Sumez

Lol, that's an interesting definition of "hidden gems".
Well, I guess to some people anything other than Mario and Zelda are hidden.

Hagane has really been expensive for ages. I bought mine a long time ago, and bought the Japanese one because it was the only one I could find cheap even then.

Dragon Quest 11 is amazing. Did you remember to enable the super strong monsters draconian challenge?

It sounds like some kind of challenge mode for experts to do on subsequent playthroughs, but the game really feels like it's balanced for it, and I often hear people complain about combat feeling way too easy and pointless playing on "default".

Oh I've had the DC version for quite a while.  But nothing tingles me like a real cartridge.

I'm guessing only American variants count? Because these seem to leave out every non-American variant.

Castlevania and Mega Man both absolutely intends for you to use just your whip or buster for said bosses as a valid approach. Death is actually a really fun battle if you learn to fight it. It just isn't the only way to approach it.

They knew what they were doing. They wanted to give players an easier way through the game. Like I said earlier, these are games intended to be played over and over and over again, so they wanted to give people multiple approaches and ways to challenge themselves.

9 hours ago, peg said:

Yes, exactly, and I'm glad more and more people around here are actually waking up to this reality.  I was shit on all over NA for saying the same damn things for years

Yeah, in my experience it's a very unpopular "opinion" in some communities, and I'm glad to see other people here on the same page.
I think people are reacting like someone is telling them how to play (or not to play) a game, which is a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm really just trying to outline the difference between getting a game over, and not getting a game over. If it didn't make a difference, why would it be there?

That's why I'm talking coalitions. It's a pretty common way to form a democratic government.

Of course I don't know if anything in American law actually prevents it, but from what I'm told it's not possible to form one in the US.

50 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

Trump being impeached means nothing to his base and will actually galvanize them to get out and vote purely out of spite.

That's the only conclusion I've been able to draw, too.

50 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

This country desperately needs a third major party.

How about allowing coalition goverments, making room for a potential multi-party system in the first place?
This two-party structure really feels like a comic book version of democracy.

Like several people have been saying here, this whole "with us or against us" thing is harmful to politics.

As someone who has no idea how USA's version of "democracy" works, I had to look up what this meant, and it seems like something that (probably) doesn't really have any consequences at all?

It kind of bothers me that Billy bookcases are the standard cheap IKEA solution.

They have another line of shelves, Bestå which come in a 20cm deep variant which is completely perfect for DVD or CD case sizes, as well as NES, SNES, MegaDrive, and most other console formats.

It saves a lot more space in a room than a Billy shelf, and you don't get a ton of awkward empty space on your shelf which will eventually end up used for a mess, or games stored in double layers (ugh). Unfortunately the ~190cm tall version of the shallow frame variation isn't a part of the lineup anymore - at least not around here, and they are getting really hard to come by. You can get a similar result from stacking three 60cm ones, but that requires a lot more wall attachments and wastes a good amount of shelf space.  

For bigger items however, the 40cm deep variant is still super useful. I'm really proud of my storage solution for arcade PCBs using one of these, though unfortunately I've run out of space again since:

With 10 channels and FM modulation, it's not really "NES music" at all. You could stream MP3 to an NES using expansion audio if you wanted.

That said, this sounds really awesome, and whoever made it is super skilled.

13 hours ago, dr.robbie said:

What boggles my mind is how popular the game still is relative to its age. I work with teenagers / young adults and they regularly talk about getting together and doing stuff in the game. A game that probably came out half their life ago.

Whoa what. I feel like GTA 5 came out like last year, but apparently it's a few years older... Why does time move by so fucking fast?

Found a *local* listing for Windjammers last weekend. Local as in I could actually just get in my car to drive there and pick it up. Wild!

I officially stopped buying Neo Geo games 15 or so years ago, but I've had a few holes in my collection ever since. With that game finally down, I don't feel that I'm really lacking any games anymore outside of a few key ones: Super Dodge Ball, Zupapa, Magician Lord, Nam-1975, and Metal Slug X.

Oh, and Twinkle Star Sprites. But it seems unlikely I'll ever be able to throw money after that one.

I'm impressed, I always fail at that, since being any higher than the floor when his fireballs move downwards, will cause them to turn around as they home in on you. As long as you stay on the floor, they'll despawn below you, so I try to just avoid them and only move up when I'm certain to get a hit in on him.

19 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

How is it? Looks amazing.

Can't speak for Deadeye, but "amazing" might be overshooting it IMO. But it's not bad.

It's a stereotypical modern indie platformer, mostly focused on in-air movement tech and basic puzzle solving. It has a fair amount of backtracking in its second half, but minor changes to the stages makes that less tedious than it sounds. It has a lot of amateurish feeling elements, and a somewhat cringeworthy, persistent style of humor, but overall I think it's an enjoyable game.

Its Ninja Gaiden focused marketing campaign is confusing as heck, because it really has nothing to do with that game.

Yeah, each of them stays dead. Like Tulpa said, it means you can keep subweapons for the later ones and cheese them.

This is the least fun way to beat the game, but at least it gives people an easier option.

The first of the three bosses is very simple though. It'll easily kill you when you come unprepared, but as soon as you see its pattern, you probably won't ever get hit by it again.

Yeah I was talking about the original version included in the game. They also included SOTN, and that one featured a completely new translation.

5 hours ago, Tulpa said:

A lot of people like to cheese the bosses using the spin slash whenever they can, even if it means losing a life.

But I never liked doing that. Jaquio's tough, but he's beatable with just the sword. The whole game can be beat with just the sword. The final boss, Jashin, is a joke compared to Jaquio.

Yeah!! No time for cheese strats here!

