Historical Revisionism in Video Game and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[Nutmeg]

Raiden Fighters Jet

Have you played the first two Raiden Fighters?

Jet is a far more intense experience. All stages are bite sized and the patterns are hyper-aggressive. The stages are capped with Toaplan style bosses, except also hyper aggressive. The first non simulator battle is also an exercise in speed killing to avoid practically invisible bullets -- a really cool effect when you first play it "wow it's nothing like the simulator!".

In contrast, the first two games follow the format of two missions consisting of two bite sized stages with more traditional Toaplan style layouts, followed by one longer stage which consists almost entirely of a single multiple screen spanning boss. In these mega boss stages, the camera pans around both horizontally and vertically as you, the player, fight the scrolling in order to dismantle all the boss's turrets and defenses coming in and out of view while trying not to get sniped. It's a really unique experience -- only Omega Fighter did something remotely similar.

All three games are great but I think the first two might be better choices for players that don't care so much about an extremely high skill ceiling.

 

[Silverfish]

What about a game shark?

I have too much respect for Game Shark to consider it cheating. It saved me 20 hours of busywork in Ultimate Spider-Man back in the day.

 

[Falksi]

The whole "cheating" thing has several angles to it for me.

I play original hardware where possible, I just love the pure experience and the difference it makes with stuff like when I plug headphones directly into machines like the SEGA Megadrive is huge to me. Thus I experience a lot of games without stuff like save states and cheats.

Personally I prefer to play that way anyway, if I'm judging a game I want to do so by playing the way which the developer originally intended us to experience it, not what it's evolved into over the years.

But I don't see any issue with stuff like save states if they're used conservatively. Breaking trickier sections down with them is something many folk do, and anyone who plays genres like SHMUPs knows that piecing it all together to actually 1CC or no-death run a game is a far cry from playing all the way through live. When I see Youtube vids of "All bosses defeated no damage" I know most those kids couldn't do that on a live full playthrough - no amount of stating changes the fact most these games demand good reactions and skill regardless.

My only real grip with save states is when people "tour" games with them, then judge those games, that's just bollocks. Half of the thrill of older games is the sense of reward and satisfaction you get when conquering a difficult section, and so when folk use states & rewinds to beat those sections and then come away like "meh, it's an OK game" or "you can finish it in only 40 minutes" I do despair. They miss the joy of unravelling it all and buzz of the conquest too.

What Nutmeg seems to be talking about is expert level break-downs, analyzing tricky sections which demand intense study, but most people will only do that long after they are very familiar with a game and have beaten it anyway.

I definitely don't class beating a game using save states as beating it though, to me that's touring it. Unless you've beaten a game from start to finish in 1 genuine OH run with no saves, rewinds, assists, cheats etc. then to me you haven't actually beaten it.

 

[Machocruz]

Have you played the first two Raiden Fighters?

Jet is a far more intense experience. All stages are bite sized and the patterns are hyper-aggressive. The stages are capped with Toaplan style bosses, except also hyper aggressive. The first non simulator battle is also an exercise in speed killing to avoid practically invisible bullets -- a really cool effect when you first play it "wow it's nothing like the simulator!".

In contrast, the first two games follow the format of two missions consisting of two bite sized stages with more traditional Toaplan style layouts, followed by one longer stage which consists almost entirely of a single multiple screen spanning boss. In these mega boss stages, the camera pans around both horizontally and vertically as you, the player, fight the scrolling in order to dismantle all the boss's turrets and defenses coming in and out of view while trying not to get sniped. It's a really unique experience -- only Omega Fighter did something remotely similar.

All three games are great but I think the first two might be better choices for players that don't care so much about an extremely high skill ceiling.

I played the old, old Raidens, 1 and 2 I believe. I didn't mean to suggest that Jet was an easier shmup. Just one of the ones I want to get into down the road. And mostly because the visuals are cool to me. I know Progear isn't easy either.

Tonight I started Blazing Star. First two stages are absolute cake, enemies barely fired any bullets. Then it ramped up in the 3rd stage a fair bit. I think the shaders I was using were making things fuzzier than they should be, I got hit by things I didn't even see. But I'm not really feeling it anyway. It looks amazing in screenshots, but the machine enemies aren't that cool, indistinct, like they could come from any random sci-fi game or designer. Game overall feels slight. Think I'm going to replace this hori selection with Thunder Force 3.

 

[Nutmeg]

I played the old, old Raidens, 1 and 2 I believe. I didn't mean to suggest that Jet was an easier shmup. Just one of the ones I want to get into down the road. And mostly because the visuals are cool to me. I know Progear isn't easy either.

The old Raidens are quite different from the Raiden Fighters games and much crueler games for example, and primarly, with regard to recovery after death.

Raiden Fighters was originally going to be called Gun Dogs but they renamed it during location testing because the Raiden name attracted more players to the machines. RF1 and 2 often get overlooked in favor of Jet because most people always list RFJ as their favorite, but IMO they are well worth playing and it also makes sense to play them as a more friendly way to get acquainted with the series' conventions and perks before jumping into RFJ.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

What about a game shark?

