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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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Darth Canoli

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All these games were mostly fun because you played with someone, not sure if you're testing them alone or not, if that's the case, of course, it's not the same.

Double Dragon strength was the animation speed and if there were any lag, it was during the walking transitions or when the screen was scrolling.

i wasted a fortune or two on "forgotten worlds", i'm afraid to see how badly it aged.

Forgotten worlds was quite simple back then but really addictive because of the secret shops, almost a shooter/RPG.

At some point, you should consider Golden Axe and Golden Axe 3 (arcade version)

Someone mentioned Ikari Warriors, spent quite some time on this one too, really good, you could use enemy tanks but i wasn't able to beat the last boss, a kind of wall with canons which didn't want to die (if it was the last boss :roll: )

Also, one of the best NEO GEO beat'em all is Robo Army.

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Also, an obscure beat'em all which was extremely fun on NES : Dynamite Dux

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I think the NES version was for one player only and then 2 players for the amstrad version.

Streets of Rage 1 and 2 were really fun, didn't play much of the third.
 

Sjukob

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All these games were mostly fun because you played with someone, not sure if you're testing them alone or not, if that's the case, of course, it's not the same.
No word about gameplay huh ? I don't have a buddy to play with, because people I hang out with are not interested in old games.

Double Dragon strength was the animation speed and if there were any lag, it was during the walking transitions or when the screen was scrolling.
No, it also lags at specific points on stages and when you fight more than 2 enemies, which means that it lags almost all the time.

Streets of Rage 1 and 2 were really fun, didn't play much of the third.
I don't think there is a point in playing genesis versions, when remake offers you all the content from trilogy + some of it's own (though they didn't copy SoR 3 campaign completely for some reason) and there a lot of settings to cusomize the gameplay. Also it's a free game.

And about games you recommend, I know of them but have no idea when it's their turn for review, except may be Golden Axe series that I plan to play soon.
 

Silentstorm

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Golden Axe is one where the best entry sadly didn't get much attention in my opinion, The Revenge Of Death Adder is freaking awesome after all and to this day i am suprised there isn't any port.

Oh yeah, there is one Konami licensed beat'em up that is excellent but didn't give the same attention that X-Men, TMNT and The Simpsons got, i am talking about Astérix:
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Which, for non-europeans out there, is a great comic book series that also had movie adaptations and had Konami like it enough to make a game out of it, and like their usual beat'em up stuff at the time, it's great.
 

Darth Canoli

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No, it also lags at specific points on stages and when you fight more than 2 enemies, which means that it lags almost all the time.

More than 2 enemies, that's a joke right ?
So you're saying you're playing the arcade version on an arcade machine ?

It didn't lag when i played it, it wouldn't have been so popular if it did.
Now, if the emulation version lags, that's on the emulator.
 
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Golden Axe is one where the best entry sadly didn't get much attention in my opinion, The Revenge Of Death Adder is freaking awesome after all and to this day i am suprised there isn't any port.

Oh yeah, there is one Konami licensed beat'em up that is excellent but didn't give the same attention that X-Men, TMNT and The Simpsons got, i am talking about Astérix:
arcade-asterix-3.png

Which, for non-europeans out there, is a great comic book series that also had movie adaptations and had Konami like it enough to make a game out of it, and like their usual beat'em up stuff at the time, it's great.

more fun to watch than to play.
 

Sjukob

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No, it also lags at specific points on stages and when you fight more than 2 enemies, which means that it lags almost all the time.

More than 2 enemies, that's a joke right ?
So you're saying you're playing the arcade version on an arcade machine ?

It didn't lag when i played it, it wouldn't have been so popular if it did.
Now, if the emulation version lags, that's on the emulator.
See for yourself, the first lag starts when the big guy breaks the wall.
 
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Silentstorm

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Messages
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Yeah, i think i remember hearing a retro gaming podcast where they wondered how the hell Double Dragon got so popular, but they stick with it being a great beat'em up at the time and having a cool visual design alongside neat little touches like the multiplayer mode ending with a fight between the two players.

It's a game, probably series, that hasn't aged as well as people hope, and yeah, would rather play other games in the genre such as Streets Of Rage instead.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
No word about gameplay huh ? I don't have a buddy to play with, because people I hang out with are not interested in old games.

There is a Kaillera which is used for playing arcade games in a simple and really effective way. I don't know about the timezone in which you are, but if you are interested we could play some other titles.
 

Sjukob

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There is a Kaillera which is used for playing arcade games in a simple and really effective way. I don't know about the timezone in which you are, but if you are interested we could play some other titles.
I live in one of the worst areas for online gaming - Far East (Khabarosvk Krai +10 gmt) 150-200 ms to Europe and 200-250 ms to US (same for Oceania), Australia has the same time zone but ms ranges from 350 to over 500, China lags like hell and Korea and Japan are fencing themselves off other countries. Can barely even play with compatriots because of huge time difference (over 60% of Russia population lives in it's western part and there's a 7 hour difference between our timezones) and delay is pretty noticable 120-150 ms. It's not common for folks from Far East and Siberia to play computer games, so that's not really an option too.
 
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Sjukob

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Jul 3, 2015
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Battletoads 1994
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I finaly got time to play some games, I promised to review this game about a week ago, so here it is. I was suprprised to see EA being associated with this game, I should've taken it as a warning and given Silentstorm a finger and said "Screw you pal, I'm not reviewing this shit" but instead I played it to the end. Battletoads features 6 stages + 1 bonus stage, there are three playable characters and coop supports as much players.

The toads look like they are wearing latex suits
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As for characters, they mostly vary visually. Their attacks have different properties and graphics (I mean that their "super" attacks look different), but they control the same and there seems to be no difference in how much health they have or how much damage they deal. I couldn't find a movelist for this game anywhere, but I don't that I haven't discovered all of the attacks. Toads' tools are fairly standart: standing combos, jumping and running attack, throws and they can also hit lying enemies, one important thing is missing from their moveset - is despair attack, but I'll explain it later. The arsenal isn't impressive either, here you have: a gun, explosive crates and a huge metal bar that looks like an icecream.

Well, I think that's all I can say about the game in neutral tone and it's time to cut it to the chase - fuck this game, I don't like it. Remember my Gaiapolis review ? I hated that game, but at least it had some things done well, but here I really struggle to find anything that stands out among piles of crap, I guess that music is ok, but I don't remember anything except that crazy guitar playing between missions. Seriously, just everything else about it is bad or underwhelming and ,of course, I will explain why.

Let's start with the combat. Why is it a complete ass ? Firstly - it's nigh impossible to net get hit by somebody, your attacks have crazy recovery time and delays, if you are trying to do a standing combo and hitting somebody enemies can just approach you in the face and hit you in between attacks, the running and jumping attacks recover so slow that you are almost guaranteed to get punched in the face after it if there's at least one enemy didn't get hit by them. Secondly - there's no despair attack, toads can do an attack that hits everything around them but it requires at least two enemies standing close to you on both left and right sides, it's bad because if you get in such position you're gonna get fucked, it also means that you can't shake off multiple foes attacking you from one side, enemies attack with combos and they can just gangrape you if several of them get close enough and start comboing you, losing 80% or even 100% of your life is very possible in such cases, some of them are very fast attackers too. Thirdly - reliance on super attacks, when somebody is low on health or knocked down you can do a super attack that does a lot more damage (very useful against somebody low on health, brilliant game design), has more reach and makes you invulnerable for a short time, the problem is that you absolutely have to use these attacks and create opportunities to use them against healthy foes, because you are not going to fight off the crowd otherwise. Thanks to that battles often turn into retarded crap of trying to knock down enemies with your shitty running/jumping attack without getting raped by the crowd and footballing those who fell down into the others. Sometimes supers just work against certain special enemies (they always work against bosses) and sometimes they don't and you get grabbed/beaten instead, I really don't get why I should feel like a helpless idiot trying to get into position where I can finaly use super, when they are the only real way to kill shit.

For some reason the graphics are very blurry (not sure if this is an emulator's fault) and they start to strain my eyes after some time of playing
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For a game where it's so easy to lose your health it's not that generous with things that restore it. At certain points a number of flies appear for toads to eat them, you can usually get about 40-45% of your health back, but that equals to 2 missed attacks or less, because enemies with guns can drain like 50% of your life in a single attack. As for lives and score - there's no score system in the game (except amount of killed enemies) and you can't earn additional lives, though their number per coin can be changed in arcade options. The bosses are mostly annoying hp bloated cunts that have 1-2 easily avoidable attacks and just suck a lot of your time, because they counterattack if you hit them 2 times with super. There are also special enemies that are like this, but they don't appear too often. The last boss is the most extreme case of hp bloat, killing him may take you anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Some of your opponents have pretty amazing range on their attacks, you're mostly going to notice this when you encounter big rats that can grab you without colliding even if you are in the air, and fat rat boss who seems to have really long arms. I don't remember ever having problems with the controls, though I don't really like how toads have momentum while running. At least there are no ambushes (a few minor ones on level 2 don't really matter).

The graphics are so-so, I don't know if these are emulation problems, but as you can see they are blurred, besides that backgrounds are poorly done and are very repetitive, toads are finely animated but most other enemies have pretty pathetic and uninspired animations, even some of the bosses are among them. What really stands out is the amount of violence happening on the screen, it's far from Splatterhouse levels, but some foes explode with blood when killed, rats turn into skeletons on death, you can grab and punch giant rats' crotches, a couple of times you're even shown a rat taking a shit and there's more to that.

Developers tried to make gameplay varied, there are "minigames" where you have to avoid projectiles or traps, on level 4 you descend into pit on your jetpack and final level turns the game into a shoot'em'up. Such things could've been a great addition to a strong gameplay, but in Battletoads you just don't feel anything when you play them, last level is pretty decent and it's the only time when I had fun with the game.

