db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 17, 2014 20:37:57 GMT
I won't quibble over terminology. Tech demos or not they were a lot of fun to play, different than a lot games that came before and keep me coming back for more occasionally. There were some great arcade ports on the MD/G but given that most can emulate the actual arcade game on their computers with relative ease now can they still be considered essential games? In most cases I'd rather just play the arcade version in MAME. Games I currently consider essential on the MD/G because they weren't offered on other systems or were the best of any: NFL '94, Outrun(but only because I can't get the arcade to emulate properly on my computer), Shinobi 3 and Ghouls & Ghosts just because of the continues you don't get in the arcade...I can't think of anymore right now but perhaps you're right. Perhaps I'm just not familiar enough with all the awesome games available for it. Please do educate me about this. I'd love to know what others here think are essential games for the MD/G. I will certainly check them out.
BTW, I've played through some of Contra Hard Corps and think it's a good game. However, aside from the top down parts, I just prefer The Alien Wars more overall.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 17, 2014 23:45:12 GMT
I can't think of anymore right now but perhaps you're right. Games i would name essential, that are unique to the Mega Drive: - Revenge of the Shinobi - Shinobi 3 - Shadow Dancer (has nothing to do with the Arcade game) - Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles obviously - Gunstar Heroes - Comix Zone - Vectorman 1 & 2 - Streets of Rage 1 & 2 - Alisia Dragoon - Eternal Champions - Landstalker - Shining Force 1 & 2 - Phantasy Star IV - Wonder Boy in Monster World - World of Illusion - Quackshot - Ranger X - Castlevania: Bloodlines/The New Generation - Thunderforcer III & IV - Ristar - Adventures of Batman & Robin - Ecco the Dolphin - Elemental Master - Gauntlet IV (though it's based on the first Gauntlet Arcade Game) - Gleylancer - Golden Axe 2 - Rocket Knight Adventures - Toe Jam & Earl - Target Earth - Alien Soldier - Herzog Zwei - Panorama Cotton which is a technical marvel that is actually fun to play and not just simply a graphic demo. I leave out sports games, since i can't think of too many unique ones that actually were good and the best ones are multiplattform releases that were better on other systems (like NHL 94 being a legendary game but it gets blown away by the PC version). Though maybe Evander Holyfield's "Real Deal" Boxing can be counted.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 18, 2014 0:02:49 GMT
I can't think of anymore right now but perhaps you're right. Games i would name essential, that are unique to the Mega Drive: - Revenge of the Shinobi - Shinobi 3 - Shadow Dancer (has nothing to do with the Arcade game) - Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles obviously - Gunstar Heroes - Comix Zone - Vectorman 1 & 2 - Streets of Rage 1 & 2 - Alisia Dragoon - Eternal Champions - Landstalker - Shining Force 1 & 2 - Phantasy Star IV - Wonder Boy in Monster World - World of Illusion - Quackshot - Ranger X - Castlevania: Bloodlines/The New Generation - Thunderforcer III & IV - Ristar - Adventures of Batman & Robin - Ecco the Dolphin - Elemental Master - Gauntlet IV (though it's based on the first Gauntlet Arcade Game) - Gleylancer - Golden Axe 2 - Rocket Knight Adventures - Toe Jam & Earl - Target Earth - Alien Soldier - Herzog Zwei - Panorama Cotton which is a technical marvel that is actually fun to play and not just simply a graphic demo. I leave out sports games, since i can't think of too many unique ones that actually were good and the best ones are multiplattform releases that were better on other systems (like NHL 94 being a legendary game but it gets blown away by the PC version). Though maybe Evander Holyfield's "Real Deal" Boxing can be counted. While some I don't recognize and will check out most you mention here I've tried and they're just not for me. I'm generally not a fan of shmups and beat em ups unless there's really something unique and fun about them. Otherwise they just seem like pointless level grinds to me. Also, I'm not a fan of RPGs at all. No, not even Phantasy Star, as sacrilegious as that may be here. I don't like having to read a lot of text when gaming and I find most turn-based combat systems about as fun as watching two ants battle over a crumb of food. Actually, the ant battle does sound like more fun to me! I don't think I can be converted on this one because I have tried after hearing so many people rave and wax poetically about them. However, it's just not the kind of fun I'm looking for. Getting even more sacrilegious I'm not a Sonic fan either. I guess I just don't get it but it seems to me that you get going pretty fast in that game and inevitably bump into something spilling all the rings you've just collected. It just seems like an exercise in futility to me and I just can't get into a groove with it. Thanks for the suggestions though. I will check some of them out soon. Panorama Cotton does look interesting to me but more fun than Star Fox?! Come on!
