Last Retro Game You Finished And Your Thoughts

The_Jaster wrote:

Also it looks like she is uncomfortably letting one rip rather than being in a kicking pose.

Certainly gives the term "Bloody Roar" new meaning

gjones wrote:

Certainly gives the term "Bloody Roar" new meaning

Primal Fury? More like Pilau Daal Fury.

JayMoyles wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Primal Fury successfully captures that arcade feel that I particularly like in my fighting games, with tight and responsive controls, quickness, and a move list is uncomplicated and immediate.

My take on an uncomplicated move list is that its appeal for me depends on how much time I'm planning to spend with a particular fighting game. If I'm only planning to whack through Arcade Mode a few times, then I do think having fewer or less complex moves to use is better as I won't really have the time to get stuck into the movelist. For fighting games where I end up spending hours playing online with mates and perhaps even more time offline with various modes, I do prefer having movelists with a bit more depth to them. There's a real thrill in learning a difficult combo and then landing it in a battle against a real player. I remember seeing a pro player pull off a combo in Injustice 2 with the character Brainiac, thinking "I could do that that", and then landing it against Andy in an online battle. Good times.

Bloody Roar is definitely one of those fighting games that’s engineered for a few blasts in Arcade Mode. A lot of it is flash and spectacle, and it’s doesn’t have the depth to be anything that anybody would play competitively for hours and hours. When my mate had Primal Fury back in the day, it was just one of those games that was in our multiplayer circulation, maybe good for fifteen minutes between Super Monkey Ball and PES.

~

That box is a weird one right enough. I’m guessing that treesmurf is right, though it’s not a focus group I’ve held or an area of marketing analysis that I’ve investigated. Bloody Roar was a reasonably well-established series by the time it landed on GameCube though, I think it was three or four games deep on PlayStation. On GameCube, that must have been one of the last ones.

Can't believe you haven't yet done a focus group on 'human or animal cleavage?' Surely that's the first port of call for any marketing department.

masofdas wrote:

Treesmurf wrote:

I guess from a marketing point of view, most people want to see human cleavage over animal cleavage.

The Jay Edition

Balladeer wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

I remember seeing a pro player pull off a combo in Injustice 2 with the character Brainiac, thinking "I could do that that", and then landing it against Andy in an online battle. Good times.

You sure you don't just like hammering Andy?

Well, yes, but as Andy says it's all about how I hammer him.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Primal Fury successfully captures that arcade feel that I particularly like in my fighting games, with tight and responsive controls, quickness, and a move list is uncomplicated and immediate.

My take on an uncomplicated move list is that its appeal for me depends on how much time I'm planning to spend with a particular fighting game. If I'm only planning to whack through Arcade Mode a few times, then I do think having fewer or less complex moves to use is better as I won't really have the time to get stuck into the movelist. For fighting games where I end up spending hours playing online with mates and perhaps even more time offline with various modes, I do prefer having movelists with a bit more depth to them. There's a real thrill in learning a difficult combo and then landing it in a battle against a real player. I remember seeing a pro player pull off a combo in Injustice 2 with the character Brainiac, thinking "I could do that that", and then landing it against Andy in an online battle. Good times.

Bloody Roar is definitely one of those fighting games that’s engineered for a few blasts in Arcade Mode. A lot of it is flash and spectacle, and it’s doesn’t have the depth to be anything that anybody would play competitively for hours and hours. When my mate had Primal Fury back in the day, it was just one of those games that was in our multiplayer circulation, maybe good for fifteen minutes between Super Monkey Ball and PES.

There's nowt wrong with having a fighting game like that to whack in between the multiplayer games you spend a lot more time on . I remember having a somewhat ropey X-Men fighting game on Gamecube that was perfect between a bigger session on SSBM or Timesplitters 2.

It looks edgy

Not enough black and red to satiate my edgelord hunger.

How about this bad boy

I presumed Mas was referring to Jay's days as Pocket Rumble Quinn Champion of the World.

Crumpy Andy wrote:

How about this bad boy

Considering the number of Beano comics I found in a bag when I cleared out my childhood bedroom at my Dad's, it actually explains a lot.

Balla: Quinn could wipe the floor with any of the fools in Bloody Roar for free.

Wait... what the hell is Desperate Dan doing on that cover? This is worse than Snake being in Smash Bros.!

I mean, Bananaman was also a Dandy character... Maybe Beanotown just means Dundee. (Though I doubt Lorraine Kelly features as an unlockable racer.)

