Nostalgia binge. Except Wonderboy, all of these have been extensively covered around this way recently.  

18. Super Buster Bros aka Super Pang (Snes)
Pang is the Pang I remember from being in every arcade, restaurant, cafe and bakery from the town I lived in in Spain. Probably only second to Street Fighter 2 for the raw floor space covered. I used to spend Saturdays biking between these places. I might go to a specific cafe for Operation Wolf, Turtles, or Shadow Dancer. I doubt I ever made a special trip to go and play Pang. Still it holds up well, plays nicely and it's still fun to play. [8]  

19. Wonder Boy : The Dragons Trap (Switch)
Ridiculously wonderful remake. This was number three or four or so in the first computer games I owned but it's open-world, metroidvania-like set up was too complex for me. It's a genius piece of 8-bit game design, has dual retro and modern soundtrack amazement, beautiful hand-drawn animated sprites, zero pointless fetch quests, doesn't even once try to get me to care about some story, not an ounce of flab on the whole thing. The fusion between the old game and the updated graphics, sound and quality of life improvements is spot on, mix and match them how you want. A perfect [10]

20,21,22. Streets of Rage 1 & 2, Bare Knuckle 3 (Megadrive)
I thought the order of greatness would be 2,1,3. It's 2,3,1 on gameplay. And 2,1,3 on everything else. 
   
23. Streets of Rage 4 (PC)
It's good. All the love and care and reverence that the same devs poured into Wonderboy is there. Like Wonderboy it's a facelift, modernising a lot of it, but in careful and measured ways that leaves the same basic game underneath. The core moves on this are generally still great. Mixing up crowd management and brutality and herding goons around. It's great fun.
I can't use the specials regularly. I always get punched straight after and lose health. I would have had all the characters able to run and roll. Feels like the slowness in being able to close people down and stuff, while not bad here, is one of those things from the old games that they could have left behind. Combo system and movesets could be a bit more advanced as well but once you start going down that rabbit hole its becoming less and less like Streets of Rage. I've only played through it once solo and can't see myself doing it again but I liked it. Wouldn't mind a run through or two on co-op. [9]

@monkey Wonderboy was a great remake. The way you could change the graphics and music was amazing, I found myself flicking between the two on every area.

It's a very different game, but the original Wonderboy was remade as Returns Remix which I thought was decent to.

It's a fair point regarding the perception of it though, if it's just a reskinned Street Fighter 2 with dodgy visuals and slightly sloppier gameplay, doesn't that still make it better than the vast majority of one on one fighters on home consoles at the time? It got such a kicking in the mags it wouldn't surprise me if a metacritic round up would show a lower average than Rise of the Robots from a couple of years before.

I think your both right tbh.

The 3D boom was real and it's easy to forget just how old 2D felt when Tekken etc were available.

But I'm with moot in thinking it's a much better game than most.

I think I can speak for him, that like myself our preferred fighters are quite limited. Both SF fans with Killer Instinct/Virtua Fighter filling in respective runner up spots, with not much love for other fighters after that.

I'd rather play this over everything other than other SF games, but I get the whole at best it's pointless.

It's an odd one for me to put a score to.

retroking1981 wrote:

@monkey Wonderboy was a great remake. The way you could change the graphics and music was amazing, I found myself flicking between the two on every area.

It's a very different game, but the original Wonderboy was remade as Returns Remix which I thought was decent to.

That’s on the Switch wish list. Might wait until it’s dirt cheap though.

JonB wrote:

I'd still rather play Tuff E Nuff again TBH. This was an early PS1 game. At this point, we'd all spent the last few years playing top quality conversions of SF2 on 16-bit consoles and now we'd upgraded and all that was on offer was a version that lacked all the style, flow and impact of those previous games, and looked plain nasty. That it's mechanically sound doesn't make it feel worth playing. I think most of the reviews would still be in the 5 or 6 range, which seems about right. In the end there's just no reason to play it, except perhaps for some fondness for the film itself.

Think I only played it that one time, but agree liking the movie and Van Damme would have been a big part of the enjoyment.

Would have been about 12 or 13 when it came out - There was definitely a time when Street Fighter was seen as a bit cartoony compared to Mortal Kombat to us back then.  

We'd probably have seen the digitised art as more grown up, tacky as it seems now!  

The other big thing about early Playstation (aside from 3D) was full motion video ie Real People in games.  We'd play any old shit if it had an FMV intro.  That might have been part of it.

I was never a fan of FMV for the most part.

The ones I liked could all be counted on your hands and we're usually by Namco, Square or Capcom.

I never really liked going from FMV to in game graphics, MGS was the first game I can remember on PS that did it right.

One thing I've noticed playing PS1 recently is how bloody many companies did an FMV intro for their logo. Horrible grainy time wasting shit.

retroking1981 wrote:

I picked it up in a sale myself, it's regularly in them.

