Sega Saturn Game Info Box Color Codes & List of if Saturn Shmups Support Saving

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Brian

I made this list back in early 2009, a while after I got a Saturn, because I wanted to know exactly which Saturn shmups save, after learning that Darius Gaiden and In the Hunt don’t.  This version of the list is largely unchanged, but I did improve the first section.  Most shmups on the system do save, but there are a few that do not.  In order to easily figure out which gaems do and which don’t, I looked at those yellow boxes on the back of all Japanese Saturn games which tell you some info about the game.  So, this list will have two parts, first my analysis of what those lines in the yellow box mean, and second a list of all Saturn shmups sorted into ‘do save’ and ‘no saving’.

Sega Saturn Japanese Case Back Label Dot Color Codes

Notes: These colored dots are found in the yellow box on the back of every Japanese Saturn game.  The box tells you information about the game.  Each line in the box starts with a colored dot, and then has some Japanese text after the dot with the details.  They appear in a set order, and the list below is in the order that they appear on the cases.  The first two of these appear on all game cases,  but the rest only appear when they apply.

Blue — Number of Players — All games have this, with a number between 1 and 12, for the number of player supported.

Red — Genre — Yes, each games’ genre is listed in the info box.  All games have this.

Purple — Backup Save (ie the game supports saving) — Games that have saving have this.  Games that don’t save to the system or backup RAM card won’t, so a game with password-only save, for example, would not have this — it only refers to actual save files.

Green — Accessories Supported — this category will list the System Link Cable, 3D Controller (“Multi Controller”, it’s called in Japan, though here these listings are all in Japanese of course), Mission Stick, Arcade Racer, Mouse, Keyboard, Virtua Gun, and such.  There is no listing for the standard controller, since all games support it.  If alternate controllers or accessories are supported, they are listed here. Each accessory gets a separate green-dot listing, so games that support multiple accessories will have several of them.  You’ll need to know Japanese to be able to tell which accessory is supported by just looking here, but it’s usually not too hard to guess — the wheel for a racing game, joystick for a flight or mech game, gun for a lightgun game, and such.

Yellow — ??  I’m not sure what this one means.  Hopefully someone can answer this question, what does the yellow dot line mean?

Black — Black — Multiple Discs? But some with it seem to be one disc games… maybe those are games that also come with a soundtrack disc, a demo disc for another game, and such. It says “CD-ROM something”.

Saving in Saturn Shmups

Notes: Games are Japanese-only releases unless noted with a (JE) or (JUE) to note the other regions.  All games are listed by their Japanese release name; other region titles are in (parenthesis).  Games are in alphabetical order within each list.

Saving
—
Blast Wind: Ultimate Destroyer
Batsugun
Battle Garegga
Capcom Generation 1
Capcom Generation 3
Capcom Generation 4
Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo Kanpekihen
Cotton 2
Cotton Boomerang
Darius II (JE)
Detana Twinbee Yahho! Deluxe Pack
DonPachi
DoDonPachi
Dezaemon 2
Galactic Attack (JEU) (Layer Section/GunLock)
Game Tengoku – The Game Paradise
Gokujou Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack (JE) (Parodius)
Gradius Deluxe Pack
Guardian Force
Gunbird
Hyper 3D Taisen Battle Gebockers
Hyper Duel
Keio Flying Squadron 2 (mostly a platformer) (JE) (Keio Yugekitai 2)
Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me
Kyuukyoku Tiger II Plus
Layer Section II
Macross: Do You Remember Love
Planet Joker
Radiant Silvergun
Sega Ages: Fantasy Zone
Salamander Gold Pack Plus
Sengoku Blade
Sexy Parodius
Shienryu
Shippuu Mahou Daisakusen
Skull Fang
Sol Divide
Sonic Wings Special
Soukyugurentai
Soukyugurentai Otokuyo
Steam Hearts
Terra Cresta 3D
Strikers 1945
Strikers 1945 II
Thunder Force Gold Pack 2
Thunder Force V
Tsuukai!! Slot Shooting
Twinkle Star Sprites (has black symbol)
Wolf Fang: Koukiba 2001 SS

No Saving
—
Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko
Darius Gaiden (JEU)
Gekirindan – Time Travel Shooting
Gun Frontier (has black symbol)
In the Hunt (JEU) (Kaitei Taisensou: In the Hunt)
Konami Antiques MSX Collection Ultra Pack
Prikura Daisakusen (has black symbol)
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1

Posted in Classic Games, Lists, Research, Saturn | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

My Thoughts on E3 2015

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Brian

E3 was this week, and it was pretty awesome to watch!  It’s great that so much stuff from E3 gets streamed now, there was so much to watch.  I’m sure I’ll be finding stuff to watch from E3 for quite some time, you can’t watch it all during the show.  I watched all of the press conferences on Sunday through Tuesday, but during the show mostly watched Nintendo’s Treehouse stream and Giant Bomb’s after-show streams, only occasionally watching other streams during the show such as Twitch’s, IGN’s, or Youtube’s.  I love Nintendo, so it got first priority.

Ratings: The Press Conferences & Games Shown
(and Nintendo World Championships 2015)

First, my thoughts on the press conferences.  They will be organized from best to worst.  I’m judging each conference mostly based on whether they had games I want to play.

Nintendo World Championships 2015 – A. This was a great show! I hope that in the future Nintendo goes back to live press conferences (with more reveals), but this tourney was great fun, I really liked watching it.  The tourney was structured well, they showed off a lot of games, there were even a few new games shown, and Mario Maker looks really great, it has improved a lot over last year.  If they do more events like this in the future, though, it’d be nice to see more places holding qualifying tourneys — this had only eight, which really isn’t many.  Otherwise, great show!

Nintendo – A-. Nintendo showed almost nothing for next year, but their library for this year is great, stronger for 3DS than Wii U but the Wii U has some good-looking games as well — Star Fox and Mario Maker look fantastic, and hopefully Xenoblade Chronicles X as well. Yeah, I also wish that the conference had had a big reveal of some major upcoming Wii U game, but otherwise it was quite good. The hate Nintendo is receiving here is crazy. The 3DS got some great stuff announced — new Zelda! New Mario RPG! And maybe the Metroid game too, MP Hunters was fun.  The Treehouse stream later on made the Metroid game look a lot better than it came off in the initial trailer in this conference, so I am optimistic about the game (more below).  The Mario RPG game is by the Mario & Luigi team, which does make me a bit cautious — those games are okay, but I strongly prefer the Paper Mario games over M&L.  I hope this is better than past M&L games.  And the Zelda game really looks awesome; it’s basically a followup to Four Swords Adventures, which is a very good game.  This year’s Wii U library is pretty good as well, with Star Fox, Mario Maker, and Xenoblade Chronicles X as the headliners.  The Wii U Mario’s Tennis game looks good as well  All three major Wii U games looked fantastic in the press conference, and in the Treehouse afterwards as well.

Sony – B to B+. Yeah, the three big reveals are a big deal, and they showed some other great stuff that’s a ways off too (Horizon could be good), but Sony showed NOTHING for this year. Sony and Nintendo really are opposites here, and while shocking reveals are great, why wait all that time for the games with nothing until then, when Nintendo has good games now AND will surely also have other good games in the future, even if they haven’t announced them yet? And as for those three reveals… FFVII isn’t a game I’ve ever found interesting enough to stick with, but it is cool it’s getting a remake; TLG looks okay but dated; and I found Shenmue 1 quite boring so I doubt I’d like this new one either. So yeah, as cool as it was to see them, for me personally the games aren’t my favorite things.  As for the rest of the show, it was the usual mixture of stuff; Sony conferences are always long and unevenly paced.  This time the first half was loaded with reveals, but the second half had few to none and was less interesting.  Sony finished with Uncharted 4; the driving stage shown looked fun, but I’ve never had much interest in that mostly third-person-shooting-focused series.  The highlight for me at Sony’s show, as far as a game I might want to try, is probably Horizon.  It’s got a female protagonist, an interesting long-after-the-robot-apocalypse setting, people with primitive weapons fighting against robots… it looks pretty cool! Robot dinosaurs are awesome. :)  The Last Guardian also could be better than it seemed here, we’ll see.  And FFVII… well, the trailer was good, even if the original game never has held my interest.  I’ll certainly be following the remake, though I imagine it’ll be a long time before it releases.

Square-Enix – B. Square’s conference was pretty impressive, loaded with pretty good-looking games that look pretty interesting. The main thing holding back this conference was that the biggest titles were already shown yesterday at other conferences — FFVII Remake, World of Final Fantasy (is this an F2P game, or a traditional RPG? I can’t tell.), Tomb Raider, etc.  Still, they showed some games I’m interested in.  I hope Star Ocean 5 is good!  Star Ocean 2 is my favorite PS1 game, so though the series hasn’t come even close to that high since, I still hope each one will be great.  Apparently it’ll be set in between the second and third games, and might say more (or maybe retcon or explain-by-weird-metaphysics) SO3’s crazy plot twist.  That could be interesting, or just dumb, we’ll see.  Kingdom Hearts 3 also could be good, though I’m not a big fan of the series; the games get repetitive, and Sora isn’t the most interesting character.  I really wish this one would have other playable characters, but all they’ve shown is Sora.  The Nier 2 reveal was also interesting for how little it said.  I haven’t played the first one and from what I know about the story I don’t think I want to (it’s incredibly dark and depressing!), but I’m glad a sequel is being made for its fans.  As for their Western games,they talked about the new Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Just Cause games.  They all look good enough, though I’m not really looking forward to any of those; I’ve never been a Tomb Raider fan but turning it into a third-person shooter made me like it even less; I don’t care for open-world games; and Deus Ex… who knows, we’ll see.  Still, it was a pretty good show overall, though they could work a bit on their presentation; it was a bit slow and low-budget.

Microsoft– C+. This was one of MS’s better conferences, but still was a bit thin on games. MS definitely has a better 2015 library than Sony, but they didn’t have the big reveals Sony did, and we already know about their major titles for this year. Armature’s Recore and the Rare pirate MMO game look very promising and could be good, but I want to see more of them. Armature was founded by some people from Retro Studios, so I hope this game is good, Metroid Prime is one of the best ever!  MS also showed off their AR headset, Hololens.  I’m not a fan of VR stuff, though I do like my Virtual Boy, but it’s interesting to see at least.  But I don’t think all games will be better in VR, and certainly as long as it’s a big bulky headset I won’t want to be wearing those things for long.  And how will they feel over glasses?  However, I really find it annoying that MS won’t talk much about PC in their conferences. Microsoft, so long as you show that PC isn’t important by not talking about it in your conference, I’ll never believe your “we care now about PC gaming, really!” talk. And trolling PC gamers by, at the PC Gamer conference, announcing that KI and the Gears remaster are getting PC ports but not Halo or Forza is kind of annoying; I’m not really a fan of any of those four franchises, but still, if you’re going to support the PC, release your major titles for it. The PC IS a Microsoft platform after all.  Their excuses for why they barely mention it at their press conferences don’t hold up.

Ubisoft – C. The conference was well presented and as entertaining as ever, but they showed very few games I really want to play. I like Ubisoft’s racing and platformer games the most, but they had almost none of those apart from a new console Trackmania game and maybe the new Anno game. Trackmania will probably be cool, but otherwise the conference was just way too much Tom Clancy stuff I’ll probably never play. They showd like three Tom Clancy games… blah.  There was Assassin’s Creed as always, of course; as a history major I wish I loved that series, but I just can’t get into it, the gameplay is too simple and lacks depth or challenge.  The story is weird as well.  Still, Ubi does always have one of the funniest conferences, and that is worth something.

EA – C-.  Mirror’s Edge 2 and the yarn game were the highlights here, and those look great. The yarn game is a 2.5d platformer and I’m hopeful it’ll be as good as it looks in the video.  Also, I am particularly happy to hear that Mirror’s Edge 2 won’t have guns, that’s a step in the right direction!  The guns were the weakest part about the first game.  The new Mass Effect game could be good too, but they showed little of it.  I still haven’t really played the series, either.  However, apart from those few games, this conference was mostly bland.  EA talked a lot about its sports games of course, and such.  There wasn’t much interesting here, but nothing completely terrible either.  Oh, and as a longtime Star Wars fan maybe I should care about the new Battlefront, but I’ve never played the series before and don’t particularly care for that kind of (Battlefield-style) game, so I don’t really.  The original Battlefield 1942 demo was alright when it first released, but I never was interested enough to play any more of the series after that.

Bethesda – D. Dishonored 2 could be great, but nothing else here was at all interesting. Doom, looks pretty seriously disappointing (where’s Doom’s speed, graphical design, and level styles?  Gone, that’s where, it seems.), and the only Fallout games I care about were made by Black Isle. I don’t like Bethesda much, and this conference was a good example of why.  Their parent company ZeniMax has done some pretty scummy things to developers, but even just looking at their games, as someone who does not enjoy open-world games it’s hard to find much in their library of any interest.

The PC Gaming Show – I can’t rate this PC Gamer conference for sure because I didn’t watch it all.  It’s a good show, but long.  The show is interesting, but low-budget and light on reveals. Still, it’s great that it happened at all. MS showed their usual lack of interest in the PC, so someone had to step up! And they had lots of great and interesting PC games to show, even if they were’t new. So yeah, B-something grade probably.

More thoughts on some games shown on the show floor

No Man’s Sky (PS4/PC) – This was shown at the Sony conference, the PC Gaming Show, and during E3, and it’s a game that has gotten a lot of buzz, but definitely does not look interesting to me; it’s all about incredibly open-ended design.  This looks like a product that is not for people who want to play a game… it is for people who want to experience life, explore, find things, and shoot at them if you want. It’s massive with no real clear gameplay hook unless you LOVE near-purposeless exploration, a 100% procedurally generated world, and such. Is it a game? Yes… but there’s barely any point to it.  I don’t see a hook to actually make me want to play, and their talking about the games’ complex crafting system reinforces that– I hate crafting!  This is not a game for me design-wise, that’s obvious. Also no date was mentioned for release, for those who are interested in the game.

Street Fighter V (PS4/PC) – Based on the first reveals I basically had thought of this as ‘SFIV but with better graphics’, but after watching people play the game, there is a bit more to it than that.  Capcom have mixed up the game system a bit here — parries seem to be back in for example, and movesets are different.  The art is also a bit different.  Still, the game is very much based on Street Fighter IV.  Just like that game it is a 2.5d fighting game, with polygonal graphics but gameplay strictly on a flat plane.  The graphical design is also similar to SFIV, but with better graphics.  SFIV is a good game, but never has grabbed me like KOF XIII.  Still, I’m sure this game will be good.  It’s already very playable, clearly.

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes (3DS) – Watching some Nintendo Treehouse stuff, the new 3DS Zelda game really looks like great fun. I’ve been thinking that it’s a shame that Nintendo hasn’t made another Four Swords game, because FSA on the GC is a great game, but they’re finally doing it! And it looks really fun, too. They are emphasizing cooperative play more this time, so the three players share a health bar. This definitely makes things more challenging, but making people work together isn’t bad. The graphical look is similar to the previous 3DS Zelda game, but it looks good enough. The different costumes are interesting as well, each one has different abilities. Different costumes will definitely change how you approach some things, and I’m sure there are better costumes for certain stages. Plus it’ll have online play too, which is fantastic (FSA relied on GBA links only, of course, and that connectivity thing… wasn’t exactly an answer for online play, that’s for sure.). It’s looking great.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force (3DS) – After watching some footage on the Treehouse stream, Metroid Prime: Federation Force looks pretty good, basically like Metroid Prime but with cartoonier art and 4-player co-op. The character and mech designs definitely could use some work, and hopefully they improve, but otherwise this game looks quite good. The environments look great, very Metroid Prime-styled. The music sounds like MP stuff as well, and the interface and controls also, which is awesome because Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever. So yeah, they have some things to work on, but the game definitely looks quite promising.   So yeah, another thing where the hate is massively overdone. I’m sure they will eventually make another single player-focused Metroid or Metroid Prime game, but this game looks good too.

