MagusSmurf

3 > 2 > 1 I like the slide. Feel like 3's difficulty in the robot master stages was probably a little more even than 2's (the levels of which are generally pretty easy besides Heat and Quick Man's sudden spikes) and ramps up for the Doc Robot stages. Shame 3's Castle is so brief and easy (a couple bosses aside) and the final boss isn't very good. Haven't played 10 and 11, haven't replayed the others recently enough to say for sure (4 through 6 coming soon) but fairly confident 1 is the outright worst and that 7 and 8 aren't on par with 2 through 6. I definitely remember thinking Mega Man 9 was way harder than the NES games when I played it, glad it isn't just me. Agreed that in general the difficulty of NES games is wildly overstated. Mega Man 1's difficulty in particular. It's got some annoyances and questionable design that make it not as good as later games (Mega Man doesn't control as well, two out of six weapons are basically worthless, Elec Man 3HKOs you, Magnet Beam is mandatory for Wily 1 but you need Super Arm to get it, Foot Holders in Ice Man's stage, no passwords) but not much that should be a real showstopper. I think its particular reputation for difficulty mostly boils down to not having Energy Tanks so you have to actually learn the bosses to some extent instead of having an easy out. I generally only use Energy Tanks if I make it to the boss door at low health (Exception: Wily Capsule in 7) and don't see too much difference overall - the shorter length compensates for any increase in difficulty per level. Yellow Devil in particular is pretty much just learning what the pattern for the bottom two rows is and how to jump them. It's been awhile but I'd say Dr. Wily's Revenge is actually better than Mega Man 1. Mega Man himself handles better, the stages pretty much do their own thing and freely include Mega Man 2 elements or new stuff where they'd make sense (generally to its benefit), there are passwords, Elec Man no longer kills you in three hits, Cut Man isn't a total joke, and the two MM1 Robot Masters they didn't include had terrible weapons anyways. On the downsides, there's the lack of color obviously. Shame Capcom never actually made that colorized collection on GBA. The reduced screen space is a bit of a bummer but since the designers took it into account and the stages aren't close adaptations of MM1 to begin with it's not too big a deal. Ice Man's pattern, not complex in the first place, was simplified presumably for that exact reason. The Wily levels are pretty long and if you Game Over at the bosses it's quite the trip back.

Beat this again and then did the second loop yesterday. Having used mostly the staff this time, I'm assuming part of the reason there are no pickups for it in the latter stages of the game is they didn't necessarily want people cheesing the later bosses with it; it makes most bosses go down in three hits. The power boost the staff grants over the long-ranged weapons is so devastating to normal enemies that most of the second loop played about identically to the first despite enemies being twice as durable. Only took about an hour to go from the beginning of the second loop to the final stage, though I did abuse flight at some points. Couldn't manage to cheese the boss of 5-1 with the staff this time so had to actually fight him with the chain. The final stage on the second loop, though is...quite something and took longer than the rest of the loop put together. Those flying enemies and the ones that drop from the ceiling are ridiculous when you have to hit them twice for them to die. Ended up using the tiger transformation because it could still score a OHKO on them and its jumping height and speed helped too. Upon beating the second loop, they forego the ending text this time and send you back to the 1st stage again for a 3rd loop, and this time the enemies can take...three times as much damage? Uh. No thanks. I maintain my 6.5. I don't consider that a bad score, the game's above average for the NES and was reasonably fun but I didn't find it too special overall. I do think it starts abusing fast enemies coming right at you and your killed-in-one-hit ninja self starting around 4-2 or so. Though with infinite continues, you can just make a plan for it and do better next time, so not too big a deal. Would agree that at least in the first loop the game is only in the "kinda sorta hard" range.

6/10 Nice concept, visuals, music, and general vibe but a little too rough around the edges. Hit detection didn’t seem great, levels are probably a little long and frustrating given you have to repeat the entire thing if you die, and the game gives you no real clues on how you’re supposed to beat the game’s two bosses - the first one’s weakness doesn’t even really make sense. The Sega CD version, on top of a different soundtrack and some new levels, apparently also adds checkpoints which some levels of this game could have really used, and also you don’t have to replay Welcome to the Machine if you lose to the final boss, so that one might actually be a pretty neat game.