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 18, 2014 21:46:52 GMT
We got it eventually! They did release a second model, identical to the Japanese original, in Europe. I actually prefer the d-pad on the first model here (I like the notches on it!), but those should buttons are baffling. I know (i have those pads now, i also have the original pads) but the fact remains that there was no need for what Sega released originally here in Europe and NA. Why not keep the same design since it was based on the Mega Drive 6 Button Pad? It worked, it was popular. Why design something that has a horrible, uncomfortable D-Pad and shitty shoulder buttons? It makes no sense at all. The 3D Pad was even better (only flaw is the wobbly start button, to this day i don't know why Sega and Sony thought that rubber buttons were a good idea?!) Panorama Cotton does look interesting to me but more fun than Star Fox?! Come on! I would say that Panorama Cotton has a bit more going with the changing scenery, where Starfox stays the same (flying around with not much going on, enemies usually coming in the same way and even when you encounter some closing doors, they only hurt you a but and don't destroy you) and you have to keep in mind that Panorama was done with a stock cartridge, no extra chips or cpus, whereas Starfox relies on the SuperFX CPU and it looked like a 1990 PC Game, i mean 3D textured polygons were an old thing on the Mega Drive (Hard Drivin', again done without any extra CPU's or Chips!) But to be honest, Rail Shooter is a genre that should've never left the Arcades. It's fun for a couple minutes but outside of "ooooh look at the fancy graphics!" there's nothing there to hold interest. The best example is Star Wars - Rebel Assault on the PC. Back then it was insane: Full Motion Video, Star Wars licence, the music and the graphics were actually awesome, which led to people wasting several hundred bucks on a CD-Rom but once you get behind that it's a "Auto-Pilot, press a button every couple seconds and slightly move your joystick", the gameplay is just bad. To this day i don't understand why retrogames crap all over the Sega CD FMV Railshooters like Sewer Shark, while at the same time Rebel Assault is seen as something amazing. It's basically the same faeces, though Sewer has cheesy cutscenes which is a win in my book. There are only 3 Rail Shooting games that are amazing: Panzer Dragoon 1 & 2 and Sin & Punishment on the N64 (i actually forgot to mention that on my console post, though apparently "cabal shooter" is the correct term for that game, in the end it's the same though) everything else either follows the classic Space Harrier system or is just too generic while i don't understand why it was so popular in the 90's (even the band Iron Maiden released a rail shooter that was really bad, Ed Hunter)
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 18, 2014 22:43:24 GMT
Ok, I'm not trying to get snippy here but I tried it and Star Fox should be considered a demo next to this?! It seemed much more like a broken demo to me than SF, not yet complete and out for beta. The controls were pretty wonky and I didn't find the 3D effect as convincing as SF. Furthermore, I just wasn't getting lost in the game or having much fun. I think while you find SNES games kind of a flash in the pan I think of many MD/G games that way. Graphically impressive but just not a whole lot of fun to play. I don't mind the polygons. Virtua Racing is like that but I can still have a lot of fun playing it. I'm not put off by games that are intentionally stylized because of the limits of their technology. Sometimes that's in fact one of the things I like about them. Like I said, I kinda prefer the original SF to the N64 remake (although both are very good, IMO). I think this is where our difference in age shows. I think rail shooters have been much maligned by the GTA type experience in recent years. GTA is cool, no doubt; but should everything now be a wide open sandbox experience because of it? I think not. While I appreciate what games have become since the Nintendo revolution I still really like an at home arcade experience too; and often I don't want to spend hours immersed in a game but to just have some kicks for an hour or so...maybe even less. Why does a game have to be so incredibly deep now to be considered any good? There are lots of great guided experiences in video games and to deny yourself those is to deny a really big chunk of quality gaming and gaming history. You starting off making your point by mentioning a couple notoriously bad games but at least redeem yourself by mentioning 3 awesome ones However, there are a lot more good rail shooters and guided experiences in general out there.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 19, 2014 1:47:26 GMT
Not to get too philosophical but even in an open world experience a lot of it, of necessity, must be "on rails." As the Amazing Randy is fond of saying, " A totally open mind is really no mind at all." Meaning there has to be some discrimination, some judgement in order for evidence of a mind to even exist. That's inherent in its very definition. The same can be said of open world video games. A totally open world is really no world at all. Even in an open world game many elements of it must remain "on rails." While you may have the options of where you want to go and who and how you want to interact with once you do make a choice at least some if not a good portion of the game's response must be guiding you towards some or a select few outcomes. Otherwise you would be totally directing everything and know the outcome of every choice and, well, where's the fun in that?! I think we've all gotten a little too either/or in our expectations of video games these days.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 19, 2014 2:33:36 GMT
Ok, I'm not trying to get snippy here but I tried it and Star Fox should be considered a demo next to this?! Yes i do. Starfox was created as a showcase for that additional CPU on the cartridge (SuperFX) and it basically follows Space Harrier to a point. And please play Panorama Cotton for more than 10 minutes. The first 2 Stages might seem generic but after that the game opens up, it gets more difficult, has more challenges and seeminglessly switches between vertical and horizontal scenes. And also remember: No additional chips or cpu's, no trickery, it's just the stock mega drive with it's 1987/88 technology that runs it whereas the SNES needed an additional CPU (the SuperFX chip was nothing more, just a second CPU that took over most of the work from the SNES CPU) to run Starfox on a half-decent fps rate.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 19, 2014 3:55:17 GMT
Well, I'll try to endure to the point where you say it gets wonderful but I'm just not hopeful. In the same way when I watch a movie I don't really want to have to work to get into, I likewise don't want to have to with games either. They should suspend my disbelief. I shouldn't have to. Games either they grab me in that way or they don't. Star Fox grabs me. Cotton does not, but I'll try to get to level 3 to see what you're talking about here.