Balladeer wrote:

Wait... what the hell is Desperate Dan doing on that cover?  This is worse than Snake being in Smash Bros.!

The Beano bought and then absorbed the Dandy.

Just looking it up, I'd reminded myself that Korky was also originally a Dandy mascot. Everything I thought I knew was a lie!

Them characters bring back a lot of memories. Wasn't the back of the Dandy always that Ivy kid being a terror?

My dad would always say "Sir, Roger's melting" whenever something was hot, referencing a Roger the Dodger comic none of us knew probably from the 60s! It's a shame something that was once an institution like the Beano/Dandy isn't as popular now. Or at least it doesn't seem like it.

I think that was the Beano GJones! I remember one of my criticisms of the Beano just as I was growing out of it was, every strip was 'naughty kid does bad stuff'. Amazing how long they kept it creative for, given that!

I grew out of the Beano for the same reasons. The killer blow was the time they were giving away something daft like a big Plug badge, and I just thought "fuck that", before probably heading up the road to sort out my Pokemon cards and eagerly count down the days until Donkey Kong 64.

~



As you’d maybe guess from the title and box-art, Aero The Acro-Bat is an athletic 16-bit platformer that takes place under the big top at a circus. Aero (…The Acro-Bat) is the protagonist and the circus’s main attraction, and entertains the crowd by doing all sorts of hoop-jumping, tightrope-walking and pool-diving trickery through levels that have been booby-trapped by an evil clown. The idea behind the game is quite smart and playful, and due to this its distinctive amongst the other four hundred billion mascot platformers from the early to mid ‘90s.

It’s too hard and too flawed to be worth bothering with though. Deaths come cheaply, either via one-hit kills or against some really nasty and unreasonable time limits. Those become very problematic when put together with the game’s level design. Overall poor, this isn’t your left-to-right Sonic fayre. Aero The Acro-Bat’s levels are sprawling, and often leave you confused about where to go and what to do. Controlling Aero isn’t very satisfying or as agile as it should be either, as his main form of corkscrew attack arcs at only a 45 degree angle. It’s mostly useless.

Aero The Acro-Bat is mostly useless, in all truth. 4/10.

For the most part, Downhill Domination lobs realism out the door and embraces pure arcade fun. Similar in gameplay to SSX 3, you race against rivals to earn podium places, boost your experience points, earn cash to upgrade your equipment and progress onto the next challenges. Light combat, daredevil trick combos, stat-boosting power-ups and plenty of massive ramps to jump off of solidify this comparison further. Really, it’s quite easy to just say that Downhill Domination is just SSX with bikes. Yet to its credit Downhill Domination’s course design is more dense, expansive and technically impressive than any SSX game from the PS2 era.

On paper, it all sounds magic. However, Downhill Domination vitally lacks an x-factor. It just doesn’t have any of those remarkable and special variables that make it worth playing over something like SSX Tricky or SSX 3. It’s true that Downhill Domination’s level of challenge is pretty modest, that it’s trick system isn’t all that imaginative and that it innovates in few ways. I don’t think any of that explains it though. Whether it’s conceptual, technical or gameplay-wise, something’s definitely missing here.

It’s been a while since I’ve played a game that’s left me with as mixed feelings as Downhill Domination did. It’s very fast, fun and arcadey, personifying absolutely everything that I want from a retro game. Yet it’s very hallow and vapid at the same time. I liked and enjoyed it, but I don’t feel attached to it whatsoever. It’s perfectly entertaining, but instantly forgettable. I should love it, but I just don’t. 5/10.

There really were a slew of extreme sports games on the PS2 generation and most of them were thoroughly average. Were Tony Hawk and SSX such big franchises that they were worth emulating? The only one I thought was up to much was Aggressive Inline, which was basically just Tony Hawk's but on rollerblades.

The Dave Mirra freestyle BMX games were good as well until it all went (literally) tits up when acclaim lost the licence.

Aggressive Inline and Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 are the games I think of when it comes to good-quality extreme sports games that aren’t Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I’d say Tony Hawk and SSX were a big enough deal for others to try to reproduce and follow – both were absolutely massive at the time. I’d go as far as to say that the first couple of Tony Hawk games had an even bigger cultural impact, going beyond just being games.

Activison didn’t half run that Pro series into the ground though. Remember Kelly Slater Pro Surfer? Remember Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarder? Remember Sir Captain Tom Moore Pro Walking Around The Garden For A Pound A Lap? Woaft.

