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WHAT PLAY YOU?


Onyx2

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Went out and bought two wired 360 controllers for Windows so I can use them with emulators. Got NES, SNES, and Megadrive/Sega CD. Visited a few top games from my childhood (Megaman 2, Mickey and Donald's World of Illusion, James Pond 3, Parasol Stars) and a few stinkers (Dragon's Lair on the SegaCD, Megaman 7 on the SNES, Ecco the Dolphin) but one game stood out as the worst of a bad bunch, despite being labelled the best game in the series, and getting rave reviews from everyone...

 

Sonic CD

 

What a poor game, and a bitterly disappointing Sonic game. Poor level design, a "time travelling" system that just turns whatever level you're on brown, rubbish boss fights, a load of trial and error, clunky controls (especially the spin dash) and instantly forgettable music. I have no idea how this makes it into a best Sonic game list at all, nevermind as #1. It's proper shit. They took away all the catchy songs, all the classic sound effects (when you get a 1up, Sonic now just goes "YEAH!" like he's Rayman or something). A run through of the first few boss fights goes like this;

 

Robotnik in a two legged pod with two pinball bouncy things as arms. He slowly walks towards you, you hit him once or twice and he runs off. You win

 

Robotnik at the top of a pinball machine, you clunkily flail around in it because Sonic refuses to stay curled in a ball so you end up landing on flippers and running helplessly back down to the bottom. You finally by luck bounce your way up and hit him once. You win

 

Robotnik floats left and right underwater with a sheild made of bubbles. Not only does he only shoot 3 little pellets that would only hit you if you were a retard, but you'd think he'd let you drown and not supply you with endless bubbles. Hit him once. You win

 

Robotnik just floats away from you. Hit him about 4 times, he runs further away and you just finish the level. No obstacles, just follow him. You win.

 

Then when you finally get to the bosses they've put any effort into, you've got so sick of the actual game that you can't be arsed. One he's in a metal cage dropping things on you from a crane, you have to run on the treadmill floor to grind the cage down till you beat him. Cool, if a little arsey.

Then a race with Metal Sonic which is quite good except it's all trial and error and just generally a pain in the arse.

 

The special stage is dreadful too, they've just lifted one of the Snes Mario Kart tracks and put UFOs on it that sonic has to jump into, but it's so shitly made that you end up just running in circles.

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Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is happening. It was shown at Capcom's Hawaii event but there's a week long embargo on media/wider reporting and everyone ahs signed NDAs. Soon.

 

Maybe it'll use an upgraded version of the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom engine? Sadly I can't see them returning to full-on 2D, but the TvC engine is the next best thing. It needs to be a shitload faster than SFIV anyhow, otherwise it wouldn't be a versus game. As long as they keep the immediacy, fluidity and speed then it'll be grand. Oh, and if they make it so more than three or four characters are good enough to win tournaments then that'd be good too. The vs. games are always a little bit broken, unbalanced and prone to infinite combos, but they're also ludicrously good fun and tend to have amazing casts and eyeball-melting action, so I'm hugely excited about this and want some more info now!

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More on the emulation front. Quite a lot actually so i'll pop up a few short thoughts on what i've been playing.

 

Dreamcast:

 

Started with Street Fighter 3rd Strike and I have to admit I can see why it's such a highly recieved game. The controls are good, the movement is fluid and it has a really rubbish theme tune "May the best fighter win and win again. Battle to the top until his life ends" which follows behind only "Indeeeestructabllleeeee" as cheesiest fighting game tune of recent memory.

A good handful of the characters are a bit poo, such as Twelve, Q, Urien, Necro, and Oro, but there are some really good characters i'm disappointed aren't in the new SSFIV like Elena and Sean (who's basically Abel anyway) and Alex. Glad to see the top notch Ibuki made it in though. The last boss looks like Seth with blonde hair too.

The choice of special moves is good, with some that take more energy and do less damage than the weaker ones, but leave a massive gap open for slipping in a combo (Alex's Headbutts are a good example). Didn't get round to working out how to use parry and stuff which ended up being embarrassing when I had a bonus round with Sean chucking basketballs at my head and I didn't know how to parry them. Just stood and took it like a man.

Overall a good game, and was easy to pick up and play. Don't think i'll have a ton of time to get to grips with it though with SSFIV out at the end of the month, but i'll be back on it definately.

