Son Of General Retro Discussion

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DinoRex

CiDeRmAn

Hey!
That guy looks like... looks like... Gordon Freeman!

Doge

o1s1n wrote: »

There really aren't that many at all. Between The Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi on the PS2, all you really have is Shinobi III on the Megadrive and Shinobi X on the Saturn.

III is fantastic and almost as good as The Revenge. Still haven't played X yet.

Wikipedia lists 12 in total:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(series)

3.1 Shinobi (1987)
3.2 Shadow Dancer (1989, 1991)
3.3 The Revenge of Shinobi (1989)
3.4 Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (1990)
3.5 The Cyber Shinobi (1990)
3.6 Shinobi (1991)
3.7 Shinobi 2: The Silent Fury (1992)
3.8 Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993)
3.9 Shinobi Legions (1995)
3.10 Shinobi (2002)
3.11 Nightshade (2003)
3.12 Shinobi (2011)


I never would have thought of Shadow Dancer as a Shinobi sequel, but they all seem to be made by the same company more or less.

Retr0gamer

Shadow Dancer is 100% a Shinobi game.

Just beat Dark Souls. Guess I'm as amazing as I always knew I was.

Atavan-Halen

Yay retr0!

Ima have to pick that up soon. I quite like demons souls.

Doge

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Shadow Dancer is 100% a Shinobi game.

Just beat Dark Souls. Guess I'm as amazing as I always knew I was.

I think I've confused it for Shadow Warriors, which was on the c64 and had totally different mechanics!

Jack burton

Well Shadow Dance in the Arcade and on the MD are both completly different games but both have the same mechanics, which is different to the rest of the 2D games

On a seperate note, watch this and wait for 1:15, so many people I know are just ruined

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/streets-of-talking-classics/720535

Pyongyang

Didn't Shadow Dancer see a release on the C64? What was that other ninja-ey game with yer wan in black who walked about and things?

That was on the C64 too.

I think she had a bike too or something along those lines. I had the demo of it on a CF PowerPak and I thought it was absolute trousers.

OwaynOTT

I have this game got it in a bundle of stuff. It's a sample cart from konami a famicom game. Anyone know what those are worth if anything?

Retr0gamer

Pyongyang wrote: »

Didn't Shadow Dancer see a release on the C64? What was that other ninja-ey game with yer wan in black who walked about and things?

That was on the C64 too.

I think she had a bike too or something along those lines. I had the demo of it on a CF PowerPak and I thought it was absolute trousers.

It was a very late release, I read a review of it in Commodore Format and I had a C64 when everyone else had a SNES or MD. Supposedly it was a rather good conversion as well.

Pyongyang

Aye. At least it wasn't that one with yer wan in it.

US Gold did Shadow Dancer for the C64 did they not?

o1s1n

waveform wrote: »

Wikipedia lists 12 in total:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(series)

3.1 Shinobi (1987)
3.2 Shadow Dancer (1989, 1991)
3.3 The Revenge of Shinobi (1989)
3.4 Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (1990)
3.5 The Cyber Shinobi (1990)
3.6 Shinobi (1991)
3.7 Shinobi 2: The Silent Fury (1992)
3.8 Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993)
3.9 Shinobi Legions (1995)
3.10 Shinobi (2002)
3.11 Nightshade (2003)
3.12 Shinobi (2011)


I never would have thought of Shadow Dancer as a Shinobi sequel, but they all seem to be made by the same company more or less.

Ah, but the comment was 'Between The Revenge and Shinobi and Shinobi on the PS2'

Which leaves you with this -

3.4 Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
3.5 The Cyber Shinobi (1990)
3.6 Shinobi (1991)
3.7 Shinobi 2: The Silent Fury (1992)
3.8 Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993)
3.9 Shinobi Legions (1995)

I always forget about Shadow Dancer, it's a great game. The others are just Master System ports and Gamegear games. I wouldn't call them cannon until you get up to Shinobi III.