Star Fox (Wii U) – I’ve seen some criticism of this game, both visually and in terms of controls, but at least for the graphics, I think the game looks pretty good.  And in terms of the gameplay and story, what they showed here aimed straight for the Star Fox 64 fan, and Star Fox 64 is my favorite rail shooter ever so I like that for sure.  The gyro controls could be good or bad, and I’ll need to play the game before I know if it’s fun to play that way or not, but at least based on graphics, design, story, and levels, I’m really excited to play this game!  It looks good.  That Platinum Games are working on the campaign is good news as well, they do great work.

Mario Maker (Wii U) – Mario Maker is probably the most improved game that also showed at least E3.  Last year the game looked fairly basic, but now this is a polished, full-featured Mario game creator.  From the NWC’15, conference, and Treehouse this game got a lot of focus this E3, and it’s easy to see why.  This game looks simple enough that making levels will be easy; the complex editors in some games don’t make me want to try to learn how to make levels, and that interest drops even more when the physics and design have unfixed issues as well (see Little Big Planet), but this game doesn’t have any of those problems, the footage shown made this obvious.  This game has only tile-based graphics, which limits you, but it also makes design easier.  That’s also how the games actually look, of course.  Both making your own levels and playing other peoples’ stages look like great fun.

On the Harsh Criticism of Nintendo This E3

So, Nintendo’s E3 Direct got a lot of (overly-) harsh criticism online, because it didn’t show much new. I think the critics are going too far, even if they have part of a valid point. The contrast between Nintendo and Sony’s conferences this year really was interesting. Nintendo had a very good conference for 2015 games, but showed almost nothing for next year and had no big reveals. Meanwhile, Sony had a very good conference for 2016-2017 games, but showed almost nothing for this year (apart for some multiplatform third-party titles), and had some big reveals that are a year or years away.

Which is better? I’m not sure, both have their merits. Had Nintendo had even a single hinted major Wii U game reveal, I think it’d be easy to say they won, because for E3, the game releasing later this year should matter more than games that are a year or more away. Of course, the problem is that they didn’t have that, they had only some handheld and minor titles to reveal. And yeah, that’s a problem, but I think the haters here are MASSIVELY overstating how bad the conference was. It was, for the most part, a great conference, with no major bad sections, lots of interesting games shown, and some interesting reveals — the three new 3DS games announced all look good, for sure. Yeah, it was sadly lacking in reveals for the future, but still, it’s an okay conference overall.

After watching, I thought ‘I wish there had been some more new games shown, particularly for Wii U’, but overall I think it was a good conference. And yeah, anyone saying “worst” did not watch 2008 — this one was many, many times better than that thing was.

Last though, I really do hope that the absence of any major reveals was just because Nintendo was too focused on showing only 2015 stuff, and not because they’re giving up on Wii U in favor of NX sooner than they should.

Game of Show

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes.  Zelda is my favorite series, and this game looks like a lot of fun.

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Sega CD games and “Bit Rot”: A worse problem than on other disc-based platforms? Why is this?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Brian

Sorry for the lack of updates, but here’s something important. Hopefully I can get back to a more regular (at least weekly) update schedule after this.

Introduction

I know that this has been mentioned plenty of times around the internet, particularly with reference to the Sega CD, but to check the status of my collection in particular, I recently checked all my Sega CD games, and here’s what I found.  It’s really bad, unlike anything for any other console I own.

First though, by “bit rot” I mean when you look at a CD, looking at the back of the disc and pointing the label towards a light source, and look to see if you can see any light through the disc.  If you can, that’s either bit rot or bad label-side surface scratches.  There isn’t really any way to tell the two apart, but it doesn’t matter really which it is, the end results are the same: dead discs.  The data on CDs is much closer to the label than the back of the disc, so scratches on the label side are actually worse than scratches on the back.  I will call any points where I can see light through the disc “bit rot” here regardless of what it actually is, because that’s a common term used for this kind of thing.

Now, I got a Sega CD in mid 2006.  Interestingly, as the list below should show, almost all of the games I own with bit-rot problems are games I bought between ’06 and ’10; few games I got since 2011 are affected.  I wonder if this is because of something that happened, or if it’s just that I got much better at checking games for damage before buying them… because that did happen, but it could be both, I’m not sure.  I do know that there are some SCD games that worked better when I got them than they do now, and others that always did have issues.

An argument against there being some kind of thing that happened, whether it’s bad storage or what have you, is that no other console’s discs, or my PC CD game collection, are similarly affected.  I do have a bunch of dead Gamecube discs, but none have ‘bit rot’ — all are just not working even though there’s no visible damage, or visible damage that I got professionally buffed out but the discs still don’t work.  Yeah, those nonworking GC discs are weird, but there are only five of them, and all are among my most played games for the console; it’s not random stuff, it’s games I played a lot of.  Also I kept many GC discs in a holder case thing instead of their jewelcases for years.  It’s an nice one with actual things to clip discs into instead of just sleeves, but still, it still was harder on them than the cases I imagine.  I was also at college during the GC generation, so I carried it around a lot.  Anyway, I mention this because it’s the only other thing I have with many nonworking discs.  I got a Playstation in January ’06, before the Sega CD, but the only nonworking PS1 discs I have are games that I got that way, I don’t have any that once worked but now don’t.  I don’t have any similar issues with any of the disc-based consoles I’ve gotten after that, either.  Oh, and as for the PC, I’ve had a PC with CD drive since ’95, but the with only a few exceptions, most of the few PC CDs I have that used to work but don’t now are discs that physically broke.  And the one or two that are actually scratched too badly to read are games I played a LOT.  It’s nothing like the Sega CD.  As for disc-based consoles I got after ’06, most have few to no nonworking discs in my collection.  I do have a some bad Dreamcast discs, but all are discs I got that way, none worked and then failed on me.  Other systems I have are not like the Sega CD, not even close.  This includes the Turbo/PC Engine CD and early to mid ’90s PC CD games, so it’s not just age.

So yeah, why is this?  Why are Sega CD games so likely to have that ‘you can see light through the disc’ issue that irreparably damage them?  Did Sega just use bad CDs or something?  I’d love to know if anyone knows anything.

Key & Definitions

Below is a list of my SCD games, followed by a note saying what I saw when I looked at the back looking towards the light.

Format: Gamename Date Purchased (Approximately, these are not all accurate) – Status

Notes: By “pinholes” I mean places where you can see a spot of light through the disc.  By “scratches” or “blobs” I mean larger areas with light shining through.  “Clumps” of damage mean bunches of pinholes and scratches together.

(J) means that it’s a Japanese import game.

32X CD Games

Fahrenheit 11/26/2007 – 32XCD disc – several pinholes and 1 clump with damage.  The game seems to work based on what I’ve played, but it’d probably crash somewhere I imagine.
Night Trap 12/09/2014 – Good
Slam City with Scottie Pippen 07/13/2011 – Good (all discs)
Supreme Warrior 12/09/2014 – Good (both discs)

Sega CD Games

Adventures of Batman & Robin, The 06/12/2010 – Good
Adventures of Willy Beamish, The 01/15/2010 – 1 pinhole.  The disc works, though I haven’t gotten far into the game.
After Burner III 07/13/2011 – Good
AH-3 Thunderstrike 08/01/2007 – Not working.  There are many pinholes all over the disc.  This disc never worked for me.  I can get the game to start on my PC’s DVD drive, but it can’t read the whole disc.
Aisle Lord (J) 03/13/2014 – Good
Android Assault: The Revenge of Bari-Arm 06/12/2010 – Good
Arcus 1-2-3 (J) 04/01/2014 -Good
Arslan Senki (J) [The Heroic Legend of Arslan] 04/13/2015 – Good
Battlecorps 08/09/2006 – 1 pinhole, 1 scratch, and 2 clumps of pinhole and scratch damage.  The game works though, at least through the first few levels; I would expect it’ll fail at some point though, with all this damage…
Bram Stoker’s Dracula 08/08/2006 – Not working.  11 pinholes, a clump of pinholes, and 2 scratches are on the disc.  This game worked back in ’06 in my SCD, before failing several years later.
Brutal: Paws of Fury 08/18/2011 – Good
Chuck Rock 06/12/2010 – Good
Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck 06/12/2010 – Good
Cliffhanger 08/26/2010 – Good
Cobra Command 08/26/2010 – 3 pinholes (disc works, as far as I’ve gotten into the game)
Demolition Man 07/13/2011 – Good
Double Switch 08/17/2008 – Good
Earnest Evans (J) 03/13/2014 – Good
Ecco the Dolphin 12/02/2012 – Good
ESPN Baseball Tonight 08/22/2014 – Good
ESPN National Hockey Night 07/13/2011 – Good
Fahrenheit 11/26/2007 – 11+ pinholes and clumps.  This disc probably doesn’t work, but I haven’t used it much beyond using it as a key disc to play the 32XCD version, which has less damage (see above).  When I did play this version some in the late ’00s I did get partway in without it crashing, though.  Not sure if that’d still happen.
Fhey Area (J) [Faeria] 04/01/2014 – Good
Flink 02/24/2010 – 1 pinhole.  As far as I’ve gotten the game works fine.
Formula One World Championship: Beyond the Limit 03/30/2011 – 1 pinhole.  There’s also a scratch near the center (maybe not on data?).  The game seems to work fine.
Games Can #1 (J) [Game no Kanzume Vol. 1] 04/01/2014 – Good
Games Can #2 (J) [Game no Kanzume Vol. 2] 04/01/2014 – Good
Ground Zero Texas 11/26/2007 – Disc 1 – 3 pinholes near ring.  Game seems to work though.  Disc 2 – 3 pinholes near ring, 1 on disc.  Not sure about this disc, I haven’t finished disc 1.
Jurassic Park 11/26/2007 – Not Working – Game will not play.  There are 7 pinholes, plus a clump of damage in the center ring.
Lethal Enforcers 03/29/2011 – Good
Loadstar, The Legend of Tully Bodine 08/08/2006 & second copy several years later – The first copy doesn’t work, it did at first but failed after a few years, and has lots of pinholes and such.  The second copy has no damage and works great.
Mahou no Shoujo: Silky Lip (J) 04/13/2015 – Good
Mansion of Hidden Souls 10/08/2010 – 1 pinhole (the game works as far as I’ve gotten into it, though)
Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse 02/24/2010 – Good
Midnight Raiders 08/01/2007 – 1 pinhole on disc and 3 in ring.  The game seems to work fine though, though I’ve never gotten to the last level, level 3 (it’s so hard!).
Mortal Kombat (1993) 08/26/2010 – 1 pinhole.  This disc also is scratched up a bit.  I don’t know which is the cause, but it crashes during the intro FMV, though when I first got the game it could play it without issue.  If you skip it the game works fine though.
NBA Jam 11/05/2014 – Good
Racing Aces 04/06/2011 – Good
Record of Lodoss War: Eiyuu Sensou (J) 04/13/2015 – 1 pinhole in center ring.  Game works fine.
Rise of the Dragon 05/25/2010 – No real damage, but the center ring looks a bit ‘chewed’ — it’s uneven.  Game plays fine.
Road Avenger 02/04/2015 – 3 pinholes in center ring.  Game works as far as I’ve gotten.  I saw the damage in this before buying the game a few months back, and it seems to be fine.
Robo Aleste 06/12/2010 – Good
Sega Classics Arcade Collection 4-in-1 07/18/2011 – Good
Sega Classics Arcade Collection 5-in-1 12/02/2012 – Good
Sewer Shark 04/06/2011 – Good
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective — Volume I 07/18/2011 – Good
Silpheed 06/12/2010 – Good (the center ring is a bit chewed, as with Rise of the Dragon, but the game seems unaffected.)
Sol-Feace 04/06/2011 – Good
Sonic CD 07/21/2008 – 3 pinholes in a clump in the center ring.  Game works fine.
Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin 06/12/2010 – Good
Star Wars Chess, The Software Toolworks Presents 11/26/2007 – 1 pinhole on disc, 5 in center ring in clump.  The game seems to work.
Star Wars: Rebel Assault 08/08/2006 – Not working.  11+ pinholes on disc, plus more on the center ring.  The game will start, but crashes at certain points in multiple levels.  This disc initially worked fine — I beat teh game back after I got it, before later on the disc stopped working for whatever reason.
Starblade 11/26/2007 – 1 pinhole near ring.  The game works fine.
Stellar Fire 10/08/2010 – 1 scratch on disc, 2 pinholes in center ring.  It works as far as I’ve gotten though.
Surgical Strike 02/16/2011 – (Sega CD disc) – Good
Third World War 08/08/2006 – Not working.  The game will start, but it crashes partway through a game.  There are many pinholes in and near the center ring, and 5+ on the rest of the disc.
Tomcat Alley 05/25/2010 – 1 pinhole
Wing Commander 05/16/2015 – Good
Wirehead 02/16/2011 – Good
WWF Rage in the Cage 08/26/2010 – 5 pinholes and a (maybe deep) scratch.  The game works as far as I’ve gotten though.
Yumimi Mix (J) 02/07/2014 – Good

Conclusions

– I have no games I got since 2011 with damage bad enough to make the game not work, and few with damage I’ve gotten since then.  Pointing this out is why I put the dates above.

– All of my Digital Pictures games have no damage, and only 1 of the 10 Japanese import games has even a single pinhole and the one that does has only one, and it’s in the center ring where it doesn’t matter.  Huh.  Did the sellers just not sell discs with this kind of stuff, or did Sega of Japan use better discs?  Could be either one really.

– Again, no other CD game collection I have is anything REMOTELY like this in terms of damage.  The others have either no or maybe one or two games with any games where you can see light through the disc, not counting discs I got nonworking (and for Sega CD that would really only eliminate ThunderStrike, the other nonworking games used to work.).

Posted in Articles, Classic Games, Research, Sega CD | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights (TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine) Review – A Surprisingly Good Platformer

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Brian

I played and finished this game recently, and wrote up a short-ish review of my thoughts.  I’ve expanded it a bit here, but it’s shorter than most of my full reviews.  Hopefully it’s a good review.  This game is obscure, but it’s actually reasonably good, and is definitely fun and worth playing for any platformer fan.

Box Cover

Game Info

  • Title: Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights
  • Publisher & Developer: Hudson Soft
  • Released: 1991, Japan Only Release
  • Platform: TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine)
Title Screen

The title screen, and one of the few times all characters are seen in their Arabian outfits. It’s a nice title image.

Introduction and Story

This is a game I got fairly recently, and decided to try out.  At first the game seemed simple and average, but it actually gets pretty good, so I stuck with it and finished the game in a few days.  This game’s fun stuff!  Dorabian Nights is a fairly standard Hudson platformer, so it’s not one of the greats of the genre — Hudson platformers never were — but it is a good, solid game that’s fun to play. This game is a licensed platformer based on the popular, long-running childrens’ comic series Doraemon.   As usual in Doraemon games, you play as Doraemon, the silly blue cat/alien/robot guy, and have to save the day.  Unlike the SNES or N64 Doraemon games, you cannot also play as Doraemon’s human friends, only Doraemon himself.