 

Next I downloaded Shen....Mue. Can't say I was swept in by it. Had massive expectations which were pretty much crushed straight away. He moves like a right gimp, and the first hour or two of the game are watching poor dialogue and running around talking to people. I did see the potential though with the collecting figures (I spent about 2000 until I got a figure I recognised, it was Eggman) and had a laugh in the arcades where every game was a quicktime event, then I went to play Space Harrier and the game crashed.

Didn't play it enough to say whether it was good or bad, but I could tell it wouldn't be my type of game after spending so long doing nothing and laughing at the poor voice acting. I also gave the orphaned cat tofu instead of fish because

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

cats are shit

 

[close spoiler]

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Power Stone 2.

 

Like a mix between Smash Bros and Kung Fu Chaos on the Xbox. Really good little fighting game which can get confusing at times. Didn't play it for that long though.

 

Also downloaded ECW Anarchy Rulz and Chu Chu Rocket but no idea how to run them as they were a different file to the others. Damn.

 

PS1

 

Only one game for this so far. The pretty awesome Megaman 8.

 

Love this game. It's my favourite behind Megaman 2. The graphics are top notch, the gameplay is good, and the levels are all unique. Music is great, enemies varied and weapons open new paths and stuff giving them more use. Best of all though is the voice acting. " You need to find the enaaahgree wezources W...Megaman"

 

The entire emulation thing was a pain in the arse though because I needed to download allsorts of BIOS files, Xpadder to configure a control pad into them, plugin files and Daemon tools. It's all sorted now though so it's just a matter of download a game and play it. Looking forward to playing all those old PS1 games I had demos of but not the full game (Overboard!, Syndicate Wars, Parappa the Rappa) and a load I used to have. Dreamcast didn't impress me at all though, was more trouble than it was worth. The sound was such a pain in the arse, had to edit the configurations and buffering and tinker for ages with it.

Any recomendations would be good, especially for Dreamcast.

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Dreamcast

 

HOTD2 or Typing of the Dead

Confidential Mission

Outtrigger

Dynamite Cop 2

Virtua Tennis

Zombies Revenge

Jet Set Radio

Sonic Adventure

Fire Pro D ( or is it E? Ive forgotten)

 

Off the top of me head

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Third Strike is incredible, and it's a testament to its quality that it's still featured at most of the world's major tournaments. Disagree with some of the character comments, but I won't get into it because I'll bore you.

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Opened up my Ps2 once again and I'm loving getting retro. Get paid on Thursday and will go through my local CEX, Game and Gamestation, as all there ps2 games range quite cheaply any recommendations..?

 

Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect

Smackdown Here Comes The Pain

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Opened up my Ps2 once again and I'm loving getting retro. Get paid on Thursday and will go through my local CEX, Game and Gamestation, as all there ps2 games range quite cheaply any recommendations..?

 

Silent Hill 2

Metal Gear Solid 3

We <3 Katamari

Guitar Hero

Marvel Vs Capcom 2

Capcom Vs SNK 2

GTA Vice City

GTA San Andreas

Black

Def Jam: Fight For New York

Resident Evil 4

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Edited by MRMIdAS
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  • 2 weeks later...
More on the emulation front. Quite a lot actually so i'll pop up a few short thoughts on what i've been playing.

 

Dreamcast:

 

Started with Street Fighter 3rd Strike and I have to admit I can see why it's such a highly recieved game. The controls are good, the movement is fluid and it has a really rubbish theme tune "May the best fighter win and win again. Battle to the top until his life ends" which follows behind only "Indeeeestructabllleeeee" as cheesiest fighting game tune of recent memory.

A good handful of the characters are a bit poo, such as Twelve, Q, Urien, Necro, and Oro, but there are some really good characters i'm disappointed aren't in the new SSFIV like Elena and Sean (who's basically Abel anyway) and Alex. Glad to see the top notch Ibuki made it in though. The last boss looks like Seth with blonde hair too.

The choice of special moves is good, with some that take more energy and do less damage than the weaker ones, but leave a massive gap open for slipping in a combo (Alex's Headbutts are a good example). Didn't get round to working out how to use parry and stuff which ended up being embarrassing when I had a bonus round with Sean chucking basketballs at my head and I didn't know how to parry them. Just stood and took it like a man.

Overall a good game, and was easy to pick up and play. Don't think i'll have a ton of time to get to grips with it though with SSFIV out at the end of the month, but i'll be back on it definately.