Frankly, I don't really care how a game achieves what it does, only that it achieves. I mean, if were going to get critical of Franensteinian add-ons shouldn't the MD/G qualify with it's 32X and then CD? Some of those games were pretty decent though and I don't really care how they got that way now. Maybe if I had to pay for that monstrosity back in the day I would feel ripped-off but now I can just pick and choose what games from it I find engaging.
Having said that, I have taken a little more time with the MD/G library and have developed a little more love and respect for it. I've come up with 10-12 essential games for it. I think I'll post my list in the Top 10 MD/G games thread going on right now though. It's just that when I compare what I consider its essential games to those of the SNES I still have to side with the SNES. If they were shipping me off to a deserted island and said you can only take one console from each generation the SNES would still be my fourth gen choice.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 19, 2014 10:31:29 GMT
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 20, 2014 22:31:53 GMT
Well, I'll try to endure to the point where you say it gets wonderful but I'm just not hopeful. Well it sounds like you made up your mind long before even playing the game. That's perfectly fine and if you prefer Starfox, that's also perfectly fine. Everybody has a different taste. I just disagree. To me, Panorama has the better, fluid controls, there's a lot more going on on the screen and the changing scenery is nice. In general i never cared for all those technical marvels on consoles, most of the time, they made me laugh because consoles still were so far behind what PC's could do at the time. Like the Playstation and when everybody went crazy over Ridge Racer. Around the time that game came out here, Bleifuss (Screamer) was released on the PC, it featured a lot more tracks, more cars (based on real cars) and it SVGA graphics with it's texture mapped polygon tracks that ran at a fluid 60+ FPS made Ridge Racer with it's pixelated resolution on 30 FPS look like a joke. Same goes for all those 3D Revolutions in the 16-Bit Era: Virtua Racing came with an insane price (it was 199,95 DM here, twice the price of other Mega Drive games!) and was released around the time IndyCar Racing on the PC came out which actually had textures on the cars, tracks and surroundings. Same goes for Starfox: Even the 1 year older Wing Commander 2 was better in every way imaginable: Better graphics, better sound, better story (Chris Roberts always went for a movie like experience) and Wing Commander 3 came out 1 year later in 1994 with Cutscenes full of Hollywood Stars and graphics that actually blew me away, more so than what the celebrated Donkey Kong Country showed (and the gameplay was bad, i just wanna quote Shigeru Miyamoto: “Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.”, it's the truth) And in general i care more about good gameplay than graphics. Super Monaco Grand Prix 2 on the Mega Drive for example has nicer graphics than Formula 1 Grand Prix on the PC. But Geoff Crammond actually created a realistic (for it's time) racing simulation with a full F1 rule set, license and everything. Where's Super Monaco pretended to be realistic and was called a Simulation but in reality was a simple Arcade racer and couldn't hold my attention very long.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 20, 2014 23:00:08 GMT
No, I really will play further into Panorama Cotton...promise! I could possibly change my mind about it. However, I won't change it about Starfox. I would put it up there with a game series like Wing Commander, which I actually did play on PC back in the day. While I sometimes didn't always like how long it took to get to the action I appreciated the attempt at a cinematic approach. I still love the cutscene where the alarm's going off and they're running toward the flight deck Re: DKC, I'm not saying it's the greatest game or even a great game per se. It's probably the weakest link in my list but it was pretty and pretty fun to play with some interesting elements that made me want to keep going. It's not incredibly deep though, but I don't think a game has to be to be good. I like both good game play and interesting graphics. I prefer a game to have both, if possible. A good example of this is to check two versions of the game Up & Down. Play the arcade version first and you'll understand pretty quickly what's going on and how to do it. It's fun and looks pretty good. Now try the Atari 2600 version of the same game. It looks like an abstract, cubist version of the game; and unless you knew what the game was about already you might not immediately get it. You would probably need to read the manual to understand what was going on. And yet, it's an eminently playable version of the game once you do. Is it as good as the original? Hell no! However, they nailed the essence of the gameplay. Most people would still probably choose the arcade version though.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 20, 2014 23:33:49 GMT