The_Jaster wrote:

The Dave Mirra freestyle BMX games were good as well until it all went (literally) tits up when acclaim lost the licence.  

I’ve never been brave enough to buy that BMXXX game. I’m scared if I was that someone would spot me with it, and tell everybody I was a big durty.

~



Burning Force is a really early Mega Drive game that seems to be long-forgotten and forever overlooked. I hadn’t heard of it before I played and completed it, and I thought I knew my 16-bit Namco stuff pretty well. Anyway, it’s like Space Harrier, but a little faster though without the same freedom of movement and verticality.

The plot is something to do with that big-arsed protagonist’s graduation from Earth University’s space cadet training program, and the game’s levels are disguised as daily tests before a final exam. Each daily test has three exams: two ‘normal’ stages where you ride a jetski and move left to right, a boss stage where you control a jet plane and dart about the screen a la Lylat Wars, and then a bonus stage that lets you collect extra lives and extra points. The story isn’t exactly as fun as Animal House or anything, but at least this way is resembles a coherent video game.

The settings of these levels are fairly nondescript forests and oceans, the enemies could very well be ripped straight from any Chinese bootleg that Piko Interactive owns, and the scaling visuals aren’t anything special nowadays either. The weaponry is mildly ordinary as well, with just a few lasers and beams and vary in effectiveness. An almighty difficulty spike about halfway through was a bandit too, as I was having a nice and pleasurable enough time up to that point.

Still, it’s quite a colourful, speedy and smooth game considering it’s age. It’s got a really good soundtrack too that makes a Mega Drive sweat hard, it’s melodic and gritty like all the best Mega Drive music. Above all else, it’s an unusual and interesting enough game to be worth an hour-or-so of your time. 6/10.

I did own that and thought it was fine enough.

Hope to have some of the NGPC games in here soon.

Quake


Just finished up the main campaign & Nightdive studios have done it again, much improved gyro aim compared to Turok (only a flick stick option is missing) - loads of graphics options to choose from, online co-op campaign/deathmatch/horde mode with full crossplay, 4 expansion mission packs & two add-on mod campaigns. (Probably with more to come)

I've still to give the expansions & mods a try but I've had my fill with just the main campaign for now, even if you're only a little into fps games from the era this is an absolute must have for the Switch. (it's on sale for £3.99 until the 20th as well)

Quake looks brilliant, but I’ve already got so many retro first-person shooters downloaded. Is Quake so much better than, say, DOOM 64, or Duke Nukem 3D?

~



The time seems right for me to post this review I've had kicking about my drafts folder for over a year!

Splash Or Crash is a mostly-forgotten yet novel experience from the 3DS eShop’s early days . Basically, you drop an object down a well and use the Circle Pad steer it to the bottom as quickly as you can. The gameplay is propped up with “special obstacles” that you have to navigate past, such as widden pallets, fans, cannons…and just for the hell of it, pizza slices and biscuits too. The objects you can drop are similarly odd, with examples such a shot put ball, a watermelon and a droplet from a magical formula. Each of these ‘stones’ have their own speed and durability traits, but there’s loads of speed boost and health balloons to fall through on your way to the bottom of the each of the game’s ten wells.

It’s a decently entertaining game. Seemingly on purpose, the first object you unlock is an undestroyable bouncy ball – and I think this is supposed to teach you to layout of the levels, and let you practice without any danger of getting a game over. Arguably though, this might disincentivise a player from using anything other than this bouncy ball. After all, there’s no penalties for using the bouncy ball, and with it you can easily see the whole of Splash Or Crash in around thirty minutes. I guess it’s up to the individual player to be committed and interested enough to try mastering the other objects and their differing speeds, physics and turning. I played about with these newly-unlocked stones/balls/plates/eggs for a couple of hours and beat all my original times. Now though, I think I’m finished.

The stereoscopic 3D effect is mostly very well done, and the game’s goofy sense of humour reminded me a bit of the much-loved Kororinpa on Wii. I like it if there was more music and I’d prefer if it used gyro controls, but these and it’s relatively short length and seeming lack of variety don’t hurt it too badly. On balance, I think this is worth a try at £2.69. 6/10.

Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Quake looks brilliant, but I’ve already got so many retro first-person shooters downloaded. Is Quake so much better than, say, DOOM 64, or Duke Nukem 3D?

Only ever played those two briefly so it wouldn't be fair to say, so your answer is go get & play DUSK instead.