Incline Revisiting Old Games (Again)

[Clockwork Knight]

Did anyone actually ever manage to find an arcade which stocked [Cadillacs & Dinosaurs]? Because as kids we read & heard all the hype, but could we fuck as like actually find one to play. Feels very satisfying to tick this one off the list and finally walk the dinosaur.

Yes, it was there until some years ago. I'm afraid of going back and see it replaced with crane games and that Mario Kart from Namco.

Maybe it was hard to find because it runs on a less common board, but that's just a random guess.

 

[Machocruz]

Played NES Shadowgate for Halloween, made me think of this thread. I had a blast. I'm going to start going back to old console games. There was a lot on the Genesis and NES I didn't play because rental places and stores near me didn't carry them. The purity of old cartridge games is refreshing. No waiting through cutscenes, loading, updates, etc.

 

[Falksi]

Played NES Shadowgate for Halloween, made me think of this thread. I had a blast. I'm going to start going back to old console games. There was a lot on the Genesis and NES I didn't play because rental places and stores near me didn't carry them. The purity of old cartridge games is refreshing. No waiting through cutscenes, loading, updates, etc.

Aye. There's SO much to be said for instant loading & accessibility.

Monkey Island Vs the SE REALLY emphasised how important it was to have a good game "Rhythm" of click & response. No wait, no faff, no install, no updates etc. Plug, play & thrive. Even today's most popamole games fail to get that effect due to all the waiting around & "story".

 

[Falksi]

Aliens - Arcade

^Bright garish colours ahoy!

One of my best mate's had a huge boner for the Aliens franchize, and "Aliens" in particular. Aged 12, he'd stay in most Sunday's & watch it over & over, alongside a dose of the Simpson's. We all know it's a great film, I thrive on it, but when we saw this in the local cashade he spunked buckets. I had the odd blast on it, but it didn't half guzzle your coinage, so I'd be surprised if I played it more than a dozen times in total and so had no lasting impressions of it.

This time I have though. I mean, what the fuck have I just played? Seriously, I've come away from this totally head-fucked. Where to start? Well it's Aliens and it deserves Kudos for including plenty of elements from the film. Ripley & Hicks both star (albiet Riley has a blonde perm); Newt pops up here & there; it contains the usual Xenomorphs, facehuggers, eggs, queen etc; you crawl through vents; you get to use the Neca P-5000 Deluxe Power Loader, etc, etc. For a game of that era in some ways it's surprisingly faithful to the film.

But then it's like someone slips some acid into your drink, and things just get trippy. Pink aliens everywhere, bright colours splodges & splashes too, purple worm spewing zombies, generic giant spiders, brown flying alien heads, mind melding alien bosses etc. It really is like you're off you're tits when playing this. That extends to the music & FX too, it's just like a brutal attack on the senses. It takes a huge shit all over the tone of the film, and presents one which it isn't even as grounded as that of a comic book, it's more like "Care Bares Alien LSD adventure".

The core gameplay isn't much to write home about either. Point & shoot with little tactical requirement throughout. No jump ability, no roll, no slide, no swinging etc. It's really one dimensional stuff. It's not bad by any means, there's just not much to it either. Between side-scrolling stages you get to ride the M577 Armoured Personnel Carrier, and whilst it's a nice change, it's not particularly exciting. It's just a bit of extra show, and that's cool enough, but nothing to write home about.

It's essentially Aliens on a trip, with mediocre gameplay. How much you enjoy it probably relies on how enamoured you are with the franchise. It stands out, and I'd say check it out if you like the look of it, but I came away from it feeling a bit sick and in need a lie down. I won't be returning any time soon.

 

[Falksi]

Aliens Vs Predetor - Arcade

Remember when that dream combo of Aliens Vs Predetor sounded awesome? Yeah, we soon grow up & learn the truth of cash-ins & sequels don't we. Well continuing the Aliens theme, I thought I'd blast through this a few times. It's a game which I've never played before.

Fortunately, this doesn't falls into the "easy cash-grab" category. It's a legitimately fun & worthwhile beat 'em up. Unlike the earlier 1990 Aliens shooter, this manages to hit a really nice spot presentation wise, and conveys a great comic book tone. It's still far brighter & lighter than any Aliens film, but it's way more grounded than the 1990 shooter, and everything looks really big and meaty.

