for the record: Murph is completely and totally legit and owns most of the games he’s posting about on PCB
you should follow his Twitch channel so you can randomly catch FF or AvP 1CCs or unhinged 2 loop Crime Fighters clears
2 Likes
Played the Undercover Cops I extracted from Irem Arcade Hits.
This “World” version of the Undercover Cops ROM apparently has cut-down sound and omits a few player character attack moves (missing an additional throw animation, and a dash jump attack that probably would have helped with one boss I can think of
in particular) compared with the Japanese version or the apparently ultra-rare “Alpha Renewal” version (Japanese music & moves + English text).
Even with cut-down music, this version gets soundtrack copyright claims on YouTube! Sheesh.
It’s got Irem’s future Metal-Slug-creating Nazca Corporation team’s signature obsessively detailed animation action sprites, but the gameplay isn’t great, with somewhat clunky control (a frustratingly short dash range, for instance, and a jump animation that delays take-off to show the character bending their knees,
which has got to be an Action Game 101 no-no) and lots of cheap-feeling enemy attacks (tunneling up from the ground to transform into exploding mines, for instance,
or just having an instant, unerring wide-range counter attack move
) making it more frustrating than fun.
10 Likes
oh no my licence!
8 Likes
crying seeing screenshots of the world version of UC Cops
love yourself, play the Japanese version if only for the absurd soundtrack
1 Like
I don’t think there’s anywhere to buy that version just now.
that seems like it’s the rights holder’s ptoblem. if they don’t care about taking your money, why do you care so much about giving it to them?
5 Likes
Well at this point I’m only about $10 interested in any version of that game, even the fabled “Alpha Renewal” version. = P
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Looks dope but I can’t trust those visuals without seeing them in motion
Crows: The Battle Action for SegaSaturn
4 Likes
you don’t always have to link to the big sites, you know
7 Likes
Gotta bribe Google to get on the first page where I’ll see ya. ^ _^
i’ve heard that for some people, i appear as a search suggestion after only four letters!
doesn’t happen for me though lol
Oh shoot maybe I just gotta run a buncha searches for–oh hm well I wonder if that’s their browsers storing something locally, rather than Google storing it in the per-user profile we know they keep on each of us. ; )
One thing I like about the Hardcore Gaming article is that they point out a bunch of the devs are ex Technos Japan.
The game does look kinda eh slow and lacking punctuation, from skimming video. Nice base graphics though.
i like falcon’s gentlemanly walk in sengoku 3, with his hand on the end of his sword’s grip. he’s annoying to play as though, since missing the first hit of his weapon combo leaves him vulnerable for what feels like a really long time
5 Likes
Franko: The Crazy Revenge
i haven’t played this game, but i’ve watched Twitch streamer Macaw play it a couple weeks ago when he was on a Polish PC/DOS games kick. the game is not….good, but it has a kind of mid-90s charm to it, and it’s a fun look at a game scene i was pretty oblivious to most of my life.
sprites are clearly ripped from stuff like Final Fight, and it seems very hard to play well.
One of the earlier Polish commercially released video games, it also attained quite a notoriety with the amount of violence (being possibly the first violent Polish video game), use of sampled Polish profanity, nudity (with one of the enemy types in the later level being coat flashers) and with how much detail have it portrayed urban Poland in the early 1990s.
i bring this up, because just yesterday, a sequel to this game was released (and once again, Macaw is currently streaming it)
Skinny & Franko: Fists of Violence
now available for most things, apparently.
the art style is…unique? it looks like a Flash game most of the time, but there are so many individual attacks that are specific to backgrounds and surroundings, and enemy appearances change as you beat them up, that it’s clear a lot of time was spent on the game. i recommend trying to watch Macaw’s stream to get an idea of how much detail is in the game. at the same time, it feels like a wasted effort since it’s so ugly looking lol. however, after 20-30 mins of watching this…i kind of want to play this game and own it and make people who come over play it with me.
“You’re good! I’ll make your ass parking!”
is just one of the many unique bits of voiced dialogue you can expect to hear from the onslaught of men coming at you.
each stage seems like it’s 40 minutes long and there are 8 of them. it’s difficulty seems to be aiming for “what if you were actually trying to fight this many people at once” i.e. it’s impossible
note: going to just say that the game has some Questionable Representation in it, so maybe purchasing it with money as opposed to stealing it is not recommended if you’re curious to try it
4 Likes
weird
8 Likes
oh wow they made billy a twink
1 Like
I keep trying other beat-em-ups but the original Double Dragon is the only one that really keeps calling me back. It all fits in its own weird world, you never quite know what’s going to happen when you go up against an enemy, and it’s just about the perfect play length.
And the music and sound FX CRUSH.
And the art style has that endearingly primitive yet ruddily handsome effectiveness that looks tough yet manages to have a lot of pretty primary colors, and doesn’t overdo things.
The ROMs for the three arcade Double Dragon games can be extracted from Double Dragon Trilogy on Steam ( Double Dragon Trilogy on Steam ):
The extracted Double Dragon ROM runs in current MAME, 0.254. You can mess with MAME’s “Sliders” controls from TAB or ~ to adjust SFX and Music volume independently, as well as overall volume; you can also scale the screen up slightly to crop the small black border built into the arcade ROM (maybe was a slowdown reduction measure?):
Those settings, cutting music volume by half and doubling SFX volume, get it pretty close to the volume balance in Arcade Archives Double Dragon on PS4–which is a very good port although as one of the very early Arcade Archives entries it somewhat oddly doesn’t quite let you scale the game window up to full screen height (including the ROM’s built-in border).
Generally looks good, but the lack of mid-air physics breaking on the hurricane kick weirds me out. Gimme that mid-air stop