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

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Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
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Messages
27,088
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Two dudebros floating through space shooting everything that moves?

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It's alright, as Silentstorm said.

The words "small fortune" reminded me of one that game I enjoyed immensely in the arcades - Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road Racer. It was a blast back then, and I'm uncertain on what grounds it should be considered
rating_oldman.png
today.

ivan-iron-man-stewarts-super-offroad-background-1.jpg


(OK, so maybe the poster.)
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Double Dragon Gold 2011 (OpenBOR)
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Alright, I actually finished this game and can now give you a proper rundown, it's a fan remake of Double Dragon 1 and 2. Double Dragon Gold is devided in three chapters, the first two copy DD 1 and 2 stories and levels without adding anything special, but the third one is some sort of author's revision of Double Dragon Advance mixed with DD3. There are no cutscenees or anything and storytelling is on the level of the first game - something happens to the girl and protagonists venture onward to break some faces. Each campaign consists of 5/6 short levels, you have to beat prior campaign in order to unlock the next one and the further you go the more difficult the game becomes. There are more playable characters now, Billy and Jimmy got a pair of additional palettes to allow for 4 player coop. After finishing each campaign you will be shown a hint about how to do a certain move, if you don't care about author's intentions than you can scroll down and find pictures of those hints.

The game fixed a lot of problems I had with the first Double Dragon - hp bloat (there are even hp bars for enemies now), controls, combat and most importantly there's no lag at all. Some of the fixes don't solve the problems completely but it's definitely better now.

Moommyyy
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The combat system is basically Double Dragon 2, but special attacks are much easier to input, there are also moves from Double Dragon Advance with blocking and running, dedicated button was added for rear attacks and unlike in Renegade or Double Dragon 2 it always throws an attack behind you no matter which direction you are facing. Most of the weapons that were present in DD 1 and 2 and Advance are also available here, the most notable missing item is dynamite which didn't make it here for some reason. Enemies are also taken from said games with a couple of exceptions.

As you would expect there's plenty of author's changes and one you immediately notice is a complete destruction of game's difficulty via huge number of continues - 10, scroll down to the end of this post to find out how to reduce them. Others include reduction of enemies health, slightly altered encounters, sprites, attacks and AI. I don't have much experience with Double Dragon series so I'm just going to describe how I felt about this game in general.

In first Double Dragon your movelist was basically reduced to elbow strike, because it was crazy OP and approaching enemies face to face wasn't easy. OP moves are still present here (elbow was massively nerfed though) and you are going to be spamming them a lot, but I feel like combat is more varied overall because you can't rely on one attack only and even the said OP moves need to combined with others. For example enemies simply can't defend against running attacks so you use them if you want a reliable knockdown, but the damage of such attacks is low and if you want to beat punks faster you have to take risks, and here comes moveset imbalance.


The third campaign, the first fight. You're about to get gangraped from the start.
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You want to knock down enemies because it's the easiest way to approach them, only elites and bosses are invulnerable when they wake up, so you can just stand and spam your attack near a downed punk for guaranteed hits. The problem is that hyper knee and tornado kick are absolutely fucking broken. Their damage is huge and they give a lot of invulnerability time, but they are kind of slow to fire, here comes the ultimate combo wombo. Knock down somebody with running attack and while they wake up your tornado kick/hyper knee has enough time to prepare, so stand over somebody and execute the special, watch enemy getting hit for a fuckload of damage and even if they have any wake up attacks that give them invulnerability they are not going to beat yours, because your invulnerability massively outlasts theirs. It also doesn't cost you anything to spam these moves, they don't drain your life and there isn't any power gauge. When it comes to weapons, whip is the deadliest one in the game due to it's huge range that allows you to attack anything without being in any danger of getting hit, but the further you go the rarer it becomes.

It's pretty easy, but I did not find it as retarded as DD 1 elbow spam. AI is very defensive here so enemies won't just walk into your attacks, though sometimes they walk offscreen for no apparent reason. You won't find opponents that are agressive until the end of second campaign, so most of the time you will be the one doing the first move, don't take it as a difficulty downgrade, because enemies have a great sense of reach just like in others Double Dragon games and will slap you in the face as soon as they can, they are also given a slightly better Z axis range on their attacks compared to yours, so it's not as easy to cheese them.