Well done Retr0 on beating Dark Souls. How many hours did it take you in the end?

DinoRex

Pyongyang wrote: »

Didn't Shadow Dancer see a release on the C64? What was that other ninja-ey game with yer wan in black who walked about and things?

That was on the C64 too.

I think she had a bike too or something along those lines. I had the demo of it on a CF PowerPak and I thought it was absolute trousers.

Think that's Saboteur 2, you're a guy in the first one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXpnYzr0aAM

I always had a soft spot for it anyway.

Jack burton

For Retr0 go on treat yourself to a nice Christmas present

Pyongyang

DinoRex wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXpnYzr0aAM

I always had a soft spot for it anyway.

Ugh! THAT is the game! Bleurrrgggghhhhh! I'd rather walk around Henry Street in the nip letting aul wans fire a crossbow at my bare arse than play that game.

What an absolute pile of old man's trouser custard that game is. :pac:

Retr0gamer

o1s1n wrote: »

Well done Retr0 on beating Dark Souls. How many hours did it take you in the end?

I'll check when I get home. Think it might be 70+.

By the way the Game Gear Shinobi games are amazing, don't dismiss them!

Jack burton wrote: »

For Retr0 go on treat yourself to a nice Christmas present

Ah yes, the obsession with giving away cheap tacky busts with every special edition of a game. Displaying these in your bedroom will ensure you'll never contract an STD true the fact that you'll never be given the chance to contract one. The worst one was the Halo Reach one, it looks like a few generic chinese knock off toys. Tackiness at it's finest:

Pyongyang

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Cheap tacky busts

DinoRex

I'm just one of those people who has a soft spot for old Durell games.

Loved Thanatos as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meqHf-t0yZ8

CiDeRmAn

That was one of my favourites as well!
Turbo Esprit was brilliant as was the chopper game Combat Lynx...
Ah, the sweet musty smell of nostalgia...
Must get some TLL going on now....

Retr0gamer

Hmm, I've actually only clocked up 53 hours in Dark Souls.

Also two things I noticed from listening to Roleplayers Realm podcast on the way home:

1. Julian Rignall is now working for Gamepro. Awesome, the guy is a legend in UK games journalism.

2. I'm not crazy. Legend of Dragoon and it's awfulness has now become a running joke on Roleplayers Realm. It's not just me and nobody knows their RPGs better than Kat Bailey and Bob Mackey.

DinoRex

Finished the 3rd dungeon in Zelda last night.

Wasn't so crazy about that one... lot of the monsters were pretty frustrating to fight with the control system.

I've been reading reviews and I'm beginning to think that either I'm completely mad in hating the controls or I have a dodgey controller... may try my old Wii Motion Plus later... oh... I wonder what would happen if I plugged the motion plus add on into the zelda controller with it's integrated motion pluss...

Retr0gamer

I heard that Doctor Who powers the Tardis with such a contraption.

johnny_ultimate

Ugh, collectibles. Retro platformers have a lot to answer for - looking at Rare particularly.

CiDeRmAn

Donkey Kong 64!
So many things to keep juggling in the noggin while thinking of loads of different controls for characters and tons of levels, I found the whole thing massive, impressive but a mess.
Not at all as tight as Jet Force Gemini or BlastCorp.
Even the first Banjo game was far better, the second one suffered from that gods-awful collectible thang, in fact I seem to remember countless little pop ups for the first hour telling you what each different one was for....

They seemed to be a better developer on the Nes, and dare I say it, in the earlier days, on the Speccy, as Ultimate (Play the game), at least with Alien8, Knight Lore, Sabre Wulf and Atic Attack.

johnny_ultimate

I'd rather a game just features a handful of worthwhile optional diversions that provide actual gameplay rewards than a crazy amount of worthless trinkets. Assassins Creed sequels feature both - the excellent extra dungeons, and the utterly pointless flags.