One of the "minigames" avoid the balls
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When I first seen gameplay videos of the game I thought it looked great, especially with all the dirty stuff, but trying it out made me understand that I was very wrong. To be honest with you I didn't like the game at the very start, I just had a feeling that something was wrong and that feeling didn't fail me. I've read that the game failed at the arcades and I'm honestly not surprised in the slightest. Battletoads didn't offer anything that could've toppled it's competitors at the time, for casual players there were Konami games among which Violent Storm and Metamorphic Force particularly stood out with their great graphics, music and style. Those who preffered stronger gameplay and challenge had Capcom brawlers like: AVP, Punisher, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and even these games featured much better presentation than Battletoads. I've read that it is unfinished and it really shows (especially in the ending), Battletoads can't really offer anything exciting to the player, especially compared to other arcade games, stay away from this game, you don't lose anything by not playing it.

I don't want this topic to get political, but this thing could've been a great representative of various left wing freaks
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Additional stuff:

Some info about the game from speedrunner

More screenshots, warning they are big
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Gameplay videos

 
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Machocruz

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Messages
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Hyperborea
When someone brought this game up, I was going to make a comment that it's really not that good. I think all the battletoad games are forgettable and visually bland.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
I managed to finish Renegade and even found a stable version of game's rom. I updated the review and links in the OP.

When someone brought this game up, I was going to make a comment that it's really not that good. I think all the battletoad games are forgettable and visually bland.
Yeah, I actually regret playing it. It wasn't as bad as Gaiapolis though, the day after I finished that game I had diarrhea, stomachaches and even puked a little bit, at least that didn't happen after I played Battletoads. Bad games can really damage your health I guess.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
R-Type Trilogy 1987 - 1993
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Even before I made a review for Battletoads I wanted to play some more shoot'em'ups, Unclickable Kitty wanted me to do R-Type and so I gave it a go. I played 5 games in total and I decided to split them in 2 categories: the first one - R-Type 1,2 and 3; the second one - R-Type Leo and Cosmic Cop. I'm going to start with the first group, but since the games are so simple and heavily resemble each other the review is going to be pretty short, despite featuring 5 different games.

Probably one of the most memorable R-Type enemies, I bet you can guess what served as a basis for it's design
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As I've said, R-Type games are simple. You control a ship, you move horizontally and you have to blast everyone while avoiding hostile attacks. The only distinct feature is the force pod, which is used for firing advanced weapons and blocking projectiles, you can use it like a weapon by rumming it into enemies, it is also detachable and can be used as a projectile, at any point you can command it to return to your ship and this thing can be attached to either front or back of your ship, which serves as one of the most important strategic decisions allowing to choose where you want to shoot your stronger weapons and how would you like to defend yourself. There are 3 weapons in total in the first game, which serve different purposes and it's in your interest to change them depending on the situation: 1 - maximum power but limited range, 2 - spreads weaker lasers all over the place, 3 - covers vertical edges of the screen. Your ship itself can either spam small but weak projectiles or charge one big piercing shot, additionaly you can collect homing missiles that are periodically launched from your ship and a pair of smaller orbs that protect you from enemy fire. Most of the games are singleplayer only and don't have more than 8 stages which don't feature any minigames or bonus rounds.

A lot of visuals in the series are weird, I can't help but think that those red things look like dicks
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Now you are probably thinking that it sounds pretty simple and that games are probably not that hard... Hahahahaha... hahaha... ooohhh Well you better lube up, because R-type is aiming to rape the player as much as possible. 1 hit kills you, you can't touch anything (including walls) or you're dead, you lose all your upgrades on death and get thrown back to the last checkpoint, in later stages that means you might as well start the game over because enemies are strong and it's hard to manage them even with fully upgraded ship, but without upgrades you don't really stand a chance, so you're not allowed to make any mistakes at all. Speaking of upgrades speed bonus is retarded, without it you're too slow to avoid shit on the screen, but if you get too much of it your ship becomes too fast for precise control and you will keep bumping into obstacles, why isn't there a reasonable limit for this I have no fucking clue. The game is extremely claustrophobic and gives you very little space to fly around, but it's very generous with huge enemies, attacks from behind and projectile spam. It takes too long to place force pod in the rear of your ship and you actually need space to do so (you have to fire it and command it to return while it's is behind you) and unless you know in advance that you have to change it's position you're fucked. In general R-Type heavily relies on memorization, combining points I made in the last two sentences, you can see that unless you've seen what's coming you're fucked. You're going to die and die and die until you develop skill and reaction to deal with some particular situation, then you move to the next one and the process repeats.

At least you can touch water without exploding in the second game
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Hope that fucking sounds good to you, because I personaly dislike when digital entertainment violates my anal space. All of the things mentioned above are augmented by game's pretty fast pace, you're not given much time to react to all crap coming at you. The issues with speed limit and inability to just command force pod to get to the rear/front of the ship are plain bad design, did developers play their shit ?! It's just so fucking obvious to anybody who got past the first two stages, but it looks like developers were especially gifted people and they didn't fix this shit at all ! Well, what else can I add ? Enemies aren't spongy and die pretty fast, including bosses, you can show off your skill by getting into somebody's face and rumming them with your force pod for crazy damage, music is pretty good, but you won't hear most of it because sound effect from weapons are too loud and you likely won't pay much attention to audio when you're desperately trying not to die. Graphics are nice and detailed, but the design itself is pretty bland for most of the things.

One of the examples of tight spots, you only have one way out and a fucking robot shoots a beam right into it
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R-Type 2 copies the first game mechanics completely (there's one new weapon though), it is slightly easier than the first game, but it's still incredibly difficult. I just can't adequately describe series' formula of creating difficulty by using text + screenshots format, but if you watched AVGN episodes you might remember "Silver Surfer" review and I can tell you R-Type is exactly like that, except you can't shoot back as easily. Fiinal boss in R-Type 2 is a fucking joke, it's some bullshit rng, where you have to get into a tiny square and hope that you're not killed by projectiles while you're shooting a boss.

R-Type 3 wasn't released for arcades, but it brought plenty of gameplay changes. Firstly you're given a choice of which force pod you want to use, they have different weapons and one of them deals more damage on contant with foes. I haven't played game enough to give a good description of each pod, sorry. Another thing is that you now have 2 chargeable weapons - beam and hyper, the first one is that piercing super projectile that you're familiar with and the second one is shotgun type of canon. You can overcharge both of them resulting in bigger damage and aoe, but longer delay between shots, overcharge for hyper gives you extreme firing power for a limited time, but once it's over you can't use charge attacks for a while.

Another example, hostile ships appear all around your ship and ram you at crazy speed. Transition to home consoles didn't go well for game's graphics.
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R-Type 3 follows the same formula as the previous titles, keeping all of it's strength and issues, since it was made for home consoles graphics took a significant hit and look kind of blurry, music is way better though. At times the game can't handle all the explosions and projectile spam happening at once and starts to lag, though this time it's to your advantage since it gives you more time to react to dangers coming at you. I feel like R-Type 3 might the most extreme example of memorization game in the series (probably making it the hardest one), especially on that level where you have to dodge red lasers coming from tubes, which also reflect off walls.

At the end of each game you're given a chance to play bonus round where game becomes harder, but I can not beat any of these without abusing save states and I don't really see why should I even try. It's a memorization game and I am just saving my time and sanity. I haven't told you about additional lives and continues (and plot, but would you care ?), but who cares when single hit = death and past first half of the game death usually equals to game over. I don't like R-Type trilogy, the shooting is fairly fun and creative, graphics and music and nice for a space shooting game, but all of the positive aspects are completely killed of by sadistic difficulty and it's trial and error design, the said problems with speed bonuses and issue with force pod control are really annoying too. These 3 games are definitely not the ones I'm coming back to unless I feel crazy enough for some digital anus ravaging.

Additional stuff

More screenshots, warning they are big
R-Type
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R-Type 2
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R-Type 3
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Gameplay videos









Cosmic Cop/Armed Police Unit Gallop 1991 and R-Type Leo 1992
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I put these games into separate category, because they signficantly deviate from the trio described above.

Cosmic Cop looks a lot like "In the hunt"
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Cosmic cop is heavily simplified game that doesn't seem to have anything in common with R-Type games (even the ship is completely different), there's no force pod, various primary weapons were removed (you can power up your primary weapon once and that's it) but there are 4 types of missiles now, you can't charge your primary weapon but you have a laser canon which homes in on several enemies around you and shoots them with a continues stream of projectiles, it's powered by gauge which quickly restores itself if you are not using it. You can collide with obtacles (but not enemies) without dying but doing so will make you drop your missiles, you still can explode if you run into dead ends, where your ship can't move forward anymore. Cosmic cop is also the fastest of all the games mentioned here, at times it's really hard to react to things happening on the screen. I guess you can say it's easier than the trilogy, but it's not an easy game at all, it feels like difficulty shifted from pattern/route memorization to reaction speed. You can control game's speed by moving your ship left and right, though there are parts where the game just wouldn't let you go slower. There are no speed bonuses and laser allows you to freely shoot at any direction, so at least it got rid of these 2 problems.

Another tough shit, touching any of these small pods will kill you, they shoot lightning and you move at crazy speed barely having enough to kill enough of them to create a pass for yourself
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There's this typical R-Type stuff where a lot of hazards give you very limited space for maneuvers, but this time your ship travels very slowly vertically, but constantly charges horizontally and that actually makes dodging projectiles more difficult. The graphics look way better, but sometimes it's easy to get lost in all the explosions happening around, music is utterly forgettable though. Don't know what else to say about this one, while R-Type is stupid hard it also has interesting design, this one however is much closer to those bland average games that you quickly forget about.