By coincidence I beat this game less than 24 hours ago. It kills you in one hit because the game is very short (see that let’s play posted in this topic) and most of the enemies either only take a hit or two as well or are slow and clumsy. Unless you’re on a boss there’s no penalty for death or Game Over whatsoever so you can just try again and you’ll still only be about a minute from the end of the level. The harder sections of the game are very memorization heavy without feeling all that special so yeah probably not great overall but it’s fun and not super hard since it’s so forgiving and doesn’t require exceptional execution. Though for a game where you theoretically have four weapons of different strengths and weaknesses to choose from, the staff and sword are pretty much absent from the second half of the game. Think I’d give it a 6.5/10 or so. The second loop gives enemies double health and I’m curious to see how that works out as well as to see how much easier this game goes when you already know what you’re doing; will try before too long. The second form of the final boss’s attack pattern is asymmetrical; he responds differently depending on whether you’re on his left side or right. If on the right you can just jump over him to get to his left but it’s not that simple from his other side. If you’re on the left, you have to duck-then-jump his high-then-low strikes, he’ll back off slightly then come at you again, and after this second set of high-then-low strikes, he’ll prepare his projectile spread but he stops moving while doing this, so you can jump over him while jumping his second low strike, run to the other side’s edge, and duck his projectiles. A bit obnoxious to figure out but not that bad once you do. Not the first boss in the game that let you run around both sides but attacked asymmetrically; 4-2’s boss had that gimmick too. I think 3-2’s boss was also trying to teach me how to handle this kind of boss but the game allowed you to instead cheese that one really easily with the tiger transformation so I didn’t learn.

Time and the internet have sorted out the decent-to-good NES games from the total dreck and at this point anyone who just cares about playing the games can easily do so for free all-killer, no-filler experiences that don't outstay their welcome (barring some of the more menu based games which can have issues) whereas many games that are fun for the short time they last would have made terrible value-for-money propositions back in the day. And you can't easily get 3 of your friends together for a couch co-op N64 session anymore, without which the N64 feels a little lacking.

The earliest well-known Japanese Tactical RPG is the original Fire Emblem from 1990, which was an attempt by Intelligent Systems to put more of an RPG spin on their previous strategy game Famicom Wars from 1988, which seems pretty sensible in light of how popular Dragon Quest III was that year. Famicom Wars came out only two months after Pool of Radiance so I kinda doubt the Gold Box games had any real influence on Japanese developers.

Praising FFVI in posts in which FFVIi is bashed for deviating from the series has me kind of confused. FFVI had already pretty much junked a lot of the then-traditional RPG settings and trappings before FFVII did, the main part of what FFVII added to that was the 3D stuff and all the minor mini games. And then praising FFIX...Its setting is more like the older games the game is a tribute to but the pacing, storytelling, and characters are clearly more like FFViI’s.

Symphony of the Night's non-linearity meshes really poorly with its RPG elements and in every playthrough I've done the difficulty balance and progression have completely crumpled well before I hit the inverted castle. The game pretty much turns into Dracula's Castle Hallway Simulator, and while the game feels solid enough and has good enough visuals and audio to make that an appealing prospect, it's certainly no masterpiece. The amount of assets reused for the inverted castle along with mostly the same song playing diminishes it somewhat as well. For more general issues I remember the pause menu being kinda bad, there's no good excuse for subweapons not having a dedicated button on a console with as many available as the PS1, and I generally don't think the fighting game-esque diagonal inputs to activate spells have any place in a 2D platformer - but I hated the idea so much that I've never bothered actually trying them very much so maybe they work a little better in execution than they sound. The game remaining so heralded (beyond just historical influence) is a bit weird to me. Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance were maybe a little wonky but I thought the four Igavanias after those were all improvements on SotN. Some of them have a gimmicky feature here or mechanic or feature of world design I could see people maybe disliking enough to drop them below SotN but all of them? I kinda think SotN's extremely low difficulty, along with nostalgia and weird PS1-era charm, is what's actually appealing to people. I will grant I've never done much with Richter mode or dug too deep into the game to intentionally challenge myself but for the latter you'd probably have to try pretty hard!