In specific, this game is loosely based off of the animated movie of the same name as the game.  One odd thing about this game is that even though it’s a licensed game based on a movie, from what I’ve read about the movies’ plot, almost none of that happens in the game.  The movie is almost entirely set in the fantasy Arabian setting of the title; Doraemon and his child friends go on an adventure there.  The girl character gets kidnapped and the others have to rescue her, etc.  I hate ‘rescue the girl’ as a plotline, and you still have to do that here, but it’s different.  In this game, in the intro cutscene the four children jump into four different storybooks, and Doraemon has to go into the books to rescue them.  Each book is set in a different time period.  The first is dinosaur-themed (just dinosaurs, thankfully, no cavemen!), the second ancient Japan themed, the third creepy/’horror’ themed, and the last Arabian themed.  You rescue a child at the end of each book, with the girl last, but as they’re not playable in the game, this doesn’t matter as much as it would in the SNES games.

So, as far as the Arabian, or “Dorabian” (heh), setting goes, on the title screen Doraemon has a turban on and the four children are in Arabian outfits as they fly on a magic carpet, fitting the Arabian setting, but ingame he only wears this in world 4 and the final level.  Similarly, his human child friends only have their Arabian outfits on on the title-screen image and in the second part of the end cutscene, too.  It’s a little odd, but there’s only five levels in Arabia in this game.  So yeah, don’t expect much of the movie here.  Of course, games that try something different often end up better than movie games that strictly follow the plot, so it’s okay.  Plus, I like the variety of the four worlds.  Every level has a different setting, and they’re interesting to see as you progress.  I’ll get back to that, the level variety is a strength of the game.

Level 1

The first level. Doraemon starts out with just the stun gun, in the age of the dinosaurs.

Level Setup and Items

Another good point of the game is the mostly well-designed difficulty curve that starts out easy, but gets much more difficult in the second half of the game.  By the end, the game’s a legitimate challenge.  Dorabian Nights uses a map screen between levels, with a new map for each of the five areas.  You can go back and play earlier levels whenever you want.  The game has four worlds of four levels each and a final level at the end, so it’s not long, but it isn’t overly short either.  The first world is very easy, the second fairly easy, the third pretty tough, the fourth about on par with the third or maybe slightly easier, and the last level is hard.  Overall I had the hardest time with level 3-3, I died more in that level than any other.  It had me stuck for some time; beating that level took a few days of leaving my TG16 on.  I had to do that because you can’t save in this game, sadly, though you do have infinite continues… from the beginning of the world.  Die in a level and you start it over, lose all your lives and it’s back to level 1 of the world.  This may be a kids’ game, but it’s not as easy as you might think.  The first SNES Doraemon game is a lot easier than this game, for sure, and all of the SNES Doraemon games have password save too.  Still, I like the challenge in this game, and it’s probably more fun to play than most of the SNES games as well.  The game is by a more prominent developer and it shows.

While the game is fun, replay value is somewhat limited.  You can go and play the levels again after beating the game so long as you don’t turn it off, because the map screen is accessible if you start the game again, but there is little reason to; there are a few areas in earlier levels you can only access with items you get later in the game, but these only give you extra lives and such, so they probably aren’t worth it unless you really want to replay the game right away, or see absolutely everything.  Ah well, it’s fun while it lasts.

In the game, you have 4 hits per life.  Green things you can dig up give you a hit point back, if you’ve been hit, and these do respawn… but so do the enemies.  Doraemon has five different weapons, one of which you only use during the final boss fight.  You’ll get a new weapon in each world, pretty much.  The four weapons you use through most of the game have some nice variety.  The starting gun stuns enemies, the second is the best all-purpose gun, the third is a homing gun which fires slowly but the shots will curve to hit a target, and the last is a cape which sends enemies flying back to damage other enemies, which can be fun.  You also can collect some other items which give you a shield, invincibility, and more.  You get these items from doors; hit Up at a door to go in.  Doors either have a powerup, a bonus minigame (for an extra life or health), or in a few cases some other usually-silly scene in them. There are never enemies in these rooms.  The bonus rooms are amusing and add more variety to this already varied game.  This is a slow-paced game, though — Doraemon moves slowly and there is no run. I don’t mind, though some people do.  I think the game plays well despite its slow-ish pace.

Box Back

The back of the case shows some the games’ level variety.

Visuals and Level Design

Graphically, the game looks like a standard late ’80s to mid ’90s Hudson platformer, with Doraemon in it. As with all of their platformers from the era the game is cute and cartoony and looks nice.  The art is well-drawn and there’s more graphical variety here than in many cartridge games.  Visually, the one downside is that, as usual on the system, there isn’t much parallax scrolling, unfortunately — only two stages have any, the rest are flat.  one of these two is the first level, and it looks good, but you won’t see parallax again until one of the last levels, and that’s its only other appearance.  The graphics are better than I thought they’d be; I was expecting something maybe more like the mediocrity of Bakusho Yoshimoto Shingeki, but this game looks better than that one for sure, and it’s also a lot longer and harder than that game is. The music is good, but not hugely memorable. Still, it’s catchy, fun stuff, and it held up well throughout my time playing the game.

As I said earlier, the game also has some nice gameplay and enemy variety. Almost every one of the 17 levels in this game is visually unique!  Every single level has multiple enemy types you will only see in that level as well, and no enemies return when you go from one world to the next.  As a result, Dorabian Nights is always mixing things up by introducing new enemy types and level styles.  Many levels have one-off challenges or stage-design gimmicks that only appear in that one level.  For example, there is one (and only one!) underwater level, one level where you ride a dinosaur for part of the level, one level where you shuffle along platform edges where one hit knocks you back down (this is 3-3, the hardest level), one level is loaded with these pots you can break, some of which keep spitting out enemies at you, and more.

The variety is great, but I kind of wish some of the better ideas appeared more than once — more later levels with platforming as hard as 3-3 might have been a good idea, for instance, or an animal or vehicle to ride on after the first stage other than those flying-carpet bits in the last level — but still, it works, and the game is challenging even without more levels like that. The final boss is definitely a good challenge, for instance.  This is one of those games where the final boss plays differently from anything else in the game, and it uses that special 5th weapon as well, but I won’t spoil how it plays; I’d recommend playing the game instead!  The boss took a while to beat, and I finally beat the game with 1 hit point left on my last life.  Yes, really; it was pretty tense! I thought that a death would send me back to 4-1, but I think that actually you might be able to start from the last level, since it has its own screen on the level-select map, though fortunately I didn’t test it. That was close, though… I had to survive for quite a while with only that 1 hit point left! Tense stuff, but it was fun.  The ending’s decent.   A bit short, but good enough.

Doraemon Nobita No Dorabian Night Screenshot

This is from the CD version, but the HuCard version looks the same here. This is the first level in ancient Japan.

 

Conclusion

Overall, Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights is a simple but fun platformer, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  I didn’t think this would be all that great, but it’s a fun game for sure.  It’s not as good as the Bonk games, but after them it’s better than some of Hudson’s other platformers for the system.  The game has decently nice graphics, lots of variety (I really like that every single level has a unique look and feel to it; that’s not common in a game like this!), and good level design.  It’s a good game.  The main flaws are that the game should have had saving (having to leave the system on for this long is annoying), I’d have liked to see parallax in a lot more levels than just two, and the difficulty is uneven — why is 3-3 the hardest level (other than maybe the final boss), for instance?  And why is the desert stage, 4-3, super easy, while the other levels in world 4 are a reasonable challenge?  Ah well.  The game is pretty good, these issues aren’t too bad.  The game is also slow paced, something some people really dislike, but I don’t mind this; as with, say, the Bonk or Tempo games, the slow pace fits the design well.  I give the game a solid B.

On one final note, there is also a Turbografx CD Super CD version of the game that released in 1992, a year after this HuCard version.  Sadly, it is an INCREDIBLY lazy port — Hudson just redid the intro and ending with voice acting and more animation, redrew some graphics to make them look a little better, put in vocal songs on the title screen and in the new end-credits sequence (yes, there are actually credits on the CD version), and added some voiced sound effects. That’s it, no other changes. It even still has chiptune music ingame. That’s not an issue with this version, though, just with Hudson failing to improve the later CD port much at all. Anyway, this game is fun, try it out if you like platformers.

Videos

PC Engine / TG16 version longplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zxw1gJ3k_A

PC Engine CD / TCD version longplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyWOVpMsXCI

Posted in Classic Games, Full Reviews, Reviews, TurboGrafx-16 | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

TI 99/4A Function Key Listing

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Brian

This is just a little list I made based on looking online for this information, after failing to find a link online showing the order of the function keys for anyone like me who has a TI 99/4A computer (Texas Instruments’ computer from the late ’70s to early ’80s) but doesn’t have the manual or the key strip of paper (or plastic) that goes over the number keys that tells you what pressing FCTN + a number key does.  The problem is, TI 99/4A games and software will just say “press Back to restart”, but the keyboard doesn’t tell you what the Back key is, you need the key to figure it out.  This made the games somewhat frustrating, until I managed to find a video I could see the key-strip in.  Maybe there are copies of this online, there probably are, but I didn’t find them, so here’s my version.

Just print out the line below, cut it to fit, and put it over the top of the keyboard.  Hopefully the spacing is right, but the spacing was right for me as it is below.  Most importantly, though, the functions are all in the correct order and are worded as they should be.

TI 99/4A Functions
Press FCTN plus the number key below each function to activate each one.  They are in order, so DEL goes over the 1 key, INS over 2, to BACK over 9, REDO over 0, and FCTN over + =.

DEL  INS  ERASE  CLEAR  BEGIN  PROC’D   AID  REDO  BACK  QUIT  FCTN

Posted in Lists, Research, TI 99/4A | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

List: Hudson & NEC’s 3rd & 4th-Gen Platformers: Watching Hudson Shift Platformers from TG16 to Nintendo

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Brian

I love platformers, so I was wondering, why did Hudson give up on platformers on their own console?  And just how bad was this switch, anyway?  So, here’s a list of all Hudson platformers on 3rd and 4th generation consoles, with commentary.

Contents: First, a commentary; second, the list backing up the point, broken up into categories.  And last, a short list of the platformers published by NEC on the Turbografx and Turbo CD.

Hudson and Platformers, TurboGrafx or Nintendo?

The now-dead Hudson (dead because Konami shut them down) was a significant developer of platformers from the mid ’80s until the late ’90s, and made some more here and there in the years after that as well.  In the middle of that period, Hudson released its own console, the TurboGrafx-16, aka the PC Engine in Japan.  In those post-Super Mario Bros. days platformers were one of the most important genres, so Hudson released platformers on their new console.

At first, Hudson supported the console.  Hudson released almost no platformers on the NES between 1987 and 1990, versus some on the TG16, SuperGrafx, and Turbo CD.  Hudson released two games in the genre in 1987, one each in ’88 and ’89, and four in ’90.  However, after the Super Nintendo’s release in Japan at the end of 1990, Hudson began to move their platformers over to Nintendo platforms.  Between 1991 and 1996, Hudson released many, many more platformers on the NES, SNES, and Game Boy than they did the TurboGrafx and Turbo CD.  It’s easy to look at this and forget that this came after several years of them almost exclusively supporting the TG16 for this genre, but that shouldn’t be forgotten!  It’s sad that right after upping their TG16 platformer development numbers in 1990, they moved a lot of that focus over to Nintendo.  I wonder if the system would have done better had Hudson continued to focus their platformers on their own system, and put a bit more focus on the genre than they mostly seem to have?

What seems to have happened is that in the early ’90s, Hudson looked at Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog, and instead of continuing to try to attract people to their own console as they had before with platformers like Bonk’s Adventure, they gave up and started shifting their platformers over to Nintendo platforms, without trying to make games on Super Mario World’s level, while at the same time focusing more on “CD-style” games for their own system, such as digital comics, RPGs, adventure games, action-RPGs, and such.  Their decision makes sense; while the TurboGrafx sold okay in Japan and was the leading 4th-generation platform there until 1990, selling over 5 million PC Engine consoles in Japan, it never caught on overseas, never was really released in Europe, and faded quickly once the Super Nintendo released.  The Super Famicom (Super Nintendo) went on to sell over 17 million systems in Japan, while the PC Engine, PC Engine CD addon drive, and PC Engine Duo line all combined were only around 7.5 million, maybe 6.5 million of those able to play HuCard games, and 2 million CD games (approximately half CD addon drives, half Duo systems).  This did beat out Sega’s numbers in Japan, but, for a North American-market comparison, sort of like the Gamecube and Xbox when compared to the PlayStation 2, while the other two systems were close to eachother, both were crushed by the top system of the generation.

So, seeing the impressive strength of the Super Nintendo right from launch, Hudson reacted by starting to move some of their games over to the platform, which they did starting in 1992.  But, while it may have increased sales of those games, this move surely hurt their own console, since anyone who had bought a PC Engine for Bonk’s Adventure, Bomberman, or Adventure Island had little reason to stick with the console after 1992-1993.  Though Hudson released PCE CD titles until 1995, 1993 the last year major titles in any of those three top franchises released on PCE.  Maybe this was more of an overall positive for Hudson than a negative, but I can’t help but think that giving up and moving your biggest mass-market franchises over to the competition while leaving mostly more niche games on your own platform is unfortunate.  I love the SNES, and the Genesis, but I like seeing people continue to support their hardware, and it’d have been great to see versions of Super Bonks 1 and 2, the later Super Bomberman titles, and Super Adventure Island II on Turbografx or Turbo CD.  Hudson did release more games on SNES than just platformers, but their abandoning the TG16 is more noticeable with platformers because the other genres Hudson focused on were better-covered on the TG16 and CD, including shmups, RPGs, digital comics, and the like.

On that note, another unfortunate thing is that Hudson never really put effort into CD platformers.  The Sega CD did not have a huge number of platformers either, and few are exclusive, but Sonic CD, Sega of Japan’s one platformer for the system, was a major exclusive that really showed off what the Sega CD could do and surely sold consoles to some people.  But Hudson… well, just look at the list below.  It’s a pathetically thin list consisting of only three games — two basic and shoddy cart-to-CD ports that add little to the HuCard originals (and one of those two, Doraemon CD, doesn’t even have a full CD-audio soundtrack, it’s still mostly chiptunes!), and one incredibly short and easy game I find pretty disappointing.  Excepting their 1989 port of Westone’s great arcade game Monster Lair, Hudson did not ever put much effort into making CD platformers.  I know the CD userbase was smaller, but Hudson could have done more than they did.  The best platform games Hudson published on Turbo CD were Westone titles —  that Hudson port of Monster Lair, and Westone’s 1994 sidescrolling action-RPG Blood Gear.

In conclusion, it kind of feels to me like Hudson didn’t do as much with their 4th-gen platformers as they could have.  The NES stylings of ’87 to ’90 TG16 platformers are understandable, but Hudson didn’t change as quickly as their competition did.  Unlike the SNES and Genesis, the best platformer on TG16/CD is a third-party game, Konami’s Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood, not a first-party one; Hudson’s games, as fun as they are, weren’t quite on that level.  Still though, JJ & Jeff is a pretty good game for 1987!  And Bonk’s Adventure and Momotarou Katsugeki in 1990, and Bonk’s Revenge and Doraemon: Nobita no Dorabian Nights in 1991, are also good games that hold up reasonably well for the time, though the ’91 titles do show Hudson’s tendency that generation to continue making their same cartoony platformers, not something more like Mario World or Sonic.  Still, those games have good art, clever level designs, and more.  But where were the Hudson platformers that really went all-out, and had a sizable volume of content as well?  Super Bonk 2 looks and plays a lot like the first TG16 Bonk from almost 5 years earlier, for instance, while Nintendo or Sega showed more improvement.  I love platformers so I wish that we’d seen Hudson pushing things more often, as the good parts of their games show that they could when they tried.  They did have some more ambitious later titles, such as Super Adventure Island II or DoReMi Fantasy (Milon 2), but of course those were on SNES.  It would have been great to see Hudson stick to its platform more while they were still supporting it.

