Games I Have Finished (as far as I can remember)

[A Black Falcon]

NES
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Darkwing Duck - Yes, I finished the game already. It's a great game, one of those great NES platformers for sure, but with only 7 levels and infinite continues, it wasn't too hard to finish after a couple days of practice -- that is, of leaving the system on because the game doesn't have passwords for some dumb reason. So yeah, this game is good but a bit short. Was it worth the money? Probably, but more levels would be nice -- this game released the same year as Mega Mans 3 and 4, and uses the MM engine, but has a lot less content than those games so though each level is just as challenging as MM3 or 4 levels (that is, it's an approachable challenge, not super hard but not really easy either), it won't take as long to finish this game as those. Ah well. At least the levels it does have are varied and well-designed, and the game has some new game mechanics such as hanging off of things and using your cape as a shield. Pretty good game. I really like it -- the graphics, music, and gameplay are all great. All I wish it had were health bars for the bosses, passwords, and more levels; otherwise it's great. Seeing the Mega Man engine repurposed into something somewhat different is pretty interesting. Ducktales is of course Capcom's top NES Disney classic, but Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck are also fantastic.

One thing, though -- people call this game "hard", but DuckTales and Rescue Rangers "easy", but I've beaten this game quickly but not those (well, I may have seen DuckTales' ending sometime when i was a kid, I don't remember but friends did have the game, but if so I doubt I was playing!). Why? Because of the infinite continues, of course! Those two first Capcom NES Disney games have no continues at all, making them in some ways harder than this one. Each level in this game is a lot harder than levels in those, but you can just keep trying...


Saturn
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Detana! Twinbee Yahho Deluxe Pack - I beat both games on this disc, Detana!! Twinbee and Twinbee Yahho!. They are ports of Konami's two Twinbee arcade games, the first from '91 and the second from '95. I have at least one version of most of the Twinbee shmups (I have the three NES/FC games (Twinbee, Stinger, and Twinbee 3), the SNES game (Pop'n Twinbee), and this collection), and both of these games are pretty fun stuff. These two games and the SNES game all play and look VERY similarly, so Detana was obviously successful considering that it got two sequels done in the same style. The NES games have some side-scrolling levels, but the three later titles are entirely vertical-scrolling. The graphics are very bright and colorful and look great, though the second game has better graphics than the first one, as you would expect. There is a bit of sensory overload at times though, as enemies come from above and below and you have to dodge them and their fire, remember to target and bomb enemies on the ground because this series has Xevious-style bombing in it, and try to juggle those bells at the same time. It can be tricky, and it's easy to die and/or miss a bell -- and when you do you won't score as much. Yahho has a meter on the side for consecutive bells gotten for instance, so if you miss one it empties and you won't score as much.

Returning to the bomb system though, I've never liked games with this Xevious-like fire-and-bomb system, either in Xevious, Dragon Spirit, Twinbee, Soukyugurentai, or Galactic Attack/RayForce. Bomb/missile-target systems work in 3d games like Star Fox 64 and After Burner, but in top-down games I don't like how restrictive the targeting systems in most of these games are. Of the games I mentioned above though this series is one of the most playable -- there is more forgiveness in how accurate you need to be, and you can get stuff like homing attacks too, in these two games anyway. So yeah, I don't like this (if you must have separate attacks for air and ground, do it like Raptor and just have different weapons which fire ahead, instead of using these annoying bomb-target cursors!), but I don't find the system as annoying here as in, say, Dragon Spirit.

The other main issue with these games is length, if you don't restrict yourself artificially. These two games are both somewhat short and give you infinite continues right from where you died, so if you just keep hitting continue you'll beat them quickly, as I did. I did die quite a few times, particularly in Detana (which I think is a bit harder than Yahho, probably -- the second to last boss killed me quite a few times), but these games are a whole lot easier than Konami's main shmup series, Gradius, that's for sure. Both of these games have Gradius-like easy final bosses, and there is some amusing comedy, but I do wish Yahho had a better last boss, even if that ending bit was pretty amusing. Ah well, it's a fun game anyway, with mostly good gameplay and some silly comedy. Both of these games have two player co-op too, as do the NES games as well, which is nice. Overall I like Gradius a lot more than Twinbee, but these games are fun things to play once in a while. I'll definitely play them again and try to get better -- I may have beaten the games, but with the number of game overs I got, I didn't get anywhere near the high score table, and that does matter in this kind of game.