Last Famicom game you played?

[Nightstar699]

Huh. I remember feeling kinda "meh" about Guardian Legend as a kid, those exploration segments seemed a bit much, and they were what made me hesitant to add it to my Famicom want list at first. Seeing the boxart/poster in your Finds post featuring it are what changed that, I'll definitely admit it seems better in concept than execution. 

I last no-deathed Castlevania 1, good way to start off the day.

[Ghegs]

Huh. I remember feeling kinda "meh" about Guardian Legend as a kid, those exploration segments seemed a bit much, and they were what made me hesitant to add it to my Famicom want list at first. Seeing the boxart/poster in your Finds post featuring it are what changed that, I'll definitely admit it seems better in concept than execution. 

Yeah, the box art and the poster are so good. I'm somewhat considering selling my Guardic Gaiden now. I'm probably not going to play it again, I may take it out every now and then to gush over how cool the poster is, but that's pretty much it.

A solid remake of the game could be damn sweet.

[nerdynebraskan]

I played a bit of Mad City tonight, to test my Famicom Light Gun (which sadly, seems defective). I went ahead and played a round with the Hyper Shot too, and that works great.

[Nightstar699]

How do you like it, Jackson? Would you say the improvements put it into "good game" territory? That's one I've been debating whether or not to put on my wanted list.

I just got done with a no-death of Captain Saver/ Power Blade 2. I've grown to love this game as much as the first Power Blade.

[Ghegs]

Mad City is horrible. Some time ago I saw a CIB copy for sale for $8, almost bought it right away but decided to give it a go in emulator first and I'm glad I did. So boring, easy and lackluster. No amount of tweaking the enemies' health can make up for the dull gameplay. I passed.

[nerdynebraskan]

I think Mad City is decent. It is pretty easy, unlike its NES cousin Bayou Billy. The variety in gameplay is pretty ambitious. And since it's Konami, you know the music is going to be cool.

But it's true that the gameplay lacks polish, which is typical of multi-genre FC/NES games. The most obvious flaw is the suspect hit detection in the beat 'em up stages, which are the bulk of the game. The NES version is an utter chore; who wants to play a beat 'em up where the low-level grunts have health almost equal to yours AND are tough to hit just because of poor programming? (Let alone the gators, who are really tough to hit and actually have to be fought in Bayou Billy.)

[Nightstar699]

One example of a great multi-genre game is GUN-DEC/Vice: Project Doom. Besides that, most the ones I've played are pretty crappy, E.G. Battletoads which tries cramming a ton of genres in, but none of them done well. Mad City seems to be the same way in that regard. I dunno, I'd just rather have one genre done really well than a bunch of them done poorly.

The only thing that interested me about Mad City (besides, of course, that music) is the fact that I just don't know of many good beat 'em ups on FC, besides Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon II and the Spartan X games, which is a shame because I love the genre.

[Ghegs]

I've always had a philosophical issue with beat 'em ups. You're supposed to be this kick-ass guy who's a bad enough dude to rescue the president. But you often have to keep pounding on a single grunt enemy for what feels like minutes just to defeat him. It certainly doesn't make me feel like a bad-ass, compared to playing as Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaiden who slashes at an enemy once and they friggin' explode. Or even as Thomas in Spartan X, where one solid punch or kick gets rid of most small-time enemies.

This also ties in with my pet peeve in games, locking the player in to a room (or just not scrolling the screen forwards) until all present enemies are defeated. Most annoying in later-era games like Devil May Cry that ties to justify this by a magical barrier popping up, and then disappearing when the room has been cleared. It's fine if it's an occasional thing, but having every encounter like that just annoys me. So I don't tend to play the genre a whole lot. FC's representation of the genre are pretty basic anyway, all the elements that can make those games interesting (many different attacks, varied enemies so you don't fight the same palette swapped guy constantly, etc) didn't really start coming out until a bit later. I understand the Neo Geo has many good beat 'em ups.

Also, Mad City's music. Yeah, it's pretty decent, that one riff is even catchy, but I felt there were maybe two songs in the entire game. One for the beat'em up stages, and the shooting/driving stages share the other tune. Maybe they have a different BGM, can't be bothered to check. But the game definitely doesn't have the variety of memorable music something like Castlevania has.

[Nightstar699]

Beat 'em ups almost feel like a smaller-scale fighting game to me, and there's something satisfying about being able to continue your assault on a single enemy until they go down. Like in Mighty Final Fight, which I'd cite as being the FC's best beat 'em up. It's fun to execute Haggar's infinite combo and watch it drain an enemy's health, then be able to finish them in any manner I choose, the move/character variety is something I love about beat 'em ups.

