racketboy Contest: RetroGaming Hacks Book & Sega Visions

[racketboy]

BTW racketboy, is there any way you can cross out or remove already taken games? It would make it easier.

I removed the ones taken already.
I'll add more if the list gets too empty

[Abras]

KILLER INSTINCT

KI may just be another fighter to most people, but it's one of the first games I have a clear memory of playing, and thus holds a special spot for me. My (older) cousin would come over and bring his copy of Killer Instinct and the carnage would ensue. He and my older brother would combo away at each other, f-bombs and a-bombs flying, while I button mashed and tried not to lose too badly. I remember distinctly being impressed with the graphics, as nothing I remember seeing on the SNES could compare. Rare took a really big chance when they bought that rendering equipment since they could have gone bankrupt, but this game (plus the Donkey Kong Country's) helped them stay afloat.

The game's campy gore and finishing moves are reminiscent of the Mortal Kombat games, while mechanics of the game feel more like Street Fighter II. The characters, however, are exclusive to KI, and suffice to say that they are some of the coolest characters around. As a kid, Fulgore, Glacius, and Sabre Wolf were so much cooler than Ryu and Zangief. The game also featured a few novelties for the time, such as the double health bar, automatic combos, and combo breakers. Those ideas, especially the combo breaker, have gone on to become quite common in fighting games. But, to be honest, KI is far from the best fighter I've ever played. It was an introduction to the genre for me and I have since moved on, but everyone should give it a try, if only to see a friend's face as you perform an “Ultra Combo.”

[Abras]

Finaly Fantasy (NES) reserved

[fastbilly1]

In 1987 Rare released what many believe as their best game. It single handedly brought vehicular combat to the 8bit generation and created its own subset of the racing genre. Sure it was preceded by Death Race and those like it, but this was the first of its kind where the objects looked like what they were representing. But after doing all that it faded into relative obscurity in the annals of gaming history. It was simply following the pattern set into place by Rare’s other amazing series of that time, Sabrewulf comes to mind. This game of course is none other than RC Pro-Am.

Not only did RC Pro-Am spawn a sequel on the NES, the aptly titled RC Pro-Am 2 (one of the few 4 player NES games), and a portable port, like previously mentioned it spawn a genre. Borrowing its dynamic isometric point of view, slick controls, and quick gameplay, many games followed suit. Rock and Roll Racing being the most obvious, but even Mario Kart utilized the zany powerup idea birthed in RC Pro-Am. Its essence can be felt in games even today.

But even the greats have their inspirations. Super Sprint and Death Race being two of the most obvious from the gameplay point of view. Super Sprint utilized a birds eye view for up to three player F1 racing on a snaking course, while Death Race brought weapons to vehicles for console gameplay – One could argue that MUDs, Rouges, and Autoduel (all pc titles) all brought these elements in first, but this is my writing so you get my opinion.

Other elements introduced in RC Pro-Am would be the obvious track based upgrades, Gears, Engine, and Tire – representing Acceleration, Top Speed, and Grip respectively. Aswell as the ability to have your vehicle upgrade if you collect the letters NINTENDO off of the tracks (you start as a truck, move to a van, then finally a race car). The ubiquitous bombs, rockets, and generic ammo stars are also present, beginning at stage 2. The superstar of the game, the rollcage, appears on stage 3 and quickly becomes a coveted item, because unlike the weapons, the bots can pickup this powerup. Why does this become a problem you ask? Well picking up a rollcage renders a player invulnerable for roughly 30seconds. So your weapons do not harm them and they can run you off the track much like what happens when you hit the bots with a rocket. In a simpler statement, they mess you up.