In fact the whole thing has a real weighty, crunchy sense of satisfaction to it. Your blows feel like they really connect, and the fighting is fast, frenetic, chaotic and fun all round. In particular, there's a fucking superb balance of hand to hand combat & weapon based combat throughout. You have a standard side-arm which you can use (but which needs to recharge or be reloaded depending on your character), some characters come equipped with melee weapons, and there's a ton of pulse rifles & suchlike too. It's all balanced very well, and you never spend too long without smacking the shit out of something either. That finely tuned combat pacing, mixed with the deliberate crunchy feel works an absolute treat and makes it a joy to blast through.

Each selectable character is different enough from the others to be worth their own playthrough too. Don't get me wrong, there's not a huge difference between them all, but there's definitely enough of a difference that you'll have fun experimenting how best to use them, and finding who's your favourite. It's also a great length, with 7 stages to finish, none of which outstay their welcome.

The music's wank though. Fuck knows what they were thinking here. When you look at how superb the soundtracks are to some of that era's best beat 'em ups, this really stands out as ear-wrenchingly bad shit. It also lacks the depth of the best beat 'em ups such as Streets of Rage 2, and for that reason I was tempted to give it a 4/5. But even with that in mind, it still doesn't stop it from being a superbly enjoyable blast, which pushes all the right buttons that an 80's action movie of this ilk would too, and which constantly has you on your toes too. So for sheer thrive-vibe I opted for a 5-thrive.

A great, very satisfying & cool scrapper.

 

[Machocruz]

Supposedly using the girl in AvP opens up all sorts of fighting game-like combo possibilities. I found the enemy variety lacking. Various flavors of alien that all amount to the same thing to me, and a few human soldier types. Not one of the more robust rogues galleries in brawlers .

 

[Falksi]

Supposedly using the girl in AvP opens up all sorts of fighting game-like combo possibilities. I found the enemy variety lacking. Various flavors of alien that all amount to the same thing to me, and a few human soldier types. Not one of the more robust rogues galleries in brawlers .

I thought similar with the enemies, but then again I also thought that kept in line with the films. There's often hordes of aliens on screen at once, and it gave me that mobbed feeling, which Aliens is all about especially. No individuality, just a legion of single minded creatures all attacking en-mass. Which is why I didn't factor it as a negative.

 

[Machocruz]

Supposedly using the girl in AvP opens up all sorts of fighting game-like combo possibilities. I found the enemy variety lacking. Various flavors of alien that all amount to the same thing to me, and a few human soldier types. Not one of the more robust rogues galleries in brawlers .

I thought similar with the enemies, but then again I also thought that kept in line with the films. There's often hordes of aliens on screen at once, and it gave me that mobbed feeling, which Aliens is all about especially. No individuality, just a legion of single minded creatures all attacking en-mass. Which is why I didn't factor it as a negative.

Yeah it comes with the license (post the first movie, where the alien had completely different behavior than every depiction that came after), and better that than they made up a bunch of bullshit enemies. Not really a negative as in a flaw, just something that keeps it from being at the very highest tier of brawlers in my book.

 

[sser]

You should try Aliens: Infestation. It's on DS but it's completely playable on PC since it doesn't use the touchscreen all that much.

It's very solid, though unfortunately my game bugged on the final boss and I could never beat it (the queen kept getting trapped in corners and being unhittable).

 

[Falksi]

MONKEY ISLAND 2: LE CHUCKS REVENGE - PC

^Does Guybrush give you the horn?

Arrrrr!! Another hearty return to the MI series! Sail away with me as we hit the high seas of adventure again!

Pft, I wish. God playing this drained the fucking life out of me. It's not a bad game, it's juts a fucking slog.

Starting with the positives it feels more fleshed out & grander than the original. The presentation is lush and it also sets thing up nicely, with Guybrush still trying to prove himself post Lechuck, and folk sick of his story. A real cool way to kick things off. The whole game & vibe is more grounded than the first game too, and it keeps it fresh and works in context of a new adventure.

It does occasionally hit that sweet spot of brilliant humour which the original did too, and when it does it's fucking brilliant. About halfway through I entered the Governor's mansion, and the conversation options were piss funny. For a few brief moments I was loving it, and it felt up there with the heights of the original. But this only served to highlight how few and far between such great dialogue is overall sadly.

See the whole thing just feels way more padded out, and flows way worse than the original too. There are fewer laughs, and it misses a lot of opportunities for good banter. For example, when you tell the game host that you don't gamble, there's no slur or piss-taking about being a coward or fanny, it's just played straight & dull.

There's also far less bread crumbs leading up to the puzzles, and I solved way more through trial and error than through actually thinking them through. Some of the actions which you are required to undertake to progress are particularly bizarre & just feel skanky tbh. In fact overall the puzzles, and game itself, feels a bit lazy and sequel-esq. And then there's the ending, which again just gave me that feeling of "we really can't be bothered anymore".

