Retro Club - 8 & 16-bit puzzlers - The Bear and Badger

Mod74

Hey, UN Squadron. Did I actually suggest that out loud or did you read my mind?

dynamiteReady

Either frikkin' way, the game is bad*...

*Michael Jackson before the pedo, Jesus juice, court case, "bad"

Moot_Geeza

So Saturn emulation is getting decent then, going by that Sonic R footage.Â Praise the Lord.Â Not perfect, as I seem to remember Sonic R had a fade in rather than pop up effect for distant polygons, but definitely good enough to start rejoicing.Â Perhaps I will get to play all the 32-bit Panzer Dragoon games again after all.

Bollockoff

Speak of the devil, I came in here to ask if Saturn emulation was a done thing as i'm determined to play Panzer Dragoon Saga in some form.

davyK

Bollockoff wrote:

Speak of the devil, I came in here to ask if Saturn emulation was a done thing as i'm determined to play Panzer Dragoon Saga in some form.

Sega - those lovable eejits - apparantly lost the source code of PD Saga...so emulation really will be the only alternative.

Moot_Geeza

Was really struggling with UN Saqadron at lunch today, specifically the forest level with the gun turrets - really struggling even with save states.Â My mate came round this evening and showed me what I was doing wrong - apparently a certain amount of dying is advisable to power up the weapons, which I wasn't doing as I was spamming the save states for my first credit.Â He said you get something like three lives with three continues, and the weapons can only really reach level five after a few deaths (and also that the forest level I was having trouble with is the second toughest stage).Â He also suggested I don't buy any different ships from the store until towards the end.Â

I'll get back on it tomorrow.

davyK

Think that's where I got stuck too - maybe I should give that a try.......between this and SubTerrania this thread is becoming quite educational...

Moot_Geeza

I beat the forest fortress level at lunch, thank fuck.Â Still hard even when powered up.Â

In light of the discussion in the section/level/whatever thread, I've added Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3, and Yoshi's Island to the OP (not 'til March though), for some healthy debate about what are, in my opinion, the highlights of each series.

dynamiteReady

Un Squadron is as hard a fuck, but I've never been all that good a shooters...

My unedited observations up to this point:

- The game's logo is a fucking flaming unicorn! Lol!
- The sheild system is blatantly a precursor to the one found in Halo...
- Took me a while to get use to weapon switching... But...
- Being able to do so while the game is paused is a small and welcome mercy.
- Why does the commander on the briefing screen have an X shaped scar on his head?
- Is the first of the three characters on the selection screen a burd?
- Look a the size of your ship... Is a submarine really that fucking large?
- That said, the submarine stage is very clever, though rather tedious.
- Same to be said for the 'bombing' raid stages (but without the tedium).

That forest level is fucked. It's nice to have a non-linear path through the stages, but there should be some indication of the relative difficulty of each stage...Â

That level's a frikkin' mire... in fact...

- Every level after stage one is a frikkin' mire. This game is quite hard.

Moot_Geeza

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds it hard.Â I thought Super Aleste got tough towards the end, but this is different gravy.Â I've finished another two levels.Â It's very much a game that would have revealed its required strategies slowly - not just in route planning/money spending, but in the way you can get more powerful after dying than you can by lasting a while on one life.

The shield/Halo thing is interesting, I can't think of anything that did it earlier.

retroking1981

UN Squadron (SNES)

Played a bit of this at the weekend.

Still good...

Still hard...

Still don't quite love it as much as I feel I should or as much as many others do...

Solid addition to the SNES library but there are better examples of this genre on the system imo.

4/5

hylian_elf

Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie?
R-Type III?
Super Parodius?
Pop 'n Twinbee?

Hodge360

Anyone want to revisit Midnight Resistance? Had a little reminisce as I was dropping off last night.

mk64

It was my favourite game on the Amiga. It's also the only playable version. The md version was terrible.

The flamethrower looks gorgeous on a500 and I loved the coop. Awesome game.

Moot_Geeza

Hodge360 wrote:

Anyone want to revisit Midnight Resistance? Had a little reminisce as I was dropping off last night.

I'm going to eat some cheese before I settle down tonight and think about Herzog Zwei. That could be an a amazing dream.

I'm up for Midnight Resistance, I've never played it.

Played a bit more UN Squadron. Just about managed to destroy a battleship (with save states). Not sure how far I am from the end.

Hodge360

I had it and loved it on the good ol C64.

retroking1981

How about a Batman week moot?

I've only ever played 4 Batman games:
Batman - NES
Batman Returns - SNES
and the new Rocksteady games on PS3.

Would be nice to check out some retro Batman goodness.

edit: tell a lie I played that one on Wii with you too

Moot_Geeza

I'll add a choose your Batman week (and Midnight Resistance), but I'll leave the existing schedule as it is, I've already put Zero Tolerance back once.