Some people say that R-Type isn't bullet hell, don't trust those people
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And so we finaly got to R-Type Leo, the first R-Type game I saw on youtube, but the last one I played and the only I liked, it's also the only that features real coop that supports 2 players. R-Type Leo is also pretty simplified, once again you only have 3 weapons (missiles are here but they aren't as good as in previous games), there's no force pod and no chargeable attacks. Instead you get 2 orbs that protect you from fire and allow you to shoot your primary weapon, you can fire them at enemies but their deployment time is limited and you can only shoot your basic weapon until you pick them up, there's also a cooldown (gauge) for this attack. I feel like weapons in R-Type Leo are way more balanced than in other games, previously you mostly had to have a correct one, but now there's more freedom in how you want to approach obstacles, their concept remained the same as in the first game, except that weapon that covers vertical edges now also fires horizontally. What I really like R-Type Leo for is that it god rid of all the problems I had with the previous games: insane difficulty, uncontrollable ship and inability to easily fire backwards. R-Type Leo is definately the easiest of all titles mentioned here and also the one with the slowest pace, but I hesitate to call it easy, because in the last two stages the difficulty jump is pretty crazy, as for ship's speed they finaly gave it a good limit and even at it's maximum I've never felt like I was going too fast, the orbs switch their firing direction depending on where you go: you go left - they shoot right, you go left - they shoot right, it might not sound convinient and I think I would've preffered a separate button to switch their direction, but it still does a good job.

One of the reasons why the last two stages are difficult, these spiders take a lot of space, jump around and rain fire on you
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Also if you die, you don't get thrown back to the last checkpoint, instead you reappear where you died, enemies in this game aren't as extreme as in the others but it still sucks to lose your upgrades. R-Type Leo also features the best graphics and music in the series, some people might argue that R-Type 3 did music better, but preference goes to R-Type Leo. It's fun a game and developers finaly recognized problems of the series and took measures to solve them, there's no longer idiotic memorization and hazards usually give you plenty of time to react to them, though the last two levels are significantly more difficult and claustraphobic they don't ruin the game for me. If you're looking for a fun shooting game you should try giving this one a go, it's the best one in the series and you can play it with your friend.

Well, that's Retro-Type for you. Will I do modern ones ? No idea, but it's surely not happening soon, especially when I think about that damn trilogy, but R-Type Leo gives me hope that the following games will be close to this one. I wonder if other shoot'em'ups of that era are similarly ridiculously hard, in before somebody asks me to do Darius, Gradius, Parodius, Donpachi or something else. No, I'm taking a break, not from reviewing games, but from playing those crazy shooters or I might end up developing an eye twitch. They'll keep coming, but for now I will return to beat'em'ups.

Additional stuff

More screenshots, warning they are big
Cosmic Cop
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R-Type Leo
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Gameplay videos

 
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Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
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

So about that, I couldn't hold back and downloaded and played that game, as for now I finished it 4 or 5 times, can't remember already. Not sure if my statement "best beat'em'up at the moment" stays true (I have yet to play certain games that I believe to be extremely good as well), but the game definitely didn't dissapoint and turned out to be amazing. Surprisingly not a lot of people talk or know about it, there was a scandal with it's release when SEGA tried to ban it from the internet in 2011, although developers warned the company in advance (in 2003 or something) that they were making a free remake of Streets of Rage series and SEGA didn't say a damn thing.

As for the game itself, it offers you a huge roster - 12 characters + 6 different versions of some of them, they vary from each other pretty significantly allowing you to choose playstyle that suits you best, for example some of them deal a lot of damage but have trouble getting close enough to enemies, others have great reach and can easily approach enemies but their damage is lackluster; some of them are pretty overpowered when compared to others, but no one is broken to the point where they will carry you through the game. A lot of game elements can be customized, like: weapon durability, hit delay, special attacks, running, dodging, jumping etc. There's a smooth and optional difficulty progression that you can set for yourself: easy, normal, hard, very hard and mania; difficulty settings affect how fast enemies are, how much health they have, what type of enemies spawn and how many of them will be thrown at you, additionaly you can set amount of lives you want to start with, though you can't configure continues and I'm not sure how many you can have, since I've never ran out of my lives. Enemies are fair, especially when you compare them to punks from arcade games, but some of the bosses are pretty retarded with how they can counter everything or how much damage they deal. There are 4 different routes for you to play, each of them features 8 levels and at certain points in the game you can go from one route to another if you desire. The graphics aren't as good, but they are stylish and colorful, it shows that sprites were done by amateurs but you won't notice it in motion, music on the other hand is totaly amazing and there's a lot of it, tracks set up different mood going from crazy action stuff to slow and relaxing. There's modding support, but due to lack of popularity it didn't get that many mods and I haven't tried any of them yet.

I wanted to write a short preview for the game just to attract some attention to it, because it totaly deserves to be recognized as one of the best beat'em'ups in history and it provides another example that passion > money, and that big companies are pathetic cunts. I'll be writing a review for this one as usual, but due to how big this game is it will take some time and I'll try to beat some other games in the meantime. Please spread the word about this one or at least try it for yourself.

I've already posted screenshots and music in others topics, but I guess it's alright if I crosspost them here.

Raging in the streets. Screenshots are small because the game only supports low resolutions.
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Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Streets of Rage Remake 2011
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Finaly guys, after 40 hours of playtime I think I've seen and tried almost everything the game has to offer and ready to tell you about it. This review is going to be massive, probably the biggest one I've ever going to submit in this topic and I hope you're going to like it.

Firstly I have to tell you a short story about it's development - some guys from Netherlands, big fans of the Streets of Rage series decided to make a remake of the series, development of the game started in 2003, they tried to contact the publisher, but SEGA ignored their requests for cooperation and approval, so guys decided to continue their work; as the years passed several beta versions were released, among them the most notable one was v4, which was released in 2007, it was more like a complete game, but still not quite "there" yet. In 2011 v5 - the final version was released and that's where shit hit the fan, there wasn't anything wrong with the game, it could've used some bugfixes and a few patches, but it was completely playable, the problem was that SEGA finaly started to get involved. Fuckers wanted to outright ban the game, they contacted developers and asked them to remove download link for the game, which was (and still is) free since the guys never got rights nor official approval for the game, and discontinue their support, developers did exactly that, of course SEGA used some bullshit excuses like "protecting intellectual property" even though they ignored the game for 8 fucking years and never answered developers requests, some time after their "ban" they put SOR series for sale on Steam, what a fucking joke. But you know how it works, right ? Whatever gets on the internet stays on the internet, despite threats from SEGA the game received a couple more patches (v5.1 is the latest version) and there are plenty of download links you can still use.

So why have I told this ? Because big companies are massive pathetic fucking cunts, never forget that. And I also want you to spread the word about this game, because it's not a well known one, but it's a great beat'em'up (one of the best ones) and I'll explain why in this review, so please share download links, play it yourself, tell your friends about it, anything will do. But enough with the foreplay, let's get to the review.


WARNING: This time screenshots are small, because the game runs only at small resolutions.

The game starts with the opening cutscene, which shows you that team struggled to make art for the game
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Remake follows original story pretty loosely, after getting beaten by Axel, Blaze and Adam, Mr.X returns to take control over the city once again. At the start of the game you have access to 6 characters (you can unlock more) and 4 different routes to beat, each one can take you about 1-1.5 hour to complete depending on your performance and difficulty. Unlike characters, all stages and paths are available to you from the start, although some of them are harder than the other ones. Each route contains 8 stages in total and you are free to select which route you want to play: the first and the second route replicate SOR1 and SOR2 levels and try to follow their stories respectively, the third and fourth ones contain SOR3 stages + some original ones made specifically for remake version, so there's no real SOR3 campaign for you to complete, but remake levels do not dissapoint. There are actually more than 32 stages, because at certain points you can change routes and that allows you to play transition stages + there are some optional bonus levels, I haven't bothered to count them, but I think there are about 42 stages in total. SOR1 route is definitely the easiest one as it contains the least ammount of advanced enemies and features almost no gimmicks, other routes are significantly harder with much heavier fights, SOR3 and SORR routes are also rather heavy on various gimmicks and surprises, for newcomers I really recommend SOR1 route, just so you can get used to the controls and game mechanics without too much trouble. Completing different routes will give you different endings, though there's almost no C&C in this game that affect the story, you only have three: 1 in the end of SOR1 route and 2 in the end of SOR3 route; there's also a "secret" ending that you get if you fairly beat the game on hardest difficulty. You might want to take a look at the community made maps to not get lost, I personaly prefer the map made by some russian dude, which I translated specifically for you with the help of Paint, but just in case I'll upload several other versions in "Additonal stuff" section.

A fight over apple
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As for game mechanics and options... Fucking shit, there are so many of them, SORR is crazy customizable, it would take an incredible wall of text for me to describe all the settings available to you. I found a video where some guy showcases game's options, so please watch it if you want to understand what I am talking about. I know it's cheap for me to do that, but it's so much better than a plain text. Under spoiler I'll explain options that I personally recommend for the best game experience. Quick note about coop - it only supports 2 players.


My recommended settings. If you don't see some option, that means it's really up to you to tweak it and there's nothing for me to comment on.
Game options:

Difficulty - "Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Mania" I would personally call them "For children, Easy, Normal, Bullshit and Extreme Bullshit", the difficulty setting affects how many enemies will spawn, how much health they will have, their AI and speed. On "Hard" setting you will get every possible spawn and maximum amount of thugs, on "Very Hard" they become significantly smarter and VERY fast, haven't noticed much difference between "Mania" and "Very Hard" besides increased health. I really recommend for everybody to start on "Normal" because game controls take time to get used to and boosts that enemies get each time you increase the difficulty are significant (especially AI and speed), like on "Hard" they will start eating your food ! On "Very Hard" and above faster enemies will try to flank you 100% of the time and it's hard to shake them off when they run at insane speed and outnumber you 10to1, there are other some other things that are affected by difficulty, but you will discover them yourself when you start playing. So take it slowly and only make the game harder when you feel like you're ready.