It has it's moments, I don't think it's a bad game at all, just a very average & disappointing one which was just too chore-like for me, and I struck up no connection what so ever when compared to the original.

 

[Machocruz]

Adventures have some sweet art. I need to check more of then out. I've only played the aforementioned Shadowgate, BaSS, Maniac Mansion, Burn Cycle, and whatever Kings Quest was on Master System.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I've been playing Knights of the Round, the arcade game, on MAME. Pretty fun beat em up, pretty hard too !

Normally when i play beat em ups on MAME, i do my first run with 3 credits, then if i lose i try a new run adding 2 extra credits and keep doing that until i reach 9 credits, then i start adding 1 extra credits per run.

So, it's something like that:

First run: 3 credits
Second run: 5 credits
Third run: 7 credits
Fourth run: 9 credits
fifth run: 10 credits
...

That's the best way i found to balance difficulty in these Arcade beat em ups. So far, i've only able to reach half of Knights of the Round, using 9 credits, the game is tough.


"Unique" mechanics i found in Knights of the Round:

you can ride a horse.
you level up.
your character gains more armor as the game progresses.
if you block a enemy attack you become invulnerable for a short period of time.

I should be abusing the blocking mechanic a lot more but the controls are just not the best.

 

[Tehdagah]

You should try Aliens: Infestation. It's on DS but it's completely playable on PC since it doesn't use the touchscreen all that much.

It's very solid, though unfortunately my game bugged on the final boss and I could never beat it (the queen kept getting trapped in corners and being unhittable).

 

[Falksi]

I've been playing Knights of the Round, the arcade game, on MAME. Pretty fun beat em up, pretty hard too !

Normally when i play beat em ups on MAME, i do my first run with 3 credits, then if i lose i try a new run adding 2 extra credits and keep doing that until i reach 9 credits, then i start adding 1 extra credits per run.

So, it's something like that:

First run: 3 credits
Second run: 5 credits
Third run: 7 credits
Fourth run: 9 credits
fifth run: 10 credits
...

That's the best way i found to balance difficulty in these Arcade beat em ups. So far, i've only able to reach half of Knights of the Round, using 9 credits, the game is tough.


"Unique" mechanics i found in Knights of the Round:

you can hide a horse.
you level up.
your character gains more armor as the game progresses.
if you block a enemy attack you become invulnerable for a short period of time.

I should be abusing the blocking mechanic a lot more but the controls are just not the best.

Funnily enough I played through this myself last night, and am halfway through writing up my thoughts on it. Will prob post later or tomorrow. I found the blocking mechanic total bollocks.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Funnily enough I played through this myself last night, and am halfway through writing up my thoughts on it. Will prob post later or tomorrow. I found the blocking mechanic total bollocks.

Yeah, the controls are just retarded. The most responsive way to use block is to press the attack button first then the directional button, you can hold blocking for a while, but if you hold too much your character become stunned. You can also do a heavy attack by pressing attack button then forward, does massive damage at the cost of a longer animation, best to use against stunned enemies.

Anyway, here's the others two beat em ups i've beaten so far:

Knights of Valour Plus: it's like an asian version of Knights of the Round, pretty good, you can use items in combat and there's lots of items. Had to use 16 credits to beat.

Violent Storm: similar to Street of rage, this game have an awesome soundtrack and atmosphere ! nothing unique in term of mechanics, but i had a lot of fun. Had to use 13 credits to beat this one.

 

[Falksi]

Knights of The Round - Arcade/SNES

^Merlin looking remarkably like the John Boorman version

"Behold! The Sword of Power! Excalibur! Forged when the world was young, bird and beast and flower were one with man, and death was but a dream!" Who doesn't fucking love a bit of the Arthurian legend eh? Swords, sorcery, slags, betrayal at Camelot, dragon's breath.......it gets dem juices flowing doesn't it campers? I could never get a hold of the SNES version of this as a lad, but did have numerous blasts on it in the arcade.

And as a game, it's a bit of a let down tbh. Which is a mighty shame, because I'd love a good Arthurian beat 'em up to pass time on. Sadly, it's just a bit flat and empty. The biggest flaw I found was the fact that there's very few moves available. I mean for a '91 game it has a massive lack of attacking options, and is more akin to a mid-80's game. You have a basic attack, a jump & jump attack, a desperation move, and a block, that's it. No grabs, throws, special moves etc. and because you're already wielding a weapon, you don't pick up weapons either. The block is also a fucking right pain to execute, push away & attack at the same time - very un-intuitive, and this renders it as good as useless.