Arkham City is proving a nightmare. Why don't I just ignore them, you ask? Well some of the game's best, most fiendish sub-missions - Riddler Hostages - require a certain amount of challenges to be complete. Some of these are skill based, but most involve collecting those endless frickin' trophies. There are four hundred challenges in the game. I'm at 220 - mostly ones I've stumbled across, but maybe around an hour of actively looking for them. The fourth of sixth hostage missions isn't even unlocked yet

Time commitment does not equate to depth. Boo-urns to the otherwise excellent Rocksteady for such stupidity.

And I'm not best fond of the audio logs that seem to have gained newfound popularity since BioShock. Rapture was interesting enough to just about pull it off. Other settings, frankly, are not.

o1s1n

Haven't gone near Arkham City yet, but any collectable I came across in Assylum was by chance. I didn't look out for any at all. Waste of time and an irritating way of dragging a game out.

Didn't really bother with the audio logs at all in that either.

I only really like audio logs when they are used to give you that sense of doom. '****, something really bad happened here'. (Fallout 3 for example) Anything other than that and they tend to get ignored.

Retr0gamer

Donkey Kong 64 is a mediocre platformer made into a terrible game by the absolutely ridiculous amount of collectibles.

DinoRex

Retr0gamer

Ah for **** sake Halo Reach. You were going so well. A few Cheesey lines her and there and some deaths that fail to be emotional, one is the most bromantic thing I've seen since the MGS2 handshake, but otherwise you were doing alright.

Then you go and retcon the series. Namely Cortana. In the first game she's a human AI. In this she's either a forerunner AI or else an AI with vast amounts of forerunner information.

So no instead of Cortana being a clueless human AI she is something akin to Irvine in FF8.

'Remember that evil witch we were sent to assassinate, well she's your bosses wife, she brought you all up in an orphanage when you were younger and you all forgot this due to some Deus Ex machina. I knew this but didn't think it was useful information.'

Now Cortana in Halo 1 is like:

'Yes I knew all about the Halo ring, it's incredible destructive power and the fact that it contained a horrible alien parasite that could threaten the world, but I didn't think it was important to tell you so played dumb.'

Even at it's most simplest it she now knows the location of the Halo in the first game yet the game clearly states they made a blind jump to that location.

Lazy, lazy, shoddy writing Bungie.

At least the game is still enjoyable.

CiDeRmAn

Woo hoo!
I finally offed the two roof gargoyles!
It took a bit of point farming last night to get the stats up but, Feck it, it all worked out!
Boy does this game make you work hard!

paperwork

Had another crack at D64, I left it a while back as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. It is a complete mess, but their hearts were in the right place... they just wanted to give us everything... all at once.

I think D64 is Nintendos Sonic Adventure.

Retr0gamer

A mess is putting it kindly. Rare just didn't understand the simplicity that made Mario 64 so good and spent their time trying to out do it with the mantra of more is better, which was wrong. It's telling that from the great Banjo Kazooie onwards the games got progressively worse.

Myrddin

Retr0gamer wrote: »

A mess is putting it kindly. Rare just didn't understand the simplicity that made Mario 64 so good and spent their time trying to out do it with the mantra of more is better, which was wrong. It's telling that from the great Banjo Kazooie onwards the games got progressively worse.

A similar story with the Sonics of today. While Sonic Generations does have some nice touches, again its missing the point.

CiDeRmAn

Probably true to say that the only truly great Sonic games, post Megadrive, are on the GBA and one on the Neo Geo Pocket Color.
As the polygon count went up the recognition of the core elements that make us love the series seemed to abandon Sonic Team completely.

I think the rot set in with Sonic Adventure, frakkin Big the Cat!

Atavan-Halen

I've been meaning to try out sonic on the NGPC. Is it any good?

o1s1n

atavan-halen wrote: »

I've been meaning to try out sonic on the NGPC. Is it any good?

