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PartridgeSenpai
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Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by PartridgeSenpai Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:56 pm

Super excited to be hosting another Together Retro :D

The voting was really close, but One Hit(?) Wonders eventually won out. This month is all about celebrating and looking into not just games but series that only ever had one shot at life. These are games that are the only entry in their franchise. That means no sequels, prequels, or even puzzle game spin-offs (however, very importantly, ports are totally okay). Whether it was due to the financial situation at the company, the intended lifecycle of the product, or simply poor sales performance, these were all the fruit that these could-be franchises ever bore, so let's give them a look and take a look at why they may've been abandoned~

My suggested titles from the voting thread were:
- Nintendo regional exclusives/flops (Disaster Day of Crisis, Cubeivore, Doshin the Giant, etc.)
- Treasure's Genesis games (basically all published by SEGA)
- Capcom and Konami's PS1/PS2 output (there's a lot of weird stuff there)

And AJ & Prfsnl were kind enough to make several more detailed suggestion lists in the voting thread. Thanks a bunch, guys :D

For me, I'm gonna be playing Onion Games's "moon RPG" that got ported to English (finally) on Switch for the first time last year~. A very preferable alternative to shelling out like 6000+ yen for the Japan-exclusive PS1 original ^^;

Happy gaming, everybody~
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SpaceBooger
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by SpaceBooger Mon Mar 01, 2021 6:49 pm

This list is mostly OG Xbox and newer but has some good ideas on it: https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/201 ... t-wonders/
Here is another list, some on this list would not qualify by our definition, but worth checking out: https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/201 ... t-wonders/

Here are some I am considering (please double-check that they would work):
GunValkyrie
Jet Force Gemini
Metal Storm
ShatterHand
The Guardian Legend
Comix Zone
Ristar (does having a GG version count or is it a port?)
Billy Hatcher
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Brütal Legend
Full Throttle
Grim Fandango

Lastly, would Super Mario 2 work since it's technically Doki Doki Panic which was a one-hit wonder... as was the style for SMB2?
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by alienjesus Mon Mar 01, 2021 8:02 pm

My plan for the month:

1. Soleil (aka Crusader of Centy) for Mega Drive - published by Sega in Europe and Atlas in America (who are also now owned by Sega)

2. Great Greed for Game Boy - developed & published by Namco
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by prfsnl_gmr Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:43 pm

SpaceBooger wrote:Here are some I am considering (please double-check that they would work):
GunValkyrie
Jet Force Gemini
Metal Storm
ShatterHand
The Guardian Legend
Comix Zone
Ristar (does having a GG version count or is it a port?)
Billy Hatcher
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Brütal Legend
Full Throttle
Grim Fandango
Super Mario 2


The Guardian Legend is actually the sequel to Guardic for the MSX.

The Game Gear Version of Ristar is different enough from the original that I would exclude it.

IMO, Star Wars: Republic Commando ties into Star Wars games generally. There is only one Republic Commando game, though.

SMB2 is a definitely part of the SMB series. There may not be another game in the series quite like it, but it definitely influence later games in the series.

Just my thoughts!
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by SpaceBooger Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:33 pm

prfsnl_gmr wrote:The Guardian Legend is actually the sequel to Guardic for the MSX.

The Game Gear Version of Ristar is different enough from the original that I would exclude it.

IMO, Star Wars: Republic Commando ties into Star Wars games generally. There is only one Republic Commando game, though.

SMB2 is a definitely part of the SMB series. There may not be another game in the series quite like it, but it definitely influence later games in the series.

Just my thoughts!

Awesome. That is why I posted them. I wanted to create a discussion... plus I never knew about the MSX sequel to Guardian Legend.

I think I will give the following a go:
Jet Force Gemini - I own it always wanted to play it, but never have for more than a couple of minutes.
Metal Storm - I just got the Retro-Bit rerelease last year...
ShatterHand - I have wanted to beat this soooo many times but never put the time into it. Maybe this month is it.
Crusader of Centy - I have a repro that doesn't save... maybe time to play on the Retron5 or the Genesis Mini.
I'll give each of them a try and see which one sticks.
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by Nemoide Mon Mar 01, 2021 11:44 pm

I'm planning on playing Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa put out by Konami, originally for Famicom Disk System!
I have the Wii Virtual Console release and I feel like this is a good title to test out hooking up my Wii to my CRT so I can play it in 240p! Plus I've got a controller for the NES mini so I can have something PRETTY CLOSE to the original FDS experience.