Lives - number of lives you start with, this amount is also given to you when you use a continue. Default number is 3 and it's a very balanced choice, I don't recommend setting it above 5, which is already very generous, if you can't complete the game with 5 starting lives, then you're not ready for this level of difficulty yet. You can set it to 9 for lolz and make it impossible to lose. Note that in game you can earn more than 9, but the number will still show 9.

Star moves - these are blitzes. Each time you score 40k points without dying you gain a star (up to 3) that changes your running attack, if you die you lose one, but can still can earn stars the same way. "A button" - always do running attack that corresponds to the number of your stars. "X button" - your running attack will always be your №1 blitz, but you can hold "X" button and input combination to do other blitzes, even if you have no stars at all; also if you press "X" button while running, you will do blitz attack that corresponds to the number of your stars. I see no point for "A button" option, "X" is just more flexible.

Weapon type - all of them are pretty flawed. SOR1 inability to throw away weapons is too annoying to deal with, especially when you want to get rid of shit lying on the ground, SOR3 weapons break too fast and SOR2 drops weapons when you grab somebody (which you will be doing all the fucking time, because this game still uses that retarded "run into somebody to grab them" mechanic in 2011) and if some weapon gets dropped on the ground 3 times it disappears no matter which option you have selected. I personally use SOR2, but you can choose whatever you want.

Meter Type - this one is not just about the meter, here you can also choose if you want an in-game timer or not, here are the options. Timer - in-game timer, if you run out of time you die and clock resets, use your health for special attacks, your defensive special won't drain your health if it doesn't connect. Gauge - no timer, use your meter (or health if you don't have enough meter) for special attacks, unlike "Timer" option specials can massively drain your health if you your gauge isn't filled enough. Both - specials use "Gauge" rules, but there's also in-game timer. Mind that bonus points for timer can be very handy for earning stars and additional lives. On harder difficulties enemies have a lot more health, so you might want to disable the timer... Or gauge, if you want to spam defensive specials with little penatly for your health.

Combo Type - SOR3, screw SOR2. SOR2 makes delays between hits too massive to handle, if you attack you can't move for something like 1.5 seconds, you lose your ability to combo into: grabs, blitzes and jumping attacks; also faster enemies will make your life a nightmare.


Video Options:

Game speed - don't set it to "Full Speed" or it will be too fast to control.


Miscellaneous:

SOR3 Exceptions - set to no, unless you really know what you're doing, if you set it to yes you won't be able to run diagonally which is very important.

Enable Police - no reason to have set to "no" unless you're going hardcore or something. Really helps you at clearing some annoying crowds and if you don't use it, you get 10k bonus points after you finish the level. You get to call police once per life, but on some stages you can find pick ups that allow additional calls.

Enable Run and Roll - SOR3 over BK3, BK3 roll is way too short and it's not enough to actually dodge the attacks. You can set it to "no" if you hate running for some reason. SORR is the second game (the first one is Guardians) that I know of, that allows you to dash along Z axis.

Controls:

It's not clear what some buttons are supposed to do, so here's an explanation

Special Combo - button that you use to input blitzes

Series - do final hit of your standing combo

Start - pause

The interesting thing appears once you finish the game once on any difficulty. During your playthroughs you earn cash that can be spent in shop, which is run by Blaze, on various things: characters, game modes, cheats, game edits and other stuff. The amount of earned cash is affected by difficulty, defeated enemies and obtained items. The prices aren't high and it won't take you long to unlock everything, for the beginners I really recommend buying characters first, especially their SOR1 and SOR2 variants.

Blaze sells stuff
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Is your head spinning yet ? Wait till we get to the characters, because there's a fuckload of them ! There are 18 fellas waiting for you to try them out ! And this number is not some form of compensation for game's shallow mechanics, the combat system in the game is pretty advanced and it isn't any less deep than Denjin Makai, which I found impressive at the time. I'll explain how it works and tell you about the stuff you can play with.

Basic stuff: Characters can do the regular beat'em'up things like: standing combos, jumping attacks, back attacks, grab attacks and throws. Doesn't seem too fancy, but you can execute the final attack of your standing combo without doing the full combo, which can be useful for a fast knockdown or additional range. Each character has 3 jumping attacks, which one you are going to use depends on the direction you're inputting during your jump: forward + attack - knockdown attack; down + attack - doesn't knock enemies down and leaves them open for additional attacks when you land; just attack - jump in place and do attack that deals more damage and usually has anti-air properties. You also have back attack that is very fast, knocks punks down and breaks blocks. Grab game is pretty impressive as well: forward + attack - set of 3 attacks, knockdown on final hit, though you can deliver 2 hits and do something else instead; back + attack - throw, as usual you're invincible during throw animation; attack only - fast knockdown attack; jump - get behind (or in front of) grabbed opponent, you get different attacks depending on your position during grabs.

Specials: You have defensive (special button) and offensive specials (forward + special button), the first ones is something I usually call "despair attack" and it should be well familiar to you - attack that makes you temporary invulnerable and knocks away everybody from you, offensive special's purpose is to deal damage, it still offers some protection, but no invulnerability like defensive one. Special attacks consume either meter or your life, depending on your settings.

Blitzes: Running attacks are called "Blitzes" here, each character has 3 different versions of them, which you can use by either inputing a specific key combination or just running and pressing an attack (depends on your settings), unlike specials blitzes do not require any resources to be used.

There are also various weapons for you to pick up and there's plenty of them, but essentially they are devided in 3 categories: one handed (knives and everything resembling them), two handers (pipes, planks, bats, swords etc) and guns (pistol, uzi, rocket launcher), every character has certain special attacks with specific melee weapons (guns don't feature any special attacks) and swings them differently.

The life and continue system should be well familiar to you - die and lose a life, get enough points to earn additional life, number of starting lives can be changed in settings, but you can't do it for continues and you always going to have 3 of them, you can't earn additional continues.


Daddy's doing business
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All in all characters are very varied: some have great jumping attacks, others great blitzes, some excel at grabs, others at using weapons, some are slow, some are fast, some have long reach on attacks and others don't etc; and it really shows when you take them to higher difficulties, where you are required to understand their strong and weak sides to successfully beat the game, there's no such character that will carry you through the game. I finished the game with each of them at least once (except 2 and I will explain why), obviously it's not enough to give you a detailed analysis, but I'll give you a quick rundown for each one, but since there are so many of them, I'm putting character section under the spoiler.

Character description (it's very long)
Quick note. I really recommend you to download CajNatalie character's fixes here, which is included in SOR3 Ultimate Mod. It is a big improvement over original balance, it doesn't include any extremes and just makes characters more enjoyable to play. Download the archive, open "Characters Patches" folder, copy "data" folder into your SORR directory, copy "chars" and "backup_chars" folders into SORR/palettes folder. Do the same for SOR3 Axel and Skate.

Stats that you see in character select screen are very misleading and were probably added just for fluff, you can only really trust the stamina rating, I really recommend to either read my summaries or try out characters yourself. Keep in mind that everybody who is considered a SOR3 character can't use offensive specials during grabs. The six starting characters, all of their variations + Roo can call police to deal heavy damage to every enemy on the screen, it's not available on every stage though, everybody else has their own version of police special that can be used anywhere, but it's either weaker or does something else instead of delivering damage. Under each character's discription I posted a picture that shows you how to input their blitzes, blitzes are done the same way across all versions of single character, but copypasted them just for conviniece.

Characters that are available from the start:

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SOR3 Axel

Уёбище. The worst fucking versions of Axel, he is a very flawed character with almost no strengths. I have no fucking idea what the fuck were developers thinking when making him.

+normal attacks are fast
+blitz 2 is pretty good (but you have to install CajNatalie mod for it to be so)
+has a good special with swords with big invulnerability window
+-offensive special makes him completely invulnetable, but the move itself is as scary as 10 year old girl slapping you a bunch of times
-low damage
-runs slowly
-reach is lacking
-bad approach
-doesn't have a move that deals good damage in a single hit, which makes certain enemies annoying to deal with
-stupid throw when grabbing opponent from behind that leaves him open for attacks of faster enemies and makes it harder to go for chain grabs
-his "GRAND UPPAH" doesn't do shit
-blitzes 1 and 3 leave him open for attacks
-blitz 3 can do big damage if you land it correctly, but it forcefully moves him up and down a lot, has a knockdown hit in the middle of it for some reason and a long recovery after being executed, making it an unsafe and a very unreliable move in general
-struggles against enemies that block

I strongly advise you to avoid this fucking blondie, if you want to play the actual good variations of Axel stick with SOR1 or SOR2 versions.

Blitzes
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SOR3 Blaze

Overall Blaze is a much better character than Axel (if you are comparing their SOR3 versions) but she still suffers from SOR3 characters being gimped damage wise for some reason.

+good jumping attacks
+runs fast
+defensive special hits harder than average
+blitzes 2 and 3 are good and strong
+normal attack during frontal grabs is a slamming throw and it can be used on big guys
+-good approach with blitz 3, but pretty bad without it; you can try and use jumping attacks, but they are still vulnerable to anti-airs
-healthpool is lower than average
-doesn't have a move that deals good damage in a single hit, which makes certain enemies annoying to deal with
-damage is lacking, but it's better than Axel's (lol, get outperformed by a girl)
-blitz 1 sucks, although it's the best of all Blaze versions, others have it even worse
-isn't really good with any of the weapons, she has some flashy moves with swords and knives but they are uselesss; you can try and use her normal attack with knives, which is a stab and slash combo, but it's slow

You might find Blaze fun to play, but her SOR1 and SOR2 versions are much better overall.

Blitzes
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Adam

My favourite and the first character I've beaten the game with. Adam has a lot of stengths and almost no real weakness without being overpowered.

