Together Retro August 2020 - Birds are Jerks

[marurun]

If you want something not only hard but a bit obtuse, try J.J. and Jeff on TG16. There are birds that poop on you.

[MrPopo]

If you want something not only hard but a bit obtuse, try J.J. and Jeff on TG16. There are birds that poop on you.

Obtuse or obscure?

Also, after grinding for another couple of hours I finally knocked out Ninja Gaiden. I fortunately got a good fight against Ken (deleted him before he could get fireballs out with spamming jump slashes), but then I was stuck on Jaquio for the longest time. Since you only get a health refill the first time and the hall leading up to him spawns a ton of fast moving stuff (including a couple of jerk birds) half the time I'd get in at low health and just die. And it took a while to figure out the right way to deal with his fireballs; if you don't get them into a pattern of despawning off the edge of the screen they'll circle around you and bounce you around. And you gotta be careful not to run into him; there's a fairly narrow window of hitting him without being hit by him. One attempt was him down to one when I died, and the following attempt I killed him with two health remaining. Fortunately, since you cutscene before the Demon you refill to full, and the Demon is the easiest of the three; while Ken can be the easiest if you get a good start it also will go off the rails if you screw up. The Demon is the same from the beginning to the end and the attacks are pretty easily avoided; you'll take a hit here or there but you have plenty of health and can just kill him easy.

[marurun]

JJ and Jeff is decently well known for a TG16 game, but it is hard, and has a lot of that weird early NES logic for requiring you find hidden things to actually progress and win. But it also has a pretty fun sense of humor.

[Ack]

I hate platformers, I have heartburn, and I just beat Castlevania the Adventure. It has annoying birds and bats early on, but those are the easy enemies. The harder part for Christopher Belmont is simply jumping and then somehow turning into a stone made of dead weight in midair as he plummets into a bottomless pit because he was a pixel off on the jump from a collapsing platform.

I despise you, Castlevania the Adventure. I despise you so much, I beat you, then wrote your name on toilet paper so I could enjoy the sensation of shoving you in a toilet, emptying my bladder and bowels on you, and flushing you into the Atlanta sewer system. I hope you die in a fire.

Have a nice day, everyone.

[Ziggy]

E.V.O. on the SNES, as the Amphibian (the second world) you do battle with the insects and they can be quite annoying.

Those bosses were probably the worst of the game's bosses, just due to their mobility vs. your jack of good attack options.

Playing this game as a kid, they gave me a little trouble but it wasn't too long before I could beat them. IIRC, they have a swooping attack, and if you time a jump and bite just right you can nail them during their swoop.

The brick wall that I faced in this game as a kid was the Bird-man Fort during the ice age. Oh yeah... This game does have actual birds that are jerks! They built a fucking fort that's a maze with many warp points. Only jerks do that! I couldn't figure out how to navigate it as a kid, and this was before you could easily look up a guide for it on the net.

Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey has those really annoying bats that kill you in one hit.

This game has been on my list for a while, maybe I'll use this as an excuse to finally play it. I could play either the PC or PS1 version. Would you happen to know if one version is better?

I hate platformers, I have heartburn, and I just beat Castlevania the Adventure. It has annoying birds and bats early on, but those are the easy enemies. The harder part for Christopher Belmont is simply jumping and then somehow turning into a stone made of dead weight in midair as he plummets into a bottomless pit because he was a pixel off on the jump from a collapsing platform.

As much as I love Castlevania, you just move way to slow in this game to make it any fun to play. I ended up using a Game Genie code that makes you walk faster, which breaks certain timed areas (makes them have no challenge) but it was either that or stop playing.

Have you played Castlevania The Adventure ReBirth?

[Ack]

Hey Ziggy, I have not. I played this as part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, but unfortunately ReBirth was not included. In fact, it's sort of a grab bag of classic-vanias.

[Ziggy]

If you're a fan of Classic-Vania, then ReBirth is absolutely worth playing! Unfortunately, it was only ever offered on WiiWare, which has been shut down. So if you wanna play it, you'll either need a soft modded Wii or an emulator.

[opa]

Going through my stuff I found a wad of Rebirth. Gonna check it out.

[Sload Soap]

Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey has those really annoying bats that kill you in one hit.

This game has been on my list for a while, maybe I'll use this as an excuse to finally play it. I could play either the PC or PS1 version. Would you happen to know if one version is better?

As far as I know there isn't much difference outside of some minor graphical changes. I only ever played it on PS1 and it was fine.

[MrPopo]

It occurred to me that I don't have many unbeaten platformers left in my collection. So I started in on my copy of Earthworm Jim. My god, is this game terribly designed. The birds in it, as well as all the other flying enemies, are total jerks, mostly because jumping removes half your ability to deal with enemies. And the screen never scrolls quite far enough for you to see the enemies you're about to jump into. And to call the hit detection "spotty" is charitable. So far the best thing I can say about it is that the animations are pretty.