The next generation Hudson would make their only few attempts at 3d platformers, and they actually ended up pretty good — Bomberman 64 (N64), Willy Wombat (Saturn), and Bomberman Hero (N64) are good games. It’d be great to see what Hudson could have done putting that kind of effort into some later Turbo CD platformers!

Note for the lists below: I use Japanese release dates here, since all games except for one game released there first, and many games only released in Japan.  The one exception is Jackie Chan (NES), which released in the US one month before Japan; it has an asterisk below.

List: Hudson Platformers, 1984-1990

Famicom / NES
———-
These games all released between 1984 and 1987, excepting only one game, which is noted.  They are in chronological order from earliest to latest.
———–
Nuts & Milk – 1984 (puzzle/platformer) (Japan only release)
Lode Runner – 1984 (Western puzzle/platformer game they ported to the NES) (Japan only release)
Championship Lode Runner – 1985 (sequel to that game) (Japan only release)
Challenger – 1985 (only partially a platformer) (Japan only release)
Adventure Island – 1986 (a port of Westone’s arcade & Sega Master System game Wonder Boy)
Milon’s Secret Castle – 1986
Ninja Hattori Kun: Ninja wa Shuugyou Degogiru no Maki – 1986 (Japan only release)
Mickey Mousecapade – 1987 (Capcom published this in the US, but it’s a Hudson game)
Takahashi Meijin no Bug-tte Honey – 1987 (only partially a platformer) (Japan only release)
Xexyx – 1988  (part platform/action and part shmup)
*Jackie Chan – 1990 (US release in December 1990, Japan release in January 1991)

But there were no more after that on NES until ’90/’91’s Jackie Chan.  Hudson’s platformers in the TG16’s early years were on their console.  From when the PC Engine released in Japan at the end of 1987 until mid 1991, excepting only Xexyz, Hudson exclusively released platformers for its own consoles.

TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine
———
These games released between 1987 and 1990.  They are in chronological order.
———
JJ & Jeff (Kato-chan & Ken-chan) – 1987; Hudson’s first TG16 platformer.  It plays sort of like Adventure Island, and set a cartoony graphical standard Hudson would return to a lot on the platform.
Bikkuriman World – 1987 (platformer action-RPG) (this is a port of Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land, also released in arcades and on the Sega Master System) (Japan only release)
Keith Courage in Alpha Zones (Eiyuu Wataru) – 1988
Aoi Blink – 1990 (Japan only release)
Momotarou Katsugeki – 1990 (Japan only release)
Bonk’s Adventure – 1990
———-
PC Engine SuperGrafx
———-
Madouou Granzort – 1990 (plays sort of like Keith Courage) (Japan only release)
———-
TurboGrafx CD (PC Engine CD)
———-
Monster Lair – 1989 (platformer/shmup)

It’s not a lot of games in absolute numbers, but again, they had even fewer on Nintendo during that period, only one and it’s just part platformer.  Bonk’s Adventure particularly was a hit, and Bonk was for a while Hudson’s top mascot character, before being upstaged by Bomberman.  Bonk’s Adventure isn’t quite as great as Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog, but it is a good game well worth playing.

List: 4th-Gen Hudson Platformers, 1991-1997

As detailed above, after the SNES released in late 1990, Hudson began to shift their platformers away from their console, unfortunately.  As much as I love the SNES (and Genesis/Sega CD), it’s sad to see Hudson give up on their also-great system and move over to the competition.

TurboGrafx-16 (PCE)
———–
Jackie Chan – 1991
Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights – 1991 (Japan only release)
Bonk’s Revenge – 1991
New Adventure Island – 1992
Bonk 3: Bonk’s Big Adventure – 1993
———–
TurboGrafx-CD (PCE CD)
———–
Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights (CD) – 1992 (Japan only release)
Bakushou Yoshimoto Shingeki – 1994 (this pitifully easy and dated game is it’s kind of fun, but looks and plays like a game from years earlier, and is insanely easy.) (Japan only release)
Bonk 3 CD – 1994 (North American-exclusive release, sold by mail order only)

Hudson released no platformers on the system in ’95, though they did release one side-scrolling beat ’em up with a few platformer elements on the next-gen PC-FX that year, Zenki FX.

Hudson Sidescrolling Action-RPGs, 1991-1994

I put a category for this in the list because some of Hudson’s more significant sidescrolling releases on their console during this period were sidescrolling action-RPGs.  These games are not exactly platformers, but they are sidescrolling and do involve the player doing some platforming.  Hudson released no games in this genre on the other 4th-gen consoles — the multiplatform titles here were released by other companies on those platforms.

TurboGrafx-16 (PCE)
——–
Dragon’s Curse – 1991 (this is a port of Westone’s Monster World 2: The Dragon’s Trap, aka Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon’s Trap, also released on arcades and Sega Master System.)
——–
TurboGrafx-CD (PCE CD)
——-
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys – 1991 (a port of the Falcom game of the same name, also on Genesis and SNES)
The Dynastic Hero – 1994 (a port of Westone’s Genesis game Wonder Boy in Monster World, aka Monster World 3)
Blood Gear – 1994 (an original title, TCD-exclusive, from Westone) (Japan only release)

Hudson Platformers on Nintendo Consoles, 1991-1997

NES
——
These games released between mid 1991 and 1994.  They should be in chronological order.
——
Jackie Chan – 1991 (US Dec. 1990)
Adventure Island II – 1991
Felix the Cat – 1992
Adventure Island III – 1992
Bonk’s Adventure – 1993 (down-port of the first Turbografx game)
Beauty and the Beast (Western-developed) – 1994
Adventure Island IV – 1994 (Japan only release)
——–
Game Boy (GB)
——–
These games released between 1992 and 1994, with one more title in 1997 (noted).  They aren’t all in order.
——–
Adventure Island – 1992 (remake of Adventure Island II)
Bonk’s Adventure – 1992 (semi-original, not a port)
Felix the Cat – 1993
Milon’s Secret Castle – 1993 (a remake, not port, of the NES game)
Adventure Island II – 1993 (remake of Adventure Island III)
Bonk’s Revenge on the Game Boy (original title, not a port) – 1994
Bomberman Pocket – 1997 (yes, this is a platformer)
——–
Super Nintendo (SFC)
——–
These games released between 1992 and 1996.  They are in release order.
——–
Super Adventure Island – 1992
Inspector Gadget – 1993 (Japan developed, but a US-only release)
Super Bonk – 1994
Hagane – 1994 (1995 in the US)
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Western-developed game) – 1994
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West – 1994
Super Genjin 2 (Super Bonk 2, had it gotten  Western release) – 1995 (Japan only release)
Super Adventure Island II – 1995 (one of Hudson’s last US-released titles before shutting down their American publishing arm that year)
Zenki: Rettou Raiden – 1995 (Japan only release)
Zenki: Denei Raibu – 1995 (Japan only release)
DoReMi Fantasy (Milon 2)  – released in early 1996 (Japan only release)

And that’s the last.

Hudson Platformers: Releases Per Year, By Platform

So, overall, ordered from most to least within each year:

1987: 2 NES (both released before the PC Engine’s release), 2 TurboGrafx-16
1988: 1 TurboGrafx-16, 1 NES
1989: 1 TurboGrafx-CD
1990: 3 TG16 (+1 TG16 SSARPG), 1 SuperGrafx, 1 NES (1991 JP)
1991: 3 TG16 (+1 TG16 SSARPG), 1 NES (2 JP), (1 TCD SSARPG)
1992: 2 NES, 2 GB, 1 TG16, 1 TCD (port of a 1991 TG16 game), 1 SNES
1993: 3 GB, 1 TG16, 1 NES (port of a 1990 TG16 game), 1 SNES
1994: 4 SNES, 2 TCD (1 is port of a 1993 TG16 game), 1 NES, 1 GB
1995: 4 SNES (and 1 beat ’em up/platformer on the next-gen PC-FX)
1996: 1 SNES
1997: 1 GB (and in 3d platformers on on next-gen platforms, 1 Saturn & 1 N64)
1998: No 2d platformers, but in 3d, 1 N64

I said it before, but it would have been great to see Hudson put a serious effort into some later Turbo CD platformers, as they did with RPGs in AnEarth Fantasy Stories or Gulliver Boy, or shmups with Gate/Lords of Thunder and Sapphire, or fighting games with their SNK ports.  I’m sure they could have done something cool, even if that generation Hudson never did manage to match Nintendo, Sony, or Konami’s best efforts in the genre.

 

NEC

As for NEC, the other first party on the TG16 and Turbo CD, they didn’t help matters, because NEC in Japan released few platformers of any type.  NEC did not release any games for other consoles that generation, but their library in the genre was thin; NEC mostly focused on visual novels, RPGs, and other games for their niche otaku core fanbase.

NEC Japan releases

TurboGrafx-16 (PCE)
——
Genji Tsushin Agedama – 1989 (Japan only release)
Son Son II (by Capcom) – 1989 (Japan only release)
Altered Beast (sidescrolling beat ’em up, port of a Sega game also on Genesis and Turbo CD that same year; not as good as the Genesis version) – 1989 (Japan only release)
Tiger Road (port of a Capcom game) – 1990
——-
SuperGrafx
——–
Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (port of a Capcom game) – 1990 (Japan only release)
——-
TurboGrafx-CD (PCE CD)
——–
Altered Beast (sidescrolling beat ’em up, port of a Sega game on Genesis that same year; worse than the Genesis version) – 1989 (Japan only release)
Bonanza Bros. (port of a Sega game released on Genesis in ’91) – 1992 (Japan only release)
Horror Story (TCD-exclusive autoscrolling run & gun game maybe you could call an “action-platformer” of sorts) – 1993 (Japan only release)
Chiki Chiki Boys (another port of a Capcom arcade game; ported to Genesis in ’92) – 1994 (Japan only release)
Strider Hiryu (another port of a Sega game) – 1994 (not as good as the 1989 Genesis ver.) (Japan only release)

TurboGrafx-CD Sidescrolling Beat ’em ups and Puzzle games from NEC
———-
Also add Renny Blaster (1995) and Mad Stalker (1994) if you want to count those sidescrolling beat ’em ups, but they really shouldn’t count.  Bazaru de Gozaru No Game Degozaru (1996) is also worth mentioning, but while it has a side view, the actual gameplay is purely a puzzle game, not a platformer.  All are Japan-only.

Overall it’s a thin library made up of mostly ports, there.  Son Son II is great, but it’s from ’89.  Following Mario World and Sonic’s releases after that, about all you have are a few old ports, an apparently not-great run & gun, several beat ’em ups, and that’s it.  Some of them are good games, sure, but it’s not many games total, and third parties were most definitely not making up the slack.  Konami’s Rondo of Blood was amazing, but it was Konami’s only platformer for the system, for instance, while Konami released many platformers for the SNES and Genesis.

NEC USA & TTI releases

Unlike NEC Japan, NEC USA may have cared more about platformers… but they had zero budget, so their games were worse.  There are seven platformers for the system only released in the US, and most are mediocre to bad.  Turbo Technologies, Inc., or TTI, took over from NEC in 1992.  They had little money, but did release a few good Western-developed games, including Shape Shifter and the sidescrolling adventure game Beyond Shadowgate, as well as the subpar platformer Camp California.

Note, other than Shape Shifter all of these games are US-exclusives.

TurboGrafx-16
——–
Night Creatures – 1991
TaleSpin – 1991
Impossamole – 1991
Ghost Manor – 1992 (TTI-published)
Darkwing Duck – 1992 (TTI) – The worst game of this bunch by far.

TurboGrafx-CD
———-
Addams Family – 1991
Shape Shifter – 1993 (TTI)
Camp California – 1993 (TTI)

Side-view adventure game on TCD: Beyond Shadowgate (1993, TTI-published)

Low-budget third-party-developed games don’t usually end up good, that’s what we learn from this NEC list here.

Posted in Classic Games, Game Boy, Lists, NES, SNES, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

San Francisco Rush 2049 Version Comparison: Nintendo 64 & Dreamcast, The Differences and My Preferred Version

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Brian

San Francisco Rush 2049, developed by Atari Games and published by Midway, released in late 2000 for the N64 and Dreamcast.  It is my favorite game ever made in which you drive a vehicle.  I got the game for Nintendo 64 back in January 2001, and it’s the only game I have had for that long and have definitely played at least some of in every year since I bought it; next on that list would be Guild Wars, which I have probably played at least a bit of every year since 2005, but I’m not 100% certain about that, while I am for Rush 2049.  The game is not one of my most-played games ever, there are PC and handheld games I’ve played more, but it is the game I’ve gone back to more regularly than anything else.  That is one of the reasons it’s my favorite racing game; at first I liked F-Zero X more than Rush 2049, but then I realized that I was going back to Rush 2049 again and again and again, while after beating F-Zero X, I stopped playing it.

So, I have played quite a lot of this game.  Years after getting the N64 version, I got the Gamecube version in Midway Arcade Treasures 3.  I won’t be talking about that highly disappointing collection of great games much this time, though; Rush 2049 there it is a bad port of the Dreamcast version I will discuss below.  After getting a Dreamcast in August 2007, I got the DC version of Rush 2049.  It’s a great version of a great game, but the N64 and DC versions have differences, and I’ll go over those below.  I’ll mention the biggest issues with the Gamecube MAT3 version at the end of each category.  I would generally assume that the PS2 and Xbox versions of MAT3 will largely be the same, but I have not played those myself; comments from anyone who has would be great.

Overall, subjectively, the Nintendo 64 version is the one I still mostly play, but objectively the Dreamcast version is better in most ways.  After the version differences list, I’ll explain the four reasons why I mostly play the N64 version despite its not-quite-as-good graphics.

Table of Contents

  1. Feature Differences – Feature differences that are not graphical — multiplayer, control, music, and car colors.
  2. Graphical Differences – Graphical differences between the versions — this lists the various ways that the Nintendo 64 version was downgraded versus the Dreamcast version.
  3. The reasons I mostly play the N64 version.


1. Feature Differences

  • Car painting (N64 Advantage) – This is the one thing the N64 wins.  As I said above, you can choose the three colors your car will be painted in on the N64, out of a selection of several dozen colors, selecting a different color (if you wish) for each of the three zones on the car.  You can’t fully paint or sticker the car as you can in Top Gear Rally or some newer racing games, but it is a nice option.  On the DC all you can do is choose between eight presets, which probably aren’t quite what you want.  I don’t know why this is, but it’s a bit annoying, if minor.
  • Analog Acceleration (DC Advantage) – Unless the N64 game has some wheel support I don’t know about, the DC version has analog acceleration and braking while the N64 version, as per its controller, does not.
  • Multiplayer (DC Advantage) – On Dreamcast, Race (Single Race only), Stunt, and Battle modes are all playable with up to four players.  On N64 however, while Stunt and Battle modes are playable with up to 4 players, Race mode is for only 2 players max, probably because of framerate issues I would guess.
  • Music (No Clear Advantage) – The two games have similar soundtracks, but they are not the same.  The Dreamcast version has a total of 18 music tracks, while the N64 has only 12, and they are not all the same as the DC music.  The DC music is mostly based on the arcade soundtrack, while the N64 has a somewhat different soundtrack.  Perhaps because it’s what I am most familiar with, I’ve always liked the N64 soundtrack the best.  I think the compositions are better, and that makes up for the smaller number of music tracks.  The DC soundtrack is good, but just doesn’t match up to the N64 music for me… where they are different, I mostly prefer the N64.  Both soundtracks should be on Youtube, for comparison.
  • Track Names (No Clear Advantage) – On the N64 tracks are named with numbers — Track 1, Track 2, etc.  On DC however each track has a word for a name instead — Marina, etc.  This isn’t a better-or-worse thing, just different.  It’s just a bit weird that they didn’t use consistent labeling between the two versions of the game.
  • MAT3 – Feature-wise, Midway Arcade Treasures 3 is mostly the same as the Dreamcast version, but with longer load times because it’s a bad port.  The one major feature difference is that you cannot change the controls in MAT3; they are locked to one preset, and it’s not great.  In the N64 and DC games you can change your controls in the menu, but not in MAT3.