+good jumping attacks with above average damage
+healthpool is above average
+good approach
+his standing combo will launch enemies into the air and if they collide with others, they will hurt and knock them down
+all of his blitzes are good, easy to input and can be used for different situations
+has a second offensive special (press special while running) that makes him invincible and does good damage in single hit; I didn't like this move at first, because it's slow and range is so-so, but it's good once you know how to use it
+great normal attack with two handed weapons, it's fast and has great reach, he also has some ok specials for bats, pipes and planks, but you can just keep spamming those excellent normals
+defensive special can hit enemies several times for bigger damage
+-first offensive special is meh considering how good his other moves are, but it means that you can save your meter for defensive one instead
-runs slowly
-back attack sucks (probably the worst in the game)
-delay between attacks in his combo is pretty significant (especially without CajNatalie mod) and makes it harder to go in for grabs or mix it with specials or blitzes

Adam is the most well rounded character in the game, he's moveset is great and he's good with almost any weapon in the game. Adam is a good choice for beginners and advanced players alike.

Blitzes
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SOR3 Skate

Absolutely pathetic fucking garbage, forget about this fuck and never play him. He's just extremely inferior to SOR2 Skate.

Blitzes
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Max

The big guy. One of the best characters in the game, he was so good that he even recieved some nerfs in CajNatalie mod, but he's still brilliant even with that mod installed.

+biggest fucking dick damage in the game, nobody else comes close
+big healthpool
+good approach
+hardest hitting standing combo in the entire game
+best and strongest grabs in the game, his asscracker throw from behind (I believe it's called "atomic drop" in wrestling) will take about 60% of life bar away
+can throw big guys freely
+all of his blitzes are good, especially blitz 2 that makes him invulnerable (nerfed in CajNatalie mod) and crashes blocks
+defensive special range and damage are above average
+when he swings two handed weapons he attacks both in front and behind of him
+has good running attack with pipes and planks that is a bit slow, but comes with great range and damage
+strong offensive special with good damage and range
+-can't throw enemies at all, he only slams them into the ground; punks won't be able to tech your throws, but it also means you can't use them as a living projectiles or abuse pits
-slowest run in the game, you can try and compensate it with his slide though
-standing combo is slow
-big hitbox
-going big dick damage during frontal grabs leaves him open for attacks
-can not change positions during grabs

Max fits "strong but slow" archetype perfectly, he a real powerhouse and should be your choice if you want to absolutely destroy everything that you see. He's one of the best characters in the game, but it takes skill to use him correctly thanks to his low speed and big hitbox.

Blitzes
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Zan (considered SOR3 type of character)

Zan is kind of a one trick pony type of character and it's easy to hate him for it, but I think you should try giving him a go, he might turn out to be more enjoyable than he seems.

+heathpool is above average
+runs fast
+extreme approach with his blitzes, especially with blitz 3 that will beat every other move in the game, except projectiles and certain jump attacks that come from great height
+can throw enemies behind himself during rear grabs
+-has an unblockable special projectile (press special while running), but it's damage is low and you can hurt yourself with it
+-all of his blitzes have great properties, but their damage is low
-low damage, it's so bad that you should really consider turning timer off if you decide to play Zan
-standing combo sucks - slow and lacks damage
-isn't really good with any of the weapons
-relies on having stars, because trying to input blitzes manually while running around is really hard

Playing Zan is about spamming blitzes, their damage blows, but they look pretty cool. If you are looking for a cool cyborg to play, then you should consider skipping Zan, he's an old man first and everything else second. Though you might give him a go if zapping punks with electricity, while sliding on rocket boots everywhere sounds like your type of thing.

Blitzes
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Characters that you have to buy in shop:

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SOR1 and SOR2 versions of Axel

As I've said, these 2 are much better than their SOR3 counterpart, though they still have serious flaws, they also feature some great strengths this time, not being considered SOR3 type of character also greatly helps them.

Common strengths and weaknesses:
+fast standing combo
+blitzes hit very hard, even blitz 1 (grand upper) that you're going to prioritize, because it's the easiest one to use; SOR2 version hits a bit weaker and features less multihit

+blitzes 1 and 2 are good and strong
+offensive special hits very hard; SOR1 version will take away about 50% of life bar, SOR2 version hits even harder - about 60%
+good special with swords with big invulnerability window; SOR1 version is gamebreakingly good - biggest invulnerability window with huge range and damage ( takes 45% of the life bar with single sword slash at no cost, lol), though the attack is slower; SOR2 version is the same as SOR3

-run slowly
-bad approach; SOR2 versions has it a bit better, because his jumping attacks are better
-offensive special leaves them open for attacks; SOR1 versions is way faster, SOR2 version is a copy of SOR3 special, but damage is way higher and it has no invulnerability
-blitzes 1 and 3 leave them open for attacks
-blitz 3 can do big damage if you land it correctly, but it forcefully moves them up and down a lot, has a knockdown hit in the middle of it for some reason and a long recovery after being executed, making it an unsafe and a very unreliable move in general
-struggle against enemies that block
-don't have a move that deals good damage in single hit, which makes certain enemies annoying to deal with; SOR1 version has it a bit better, because his offensive special is only 3 hits

There isn't much left for individual details, but here they are:

SOR1 (has range issues without CajNatalie mod) SOR2 (is untouched in CajNatalie mod)
+the only version of Axel that has a proper rear throw -reach is kind of lacking
-has the worst jumping attacks in the entire game -stupid throw when grabbing opponent from behind that leaves him open for attacks of faster enemies and makes it harder to go for chain grabs
-has a running special (press special while running), but it's useless - pathetic damage and reach
-since he's unchanged in CajNatalie mod it's way harder to land his blitzes 2 and 3
-one of the slowest grab attacks in the entire game

Even with much improvements over SOR3 variant Axel remains one of the hardest character to play, because he's very unsafe. Both of the versions might seem like they are overly flawed, but you won't really notice it when you start breaking bones with their super strong blitzes and specials, the hard part is getting in without having your face smashed. Blocking enemies are the bane of their existence though, because they nullify their biggest strengths. Oh and if you find a sword, you can break the game with their special.

Blitzes
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SOR1 and SOR2 versions of Blaze

Just like with Axel, I consider these 2 the better versions of SOR3 Blaze thanks to their bigger damage.

Common strengths and weaknesses:
+runs fast
+good jumping attacks; SOR1 version isn't as good, but is still fine
+defensive special hits harder than average
+blitzes 2 and 3 are good and strong
+offensive special has good reach, hits hard (SOR2 version hits very hard but SOR1 is faster) and deliver it's damage in a single hit
+-good approach with blitz 3, but pretty bad without it; you can try and use jumping attacks, but they are still vulnerable to anti-airs
-healthpool is lower than average; for SOR1 version it's very low
-blitz 1 is horrible, just forget about that move
-aren't really good with any of the weapons, they have some flashy moves with swords and knives but they are uselesss; you can try and use their normal attack with knives, which is a stab and slash combo, but it's slow; SOR1 version doesn't even have that

Individual details:

SOR1 SOR2
+her blitzes 2 and 3 are slides, they don't hit as hard but have better range and are way faster, also you can slide under attacks that hit high +good back attack that also hits in front of her
-the only version of Blaze that doesn't have a slam during frontal grabs

The biggest advantage of these 2 over SOR3 Blaze is their strong offensive special that is good in almost every situation. SOR1 version trades some of her health and damage for speed, SOR2 version hits harder but is a bit slower. Blaze is good girl, I recommend you to try her out.

Blitzes
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SOR2 Skate

His SOR3 variation is worthless, but SOR2 Skate kicks ass. Ever wanted to play something like Zan but with high damage ? Well, look no further.

+fastest run in the game (alongside his SOR3 version and Rudra)
+all of his blitzes are good and hit very hard
+extreme approach with his blitzes
+good jumping attacks with above average damage
+alongside with Max has some of the best grabs in the game (bet you didn't expect that from a kid)
+can throw opponents in any direction
+his throw from behind deals high damage, makes him invulnerable for something like 3 seconds and can also hit enemies that come close (this happens more often than you would think)
+smaller hitbox
+-offensive special hits very hard, but it's also slow and not that easy to land properly
+-has good running attack with knives, but why use it when his blitzes are so much better ?
-very low health
-grab attacks are pretty slow
-his blitz 1 and offensive special are considered air attacks, which can make some very specific enemies annoying to deal with

SOR2 Skate is kind of similar to Zan - run around and spam blitzes, but his damage is way higher, his moveset is way better in general and he offers you more room for tactics with his grabs, jumping attacks and offensive special. Don't hate on SOR2 version, just because SOR3 Skate is an insufferable garbage, SOR2 Skate is a cool kid.

Blitzes
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Mr.X (considered SOR3 type of character)

Ever wanted to play as the big boss ? Despite being a formidable opponent, as a playable character Mr.X is honestly pretty underwhelming.

+big healthpool
+runs fast
+standing combo has good reach
+throws enemies very fast and very far
+can play a good keep out game with his gun
+his shooting attacks are unblockable
+-defensive special makes him shoot everywhere, it covers big area, but it's a bad move when you need to get out of the crowd that stands close to you; also the animation is long and he's only invincible at the beggining of it
+-offensive special is fast and deals decent damage at range, but doesn't do anything when used at close distances
+-all of his blitzes have significant strong and weak sides at the same time: blitz 1 - fast and decent damage, but short range; blitz 2 - ok, but harder to land and it's doesn't have the speed of blitz 1 nor the damage of blitz 3; blitz 3 - good damage, but it's hard to land and easily goes past opponents, animation is also pretty long
-can't use weapons at all, if you pick anything up he will throw it away immediately
-doesn't have police special
-can't change positions during grabs
-bad jumping attacks

I would say that Mr.X is a very average character, he looks cool with his gun, but he's not as amazing gameplay wise.

Blitzes
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SOR2 and SOR3 Shiva

Remember when I said that there's no character that will carry you through the game ? Well, when it comes to Shiva that statement is only half true, this guy is seriously overpowered.

