Ooh,UN Squadron. Didn't see that,rings bells but I can't remember it. Onto YouTube I go. 
What's Christmas Break? Never played that.

Played this a lot in my SNES days. Still have a decent condition copy. 

Far too much to play at the moment for me to give time to a game I've already played a fair bit, otherwise I would jump onto this. 

Might join in on the shmups, though. Cos you know. Shmups.

I have this CIB too - played it to death back in the day - can't remember how many times I completed it - pure enjoyment from start to end.

The dash control with the shoulder buttons is brilliantly done - it's very satisfying using the button to stop the dash and judging the skid. It really comes into play at the latter part of the train section with the collapsing bridge etc.

Music is great - the haunted house level and the western theme are my favourites.

Most of the bonus games are delightful but ultimately involve too much luck but I really like the skill-based squash court game.

Week thirteen - Super Aleste (SNES)

Known in North America as Super Megaforce, this is a vertically scrolling shooter developed by Compile.  In the year 2048, a large mechanical sphere falls from space and starts attacking the world's major cities.  After the failure of the original Aleste craft to destroy the sphere's growth, the Super Aleste was built, with the ultimate goal of flying into and destroying the sphere.  You have eight different weapon types at your disposal, each of which can be powered up, and interestingly, your health bar is apparently tied to your weapon power (if you take a hit with the weapon at its lowest strength you explode).  Wikipedia says nine main levels with three bonus stages.  Good luck. 




Play and discuss, or just simply reminisce.

Week thirteen (03/12): Super Aleste (SNES)
Week fourteen (10/12): Back to the Future III (Megadrive)
Week fifteen (17/12): Sub-Terrania (Megadrive)
Week sixteen (24/12): Christmas break
Week seventeen (31/12): UN Squadron (SNES)
Week eighteen (07/01): Zero Tolerance (Megadrive)

Super Aleste is up there in my all time favourite list. I haven't a great appetite for the modern curtain shmup (though I like some of 'em - Castle Shikigami 2 for example) but this and the mighty Galactic Attack (aka Layer Section) on Saturn are my two top old schoolers.

I have the PAL version CIB and the Japanese version cart only.

Some of the levels go on a bit but it's great. The number of weapons at your disposal is excellent too. If you are playing this emulated or cart only bear in mind that by pressing the R-shoulder button you can change the behavioir of whatever weapon you are using - it can make quite a difference to how you play the game.

There isn't a better technical example of sprite handling than this on the supposedly underpowered SNES - it is sprite city with no slowdown or flicker.

Go into options and fiddle with the difficulty - in addition to the usual hard/easy settings there are a tricky and wild settings that really pushes the difficulty up by changing the rules a bit - on tricky - defeated enemies get replaced by a shower of bullets - wild is tricky level cranked up to hard!!

Nah UN squadron isn't for a few weeks yet. Check the OP for the running order. 

I've fallen a bit behind here. Going to crack on with Tiny Toons and Super Aleste this week.

I have the game, but might give it a crack on ZSNES or something, SNES is tucked away in the loft.

I did like it back in the day, but it is quite a simple game.  The music was quite good as well as the gorgeous Mode 7 graphics.

Looking ahead - if you want to try another lovely platformer then stick Out To Lunch (SNES) on the schedule for later on - was playing it a wee while back and it's still pretty excellent in an understated way. Think it was an Amiga game originally.

Rondo of Blood on PC Engine.

Played most of the first stage of Super Aleste, until it crashed anyway.  Very good, much more my type of shooter than Gynoug I reckon; it's like a better Truxton.  The health being twinned with the weapon level works well.  I'm impressed so far.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Added, just watched a video on Youtube, looks good.  A few more suggestions for non Sega/Nintendo 16-bit games would be cool, much as I'm loving them we've been focusing on two consoles for the most part so far.

There were other gaming machines? lol

In all seriousness though the only other ones I can think off are the 8/16Bit computers of the 80s/90s and consoles such as the PC Engine, NeoGeo, Atari Jaguar and all those other 90s consoles that tried to cash in on the gaming boom.

Most of these aren't easily accessible so suggestions for them will always be few and far between and anything later and we're venturing away from 'retro magazine club' into the sister thread 'book club'.

If you wanna go further back my Atari 2600 is set up and ready to go!

Will try and give Super Aleste a quick blast but TBH I'm already looking forward to next week.

davyK wrote:

Super Aleste - short game - normal difficulty - 1,025,820

I'm aiming to beat that.

With saves states.

Don't forget there were 3000ish Amiga games Retroking, or arcade games/old PC stuff. We don't have to stick to the consoles.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Super Aleste - short game - normal difficulty - 1,025,820

I'm aiming to beat that. With saves states. 

The short game only lasts 5 mins or so - it's a quick tour of the game through 3 shortened levels......my main game 1cc run score is 5.6 million.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Don't forget there were 3000ish Amiga games Retroking, or arcade games/old PC stuff. We don't have to stick to the consoles.

Do they work on your cannoo? Also the legal way is a lot more effort than plugging in a console. Imagine loading up a C64 game for one of these? No thanks! Plus who the hell owns a NeoGeo? Nintendo/Sega are standard stuff, 90% of this thread will be made up of those.

I'll buck the trend right now, Kangaroo - Atari 2600.
Atari's attempt to capitalise on Nintendo's Donkey Kong. Also the first video game I ever owned.