2. Graphical Differences

Here are graphical differences between the two versions.  First though, the list below compares the N64 game with the Expansion Pak attached.  Without an Expansion Pak, Rush 2059 for N64 has no in-race music, no moving objects on the tracks (planes, trolley cars, and such), and no Race Track 6 or Extreme championship.  Just be sure to always play it with the expansion pak.

With that said, there are no categories here where the N64 version is the better of the two; all categories are ways that the N64 is downgraded versus the Dreamcast.  The DC version looks very much like the original arcade game, so it is very impressive that the N64 holds up as well as it does– and it gets very close!  I have always thought that Rush 2049 is one of the absolute best-looking games on the N64, and it really is.  The game looks fantastic for the hardware.  It can’t match up to the DC however, and it’s interesting to look at the changes they made to get the game running on N64.

  • Resolution – The N64 version runs at the N64-usual 320×240 interlaced resolution as far as I know.  In comparison the Dreamcast version runs at 480i or 480p, with VGA progressive scan support.
  • Framerate – Both versions run fine most of the time, but the N64 version does probably have a lower average framerate.  The N64 version also has some occasional framerate issues, particularly on Race Track 6, but mostly it is smooth.  The DC version probably runs at a higher framerate, though it’s hard for me to tell, and doesn’t have issues on Track 6.  The MAT3 version does have some framerate problems, at least on Gamecube, that make it run maybe worse than the N64 version.  But MAT3 has a lot of issues, so that shouldn’t be surprising.  All versions have some weird camera/framerate spinning issues while you’re high in the air in jumps in the stunt arenas, so that’s probably some camera engine issue and not framerate.
  • Textures – Of course the DC version has sharp textures, just like the arcade, while the N64 has lower-res textures.  The N64 textures look great, but they are clearer on DC.
  • Special Visual Effects – While as far as I can tell the draw distance and model polygon counts are identical between versions almost all of the time, the DC does do a couple of things the N64 doesn’t — on DC there is a reflection of the car on that disc the car sits on in the car select screen that doesn’t exist on N64; a building in track 3 has a cone of light emanating from the top of it on DC, while there’s no light coming out of the top of the building on N64 (there may be other similar buildings elsewhere with missing light effects, that one just stands out); and on night tracks (tracks 4 and 6) on Dreamcast the cars have projecting headlights, while they don’t on N64.  That’s it, as far as I know.
  • Draw Distance – for the most part, both versions have full draw distance all the way to the horizon.  However, there are a couple of very minor instances of popup in the N64 version.  The most obvious one are the small vertical cables on the Golden Gate Bridge (the small cables that connect the top cable to the one along the bridge deck) have a closer draw distance on the N64 than Dreamcast.  This is one of the only places I’ve ever seen anything other than full detail all the way to the horizon in the N64 version.  The other place is that rarely, particularly in Race Track 3 or 5, when you go around a turn into one of the big open areas, stuff may pop in far in the distance.  This does not always occur and you have to REALLY be looking to see it before everything’s appeared, but I have noticed it a few times while looking for popup.  I don’t think the DC version has a similar issue but I haven’t played it enough to be certain.
  • MAT3 – MAT3 graphically is the same as the DC version, but with more framerate problems, particularly in 3-4 player multiplayer.  MAT3 in 3-4 player almost certainly has the worst framerate of any version of this game.  I’d recommend sticking with the DC or N64 for multiplayer.  Of course, as mentioned previously, the load times are longer as well.

Otherwise though, as far as I can tell the two games look the same, apart from the texture, resolution, and maybe framerate differences, fairly impressive for the N64 considering that both versions are down-ports from an arcade game with lots of added content made for the new console version, it wasn’t N64-first.  The DC version looks a little better, but the N64 version also looks great.

 

Why I Prefer to Play the Game on Nintendo 64

  • Nostalgia – I got the N64 version in January 2001, while I didn’t get the DC version until after getting that console in Aug. 2007 (and the Gamecube MAT3 version in between).  I’d played the N64 version a lot before getting the others, it’s the one I have the most memories with.  Rush 2049 is the only game I am sure I have had for that long and have played at least some every single year since I bought it, and it’s my most played TV console game.  There are handheld and PC games I’ve played for more hours for sure, but not TV console games, and there aren’t any other games I have had as long and played at least some every single year.  Maybe I’ve played Guild Wars (PC) at least some every year since ’05, but that’d be the only close contender in how often I go back to a game.
  • Stats / Save File – The game keeps track of total stunt points, time played on each track (not counting resets, though, which surely removes scores of hours), best times for each track, etc etc, and my stats are all in my N64 save file, which I still have from when I first created it.  The GC and DC save files don’t have anywhere remotely near as much time, times, points, etc. on them.  Of course not having to unlock everything again is also a big plus, it takes a while to unlock some things in this game!  Getting a million stunt points in those versions to unlock the Obstacle Course would be time-consuming, for example.  Why not just play it on N64, where my stats are all there?  I like being able to see how I compare to my old times, etc.
  • Car Painting – The one major feature the N64 version has over the DC (and MAT3 because it’s a DC port) version is that on the N64 you can directly choose the three colors you want your car to be painted in.  In the DC version, however, all you can do is just choose one of eight preset color sets.  I like my car’s colors on N64, and can’t make a car that looks like that on the other version.  I like my florescent green and purple car on the N64, but on DC/MAT3 the only green option is a somewhat bland teal and white one or a decent but not as great one in two shades of green.  Bah.
  • Controller – I like the DC controller quite a bit, but the N64 controller is one of my favorites ever.  The game plays great on DC, but I do prefer the feel of playing it on N64.
  • Soundtrack – The DC soundtrack is also amazing, but there’s just something about the N64 music that I really love.  Rush 2049’s soundtrack for the N64 is one of my favorite game soundtracks.

 

Conclusion

I like the game the most on N64, but I am an N64 fan, of course.  And the Dreamcast game is also amazing; I’ve been playing it some recently, and it is fantastic.  For anyone who has not played the game on one platform, just get whichever version you want, you can’t go wrong either way.  The DC version may look a little better, but the N64 version looks great as well, and the polygon counts per frame are mostly identical (apart from those effects I describe above).  Get whichever version you have the system for, on either system it’s one of the best games ever made!  Just remember to avoid the MAT3 version if you want to play the game as it should be; get Rush 2049 for N64 or Dreamcast.

Overall, Rush 2049 is the best racing game ever made!  And it is the best stunt-arena game ever made as well.  And it’s perhaps the best multiplayer vehicular battle arena game of its generation.  And that Obstacle Course track is pretty great also; it inspired the recent PC racing game Distance.  Be sure to play this incredible masterpiece.

Posted in Articles, Classic Games, Dreamcast, Lists, Modern Games, Nintendo 64 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Games By Genre: Dreamcast – Games List With Comments & Recommendations

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Brian

This is my Dreamcast games list. I wrote the original version back in 2008, and improved it in 2012, and I think it still holds up quit well!  I added a few games to this new 2015 version, and improved the formatting some due to WordPress’ additional features versus a forum, but it’s mostly the same as before.

Key

This list is sorted by genre, and within each genre, by region of release — ‘US’ for games released in either only the US or the US and other regions, ‘Japan’ for games only released in Japan.  Maybe I should separate the ‘US’ category into US-only and US/JP releases, but most games released in both regions.  There are a few US or US/EU-only games, though, so that might be helpful for anyone reading this not in the West.  The genres are in a somewhat random order, though genres where most games have similar multiplayer are grouped at the top.  Multiplayer games usually have the number of players that the game supports (for offline, single-system play) listed, either by genre for genres where most games have similar multiplayer, or by game.

Several additional markers identify exclusives and games I particularly love.  Exclusives are always one of the major reasons to consider buying a console; I first made this list in large part to counter the claims of people who said that all of the good Dreamcast games have ports somewhere.  They didn’t when I first wrote this, and still don’t, unfortunately.

Italics for  games either only released on the Dreamcast, or games only released on Dreamcast and PC or arcades — that is, true exclusives and home console exclusives for the system.

I also underline italicized games which are actually multiplatform, but do have significant amounts of DC-exclusive content that earn them the italics, namely the three DC-only tracks and circuit mode you’ll only find in Daytona USA 2001, King of Fighters 1999’s DC-exclusive polygonal backdrops and extra strikers, the features that differentiate the DC and PS3/360 versions of Soul Calibur, and Demolition Racer: No Exit’s added content, improved gameplay, additional ways to score points, and more.  Other than those three, though, all italicized games are console-exclusive on DC.

Bold for games I particularly like. I also like a fair number of the non-bolded games that I have played, but those I thought were particularly noteworthy. I certainly like some of the non-bolded games too, of course — I don’t only like the bold ones, but I like them more than the non-bolded ones, I would say.

“US” titles were released in the US and maybe or maybe not other regions (sorry for the US focus).  “Japan” or “Europe” mean that those games were released in those regions only unless both are listed, in which case the game came out in both of them but not the US.

Games are one player only unless noted.

 

Dreamcast Games List
Shmups/Shmuplikes
————————————–
Multiplayer in this genre: all 2 player unless noted with ‘1p only’
—————————————
US: Giga Wing, Giga Wing 2 (4 player simultaneous! Awesome!), Mars Matrix, Gunbird 2 (Psikyo is great), Cannon Spike (arena shooter), Bangaioh (1p only) (very similar to the Japan-only N64 original, but not the same), Centipede (good arena-ish shooter crossed with a 3d platformer); Japan: Under Defeat (was DC exclusive until the recent, also Japan-only PS3 and 360 ports; it‘s the second best DC shmup after Ikaruga), Ikaruga (What more could be said about how amazing this game is? Not much I think.), Zero Gunner 2 (also Psikyo, but a bit different this time), Twinkle Star Sprites (Neo-Geo port, has English mode), Border Down (1p only), Trizeal (Raiden-esque, better than Raiden III), Trigger Heart Exelica (1p only; okay game, is on X360 XBLA worldwide), Chaos Field, Radirgy, Karous (all three 1p only games from Milestone; each one is better than the last, but they’re only okay at best), Shikigami no Shiro II (on PS2 in the US in English as Castle of Shikigami II); Unlicensed Releases (all region, as long as the system can play CD-Rs): Last Hope (1p only hard R-Type clone), Dux (1p only hard R-Type clone), Fast Striker (1p only bullet hell shooter), some upcoming titles (ReDux, Sturmwind)
2d Fighting
—————–
Multiplayer in this genre: all 2 player except Marvel vs. Capcom 1, which has a 4-player alternating mode, and Street Fighter Alpha 3, which has a special 3 player 2-vs-1 mode.
—————–
US: Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2 (I‘m just not a fan… too fast and crazy, I prefer CvS2), Capcom vs SNK (good game, but CvS2 is better), Street Fighter III: Double Impact (a good game well worth having, the stages, endings, and music are entirely different from 3S), Street Fighter III: Third Strike (one of the best fighting games ever), Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Street Fighter Alpha 3, The Last Blade 2 (another of my favorite fighting games, though the Japanese version is better, Japanese text only or no, and only also on Neo-Geo and the Japanese PS2), Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves (exceptional, only also on Neo-Geo and Japanese PS2), King of Fighters ’99 Dream Match (aka KOF ’98, one of the series’ best!), KOF ’99 Evolution (KOF99) (Italics because it‘s the best US release of the game – has DC-exclusive 3d stages, DC-exclusive extra strikers, etc.); Japan: Capcom vs SNK 2 (one of my favorite fighting games ever, though I‘ve mostly played it on GC), Capcom vs SNK Pro, Vampire Chronicle (Darkstalkers) for Matching Service (This is great, and has more animation and shorter loading, but for features, Darkstalkers 3 on PSX has more.  Also, the PSP Darkstalkers game is a port of this game with added features but longer load times.), Super Street Fighter II X for Matching Service (this is SSFII Turbo for DC), The King of Fighters ’00, ’01, and ’02 (KOF ’00/’01 and ’02/’03 packs are on the US PS2,and there are some newer re-releases as well), The Last Blade 2 (Another of my favorite fighting games ever.  The Japanese DC version has blood and fatalities, but the US one is a straight port of the US Neo-Geo game, so all blood and fatalities are removed like they were there. Unfortunately unlike on Neo-Geo, the Japanese version is Japanese language only. US and JP version savefiles are inter-compatible though, so having both is the best solution I think.), Guilty Gear X (most other GG games had US releases, obviously, but not this one).

3d Fighting
—————–
Multiplayer: all 2 player except for DOA2, which has a 4-player alternating mode)
—————–
US: Soul Calibur (supports fishing controller for motion-sensing control!  There is also a PS3/X360 version of this game, but it’s not the same as the DC version.), Virtua Fighter 3tb, Project Justice (surprisingly great game, and I don’t like Rival Schools for PSX that much but this is fantastic), Power Stone 1 and 2 (both are only also on PSP), Psychic Force 2012, Heavy Metal Geomatrix, Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein, Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (was exclusive, but now is on XBLA too… controls are a nightmare on the gamepad though. I‘m not a fan.), Dead or Alive 2, TechRomancer; Japan and Europe: Fighting Vipers 2 (I like the first one, but haven’t played this; graphics are supposed to be very mediocre.); Japan: Dead or Alive 2 (this later Japanese release is better than the US one – it has 5-7 costumes per character (some unlockable), instead of 2-4 per character like the US version, plus more. Great game.)

Wrestling / UFC
——————————
Multiplayer: all are 4 player unless noted.
——————————
US: WWF Royal Rumble, WWF Attitude, ECW: Anarchy Rulz, ECW: Hardcore Revolution, Ultimate Fighting Championship (two player); Japan: Giant Gram: All Japan Pro Wrestling 2, Giant Gram 2000: All Japan Pro Wrestling 3, Fire Pro Wrestling D, New Japan Pro Wrestling: Toukon Retsuden 4

——————————–
Multiplayer Note: From this point on in the list, games only have multiplayer if it is noted; there are no more genres with similar multiplayer in most titles.
———————————

Action-Adventure
———————————
US: Shenmue, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (awesome game, but frustrating… it‘s easy to get lost.), Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm (fantasy combat, by the “Die by the Sword” team… imperfect controls, but it is fun. I like it.  Maybe this should be bolded.), Shadow Man (good game), Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern (widely disliked, but a few people like it); Europe/Japan: Shenmue II

Adventure / Survival Horror
—————————————————-
US: Resident Evil: Code Veronica (classic RE, you like it or you don’t… it‘s okay.), The Ring: Terror’s Realm (average), Carrier (solid, fun survival horror game), Illbleed (looks interesting, haven’t played it myself), Blue Stinger (early but good, in my opinion at least; this is a love-or-hate game, I think. The “so bad it‘s good” voice acting is good stuff too.), Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (subpar reviews), D2 (from Kenji Eno), Stupid Invaders (PC port, traditional-style adventure game); Japan: The DC has lots of visual novels and dating sims. Kanon, Air, etc, this was one of the most prolific genres on the platform. Pretty much none are playable for people without a good grasp on the language though of course. Virtually all are PC ports, and quite a few were also on PS2.  There are a few DC-exclusives, though, mostly from Sega, such as their two Love Hina games.  Note that the Sakura Taisen series are listed as strategy games (see below) because of the battles between adventure segments.