+biggest range on normal attacks in the game (especially for SOR3 Shiva), it's so good that most of the time AI just can't handle it
+fast standing combo
+great jumping attacks
+defensive special has bigger than average range and damage
+offensive special has great range and damage, also it's a single hit attack
+great approach, because of extreme range on his normal attacks you don't even have to use bltizes or jumping attacks
+runs fast
+healthpool is above average
+blitzes 2 and 3 are good
+can hit opponents 3 times during grabs before finishing it, he is the only character that can do so
+can throw big guys freely
+great special with swords, that is almost as broken as SOR1 Axel's is; SOR3 Shiva is a plain better sword user than his SOR2 variant
+-police special makes him super fast for about 1 minute, doesn't clear screens for you but still helps you kill shit better, it also can be used anywhere
-blitz 1 sucks, it might look like a cool move when used by a boss, but it's really not
-has the same stupid throw from behind, that SOR2 and SOR3 Axels do; it also does less damage than his frontal throw, so avoid it

As for their differences, they are very minor. The only significant ones are these two: SOR3 Shiva can't use offensive special during grabs, but is way better with swords. SOR2 version has a good running attack with knives, but as usual the damage is low; also his blitzes are faster but their range is shorter.

It's hard not to love Shiva, when he's a nigh perfect character. Don't feel bad about playing him, the game throws a lot of cheap shit at you and it's fine to pay it back the same type of coin.

Blitzes
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Rudra (considered SOR3 type of character)

Completely original character by SORR developers. I really didn't like playing her at first, because she's just not my type, but after giving her another try I found her to be pretty fun and strong.

+fastest run in the game alognside Skate
+all of her blitzes are good and ignore blocks
+blitz 3 hits pretty hard
+defensive special hits harder than average and also ingores blocks
+good approach
+good range on normal attacks
+good jumping attacks with above average damage
+great throw during rear grabs, has big invulnerability window, makes it easy to go for chain grabs and can also be used on big guys
+-police special can be used anywhere, but it's damage is lower
+-decent special with swords that hits very hard (probably even harder than SOR1 Axel's special), but it's kind of slow, range isn't that good and it doesn't make her invincible
-health is lower than average
-blitz 1 damage is low
-blitz 3 - her fastest way of killing things is pretty awkward to input manually, so you would want to keep those 3 stars
-probably the worst offensive special in the game (I think even SOR3 Skate has better one) - throws three shurikens that deal pathetic damage, it's only good for knocking enemies down and making them drop their weapons

It feels like whoever developed this character wanted her to have an aswer for everything, she might not look that amazing, but harder parts of the game are way easier for her to beat (ability to crash blocks is way stronger than you might think). I find her design boring and still don't fancy playing her much, but she's a strong character nonetheless and the game features a unique ending for her.

Blitzes
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Elle (considered SOR3 type of character)

I guess you can count her as another unique entry in the series, she was present as an enemy in SOR2, but wasn't made a playable character until Remake. I wasn't expecting anything from this character, but here's what I got.

+biggest Z axis range on her normal attacks, it's easy to hit enemies above or below you
+standing combo also hits enemies behind her
+good jumping attacks
+hardest hitting defensive special in the game, it's so good that it can used as an offensive one
+offensive special has huge range
+can throw enemies in any direction
+runs pretty fast
+-police special can be used anywhere, but it's damage is lower
+-blitzes 2 and 3 aren't strong, but aren't weak either
-isn't really good with any of the weapons, she has a decent running attack with knives, but it's too slow
-blitz 1 is pretty bad

Elle is the most average character in the game (first time charcter stats actually tell you the truth), her moveset is solid, but none of her attacks are really outstanding. She's alright and you can have fun with her (if you catch my meaning), it's just that I don't like her lack of extremes.

Blitzes
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Ash (considered SOR3 type of character)

I haven't played this character without CajNatalie mod, which buffs him a lot, so I can't tell what's it like to play him in the original version, other people say that he's really bad. But here's the summary for a modded game.

+runs very fast, hard to tell but it feels like his speed matches Rudra's
+defensive special hits harder than average
+great jumping attacks, his elbow drop is so good that it will beat most anti-airs
+standing combo hits very hard, only Max hits harder
+last hit of standing combo has insane reach, it's way longer than his sprite and AI absolutely can't handle it, you can even bypass opponent's block with it (don't forget that there's a button that allows you to use last hit of standing combo instantly)
+grab attacks are fast and have good reach, pretty easy to hit adjusting enemies
+blitz 3 is crazy strong: great damage, great range, great priority, great speed; it's a move that wreck everything
+he's invincible during his jump back after he does frontal throw and enemies will often walk right into him and get grabbed, allowing you to easily do a chain throw combo, while staying completely safe
+-police special can be used anywhere, but it's damage is lower, it also looks hilarious
+-running attack with pipes and planks has enormous X axis range and good damage, but Z axis range is lacking and recovery is pretty long, so it's not that easy to hit somebody with it
+-offensive special is pretty meh, but it also means that you can save your meter for defensive one instead
+-blitz 1 has great properties, but it's damage is low
-can not throw enemies behind during frontal grabs, he will slam them into the ground instead
-standing combo is slow and delay between hits is massive
-kind of relies on having 3 stars, it's not easy to spam his best attack - blitz 3 manually, while staying on the move
-absolutely horrendous roll (worst in the game), it's so slow that you should forget about using it at all, if you don't you will get yourself killed

Despite looking like nothing but a joke material about faggotry Ash can be a very strong character, if you know how to use him. He's the most gimmicky though, so it will take quite some time before you become good with him.

Blitzes
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Dishonorable mention:

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Roo and SOR3 Skate

Remember that I've said that I've only finished the game with 16 characters ? Well I couldn't make it with these 2. I've already said that SOR3 Skate is just a much worse version of SOR2 Skate, it's like they've taken out all of his strong sides, except high speed and grabbing game, and threw some shit on top of it.

Roo is fucking awful as well, his damge is extremely low, his jumping attacks are lacking, hiz blitzes are only good against opponents in the corner, his range sucks, his health is very low etc etc etc. There's hardly anything good about him, he makes SOR3 Axel look like a decent character, the only good thing he has going for him is his extreme back attack that breaks block, has great range and can stunlock opponents indefinitely, if you can keep landing it correctly, in fact that's almost his entire playstyle - get in the position (i.e. turn his ass towards the crowd) to spam his back attack and keep doing until everybody dies, considering his extremely low damage you have to repeat it about 1 trillion times per encounter. Sounds fun ? Absolutely fucking not !

Roo Blitzes
Roo.png

Zan demonstrates his tickling skills
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Playable characters might look cool, but their enemies are real deal too. Though they mostly have the looks of generic punks, thugs and mafiosos, their fighting skills and attacks have great variety, you absolutely can't use same tactics against everyone, you will need to figure out ways to fight different enemies efficiently. That is especially true for bosses, because most of them deal heavy damage and easily punish your dumb moves. One of the most formidable things in enemies arsenal is their ability to block, they use it very often and it seems like they can block almost any move in the game (I remember some guys blocking baseball bat swings), except grabs and a few unblockable attacks, that most of the characters don't have. AI in this game is pretty great as well, enemies with weapons and long range attacks will try to stay out of the way, faster enemies are always looking for ways to flank you and those who prefer frontal approach are pretty good at avoiding your attacks, some opponents also have good anti-air moves that will reliably beat your jumping attacks, there's of course much more to it, because as I've said enemies come with great variety of tactics and behaviour types. There are also plenty of obstacles scatted around the stages like: pits, traps, moving cars and motorcycles, railroad platforms, explosions and other stuff; though most of the time they favor player and it's easy to make enemies kill themselves.

There are no rules for this race, punk
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There isn't much variety of gameplay during campaigns, but sometimes you will have to ride motorcycles or jet skis, or even run away from some hazards, though most of the time it's just about beating punks and moving forward. On the other hand outside of campaigns you have plenty of other game modes: survival, boss rush, versus mode, volleyball game and events; but these are made for experienced players and will give you some good challenge to overcome. Boss rush is the easiest mode, especially if you use OP characters like Shiva or Max; survival on the other hand is very hard, harder than beating the game on mania. Events is a collection of 16 minigames, most of them were made to be as annoying as possible (I haven't beat 3 of them, too lazy to really bother), though they can be fun to complete, double that if you're playing with your friend. Survival and boss rush feature several stages and if you fully complete either all boss rush stages, all survival (getting enough points to obtain S rank) stages or events you will get access to AI editor that allows you to change: enemy movement speed, ability to pick up food or weapons, damage, blocking and evading skills; also it's not the only thing in the game that allows you to fiddle around with AI. Talking about game's crazy custmization, huh ?

SORR was also made to support various mods, sprites and sound edits, you can even make a custom campaign yourself if you want. Unfortunately the game isn't open source and it really hurts it's modding scene. There are some campaigns made by SOR fans that use resources from various arcade or home console games, but I haven't tried any of them yet.

Not the type of a baseball match you would want to see, or would you ?
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The presentation in this game is pretty great. Sprites don't look very detailed, because the game follows the style of graphics that were made for home consoles, which had weaker hardware than arcades at the time, but they and backgrounds look stylish and colorful, there's also a great variety of them. It could've been even better if there was more stuff happening in the background, like in Guardians. Protagonists and bosses have rather rich animations, but the same can't be said about regular enemies, though it never came as the problem to me. Authors have done a lot of artwork for the game that wasn't present in the original series and while the intro doesn't look good, pictures that are shown between missions are well done and fit the game perfectly. Music in this game is totaly awesome and there's a lot of it, authors tried to follow the style of the original and make it even better and they fully succeeded in that regard. I don't feel like reposting the songs anymore (I've done it 2 times already), so just look at the post above this or search for it yourself. I don't like some of the sounds that were ripped from console versions, it's the same problem with home console hardware, that it couldn't support high quality sound at the time and certain sounds in SORR are not good, probably the most notorious example is Axel's yell, his robotic sounding "AAAAHHH" is just off putting to me.

