FC 45: Retro Game Challenge

[SilentSnake]

Originally Posted by Knight

Arrgh! There's another Rally King that's nearly exactly the same? Damn you Arino!

[nunix]

I can't drift boost. =(

EDIT: Got past that, but.. going to use cheats for challenge 4, so annoying.

One interesting thing about RK is seeing the other cars blow up and stay blowed up. But Young Arino's "DUDE" and "YOU'RE GETTING KILLED" and "I'm gonna take a nap.. wahuh?!" are just.. argh. I may play this with the sound off from now on, which just pisses me off, because each of the games have pretty good music in places but it's just not worth putting up with the commentary.

[Kishi]

Rally King sucks, Star Prince rocks, more in the blog tomorrow.

[xScribble Hero]

I won't get mine until the 17th. darn.

[SilentSnake]

Haggle Man 3 is non-linearly super awesome.

[Rosencrantz]

Gamestop had two copies! And I had three Gamestop gift cards (with varying amounts of money on them) left over from holidays, and the combination of two of them paid off the game. I've only completed the first game so far.

[Red Hedgehog]

Yes, this game is as awesome as advertised. Very impressed with Cosmic Gate. I... don't really like Galaga, but it was enough different and polished that it drew me in. Haggle Man was also a great arcade platformer conversion. Rally King, as most have pointed out, sucks.

So far I've only failed one challenge on my first try - the final Rally King one which took me two. And now I have to go to bed, but I can't wait to try Star Prince.

[Willm]

I managed to get enough money to buy this and pay off Street Fighter IV today. Yay! I played through a good chunk of it today at my desk (instead of, you know, working) and so far it's blowing me away. I knew it was supposed to be good, but I didn't realize how enamored I would be with the entire product. The magazine's alone are enough to win me over; I knew they were supposed to be throwbacks to the old mags from my youth, but I didn't realize how clever the little injokes would be, or that they would have the people from those mags (Dan Sock!) I find myself awaiting the arrival of the next GameFan with almost as much anticipation as I did when I was a kid waiting to receive the newest EGM/Nintendo Power in the mail.

Right now I'm grinding in Guadia Quest, which is probably my favorite game along with Star Prince. I've legitimately enjoyed every game so far, which I wasn't expecting (I thought there would be at least one game I would hate.) I think I might be one of the very few people who really liked Rally King, but that's probably due to my love of 8-bit racers back in the day.

[Knight]

Originally Posted by SilentSnake

Yea, I found that out after I posted. I didn't even notice any actual stage changes, besides the palette swaps to make it looks like it was night time.

Originally Posted by Kishi

Rally King sucks, Star Prince rocks, more in the blog tomorrow.

Yes. I don't even like SHMUPS and Star Prince was pretty kickass. The barrier was a neat mechanic.

Haggle Man is also pretty fun, but I rarely find myself using the doors when it's just faster and easier to run over and jump on them instead of going into the doors to get the proper color to kill the enemy, who had just wandered off while you were fucking about with the doors. Going into them in reverse alphabetical order to get a health refill was a great trick though.

Gonna get in a little time with Guadia Quest before bed, but I still have to decide on names. I was kinda thinking of going for a Big Lebowski theme, with DUDE, WALT and DONY.

[Red Hedgehog]

Also, my favorite joke so far is young Arino quoting DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

[Nich]

I'm on the last challenge of Haggleman, but I can't get the boss to do his upward attack while I'm standing on the solid platforms. (He's done it once or twice, I just can't get him to do it reliably.) So I'm asking my friends on the Internet for help.

[Willm]

I don't think you have to beat him that way. IIRC, I simply stunned him with ninja stars and stomped on his head a few times.

[Kishi]

Yeah, they don't really tell you that the armored enemies wear down under repeated fire. For me, he was always eager to do the upward attack, though.

[mopinks]

I haven't played very much yet, but Haggle Man is killer.

I miss simplistic arcade platformers :'{

[Kishi]

I wish there were an actual name for the sub-genre of action games with either horizontal or vertical scrolling (but never both, and sometimes none at all) and the victory condition of destroying all the enemies in a stage before moving on. Maybe there were just never enough of them to warrant a distinct label.

Obviously, the first person to think of one gets a cookie.

[Shadax]

Originally Posted by Kishi

I wish there were an actual name for the sub-genre of action games with either horizontal or vertical scrolling (but never both, and sometimes none at all) and the victory condition of destroying all the enemies in a stage before moving on. Maybe there were just never enough of them to warrant a distinct label.

Self-contained plane-em-ups?

(I'll take white chocolate macadamia nut thx)

[Octopus Prime]

Originally Posted by Kishi

I wish there were an actual name for the sub-genre of action games with either horizontal or vertical scrolling (but never both, and sometimes none at all) and the victory condition of destroying all the enemies in a stage before moving on. Maybe there were just never enough of them to warrant a distinct label.[/color]

Side-scrolling kill-em-up puzzler?