Enemies & environments are also pretty bland too. There's no real need to implement any tactics anywhere along the line, you just straight out button bash from start to finish, with maybe the odd combo of enemies or boss stretching that slightly. Combine the lack of moves with a fairly bland & similar enemy set, and the whole thing becomes really stale really quickly. There's barely any environmental hazards, and you've seen most things the game has to offer by the end of level 2.

Levelling up is a nice touch though. Each time that you do your armour or weapon changes, and even though it's mostly cosmetic it still adds a bit of spice to the game. You also get to ride a bobbo in certain sections, and whilst it's a bit awkward doing so, it adds a nice bit of flavour. And at it's core the game does play fine enough. It's not skanky, it feels beefy enough, and the three players which you can select feel different enough to be worthwhile (although Lancelot stands out to me as by far & away the most fun to play as).

At no point was I annoyed, pissed off or even fed up with the game. But then again at no point was I buzzing or excited either. Bland but serviceable.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I agree, it's fun for a while but not great. I should add that you dismount way too easily in this game, mounting on a horse should feel powerful yet i trying more to avoid taking damage than to hit the enemies, your damage barely increase too, shit feels pointless.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I finally beat Knights of the Round, took me like 9 attempts, 19 credits. Overall fun game ! surprisingly i didn't get bored even after 9 runs in a row, i'll give it a 3/5. It's almost a 4/5 for me, but the game is too simplistic and the music is way too forgettable for a Beat em Up.

The game is not that hard, i was just making too many mistakes, like unnecessarily dying early on. You just die way too fast in this game even for the weakest enemies, so you can't afford getting hit.

But that's what i like about Beat em Ups games, there's a attrition minigame going on, all parts of the game matters in the long run, you need to save as many lives as you can if you want to have a chance against the final boss(which is always OP and cheap as hell).

 

[JDR13]

Don't forget to grab Streets Of Kamurocho for free on Steam during the next 48 hours. It's a throwback homage to the Streets of Rage series.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368430/Streets_Of_Kamurocho/'


Also, Endless Zone. - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368450/Endless_Zone/

What did you think to these mate?

I thought SOK was decent enough, but I'm no real Yakuza fan so personally I'd still sooner go back to the original SOR games. It didn't seem to have much in the way of innovation either.

Endless Zone just bored me. Did things well enough, but no real excitement to be had.

I only played Endless Zone for about 15 minutes. There's just not much to it. SoK was kind of meh as well.

Did you play Golden Axed? I thought that was pretty good for what amounts to an Alpha demo. Combat is fluid and the animations are pretty tight. It's a shame it got cancelled because I think it might have been really good.

 

[Falksi]

I only played Endless Zone for about 15 minutes. There's just not much to it. SoK was kind of meh as well.

Did you play Golden Axed? I thought that was pretty good for what amounts to an Alpha demo. Combat is fluid and the animations are pretty tight. It's a shame it got cancelled because I think it might have been really good.

Not tried Golen Axed yet, can't see it available on Steam though? Am I being a dolt?

 

[JDR13]

I only played Endless Zone for about 15 minutes. There's just not much to it. SoK was kind of meh as well.

Did you play Golden Axed? I thought that was pretty good for what amounts to an Alpha demo. Combat is fluid and the animations are pretty tight. It's a shame it got cancelled because I think it might have been really good.

Not tried Golen Axed yet, can't see it available on Steam though? Am I being a dolt?

Uh oh... did you not grab it when it was available? I think it was a limited time offer.

I'm sure you can find it by other means if you have to.

 

[Eirinjas]

Contra Hard Corps - Megadrive

^Haven't I seen you somewhere before?............

Raved about in gaming circles, Hard Corps is renowned as one of the best in the series. I played it years ago, but could never take to it. Something about it didn't grab me like Contra 3 did.

So on the plus side there's branching paths, cool graphics, the usual Contra set-peices, and some very cool & well balanced characters. But overall I was very disappointed. Firstly it recycles a fair few elements from Contra 3, which isn't bad per say, it just feels a bit too familiar at times. Secondly the music's fucking wank too. Ear bleeding shit at times.

