So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Retr0gamer

Contra 4's final stage is a vertical climb through gargantuan levels of bullshit. It goes on forever as well. I mean the final stages of Contra 1 and 2 in the arcade are the same but they never went on this long. I thought I got close to the end but turns out I only got about 3/2s of the way through.

Retr0gamer

Had a pretty mediocre run of contra 4 last night. Kept getting stupid deaths and losing weapons but it wasn't a disaster. Got to the two stages that preceded the last stage that are usually a nightmare for me and absolutely stormed them and picked up loads of lives from score. Went into the final stage with 15 lives. Sounds like a lot but very easy to screw it up. Got to the boss with 12 lives and decent weapons which I managed to lose with two cack handed jumps before the boss.

Boss is very tough, fantastic pixel art. I was without weapons but he drops weapons every so often so not too bad. Managed to kill him with 6 lives left.

Retr0gamer

Was going to move on to some analogue pocket games but think I'll stick with the DS and give Spirit Tracks a proper go.

Retr0gamer

So Ive spent two nights playing Spirit Tracks and it still feels like I'm not out of the tutorial. I'm kind of glad Nintendo have moved on from this form of inelegant handholding.

CiDeRmAn

As a long time Robotron fan I am ashamed to admit I didn't know of the sequel, Blaster.

Booting it up on the cab, courtesy of Retropie, it's bloody marvelous!

In fact, I can see where Minter got a lot of his inspiration for his later titles such as Moose Life and Polybius

Retr0gamer

The origins of the Kings Field name is kind of boring:

https://twitter.com/illusorywall/status/1808891516401721586?t=xA42UzgNHgrQTFCnTtZd2A&s=19

Mr.Saturn

After years of being curious about it, I can confirm Touch the Dead/Dead 'N Furious (DS) is a great little House of the Dead clone converted for touch controls and is utterly gimped by a fidgety-as-**** reload mechanic that cripples what's already a pretty tough game of reflexes. Initially it lent an air of tension to the proceedings, but as the hordes increased, the novelty of having to carefully and precisely draw your clip across the screen wore out something fierce.

Retr0gamer

Playing a lot of metal slug 2nd mission and it really is a massive improvement on the already excellent first game.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122366694#Comment_122366694

It really has the absolute essence of a Metal Slug game. Really impressive how they achieved that on a handheld at the time.

The first game is good too alright, but it's definitely missing that certain something.

Retr0gamer

Im really impressed by the pixel art. It looks incredible and the animation on everything seems over the top for a handheld game. Every sprite has so much personality. It's also more than twice as long as the original game. They packed so much into it.

Mr.Saturn

Have graduated to that level of impatience where I'll spent hours learning to cheese a course in Monkey Ball rather than learn the level. AV/RGG's design and accommodation for 'breaking' levels they've obviously designed with care lends a whole new admiration for the work they put into their stuff.

Mr.Saturn

Hard Corps Uprising is the greatest sequel to ever exist that I only just heard of in the last 24 hours.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122393628#Comment_122393628

It's really damn good and It's a shame it's stuck on PS360 and Konami never let Arc System Works make another. The DLC characters are excellent as well.

o1s1n

Just coming to the end of Rent A Hero on the Dreamcast, should have the last couple of missions finished over the weekend.

100% worth a go, very funny game. The only thing that annoyed me a bit in this translation is they changed all the names to 'funny' ones. Like 'Hangover Park', 'New Dork City', 'Cornhole Valley' - the character names are different too.

I thought it seemed a bit on the nose and really not fitting with the game. Looked up a walkthrough and all the names are Japanese. 'Hangover Park' where you live for example is actually called 'Kojhia' in the walkthrough. So not sure what's going on there. Translators taking liberties?

One other niggle I had was the lack of interaction. The detail in the interiors is absolutely amazing. There are fully fleshed out houses with all kinds of things in them. You'll find gashapon machines and other types of vending machines all over the place. There's even a Gigo arcade full of Blast City cabinets.

BUT, absolutely nothing is interactive! It's basically 'Shenmue, the comedy'. Some little touches like being able to collect capsules, play some games in the arcade or just interact with some of the TVs and stereos about the place would have just made it so much more.

The_B_Man

I had a craving for some StarCraft. Installed the blizzard launcher and downloaded the game.

I remember it being 450mb roughly, with the Broodwar expansion being similar. I had them on one disc years ago.

Turns out they've added HD textures. It's now over 5Gb to download! I was shocked.

I ended up just playing one level and kept toggling between original and HD textures to see the difference, and didn't really play it properly.

On a side note, you can only see the HD textures if u purchased the enhanced edition. This means i would have bought this game with the knowledge of these HD textures, but simply forgot about it....