At first I found this game to be pretty tough, but once you learn the tricks I described above you will notice that it is easy, save for the few fights. Whatever you can't land your specials on can be spammed to death with running attacks, like Willy (who learned to shoot here btw and does that a lot) who might give you problems with massive range on his melee, but put him against the wall and just run kick him to death, he wouldn't even be able to do anything. Doppleganger fight in the end of second capmpaign is probably the most technical one since he has all the moves you do and that means i-frames spam, but he doesn't hit hard and I wasted him first try and lost about half of the life bar. The two final bosses are honestly pretty retarded, you will fight Willy once again but he will be supported by an infinite number of elite crooks (up to 4 at once) and there's only one wall to bang him against and it's smaller than the others, and final boss goes like this - make single mistake and you're dead, was nice to know you. Other than that there are no bullshit fights in the game, so you might want to lower number of continues to 3 or 2 (or even 1 if you are DD veteran) and leave the number of lives at 3.

I didn't know we were part of sado-maso clan
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However there is a number of downgrades compared to DD 1, 2 and Advance, they are:
1) Enemies can't run
2) Enemies don't drop weapons when they are knocked down
3) Weapons don't show on enemies sprites, so you can't say if they are carrying something unless they die or attack
4) Enemies don't pick up weapons or at least are not inclined to do so
5) There are no throwable items and weapons (except knife) can not be thrown
6) You can not use specials while carrying weapons, this made me avoid everything except whip, because tornado kick and hyper knee are that good
7) Certain traps were replaced with others more primitive ones, like the pushing blocks in the final level of DD 1 are now spears coming from the floor
8) Doppleganger doesn't have shadow attack, at least I didn't see him using it
9) There are no Five Emperors in the game, you fight Raymond and his recolored clones instead
10) Some enemies lost their unique entrances, like big guys no longer break walls they just spawn off screen
11) Amount of health doesn't influence recovery speed after getting knocked down, everyone gets up at fixed speed no matter current health level

There might be something else that I didn't notice or just don't know. Overall I liked this game and it is the best experience I've had with Double Dragon so far, it also introduced me to some of the kickass music from the series. Double Dragon Gold might not be an amazing "remake", but it's an enjoyable game nonetheless.




No additional screenshots this time, because there's not much point as the game copies DD 1 and 2 and I didn't make many. Moveset is available in the game itself as well (make sure to scroll it to the end, so you know how to do tornado kick), so here are the pictures of secret moves that are shown to you after you finish one of the campaigns. And after you beat the game three times you can play as any character in the game except doppleganger.
Open-BOR-2019-05-15-20-49-00-38.png

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Gameplay video


EDIT:
My only problem is that you are given 9 continues from the start, which is way too much and removes challenge and I haven't found a way to lower it
I managed to find a way to do that. You will have to unpack game's .pak file, but getting it to work was a pain in the ass. Download OpenBOR assests or whatever here, the things that we are going to use are located in "tools>borpak>scripts" (but download the entire archive just to be sure) there are 2 .bat files (packer and paxplode) that don't work without an .exe file, which is missing for some fucking reason. Grab the borpak.exe here and put it in the same folder as those 2 .bat files, now paxplode.bat will unpack .pak files, to do so just drag them over .bat file. After the unpacking finishes a "data" folder will appear in the same directory where your .pak was, this folder contains all the resources of the game. For Double Dragon Gold open level.txt file and find lines that define the number of continues and lives for each episode, edit them as you please, I assume it works similarly for other games, don't forget to save the changes. After that you need to pack that "data" folder back into .pak file. How do you do that ? Drag the folder into packer.bat ? Of course not, because it doesn't fucking work (at least it didn't work for me)! Create new .txt file put this line (without quotes) over there "borpak -b -d data mod.pak" and nothing else, change the format of the file to .bat (through "rename file" option) and now you have a packing tool. Place the .bat file you created and "data" folder in the same directory where borpak.exe is located and drag the "data" folder into .bat file, now it actually works and will pack your stuff into "mod.pak" file. After that you can rename it and put back to "paks" folder and finaly play the game.

What the fuck is that ?! Why the fuck you have to do all this shit just to change the number of lives and continues ?! Fucking why is it not an ingame option ?! What an absolute fucking mess!
 
Last edited:

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Gaiapolis 1993
eah.png


Once again I couldn't find a poster with good resolution, but I think starting screen looks good enough. This is another game from Konami featuring 3 playable characters and a big number of stage that I haven't bother to count, but sources say it's 17, coop supports 2 players. Just like Metamorphic Force this an original entry (i.e. it features it's own universe). This a rather story heavy game for arcades, after each mission there's a cutscene with dialogues, it's also the first arcade I've seen that uses a password system in case you quit before finishing, so you can continue from where you left.