I'm also not a fan of boss-rush type games in general. Despite there being some very inventive bosses, what it boils down to is spending a lot of the time locked in a samey course of action. Stay in one place & rely on a certain weapon, jump in a certain repetitive pattern over & over. Not a problem when that's an occurrence once or twice per level, but when it happens 5 or 6 times throughout, it just gets boring. Especially when each one is so punishing and each fight lasts quite some time (whereas they were often over in half the time in Contra 3)

It can be quite fiddly at times too, with the weapon select method another step back from the L/R method used in Contra 3. Yes you can pause the game to select a weapon, but that detracts from the action. There's very little room for error, so that highlights the fundamental design flaw with the A button both switching your weapons, and locking you in place when needed. It's very easy to pull off one instead of the other, and this becomes frustrating. And there's some absolute total bullshit deaths from out of nowhere too. I know it was rife in this era, but some games take the piss at times, and this is one of them.

It's really strange how just a few small differences from this to Contra 3 can make it so detestable, but I really didn't like it at all.

Overrated.

The original Japanese version of the game had a life bar and allowed you to take 3 hits before death. This patch restores that to the US version of the game:

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/797/

I found Romhacking.net to be a tremendous resource when I was creating my personal rom archive. The Dune 2 and Mortal Kombat hacks are pretty f'n amazing.

 

[Machocruz]

I definitely want to get into rom hacks at some point. Seen some interesting FF1 hacks. I want one that fixes Simon's Quest. Anything Castlevania,Metroid, and Zelda has my interest. Shadowrun hacks could be interesting, if they exist.

 

[Cazzeris]

Maybe you should revisit your old granpa

 

[Falksi]

X-COM: UFO Defence - PC

Well inject me full of horse-spunk and fondle my balls, it's time to insert a true classic into the list. I've owned this game since '96 and have regularly returned to it hundreds of times over the years, making it my most played game ever on Steam. I've been holding off on these PC "classics" as I want to play as much lesser covered stuff as possible, but this week the urge to go back again was too strong to resist. When I originally got the game is was a floppy copy, and my mate Johno simply gave it me free. "Here you are, this is wank, you can have it" he said lol. Despite his slating I gave it a blast and for the first 20-30 min thought the same, "WTF is this shit?". However, once those battles started rolling and once it got going I was fucking hooked.

And it's still utterly incredible. We all know it, and I'm not saying anything which a million other gamers haven't said before, but fuck me this game is stunning. Firstly how it nails that horror-sci-fi vibe & feel is jaw-dropping. The atmosphere just fucking oozes tension, fear and excitement. And then when it all kicks off it switches to a chaotic, explosive mind-metler seamlessly. Fantastic stuff.

Then you've the superbly structured management part of the game. Yes the battles are the game's primary focus, but the management side of things is brilliantly balanced, and keeps everything ticking over very nicely & tensely. Even though I know the research tree like the back of my hand, it still remains satisfying to progress it due to the which way things evolve. But whilst the whole game is superb, the battles are where it's really at, capturing the feel of land-based alien invasion perfectly. It's brilliant just how innocently normal a scenario can look on arrival one moment, to then you suddenly having swarms of bad guys attacking you from every angle the next. So many elements combine so well that it's actually quite frightening to think that they managed to strike such a superb balance of everything, and you go through all the emotions as you hunt down the evil aliens.

It's also amazing how the game CONSTANTLY throws new situations at you, even 25 or so years after it's release. How the fuck can a game STILL be surprising me after all that time?!?!? So many of them pull the rug from under you, yet present a possible solution too. And when you do occasionally get to pull off the impossible, it feels SO sweetly fucking satisfying I could ejac.

And it really is brilliant how much bait & switch, push & pull goes on throughout the game on all levels due to all the layers of depth throughout. One minute you're fully armed & have 8 dudes cornering a solitary alien; the next those actions unearth's a nest of Chrysalids and half your team has been turned against you as your ammo starts to run low and "Scaredy John" panics drops his rifle & legs it; and the next Scaredy John pulls himself together, picks up a laser rifle from a dead team mate, and sweeps the area clear of enemies, only to then have a random one sneak up behind him & shoot him to lose you the mission. It's more addictive than herion.

And of course their's flaws. It is a bit skany at times, it can perform sluggishly (Open X-com obv best, although I'm not a fan of some of the gameplay tweaks that has), having to re-equip soldiers for every battle is an annoyance (again, something else Open X-com addresses), and worst of all is having to hunt around for ages to find that last alien. That can become a real slog. But we really are nitpicking here and all those are minor blips which pale into the background when playing.

The word "Classic" is thrown around a lot, but this is without doubt a bone-a-fide, full on, timeless classic which still oozes brilliance and splendour. Wank me off and call me daddy.