I can also see why you'd hate the "invisible barrier" that pretty much every beat 'em up out there has, but most beat 'em ups just aren't designed around much else but fighting enemies so it makes sense that they force you to dispatch all of them. Also, if it takes forever to kill even the smaller goons, then that's a sign of a badly designed beat 'em up, E.G. the aforementioned Mad City. In a good one, let's say, Warriors of Fate or Double Dragon II, you have the move variety to kill enemies quickly if you're able to master your character's array of attacks. For example, the Uppercut/Knee special moves in DDII, they're able to kill a lot of the enemies in 1 or 2 hits but they take extremely precise timing to pull off, so they have to be learned. A lot of people just try sticking to the "mash attack button" combos, which is an ineffective strategy, and that might be why they find beat 'em ups to be boring.

Also yeah, Mad City only has a couple themes. A good couple themes, but that's still kinda sad. On topic I just got done no-deathing Akumajo Dracula, I'll go for Akumajo Densetsu next.

Edit: I can't think of many good Neo Geo beat 'em ups other than Sengoku 3, by the way. From my experience the Mega Drive, Super Fami and Saturn seem to be the best consoles for the genre.

[Protoman]

The only thing that interested me about Mad City (besides, of course, that music) is the fact that I just don't know of many good beat 'em ups on FC, besides Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon II and the Spartan X games, which is a shame because I love the genre.

TMNT 2, TMNT 3, River City Random, Downtown Jidaigeki Zennin Shuugo, Batman Returns possibly

[Ghegs]

Finished Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima IV.

What an amazing game. Easy to be sure, but a great experience, and it felt like an appropriate swansong to the Famicom.

It's not without its design flaws - many of the acquired items are used exactly once and then never again, some of them not even that much. Some of the non-essential minigames were more difficult than any of the bosses. The dinosaurs are kind of useless. Except for the pterodactyl, and after he has been rescued all jumping challenges can be circumvented by just using him. The game map's relatively small size and the lack of difficulty makes for a fairly short game.

But the positives far outweigh the slight negatives. The graphics are great with neat little touches here and there, like the way Tina comes out to wave to Takahashi every time he leaves for his adventure. I thought that was cute. The controls are spot-on. The passwords are short, which comes much appreciated after the looooooong Guardian Legend passwords. Most importantly, it's just great fun to play. I enjoyed exploring the island and I only wished there was more of it.

A game I'll certainly play again.

[Nightstar699]

Cool! The small map size makes Takahashi IV sound a bit more appealing to me, full-on Metroidvania games just make me feel too lost to enjoy the experience.

The only thing that interested me about Mad City (besides, of course, that music) is the fact that I just don't know of many good beat 'em ups on FC, besides Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon II and the Spartan X games, which is a shame because I love the genre.

TMNT 2, TMNT 3, River City Random, Downtown Jidaigeki Zennin Shuugo, Batman Returns possibly

The thing about River City Ransom is that, while I do enjoy it as a game overall, I wouldn't think of it as a good beat 'em up... if that makes sense. The RPG elements and humor are more of what define it IMO, the combat and enemy variety is too shallow for it to hold a candle to any of the better beat 'em ups out there.

[UglyJoe]

The thing about River City Ransom is that, while I do enjoy it as a game overall, I wouldn't think of it as a good beat 'em up... if that makes sense. The RPG elements and humor are more of what define it IMO, the combat and enemy variety is too shallow for it to hold a candle to any of the better beat 'em ups out there.

Hmm...disagree.  It's not great compared to classic CPS2 arcade beat-em-ups, but it has great variety for an NES beat-em-up once you've purchased the techniques.  The two-player stuff is cool, too (you can throw your partner at eneimes!).

[Nightstar699]

I'll admit the variety in stuff to pick up and throw/strike with (including, as you cited, your own partner/other enemies) is great. The only special moves I recall in the game are those techniques you can learn that make you punch or kick rapidly and knock the opponent down. The problem is that once these moves are learned there really isn't much of a reason to use anything else. Compare this to the move variety in Mighty Final Fight, where the characters (except Haggar) have two types of jumping attacks, all have both throw and hit enders on their combos, a unique special move per character, a unique desperation move per character, grabs with multiple types of enders (bash, throw, or suplex), plus a weapon each. Being able to mix up my combos with these various techniques are what I find most fun about beat 'em ups, RCR never really felt that same way to me, as much as I do like it overall.

[Zycrow]

I played Doraemon for a solid 90 minutes or so last night - I really just intended to test it out for a bit but ended up playing until about midway through World 2. Surprisingly fun game, considering it's a licensed property.