Protagonists, the supposed dragon looks more like a dog.
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You can play as either human - Gerard Himerce, prince of Avalon; dragon - Duke Galahad (who has an abnormally large ass for some reason); fairy halfbreed - Elain Shee. There are no real differences between them, except that fairy can't use shields (she can still block like the others) and her spinnning attack is done differently. Just like other Konami games gameplay is very simple: you have regular combos; block that is done by holding down attack button; spinning attack - do a clockwise (counter-clockwise for fairy) rotation; running attack (you can't actually run in this game) double tap any direction, hold it if you want to run a longer distance before attacking; magic that you acquire by collecting crystals, it grows stronger if you get more crystals without using magic; pets which come in three different kinds, collect corresponding eggs to increase their max health, press "pet" button to let it go loose and attack enemies, press button again to recall and let it restore it's health. Characters gain experience by attacking enemies (max level is 30) and collecting items, with each level your health and damage increases, there are some secrets on levels for you to find, they can grant you health, pets, items or even unlock secret levels for you, though I didn't really bother myself to find them.

At least he can breath fire
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The game has great graphics with lots of special effects, that it can't handle at times, so at times you can experience some lagging, there's great variety in scenery, though for some reason the game's screen has very small width, I suppose hardware just couldn't handle such graphics in proper resolution. Music is nothing amazing (like it was in Metamorphic Force, for example) it's fairly average and forgettable. And that's all positive/neutral things I can say about this game and now I'm about to take a massive dump on it, because it's completely fucking horrible !

Major fuck up â„–1 - the gameplay is a complete fucking ass. 90% of time you are going to spam your regular attack, because it has the best damage in most scenarios, sometimes you might do a spinning attack, but have fun inputing that fucking thing, running attack with it's horrible damage is mostly useless, though you can try and cheap bosses and certain enemies with it, also you can't attack knocked down enemies to make process go faster. Your character can't fucking move for shit and running attack doesn't help much, screen moevement is also incredibly delayed, at times I have to walk at the edge of it for a few seconds before it begins to scroll. So, you have groups of enemies to battle, but your maneuverability is almost non-existent, great fucking job ! Can blocking save you ? Well, kind of... Most of the attacks in the game are unblockable and you have to actually face enemies to block them, good thing that blocking massively reduces damage you take and after you take damage your character blinks allowing for a brief invulnerability, so one of the best strategies is to get hit while blocking and attack enemies while you blink. Why's that ? because almost everything can hit you back while you are hitting it and you die really fast in this game.

You don't have to choose in cases like this, just grab everything (including the priestess), you are a fucking dragon
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A lot of enemies deal damage just by fucking touching you ! JUST WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT ABOUT THIS ?! In the game where you can barely move around and have to fight hordes in a very limited space, you can be fucking killed by touching a random crocodile or some other shit ! Due to this your pets are almost useless, because they will quickly get killed just by running into enemies. And enemies quickly turn into hp bloated cunts, that can also protect themselves with shields or just block your attacks with weapons. The bosses are outright retarded, these are the most bullshit, unfun and unfair encounters I have ever seen. Not only they take a lot of space by themselves (and also fucking damage you if they touch you) and have huge range on their attacks, they are also faster than you, have plenty of invulnerability frames and a lot of hp (final boss has 60 fucking health bars and pre-final boss has 72 bars split between 3 mages), unless you saved some powerful spell for them you are pretty much fucked, you are going to just run around without really being able to dodge their attacks and if you try to block, they will either immediately follow up with another or just run away. If you don't want to die, you can cheese them with running attacks or some other shit, but it's so fucking tedious. Not all of them are like this, but 90-95% are and you will experience this as early as encountering the second boss. The game is very greedy with health items at times, the worst case of this is when you go through dark tunnel (I don't remember it's name already) fight a lot of tough enemies and boss at the end and then proceed to fight another boss with a lot of phases, during this time you only get 1 health restoring item and it's a weak one, mind that you don't recover health after beating a level. Also, there are no additional lives or anything, 1 coing = 1 life, so keep throwing you coins at us kids, we really need your money huha ! At first I thought that western game version was harder, just like it was with Metamorphic Force, but japanese version has all the same shit.

Fighting crocodiles among some roman-like flooded ruins
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Major fuck up â„–2 - the game is too long for how simple and awful it is. You will spend at least 1 hour to finish this crap and if you take your time to avoid dying and try to find secrets, you can easily reach 2 hours of playtime before being done with this turd. This probably comes from a game's plot that tries to be epic and give you some sense of adventure, but it's just another retarded and simple fantasy (featuring broken english as usual) story about saving the world from some evil. I don't come playing arcade games expecting a great story and I don't even hate this game's plot ot anything, but while making Gaiapolis developers obviously forgot about managing game's length, hence why there's a password system in place. So the primary motivation for somebody to continue playing ("playing" it's just that I don't know english verbs that describe a person moving through an ocean of shit) is to watch cutsceenes and read boring dialogues, at least the pictures are done pretty well. There's also no variety of any sorts, before final level you get to fly on some platform and have to collect items while avoiding obstacles, but besides that there's nothing else to spice up the gameplay.

