It was great how often this was just the first five minutes of any match.
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After we drove into town, through a building, in a car modded with a cow catcher, punting an opponent off the grille, then shot some mess of Other Dudes but not All the Dudes (Dudes were still Incoming), I clambered onto a roof for a breather and to take stock of the chaos below. There was a low wall around the perimeter. I reloaded and chugged a shield potion and ran back to the edge, then thought to do a quick 360 of my surroundings.
There was a Vegeta there.
Knocked down, on all fours, shoved into the corner between the wall and an HVAC unit. The Vegeta was trying to hide. I got out my mall katana and approached the Vegeta, but changed my mind. I picked up the Vegeta. I ran to the edge of the roof and jumped to the ground below. I jumped, with my new Vegeta, straight into the middle of a gunfight. I had Vegeta tunnnel-vision. I forgot my original purpose. I forgot everything. I just had to run around with this Vegeta on my shoulder!
I tried throwing my Vegeta away. I tried facing the new enemy and returning fire. I was quickly knocked down.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this bachelor drove in with his own cowcatcher car and blew up a gas station and with it the car and possibly himself + another teammate? idk. The only thing I am certain of is that I was undone by my lust to cart around a helpless, dying Vegeta.
Videogames can be about anything.
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The Select Button Fromsoft-to-Fortnite zeitgeist pivot was not on my 2022 bingo card
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Re: old conversations Iām late to:
Fighting game training modes: are evil. If you need a training mode to play a fighting game itās a bad game. Most fighting games are bad games. The modern ālabbingā obsession is a blight on the genre that is pushing it further and further into niche obscurity.
Shooting game for a new player: hm I probably donāt have perspective on this anymore but nobody mentioned Mushihimesama; the PC version is gorgeous and the mechanics are simpler than DoDonPachi even, especially in Arrange mode, where you can pretty much just press Fire a lotāit even Auto-bombs for you. Possibly thatās a crutch but only because most other shmups havenāt realized itās the best. : P
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Played all the games in Midway Arcade Treasures 2 on PS2.
^ The first ~third of the games; hours two and three failed to capture due to the collectionās game switch resolution toggle fritzing out my Framemeister upscaler device after a while. May be just as well because most of the rest of the games are pretty hideous too. Theyāre justā¦remarkably unplayable; the closest would have been Rampage World Tour, which is actually sort of fun, but still rough in terms of its controls, obnoxious enemies and traps, on-and-off soundtrack, and incredibly repetitive gameplay.
It feels as though the primary concern of most of the games was to create the biggest possible spectacle to attract single quarters, rather than a pleasant play experience.
Of the games I managed to capture:
My brain is too dumb for the traditional pass/shoot two-button sports game control like Arch Rivalsābut itās the most graphically pleasant game in the collection. Cyberball 2072 has only one button, and I can just bootleg it on every play, which is actually kind of funāhate being on D, though. ; P APB, Championship Sprint, and Hard Drivinā are incredibly hard to controlāmust have been far better with the steering wheel etc on the actual arcade cabs (I have only incredibly vague memories of playing them as a kid back in the day). Gauntlet II is awful: letās just hammer enemies into the player constantly.
Arch Rivals and Cyberball 2072 were among the most playable games in the collection.
That podcast interview with Arch Rivals and Rampage co-creator and artist Brian Colin (did my mention of it get in the part I was able to capture? the Arch Rivals section? canāt remember now) is TDE EP10 - Rampage co-creator Brian Colin ā The Ted Dabney Experience
Games in the collection that I failed to capture:
- Kozmik Kroozār (baffling)
- MKII and 3 (the control especially in II feels disembodied, like youāre just hitting a memorized pattern of otherwise unconnected inputs)
- NARC (so over-the-top-hideous that itās kind of fascinatingā¦but only for so long)
- Pit Fighter (ditto)
- Primal Rage (controls slightly better than MKIIā¦)
- Rampage World Tour (kind of fun; still jerky control, and awfully repetitive)
- Spy Hunter II (absolutely awful pseudo 3D view, what were they thinking?)
- Timber (nearly playable but for some reason touching a tree hammers you to the ground)
- Total Carnage (semi-playable but the over-the-top violence gets obnoxiousāthe first stage boss alone takes like ten solid minutes of shooting to killāas does cheap stuff like the screen-filling grape jelly shrapnel from exploding barrels, and MOVING MINES)
- Wacko (charming graphics but the worst-ever sound effect every time you shoot an enemy, causing it to vibrate in place bizarrely; and crippled by only four-way shooting)
- Wizard of Wor (just so jerky)
- Xenophobe (nice art but interminable crawling gameplay)
- Xybots (lots of interesting stuff but hard to spot peripheral enemies in the 3D maze, and every time you die you have to restart the entire level)
(One of the worst control features is an obsession with making the player press separate buttons for crouching or low attacksāMK, NARC, Xenophobe. UGH.)
(And many of the games have AWFUL sound effects. Although I may have had my headphones turned up too high, which wouldnāt have been helping. The collection has no volume setting option.)
The emulation or whatever by Digital Eclipse seems to be pretty good. Surprisingly sharp, blur-free graphics, even in just 480i. Havenāt tested for input delayā¦ Thereās probably a bit, but not enough to be noticeableā¦or were there really bad input problems accounting for some of the jerkiness? But I didnāt get the impression it was systemic jerkinessāit felt more like each game had its own, purposefully programmed original jerkiness.