[Kirin]

Holy crap, I managed to acquire and start playing a game in time for Fun Club. Stop the presses. That aside, this game is adorable, and pretty much exactly like being 10 in the 80s. I love it. So far I've done Cosmic Gate and am almost to the end of Haggleman. A few notes:

Am I "Doin It Wrong", or is the Memo function pretty much completely useless? Near as I can tell it always erases your work completely as soon as you try to do anything else. Huh?

I *love* that the rainbow warps in Cosmic Gate are hidden in prime-numered levels. But is it just me, or did the magazine screw up on the first level that actually counts? I tried to get one of Lv2 but got a regular gate instead. (Not that the occasional magazine strategy error wouldn't be authentic...)

XSeed sure as hell knows their audience, and it is us. I.e., game geeks who spend too much damn time on the internet. A Winner Is You, indeed.

I've gotten the baby and girl specials in Haggleman, but I want to see the dog. Also, it's adorable that kid-Arino has a pixel-crush on the ninja girl.

So much awesome. Must unlock more games...

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by nunix

I can't drift boost. =(

My suckyness at drift boosting was what convinced me to finally get to bed last night. I was up until 1 finishing the last Haggleman challenge. I really stink and I have no idea how I finally pulled it off. Thank goodness for the "pick up where you game over-ed" cheat!

[Grant]

My day yesterday was highly soul-crushing, frustrating, and tedious. This game, played at the end of it, put a smile on my face. Totally radical.

[Red Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by mopinks

I haven't played very much yet, but Haggle Man is killer.

I miss simplistic arcade platformers :'{

Yeah, it almost makes me want to go back and player Kicker - one of my favorite arcade games and definitely in the Haggle Man genre.

[Tomm Guycot]

I picked up this game even though I didn't want to. I was playing Kirby at work yesterday (shut up) and was getting really angry at Kirby and instead wanted to play retro games. Luckily this existed or I'm not sure what I'd do.

It's awesome. I love the localization touches like Dan Sock, etc etc.

I named my character "Tommy" so it would be just like the 80's but I"m never referred to by name :( What waste.

[SilentSnake]

To those who are wondering, you do indeed have to beat every game in order to beat the final challenge. However, you can cheat to do it. As much as I loved Cosmic Gate, it gets very samey very fast, so I used the skip to the last stage warp cheat to finish. However, I love Haggle Man 3 and Guadia Quest to death, so I think I want to finish them legitimately, so that's what I'm going to do. I really just hope that the game doesn't expect me to get lots of firsts in the Rally Kings, cause that would be terrible.

It's really something when it allows you to cheat legitimately but you want to finish some of the games for their own sake. It puts a smile on my face.

[Loki]

Originally Posted by SilentSnake

It's really something when it allows you to cheat legitimately but you want to finish some of the games for their own sake. It puts a smile on my face.

Right. I'm only at Rally King SP but I liked Haggle Man so much that I went back and beat all 16 levels without cheating.

[SilentSnake]

Originally Posted by j00ey

EVEN THE CHEAT CODES ARE REFERENCES

Oh Oh! I know now! It's the continue at the game over screen code.

[Kishi]

Originally Posted by SilentSnake

I really just hope that the game doesn't expect me to get lots of firsts in the Rally Kings, cause that would be terrible.

Can't you just use the code that eliminates the other racers?

[SilentSnake]

Originally Posted by Kishi

Can't you just use the code that eliminates the other racers?

...

I forgot about that one. Oops.

[Knight]

Originally Posted by SilentSnake

I really just hope that the game doesn't expect me to get lots of firsts in the Rally Kings, cause that would be terrible.

Just use the codes for invincibility and to eliminate all the other racers, then there's no possible way you can lose! There's no shame in cheating through Rally King.

[Sven]

Got into it yesterday and it's so, so great. My one minor complaint is that I kinda wish they'd replaced the Famicom with an NES (I know, I know, it would ruin the aesthetic), but just the little touches like the kid crawling on all fours over to the shelf to get something practically had me having to pause the game to stop chuckling.

Beat all of Cosmic Gate fairly quickly (and would've done so even faster had I been unable to get to both the Large Asteroids when I was close to the point total, forcing me to go through a couple of extra stages - I grew up on Galaxian, this stuff's second nature), now looking forward to Haggle Man after all of Parish's hype in the blog.

The armor-piercing power-up adds a LOT to the regular Galaxian / Galaga model. I think doing it my way (wasting the two weak shots, then taking out a full column of enemies) was more score-building than the old "take out the two underlings then the leader" trick, but really I did it for ease of play more than efficiency in getting to the 200K total.

The Rally game scares me a bit. As much time as I put into Spy Hunter, I was *always* shitty at it.

[KCar]

Got it, playing it, loving it. I do wish that they'd localized the game a little further - an NES would have been nice, but I also wish the room the kids were playing in had a faux wood panelled wall, an ugly couch, and green carpets, to really evoke a North American misspent childhood rather than a Japanese one. It's still pretty good, though. I don't mind the voice overs, but I wish the voice over were a little less generic; little Arino sounds more like the announcer for Crazy Taxi than he does a little kid. I would've loved it if he offered frantic advice like "get it get it get it!" or "hit him! shoot the guy!"

I blitzed through the Cosmic Gate and Haggle Man challenges this morning, but had to quit before I could play Rally King. I'm a bit scared.