I think this picture provides a good description of game's challenge (protip - block)
fba64-2019-05-10-21-39-45-68.png


I think that's about everything I have to say about this game. Fuck this shit, stay away from it. There's only one positive thing about Gaiapolis - graphics, only launch it if you want to enjoy some pictures and forget about completing it without dying, it's just not worth it. Can't recommend this game to any sane person and I won't be suprised if this the worst game that Konami made for the arcades. Morrowind faggots might find this game appealing, they are unlikely to be stopped by horrible gameplay and bad writing, pretty graphics and a chance to rummage through boring lore, that nobody gives a fuck about, will keep them entertained for an evening or two.

Additional stuff:

More screenshots, warning they are big (Sorry, I was too lazy to cut out black borders)
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Gameplay videos

 

Batman

Literate
Joined
May 7, 2019
Messages
5
How you find so much time writing this reviews for games, but still missed the review for Metal Slug X.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
I believe he has said he doesn't like platformers, hence why he hasn't reviewed Metal Slug X, not that it needs a review, here is one from me, Metal Slug 1, X and 3 are amazing platformers and absolutely worth playing.

Done, nothing else needs to be said, i like them more than Contra, they look amazing with great animations, the soundtracks are fantastic, they are creative and they are a lot of fun, and yes, there are other games in the series and they aren't bad either, just think that after 3 some of the magic was gone.

Anyways, since you tried Shock Troopers, what about Mercs?

Though that is one of those rare games where i think the port was better than the original, the Genesis/Mega Drive version has more content and is just better.

Smash TV also isn't bad, plus, it's somehow canon with Mortal Kombat since Johnny Cage is revealed to have been in the show and was either one of the only people to win if not the only one(i am not sure if the player characters won but probably did and just never entered Mortal Kombat) to win the contest and the fact that has never been used for a stage in any of the games is a travesty.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,315
Location
Hyperborea
Double Dragon Advance is my suggestion if anyone wants to play the original DD. One of the best remakes I've played.

I love arcade game art once it got to a certain stage of advancement, beginning around the last 2 or 3 years of the 80s. So fun to watch. The stuff that passes for pixel art in today's indie games is hack work in comparison.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
How you find so much time writing this reviews for games, but still missed the review for Metal Slug X.
It doesn't take me much time to write a review, since I know what I'm talking about. Only AVP and Denjin Makai series took me long enough to write about them, AVP was my first arcade beat'em'up and at the time I didn't have a good idea about review format. Denjin Makai was controversial for me, I liked gameplay, but playing on castrated version made me feel like the game was pretty janky; there were graphical glitches too and MAME never got rid of them, so I couldn't really understand if I adored the game and could recommend it to others or not, also second part (Guardians) features a pretty big roster overview that is probably as big as my Double Dragon review.

As for Metal Slug series, I plan to write about them too, but not until much later, I suspect you people just want to see me raging about difficulty.

Didn't know about these, they seem good enough to me (Mercs appears to be Shock Troopers grandfather), so I will check them out eventually.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
What, we wouldn't want to just see you rage about difficulty, we are not evil bastards...say, did you know that there is a Battletoads arcade game that is completely different from the NES game?

Everything but some characters is different and it's totally a lot easier than the NES game, nope, the Battletoads arcade game isn't hard at all, in fact, you should not even look at any reviews and just trust good old Silentstorm here and play Battletoads which is an easy beat'em up.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
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Messages
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
IIRC, Mercs is the (unofficial) sequel to an older arcade shooter, but right now I can't remember the name of it for certain. Ikari Warriors maybe?
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Everything but some characters is different and it's totally a lot easier than the NES game, nope, the Battletoads arcade game isn't hard at all, in fact, you should not even look at any reviews and just trust good old Silentstorm here and play Battletoads which is an easy beat'em up.
Battletoads for the arcades was planned to be one of the earlier reviews, but unfortunately fbalpha doesn't support that game for some reason, at the time I was too lazy to fiddle around with MAME (especially after my original experience with Denjin Makai) but now I can say that you can expect it to be reviewed pretty soon, may be even next week.