Ninja Gaiden is one of the absolute best games on the NES, and you shouldn't let anyone tell you otherwise. But the boss fights is generally a weakness of the game. Mostly pointless, going down in no time with little effort - and one of them even rewards just tanking damage rather than trying to avoid it.
But then there's Jaquio! Despite its simplicity, this boss fight is just amazing IMO. Like the rest of the game, it is equal parts puzzle and execution, and avoiding being hunted down by fireballs that refuse the leave the screen is the key here. Pull up your pants and fight the guy like a real ninja, or you'll be missing out on one of the absolutely most memorable boss fights of the 8-bit era.

11 hours ago, Inzoreno said:

As someone who isn't a good typer, it would have been really fun to have that to practice.

Dude. Typing of the Dead. It's way more fun than you'd think you could have with a typing game.

2 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

the cutscenes were in German and the subtitles were Japanese. I remember having to look up the translations when I played it so I could follow the story.

Only the intro is spoken in German, the rest of it is in Japanese.

Wasn't it translated for the PSP release? I recall it being so, but it's been a while, and I tend to return to the PCE one.

Yeah, as if having a second DKC2 is a bad thing.

DKC1 though... it's really overrated.

1 hour ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I apply it to everything, but I would use the same definitions. If a game gives you continues and you finish the game, I would call that completing it, but to say you beat the game would require a 1cc run. 

This is the idea I subscribe to. There's a difference between completing and beating.  Doesn't mean either isn't valid.

Caving in an using an E-tank is always better than risking spending the next 15 minutes farming for weapon refills.

Fortunately the boss doesn't do a lot of damage, and depending on where you are standing, dodging the attacks is just a question of a single timed jump. I think it's better to take your time and always stop to dodge an attack, than trying to rush the boss.

5 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

which was partially inspired by a dude on a different forum who only counted a victory if he 1CCd something

Well, if the game straight up tells you that you lost, but you continued to play to the end after that...   You finished the game of course, but in my world a "victory" implies not having failed.

Damn! I guess my assumption was wrong.

The search for the truth continues.

40 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

imo stuff like that is not particularly fun.

See this is where we can chat. I think this is a more interesting subject than just "would you label this as cheating".

Because "cheating" in a single player game essentially comes down to whether you're "cheating yourself". So let's get the meme out of the way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFJqOlYaJbs

Like I just said, no one can or should tell you "how" to play a game. But I do often come across a certain unwillingness to accept a game's merits given certain challenges. People tend to assume that something isn't fun without even having given it a decent attempt. Or the good old "I'm and adult with a job and a dog that needs walking, I don't have time to play games in a non-platonic manner!".

People tend to immediately assume that attempting any challenge in a game, self-imposed or not, is something reserved for either people more skilled, or people with more time to spend playing video games, or just people who are willing to put more effort into a video game than should be expected.
But here's the thing - even getting through Ninja Gaiden using countless continues took me two days as having fought hard enough one afternoon caused me to take a break and start over the next, going all the way. With that out of the way I could have stopped there, and the game would still be fun, but given a few more days I managed to beat it without using continues. A feat that feels incredibly satisfying given how impossible it seems on your first attempt.
It really doesn't take incredible skill to do this, all it demands is a tiny amount of determination and willingness to learn the mechanics of the game. And it's this dive into how the game really works that allows you to experience it in the way it was designed to be played. It's fine if you don't want to go for this, but I do think anyone who hasn't at least tried will have a harder time understanding just how good that game is. Conversely, I could have also taken it further. You could go for a no-death challenge, or a pacifist run. Hell, you could even start speedrunning the game. And this just goes back to how it's all subjective. I play plenty of games that I credit-feed though and then never touch again, because I don't feel like they'd give me any more. But it's an approach that makes it very easy to miss out on some of the better video game experiences out there.

And I think especially given the design you see in most modern games, it can be difficult to readjust your mindset to the way most action games were designed in the 80s and early 90s. A modern game is a single run through that frequently can last anywhere from 10 to 100 hours, and although there may be challenges available to anyone who wants to start over and experience it again, no one is expected to do so.

In the 80s when you owned maybe three games, and one could essentially be completed in less than an hour, things were different. It really depends on what game you are talking about of course, but for this subject I'm focusing on arcade inspired actions games like Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros., Ninja Warriors, Ghouls n Ghosts, Contra, Mr. Gimmick, Gradius, Mega Man, Hagane, Final Fight, etc. - the list goes on.
These are all games designed with the mindset that anyone owning them would play them again and again to hone their skills and get better, getting continuous enjoyment from them. Not all games keep being enjoyable played like this, but in my opinion any great action game should.

So how do you get the best enjoyment given spending more time with them? Again, it's really up to you. As a kid I'd play SMB1 over and over again taking every warp zone getting me to 8-4 as fast as possible. I was never timing my runs like a speedrunner, but I think the ability to beat the game in a matter of minutes is one of its many great assets.
But looking at the concept of continues/credits, what would the idea of having them on top of a lives system be, if your primary goal isn't to avoid using them? The screen usually says "Game Over" right? Most games of this type will give you X amount of lives and unlimited continues allowing you to essentially keep banging your head against the wall until you eventually break through. Some games will add a bit of challenge even with this approach, by making a continue take you further back than a lost life. Meanwhile others will allow you to just respawn immediately, making the concept of extra lives completely pointless if you choose not to limit your continue usage.
That's definitely the best way to get through the first time. And if you don't feel like you enjoy the game well enough to keep playing it after that, it's completely fine.
Hell, if you only ever played worlds 1 and 8 of Super Mario Bros. 3 using the warp whistle every single time it's not like you can't have a ton of fun doing that. But you'd also be well aware that you are missing out on worlds 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, full of stages that might be just as fun.