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Every genre has loads of players who strive to be the best and will put in the time to do so. Especially if itās a genre focused on player vs. player combat. Giving these players quality tools to help them improve and explore is a great thing and has nothing to do with the decline of the fighting game genre (or any other genre). Focusing exclusively on a competitive angle is more often than not a financial mistake but creatively/artistically itās perfectly valid. FGs are one of the few genres where you can find an active community for even the smallest, weirdest, jankiest games. Small devs donāt have to waste their time loading their games with bloat to attract an audience thatās never going to arrive! They can focus on making a fighting game.
Also nearly every FG released in the last half decade+ has lower execution requirements than anything released during the genreās heyday, maybe you arenāt playing these games but they are very streamlined and simple nowadays, itās actually a bit of a downer.
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im not sure if any of the mortal kombat games were ever more popular but sf2 was the most Popular Videogame In The World for a time and still has like a much stricter input reader than anything else ive playedā¦ ppl were simply content to press buttons and make characters punch each other til they vomitted. the skill level of the playerbase is just generally better now so of course ppl wanna lab stuff. theres nothing stopping any two ppl from still playing any fighting game just like that tho, just hanging out and pressing buttons
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The last Mortal Kombat sold 12 million copies which isnāt quite SF2 numbers but itās close. It is one of the biggest retail games of the last few years. That may be because itās loaded with dumb single player bullshit for people who do not want to lose at video games. But it also has a training mode, and a whole competitive/esports angle, and if you want to, like, win against other human beings you will definitely have to Learn How To Play. Thatās how video games work now! Everyone has access to ~hot tech~ if they want it! This is not something you can solve without a time machine or playing with other people who vow to never, ever look at a youtube or join a discord.
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I donāt think execution requirements, if weāre talking input window and so forth, is the problem; timing, for instance, is something you improve on your own just by playing. The problem is that a lot of fighting games continue to pile on more and more systems, so thereās a huge knowledge and control wall to jump over before you even feel like you can start to play; there are too many technical things to remember and think about at once.
So sure, a training mode isnāt evil in itselfāthe problem is theyāve come to be seen as absolutely necessary for any player to spend most of their time in in order for that player to feel like theyāre even able to play the game at all.
Thatās less of a problem in games with a wider player base, where there will always be a large pool of absolute noobs to match up against. And those gamesāmostly MK and Tekken, I thinkāhave maintained that capability by continuing to appeal to non-technical aspects, including the ādumb single playerā stuff you mention.
The games Iām thinking of are primarily Capcom and Arc System Works games, I suppose. In terms of actual new fighting games released on console since 2017, Iāve only played Tekken 7, MvC:I, Injustice 2, GGXrd2 demo, FEXL, and GBVS.
fortnight goku
training mode
mortal kombat
download code
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Hi, person who got into fighting games after training modes:
I literally could not do most of the moves in fighting games until I practiced a bunch in training modes. I barely use training mode for anything other than learning moves and practicing combos. I literally could not play them before training modes existed, and going back to old fighters is rough because I have no real ways to learn my basics without weird stuff like having a dummy player two.
Training modes make it easier to learn, not harder.
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The point Iāve been failing to make is that the learning curve of those games is too high.
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the lowest difficulty of mega drive columnsā original mode is so easy, i think it actually stops speeding up after a certain point.
after like half wn hour, i just got a game over on purpose
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We didnāt start the fi~re
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Iād like to share maybe my favorite Fortnite moment of all times: when the entire SB Squadron was downed, and bleeding out, and crawling towards shelter behind a partially destroyed tower, begging for me to save them, but instead of shooting enemies or rushing to their aid I prioritized taking a screenshot and saying āYou all look so funny right now, this fuckinā rocks, this is so fuckinā bad ass.ā
Then they all died.
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Iāve been picking away at Contra III for the past few days, thankfully the Japanese version which has infinite continues as my god this game seems rather hard. Iād say that it feels harder than Shattered Soldier but that likely is not strictly true, Shattered Soldier just let you play any of the four initial stages you want and I believe let you even practice the late game stages once you unlocked them.
I think said training modes that let me practice a given stage until I get it down without having to play through several tricky stages beforehand are the only way Iāve ever been able to beat a game of this difficulty (either that or infinite continues), which feels relevant to some of the other discussion going on here.
Some games might be designed to be too hard or two harsh and that can be a problem, but most games are flawed in some way and additional modes or options to be able to offset these design choices are generally a good thing. When I played Mortal Kombat 11 I couldnāt even complete the tutorial (it asks you to perform some rather advanced combos) but it gave me enough info to play through the story mode without being utterly lost, and thatās all I really needed. The game has way too many random systems and things in place, putting in a system to better teach them didnāt suddenly make them better but I at least appreciate the effort.
Also back to my original point the stage 5 boss in Contra III seemed to be designed solely because someone went āhey, using Mode 7 to spin the screen constantly and making the player feel ill would make things trickierā and I just want to say to that person that I do not care for you.
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I donāt know if this applies to the difficulty youāre playing, but double-tapping L or R makes you spin faster in the top down stages which can counteract the spinning the sand puts you in.
Though yeah itās a dumb gimmick.
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I eventually got past said boss when holding down the proper trigger let me sort of spin almost in sync with it while I happened to have a cluster bomb (whatever C is) and happened to let me do a lot of damage in the short opening I had. That feels more like a lucky break than actual skill but, you know, I did hold the correct trigger down so weāll call it 50-50.
I currently have the game suspended at the stage 6 checkpoint and I have the first two bosses after it sorted out fairly well, so as long as I can crack however many are after/get lucky I should be close to closing it out.
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Didnāt you end up rebooting us all this match? Because you definitely did that once and it ruled.
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I donāt think I did that time but letās pretend I did
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