2d Action/Platform
———————————–
No official releases apart from the Genesis ports in Sega’s Genesis collection.  Unlicensed Releases (all region, as long as the system can play CD-Rs): GunLord (outstanding Turrican clone; this is one of my favorite games of 2012. Also on Neo-Geo.)

3d Platformer or Platform/Action
————————————————————-
US: Jet Set Radio (was DC exclusive until the 2012 PS3/360 download-only release of the game; the game is incredible and deserves its very high reputation!), Rayman 2 (best version, and one of the best 3d platformers ever) (has some 4 player minigames, but main game is 1p only), Sonic Adventure (better than on GC/PC), Sonic Adventure 2 (2 player) (the GC version is slightly improved over this, particularly in multiplayer (except for kart racing, where the DC has some exclusive downloadable tracks you can get)), Super Magnetic Neo (good game), Donald Duck: Goin’; Quackers, MDK2 (partially) (great version of an awesome game! PC is better though.), Fur Fighters (4 player) (3d platformer/3rd person shooter cross), Arabian Nights: Prince of Persia (very slow and precise movements are necessary, but once I got used to it I really liked this game…), Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge (4 player) (great update of the classic arcade title, like the old ones and surprisingly difficult but really fun!), KAO the Kangaroo (1 player) (mediocre at best, also on PC), The Grinch (2 player), Toy Story 2, Floigan Brothers Episode 1 (minimal platforming, and it‘s really short, but some like it); Japan: Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream (great fun despite the language barrier), L.O.L.: Lack Of Love (simply amazing game… play this, now.)

Multiplayer Puzzle, Party, or Action Game
—————————————————–
US: ChuChu Rocket! (4 player) (good, tough puzzle game), Bomberman Online (4 player) (classic Bomberman fun), Ooga Booga (4 player) (weird but fun beat ’em up arena 3d action game), Sonic Shuffle (4 player; Sega’s take on Mario Party unfortunately wasn’t too good. Boring game.); Japan: Treasure Strike (kind of strange but fun game, not too hard to get into without knowing the language esp. with the help of the guide on GameFAQs)

Card/Board
—————–
Japan: Culdcept Second (Culdcept II) (4 player) (the PS2 version, Culdcept Second Expanded, got a US release as ‘Culdcept’), various online and offline Shogi and Mahjong games, the GuruGuru Onsen series (online casual game series, now offline of course, all with 4 player online and unknown but likely 4 player offline); Unlicensed Release (all region, as long as the system can play CD-Rs): Maqiupai (Shanghai clone)

Arcade/Futuristic Racing
———————————–
US: Magforce Racing (4 player) (this is a port of Killer Loop on the PSX, but it‘s far better (and 4 player) on DC), Pod 2: Speed Zone Multiplayer Online (2 player) (most won’t like it, but for a huge Pod fan like me it‘s good despite its flaws…), Daytona USA [2001] (2 player) (italicized for the significant exclusive content – 3 tracks and the championship mode are exclusive. But why the heck isn’t this four player, Sega? Why are there NO first-party DC racing games with four player support? Stupid… good game though, of course, though the controls aren’t as good as the Saturn versions‘ are, unfortunately. This holds it back from being bolded.), TrickStyle (2 player) (decent fun futuristic racing/stunt game, but it could have been better), Re-Volt (4 player) (best console version, BUY THIS on DC but don’t even consider it on N64 or PSX — and the sequel, RC Revenge (PSX/PS2) is a far inferior simple arcade game. Re-Volt is really a RC car sim… really, really hard, but great!), Sega Rally 2 (2 player) (disappointing but okay), San Francisco Rush 2049 (4 player) (DC & N64 versions are equally great (don’t bother with the awful Midway Arcade Treasures 3 port, though!), this is my favorite racing game ever. It‘s got everything.), 4-Wheel Thunder (2 player) (Good game! It‘s fast, fun, challenging, rewarding… simply great arcade racing. It is hard though.), Hydro Thunder (2 player) (4 player on N64 (and only N64), but better graphics here obviously. The Midway Arcade Treasures 3 port of this is decent.), Star Wars Episode I Racer (2 player) (slightly, but not significantly, improved (graphically) over the N64/PC versions… but it‘s still crazy hard), Speed Devils (2 player) (great game; it‘s a simplified and altered but still good port of Speed Busters on the PC), Speed Devils Online Racing (Stay away! This game is crippled and near-worthless. It adds one track and some cars to the game, but removes the splitscreen and single player campaign modes, leaving only single race mode and a long-offline online mode. It has harder handling than the original Speed Devils, though, making it control more like the PC original, so it is a little different, but that just makes it harder and not as fun. AVOID!), Pen Pen TriIceLon (4 player) (easy but amusing), SnoCross Championship Racing (2 player) (Sega Rally style on snow, okay game), Test Drive 6 (2 player) (I like it, anyway – it‘s fun), 4×4 Evolution (2? player offline, 4 player online) (popular game, but I find it boring.), Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing (2 player) (also on PC; sequel to Redline Racer on the PC, this game’s pretty good!), Demolition Racer: No Exit (2 player, significantly enhanced PC/PS1 port. This isn’t really a new game, but it does have significant DC-exclusive features and is much better here, so I counted it as exclusive.) (good Demolition Derby style game – fast, smooth, and fun!); Europe: Stunt RC (4 player) (arcadey RC racing game), Toy Racer (4 player; this game is multiplayer or timetrial only, there is no AI!) (from the Toy Commander studio, this game was online play-focused and sold for cheap.), Aqua GT (2 player) (below average PS1/DC boat racing game only released in Europe on either platform), Moho (2 player) (released as Ball Breakers in the US on the PSX) (action/racing hybrid game, depending on mode); Japan: Zusar Vasar (2 player) (weird game…); Unlicensed Release (will run on any system that can play CD-Rs): Rush Rush Rally Racing (4 player) (a WiiWare version exists, but was only released in Europe. No other region releases seem forthcoming. As for the game, it‘s okay, but hard – memorization is CRUCIAL, you go fast and the courses are challenging.)

Arcade Checkpoint Driving
————————————–
Crazy Taxi (1 player), Crazy Taxi 2 (1 player) (I couldn’t decide where to put them, so I ended up putting them in their own category this time. Also, it‘s really unfortunate that none of the console Crazy Taxi games have multiplayer. Note that Crazy Taxi 1 was ported everywhere, but 2 is only also in the PSP collection; though part of it was in 3 on the Xbox, that wasn’t the whole game.), Super Runabout: San Francisco Edition (1 player) (buggy and flawed game but it can be fun. The game is clearly Crazy Taxi inspired, though this has more of a mission-based focus so it‘s not exactly the same.)

Kart Racers
—————-
US: Looney Tunes Space Race (4 player) (better here than on PS2, unless you have a multitap… good game.), Wacky Races (4 player) (DC has best console version. Also on PC; there‘s also an awful PSX port. It was also on PS2, but only in Europe.) (based on the classic cartoon… and fun too! :)), Walt Disney’s World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (2 player)

Snowboard racing
————————-
Rippin’ Riders (2 player) (It‘s too bad this is the DC‘s only snowboard racing game, because I can’t stand it… it got okay reviews, but I think this game’s awful. It was called “Coolboarders Burrn” in Japan.)

Sim/Realistic Racing
—————————–
US: Ferarri F355 Challenge (2 player) (legendarily challenging), Metropolis Street Racer (2 player) (a good first effort from the team who went on to make Project Gotham Racing), Test Drive V-Rally (4 player) (pretty good, upgraded port of V-Rally 2 from the PSX), Vanishing Point (2 player) (kind of classic NFS-like, this DC version predates the much worse PSX port.), Test Drive Le Mans (2 player) (popular game I think), Sega GT (2 player), Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2 player), Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 (1 player) (the series continued on the PS2, they’re okay), Flag to Flag (2 player) (okay at best CART game from Sega), TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat (2 player), Jeremy McGrath Supercross 2000 (2 player) (mediocre), Ducati World Racing Challenge (2 player) (mediocre), F1 World Grand Prix (2 player), Spirit of Speed: 1937 (also on PC, but awful, avoid!); Europe/Japan only: F1 World Grand Prix II (released in EU/JP on DC, EU only on N64, not released anywhere in the US)

Vehicular Action/Action Flight Combat
——————————————————-
US: San Francisco Rush 2049 (4 player) (Battle Mode – multiplayer only, can’t play this mode with one person) (DC & N64 versions are best), Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense (4 player), Red Dog: Superior Firepower (4 player) (very fun action tank driving shooter game), Propeller Arena (4 player) (unreleased) (great flight action game, it‘s really unfortunate that this wasn’t released!), Wild Metal (very slow, strategic third-person tank game where aiming your tank’s shots is the key, Armada (4 player) (partially) (unique topdown space action-RPG/strategy game), Demolition Racer: No Exit (2 player) (partially – arena mode), Incoming (2 player) (PC port, it‘s one part turret shooter, one part flight action); Europe: Moho (2 player) (partially) (released as Ball Breakers in the US on the PSX) (action/racing hybrid game, depending on mode); Japan: Macross M3, Godzilla Generations (4 player) (destroy cities), Godzilla Generations: Maximum Impact (different from the first one – its a fighting game/rail shooter-esque hybrid)

Simulation (I know, there is some overlap between this and the above category.)
—————————
US: Air Force Delta, Deep Fighter, Bang! Gunship Elite (PC port. Simple arcade-style space sim, but fun), StarLancer (1 player offline, 6 player online) (solid port of the PC game), Iron Aces, Toy Commander (4 player) (a true DC classic!), Aero Wings (airshow team training – no combat), Aero Wings 2: Air Strike (air combat training), Railroad Tycoon II (PC port); Coaster Works (roller coaster builder and simulator); Japan: Frame Gride (2 player) (mech sim), Segagaga (awesome concept!), Seaman (voice-controlled life sim…), Kidou Senshi Gundam: Giren no Yabou- Zeon no Keifu (also on PSX), Kidou Senshi Gundam: Renpou vs. Zeon DX (arcade port also on PS2. That version did come out in the US and EU as Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon.), Aero Dancing i (the third Aero Wings game, Japan-only release)

Sports
———
US: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 (2 player), Dave Mirra Pro BMX (2 player), NHL 2k and 2k2 (4 player), World Series Baseball 2k2 (4 player) (2k1 is awful, don’t get it; get 2k2), NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC (4 player — NBA Jam 4, final 2v2 Midway basketball game, and the DC has the best console version — though NBA Jam T.E. on SNES or 32X is my favorite…), NFL 2k, 2k1, and 2k2, Virtua Tennis (4 player), Sega Sports Tennis 2k2 (4 player) (it‘s Virtua Tennis 2, just as good as the first one. Also supports fishing controller for motion-sensing control!); Sega Bass Fishing (supports fishing controller for motion-sensing control), Sega Marine Fishing (supports fishing controller for motion-sensing control), Sega Bass Fishing 2 (supports fishing controller for motion-sensing control), Reel Fishing Wild (supports fishing controller. I think this is exclusive and not a port of the PS1 games) (I hate fishing and would never play these, but some like them) (etc, there are more sports games but I don’t care enough about them to list them all…); Japan only: Cosmic Smash (1 player) (good game for sure), BassRush Dream (fishing controller supported), Lake Masters Pro for Dreamcast Plus (fishing controller supported; PS1 port with added stuff), etc etc (again, there are lots)

Arcade/Classic
———————
US: Mr. Driller, Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (4 player), Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1 (1 or 2 player depending on game), Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 2 (1 to 3 player depending on game), Atari Anniversary Edition (up to 4 player depending on game), Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 (up to 4 player depending on game; note that the audio emulation in the Genesis games is pretty bad, but apart from that it‘s a good collection. It‘s some Genesis games and Virtua Cop 2.), Namco Museum (2 player) (same ~6 titles as the N64 one, same complete lack of extras the PSX collections had)

Light Gun Shooter
————————–
Multiplayer & Controller: games support light guns unless noted, all 2 player unless noted.
————————–
US: Confidential Mission, House of the Dead 2 (that voice acting… :lol), Death Crimson OX (also on PS2 in Japan and Europe only), Virtua Cop 2 (in Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1 in US, standalone in Japan), Demolition Racer: No Exit (only in the “Big Car Hunter” minigame), Silent Scope (No Gun Support, Single Player Only); Japan: Death Crimson 2 (4 player)

Rail Shooter
——————
US: Charge ‘n Blast (sort of a rail shooter…); Europe/Japan: Rez (one of the all-time classics); Japan: Rainbow Cotton (mediocre according to reviews), Card Captor Sakura: Tomoyo no Video Daisakusen! (Pokemon Snap like, you (as Tomoyo) take photographs of Sakura…)

Action/Beat ’em up
—————————
US: Dynamite Cop! (2 player), Zombie Revenge (2 player) (simple, but great fun, with awesome House of the Dead-quality voice acting. Kill the zombies!), Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage (bloody manga-license hack and slash), Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles (2 player), Soul Fighter (bad game but some may find it amusingly so), Fighting Force 2 (partially) (simply awful beat ’em up/stealth game), Spawn: In the Demon’s Hand (fighting game / beat ’em up)

Third Person Stealth Action

—————————————————
Max Steel (action game with some stealth), Fighting Force 2 (partially; it‘s mostly a beat ’em up though, but either way it‘s terrible and not worth playing); Japan & Europe only: Headhunter (action/stealth/driving game with story; released in the US on PS2 but not DC.)
First/Third Person Action/Shooter
————————————————-
Note: Some of these games support a mouse and keyboard for better controls.  I recommend it particularly for Half-Life, UT, and Quake III.
————————————————-
US: Half-Life (unreleased), Unreal Tournament (4 player) (Assault mode and female characters are removed from this version, but a 1v1 mode was added with exclusive maps. I‘d stick to the PC.), Quake III Arena (4 player offline and online, and unlike UT, no cut modes.  Good game, but tough with a gamepad!), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear (4 player), Alien Front Online (tank combat game; no multiplayer anymore, was online only. That hurts the game a lot, but what’s there is decent at least.), Fur Fighters (4 player) (3d platformer/3rd person shooter cross), MDK2 (partially) (best console version), Kiss Psycho Circus, Maken X (US DC exclusive, but there was a JP PS2 version with an added third person camera), Outtrigger (4 player FPS with the smallest FPS maps ever), Slave Zero (4 player) (also on PC, decent game I think), Hidden & Dangerous (PC port, also on PSX, but Europe-only there), Soldier of Fortune (very gory, PC port), Spec Ops II: Omega Squad (PC port, bad game; there were four PS1 Spec Ops games, but I don’t think any were ports of this.); Japan only: Bluesteel Variable Formula: Space Griffon (a port of the PS1 game Space Griffon VF-9; the PS1 version does have a US release.  This version is only moderately improved from the PS1, and because it has a lot of story and objectives will be hard to play for those who can’t read or understand Japanese.)