A good example of this is to check two versions of the game Up & Down. Play the arcade version first and you'll understand pretty quickly what's going on and how to do it. It's fun and looks pretty good. Now try the Atari 2600 version of the same game. Interesting, because i consider every Arcade conversion outside of Pong on the Atari 2600 to be pretty bad with the worst examples being Pac-Man and Crystal Castles (which is one of my favourite arcade games), because not only was the Atari 2600 horrible from a technological point of view but the developers either lacked the knowledge only a few people like David Crane had or lacked the time to make something worthwhile which was best shown by the AtariAge Homebrew of Pac-Man that makes the official, infamous, Pac-Man look like it was done by a 5 year old. That was different later on, the programmers and designers learned and it was a great help that most of the time, systems used the same CPUs (like the Amiga and the Mega Drive having the Motorola 68000 which made it easy to convert games from the Amiga to the Mege Drive and even converting games from the Neo Geo down to the Mega Drive, like Fatal Fury was easy, since again, the Neo Geo uses the 68000) I still don't see how Donkey Kong Country can be considered anything more than mediocre. Everything the game offers has been done to death before: Vehicles/Animals are old, Underwater Levels are old, Bonus Rounds that either rely on quickness or memorizing are old and the Co-Op Gaming was abysmal, you have two people controling two players but it's still the same levels with the same mechanics, the Co-Op isn't taken into consideration. World of Illusion on the Mega Drive did that so much better, you actually have to work together to get through the levels that are a bit different than in single player mode. Why include this option and then don't really use it for anything interesting? The only really great thing the game has to offer it it's great music by David Wise and Eveline Fischer.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 21, 2014 1:06:03 GMT
My point was that most would want good graphics and gameplay given the choice. By the time you came along Atari was all over but I can assure you it was pretty amazing to have one in the early 80s. I'm glad that I can still revisit them from time to time with an emulator now. Yes, there were a lot of crappy games made for it (you mention a couple); that's what caused the crash in '83. However, there were some good games too. Some of the better arcade ports in my mind were: Defender, Frogger, Galaxian, Jungle Hunt, Missile Command, Moon Patrol, Phoenix, Pole Position, Sky Diver, Space Invaders, Up & Down, Video Olympics (Pong) and Warlords. I'm not saying these are great ports, we didn't really get that until the NES (which used the same chip as the Atari, BTW), but they were perfectly serviceable analogs in their day that had their own unique rhythm and were fun to be able to play at home. The actual arcade game is always better but these were good too.
P.S. DKC was cute and fun and I enjoyed it for what it's worth. I like a lot of the Disney games, particularly the Mickey ones but I think they were better executed on the MD/G. I'm surprised no one ever mentions Mickey Mania, or is that too much flash over substance again?
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Post by ShadowAngel on Dec 21, 2014 1:27:01 GMT
P.S. DKC was cute and fun and I enjoyed it for what it's worth. I like a lot of the Disney games, particularly the Mickey ones but I think they were better executed on the MD/G. I'm surprised no one ever mentions Mickey Mania, or is that too much flash over substance again? I mentioned World of Illusion several times by now as a prime example of a great game. Still, i prefer the MS version of Castle of Illusion to the Mega Drive version, simply because the Level design is a lot more interesting, just like with Sonic 1 they went towards an "look around for secrets" approach unlike the MD versions. As for Mickey Mania: It's kinda of a "forgotten" game. Maybe because it followed World of Illusion that was so awesome and Mania hadn't the Co-op Gameplay. Maybe because it came on the end of the 16-bit Era. The SNES version was weak (even lacked the spiral staircase scene that was in the Mega Drive version and i think also in the Playstation version) and most people were totally into 3D at the time. It's a good game but for me World of Illusion is better.
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db
Alis
Posts: 264
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Post by db on Dec 21, 2014 1:54:40 GMT
While World seems alright but I think Castle is better. I don't know if turning everything into flowers really did it for me in that game. I prefer the old butt bounce I'd rate Mania somewhere between those two. I'm really taken by the actual Disney animations used in it. It's a video game that looks like the cartoons you remember. All good games though. I think the Jungle Book on MD/G is good too. Almost DKC good
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