Shiva shows some looser wrestler that he wasn't studying the blade for no reason
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And of course it's not a complete review without talk about game's downsides, isn't it ? While SORR is an excellent game, it still has a fair amount of issues. The first one is that old fucking annoying way of grabbing somebody by running into them, combined with significant amount of enemies on the screen and their tendency to swarm you, at times it really becomes a fucking problem to move around without grabbing somebody. Also some enemies break away from grabs very quickly and they hit you while doing so, sometimes it happens that I get hit before I realise that I've grabbed somebody and able to react to that. A good portion of advanced enemies can grab your characters too, although you can figure out when they do so, it's still kind of a clusterfuck of "who grabs who".

Another control related issue that inputing blitzes is pretty wonky, pressing blitz button will make your character stop their actions and stand still in one place for about 2 seconds. The game is pretty forgiving with execution of blitz 1 and 2, which only require you to press two directional buttons, but with blitz 3 you aren't not allowed to fuck up. The problem is that game doesn't allow you to just input them as fast as you can (like special moves in AVP) and you have to follow the specific timing between pressing the buttons. It's impossible to count how many times I've got hit, because I've fucked up my inputs or just accidentally pressed blitz button and completely stopped in one place.

Well, well, what's going on here ?
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And as for gameplay related issues... The character balance is not good, some characters are obviously much stronger than the others, others are weak in general and some are nigh insufferable to play with. I understand that the roster is huge, but a good portion of characters deals unjustifiably low damage and others have big problems dealing with stronger enemies.

Enemy blocking ability is really overpowered and it's a really cheap way of creating difficulty. It's simply too good, when they can block almost every attack in the game and counter immediately after that. For most characters the only way to deal with them is to grab them, good fucking luck doing that. I've described problems with the grabs in this game above and those are the big reasons why these types of enemies are so annoying. What's even more stupid is that defensive specials do not break blocks and thus they fail their main purpose - getting everybody away from you; so fucking fun to waste your meter and not get out of the crowd.

On "Very Hard" and "Mania" difficulties enemies move way too fast, it's why I called them "Bullshit" and "Extreme Bullshit". It's just out of control that almost any punk in the game moves at Sonic speeds, it makes the issues described above even worse and you can't do anything without somebody shoving their fist up your ass. I think it's fair to reduce enemy speed via AI editor to more reasonable amounts, especially considering that it's not viewed as cheat usage. I've managed to beat the game on "Mania" without AI editor by using Shiva, wasn't that hard, I haven't even used continues, I can do some cheap bullshit too, lol.

I don't like that whole "lives and continues" system. I think it shifts game design from making hard, but passable challenges to "fuck it, they'll manage somehow, they have additional lives and even continues to back them up". Some stages in the game are obviously designed to milk you out of your lives, like stage 7 elevator on SOR2 route (that is followed by another bullshit elevator on stage 8 ahahahaha oh my...); so the game becomes sort of this: accumulate enough additional lives before you reach bullshit parts, try your best no to run out of them during the said parts. It's not as bad as I'm describing it (SOR2 elevators are legit bullshit though, being completely serious here), but still pretty fucking stupid.

And finaly there's no online coop, if you want to play with your friends you have to do it on one machine. I have no idea why they haven't implemented this feature, but considering that the game was done by amateurs I guess they just were not skilled enough.

I wanted to post some amusing pictures in the end, but couldn't decide which one was funnier, I would allow you to judge
Roo.png
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Streets of Rage Remake is a brilliant game and it's shortcoming can not change that. I've had a lot of fun playing it and hope you will enjoy it too. I suppose it could've been even better if SEGA werent acting like cunts. Don't know what else to say... Go and try it out now, it's a free game after all.

Additional Stuff:

More screenshots, this time they aren't big
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Gameplay videos
No death run on Mania difficulty by pro Max player






Route maps
This one I translated for you

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Movelist
If you can't find some character, then search for in-depth topic like this one


English community forum that is still alive, you can also find various mods here


Russian fan group

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Last edited:

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
:dead:

Fucking shit guys, that review took me a long ass time to do. Almost 3 weeks of playing SORR every evening and weekend to see the whole game and several days to write the above text and make it as cohesive as my IQ and english skills can possibly allow. It's an incredibly long one too, 8400 words... Wtf, am I writing a book here ?

If you are wondering why did I take on the game, that's pretty modern, even though I wanted to maintain some chronological order, well the answer is simple. I was really dying to try out that game, because it seemed great to me and also the thought process was that SORR was made as a remake of the series that were made in early 90s.

Anyway I'm going to take a short break from writing this sort of stuff to avoid burn out.

EDIT:
I wanted to put this gif somewhere, but couldn't decide where should it go, I'll just drop it here.

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Last edited:

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
BRIO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN OPREN BOR STUFF MARVEL INFINITY WAR IS AWESOME
I've seen people recommending First Alliance 2 over this, according to them Infinity War has a lot of bad design decisions and feels very unfinished.
 

BLOBERT

FUCKING SLAYINGN IT BROS
Patron
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
4,236
Location
BRO
Codex 2012
BRO BOTH ARE FUN YOU'LL WIN EITHER WAY

INFINITY WAR IS EASIER FOR MY KIDS CAUSE THERE IS NO DDOWN DOWN UP TYPE STUFF FOR SPECIAL MOVES
 

BLOBERT

FUCKING SLAYINGN IT BROS
Patron
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
4,236
Location
BRO
Codex 2012
BRO I NEVER PLAYED IT TOO MUCH BUT IT LOOKED GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME TO MESS AROUND WITH FOR A BIT
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
So I felt like playing SoRR again and I found out that there was a pretty big update for it back in 2020. It was mostly about graphical enhancements and bugfixes, but whoever made it (the author remains anonymous) has also made some very, very questionable gameplay tweaks. SoRR has already been a pretty messy game in terms of balance and higher difficulties were very cheesy as is, making AI even better at playing footsies and nerfing characters isn't something I welcome. What I really can't stand, however, is the new soundtrack, compared to previous versions it's just awful, check it out:

Old


New


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New


I would say just forget about it and stick with the 5.1 version.

Link to the new version:
https://sorr.forumotion.net/t838-new-streets-of-rage-remake-v5-2-download-and-info
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Ninja Baseball Batman 1993
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Regarded as one of the craziest arcade titles, not just due to it's name, by possibly every single person who tried to play it. Want to know why? Just keep on reading or even try playing it yourself. Supposedly it was inspired by the Ninja Turtles franchise, of course, the obvious difference is that it's entirely based around baseball, and I mean it when I say entirely. The characters, the enemies, the plot and the surroundings, almost everything is in some way connected to baseball, the game basically breathes baseball. I don't know the story around it's inception and why this theme was chosen, but man they've done a great job implementing it. That flyer above is one of the best video game cover arts I've seen. But let's move on to the gameplay already. Oh yeah!

The very first screen you see after booting up the game. Winners don't use drugs, yet the developers of this game have very likerly been ingesting some sort of fun powder.

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Batter up!
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The protagonists are ninja baseball men, duh. There are four of them, each with unique appearance, attacks and special moves. Their standout features are somewhat reminiscent of Ninja Turtles. Jose - the leader of the group and is all around balanced, Ryno is the smallest and the fastest one, can do a number of tricks out of the aerial state, Roger is slow, but is buff and hits like a truck, and Straw is the tallest one and has the longest reach. In practice however it's not all that simple, let's get into details.

In this game every character has more features and bigger movelist than the classic beat'em'ups usually provide, out of all games that I've played, Denjin Makai strikes the closest resemblance, I would say. So aside from the usual combos, grabs, jumping, running and despair attacks each character has a number of special moves they can do and a super despair attack. Holding down attack button makes characters enter a special stance, increasing their movement speed along z axis, which is very important, because otherwise there are no ways to move along z axis quickly. Out of that stance you can do a special attack by pressing jump, these are situationally useful. However, they are nothing in comparison to the super or signature attacks, each character has one of those, they do massive damage, but are not that easy to input. Special moves cost no resources, so you are free to spam them as you please, but mind that they are not without downsides (aside from one notable exception) they might have long start up or long recovery times, or even just limited range, so you have to commit to them if you decide to do one. Using and properly inputing those special moves at the right moments is something you will have to learn if you want to be a true baseball ninja. Oh yeah!

As for the despair attacks, there's a universal homerun, which is rarely used, and a super despair attack, which I've already mentioned, it's animation is unique for every character. Basically it's a screen cleaner with lots of special effects, very strong and very useful for getting rid of hordes, although it costs a good deal of your health, takes about 1/3 of it, but it really is not a big deal if you use at the right moments.

As for the stats, there's not that much difference between the characters like in some other arcade games, Guardians for example. Everyone has the same amount of health, but speed, range and damage vary for every character, more details below.

Captain Jose

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Jose is called the balanced one and he actually is. Jose offers a very good combination of speed, damage output, fast throws and powerful special moves. His normal attacks are second in range only to Straw, but have much more z axis range instead, and he swings almost as fast as Ryno does. Jose is very fast on his feet, not as quick as Ryno, but you won't have any troubles with dashing all around the screen. His super attack - dynamite dance is pretty easy to set up, you can just knock down some enemies and do it as they stand up, it doesn't have to connect for Jose to do the full animation. It's only real downside is that it does not pierce through enemy shields, like other characters' supers do, so those mecha baseball suits are a bit harder for Jose to deal with. But to compensate for this, his special attack - fire kick covers the most distance out of all similar moves, completely pierces shields and does fire damage. Sure, it's not as damaging as the actual super attacks, but it's the only move in the game which immediately deals fire damage, and fire damage instantly kills certain enemy types, regardless of how much damage it actually does. As a cherry on the cake, his ground pummel attack is very good, something that is not common in this game, useful for squeezing some extra damage on bosses or finishing off isolated enemies. Jose is a very strong character all around.