Definitely give it a go! One of the best games on the system. Looks and plays lovely

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Probably true to say that the only truly great Sonic games, post Megadrive, are on the GBA and one on the Neo Geo Pocket Color.
As the polygon count went up the recognition of the core elements that make us love the series seemed to abandon Sonic Team completely.

Actually never really liked the GBA games. They are ok but the amount of unavoidable unless you are psychic pitfalls is just ridiculous. Really awful level design later in the games when they get tougher.

Sonic team actually pretty much dissolved after Nights on the Saturn. Yuji Naka then took over. Yuji Naka is what went wrong with the Sonic series. He is often credited with creating Sonic but it's not true. Credit where credit is due Yuji Naka was a genius programmer, however he had nothing to do with the game design or production side until Sonic Adventure, he isn't cut out for it.

atavan-halen wrote: »

I've been meaning to try out sonic on the NGPC. Is it any good?

It's decent enough, definitely not up with the megadrive sonics but not bad either. It's made my the same guys that did the GBA games but at least their ****ty level design doesn't pollute the game until later. Getting all the chaos emeralds is a whore though, particularly the final one.

CiDeRmAn

It is a surprisingly nice Sonic game, not quite the game the GBA titles are, but then you have to realise this came out when the GBC was king!
Well worth picking up, it's as common as Jordan too so no probs picking it up cheap.

Myrddin

I done that hybrid bios Dreamcast thingy. Its a mixture of dev bios & retail bios, giving true region free without the need for flashing/resetting etc

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=75731602#post75731602

Atavan-Halen

EnterNow wrote: »

I done that hybrid bios Dreamcast thingy. Its a mixture of dev bios & retail bios, giving true region free without the need for flashing/resetting etc

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=75731602#post75731602

That looks cool! Where can one procure said BIOS chip?

Myrddin

atavan-halen wrote: »

That looks cool! Where can one procure said BIOS chip?

I got mine off Docentore, he has a few left apparently. Otherwise they can be bought here - http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33570 (link from mmmonkeys site)

Jack burton

Right this isnt retro related but it is awesome related! Everyone enjoy this hero, and I'm not being sarcastic, I love gale, want to be his friend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wugY6HNLOCo

Doge

Jack burton wrote: »

Right this isnt retro related but it is awesome related! Everyone enjoy this hero, and I'm not being sarcastic, I love gale, want to be his friend!

Haha, I was only watching that last night! Pity there aint more Gale like characters in Ireland! If they are, they're prob better off hiding!


Anyone ever play the flash game CANABALT?

http://www.canabalt.com/


A fan made re-creation for the Commodore 64 is about to be released soon,
and it looks awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jID05by7gw4

After this video was posted on CSDb, the guy who made the c64 re-creation of Prince Of Persia was gutted,
as he too was working on a c64 version of Canabalt,
and is going to be releasing his own version soon too!

johnny_ultimate

Watched Alien for the first time in a few years tonight (oh hai DinoRex!). With a relatively fresh perspective, I think the makers of Half-Life and Dead Space owe some serious royalties to 20th Century Fox :pac:

I think there's a thesis in there on how homage becomes mimicry!

DinoRex

I want to make a list of cinemas greatest asshole cats, Jones is definitely going to feature highly.

I love how instead of giving the crew an alien tracker Ash gives them a cat exaggerator.

johnny_ultimate

Not as bad as that cat that came back the very next day.

Edited in hindsight to reflect potential nicheness of reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM

Retr0gamer

To say Dead Space owes a little to movies and other games like Resi 4 is like saying Ireland owes a little to the IMF.

DinoRex

johnny_ultimate

Sonic Be@rbrick, combining two of my great nerdy enthusiasms!



I must admit more of a fondness towards the Rilakumma one though... And the Velvet Underground one is just perfect.

There should be an alternative / secret Sonic one too. Tails would be awesome sauce, yo.