Together Retro: Shock Troopers

[pierrot]

Did two runs: Valley and Jungle. I wasn't really keeping track of how many credits I used, but it was probably somewhere between $3-$4 worth, each. Maybe fewer. Big Mama is definitely the best character.

I'm probably done with this game, though. It's nice that there are a number of different paths, and being able to switch paths at stage 5 is interesting, but it doesn't feel like there's much variety to the gameplay. (Outside of the bike stage.) A lot of the bosses are almost exactly the same, even within a given path; The differences in the characters seem a bit too subtle for me to even care about the majority of them; and the game just doesn't do anything to really hook me like Metal Slug or something else might. There's not a lot of detail to the game—aside from the monkey that tries to steal the bananas, and Maru scarfing down donuts after one of the stages—either, I feel.

Fun game, but ephemeral.

About the team mode, I don't really see a reason not to use it exclusively. There's no real reason to ever switch out characters, but they can still give bonus health after stages depending on their 'attunement' to the next stage. It seems to have the potential to be substantially more than the health bonus in lone wolf mode.

[mjmjr25]

I haven't taken any proper runs yet but my boys are participating and warming up the cart:

you can thank the homey Pierrot for the improved pic quality - thanks duder.

[Sload Soap]

Did a run through each of the paths as Big Mama, Lonely Wolf. As usual it was a lot of fun.

I find that the difficulty doesn't really alter that much over the course of the stages compared to something like Metal Slug, which starts off OK and goes insane by the last level. I can clear Shock Troopers on maybe four credits which is pretty good for my level of skill, whereas I think it took me 25+ to beat Metal Slug 3.

The ending to this game always cracks me up as well: "The tender sunlight shining through the window, the calm breeze, song of birds. Happiness is made up of such trivia."

[noiseredux]

man, I just tried for the third time and I'm having a really tough time enjoying this game. It sounds stupid, but I don't really like these kind of games where you gotta aim in 8 directions. Maybe I'm just terrible at them, but I find it feels like a chore to play. :\

[BoneSnapDeez]

I like these 8-direction games much better than those scrolling pew-pew shooters yous guys are all into. But 2D run 'n' gun is my favorite shooter genre. That said - I do think Shock Troopers is better than any Metal Slug game.

Serious question - is anyone going to try the Neo Geo X version of the game? That's what I was planning to play before I realized I could get it $10 cheaper on PS2.

[noiseredux]

I far prefer Metal Slug to this. And far prefer pew pew to Metal Slug.

[mjmjr25]

I hope you can give it more time, Brad. This genre is really prevalent in the neo geo world (and shmup world too - Under Defeat sorta, Zero Gunner 2 - a lot). Ninja Commando on Neo and my fav, Cannon Spike on DC - though the stages are confined, not scrolling in Cannon Spike. It of course takes getting used to.

[ExedExes]

First run -- Mountain course w/ Southern Cross. Got to Stage 4 on one credit. That's pretty good. Easy route to start with, lots of health items to be found. Plus his boomerang is probably one of the best special weapons for it covers nearly the whole screen.

I'll try the other characters out through the month on their respective "good" courses and see who really is the best.

Fast tip -- you can shoot, then melee enemies if your close enough for items. Only works on enemies that are killed with a normal or machine gun (not flame, buster, anything that causes a different death animation).

[ninjainspandex]

I don't know if you know this but there are actually two different versions of Shock Troopers. In one version your team shares a life bar and in the other version they each have their own separate life bar. My two shock trooper carts are the second version where they each have their own lifebar, alot of people seem to consider this the better version. You can read about it more in this post from Neo-Geo.com

Version A
-The player's lifebar consists of 128 "points". (whenever you pickup a life-restoring item, the number of points that it adds is shown. The first-aid kits are worth +64 points)
-When a new credit is started, the lifebar does not start fully filled up at 128 points. In Lonly Wolf the lifebar starts at 112 points, and in Team Battle it starts around 90-96 points (I do not remember the exact amount right now, but it's somewhere in that range).
-At the start of each level, it will show you each character's "rating" for the level. They will be given anywhere from 0-3 stars for the level. The higher the star amount, the faster that character will be able to move ON THAT STAGE ONLY. In addition to this, if a character is rated 2 stars a +8 life bonus will be added, and if they are rated 3 stars they will get a +16.
-You are given only one life. If you are playing in Team Battle, all three characters share that lifebar, so once it runs out it's game over.

Version B
-The player's lifebar consists of 64 points, which means you can only take half as much damage before dying.
-Lifebar starts at 100% in both Lonly Wolf and Team Battle modes.
-There is no display of the star rating inbetween stages, and no life-ups are given for characters that are rated 2 or 3 stars on the stage. However, THE STAR RATINGS ARE STILL THERE EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED TO THE PLAYER, so characters will still move at different speeds depending on the level.
-By default the game is setup to give you 3 lives in Lonly Wolf, and a 3-character team in Team Battle. This setting is changeable in the soft dips under "HERO" to be a number from 1-8 (Yes, this means that if you change it to 8 and select Team Battle, you will all have 8 characters on your team). The "HERO" setting is absent entirely on Version A.
-Also worth noting that in Team Battle if the game is finished after 1 or 2 of the characters die, those characters will not be present in the ending. In Version A all 3 characters will always be there (since they all share one lifebar, naturally).

That's pretty much it. It's still unclear as to why there are two different versions in the first place, considering the game only saw an MVS release. I have a US cart and a Japanese cart, and they're both Version B. No serial number is given on the Japanese cart, the US one is 011XXX (all my carts are in a box right now). I'm pretty sure somebody here had a Version A cart with a low serial number, so it seems to imply that the Version A carts are in fact earlier. Strangely though, there are some screenshots of Shock Troopers contained in the Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad Original Soundtrack booklet, and they are clearly screenshots of Version A. Hmmmm.

Oh, and just as a correction in this thread (although Shito already pointed it out), changes in stuff like intros from AES to MVS do *NOT* count as a separate version of a game. All the data is programmed onto every game, it just depends on which format the game is running in of course. Magician Lord IS a game with two separate versions though, the MVS carts are programmed with the smaller lifebar and the "respawn where you died" function. The AES carts are programmed with the larger lifebar and the "restart the level when you die". If you somehow played the MVS version on an AES, you would get the extra AES-specific intro AND be able to play the game in the "respawn where you died" format.

Not sure why they have two versions.

[ExedExes]

I made a reference to the different versions on the article that I wrote for the main page, but I could not find as much information as you did. Thanks for that. I must have played Version B when it was out on MVS because there was always a full life bar, and the one I play now on MAME is Version A.