The game looks silly and cute, I'm hoping it's not unbelievably brutally difficult, but I GUESS I'LL FIND OUT EITHER WAY!
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by PartridgeSenpai Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:29 am

@SpaceBooger - I'd have to agree that SMB2 doesn't really count, as it's just too Mario and influences so much of where the series goes, I don't think even Doki Doki Panic would count ^^;

@Nemoide - That's a fun one! I don't thiiink it's a terribly hard one? At least I don't remember it being super hard. It's a little awkward to get used to how Upa moves at first, but it's far from Konami's hardest game on the system, for sure.

I started moon RPG earlier today~. It took a little while to get used to (it has that day-night mechanic that that developer loves to use so much XP), but I'm really enjoying it! It's a really cool adventure game, and you can totally see that this guy went on to make Chibi-Robo X3

One of the really cool aspects of the game is that the weird way the people talk at first just sounded like Chibi-Robo-esque gibberish, but it's actually all sorts of forieign languages, with each character having their own cut up bits of audio from one language making up their speech (the baker has English, the grandma has French, and the weird god thing has Polish, as a Polish friend of mine pointed out~).

I realize I'm kinda pushing the limits of my "put out by a big publisher" requirement by playing a game published back in the day by ASCII Corporation, but I'm still gonna play Captain Rainbow (a game by the same director~) later this month too, so at the very least that will most certainly count :lol:
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by Lurkei Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:30 am

Nemoide wrote:I'm planning on playing Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa put out by Konami, originally for Famicom Disk System!

I was planning to play Somer Assault, buuut I haven't played this, and I thought it would be fun to play it alongside someone else. So play it, I did! I did two playthroughs: my first on the FDS version, and my second on the FC cartridge version.

It's definitely one of Konami's easiest platformers. Lots of health pickups, scarce enemies, and not-too-tricky platforming. It's made a little tougher due to having no checkpoints, but the levels are short, so it's manageable. I only found that 5-3's underwater pencil tunnel and 7-3's tiny platforms gave me trouble. Were there any parts that tripped you up?

The ability to make balloon platforms out of your enemies together with the baby's high and floaty jumps is a great mix. It's super satisfying to ride up into the air and make risky leaps over pits or hazards that would be impossible in most other NES platformers. But these moments were rare and most of the time, enemies were just used to get up to higher platforms or climb walls, a not-so-satisfying mechanic. It's fun enough as is, but I wish there was more varied level design. A thought I had while playing is that I could see myself having a lot of fun with these mechanics if the levels were more mazelike like in Ufouria or Rainbow Bell Adventures.

The game deserves kudos for its bosses, too. Normally, I have zero tolerance for recycled bosses (especially to the degree this game does it), but fighting that pig over and over didn't feel as repetitive as it really should've. That's impressive to me! I think it's because of the way you attack: you have to take the time to hit and launch enemies in the right direction, in the short period before they fly away, while dodging the boss and having slow movement. It's not really challenging, but it's engaging enough for me.

If anyone ever makes a hard mode hack of this game, I'll for sure be the first person to play it. Maybe I should make it...

Also, I wanted to particularly mention that the flickering tomato platform in 2-1 caught me completely off-guard. The lack of a proper disappearing animation made me think I did something to despawn them! And to my knowledge, there's only one flickering tomato platform in the whole game, so I could have never guessed that this one particular platform, looking no different from the rest, would vanish right under my feet! I honestly love when games pull that kind of stuff. I'd prefer to be surprised by something unpredictable and laugh at it than breeze by something overly telegraphed.

Let me know what you thought of the game!
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by PartridgeSenpai Fri Mar 05, 2021 7:50 am

I finished moon today~. It's a really clever adventure game that has a fair bit to say about games, how they're played, and how they're made. I can pretty easily see why it's the only entry in its series (that not being the case would really fly in a lot of the game's messaging), but given the other games that the alumni of this game/studio made, it's clear that their messaging continued on in many spiritual successors to moon (from Chibi-Robo to Chulip).

Next I think I miiight play Captain Rainbow (another spiritual successor to moon), or possibly Okage: Shadow King, which was the one Fun Things purchase I let myself have this month.
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Re: Together Retro March '21 - One Hit(?) Wonders

by PartridgeSenpai Sat Mar 06, 2021 6:39 am

Finished moon yesterday, so today I started playing Captain Rainbow~. The last time I played it it was on a stream where I was REALLY tired and hungry, so I only got like an hour in. It didn't take me long to get past that point, and now I'm like 7 or so hours into the game. I've currently got three wishes granted (out of twelves) with another ready to go, although two of those are effectively the tutorial that takes place in the game's smaller first area.

Gratuitous transphobia and awkwardly crude humor aside, I'm enjoying it a fair bit. It's the inferior of its sister game Chibi-Robo by leaps and bounds (and the presence of quite so many Japan-exclusive Nintendo characters doesn't leave much to the imagination as far as why this game was never localized), but it's still a fine adventure game.
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