Atomic Runner, also known as Chelnov, is a very good Data East game from 1992. This Genesis version is a remake of a four or five year older arcade game, much improved versus the arcade original. The game plays like a run & gun game, except it's auto-scrolling, which makes it feel unique. There are a variety of weapons and powerups to collect, lots of enemies to kill, jumps to make, some short alternate routes, challenging bosses, and more. The game is a memorizer for sure, and the main challenge is in learning what to do at each moment. Enemies will appear in exactly the same places each time, though many will then fire at where you are, so the game isn't 100% identical every time. There aren't many levels, but it's really good while it lasts.
This game has good graphics, great art design, and great music, and the gameplay is great as well, and the unique auto-scrolling run & gun design is great. That makes it play somewhat differently from just about anything else. The weapons are varied and are all pretty cool, the game is well balanced and well designed, there's a good variety of enemies and obstacles... yes, I really liked this game.
You die in one hit. There's no shield. When you die, you get sent back to the last checkpoint. Fortunately the game has many checkpoints, so you don't usually lose much progress. Game over also just sends you back to the last checkpoint, though there are limited continues; you can set how many, from 3 to 15, in the options menu. There are also difficulty settings and various control options. I recommend, and use, control option C-1, where A fires left, B jumps, and C fires right. The default controls have C switching direction and A firing, but the game is easier and works better with this Forgotten Worlds/Sidearms control style.
The designers even gave players a break. Instead of sticking with the merciless difficulty that it could have, after you've died at a single checkpoint four or five times or so in a row, the first powerup you see after that checkpoint will change from whatever it is into a full-power one, so that you can try it with full weapon power. This is incredibly helpful and makes a massive difference in reducing frustration, particularly at the harder bosses. Otherwise, after you die once often bosses would become incredibly hard, having to pick away at them with weak weapons... instead, just die a few more times and you'll have full power for the fight. This game is quite challenging as it is, it's great that the designers gave players a little break like this.
There's really only one major negative: It's short. Hard, but short. There aren't many levels, only seven or so, and once you start to learn them you can get through them fairly quickly. The main part of the challenge is simply in learning things, so once you've done that it's mostly just about trying to do it faster... it's so much fun while it lasts, though, that I don't mind.
The final boss' last two forms (it has three) were definitely tricky, and held me up for a few weeks -- I got to the final boss a week or two ago, but got frustrated at dying there repeatedly (you have limited continues and no saving), and I quit for a while. Well, I picked the game up again today, and beat it on my first try! Okay, I used a bunch of continues, but I didn't run out and have to start over, I beat the game first. Pretty awesome, I thought I'd gotten a terrible start but as I went along I got better and remembered the game more and more... I really like this game, I'd never heard about it but it's pretty cool.
Other than length, the only other possible negative really is that the graphics are a little small (very nice looking and your character is really well animated, but small), and that the backgrounds in a few levels are so gaudy and impressive that sometimes I can lose track of the enemies and bullets. This is particularly true in the gold and jade Chinese-ish level. It looks amazing, but sometimes the enemies can be hard to see... or maybe it's just that the backgrounds are so awesome looking that they distract me. :) Either way, it's something you get used to.
Overall, very good game. I like this one a lot. Atomic Runner (aka Chelnov) is not well known, but it should be. Try it, you might like it. Anyone who likes run & gun games or shmups should definitely give this a play.
The Walking Dead has all this an more, I'm happy to say. Plus, it's really, really good judging from episode one, not that I'm too surprised with Frank Darabont handling it.
You know how you put files into folder in Windows? Sure you do, you're a brunch of bright subjects... and you know, furthermore, how you can customize a folder, to display a particular picture on the folder, say, to display the contents? Again, sure... right-click, customize, and then you select whatever picture you want. NOW, can YOU tell me WHY this simple feature stopped working one day for Darunia? Right click/properties/customize/choose file (to display as a thumbnail)/open/apply/okay... and nothing changes...
...FURTHERMORE...
A whole slew of other folders THAT I NEVER ATTEMPTED TO MODIFY are displaying a bunch of thumbnails I NEVER WANTED TO DISPLAY, seemingly at random.
I was just elivated to a higher plane of pure stupid at my local KFC..
The conversation with the lady at the counter went something like this..
~Takes order..
Mam I said I wanted the hot wings...
~We don't carry spicy wings we only carry hot wings...
What is the difference between hot and spicy?
~By hot I mean we cook them...
So what your telling me is that by hot wings on the sign, it means that they arn't served raw, that there cooked first?
~Yes...
:WolfSmile followed by :psyduck:
Later rage passes...
Just give me the damn wings...
Honestly it really depresses me how people these days are just content to completely piss their intelligence away.. It makes me really ashamed to call myself homosapien!
I've STILL yet to play it myself, but I've watched two of my friends worm their way through it and I've got a good impression.
Firstly, that subtitle is really dumb. I mocked the title of "New Super Mario Bros.", but at least that made sense. Other M? What is this, some sort of fancy French nonsense? Oh, I get it, the OTHER M is "Mother" or some pretentious nonsense right? Or, maybe it's just a codename they never got around to properly naming...
Anyway, I'll say this. The gameplay looks very fun. The combat is neat, and there is actually some pretty interesting puzzles and a little exploration going on. Not as much as a typical Metroid game, but it's not completely missing either. As a unique take, it's fine.