IIRC, Mercs is the (unofficial) sequel to an older arcade shooter, but right now I can't remember the name of it for certain.
According to wikipedia it's Commando.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Final Fight 1989
finalfightx68000.jpg


The king of the arcades, the game that defined mechanics of most of the beat'em'ups that were made after it's release. It's premise is familiar to everybody - some guys have to beat the shit out of criminals that want to control the city and save a girl (Haggar's daughter and Cody's girlfriend) in the process. There are 3 playable characters with coop supporting 2 players and 6 stages with 2 bonus ones.

Father, boyfriend and... a guy
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Game's fighting system is very simple and intuitive and moveset shouldn't take you more than a minute to figure out: standing combos, jumping attacks, despair attack and throws. Yep, that's about all you've got. There are a couple of melee weapons thrown in - metal bars, swords and knives, but they are identical in their use except knives, which are meant for throwing. I'm not entirely sure, but this might the first game to introduce the concept of "despair attack" to beat'em'ups - move that hits everything around character, while making him invincible at the cost of some health. Protagonists can't run or dash (although some enemies can) and screens are small, so positioning and correct usage of despair attacks and throws (characters are invicible while throwing somebody) is very important if you want to stay alive. The game isn't stingy with health resotoring items until the last stage, you get 2 lives per coin and can earn additional one for scoring enough points.

I was honestly surprised to see such graphics from the game that was released in 1989
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It might seem that the differences between characters are minor, but there's more to them than it might seem: Haggar is the strongest but also the slowest, Cody is balanced and Guy is fastest but also the weakest. I've seen people say that Haggar is easiest one to play, but I think that both Haggar and Guy are inferior to Cody. Haggar has strongest grabs, but I didn't notice much difference in damage between his standing combo and Cody's, though he definitely hits harder than Guy, he is indeed pretty slow and clumsy which can make it difficult to fight off against crowds, as a wrestling character he suffers the same issue as all other characters that use german suplex as their throw move - shitty reach, he also has a significant recovery on whiffing his attack making timing really important, these factors combined + him having the worst reach on despair attack can make it pretty difficult to fight off against crowds. Guy has the fastests walk speed, but I don't think it really matters when most of the enemies still move faster than you and the most dangerous ones have dash attacks that can not be side stepped, his damage is the worst and his standing combo is the longest, making him the overall worst character in the game. Cody on the other hand combines the best of all into one, he isn't slow and his damage doesn't suck, he's the only one that can use knife in melee and surprisingly it's the best weapon in the game combining great speed and best damage (no idea why the fuck it outdamages swords by seemingly 2 times, knives when handled by Cody are the only good weapons really, others are slow and reach isn't that good), his despair attack seems to have the best range and biggest invulnerability window. You might ask "Why would you care about such small things ?" well when the gameplay is so simple, you can't help but notice something like this and I really had harder time playing everybody but Cody.

Beating shitheads in a shithouse
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I was really suprised with graphics in this game, while you can't call animations "frame rich" the sprites and especially backgrounds look great to me, I didn't expect something like this from the game of such age. Can't say the same praises about music, I feel like there are 4 or 5 tracks in the entire game, nothing crazy or sick but they are pretty memorable. There are no cutscenes between missions, only one at the start and one in the end, for some reason I was actually expecting them to advance the plot as you move from level to level. Intro cutscene shows bandits demonstrating kidnapped girl to Haggar through TV and she wears nothing but bra, westerners were terrified of pixel cleavage and cut it out from intro completely in their versions.

The gameplay is really simple. Nobody except bosses can outrange your attacks, so getting everybody on one side (or standing with your back at the wall) and just throwing out normal attacks can win you most battles, but making it happen is not always simple or even possible. Some enemies can rush you down with no way to avoid that other than iterrupting them with your attack, this is where Haggar suffers the most, because of his long recovery after whiffing an attack, this charge move is a pretty cheap shit, because enemies can use from very close distances giving you no time to react and such attacks deal heavy damage. There are a lot of ambushes in general and game's difficulty is on the "cheap bullshit" side. If you aren't careful enough enemies can just gang up on you and clubber you to death, there is no "fall down after taking enough damage" mechanic in place so if you don't use your despair attack you can be killed in one combo, you also don't get any i-frames when you get up and can be attacked again immediately, so always wake up with despair attack (and waste more health in process). As I've said previously majority of enemies move faster than you or at comparable speed, some of them can cover the entire screen with jumps, do sliding attacks or charge at you, these attacks aren't as easy to avoid and considering the fact that you are facing huge by beat'em'up standarts crowds (over 7 punks 80% of time) it makes combat pretty chaotic. Also there is a tendency for hp bloat for certain enemies, your standing combos don't do much damage and grabs are really busted (as in really good) in that aspect, so you want to grab tougher guys but it can be pretty hard because of range on their attacks and movement speed, they also tend to hit you out of the air if you try to drop on them and grabs are wonky here, sometimes enemies get out of them in less than a second and sometimes you only get to hit them once during your grab.

