games you played today chronicles X: ten things I played about you

[smbhax]

Millipede for Famicom, aka “Milli-Pede: Kyodai Konchuu no Gyakushuu,” aka “ミリピード 巨大昆虫の逆襲,” aka “Millipede: Counterattack of the Giant Insects” (Google Translate), aka “Millipede: Super Arcade Hit!” (NES)

Part of a 1983 Atari / Nintendo deal for Atari to distribute the Famicom in the US ( Millipede (NES, HAL Laboratory) - The Cutting Room Floor ); the full deal fell through but not before HAL Laboratory–of Kirby fame–had ported Atari’s arcade games Millipede, Stargate (aka Defender II), Joust, and “an unknown title that was never released” to the Famicom.

This game also came to the NES five years later; I got the Famicom version because the US version’s graphics were revised into super-elaborate, less arcade-like versions of themselves–same deal with Joust (also the flapping never felt right in HAL’s Joust).

This Millipede feels way better on a pad than the blurry, trackball emulating version in Atari 50; it’s got to be way easier–it gives you extra ships like crazy–but especially in the faster GAME B mode, HAL came up with a great fast-paced constant action game with constant new threats zipping in at you from all directions, and great sound FX. Slowdown abounds, and the colors aren’t quite as saturated and splendid as the arcade version, but it’s great fun to play with never a dull moment, and highly addictive: going in expecting to grind out 15 minutes or so of play, I had to pry myself off it after an hour to stop having an umpteenth “just one more go.”

[smbhax]

What feels like a still-early-in-development Castlevania-like platformer that hit Free to Play on Steam, “Rise of the Eternal.”

The Steam description says the game is running in Unreal Engine 5, and this is apparently still a debug-type build; various keys toggle developer tools, for instance “;” and “'” toggle info displays and the ability to pan the view to see more of the stage.

This might also be why the game is cranking my CPU fan even with nothing going on in the game; it’s taking 50% CPU on a machine that doesn’t drop a frame in SF6.

There is no controller support; I mapped the action keys to my DualSense with Steam Input:

Triple attack: Q
Double attack: E
Move/jump: WASD or arrow keys
ESC: menu

The movement is sharp except that while you do have movement control during a jump, it’s very hard to cancel the jump’s forward momentum, so short jumps are way too hard to do reliably–and there are a few short jumps here that, when missed, send you falling all the way back to the start of a stage.

The AI and combat is extremely rudimentary; the hit boxes and timings are out of whack, your character’s attack animations are far to slow and long, and you can just hopscotch over nearly all of the enemies; besides them the only other things in the stages are health items scattered around.

The stage 4 music triggers copyright claims on YouTube. : P

The sprites and backgrounds are pretty darn gorgeous, though, and blessedly unmarred by flashing FX and screen shake–so I can actually play this without having to worry about getting a migraine. ^ _^ The subdued music creates a fitting ambiance.

Lovely pixel art and I’m a big fan of the scaled-up pixels for big monsters.

I’d love to see a fully developed game along these lines; hopefully the developer keeps at it.

[LaurelSoup]

[username]

I started up Hitman: Absolution despite knowing several people who consider it their least favorite in the series (TBF I don’t know if most of them played anything before Blood Money) as I hadn’t played anything on the PS3 in a bit. There seems to be more lore than I was expecting although I think I picked up enough to keep up (doctors = bad). It also seems to have the Batman Arkham vision thing years before those games did.

Anyways I poisoned some people and stole a girl while playing dress-up.

[Drem]

Spoiler for the last level of Astro Bot, wtf

Spoiler

[parker]

I’ve enjoyed the parts where I’ve got to be the character doing the things we’re trying to do here, the part where you hear the kid talking to his mom about how he doesn’t even know his dad whose hardly ever said a word to him etc got to me, and I loved when the kid starts to freak out and you pass on the old hard earned wisdom of the narrow path negating the enemy numbers, and damn do I love any excuse to go back to the old me and dig out my old weapons from under the floorboards of my house, everytime there’s a press the sticks to use spartan rage ability prompt in the middle of a cutscene with some nordic shitheel it’s great. Everything else inbetween drives me insane but I can’t seem to stop doing it either. They just need to figure out a way to make ps1 style jrpgs viable again, whatever graphical downgrade it takes, I guess that’s basically what it’d look more like if you took out the checkbox bullshit but also didn’t want the game to just be like three hours long (is an elden ring-alike what I’m trying to imagine in my head here, a ps1 jrpg length game with better combat?). It is pretty decent about feeling like you’re just getting ambushed by a couple enemies every so often who are there for a reason when you’re moving through an area, not fighting hordes of goons materializing out of nowhere.