RPG
——
US: TimeStalkers (Yes, I enjoyed TimeStalkers. Many people don’t seem to, and it‘s no LandStalker, but it‘s fun.), Evolution: World of Sacred Device (Evolution Worlds on the Gamecube includes part of this game, but not the whole thing), Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (repetitive game, but I like this one too… good sense of humor, a bit of strategy in the battles, and some nice graphics.  The DC original is better than Evolution Worlds, which is a port of it with a few of Evolution 1’s dungeons tacked on the front. It does get very repetitive though, so the critics are not entirely wrong.), Skies of Arcadia (slightly better on GC, but great here too, I like this version nearly as much… on either platform, it‘s my favorite console RPG ever no question.  Truly exceptional game!  My favorite game on the Dreamcast.), Grandia II (Grandia II is also on PS2 and PC, but this is by far the best version! I like this game a lot.); Japan: Japan-exclusive RPGs wouldn’t be much fun without knowing the language, but to list them anyway: El Dorado Gate 1 – 7 (seven part serial (episodic) RPG. There are guides to all parts but not translation.), Fushigi no Dungeon: Furai no Shiren Gaiden: Jokenji Asuka Kenzan! (Shiren the Wanderer sidestory game starring Asuka, with standard Fushigi no Dungeon gameplay. GameFAQs has translations for the items and menus.), Rhapsody of Zephyr (strategic RPG, Japanese port of a Korean PC game), Tricolore Crise (Cute RPG. Only has a partial menu translation, but the game looks pretty playable.), Sunrise Eiyuutan (Sunrise crossover RPG.  Lots of text.  GameFAQs guide short, not very helpful.), Sorcerian: Shichisei Mahou no Shito (not so good Sorcerian remake, very hard and mediocre graphics), Izumo (visual novel/RPG), Nishikaze no Kyoushikyouku, deSPIRIA, Chou-Hatsumei Boy Kanipan: Bousou Robot no Nazo!? (Pokemon ripoff), Card of Destiny: Hikari to Yami no Tougoumono (dungeon crawler/visual novel?  Not sure)

Action-RPG
——————
US: E.G.G. – Elemental Gimmick Gear (2d top-down action-RPG. Good stuff!), Armada (4 player) (partially) (unique and interesting game…), Silver (PC port), Record of Lodoss War (quality Diablo clone), Phantasy Star Online Version 1, Phantasy Star Online Version 2 (also on PC) (both versions of PSO are still online via user servers, but the DC versions really are irrelevant compared to the GC or PC-Blue Burt versions of the game. DC only has Episode I, while GC has episodes I and II (with online play via the hack server on GC, and with 4-player splitscreen too; the Xbox version is worthless now though, because it required now-shut-down Live.), and the PC (Blue Burst) has Episodes I, II, and IV with online play. (III is the GC-exclusive card battle game). It was great at the time, sure, but between the GC and PC titles, there‘s no real reason to play this on DC really.), Gauntlet Legends (4 player) (I love Gauntlet, but this is a very flawed version I do not recommend unless you want a serious challenge. You can’t even buy health in the shop, name your character, or save items! So this is fun, but N64 Legends or GC/Xbox Dark Legacy are much better.), Seventh Cross Evolution (mediocre); Japan: Rune Jade (without knowing Japanese getting to the point where you’re actually in the first mission can be a challenge, but once you’re in it‘s a fun Diablo clone. It was originally online, but that is gone now so it‘s one player only. Plus it requires an entire memory card to save, and for no good reason too. Still, it‘s fun enough that I‘m really considering bolding it… it‘s a good game.), Rent-A-Hero No.1 (fighting game-RPG) (Genesis remake. Requires Japanese knowledge, but there is a thorough FAQ on GameFAQs going through the whole game and translating key parts), Animastar (4 player) (Pokemon-ish monster raising/racing game RPG, GameFAQs has a very basic guide)

Puzzle
———
US: Wetrix+ (2 player) (upgraded version of the N64 game; the final title in the series was AquaAqua for PS2.), Bust-A-Move 4 (2 player) (great classic BAM game, only missing a 4-player mode like the N64 version of BAM3 has), The Next Tetris: Online Edition (2 player), Sega Swirl (4 player) (it‘s SameGame.); Japan: Puyo Puyo Fever (2 player) (great, and has full English mode for text and voice acting), Super Puzzle Fighter II X for Matching Service (2 player) (the best puzzle game ever, with two new modes…), Get!! Colonies (2 player) (Hexxagon/Ataxx clone), Bomber Hehhe (2 player), Golem no Maigo (2 player) (supposedly pretty good, but I haven’t played it), Puyo Puyo 4 (4) (4 player mode is DC exclusive — PSX version is 2-player only. Simple traditional Puyo Puyo, unlike Fever, but good, and 4 player), Sakura Taisen Hanagumi Taisen Columns 2 (2p), Tetris 4D (4p) (very standard, average Tetris with no special features beyond 4-player mode), The Shinri Game (4p) (psychological quiz game with minigames, know Japanese), Sega Tetris (2p local, once online but now offline), Plus Plum (2p), Musapey’s Choco Marker (2p), Doki Doki Idol Star Shaker Remix (2p), Hello Kitty no Magical Block (1p only), Hello Kitty Lovely Fruit Park (4p) (another Hexxagon/Ataxx clone), Communication Logic Battle Daisessen (2p local, used to have online but now offline) (Battleship-like, according to IGN…); Unlicensed Release (all region, as long as the system can play CD-Rs): Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles (2? players) (upgraded GP2X port), Inhabitants (4p)

Music
——–
US: Samba de Amigo (has pricey maracas accessory) (2p), Space Channel 5 (2p); Japan: Space Channel 5 Part 2 (2p), Pop’n Music (4p), Pop’n Music 2 (4p), Pop’n Music 3 Append Disc (4p), Pop’n Music 4 Append Disc (4p), Cool Cool Toon (2p), Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Mix: Dreamcast Edtion (2p), Dance Dance Revolution Club Version Dreamcast Edition (2p), Samba de Amigo version 2000 (2p), Puyo Puyo DA! (2p) (poor reviews) (I really don’t like music games… I am so, so bad at them…), O-to-i-re: Dreamcast Sequencer (music sequencer program, not a rhythm game); Unlicensed Release (all region, as long as the system can play CD-Rs): Feet of Fury (2p)

Strategy
———–
US: Industrial Spy: Operation Espionage (I-Spy) (some call this an adventure game, but this is a strategy/simulation title. You control a team of spies infiltrating enemy facilities entirely with menu-based control – no direct control. It‘s a pretty good game once you get used to it.), Worms Armageddon (4 player), Worms World Party (4 player) (the 2d Worms games are fantastic on almost any platform!); Japan: Many titles, including Sakura Taisen (1-4) (these adventure/strategy games all have good FAQs on GameFAQs translating much of the games; the first two are Saturn remakes, 3 and 4 are new.), Ouka Houshin (okay tactical strategy game), Super Robot Taisen Alpha, Hundred Swords (an RTS, did get a US PC release), Black/Matrix AD, Run=Dim, Rune Caster, Langrisser Millenium (the much-disliked final game in the Langrisser series), Vermilion Desert, Dogu Senki Haoh, and probably more.

Typing
———
US: The Typing of the Dead (Dreamcast keyboard required); JP: The Typing of the Date

Posted in Dreamcast, Lists, Modern Games | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

NCS Masaya Games List: Their Background and Games By Genre, 1987-2000

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Brian

Introduction & About NCS Masaya

This is a list of all of NCS Masaya’s games from their start until the original NCS Masaya died in late 1999, and also Bandai’s two WonderSwan games from early 2000 that use Masaya licenses.  NCS Masaya was the game development division of Nippon Computer System, or NCS.  After some success, the company faded out in the late ’90s.  In their prime in the early ’90s Masaya made some great strategy and action games, and they continued to make great strategy games for years afterwards.

Of course though, anyone can find a list of Masaya games  on GameFAQs, etc.  I made this list for a specific purpose, though: to show how Masaya abandoned action games in favor of Langrisser.  So, this list is sorted by genre, and by year within each genre.  If you look at the Masaya games list of GameFAQs (link below): you’ll see that the number of games Masaya published each year plummeted after 1992.  I guess that despite publishing many great games that year, they must not have sold well enough or something, because Masaya seriously scaled back making everything other than strategy games after 1992.  That’s really unfortunate, because some of their action games are pretty great!  In 1992, Masaya released five good to great action games: Gleylancer, a great shmup for the Genesis; Macross 2036, a good shmup for the Turbo CD; Cho Aniki, another good shmup for Turbo CD, and the first game in what became a popular (if weird) series; Cybernator, a cult-classic mech action game for SNES (and the sequel to Target Earth on the Genesis); and Shubibinman 3: Ikai no Princess (Turbo CD), a good, but far too easy, sidescrolling action game.  Great stuff there!  They also released the racing game Moto Roader MC (Turbo CD), a decent topdown racer, that year as well.  Moto Roader and Shubibinman were series that had seen three games released since 1990, and Assault Suits had seen two.

And then after that. for games released between 1993 and 1999…  excluding some Western titles Masaya published in Japan, and a series of wrestling games developed by Natsume and not internally by Masaya, Masaya barely even published five more action games worth mentioning in the whole rest of the decade before their closing — there’s Ai Cho Aniki (TCD shmup), Cho Aniki (SNES fighting game), Cho Aniki (PS1/Saturn shmup), Assault Suits Leynos 2 (Saturn sidescrolling mech action game), Shubibinman Zero (SNES Satellaview game released in 1997, because the game was initially cancelled in 1994), a golf game for Satellaview also in 1997, a Mode 7 SNES racing game,  a SNES boxing game… and that’s it.  And of all those games, only Shubibinman Zero, Ai Cho Aniki, and AS Leynos 2 come close to the level of quality of those 1992 titles.  I don’t know what happened, but it’s unfortunate.

Some of these games were outsourced, too — while most titles from 1987-1992 were internally developed, after that many more games were done by external teams.  Of the games in the previous paragraph, Ai Cho Aniki, the SNES Cho Aniki fighter, the PS1/Saturn Cho Aniki shmup, and the SNES racing and boxing games were all done by outside teams.  Of course the Western Prince of Persia and Battletoads games they published in Japan were also externally developed. Only Shubibinman Zero, the golf game, and Leynos 2 were internal.  And of those three, the first two were Satellaview releases, games brought back from presumed earlier cancellation (Shubibinman Zero claims to be a 1994 release on its title screen, for example, though in fact it is from 1997) and released on Nintendo’s satellite service and not on cartridges.  Assault Suits Leynos 2 is the big outlier, NCS Masaya’s last internal effort at a physical-release action game.  And it’s pretty good, at least they went out well!

To look at another genre, Masaya’s few fighting games are mostly mediocre at best, but their platformers started out iffy as well;  Energy and Shubibinman 1 have issues.  I like these games more than most, but they are flawed.  Their platformers got a lot better quickly.  But with fighting games, after three not-great efforts in 1992 they abandoned the genre with the sole exception of that 1995 Cho Aniki fighter on SNES, and that game was outsourced to an external team.  Even their second 1992 SNES Ranma game is improved over the first one.  It’s too bad that instead of continuing to work on them, they mostly gave up.  But with shmups or platform-action games, Masaya went straight from great to mostly out in notime, making the situation worse there; indeed, it is those genres that really made me wonder why this happened.

As for their strategy games, that decline started later, but it did occur.  Langrisser became popular, but in 1996, the Langrisser team left Masaya and formed an independent team.  After that strategy games followed the other genres in going mostly outsourced, and Masaya leaned heavily on Langrisser between 1993 and 1999.  Career Soft did stay with NCS Masaya for several games, until early 1998’s Langrisser V (Saturn), but after that left to work with Atlus, where they made the Growlanser series and later merged into Atlus’s RPG division.  NCS didn’t have anyone good to replace them with, so the last Langrisser game, Langrisser Millenium for Dreamcast, is widely regarded as terrible.  And shortly after that, NCS stopped publishing videogames and left the industry.

But while the loss of Career Soft and Langrisser Millenium may explain why NCS gave up on the industry, that doesn’t explain why they so significantly scaled back on action games back in 1993.  I guess sales really must have been poor… how sad, for such good games. 🙁  The studio behind Cho Aniki, Gleylancer, and Macross 2036 never made another shmup themselves after the year all three of those games released, 1992!

Sources: http://www.mobygames.com/company/ncs-corporation/history and http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/13002-ncs and also playing their games, of course.

NCS Masaya’s Game Library, Sorted By Genre

Note: All games are Japan-exclusive releases unless noted.

Puzzle

1987-1989 – None
—
1990
—
Shove It!: The Warehouse Game / Shijou Saidai no Soukoban (GEN) (US & Japan release)
—
1991-1993 – None
—
1994
—
Araiguma Rascal: Raccoon Rascal (SNES)
—
1995-on – None

Adventure or Action-Adventure

1987-1989 – None
—
1990
—
Nazo no Masquerade (TG16)
Star Cruiser (GEN) (first-person 3d action/adventure game)
—
1991
—
Cyber City Oedo 808 (TCD)
Signatory: Chouinsha (Sharp X68000)
Ranma 1/2: Toraware no Hanayome (TCD)
—
1992
—
Mamono Hunter Youko: Makai Kara no Tenkousei (TCD)
—
1993
—
Mamono Hunter Youko: Tooki Yobigoe (TCD)
[Ranma 1/2: Byakuran Aika (SCD) – This is a anime-FMV / rock-paper-scissors “fighting”/”adventure” game.]
—
1994-1997 – None
—
1998
—
Dream Generation: Koi Ka? Shigoto Ka!? (PS1)
Dream Generation: Koi Ka? Shigoto Ka!? (SAT)
—
1999-on – None

Strategy

1987
—
Gaia no Monshou (Sharp X1 and NEC PC88 computers)
Elthlead (NEC PC88)
—
1988
—
Gai Flame (Sharp X1)
Elthlead (MSX computer) (port of the above PC88 game of the same name, not a new title)
Gaia no Monshou (TG16) (port of the PC88 game from the previous year, not a new title)
—
1989
—
History of Elthlead (Sharp X68000 computer) (probably another port of Elthlead?)
Lightning Bacchus: The Knight of Iron (Sharp X68000)
Lightning Bacchus (MSX) (probably a scaled-down versio nof the above game)
—
1990
—
Gai Flame (PC88) (port of the above game of the same name)
Gai Flame (TG16) (port of the above game of the same name)
Hisou Kihei X-Serd (TG16)
—
1991
—
Head Buster (GG)
Warsong / Langrisser (GEN) (US & Japan release; Warsong is the US title)
—
1992
—
Vixen 357 (GEN)
Choujikuu Yousai Macross: Eien no Love Song (TCD)
—
1993
—
Langrisser: Hikari no Matsuei (TCD) (port of the Genesis game above)
—
1994
—
Langrisser II (GEN)
Power of the Hired (SNES)
—
1995
—
Der Langrisser (SNES) (enhanced port of Langrisser II)
—
1996
—
Der Langrisser FX (PC-FX) (enhanced port of Langrisser II)
Langrisser III (SAT)
—
1997
—
Langrisser I & II (PS1) (port/remakes of the first two games)
Langrisser IV (SAT)
—
1998
—
Langrisser: Dramatic Edition (SAT) (a Saturn version of the Langrisser I & II remakes, fully voiced now)
Langrisser V: The End of Legend (SAT)
Langrisser II (PC) (port)
Langrisser Tribute (SAT) (all four Saturn Langrisser games in one box)
Arubarea no Otome ~Uruwashi no Seishikitachi~ (PS1) (port of a PC-FX game by NEC, not originally a NCS game)
—
1999
—
Langrisser III (PC) (port)
Langrisser IV & V: Final Edition (PS1) (port collection)
Assault Suits Valken 2 (PS1)
Langrisser Millenium (DC)
—
2000
—
[Langrisser Millenium (WS) – Not by Masaya, this game was by Bandai, licensed from Masaya.]

RPG

1987-1989 – None
—
1990
—
Sol Bianca (TCD)
—
1991-  None
—
1992
—
Sorcerer’s Kingdom (GEN) (US & Japan release)
Double Moon Densetsu (NES)
—
1993-1998 – None
—
1999
—
Ou Dorobou Jing: Devil Version (GBC)
Ou Dorobou Jing: Angel Version (GBC)
—
2000
—
[Cho Aniki: Otoko no Tamafuda (WS) – Not by Masaya, this game was by Bandai, licensed from Masaya.]

