it without struggling. I might want to revisit it and refresh my memories.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Well, I'm afraid I won't be writing review for double dragon either, the game lags like hell and a lot of people reported similar issues. Developers of emulators say that this is due to hardware limitations of the past and original laged just as hard. May be I'll tolerate the lag, but I don't guarantee anything, I remember that me and my friend played this game on genesis and even completed it without struggling. I might want to revisit it and refresh my memories.

I found this incredulous at first as I had played Double Dragon in the arcades 30+ years ago and didn't remember any lag, but after checking several gameplay videos it's clear the game is double laggin'. ;)
 
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Sjukob

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Jul 3, 2015
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Double Dragon 1987
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The game made by the same guys who created Renegade, it was released a year later. It doesn't have an ingame story, just some guys kidnap a girl and you go after them. There are 4 stages in total (although you can say that there are 5, since third one is divided in two) and coop, as you could've guessed, supports two players.

Game's combat is a simplified version of Renegade's system, directional attack buttons were removed and now your character attacks in the direction he's facing, turn around attacks are still here, but now they are executed by pressing attack+jump buttons simultaneously. You can kick or punch your enemies, grab system is essentially the same as in Renegade - whack somebody a few times to make them duck and move in for grapple, jumping attacks are easier to use, but you can't run or attack downed enemies. There is still a decent AI in place and enemies aren't as easy to approach, but once you figure it out they are even easier to bullshit than the ones in Renegade.

What's going on here ?
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Due to this I didn't like gameplay in Double Dragon, your ultimate move is a turn around attack - elbow smash, it's so good there's no real reason to use anything else. If you try to fight face to face you are likely going to get hit back and will waste more time trying to land your hit on somebody, because enemies dodge (move backwards) from your attacks. However when you turn your back on them, they forget all safety measures and will just charge you blindly allowing you to hit them easily, your elbow has nice damage with great range and knock down ability, so be prepared to spam it. Punks here also have a case of hp bloat and you will take some time to go down, this is especially bad with big guys, they have more hp than bosses. There's little variety for enemies too: thug, elite thug, big guy and a chick, even bosses fit these types except for the last one. There are only 4 weapons available for use: bat and whip can only be used in melee and knife and bombs are for throwing, all of them are useful, but you may struggle a bit using bat or whip, because of said tendency of enemies to stay away from your attacks. AI will also try and pick up weapons and throwable objects to use against you, logical choice, but it's overly zealous at that making it predictable and vulnerable to attacks (stand at the item and beat everbody who rushes to it) it also tries to flank you all the time, so walls can be abused easily as well.

Hulk made it here too as one of the bosses
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Stages are alright, scenery is varied and there are even some traps for you to avoid, though I didn't really like how they were implemented here, because developers were obviously trying to cheese the player with them. On third stage you jump over a hole in the bridge and encounter a big guy immediately, unless you think fast you are going to get thrown into that hole and die instantly. On level 4 traps come out without a warning and they take 3/5 of your life bar if you get hit. Can't say how I feel about graphics and music, I have no idea if they were good by 80s standarts, but I thought they were decent. As for game's difficulty, developers were aiming for more realism, knife and bombs can fuck up you easily taking 2/5 or more of your life bar away, guys with bats can easily knock you down and have clear advantage if you try to approach them directly, mind that all of this applies to enemies as well. There are no health restoring items at all and the only way to heal is to finish the stage, at least you get a full bar back. You get 2 lives for one coin and can earn additional ones for getting enough points, but you are unlikely to get more than 2. Protagonists can take a good beating before going down and I could've said that the game is fair enough with health and damage ratios, if enemies weren't such bloated hp assholes, but at least there aren't a lot of them and you never fight more than 4 at once. It's not a hard game at all, just make sure to abuse elbow strike. There's also a headbutt attack that's executed by double tapping forward, it's a useless shit that constantly gets in your way when you try to move, big thanks to an idiot who programmed this.

Final boss, I'm not sure that he knows how to shoot his gun
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I even found final boss to be really easy, he might seem threatening with his gun, but I completed the game 2 times and never seen him shoot it, keep beating him with a bat or elbow, he can't put much of a fight and will go down pretty quickly. In the end you rescue the girl and get to live a long and happy life with her, if you are playing coop then you will have to fight your partner for the right to own that pussy, guess protagonists didn't learn one of the life's main principles "bros before hoes". As a finishing note I want to say that game runs like ass, it lags constantly and there's nothing you can do, people say it used to lag that way on arcades too and emulators are working correctly, everybody has that problem, so you'll have to accept it I guess. It's a very short game and can be completed in 10-20 minutes, so you might be able to stomach it for that time.

Overall I didn't hate the game, but I also didn't like it, you might want to play it if you are interested in genre's history, but otherwise it can be safely skipped.

 
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Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Yeah, Double Dragon is one of those games that didn't age as well as one would have hoped, or isn't as good as one remembers, honestly, you are much better off just playing the Capcom Beat'Em Ups or some others rather than Double Dragon, the first three games really.

Still, the fact that Co-Op ends in a match between the two players is still a cool idea, but besides that, Double Dragon isn't a game i particularly look forward to playing nowadays.
 

Batman

Literate
Joined
May 7, 2019
Messages
5
Where is the review for Metal Slug X I can't find it, for me is the best game, Double Dragon is a good game but Metal Slug for me is the best MAME game ever created.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Forgotten Worlds isn't that bad a game, actually, it's still a fun shooter, granted, not the best shooter in arcade history, but its still a fun game.
 

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