Twinbats Ryno
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The little speedster. While at first it might seem like Ryno was meant to sacrifice everything for his supreme speed, once you actually try playing him it becomes obvious that he's not really giving away anything for his considerable advantages. Truth be told he's just plain overpowered, largely due to his signature move - thunderbolt kick, it's just crazy. For other characters super attacks come with the actual drawbacks and they can be tricky to input, but Ryno takes all of that and dumps it straight into the garbage bin. Thunderbolt kick is largely very safe as it comes high from the air, where only enemies with dedicated anti airs can reach Ryno, and even then it will beat a good number of those anti air moves, it's damage is just massive, it's fast, recovers quickly, has good range, big invincibility period after it connects and can even hit enemies lying on the ground, making Ryno THE boss killer, well the killer of everything really, it just never ends with this move.
And Ryno's basic and general tools are good too. Yes he has the shortes attack range out of all characters, but he can machinegun them out non-stop with his incredible speed, he runs very fast, can jump off walls and enemies, has very fast throws, his ground pummel is the best in the game, not like you need it, since thunderbolt kick hits grounded enemies, his get up attack is the best in the game. You can go on and on, just a busted character all around.

Beanball Roger

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Roger is exactly what you would expect from a character with such an appearance - slow and strong. His reach is pretty bad, but surprisingly he can move around very quickly with the help of his running attacks, just like in those asian action films, where the fattest guy is also somehow the most agile one. All of his attacks deal noteciably more damage, but where he really puts the hurt on is his special piledriver - foil buster. It does massive damage and Roger becomes fully invincible as soon as it connects. To be frank this move looks better on paper than in reality as it has a plethora of downsides. It's tricky to input, it's range is very short, sometimes it wouldn't connect even though Roger clearly reaches the enemy and the said enemy even enters hitstun animation, it's pretty poor at crowd control, yes it will slap anyone who gets close enough during it's animation, but it's range is very short and only the final hit does actual damage, not being careful with it you are likely to set up yourself for getting hit by enemy attacks during recovery state.
As for the Roger's other tools, yes he hits hard and can move around quickly, but his attacks are slower than other characters' attacks are, especially his grab attacks, so you have to extra careful if you want to wrestle somebody in big fights. Roger's most fatal downside is that he's the only character that doesn't have a good, strong "in your face" type of attack that you can spam, which makes him the hardest character to deal with big crowds of enemies, and this downside becomes very apparent in the last stage of the game. As a small bonus he has a unique jumping attack - body slam that will flatten and stun enemies for a brief period of time if it connects, long enough for you to make the same attack again resulting in a infinite loop, though it doesn't do a lot of damage and the recovery is pretty long, so if there are some enemies around that weren't hit by it they are very likely to slap you during recovery.
I wasn't able to find much use for his stance attack - gut hop, even though it's the fastest stance attack in the game and does decent damage, I've read that it is really good against certain enemy types. Overal I feel like Roger really suffers from being heavily outclassed by Ryno, who can deal the same or bigger amount of damage without sacrificing anything in return.

Stick Straw

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Stick is the first character I tried playing, probably because I like Donatello from TMNT the most. Unfortunately I find Stick's performance lacking, he's not outright terrible, but I had more trouble playing him than the other characters. So what exactly is wrong with him? He's very slow, almost as slow as Roger is, but he can't move around as quickly, however his slide, for some reason, allows him to traverse z axis at extreme speeds, and he's the only one who can move like that. His extended reach, frankly, doesn't mean much, enemies who are meant to outrange you will still outrange you, it is especially annoying where you can seemingly reach them with your attacks but not quite, but they can hit you just fine. It doesn't even really help with the crowd control, in most of the fights being fast is much more advantageous. Z axis range on his attacks is the worst in the game, at times it really drags you down, during his attacks Stick either pokes with his bat or swings it vertically. His stance attack - power thrust is pretty meh, it seems like Stick either has some invicibility frames during it or it just has priority over most of the attacks in the game, so you can use it as a reversal of sorts, but it's very slow, doesn't hit that hard and generally doesn't feel like it complements his gameplay at all.
Some of the worst offenders for me are his throws, if you do a combo into a grab, hold up or down while hitting an enemy, he will slam an enemy into the ground instead of throwing them across the screen, like other characters do. So you can't even use it as a crowd control tool. His signature move - royal stinger is the most iffy of them all, it has a long animation during which you are remain vulnerable, and the delay before final hit is so long that some enemies can simply move away before it hits them. And it's a jumping attack, meaning that it triggers about every anti air in the game on it's way, and it doesn't have the amazing properties of Ryno's thunderbolt kick to beat them, so at times you have to be really careful about using it. His only purely positive advantage is that his super despair attack has the longest animation out of all and can hit enemies several times while it's active.
As I've said, I don't consider Stick a plain bad character, but for some reason every good thing he has comes with a number of downsides attached to it. Overal I feel like Roger is the hardest one to play, because it is harder for him to deal with the big crowds, but outside of such fights he's very good, but Stick feels lacking no matter the situation he's in, that's especially sad because I really wanted to like him. If you are not good enough at landing his best attack - royal stinger, then you are probably going to suffer.

Made your choice yet? Good, let's play ball, ha ha ha!

Get ready for some mindblowing action, at times it can be hard to tell what the fuck actually happens on the screen.

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The story is the usual nonsense excuse used exclusively for the protagonists to smash something. Some baseball related relics, forming a golden statue of a baseball player, get stolen and it's up for you to find and return them. After the intro cinematic you are immediately embraced by the game's sheer insanity. The first enemies you meet are walking baseballs with limbs and eyes, you fight past them and then get attacked by walking baseball gloves that try to catch you with their several meters long tongues. The very first boss is a boxer plane that punches you with the chassis and you fight him inside a flying plane. All of this is accompanied by the cacophonous soundtrack filled with occasional porn moans, laughter, oh yeah and wow yells. Even the characters themselves make weird indescribable noises and this only the first level. In our time you can see a lot of sick, weird and insane things even if you don't actively search for them, highly autistic ravings, infant guro, snail pornography and much more. You would think that you've grown accostomed to perceiving strange sights, but I genuinely was astonished and even alienated during my first experience with the game, it really is weird.

The car is the local God mode power up, make sure to bump into everything that moves.

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But underneath this lasagna of audio and visual design madness lies a damn good beat'em'up with very solid mechanics. There's a good number of various enemies with different attacks and behaviour patterns encouraging you to use different tactics during combat, there are some basic weapons for you to pick up, like baseballs, logos and even TNT, sure they are very simplistic in their use, but it's fun to use them, there's even a God mode power up that let's you ride a car, as you can see on the picture above. The playable characters all have vastly different playstyles, each with various strength and weaknesess, which I've already described in great detail above. Each level has a unique and memorable boss for you to beat, yes they are pretty simplistic and mostly fought in the same way, but their appearances are so creative that I don't really care. Oh yeah!

There's some cheap arcade difficulty stuff, but it's very, very tame in comparison to other arcade games I've played, with the exception of the final boss, I was even tempted to crank up the difficulty in the emulator settings, but decided against it for the time being. You can get some additional lives during your playthough if you manage to beat interstage minigames, the minigames are very simple and only require you to mash an attack button to either squeeze or punch out a baseball, while they make sad eyes at you, trivial to complete thanks to emulator having turbo button options. So don't forget to map it, here they are useful not only for these minigames, but also for initiating wake up attacks, which can also be done after signature moves, ensuring safe recovery.

Roger is about to score a flash royal.

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You know, I actually find it hard to describe this game in detail, not only because it's so crazy and full of character, which is nigh impossible to convey in text, but also because I have nothing but praise for it. Sure, the overal gameplay is not on the level of the best games the genre has to offer, like SoRR, but what ninja baseball batman does, it does well, and most importantly this game is genuinly very fun. Yes it has it's share of shortcomings, like the usual classic beat'em'up bullshit: some imbalance between characters, no dedicated grab button and that standing near the items causes you to pick them up if you press attack button, which might not be something you want to do and there may be a lot of items lying on the ground, but you brush them off and keep on playing, because the game is so fun and oozes so much character and style, that you just want to experience more of this creative madness. Those downsides don't really concern you.

And this creativity just doesn't end until you beat the game. The second boss is a giant car that attacks you by blowing you a kiss, the level itself is a pier with giant yacht filled with baseballs partying around, then you get to visit a casino loaded with gangster cards that shoot cannons and flamethrowers at you, the boss is giant slot machine that creates various hazards for you depending on the roll results. Then there's a haunted house in Texas with baseball ghosts, living hamburgers and some sort of refrigerator buffalo as a boss. Did I mention that both the protagonists and the enemies have various sprites for getting hit with various attacks, like being electrocuted, set on fire or flattened, or how mechanical bosses and enemies lose their parts upon taking enough damage? And the soundtrack only keeps getting crazier as you progress further, at one moment I was even about to start wowing along, this game doesn't drop the ball at all, ha ha ha!
I could go on talking about it for a long time and I still wouldn't be able to cover everything and provide you at least a remote feeling of what it's like to actually play this game. So why don't you try it yourself?

I give this game an oh yeah/10 rating and highly recommend giving it a go even if you don't fancy arcade games. There truly is nothing else like this.

Hey, check out this massive ball I have.
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Additional stuff:

Movelist (for Roger's and Stick's signature moves you don't actually have to do 360 rotation, half a circle is enough. Lower half a circle for Stick and upper half a circle for Roger)

More screenshots, warning they are big (they don't do the game justice, you have to see it in motion)

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Gameplay videos (it is much better to experience it yourself instead of watching it)


 
Last edited:

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
It takes me several days to get enough material and write a review for a game that can completed in one hour at most
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Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
You know, ever since I started this I wanted to write something about tower of doom and shadow over mystara, but just looking at how massive those games are, in comparison to other arcade games, and recalling how my SORR review went, where I spent like 3 weeks or so playing it on and on just to see what it had to offer and to be able to understand it well enough, all of it makes go: "Nyeah, not sure if want". I hope that one day I can actually pull it off.
 

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