Racing

1987-1988 – None
—
1989
—
Moto Roader (TG16) (top-view racing) (US & Japan release)
—
1990 – None
—
1991
—
Moto Roader II (TG16) (top-view forward-scrolling racing)
—
1992
—
Moto Roader MC (TCD) (single-screen top-view racing)
—
1993 – None
—
1994
—
Bike Daisuki! Hashiriya Kon – Rider’s Spirits (SNES) (Mode 7 racing)
—
1995 – on – None

Platformers / Sidescrolling Action / Topdown Action-Platformer

1987-1988 – None
—
1989
—
Energy (TG16) (port of a Japanese computer game) (Platform-Action)
Kaizoku Chounin Shubibinman (TG16) (Platform-Action)
—
1990
—
Target Earth / Assault Suits Leynos (GEN) (Platform-Action) (US & Japan release)
Ranma 1/2 (TCD) (Sidescrolling Action Beat ’em Up / Fighting)
After Burst (GB) (Platformer-Puzzle)
Trampoline Terror (GEN) (topdown platform-action) (US & Japan release)
—
1991
—
Kaizoku Chounin Shubibinman 2 / Shockman (TG16) (Platform-Action) (US & Japan release)
Mamono Hunter Yohko: Dai-7 no Keishou (GEN) (Platformer)
Dragon Egg! (TG16) (Platformer)
Jangken Man (GB) (Platformer)
[Battletoads (NES) – Japan Publisher] (Sidescrolling / Isometric Action)
—
1992
—
Kaizoku Chounin Shubibinman 3: Ikai no Princess (TCD) (Platform-Action)
Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken (SNES) (Platform-Action) (US & Japan release)
[Prince of Persia (SNES) – Japan Publisher of this Western game] (Platformer)
[Prince of Persia (GB) – Japan Publisher of this Western game] (Platformer)
—
1993 – Nothing
—
1994
—
[Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES) – Japan Publisher of this Western game] (Sidescrolling / Isometric Action)
[Battletoads (GB) – Japan Publisher of this Western game] (Sidescrolling / Isometric Action)
—
1997
—
Assault Suits Leynos 2 (SAT) (Platform-Action)
Kaizoku Ningen Shubibinman Zero (SNES Satellaview) (Platform-Action)

Shmups

1987-1989 – None
—
1990
—
[Hellfire (GEN) – made the Genesis port of this Toaplan arcade game] (US & Japan release)
[Fire Shark (GEN) – NCS’s related Western company Dreamworks Games published this Toaplan game in the West; in Japan Toaplan published it.] (US & Japan release)
—
1991
—
Wings of Wor / Gynoug (GEN) (US & Japan release)
L-Dis (TCD)
—
1992
—
Choujikuu Yousai Macross 2036 (TCD)
Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer (GEN)
Cho Aniki (TCD)
—
1993-1994 – None
—
1995
—
Ai Cho Aniki (TCD)
Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko (PS1)
—
1996
—
Choaniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko (SAT) (port of the above PS1 game of the same name, not a new title)
—
1997-on – Nothing

Fighting / Wrestling / Boxing

1987-1991 –  None
—
1992
—
Ranma 1/2: Chounai Gekitou-hen / Steet Combat (SNES) (Fighting) (Japan; the US version, Street Combat, was reskinned and has the license removed.)
Ranma 1/2 Datou, Ganso Musabetsu Kakutou-ryuu! (TCD) (Fighting)
Ranma 1/2: Bakuretsu Rantou-hen /  Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle (SNES) (Fighting) (US & Japan release)
—
1993
—
Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling (SNES, developed by Natsume) (Wrestling)
Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling Dash: Sekai Saikyou Tag (SNES, developed by Natsume] (Wrestling)
[Ranma 1/2: Byakuran Aika (SCD) – This is a anime-FMV / rock-paper-scissors “fighting”/”adventure” game.]
—
1994
—
Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling: Fight da Pon! (SNES, developed by Natsume) (Wrestling)
Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling Jet (GB, developed by Natsume) (Wrestling)
—
1995
—
Cho Aniki: Bakuretsu Ranto Hen (SNES) (Fighting)
Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling 2: 3-4 Budokan (SNES< developed by Natsume) (Wrestling)
—
1996-1997 – None
—
1998
—
Ring ni Kakero (SNES – Nintendo Power service only) (FMV-esque “Boxing” game)

Sports & “Sports” Horse Racing Gambling/Sim

1987-1988 – None
—
1989
—
Ganbare! Golf Boys (TG16) (Golf)
Rom Rom Stadium (TCD) (Baseball)
—
1990
—
Kickball (TG16) (Kickball)
Wallaby!! Usagi no Kuni no Kangaroo Race (TG16) (Horse Racing Gambling/Sim)
—
1991
—
Winner’s Horse (GB) (Horse Racing Gambling/Sim)
—
1992-1996 – None
—
1997
—
BS Out of Bounds Golf (SNES Satellaview) (Golf)
—
1998-on – None

Posted in Classic Games, Dreamcast, Lists, NES, PlayStation, Saturn, SNES, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16 | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Rolling Thunder (NES) Strategies

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Brian

This post has a few clarifications from the review that I will edit in, but mostly is focused on some strategies for how to get past harder parts of the final part of the game, Story 4.  These strategies will also be useful for earlier parts of the game, so I’d recommend anyone who wants to learn more about how to play Rolling Thunder should read this regardless of which part of the game you are facing.  I hope the tactics I describe below are helpful.

Edit 4/12/2015: I finally finished the game in Hard!  Geldra went down once again, and the day is conclusively saved.  It feels great.  Few changes were made though, just a few references to that I hadn’t finished it, and one new paragraph about how to fight Geldra I added near the end.

Intro & Concepts

I have been continuing to play through Rolling Thunder in Hard mode since writing the review, and am now up to the final level in hard mode, Story 4-10.  The first difficulty is Stories 1 and 2, and the second harder mode is Stories 3 and 4.  Each Story is five levels, one half of each mode.  Oddly, when the story goes from “1” to “2′ or “3” to “4”, the second number does not reset, so when you beat 1-5 you go to 2-6; that’s how the final level is 4-10.  It’s a little odd, but it works.  Anyway, I got to the final boss, Geldra, again, but this time wasn’t so lucky as to beat him on my first try; I died at him six or seven times before I finally beat the guy, it took several days.  Argh, I feel like it should have been easier, as while tricky Geldra is not the hardest thing about this game, but at least I kept at it and won in the end!

Before I begin with the list of Story 4 tactics, here are some clarifications of concepts I may have referenced in the review, but didn’t cover in great detail:

  • If there are three enemies on screen, enemies who otherwise should spawn won’t.  You can abuse this to get troublesome enemies to not appear in some places; read below for an example of this.
  • If you back up a screen you can get an enemy who isn’t moving much to disappear, and they will not respawn.  This is a VERY useful strategy for dealing with those guys who’re standing somewhere where they will kill you if you go to them and it’s impossible to attack them from where you are. Again, more on this below.
  • In Hard mode enemies are also faster, they don’t only all shoot at you.  They also sometimes shoot a LOT, filling the screen with bullet-fire that can be hard to avoid.  More below.


Hard Mode Strategies

So, I’ve been playing hard mode. I’m going to discuss some of my strategies for tougher parts in the levels in Story 4, the second half of hard mode.  I mentioned in the review that all enemies shoot at you in hard mode, but that’s not the only difference.  In addition to that, they also move much faster.  They really zip around in Hard, and it can make for trouble.  Figuring out timing for when you can jump or drop in Hard is a lot trickier than Normal because of how quickly they can move towards you while you are falling/jumping.    There are a few places I just have to go and hope I make it based on luck. Luck is a factor in this game, though good play (read: good memorization and execution) will minimize the luck element.

Most of hard mode plays just like normal but with faster, more aggressive enemies, but some parts are made much harder. I’ll talk about a few below.

  1. I will begin with level 4-6, the first level of the second half of hard mode.  This level has two particularly difficult sections.  The first is a part in the middle, right after the area with doors in midair that drop enemies on you. That bit is easy, but the part after that with a guy who pops out of a door, ducks, and immediately fires low is not!  This guy is really tough.  I only found two ways to get past this guy.  The first way is to jump with perfect timing, bounce of of his rear half while making you land on the rear half of the guy, because if you land on the front you’ll bounce back into his fire, take the hit (remember, two hits and you die), and move forward.  There is a wall right after this on the lower path and a new upper platform appears, so you need to jump up onto the upper platform RIGHT on the edge of it, to the left of the guy up there as he prepares to drop down; that gunner behind you follows you, so you can’t delay.  Alternately, have a bullet on the screen at exactly the right place to hit that guy as he appears, and then fire again before he can shoot so he dies without firing.  You need good positioning for the first strategy, and perfect shot timing for the second, but it’s the only way past this bit.  The second hard part is near the end, the part that’s also very hard in level 2-6 — a section part with a laser trap and a orange guy right after it that shoots RIGHT along the platform you land on after jumping through the laser beam while it’s not firing. I died lots of times before figuring out how to get past this.  I eventually had to resort to good old “backtrack so the enemy is exactly one screen offscreen to make that guy vanish” tactic I mention above and in the review; it worked. Of course you have to be very careful while using this strategy, because backtracking will re-trigger enemies you have fought before but from the opposite direction; when doing this, know which enemies can appear!  Here there is a white gunner who can appear if you back up even slightly too far.  Getting the distance just right, to make the guy vanish but not respawn the white guy, is tricky but doable. With that I managed to beat the level.
  2. In 4-7, the level is short but hard.  Remember, you can drop down from staircases with Down+jump, so long as no enemy is below to shoot at you, of course.  The first half of the level isn’t too bad if you remember it from 2-7; it’s mostly the same.  Use the “go back [in this case forwards] a screen” strategy to get the grenadier guarding the machine gun room to vanish.  Beyond that, the gunner after the checkpoint on that lower platform is a real pain.  Either time your shots just right, or jump into him and take a hit.  Those are largely the same as the first time, though.  In the hard version of the level, the big change are some guys who shoot right along the ground in the final stretch where you’re going down several screens in a multilayer area with lots of staircases.  Those guys are nasty, they stand right where you can’t hit them, but can kill you on sight! “Back up a screen” is very useful here, though watch out for the numerous other enemies which spawn.  Going forward along the floors to get guys on those lower landings to vanish will spawn other enemies.
  3. 4-8 is the second appearance of the game’s longest level. I found my practice from struggling with 2-8 for so long really paid off, and I found this level much easier than it was before!  I did die, but it didn’t take nearly as long as I expected, and I actually beat the level the first time I reached that last jumping puzzle with the narrow platforms… though I was helped by the fact that no enemies spawned after the platform with the four consecutive doors on it. I don’t know why that happened, but I presume it’s a glitch (not sure though), but it sure was helpful!  I’d remembered the positioning for making the jumps in that last stretch with the very narrow platforms, so I got to the end. Otherwise… same strategies as in 2-8, retreat to a door to fight the flying enemies, wait for them to dive, then pop out and shoot them.  And if the enemies in the last few screens was a glitch and not intentional, well, good luck; that final stretch is much harder with fire-birds attacking regularly.  Just learn where they come from and shoot them down, making sure to not be in the path of their diagonal revenge attacks after you “kill” them unless you are in a position to shoot them a second time you can, to kill them for good and for extra points.
  4. 4-9 is another level that my practice from the first loop was very helpful. This is the level absolutely loaded with laser traps, but just get your timing right and they’re not too hard.  One tip for both the 2-9 and 4-9 versions of the level, in the parts where you’re going down several screens, if that first yellow guy drops off the platform in the beginning of the last stretch down after the checkpoint, if you jump up and then up again from the top platform there he won’t be standing below you when you fall down the space.  It’s a vertical version of the “make a guy disappear by going back a screen” trick.  Anyway, this level was only slightly harder than the first time, but the last stretch did give me trouble, the last screen or two particularly; the fast enemies made the last drop, where you drop from after a double laser trap into a last area in front of the door with three enemies, really hard!  Those guys almost never cooperated and got out of the way, and “back off to make them vanish” doesn’t always work when enemies are moving around a lot, it’s more reliable when they stand still. Getting past the end of this was harder than I thought, but eventually I got lucky and managed to get down there without dying. So yeah, just keep at it.
  5. A. 4-10 took me the longest to finish of these stages.  I got to Geldra himself on the day I originally wrote this article, and then beat him several days later, but I’d seen the whole stage before starting this.  There are two tricky points in this level, though I died the most not at either of them, but at a simple “drop down into an area with an enemy below” part early in the stage, right after the first bullet-refill door; there’s no strategy there though, just hope the guy moves away and drop on the far left edge.  Of the areas that do require strategy, first is the same area that’s hard in 1-5, 2-10, and 3-5 — the bit in the middle of the level with the small box pyramid followed by several floating platforms with grenadiers and gunners on them.  This time strategies from those three previous versions of this encounter will not work, the more aggressive enemies change everything.  My strategy from 2-10 was useless here.  See, in that level my strategy was to jump to the top of the box pyramid, shoot the two grenadiers off their platform (backing off if only one was there to make a second spawn), jump up to the platform they were on, jump from there to the top platform after them, and then jump off of that to the box that ends the segment.  Several of those jumps required perfect timing, but the strategy worked because with three enemies on screen the yellow gunner on the platform right after the one with the grenadiers will not spawn because of the games’ “only three enemies on screen at once” rule, and with him gone you have a moment to jump up to that top platform before the grenadiers recover.  (There’s also a brown+green gunner below, for the third enemy.).  However, in 4-10, that brown+green gunner jumps over the box pyramid at you, so there are only two enemies on screen and the yellow gunner spawns.  My eventual strategy in this area is to go to that top box as before, shoot off the two grenadiers, jump forward, shoot the grenadier who landed on the ground, shoot the yellow guy with perfect timing the instant he drops down from his higher platform, then be ready to shoot him two more times as he appears on screen, before he can start shooting; he shoots a solid wall of fire, there’d be no way to hide behind a box and pop up in breaks between his shots to shoot at him. With good timing this strategy works reasonably well.

    B. The second hard part is, of course the Geldra room at the end. Now, in the version in 2-10, I never found a safe spot; I had to keep moving around, until I ended up at the left edge for the battle.  This time though, enemies drop faster and from different places as before, it seems, and I found a safe spot just to the right of the center, along that line around the box around the area Leila is chained up.  I just knelt there and got through the battle without too much difficulty, up until the point where Geldra killed me of course.  In 2-10 I remember a guy dropping on me if I tried ducking where I was this time, but not here, so I guess enemy placements are different here or something.  Geldra himself is the same the second time as he was the first, pretty much.  Just shoot when he does, shoot his bullets to stop them, and fire fast to hit him as much as you can.  However, somehow I had a harder time the second time around.  In both difficulties, the key to beating Geldra is to rapidly alternate between ducking and standing while constantly shooting as fast as you can.  You need to have bullets on the ducking and standing paths in order to counter Geldra’s shots as they come.  I kept going back and forth between my NES Max and NES Advantage while playing this game (and even tried the brick controller for a while, though not for long, it is so uncomfortable); each has advantages over the other.  The Max is better at rolling from down-forward to down-back for those duck-and-shoot-the-other-way parts, while on the Advantage while doing that sometimes I would accidentally stand up.  However, the Advantage is better at Geldra — with the Max, sometimes I’d accidentally move forward instead of ducking, while with the Advantage that didn’t happen. It’s interesting how each is better for different things because of their different designs.

So yeah, that’s it, that’s Rolling Thunder. The more I play this game, the more I love it! Rolling Thunder is amazing, and is absolutely one of the best ’80s games, and one of Namco’s very best games ever as well.  I’d love to see a new side-scrolling Rolling Thunder game.

Posted in Classic Games, Full Reviews, NES, Reviews, Strategies | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment