13th June 2010, 8:38 PM
Sega CD
--
Robo Aleste - Beat this yesterday actually, but forgot to post it. I've beaten the Japanese version before of course, but now that I have the US one I have to play it too, and I was interested to find that balance is slightly different -- playing both games on Normal, the levels are harder, with more enemies and faster (I think), slightly differently colored bullets (white-yellow blinking, instead of just yellow - I find them harder to see in the US version, which is bad). However, bosses seem to die in fewer hits, I think. Overall the game is harder though, because of all those additional enemies and the bullets... I don't know if it needed the changes. Oh, and one scene was censored -- the minimally detailed nude bath scene for the purple-haired woman has her closeup removed in the US version (though it's no more detailed than the nude scenes of Lucia in the Sega CD version of Lunar II, and those were not removed). Still a fantastic game, though, even with the changes. Compile were amazing shmup game makers, some of the best of their time.
Oh, I wish that they'd made more use of sprite scaling and parallax, and perhaps used rotation somehow too... the game really does not make much use of the Sega CD's hardware. Too bad. Also, I kind of hate the ending... the story in general isn't great, but the ending is just a terrible letdown. Basically you spend the whole game fighting people who actually aren't evil, and then when finally, after killing them all, you are convinced that actually your lord is the evil one (this should not be a spoiler to anyone, Nobunaga is almost always evil in anime)... you don't get to fight him. You just see a cutscene of your guy destroying Nobunaga's castle, the end. LAME! It's such a cop-out... there's no resolution either, not of what happens to your character (he did basically just kill all sides in the war for control of Japan, what happens now?), whether he feels sorry for killing so many not-evil people, what happens with the girl, etc... there's nothing. The game has a long introduction, but not much of an ending. Still, as with all Compile shooters, the actual gameplay is brilliant. It's such a great, great game, incredibly fun to play and well balanced difficulty-wise, though the balance is a little better in the original version than the US one (as mentioned above). The sprite art is great, the challenge high but fair (but watch out for those bullets!), and the levels varied. Badly done story aside, this is one of my favorite Aleste games.
Xbox
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Samurai Shodown V - beat the game in difficulty 4 (default) with two characters. Wow, is this game tough... it's not one I'd actually beaten in Neo-Geo emulation, I didn't bother because other SS games are better and the story wasn't in English on the Neo-Geo. So yeah, tough game. There are some really cheap characters... and evidently I'm awful with Rimururu, because I played it as her first and it took 86 continues to beat the game (yeah, it took hours...), while the second time, with Nakoruru, took only 36 continues and a lot less time. Yet despite using so many continues and thus proving how bad I am at fighting games, and being so frustrated at the SNK-patented unfairness a lot of the time, I had a lot of fun... when I finally finished it the second time I noticed that my heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, and there was nothing I'd rather have been doing... I love SNK fighting games. Evil, yes, but great.
Still though, it's not as good as SSIV. But it is a good game.
Oh -- Fantastic music, too! The CD audio really is quite impressive. Great classical Japanese style soundtrack, it made playing the game more fun. The graphics are outstanding as well, SSV is one of the last Neo-Geo games and it really shows. There is an incredible amount of detail, highly animated sprites, beautifully animated backgrounds, and more. For instance the blowing dirt and waving flags in one stage are pretty impressive, along with the way the characters' clothing move. This is a very good looking 2d game, a big step up from the older SS games graphically. It should be, of course, it came out seven years after SSIV, which had come out in 1996, before Neo-Geo graphics hit their peak (that happened in 1998, I would say), but still, it looks and plays great.
The stories are alright. Nothing special, but they'll do, for SS stories (which are never great). It's good that they are in English though, and as I've said this Xbox version is the only version of the game with English-language story text. This compliments Samurai Shodown Anthology or even the Neo-Geo originals.
It is too bad that Samurai Shodown V Special is Neo-Geo exclusive, that game (the last game released for the Neo-Geo) is an improvement over this one. It has fatalities, missing in SSV, several more characters (you can play as the bosses from all of the older games), a simpler arcade mode where you just fight people until you beat the boss, after which you see a few screens of text as an ending (SSV has a bit more text), balance fixes, and more; the story change is more just different than an improvement, but all the other things are improvements in that one. Evidently it's being kept as a Neo-Geo exclusive because they wanted something special for their Neo-Geo faithful, and that is the game... and indeed, it's not even in the Anthology. Ah well.
Anyway, this is a great game, and certainly is one I'll be playing some more of, whenever I want some fun extreme frustration.
--
Robo Aleste - Beat this yesterday actually, but forgot to post it. I've beaten the Japanese version before of course, but now that I have the US one I have to play it too, and I was interested to find that balance is slightly different -- playing both games on Normal, the levels are harder, with more enemies and faster (I think), slightly differently colored bullets (white-yellow blinking, instead of just yellow - I find them harder to see in the US version, which is bad). However, bosses seem to die in fewer hits, I think. Overall the game is harder though, because of all those additional enemies and the bullets... I don't know if it needed the changes. Oh, and one scene was censored -- the minimally detailed nude bath scene for the purple-haired woman has her closeup removed in the US version (though it's no more detailed than the nude scenes of Lucia in the Sega CD version of Lunar II, and those were not removed). Still a fantastic game, though, even with the changes. Compile were amazing shmup game makers, some of the best of their time.
Oh, I wish that they'd made more use of sprite scaling and parallax, and perhaps used rotation somehow too... the game really does not make much use of the Sega CD's hardware. Too bad. Also, I kind of hate the ending... the story in general isn't great, but the ending is just a terrible letdown. Basically you spend the whole game fighting people who actually aren't evil, and then when finally, after killing them all, you are convinced that actually your lord is the evil one (this should not be a spoiler to anyone, Nobunaga is almost always evil in anime)... you don't get to fight him. You just see a cutscene of your guy destroying Nobunaga's castle, the end. LAME! It's such a cop-out... there's no resolution either, not of what happens to your character (he did basically just kill all sides in the war for control of Japan, what happens now?), whether he feels sorry for killing so many not-evil people, what happens with the girl, etc... there's nothing. The game has a long introduction, but not much of an ending. Still, as with all Compile shooters, the actual gameplay is brilliant. It's such a great, great game, incredibly fun to play and well balanced difficulty-wise, though the balance is a little better in the original version than the US one (as mentioned above). The sprite art is great, the challenge high but fair (but watch out for those bullets!), and the levels varied. Badly done story aside, this is one of my favorite Aleste games.
Xbox
--
Samurai Shodown V - beat the game in difficulty 4 (default) with two characters. Wow, is this game tough... it's not one I'd actually beaten in Neo-Geo emulation, I didn't bother because other SS games are better and the story wasn't in English on the Neo-Geo. So yeah, tough game. There are some really cheap characters... and evidently I'm awful with Rimururu, because I played it as her first and it took 86 continues to beat the game (yeah, it took hours...), while the second time, with Nakoruru, took only 36 continues and a lot less time. Yet despite using so many continues and thus proving how bad I am at fighting games, and being so frustrated at the SNK-patented unfairness a lot of the time, I had a lot of fun... when I finally finished it the second time I noticed that my heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, and there was nothing I'd rather have been doing... I love SNK fighting games. Evil, yes, but great.
Still though, it's not as good as SSIV. But it is a good game.
Oh -- Fantastic music, too! The CD audio really is quite impressive. Great classical Japanese style soundtrack, it made playing the game more fun. The graphics are outstanding as well, SSV is one of the last Neo-Geo games and it really shows. There is an incredible amount of detail, highly animated sprites, beautifully animated backgrounds, and more. For instance the blowing dirt and waving flags in one stage are pretty impressive, along with the way the characters' clothing move. This is a very good looking 2d game, a big step up from the older SS games graphically. It should be, of course, it came out seven years after SSIV, which had come out in 1996, before Neo-Geo graphics hit their peak (that happened in 1998, I would say), but still, it looks and plays great.
The stories are alright. Nothing special, but they'll do, for SS stories (which are never great). It's good that they are in English though, and as I've said this Xbox version is the only version of the game with English-language story text. This compliments Samurai Shodown Anthology or even the Neo-Geo originals.
It is too bad that Samurai Shodown V Special is Neo-Geo exclusive, that game (the last game released for the Neo-Geo) is an improvement over this one. It has fatalities, missing in SSV, several more characters (you can play as the bosses from all of the older games), a simpler arcade mode where you just fight people until you beat the boss, after which you see a few screens of text as an ending (SSV has a bit more text), balance fixes, and more; the story change is more just different than an improvement, but all the other things are improvements in that one. Evidently it's being kept as a Neo-Geo exclusive because they wanted something special for their Neo-Geo faithful, and that is the game... and indeed, it's not even in the Anthology. Ah well.
Anyway, this is a great game, and certainly is one I'll be playing some more of, whenever I want some fun extreme frustration.
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