December Together Retro - Robots Fighting Robots!

[dsheinem]

Is the Saturn port better somehow?

the difference is minor

Oh, yeah. Much.

hmmm...

[pierrot]

Well, I found it to be a pretty big difference when I went from the PSN version to the Saturn version, but I could see most people not noticing it.

And of course the Gundam Battle Assault games are super fun. BIG ZAM!.

Oh hell yeah! I love Battle Assault 2!

[Gunstar Green]

I'm personally not very obsessive about the animation differences . I don't think it takes as much of a hit as a lot of Capcom fighters on PS1 do though. It's fair to say PS1 port is inferior though it's by no means bad.

[stickem]

Cyberbots is also super legit. I highly recommend unlocking all of the hidden mechs, even if you're playing the seriously inferior Playstation version. Take a spin through Devilot's story (really all of the characters' story modes are worth playing through) for super great times. Make sure to play through Jin's story also, for that hot ending demo music.

Is the Saturn port better somehow?

The PS1 port has longer load times (I'm assuming this is not an issue on modern ports?) and is missing a few frames of animation but the difference is minor and wouldn't even be noticed by most people. It plays fine.

Dam the load times are long on the saturn port as it is. I went with the Saturn port just because it had a big box "collectors edition". The downside is I have no clue what's going on. Just thought it had street fighter controls, but no....

[prfsnl_gmr]

Wait...there are no continues in Vectorman?! I played for this long to get this far, and that’s it? W...T...F...

[MrPopo]

Welcome to Vectorman.

[prfsnl_gmr]

It wouldn’t be that bad, except that the game keeps changing the play style on you. The platforming levels aren’t too bad, but then the game changes to an overhead perspective, placing you in a strange situation (i.e., a bug on a scroll?), and giving you no idea what you’re supposed to do. You burn through a bunch of lives trying to figure it out, and the game’s like, “Too bad! Play through the entire game again so you can practice this again.” Nope. Life is too short for that. I’m going to deploy save states between levels so I can get through this game.

[noiseredux]

Hey, remember that time that Nintendo R&D1 developed a fighting game for NES? Yeah, me neither. Because it was released at the tail end of the Famicom's life cycle and was never brought over to the states. Truthfully, I don't think I was even aware that Joy Mech Fight even existed until about a week ago. But thanks to the Switch's region-free nature, I'm able to play it via the Switch Online service.

So Joy Mech Fight a one-on-one fighting game in the vein of Street Fighter. It also takes some cues from Mega Man in that it features robots, and beating one robot means you can now play as that robot.

Let me lead with a positive. Given that this game was released in 1993, Nintendo really knew how to get the most out of the 8-bit hardware at this point. There's some truly impressive stuff going on here. Visually, Joy Mech Fight looks fantastic. The colors are bright and vibrant. The backgrounds are all well detailed.

The robots themselves have no arms or legs, by the way. Instead, they are floating heads, torsos, hands and feet. It's kind of weirdly jarring at first, but you get used to it rather quickly. I would assume this concession makes them easier to animated, and thus allows R&D1 to pull off some fast fighting that otherwise would not have been possible on the Famicom. It's impressive stuff.

The fighting feels pretty fluid and good. And special moves are generally easy to pull off once you figure them out. I went in mashing and hoped for the best, and honestly - at least in the story mode - it seems pretty easy to push through without knowing what you're doing (assuming you've played your fair share of fighting games before).

You start with a super basic robot, and as each one is beaten you can choose to swap to defeated ones between rounds. I liked the one that had Wolverine-style claws and just stuck with him for a while.

After seven battles I thought the game was over, but it said I had cleared Level 1 .Wait, what? How long IS this game? I checked Wikipedia and it turns out there's over thirty robots to battle. Damn. Depending how much you like Joy Mech Fight this is either a positive or a negative. For me it was kind of like... I mean, this game is fine. But it's not exactly so compelling that I want to battle 30 robots just to clear the story mode.

I have to say - for me - this is more a cool curio than a game I really want to spend quality time with. I created a save state after clearing the first wave, but I'm not sure I'm in a big rush to get back to this one.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I have to say - for me - this is more a cool curio than a game I really want to spend quality time with. I created a save state after clearing the first wave, but I'm not sure I'm in a big rush to get back to this one.

Played some last night and this is kinda where I'm at. It's an "interesting" game but not one I really want to dive into. It is better than Nintendo's previous attempt at a fighting game...... Urban Champion.

And you gave me a heart attack for a second. Thought you had sold some consoles to buy a Famicom.

[noiseredux]

Ha, no. All the US Ninty consoles have my TV inputs filled.