The annoying clusterfuck of items getting in your way when you try to fight enemies is present in it's full strength here. Just look at the picture below. I'm trying to fight off 3 guys, but if I stand anywhere near the knives or chicken, instead of doing an attack I would pick up an item, AND LOOK AT HOW MUCH FUCKING SPACE THEY TAKE ! To make it even more annoying these dudes drop knives about 50% of time when they get knocked down, littering the ground like this. And this example is not a rare situation, during my playthrough I encountered similar shit numerous times. Did the developers even playtest their shit ?
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Haggar is about to tear out punk's liver
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But regular enemies can not compare at all with absolutely retarded bosses, out of all only the first one is alright. Their damage is completely broken as you would expect, get used to being hit for 1/3 or even 1/2 of your life bar, they have a big enough healthpool though it's not as annoying if you manage to grab them (it's not easy at all), they outrange you on their attacks and move faster than you, but most importantly they have a fuckload of i-frames. There were a lot of moments where I went "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ?!" during my playthrough because it's an absolute fucking bullshit. Second boss - charges at you while being invulnerable, does that after every knock down and delay between charges ranges from 1 to 4 seconds, also invulnerable while preparing for the charge, your standing combo only tickles him and the only real way to deal damage is to land a grab. Third boss massively outranges you and hits you for 1/2 of your life bar in melee, runs away and shoots you when he gets low on health, have fun catching him when you can only walk. Fourth boss - insane range on his grab, does jumping attack that can not be avoided at all unless you do a despair attack that drains your health and does shit damage, and after that he can launch another one right away. Fifth boss - nothing special (he is just a more advanced version of some enemy that encounter regularly) expect absolutely retardedly long invulnerability period after he wakes up. Last boss moves faster than you while being a fucking cripple that is stuck in a wheelchair and even after you break his motherfucking wheelchair he's still faster and more agile than your pumped up martial artists fucking protagonists (AAAAAAAAA), of course he shoots you with harpoones for 1/3 of your life, can not be grabbed and jumps around constantly so you can't combo him, because you hit him while he is in the air.

You are not allowed to fuck around in this game at all, you're either gonna get killed by ambushes and hazards, beaten down to death by a mob or eat a "lol fuck you" move from a boss that drains 1/2 of your life bar. And as I've said this game is simple, so it has nothing to compensate for it's primitive gameplay and unfair challenge, except may be graphics.

Censored picture
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Overall Final Fight is an alright and simple game, but cheap difficulty sucks a lot of fun out of it. I say it has more historic value than as a game itself, you will probably notice elements that other games took from it (like lifts in Denjin Makai and Guardians that are clear copies of lift that you fight enemies before enganing Rolento, they even drop grenades at you; or how AVP's 1994 boss - Mad Predator is basically a reskinned version of Rolento himself), I completed the game 2 times and thought it was just ok.

Additional stuff:

More screenshots, warning they are big
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Gameplay videos

 
Last edited:
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i never understood the charm in final fight, but i spent *a lot* on captain commando. still today i might be able to reach at least "the hulk" with a sigle coin. similarly, i can still finish "the king of dragons" with a single life, even if it's supposed to be the popamole version of "knights of the round", in both of whom i've never been able to learn to consistently pull blocks off.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
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Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Oh, thank God, so i am not the only one who thinks of Final Fight as overrated alongside Double Dragon, Final Fight isn't bad though, just more average than one remembers and something that Capcom and others quickly surpassed.
 

Sjukob

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Messages
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To answer most of your questions regarding Double Dragon Gold: Modder drama.
Questions ? I don't remember asking about anything except an option to change number of lives and continues or is there something I'm missing ?
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Last line:

What the fuck is that ?! Why the fuck you have to do all this shit just to change the number of lives and continues ?! Fucking why is it not an ingame option ?! What an absolute fucking mess!

And it applies both to "Why are the settings like this?" and "Why is it so hard to change them?".
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Splatterhouse 1988
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I wanted to give this game a go ever since I first saw it's gameplay on youtube, which happened about a year and a half ago. At the time I didn't care about arcades and thought that such an old game was ought to have problems with controls and unfair difficulty, but after I finaly launched it I was pleasantly surprised. In this game you play as Rick who wants to save his girlfriend from evil monsters that infested some house in a middle of nowhere, I have no idea why he and his girlfriend went into that house in the first place. After his first encounter with monsters Rick is defeated and left to his death, but for some reason the mask brought him back to life and gave him super strength, and so Rick goes forward to kill monsters and find his girl - Jennifer. Mind that there's no ingame story and the said information is only available in manual. The game features 6 stages consisting of multiple sections, you're even given a choice which path you want to go, but it only happens once, the game is also single player only.