Even with plenty of ammunition you still have to know how to drive to win. Also the stages are designed to be unforgiving. The first few stages are fairly straight forward, but soon after, the benefits and hazards come in full force. Good news first, littered on stages in strategic locations lay zippers. Shown as a set of red arrow tips in series, zippers will temporarily increase your speed to maximum for a short distance, what seems like roughly thirty in game feet. But with the good, the sole good, there is a plethora of hazards. From the basic water slick, which will simply slow you down, to the retractable wall that will wreck you instantly, the hazards are deviously placed. There are really only three, the aforementioned water slick and wall, along with an oil slick which causes you to spin while continuing in the direction your momentum is carrying you. The oil slick becomes even more destructive is that if you hit a wall or opponent when spinning, you wreck. There is also a rain cloud that is simply a water slick that shifts left and right covering more area, and generally just being annoying. Now the stages are a thing of beauty because of how tricky the creators were. There are some stages where you will be on a trail of zippers and then randomly there will be a popup wall – timed so that if you were the second one off the mark and maintained a decent speed, it will hit you right as you arrive, everyone else will make it just fine. Or the oilsicks right in the way of a perfect drift off a zipper around a turn. RC Pro-Am shows really the epitome of what classic games were, amazing gameplay coupled with damn near impossible tracks.

But that brings up another point I have yet to touch on, drifting. To win RC Pro-Am you must master the vehicles drifting. Since it is a two button game, shoot and go, drifting is achieved by taping turn, and not holding it down. Drifting does slow you down and provides you with what some consider and annoying sound, but it gives you an offensive edge in that if you know what you are doing, you can begin to drift, take out an enemy, then tighten your drift around their wrecked hull and pass them. Ofcourse this seems very passé compared to modern games were you can perform a bootleggers turns with very little effort, but at the time it was an art.

After every race you are given a trophy based on how well you did in the previous round. The is a fairly complicated point system aswell based on the powerups you picked up, how many hazards you hit, etc, but that is unimportant when you get a Gold trophy for first place. The points do get you the big trophies at the top of your trophy case however.

There is one major downside to many people to this amazing game, the lack of in game music. Sure you have a rocking pre game beat, and title screen. But during the game itself the only sounds you hear are of the battlefield. The wine of your RC engine, the droo of the zipper, the boo-boo-pa of the rollcage, the crash of a rocket fire and the satisfying blam of it hitting its target. While many have nostalgic memories of these noise, others abhor them and wont play the game for that reason.

Asteroids and Joust are what many would consider classics, I would rank RC Pro-Am up there with the best. Sure it has its share of problems, but it has all the right markings of an amazing game that surprisingly went unnoticed by so many.



2-3 paragraphs, 2-3 pages...eh I need something to do during the downtime at work anyway.

[racketboy]

There have been some great posts here so far.
This Friday, I will go through the existing posts and designate how many entries they are worth.
So if you want to go back and make them longer or polish them up before then, feel free.

Also, there is no limit on how many games you can write about.
If we run out, I'll add more to the list.

[extrarice]

*bump* metroid added (finally)

[fastbilly1]

To prove I still cannot abide by the rules - read, I was bored at work again:

The amount of platformers that you cannot jump in probably range in the 100s; Out of those the amount that are worth playing, well you could probably count those on one hand. Jumping is an essential element to the platforming environment, jump puzzles are the bread and butter of this genre. So how can a platformer where you cannot jump be any good. Well you get a bionic grappling hook and a big gun. Yes yes, its not the same, but it will do. This game is ofcourse none other than Top Secret: Hitler no Fukkatsu – better known worldwide as Bionic Commando.

Assuming the control of Super Joe once again, he was the main character in Commando previously, or was it Radd/Ladd, or Spencer? The Americanization of this game is awful even by late 80s standards. For one, as you can tell by the name in the Japanese title, in the original version you are fighting against the Nazis and a reincarnated version of Hitler is the final boss. Since we “don’t do that” in the rest of the world, well the Nazis became Badd and the Swastikas became Albatross – but they kept Hitler as the final boss simply renaming him Master-D, why is anybody's guess. Does it change the feel of the game? In the short run yes, instead of fighting fictional evil powers you were fighting what your father or grandfather really did fight. But its affect on the actual game, well it all blends together soon after. Personally I prefer the fictional corporations and enemies over the real ones for most games – makes it harder for them to be categorized as realistic murder simulations, but I could get really off topic on that.