10/10. RE2 and RE3 were good but I always felt like they were missing something. These aren't really action games so the combat not feeling great is acceptable but I dunno, I didn't think their inventory management or route planning are particularly involved or awesome either. Other aspects of the games helped fill the hole somewhat, but while they did fairly good on the atmosphere, they can't really match the Silent Hill games or their own later REmake. And the story in this series certainly has never provided much worth caring about. Additionally, even in Hard Mode RE2 had basically no difficulty whatsoever past the very beginning if you even halfway know what you're doing. RE4 solved the problem for me by actually making combat fun and maintaining the spooky atmosphere where appropriate while tossing in a ridiculous amount of cheese. Preventing you from running and shooting at the same time helped maintain some of the tension from the more limited combat in earlier games. Also liked what they did with Inventory. Even the motion controls in the Wii version are good, to the point that they arguably imbalance the game a bit because you probably shouldn't be able to aim as quickly and precisely as they allow you to. Quick time events suck, though.

Beat Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie too.

It had over 200 games released for it and some of the ones I recognize have pretty decent reputations. The Jaguar, 5200, 7200, 32x, Virtual Boy, and the PC-FX all came from established console makers but have well under 100 each. N-Gage is also under 100. The bulk of 3DO games could be total garbage and the console would still probably come out better than some of those.

I've beaten Super Adventure Island and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose within the past few months.

I beat the following this year: Crusade of Centy - The main character is named Corona. A game ahead of its time! DecapAttack - Lots of charm but got old before it finished. Ecco - The Tides of Time - It was decent. Interested to see where the 3D game takes this franchise. Ecco the Dolphin - I totally dig Welcome to the Machine's cruelty but you really, really shouldn't have to play it again if you lose to the final boss. That's just dumb. QuackShot Starring Donald Duck - Good; preferred it to the Mickey Illusion games. Tiny Toon Adventures - Buster's Hidden Treasure - I've played the first Tiny Toons games on NES, Game Boy, Genesis, and SNES. None quite managed to be good. You'd expect better from Konami. The levels designs in this one were often pretty whatever and the game lasted too long and kinda dragged. oh hey, Mickey's Ultimate Challenge. Never played the Genesis version. Might as well knock that out aaaaaand it's done. The SNES version is generally better. Would be several more if easy mode completions were allowed. For general Mega Drive completion, I also beat Battle Mania Daiginjou.

7/10. I was pretty satisfied with it at the time but there have been far better libraries. Pretty solid multiplayer console, with Melee in particular competing fiercely with Halo 1 and 2 for the title of king of 6th gen party games. For single player Metroid Prime 1 and 2 and RE4 and REmake were fantastic. (RE0 not quite so much). Luigi's Mansion has a ton of charm, though there's not all that much to the actual game. Pikmin was pretty neat and I need to get around to Pikmin 2. Should try Eternal Darkness too. Animal Crossing seemed interesting at the time but I can't really see myself bothering with anything in that franchise again. I still like Twin Snakes even with some issues and at the time it was nice getting to play some of the older Zelda and Resident Evils to go along with the multiplatform Sonic and Mega Man collections. 3D Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox all took steps down, though, especially the latter. No Kirby game besides Air Ride, either. In Mario's case there's not even really much in the way of other 3D platformers to back Sunshine up. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are nostalgic but maybe not quite what you want to advertise your console's highest level of quality, Wario World certainly isn't great, pretty much everything else good is on PS2 and sometimes Xbox? Tales of Symphonia, Thousand Year Door, Skies of Arcadia, Path of Radiance, and the Baten Kaitos games were cool. Congrats Gamecube, you beat the N64 RPG library. Seems like there's some good work around the top by Nintendo and Capcom but the former bungled some of their highest profile games, some cool Dreamcast ports the other consoles at the time didn't necessarily get, and a solid selection of multiplatform games (seemingly a lot western stuff I didn't play; though, I have heard bad stuff about the GC versions of Splinter Cell in particular) landed here too.

7/10. Good game but not super special at this point. Still probably better than any post-genesis 2d Sonic I’ve played, though that doesn’t include Mania yet. labyrinth zone isn’t that bad when you’re not ~10. I would readily agree that essentially bringing it back for a 4th level at the end of the game was a poor choice though.

3/10. Got into it for the first time earlier this year (had previously played Phantasy Star on GBA though) and played 23 games (generally some of the most well-known and popular ones); was very disappointed. A few good games, some okay ones, nothing I thought was great. I'd say it's the worst major home console from the launch of the NES onwards (by which I mean the major non-add-on consoles from Nintendo/Sega/Sony/Microsoft plus the Turbografx/PC Engine) by some distance.