VideoGame_Discussion

Played through Contra and Image Fight so far. Awesome stuff.

Yes I too wish her movements were more fluid, but in some ways they were going for
a level of realism not well implemented in games before that.
If I were jumping from craggy ledge to craggy ledge with a 1000 foot drop below me
I’d be taking my time to stick the landing as well 😉

This will help explain it:

image

Practically no one had any idea what parkour even was until Assassin's Creed came out and after that no one would shut up about it.

BleedingViolet wrote:

That's a very, very fair point.

Lunar wrote:

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw that “parkour” graph comment. 😂

We already have a dedicated Evercade thread, but just echoing that Duke Nukem Collections 1 & 2 are now open for pre-order.
https://evercade.co.uk/retailers/

I'm really pumped about having the original Duke Nukem games in Collection 1, both the original and remastered versions. I never made much progress in Duke 3D, though, and I can't imagine the Evercade is the optimal control scheme for it. Props for getting the licensing, though.

Too late for our Game of the Month, but remasters of the first three Tomb Raider games were announced during the Nintendo Direct this morning:

https://www.ign.com/articles/tomb-raider-1-2-and-3...

Right after I bought them on the ps3 store earlier this week

Gypsy wrote:

So… what is that controller with A-M buttons used for?

Mahjong I would assume.

Edit: yep that's a mahjong controller. The kan, pon, chii, riichi, and ron buttons give it away.

dunno001 wrote:

My initial thought was banking but that was wrong

“Capcom Quiz Controller for the Famicom

Many of you may not be aware, but the alphabet only goes up to the letter ‘M’ here in Japan. Something to do with WWII I believe – yes terrible joke – apologies to all my Japanese friends reading this.”

https://www.supergaijinultragamer.org/2012/07/spec...

benstylus wrote:

Correct. Pretty much required for playing Mahjong games on the NES. Makes it so much simpler.

Gypsy wrote:

Maybe faster but not really simpler. It would be just as easy to use the left and right on the d pad to select a tile to discard (though iirc some of the old Mahjong games required you to use the special controller). D pad is Just a little slower.

I’d like to nominate both Metroid Fusion and Metroid Dread for October’s game. Both are horror-themed Metroid games where many merciless assassins hunt you relentlessly. From which will you flee: Soulless monsters or soulless machines?

SupremeSarna wrote:

I have special plans for October, but hold on to your nomination for November.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Oh you have seen my sig and cannot resist the siren call of Boapha and his pants of power?

(Or not)

benstylus wrote:

I can't possibly come up with a snarky comment that would do that game justice.

I'll post the October details tonight. I'm sure some people are going to be up for it, and some people won't, but I'm willing to put it out there and see what happens.

Renaissance2K wrote:

It's all the best things about top down action gaming, back before it got repopular with the advent of roguelikes

Renaissance2K wrote:

It'd better not be Huniepop.

SupremeSarna wrote:

What's Huniepop?

*searches for it online*

Well, there goes my algorithm...

It's September 20 (depending on your time zone), which means it's about the time of the month where we call out all the badges we're making on the Game of the Month, but nobody's finished Tomb Raider yet.

Like a lot of games we nominated this year, it's not a short game. I have five levels to go, and each of those levels has averaged about an hour to complete. The original PC release of the game is the kind of esoteric use case that justifies me building a retro PC - it's one of the few DOS titles with native 3DFX support - so I've been playing with a keyboard with the expected clumsy results.

Who else has picked up Tomb Raider this month? How are you finding it?

This is also the time of the month where I'd make a call for nominations, asking what y'al would like to play next month.

However...

Next month, I turn 40. In honor of that momentous event, all through October, I'm taking over the thread for R2K's Birthday Extravaganza. I'm inviting everyone here to explore six different game series that are important to my history as a gamer, and I'm handing out sub-time and gift cards to everyone who does.

The full wall-of-text details are here in the VideoGame_Discussion forum. RTT thread members who participate and finish at least one game will get a icon next to their username.

Until October 1, I'm happy to answer questions or help anyone track down or setup legitimate versions of these games for perusal.

Get psyched. ...Or not. But I hope you do.

Not a moment too soon, I finished Tomb Raider early this morning.

Thinking back to how janky 3D games of this era were, I was really impressed at how well-animated and expansive the game was. Sure, the tank controls take some getting used to, the gunplay is just "hold fire and jump around", and it's not without its share of cheap deaths; some of them by design... Midas...

But I enjoyed it. If you think of Lara as a vehicle to be controlled (insert chauvinist "riding" joke here) and the levels as platforming puzzles that need to be traversed, it helps. After the first few levels, I got into a rhythm and only started to get frustrated again when the levels started to get really demanding. The last three are killer.

Tomb Raider took a lot longer than it should have because I was playing it in my real MS-DOS environment on my Retro PC. I don't know if it's my hardware or just the jankiness of the era, but the 3Dfx version of the game would fail to start half the time, requiring a restart, a reseat, or a sacred ritual before I could get to my saved game without a distorted screen, blank screen, or worse. I also apparently have some kinks to work out of my new VGA capture setup.

Renaissance2K wrote:

What's wrong with Midas? Is the level basly designed or something?

SupremeSarna wrote:

I don't feel like any level was poorly designed. There are a handful of Resident Evil-style "don't even try" traps, though.