It's on there at the mo (£5.39, 40% off)

Alpha 2 was probably the last one I played for a decent amount of time (Saturn).  Had Alpha 3 on Dreamcast but couldn't get on with the pads (played a lot more Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and SNK Vs Capcom anyway), then bought Streetfighter IV on PS3 and played it for less than an hour.  I'm done with vs fighters really, but I did buy Mortal Kombat XI recently for the story mode.

I got a friend who swears by Odyssey to.

I'm tempted as the last one I played was III, which was the 5th I'd played in as many years, I got burned out.

Out of interest was is this? The 12th game in the series?

Not done with Streets of Rage 4 just yet but happy to give it a 10/10. 

Also finished Red Dead Redemption 2 which I will give 9/10

Here’s a game I gave up on very quickly when I first played it, back near its release.  My main issue was with the controls (the strange button mapping, the clunkiness of Arthur (the main character), the interface) and the plodding nature of everything (looting corpses and houses, skinning animals, moseying around camp etc).  Everything just took forever.  Also, I would try to talk to a beggar and accidentally pull a gun on him.  I would punch my horse.  I expected a lot more polish from such a big time game.  Seemed like the controls were from the early PS3/360 days, before they had all this stuff down pat.

 

Well tried it again, 18 months later and loved it.  The controls and interface are still pretty mad but I did eventually get used to them.  And the slow pace gives the game a different atmosphere and makes you play a bit differently to other open world games I’ve played.  IE looting takes forever, but you’re not supposed to loot everything.  You’re not supposed to linger at a crime scene.  If you want that extra $2 you have to risk getting caught in the act.  That sort of thing. 

 

The story is okay but it has some fantastic characters.  Arthur himself is just the best.  A reticent outlaw with a heart of gold and a blunt wit.  Very pragmatic.  I played him as honourably as possible and it feels like my actions rubbed off on him as the game went on, I’m not sure on that though.  He had some really great moments, especially the further on the game went.

 

Rockstar got bad press for cracking the whip with their employees.  You can see it.  I can’t get my head around the scope of the game world.  So much detail and (I think, I’m no expert) unique stuff to see.  Like, an excessive about of stuff, where I can’t believe they bothered.  And it just looks ridiculous.  Far better than any realistic open world I’ve seen.  It even looks stunning at night (usually games just look dark at night!), maybe even better.   Just riding around in that world and checking out the scenery is usually fun.  Not always – there are way too many random events.  You can’t go 50 metres without getting into a shootout or helping some stranded traveller.

 

The missions are a let down.  Too much of the same thing – ride here, rob that, get caught, get into a shootout, have a shootout while riding away.  And there are so many compulsory missions!  You could probably turf half of them and not lose much.  The optional ones are often more fun.  When I think about the ones I enjoyed, it was mostly due to the atmosphere or the characters.  Guess you can only have a clunky shootout with 96 blokes and clumsy horse chase so many times!

 

Too much whinging here, I guess it’s easier to talk about that stuff. I think the cowboy atmosphere made the frustrating stuff worth it, and I’ll maybe try it again in a couple of years, see how far graphics have come.

Verecocha wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

I got a friend who swears by Odyssey to.

I'm tempted as the last one I played was III, which was the 5th I'd played in as many years, I got burned out.

Out of interest was is this? The 12th game in the series?

You know I’m not actually sure, I’ve missed a good few then bounced off Origins, went back a couple of years later and loved it. Straight on to this and it’s easily one of the finest games I’ve ever played.

Highly recommended dude.

What happened after III?

The whole Desmond Miles/animus concluded with that.

Is there a bigger story arc still or are they self contained now?

Pretty much agree with Wario's assessment of RDR2.  I got through it in two separate bursts too.  Good game, but there's too much of it.

7. Vanquish (Xbox One) - 10/5 - 5.5hrs
Hard mode done! That was awesome. Even better than on normal. I have more playthroughs in me but I’ll give it a little break. What a game!
[9]

23: Erica (PS4) - 6/10

We briefly touched on FMV in this thread another day, and here's a full blown modern FMV game!  

I gather Erica is similar to the Black Mirror choose your own adventure episode (I haven't seen that); it's mostly a film where you choose the odd line of dialogue or make a decision that alters the plot.  I'm not sure to what extent; I only played it once.  Sometimes you interact with bits and pieces - flicking on a lighter, picking up a piece of paper, etc.  It's very light.

Don't really know how to talk about movies but Erica looks good enough to be a TV movie, the actors are quite good, sounds fine, etc.  It's an occult mystery.  You play as Erica herself and uncover things as you go along.

I think I got to the bottom of it in my playthough.  To be honest though I wasn't paying attention in a few key scenes.  This happens a lot when I watch a so-so film.  A plot twist will happen and I miss it because I'm too busy thinking about getting some dim sims for lunch.

Maybe I'll play again.  It's quite short and not bad.  Worth a look!