Battle of the Ports

[Yakumo]

Am I right in thinking this didn't come out in Japan, except on the Jaguar?

I think you're right. Just shows how out of touch Atari was.

[Yakumo]

Classic Capcom action on his week's battle of the Ports with SonSon. A game I used to hate but now really like.

[Nu-Eclipse]

SonSon wasn't a game I played much of BITD so I recently better acquainted myself with it via Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium on Switch. It was more fun than I thought it would be - very much a product of its mid 1980s coin-op time.

When we talk about Capcom's arcade legacy it's obviously hard to look past the CPS era but a lot of the games they made before that (early and mid 1980s) seem to be forgotten and/or underrated, like Pirate Ship Higemaru, Senjou no Okami/Commando, Makaimura/Ghosts 'n Goblins, Black Tiger or Side Arms Hyper Dyne. Maybe it was because they were often overshadowed by more famous contemporaries of that era?

[Yakumo]

Indeed. Capcom made a lot of cool games before the CPS days.

[Yakumo]

Battle of the Ports is a day early this week due to work.
This week we're taking a look at Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat

[Yakumo]

It's not often we get a Nintendo 64 game here on Battle of the Ports, so let's take a look at a load of versions of Densha De Go! 2.

[Hirst]

I’ve always fancied the Densha De Go series, but not entirely sure where to start and there’s tons of them, must be a dozen mainline games. I’ve heard the first game is rock hard and the second game is a bit more forgiving than the first. I had a demo of one of the games on my old WinXP laptop and used to play it loads, remember you could trap people in the doors if you didn’t wait long enough to close them.

[Yakumo]

I think the 2nd game is the most unforgiving out of the lot. I'd start with part 3 as they'd fine tuned the gameplay by that point.

[Hirst]

I think the 2nd game is the most unforgiving out of the lot. I'd start with part 3 as they'd fine tuned the gameplay by that point.

Just looked up some footage and I'm certain the third game was the one I had the PC demo of way back when it was a current title. I think I downloaded it through a link to some game website from the Taito one. Probably still on my old laptop to be honest, should unearth that as it'll be a treasure trove of weird wallpapers and screensavers downloaded off websites from back in the day.

Will keep my eye out for that and a good controller, seems to go pretty cheap but just a case of shipping it. Might cop out and get the special pad where the controls are just shoved onto a PS1-esque controller. While I was digging through Mercari I found this for a few quid, you know you want it!



Looks like the screw-in antenna lights up, shame it's only compatible with a load of phones that almost certainly can't connect to any kind of network.

[Yakumo]

Just looked up some footage and I'm certain the third game was the one I had the PC demo of way back when it was a current title. I think I downloaded it through a link to some game website from the Taito one. Probably still on my old laptop to be honest, should unearth that as it'll be a treasure trove of weird wallpapers and screensavers downloaded off websites from back in the day.

Will keep my eye out for that and a good controller, seems to go pretty cheap but just a case of shipping it. Might cop out and get the special pad where the controls are just shoved onto a PS1-esque controller. While I was digging through Mercari I found this for a few quid, you know you want it!



Looks like the screw-in antenna lights up, shame it's only compatible with a load of phones that almost certainly can't connect to any kind of network.

Oh man, that's a blast from the past. On my old phone I had an antenna that used to flash like a crazy night club every time the phone rang.

[Yakumo]

Those pesky little dragons are back in this week's Battle of the Ports - Puzzle Bobble

[Protocol Penguin]

Just did some research, and Bust-A-Move and its sequel on the Taito F3 hardware removes all the Bubble Bobble characters and iconography, while the Neo Geo versions of Bust-A-Move are the Puzzle Bobbles with a different title screen. Interesting.

[Mayhem]

Pity you missed off the recent C64 port of Puzzle Bobble

[Yakumo]

Just did some research, and Bust-A-Move and its sequel on the Taito F3 hardware removes all the Bubble Bobble characters and iconography, while the Neo Geo versions of Bust-A-Move are the Puzzle Bobbles with a different title screen. Interesting.

Very odd changes for some reason. I wonder if Taito were originally thinking of charging a fee to use the Bubble Bobble characters?

[Yakumo]

Pity you missed off the recent C64 port of Puzzle Bobble

Ah, if I added that it would have opened up the floodgates of "where's this version or that version.". The world of Puzzle Bobble knock offs is vast.