(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[Brad]

[MENTION=2924]Leon Retro[/MENTION] I meant too much faff to set up in the dining room

Yeah I have a 2000 with 6meg of ram so perfectly equipped for whdload. I've only played cannon fodder and it came from the desert on it so far but have a backlog ready to go once the study is repaired.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I was surprised to find out the PAL version received a few tweaks over the NTSC one.

Fascinating. I didn't know of these changes either.

I wonder which version will be used for the upcoming 3DS remaster?

[Nico87]

Yeah, I had no idea either. Apart from two DS Lite’s I got rather recently, the Nintendo Switch is my first ever European system.

[Goemon]

Had a lengthy session on Legend of Hero Tonma this morning.

Found it pretty addictive although the difficulty seems a bit brutal. They’ve compensated by giving you unlimited continues, which to me seems like a case of “sod it, we’ll not balance, they’ll get through eventually”

Actually saying that, I got to the boss of stage 5 and I’m 90% sure it’s impossible with the default weapon. Problem is, if you die, you start at the boss door with no weapons! So that ended the run right there.

[dyer60]

Anyone played Sorcer Striker? Spent some time with it tonight, good fun.

Also played Air Zonk and Aero Busters on the PC Engine.

[Leon Retro]

Had a lengthy session on Legend of Hero Tonma this morning.

.

I haven't played that for a long, long time. I remember it being quite a bit like Willow from Capcom.

Anyone played Sorcer Striker? Spent some time with it tonight, good fun.

It's funny you should ask that - because I've just finished playing through it. I guess you naturally wanted to give it a go after playing the sort of sequel Dimahoo?
I decided to go back to Dimahoo by playing it on my Raspberry Pi. Works perfectly and looks stunning. The artists really went to town creating detailed graphics that are full of imagination. It really shows how lacking a lots of modern shooters have been. The music throughout is also stirring and really adds to the action. It's a punishing game though, so I'm still pretty rubbish at it.

Sorcer Striker looks more basic, but is still a nice looking game. The action isn't so intense, so I went through the first level without dying. It's definitely a really nice companion game to Dimahoo, so I put both in my Favourites folder.

Also played Air Zonk and Aero Busters on the PC Engine.

I always mention Air Zonk when it comes to PC Engine games, because it really is a stunning game in all departments. Easily one of my all-time favourite shooters. Play the Japanese version, as the American release is censored with graphical differences.

[_SD_]

Mega Man X, Garou and Third Strike on the PS4...

Also, why is the CD version of Air Zonk strangely less impressive than the HuCard?

[Leon Retro]

Also, why is the CD version of Air Zonk strangely less impressive than the HuCard?

I guess it was produced by different people, because the lack of parallax layers is very strange. I much prefer the first game.

[QualityChimp]

My son went over to his friend's house and he came back with tales of playing Golden Axe II on the Mega Drive.
Fired up Coinops and had a go with him giving me tips and advice.
I'd not played it before, despite rinsing the first game.
I was able to use the environment and the running kick to keep most enemies off and get quite far on my first go.

[Goemon]

One of the achievements on the Megadrive Collection, Golden Axe 2, is to kill 25 enemies by knocking them into pits.

[QualityChimp]

I was probably half-way towards that on my first go.
You can lure them off bridges and throw them off cliffs if you manoeuvre correctly.

[fallenangle]

PC Tomb Raider 4 - The Last Revelation played this for the first time in ages last year and I'd forgotten how good it was. I've been slowly redoing all the old TRs and re-completed them all with no medipacks and using pistols (default weapon only) etc.

I moved on from that to doing them 'no scratch', better described as minimum damage. A tough challenge and TR4 is probably the hardest so far whether it will stay on the right side of entertainingly challenging and not slip into irritatingly frustrating playing this way .............. I'm not sure. But so far so good,

[_SD_]

A bit more Mega Man X, Metal Slug, Garou: MotW and Chaos Code - New Sign of Catastrophe, which I suppose you could put in here as it’s 7 years old now. I’m quite liking the game, and the characters are pretty cool.

[Goemon]

Finished the Legend of Hero Tonma this morning.

Really enjoyed it overall but the balance did need to be different.
Once I was past the 5th boss I was able to brute force the rest of the game with relentless continues. I easily died over 100 times on the last level and the final boss as it is tough but the ability to keep going and going allows you to figure things out eventually.

It’s definitely a straight up arcade game, designed to chomp through your money. There were times where I would lose all 3 lives of a credit within 20s when I was learning an area. It’s not a chore though as the levels are super short so it’s fast learning. You’re always back to where you were within a minute.

If they’d limited the continues I think it would have initially seemed brutally difficult but nothing insurmountable IMO. I think how long some games took me as a kid, literally months to finish. This probably took about 5-6 hours, which on the scale of things is super short.

[Leon Retro]

I played two games this evening:

Red Earth: Stunning graphics and sound. I really like the way it plays, so I had a lot of fun with it.

Kingdom Grand Prix: I love the music in this game. The graphics are also stunning. It's a game I can keep coming back to, despite never being very good at it.