As far as retro Batman goes, I think I've only played Batman (NES), Batman Returns (SNES) Batman Returns (MD), Batman Forever (MD...eurgh) and Batman & Robin (MD).

hylian_elf

Batman and Robin on SNES was amaze. Batman Returns was alright. Batman on GB I can barely remmeber.

I just completed Arkham Asylum at the weekend. Can't wait to play City.

davyK

I avoided licenced stuff like the plague back in the day though I hear that Batman Returns on SNES (the one with the clown enemies) was pretty good.

hylian_elf

Yeah, it was as good as a repetitiv brawler could be. I got bored of those type of games fast. Adventures of Batman and Robin was decently varied enough for my liking.

davyK

The only scrolly brawlers I really liked were the Battletoads games and even they tended only to have a couple of levels in that style.

That type of game gets old really fast outside the multi-player coin munching arcade environment.

Moot_Geeza

The Adventures of Batman & Robin on Megadrive was a technical marvel, with cracking music, but the extreme difficulty rendered it close to unplayable.Â Diehard Gamefan, an American publication I liked, called it the best reason to buy a Game Genie.Â I completed it last year, with saves states, but even that wasn't a breeze.Â A real shame; if they'd dialed it down by 25% it could have been remembered as one of the best games on the machine.Â

Returns on the MD was poor, although I did always fancy the Mega CD version for the Super Scaler-esque driving sections.Â I think I almost wore out that section of of the covermounted Mean Machines Sega VHS.Â What I've played of the NES Batman was great.

Moot_Geeza

Just completed UN Saquadron.Â A few thoughts:

1. It's too hard, for me anyway.Â The level with the boss on the ceiling of the cave was effing ridiculous.Â Without save states I'd still be twisting in the wind somewhere near the forest fortress level.Â
2. I like the tactical nature of the route planning, although on the flipside, the best way to finish it is apparently to save your cash until you can afford the best plane, then tackle the final level with that.Â Which is a bit shit, as there are five other effectively usleless planes.
3. It's quite long for a 16-bit shooter (ten levels).Â Or is it?Â It is compared to Gynoug anyway, but the genre isn't my area of expertise.Â Perhaps SNES shooters were generally lengthier affairs (Super Aleste was a long 'un).
4. Doubling back on your flightpath in certain sections adds a nice twist.
5. The music is indeed excellent.Â
6. Having to die - or even continue - in order to level up is interesting, although I'm not quite sure if I like it.Â

I'm not sure what to rate this one, as me being awful at it probably shouldn't knock the score down.Â I'll go with 84%.

LazyGunn

i loved un squadron, i got it on snes after having love carrier airwing in the arcades

by god its a fucking hard game, never finished (was playing on normal snes), but got quite far

i wish id stuck with it to complete it, a really great game, but it made me crazy with frustration

[Deleted User]

I owned this game, it was fantastic. Lent it to a kid in school - he got expelled and then I never saw UN Squadron ever again.

I remember it being really fucking hard. I owned it on the SNES (never had a Megadrive).

monkey

Forgot just how hard UN Squadron was when I chose it. I endorse Moot's 84% as the difficulty veers into being unnecessarily punishing at times. I completed this back in the day. I have literally no idea how I managed it.

Moot_Geeza

monkey wrote:

I completed this back in the day. I have literally no idea how I managed it.

I thought that with Sub-Terrania.Â After moaning about how 'ridiculous' and 'impossible' his favourite ever game was, I watched my mate breeze through the first few levels of UN Squadron last week...."it's all about patterns" he said.Â He is a bit Rain Man though.

Moot_Geeza

Week eighteen: Zero Tolerance (Megadrive)

Technopop's technically impressive Megadrive FPS. Space station Europa-1 has been attacked by an unknown aggressor of extra terrestrial origin. Battle your way through 40 different levels of maze-based blasting, collecting new weaponry as you go. Choose from five different operatives, the catch being once they're dead, they stay dead. The game originally featured a link up mode for multiplayer, and was well received by the gaming press upon release in 1994, receiving scores in the mid to high 80s.

How well have even the best 16-bit first person shooters stood the test of time?

Play and discuss, or just simply reminisce.

Schedule:

Week nineteen (21/01): Out To Lunch (SNES, Amiga)
Week twenty (28/01): Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (PC Engine, Virtual Console)
Week twenty one (04/02): Rocket Knight Adventures (Megadrive)
Week twenty two (11/02): Star Parodier (PC Engine/Virtual Console)
Week twenty three (18/02): Legendary Axe (PC Engine/Virtual Console)
Week twenty four (25/02): Atari 2600 week
Week tenty five (04/03): Cybernator (SNES)
Week twenty six (11/03): Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 3 LOCK-ON! (Megadrive)
Week twenty seven (18/03): Yoshi's Island (SNES)
Week twenty eight: 25/03): Midnight Resistance (arcade, Megadrive, Amiga etc)
Week twenty nine (01/04): Rub you own Rhubarb: Retro Batman week (various).

Hodge360

That MP link up sounds familiar. Think we may have actually tried that all them yrs ago. Must check with my brother.

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