The game introduces you to it's horrors right away without any warning (this is actually the second level, but the first one isn't any less brutal)
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Splatterhouse is most famous for it's amount of violence and it's the main reason why I laid my eyes on it in the past, about everything in this game is gory: the enemies which you can cut in half or splatter them against the walls, the backgrounds and scenery (just look at the picture), even hazards consist of some sick flesh that damages you (not all of them are like this). I believe violence in video games wasn't a norm back then a censorship was stricter, so I have no idea how this game even got approved. Anyway, the big amount of gore doesn't make the game tasteless and there's good variety of scenery ranging from shacks with dismembered bodies and rooms with mountains of flesh to forests, sewers and even church. Besides, the graphics look well done and stylish, I've never felt like animations were rough like in Final Fight, though they are very simple. There is also great and memorable soundtrack, it tries to capture atmosphere of horror but often deviates into something more action-like and it only complements the game, my favourite song plays when you enter a church to fight a boss.

Some guys made a cool metal remix of this, check it out


This guy is a meta knowledge test, save shotgun ammo to kill him, otherwise you are in for a bad time
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The gameplay is really simple, you move in two directions, you can walk, jump, crouch and attack, that's it. Your attack changes if you crouch, but there's no jumping attack, when in the air Rick uses standing or crouching attacks, though if you hold down+left or right (depending on which direction you are facing) and push attack button when you're about to hit the ground you will do a slide which is the hardest hitting thing in the game. There's no delay between your attacks either, so you can throw out punches/kicks as fast as you can, unfortunately I had troubles with autofire button where it was breaking the controls, but do try to assign it yourself, so your hand doesn't become tired. There are some weapons for you to use like: cleavers, clubs, harpoons, stones, wrenches and shotguns, though they don't appear as often and most of the time you're going to have to use your fists. It's a bit of a shame because I really liked chopping monsters with cleavers. Controls are very responsive, though Rick is pretty slow.

This game is pretty easy mechanicaly as enemies usually don't outrange you and are very easy to approach, their attacks are mostly slow and delayed enough for you to react, but you take damage just from touching anything hostile. To compensate for this (need to make players spend coins somehow) you are not really allowed to make mistakes, because the game is extremely stingy with health. Your health bar is represented by hearts and you can accumulate 5 hearts maximum, each hit will take 1 heart away. The only way to regain them is to finish the entire level, which, as I've said, usually consists of multiple stages and even then you only get 1 heart for completion, if you die you will have to start over from the beggining of the stage. Some of the traps aren't as easy to avoid, like rotating blades or pits with living hands (you are going to jump on ramps and their angle makes you slide towards pits), but there are no instakills in this game at all, so with some trial and error you will able to beat and avoid everything. The screen constantly moves forward, but it will stop if you don't, there's no timer in Splatterhouse, but if it takes you too long to move onward the fog will appear that damages you if you touch it, you can see it on the left side of the screenshot above. I've never felt like I had to hurry, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I still can't comprehend what he is saying; I'm the groover or I'm the ruler
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I usually dedicate an entire section where I talk about game's problems, but this time I didn't manage to find anything significant. I guess the game would've been even better if you didn't take damage just from touching things, and some very specific enemies are annoying, like those ghost girls that wait until you pass under them and drop skulls on you, it's hard to avoid considering Rick's speed; flesh worms aren't great to fight either, the only real way to deal with them is to stand in the corner and spam attack, but you have to do it really fast or you risk getting hit (remember that I couldn't assign autofire button), but these 2 can be avoided depending on which direction you choose to go, though you still have to fight flesh worms at least once. Chaisaw guy is pretty cheap too, he's harmless if you have a shotgun, but you're fucked otherwise. Other than that I didn't feel like enemies were broken or challenge was unfair, you might have to restart/reload a few times, but once you figure things out you will able to breeze through the game with ease.

It's over
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Splatterhouse is a wonderful game. Despite it's age it is still fun to play and it is very easy to get into, thanks to it's simple gameplay. The gore and overall game's style are catchy even today and the action is complemented by good music. It's also one of the few games without happy ending which greatly adds to the mood. I would recommend this game to everyone, even those who are just starting with arcades shouldn't have much trouble completing this one. It's very dissapointing that the sequels for home consoles seem like a step back in every direction.