 

The sheer ear-raping of Elena's yapping is the only reason I can't give 3rd Strike 10/10!

 

Urien and Oro are awesome when you learn to play them, and pick their best super art. Necro can be good too but I never really got to grips with him like I did with the other two.

 

Learn parrying too! One of the most fun parts of the game imo but unfortunately it ruined SF4 for me - I hate the silly bollocks focus attack replacement.

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Opened up my Ps2 once again and I'm loving getting retro. Get paid on Thursday and will go through my local CEX, Game and Gamestation, as all there ps2 games range quite cheaply any recommendations..?

 

Me too. I've been playing these two MRMIdAS recommended and Melty Blood this weekend.

 

Marvel Vs Capcom 2

Capcom Vs SNK 2

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I'm currently playing WWF In Your House for the Playstation, and its awesome!

 

...no, you read that right. I'm currently playing a wrestling game which typically crops up in just about EVERY list of the worst wrestling games ever made, and having a great time with it. Let me try and convince you that for 14 years, people have had this game all wrong...but first lets get the bad stuff out of the way.

 

The graphics are shit. Ok, thats the first thing you'll notice about the game. After its prequel, the beauteous WWF Arcade game (which still looks great even now), how could the visuals take such a dramatic and devastating dive? The animation is choppy as fuck and its obvious that the stars filmed for the graphics were shot in rooms with inconsistant lighting - hence why The British Bulldog looks a nice healthy orange whilst Shawn Michaels appears to be rotting. Whilst the introduction of personalised arenas for each wrestler seems like a good idea (a tomb for Undertaker, a desert wasteland for Warrior) consistant with the rest of the game they look crap and pixelated as hell, and you totally lose the feeling of being part of a big spectacle in a proper wrestling arena, which brings me to...

 

The sound - or lack of it. Whilst the smacks of the punches and booms of the various slams and suplexes are meaty and satisfying, the overall SILENCE of the arenas around you, save for an occasional obnoxious shout, makes you feel like you're wrestling at an ROH show as opposed to a WWF pay per view, and theres also this incredibly annoying guitar wail sound that pops up everytime you charge your combo meter or perform a reversal.

 

Another small niggle is the Overhead Press move. In the first game, only the obvious powerhouses could perform this (Luger, Bigelow and Yokozuna), whereas in In Your House its available to everyone. Yes its probably senseless nit-picking in a game where Bret Hart can shoot lasers out of his eyes and Vader can transform into a Mammoth and ram you, but it still looks stupid watching Shawn and Owen lift people up over their heads, and should have been reserved for Bulldog, Vader, Warrior and Ahmed Johnson.

 

And to be perfectly honest, those are pretty much the only things that are wrong with the game - though sadly, they're also the first things that people see when they put it on, and reach the conclusion of 'this game is the drizzling shits' without actually taking the time to PLAY the damn thing, and discover these goodies...

 

Once you accept the fact that the game is meant to be over the top and fanciful, and get to grips with the deceptively simple controls, you start to discover theres a suprising amount of enjoyment to be had. Your chosen wrestler is responsive to your commands, always seems to be facing the right opponent even in four man match ups, has a suprisingly large number of easy to perform moves, and you can generally start getting pretty good with minimal play time. Suprisingly, theres even a certain degree of DEPTH to be had from each wrestler if youre willing to invest a little time - Bulldog for example has a good 6-7 different throw animations, a handful of strange specials such as whipping the opponent, dizzying them with the Union Jack, a Scorpion-esque chain grab to reel them in from a distance, buckets of various super combos to smack the shit out of someone double quick, and all these moves can be linked together in various ways to allow you to inflict maximum punishment in minimal time. There are a few teething problems with some of the moves - reaching THROUGH your opponent when you try to grab them if youre not standing perfectly in front for example, but its nothing that renders the game unplayable.

 

Other pluses include a decent commentary from Vince and Mr Perfect, complete with Joey Styles-esque move calling, soundbites for each wrestler (I never get tired of messing around with them in the options menu, making Jim Hellwig proudly proclaim 'The Ultimate Warrior, lives only to surrender!'), and individualised endings showing around 10 seconds of highlights for each wrestler.

 

Seriously, anyone who enjoys their old school beat em up style games could do far worse than give In Your House a try. Its by no means a classic, but to me, its an old school rough diamond whose true potential was never fully realised, but still remains a great piece of throwaway silliness from my lost childhood.

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