I have too much respect for Game Shark to consider it cheating. It saved me 20 hours of busywork in Ultimate Spider-Man back in the day.

Spiderman games have been surprisingly decent over the years haven't they? Even the portable ones are respectable titles.

I definitely don't class beating a game using save states as beating it though, to me that's touring it. Unless you've beaten a game from start to finish in 1 genuine OH run with no saves, rewinds, assists, cheats etc. then to me you haven't actually beaten it.

Modern 'improvements' totally change the feel of a game if not change it's character entirely. I don't think people appreciate how vastly different changing the save system makes a game. Shadow of the beast on the Amiga is nearly unplayable. It is extremely difficult and has a maze like structure with only 1 health bar. Even getting past the first boss is a major achievement and requires many attempts. It's likely one of the hardest games ever because of poor design. The PS4 remake includes the original game but it has save states to work as check points. The game becomes a 2D dark souls where you die and reload the area. It feels difficult but a fair challenge you could over come in a couple of days if you wanted to. Comparing the 2 experiences is so vastly different it's like playing 2 different games. I wonder how many games have their current view warped by emulation enhancements or even just emulation in general. I've always thought Pokemon games emulate really poorly unless you do it on a handheld. Having your 'mons in a portable device is a different experience to having them on your desktop and having to sit down in front of your PC to play them. One of those cheap Gamecboy style emulation machines emulates Fire red as well as the PC does, but the play experience is so different.

The autistic arcade guys would probably be better off in the best shoot 'em ups ever thread since it's not related to historic revisionism at all at this point.

 

[Nutmeg]

It's one thing to practice with save states and another thing to introduce them into actual runs. To use your example, you could practice parts of Altered Beast with save states but also refrain from using save states during actual runs, and that way it won't alter the experience of those runs into a Dark Souls like one (I cringed writing that comparison but it is the one you used)

Practice is practice.

Runs are runs.

Think of it like practicing a difficult part of a piece of music at home vs. performing it at a concert in front of an audience. Just because all your practice isn't always a full, beginning to end of the piece, rehearsal doesn't somehow change the nature of a full performance when you do perform it. It would be insane to think so.

 

[Silverfish]

Spiderman games have been surprisingly decent over the years haven't they?

Yeah, the majority have been average to good, with three or four that have been excellent.

 

[Machocruz]

The old Raidens are quite different from the Raiden Fighters games and much crueler games for example, and primarly, with regard to recovery after death.

Raiden Fighters was originally going to be called Gun Dogs but they renamed it during location testing because the Raiden name attracted more players to the machines. RF1 and 2 often get overlooked in favor of Jet because most people always list RFJ as their favorite, but IMO they are well worth playing and it also makes sense to play them as a more friendly way to get acquainted with the series' conventions and perks before jumping into RFJ.

Ok, the visuals in the RF games are not far behind Jet's. Even Raiden 1 and 2 have held up well, better than I remember. But RF is definitely going on the list of candidates. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I'm kinda annoyed with the flood of so-called 'retro' players / content creators who spread bullshit about Polish gaming market in the past.

Some of them are faking nostalgia for SNES, Genesis, Zeldas, pre-FF7 Final Fantasies etc.

16-bit consoles were almost non-existence here, magazine like Secret Service were doing review of old Megadrive / SNES but quickly stopped due to lack of interest and most of games they reviewed were just platform / action games so these games were seen as something barely better than ubiquitous Famicom (not even NES) games.

Polish players jumped from Famiclone to jailbroken Playstations and 16-bit console titles were discovered in late '90's through emulation, especially when Dragon Ball hype exploded here and most of DB games were on SNES. Then polish translation hacks started to appear etc. so those console were made carreer here post mortem.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

As I remember it: in the 80's gaming in Poland was still niche, people who did play games had computers like Commodore or Amstrad. Those were still used in the 90's, but gradually less and less popular with the coming of Pegasus, and almost completely wiped out by the time of Windows 95. I did have a friend who still played on Amiga around 96/97.
In the early 90's we got the Pegasus console (a Famicon clone), and it was huge. Kids in bumfuck nowhere who never saw a computer in their lives would have a Pegasus. You could buy bootleg cartridges and controllers on markets next to socks and rugs. I have no idea how many games were relased for it or what the compatibility with real NES cartriges was, but people mostly played the same platformers and shmups as everyone else from the same cartriges. There were some PCs with DOS or Windows 3.11 around at that time, but not very popular yet.
In the mid 90's Pegasus was gradually forced out by PCs, as those became more affordable to build. PC games were horrendously expensive at first, but piracy was rampant and easy, so that was not an obstacle. A few people did have consoles other than Pegasus, but it felt like there were 10+ PCs for 1 guy with a console, and the guy with a console usually had a PC too. Most gaming magazies wrote exclusivly about PC games becasue the audience for console games was too small. Consoles didn't really take off compared to PCs until somewhere later in the 2000's.