The shiny gold door of Tomb Raider is now closed. Here's a look at all the badges we earned this month:

Renaissance2K image

image

Tomb Raider ended up being a long, tricky game. If anyone manages to finish it later on, feel free to share your victory here, and you'll earn your Lara badge.

October kicks off R2K's Birthday Extravaganza.

image

For my birthday, we're playing through games from six game franchises that are important to my career as a gamer.
- Mega Man
- One Must Fall
- Warhawk
- MDK
- Rollcage
- Twisted Metal

Beating games earns you a Cake Badge that gets increasingly decked out as you check more franchises off your list. The more you finish, the more likely you are to win the various raffles at the end of the month.

Check out the main thread (link in my sig) for more details. I look forward to reading about your exploits here.

Hey @Renaissance2K I for one am glad you are doing this. Its like one of the coolest
Things anyone on the site has ever done.

I will try to finish one of the original Mega Man games (prolly Mega Man 2)
And hopefully tell you how much fun i had.

Thanks for continuing to do this every month its really been something
good for all of us. Especially myself. Thank you Good Sir and Happy almost Birthday!

Well it looks like imma try to start on Twisted Metal 3,
I’ve only played the first 2 but apparently I do own
the third game. So thats what Imma try first.

Edit: Is it just my first impression being wrong or is that game
not very good?

BleedingViolet wrote:

Plenty of people like Twisted Metal III and 4, but if you started with 1 or 2, they're abominations.

The original developers and their engine were sold to GT Interactive, but Sony hung onto the franchise and made their own sequels that played very differently.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Well yeah I started with the first game and I think the second game I loved
even more. But I didnt think I ever played the 3rd game until last night.
It could just be my controller too though.

After I stopped Twisted Metal last night,
I popped in Tomb Raider 1 and I thought that played way worse than
I remembered too. I gotta see if I have a better controller laying around somewhere.
Maybe I have to try Tony Hawk 2 with it because I thought the controller
was okay for Rayman but it was pretty frustrating, maybe thats why?

I think Im going to also look up Gameplay videos for Twisted Metal 2 and 3
just to see how different they look and see what the person playing says about each game.
I really dont like just giving up on things so I guess i want to make sure
what I’m in for with this game before I lose patience with it.
Hopefully Flower Power isn't a terrible car either because of course
I picked her, I almost always choose a female character when possible.
If I can beat the game I would prefer to do it with her, especially
since Sweet Tooth wasnt an option. Is he unlockable or something?

Sweet Tooth is behind a cheat code in 2 and 3 for some strange reason.

Same with 4, but it makes sense in that case.

Good to know, it doesnt mean imma keep trying in this game OR trying to finish
the PS1 version of Tomb Raider now. Finally I think I get all the old 3D PS1 game
complaints. The psp and 360 remakes of Tomb Raider made me forget how hideous
the original game was. I played through it on PS1 AND PSP originally but ….. I just can’t with
the original PS1 game anymore. It plays terrible and everything is covered in bat guano that is in your 20
foot ahead only viewpoint. It doesnt even look like an actual cave, it looks like polygonal bullcrap.
I used to effing love this game, now perhaps BECAUSE of the remakes its an effing nightmare.
I did finish the first level in Peru today but it ruins all my fond memories I thought i had of it.
Being old and having different standards now kinda sucks.

I can hopefully beat Mega Man 2 on 3ds/2ds but idk about Twisted Metal 3. I’ll try again for sure
but it will be hard for me now. I really sucked at it but the controls make it even harder for me.
At least it looks better than Tomb Raider on PS1? Its something but barely.

Working a convention this weekend (running the videogaming room), had Twisted Metal Head on going on a PS2 most of the day yesterday. Someone asked if we had Twisted Metal 2 so we swapped it in for them.

Both got pretty regular play

benstylus wrote:

Head-On for PS2 was an incredible value at the time. $20 got you an updated version of the PSP game with better graphics and more features, a pseudo-sequel to Twisted Metal Black, a full digital soundtrack with a handful of tracks from older games, and a ton of footage and interviews.

I watched a couple of videos the other night about all the Twisted Metal games,
Including a best to worst. The game I have available to me is generally
Considered the worst lol. Lucky me 😉

@BleedingViolet Black?

SupremeSarna wrote:

It must be III, since that's the version he's been playing. Only die hard Rob Zombie fans would put that any higher in the list.

Just got word that my PixelFX Gem kits have shipped, so my PS2s are going to be out of commission for a bit while they're upgraded. I'm going to do a run of Twisted Metal: Black before packing them up.

Man, I remembered that this game was hard, but I forgot the specifics of how brutal it can be. The speed at which you go from "full health with a full weapons bay and a smile on your face" to "nearly dead, out of weapons, calling your mom" is truly stunning.

I'm halfway through a run with Roadkill, who was also the first character I played with back when it was first released. As frustrating as the mid-boss fight is, it was almost a breath of fresh air compared to the preceding levels and all the enemies you're trying to avoid.

But on a scale of having fun and enjoying yourself to I just got obliterated by an end stage surprise
in Doom 64 where would you place this at? Worse than Doom 64 or what? Like is it fair at all or what?

It's hard to beat Doom 64 on that front.

Lunar: The Silver Star is close.

But that's more of a Guide Dang It than a "I regret my life choices" concept.