11th April 2015, 11:06 PM
YESSS! Finally... I beat the game on Hard. The level 4-10 version of Geldra's finally dead, and the day is saved for good. It was tough but so much fun!
The real ending is short, but satisfying -- those stupid guys fist-pumping on the bottom of the screen in the normal ending are now dead, which is great. It was annoying to have won the game and see them still there after the end... but not this time, they're gone.
Compare here: http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/rolthun.htm vs, http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/rolthun2nd.htm
I took a photo of the screen there after beating the game, but VG Museum's look better of course.
For Geldra, the key is to rapidly alternate between ducking and standing while constantly shooting as fast as you can. You need to have bullets on the ducking and standing paths in order to counter Geldra's shots as they come. I kept going back and forth between my NES Max and NES Advantage while playing this game (and even tried the brick controller for a while, though not for long); each has advantages over the other. The Max is better at rolling from down-forward to down-back for those duck-and-shoot-the-other-way parts, while on the Advantage while doing that sometimes I would accidentally stand up. However, the Advantage is better at Geldra -- with the Max, sometimes I'd accidentally move forward instead of ducking, while with the Advantage that didn't happen. It's interesting how each is better for different things because of their different designs.
Also, again, I really noticed how probably the biggest change from the first game to the sequels is how many times you have to rely on the AI to just move to the right place in order to proceed in this game, while that is rarely an issue in the sequels. The cheap "if the enemy doesn't randomly move in the right way you're stuck" stuff is gone... and that's good, but... I sometimes like the challenge of trying to get past those guys, I don't know.
I should play another game next, but I'll definitely have to get back to Rolling Thunder 2 sometime soon and try to beat the last level of that game on Normal again. :)
The real ending is short, but satisfying -- those stupid guys fist-pumping on the bottom of the screen in the normal ending are now dead, which is great. It was annoying to have won the game and see them still there after the end... but not this time, they're gone.
Compare here: http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/rolthun.htm vs, http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/rolthun2nd.htm
I took a photo of the screen there after beating the game, but VG Museum's look better of course.
For Geldra, the key is to rapidly alternate between ducking and standing while constantly shooting as fast as you can. You need to have bullets on the ducking and standing paths in order to counter Geldra's shots as they come. I kept going back and forth between my NES Max and NES Advantage while playing this game (and even tried the brick controller for a while, though not for long); each has advantages over the other. The Max is better at rolling from down-forward to down-back for those duck-and-shoot-the-other-way parts, while on the Advantage while doing that sometimes I would accidentally stand up. However, the Advantage is better at Geldra -- with the Max, sometimes I'd accidentally move forward instead of ducking, while with the Advantage that didn't happen. It's interesting how each is better for different things because of their different designs.
Also, again, I really noticed how probably the biggest change from the first game to the sequels is how many times you have to rely on the AI to just move to the right place in order to proceed in this game, while that is rarely an issue in the sequels. The cheap "if the enemy doesn't randomly move in the right way you're stuck" stuff is gone... and that's good, but... I sometimes like the challenge of trying to get past those guys, I don't know.
I should play another game next, but I'll definitely have to get back to Rolling Thunder 2 sometime soon and try to beat the last level of that game on Normal again. :)