Additional stuff:

More screenshots, warning they are big
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Gameplay video
 

Silentstorm

Learned
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Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Splatterhouse is awesome, the other two games are also pretty damn good, the NES spin-off is also easily worth playing and i haven't played the Xbox 360 reboot so, no idea about that one, but Splatterhouse was a pretty good franchise that i am sad didn't become bigger.
 

Sjukob

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Messages
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Splatterhouse is awesome, the other two games are also pretty damn good, the NES spin-off is also easily worth playing and i haven't played the Xbox 360 reboot so, no idea about that one, but Splatterhouse was a pretty good franchise that i am sad didn't become bigger.
I disagree, to me Splatterhouse is just like Deus Ex - series of one game. The second one is basically a copy of the first one and gives player more of the same, which is good because I really liked the original. But the graphics and music are worse and those are very important for such simple games, there's also more obscure shit like other dimensions and some weirdly shaped spirits or whatever they are called, which shows that developers were running out of ideas. There was something like this in the first game, but only for one level and it was short. There seem to be even less weapons to use if it all, but more variety with mechanics and gameplay, a fair trade I guess. What really annoys me is that they completely trashed the brutal ending of the first game, where Rick leaves the destroyed house and his girlfriend is dead, now he has to travel to the spirit world and bring her back to life and there's a romantic scene in the end, eh, what a step down. It doesn't seem like a bad game, but as somebody who enjoyed the original I don't feel the urge to play it's sequel. It's like Human Revolution - an ok game on it's own, but can't compare to it's predecessor.

The third one and the modern reboot are just mediocre beat'em'ups, why did they even do that ?

And NES game... Are you shitting me ?! A fucking chibi style platformer with cute monsters ?! This shit is contagious and I'm not touching it ! By the way, in game Rick looks like he wears pants on his face.
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So no, anybody who wants to play Splatterhouse should play the original first one and then may be the second one, but forget about the rest.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
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Didn't mind the other games, and the NES one is supposed to be a parody and not a normal Splatterhouse game, hence why i call it a spin-off, and for what it's worth, it's a pretty fun and charming platformer, true, does not have the same feel of the other games, but it was never supposed to, just supposed to be a fun platformer with horror references.

Then again, i also don't mind chibi characters nor anime art styles, cartoony or "kiddy" looks in any game, no matter the genre, as long as it still looks and plays good, so the characters being chibi is something i never even thought was worth mentioning.
 

BLOBERT

FUCKING SLAYINGN IT BROS
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GOOD JOB BRO

YOUVE HIT MANY OF THE CLASSICS ANS MY FAVORIYES

DO THESES PLS THEY ARE SOME OF THE BEST YOU HAVENT COVERED

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Sjukob

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Messages
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Didn't mind the other games, and the NES one is supposed to be a parody and not a normal Splatterhouse game, hence why i call it a spin-off, and for what it's worth, it's a pretty fun and charming platformer, true, does not have the same feel of the other games, but it was never supposed to, just supposed to be a fun platformer with horror references.

Then again, i also don't mind chibi characters nor anime art styles, cartoony or "kiddy" looks in any game, no matter the genre, as long as it still looks and plays good, so the characters being chibi is something i never even thought was worth mentioning.
I like Splatterhouse for what it is and I don't want parodies, especially not the ones made in such style. Besides, I've never liked silly cartoon style in games and it's one of the reasons why I have no sympathy for platformers (other than gameplay, of course), I understand that in the past developers had to do this, because hardware couldn't support more serious and detailed graphics, but it wouldn't make me like those games.

GOOD JOB BRO

YOUVE HIT MANY OF THE CLASSICS ANS MY FAVORIYES

DO THESES PLS THEY ARE SOME OF THE BEST YOU HAVENT COVERED
Yeah, I will eventually review Sengoku trilogy and Gaia Crusaders, but they wouldn't come until much later, because they are such late releases. I'm not playing arcade games only to write reviews here on codex, but also to get familiar with arcade and genre history, it might not seem so because I started with AVP and Punisher and my first arcade shoot'em'up was Shock Troopers, but at the time I just really wanted to play some beat'em'ups and didn't care about chronology and some games (Shock Troopers) were just too tempting for me to try out.

You know, when I started with my reviews I was hoping to provoke people into discussing gameplay or various mechanics, or may be even argue with me about how I called their favourite character bad or something, sadly it didn't work out. Only Lutte has shat out some extremely autistic wall of text and then added me on ignore list.
 

Sjukob

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Messages
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I really want to try out Streets of Rage Remake but it seems like it's the best thing you can have in beat'em'up genre at the moment, it does a lot of things right and it's rich with content, it's also very customizable. I'm afraid that it will spoil the other games for me and I won't enjoy them. Agh, it really looks so good and tempting though:negative:
 

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