Pinned as Capcom’s first arcade game Bionic Commando had a very decent and unique home version, much like Konami and Contra. While it followed the same liner version style and stages of the arcade version, the controls were far more fluid with a pad as opposed to the 8way joystick used in the arcade cabinet. Though it did lead to problems with the claw/grappling hook and aiming, well some call them problems and some a challenge. Other changes, mainly the obvious graphical and musical, are of little effect on what is important here, the gameplay.

Clad in his green jumpsuit, black boots, and stylized shades, the hero does do one thing quite well. No matter how you look at it he does a lot of killing. Using a gun almost the size of his body and his claw the enemies don’t stand a chance. Then again initially you can only take one hit and you die, so what is a special ops to do? Well after you kill your enemies a can bounces up and down from where they were standing. Why a can comes out of your enemy’s corpse, and why it bounces is a question for the ages. You can either walk over these cans or grab them with your claw, right after they die if you shoot your claw straight ahead you can easily snag it without missing a beat, but its not as debonair as swing through a barrel to pick it up. After you gather enough cans you get a single hit point. You can have up to nine (9) hit points at a resounding 300 cans. And if you have ever played the later stages, you understand why you need them.

The stages on a whole are linear, but offer some very neat ideas that very few games have ever done, at the time they were unheard of, except in a few Scifi Rouges. For one you constantly have to use radio rooms to contact home base. Before or after you do this you can wire tap and find out what the enemy soldiers are doing. Usually it is useless info “the trucks are on the move” but sometimes it can be useful information about an upcoming boss or stage. And every once and a while the tap is traced and enemies will begin to spawn in the room while an alarm goes off – this scared the hell out of me the first time it happened, and sometimes can even to this day. Other brilliant applications in the game revolve around the trademark bionic arm and its uses.

Other than being the obvious jump, allowing you to scale vertically with ease. Firing the arm at an angle can cause you to swing over gaps or into enemies. As previously mentioned it can also be used to pickup the cans enemies leave behind, but it can also pickup your shiny new weapons that parachute from the sky, even in buildings and underground. It is a wee bit of a glitch for that to work, but it is handy when they fall in obstacles or walls. More importantly if you can hit enemies with it, they are stunned for a moment, enough that if you can get it lined up correctly, you can juggle the enemy off the wall and the claw while shooting in between – think of it much like the way one can abuse sword fighting in Prince of Persia.

Another unique aspect is that you do not have to play all the stages. The game begins at home base and you command your blue helicopter to move toward stage one. At stage one you can decide to descend (play the stage) or move on. If you choose to move on you can run into trucks which spawns an overhead stage in the vein of Commando or Ikari Warriors. In which the claw spins around you in a circular fashion instead of in a line, repelling the enemies to a safe distance and stunning them for a very short moment – it will also pickup any of the albatross emblems under its path.

Stage design is a major component of any game, and Bionic Commando is not slouch. With vibrant backgrounds and foregrounds and believable locations it does not disappoint. From your dynamic parachuting in to the first stage to the depths of the earth in the latter, the game may be liner but it has a style that was present in many games of the time. I still find it enjoyable to grapple onto lights and swing like a madman all while firing at the enemy. More robust than other ports from the same year, Bionic Commando offered people a chance to take on the world from their den with what were considered primer graphics at the time. And it still can bring some of those thoughts to people today. It may be blocky and some of the enemies are blurry, but it will provide you with a difficult journey and a rewarding experience.

Sadly the world record is now set at around 2 minutes, and a video is on the internet. If you have never played the game I highly recommend playing it before watching the video. While it is an impressive feat of gaming, speed runs ruin the experience, in that you learn all the tricks before you even play. If you have never taken on Badd give it a whirl, the worst it can do is waste a few moments of your time.

[fastbilly1]

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A Start

That is all that needs to be said about Contra.




*Note this is only halfway a joke entry.

[racketboy]

5 Days Left for entries.

[bustaballs]

I'd like to say something.

That book mentions ZZT. First of all, the book didn't give credit to the game Burglar which was made by Madtom of the ZZT community. Secondly, the URL of the ZZT community in that book is incorrect. The new one is www.zzt.org

ZZT freakin rocks btw..