[GherkinForce]

Picked up the Rocket Knight Adventures: Resparked collection on sale. I loved playing Sparkster (MD) back in the day but for some reason have never played the first one until now.

Feels pretty crazy how much better it is in every way to the sequels. Very setpiece-y with lots of mini bosses and quirky details. I like the continue screen with the triumphant music and Sparkster itching to get back in the fray, unless you highlight the game over option and he looks completely deflated and the music stops. Lots of detail in the spritework and animations.
Feels very much like a Treasure game, I suspect some of the staff on this must have gone on to work there.

Sparkster (MD) feels like such a weird downgrade in comparison. The graphics are way less detailed, and it’s pretty obvious they were trying to rebrand the game to be more of a Sonic style thing with more 'tude. The first game had this sort of classic Mighty Mouse cartoon vibe, but this one is all spiky hair anime. I think I still prefer the way the rocket works here though with it’s own button and the music still rocks.

I haven’t played much of the SNES game yet but it feels like a bit of a mess? It’s both way too fast and too slow, there’s arrows directing you to do the rocket wall bounce that lead you straight into enemy projectiles. Not really much flow to the level design. Will have to play it a bit more to get a better impression.

[notbov]

RKA is post-Treasure but it’s directed by the same guy (Nobuya Nakazato) who directed Contra 3 and Hard Corps (this is why Sparkster shows up in one of the… Shattered Soldier? endings)

the rough timeline on the Treasure schism is around post-Simpsons and both versions of Bucky O’Hare (which both are 1992)

[Father.Torque]

Yakuza 0 Stephen Spielberg and Michael Jackson are absoutely sending me

[vodselbt]

Feeling a bit shaken up by how tough things seemed to become after defeating the Dreadnaught in FF2. The dungeon at Deist was brutal. I barely made it through that place. I might need to do some more leveling if that wasn’t just some notorious difficulty spike.

[Drem]

Question about the Astro Bot post-game:

Do you think people would be mad if after beating the final level, the game left Astro Bot missing in another dimension and the post-game context was trying to find a way to rescue them, which you did by playing the other bots you’ve rescued and collecting all the Things to unlock the final challenge level? Is that too depressing an ending for a game where most people probably aren’t going to collect all Things and doesn’t really have characters in the first place?

I did like how the credits were rolling for a bit there while you just watched everyone crying.

[captainlove]

I think the devs would’ve seen it as inappropriate given the ‘good vibes’ mission prevalent throughout the game. It would’ve been a ballsy ending and might’ve upset some people at ‘gatekeeping’ the happy ending behind a challenge level. I think it’s ultimately as far as Astrobot goes in terms of subversion, it still needs to resolve in a conventional manner. Like you say there’s not much in terms of characters and narrative anyway, such a twist would be as one-dimensional as the rest of the game but harder to access so lots of people would probably be confused rather than celebratory of the decision.

[HoboSupportAct]

I’ve developed more affection for the SNES game in time -awful final boss notwithstanding- but the original MD one is a banger worth shouting about

[dementia]

Speaking of RKA and Contra SS links, I’m convinced these two are the same boss

Rocket Knight Adventures- Fish Boss

Contra Shattered Soldier killing the level 4 boss midair

[GherkinForce]

Yeah I think I need to just give it a good go before I write it off.

I still really like the second mega drive one. It may be a cool dude Sonic clone, but it does do a few interesting things like the opening robot fight (and later level ripped straight from Goemon). I remember playing only on easy when I rented it as a kid and was surprised later on emulation that the higher difficulties have extra in-between stages

[GherkinForce]

In that case I feel like the Treasure guys must have taken some assets from Konami, because I could swear Dynamite Headdy and RKA share some similarities in sound fonts and sprite styles etc.

[RT-55J]

well, for one, Aki Hata contributed to the soundtracks of both RKA and Dynamite Headdy

[iguferon]

playing ys viii and it’s fun but adol looks like a tiktok filter was applied to his face

miss ys 7 adol so bad just want him back

[Drem]

[SlumWolf]

I started playing flock with a couple of friends yesterday; I wasn’t expecting much initially (mostly because of the art style and the general vibe of the trailers) but the elegant flight controls and laid-back monster collecting grabbed me pretty quick. you play as bird rider/volunteer naturalist gliding around some pretty environments, singing to weird little guys to get them to follow you around for a while. it’s got a pokedex w/ asynchronous progression so everyone can do their own thing on a big map and compare guys/outfits. some of the interactions to charm the little guys are pretty interesting, too. it’s good