That said, then there's the other thing... Seeing more of the story, it's more of the same sexist stuff we've all talked about. It only gets WORSE as it goes on. Watching Samus literally freezing in place while soldiers all die around her, not because she's actually BEEN frozen, but because she's "scared", because she's having horrible nightmares about Ridley or whatever? Sheesh... This would have actually been excusable if THIS was supposed to be Zero Mission, but it's not, it's AFTER she's saved the universe 6 times already, not once showing this kind of fear. It's not like showing that she's human with a LITTLE fear of these giant things isn't called for, but it's ALL THE TIME from an experienced GALAXY SAVER.
That's the big thing to me. If this is going to be an official part of the storyline, somewhere between Fusion and Super Metroid, I have a hard time with it. Heck, her worshipping of Adam doesn't even fit the storyline set up in Fusion. There, she actually seemed to have a little respect but a lot of disagreement with him, and was only grudgingly working with Adam.
Ya know, I honestly think there's a way to save this story, and it's with a sequel where this Samus is just a clone. Yeah, that's the ticket. This one's a clone, the real one shows up about midway and explains that. It would explain EVERYTHING. Why's she acting like an insecure child with all those memories? The memories are imperfect and while she's got the details, she's got none of the emotional part, she's like an infant with a database experiencing it all for the first time. Yeah, and she's worshiping Adam because her memories were rewritten to revere a high-level official in the military for easy control. Ooh, and her weird talk about how she doesn't know how much time she spent floating around in her space ship? Yeah, that'll explain all o' dat! Sure, midway through the next game the real Samus shows up, in her Fusion suit, and one has a lot more mechanical moves, like the typical space jump and bombs, and Fusion Samus has more organic moves, like say a "sticky bomb" attached to enemies that crawl into out of the way areas to blow open passages and such. I'm a genius.
Really? That's it? I would have expected a modern redraw at most with a higher resolution. Even without that, they could have ported over all the GBA remakes of these games with all the bonus content.
Heck, in fact this should have been a DS game.
Even if they were putting the bare minimum work into this, it's not even the Mario All-Stars + Mario World version!
The soundtrack and the art book are nice, but a disk with nothing but an emulation of Super Mario All-Stars? I mean, that's already on the Wii store isn't it?
Why don't I put these in threads instead of the 'games I beat' thread(s) half of the people can't see anyway or don't pay attention to...
So, I got Tiger Road several days ago, and beat it today. That didn't take too long... :) Tiger Road is a 1987 Capcom arcade game ported by Victor to the TG16 in 1990. The game is one of the only platformers on HuCard on the Turbografx with backup memory save support, if you have a TurboBooster Plus or TurboGrafx CD drive, which is awesome. In the game, you play as a monk warrior fighting your way across what I assume is China, trying to defeat the evil king who has kidnapped the children. You fight all kinds of Chinese monters like Chinese zombies and dragons, and Japanese ones as well like Ninjas. It's frustrating and hard, but I like it. The game gets a lot of mediocre to poor reviews, but really, I think that it's a pretty good game.
I must admit, though, I made use of the backup save feature for saving and infinite continues. I don't know that I'd ever beat this game "legit", with no saving and with the 5 continue limit you have if you're not using a TG16 attached to a Turbo CD base or Turbo Booster Plus, but, well, the option for saving and infinite continues is there, with that addon hardware, and I have a Turbo CD base, so I'm definitely going to make use of it! It continues you from the stage section you're at, so you never have to replay a stage part that you've beaten unless you want to challenge yourself with the non-saving version of the game and really want to memorize everything, though with how the enemies spawn infinitely, this isn't a 100% memorizer like R-Type or Jim Power, you will have to use luck and skill as well as memorization to finish this game.
I mean, Tiger Road is HARD. It's as hard as you'd expect for a Capcom arcade game from that era, considering that they also made games like Ghosts & Goblins. There are only five levels, but each is broken up into many parts, and each level is longer than the last. It's got knockback, which always seems to hit you into a pit, infinitely spawning enemies driving you crazy, enemies attacking from all directions, frustrating bosses which can absorb a large number of hits, and more... it's a tough game. Fun, but tough.
The game has good graphics for a midlife TG16 HuCard game, with the bright, vivid colors you expect from games on the system. I like the music as well; it is repetitive, and the sound effects are mediocre at best, but the music works well and isn't too bad. It's fittingly Chinese in style and fits the game's atmosphere well. There are also bonus minigames between levels, which are simple but a nice diversion (the 'defeat the monks' one particularly, the other minigame is kind of easy to beat with the turbo switch on, and in this game turbo will probably be on on the attack button the whole time you're playing). The last level is pretty long and has multiple bosses, including some returning from the earlier levels. Visuals and enemies do repeat, but there's enough variety of environments and enemies to keep the game interesting, I think, and it all looks pretty nice.
So yeah, good game overall. It's fun and challenging and kept me coming back until I finished it, despite great frustration in a few of the later areas. It's a simple game, like most TG16 HuCard platformers, and it deserves its reputation for difficulty, but it is good overall, particularly for anyone with a system that can save. The save feature is really awesome to have, in my opinion. It's great to have a TG16 platformer that saves. Oh, and it doesn't just save your progress (it autosaves at the Game Over screen, so wait for that if you want to save), but it saves your top four high scores, too! Pretty cool, high score save is VERY rare on the TG16.
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