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[Leo656]

It's definitely very underrated for sure. I've said more than once, if someone made a case for it being the "best" TMNT game ever made, I wouldn't fight 'em too hard.

Which reminds me, speaking of SFII rip-offs, a few days back I spent a little time with one of the lesser ones, Justice League Task Force (SNES). Which isn't as good as "Tournament Fighters".

There's not much to it, Story Mode and Vs. Mode. Very small roster of in-game characters: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, and Green Arrow. In Story Mode, you pick one and fight your way through all the rest, who turn out to be evil robot duplicates sent by Darkseid. Afterwards, you fight Despero, and then Cheetah, and finally Darkseid. Why those two are Darkseid's main enforcers, I have no idea. Why CHEETAH of all characters is the one directly under Darkseid himself when she's a relatively minor villain altogether, again, no idea. None of the characters are very much more difficult than the others, and you can beat Darkseid with the same techniques you beat your very first opponent.

I don't think it's "bad", per se, but "Injustice" this is not. 9 characters altogether counting the Bosses, and they each have a decent, if small, moveset. The Special moves do represent the characters quite well, for the most part, but the controls aren't very responsive and so actually executing the Special Moves can be more trouble than it's worth when "crouch and punch" works just as well most of the time. It's also rather sluggish; considering that this game came out in 1995 when we were on our 80th revision of Street Fighter II "Hyper Ultra Turbo Melt Your Face" Edition, the slow speed at which it plays is very noticeable. You get used to it, it just feels like an older game than what it is. Its speed is about even with the original Street Fighter II, to give you some idea.

I will say, the graphics are quite good and probably the very best thing about the game. The character sprites are large and colorful, and they move well (if sluggish). It's based on the mid-90s versions of the DC cast, so you get Mullet Superman, Blonde Mamoa Hook-Hand Aquaman, and Super Short-Shorts Wonder Woman. The levels are pretty cool to look at with some nice character-specific touches. The visuals really shine, the rest of the game is Average At Best.

The music isn't bad but not very memorable. Same for the sound effects. "Fine", but nothing spectacular.

Again, it's not "bad" really, but pretty mediocre. Huge DC fans like myself and/or people who really like Street Fighter clones will have some fun with it in short doses, but there's not a lot to actually do. It's a 1992-standard fighting game that came out in 1995; not much else can really be said.

I got it for about $10. I think that's fine. I will say, it's better than I remembered it being and I hadn't played it since 1996, so there's that.

Average. Worth a grab if you're a huge DC fan and you find it cheap.

[Leo656]

Decided to play some more old games I'd either never played or never finished. Today, I started on the original NES Metroid. It seemed like a good one to pick because over the years I've ended up getting almost all the games in the series, but never got around to actually playing them. Partly because I never ended up owning this one or Super Metroid until recently. Felt weird to play any of the newer ones without really ever getting familiar with the originals. So since I picked those two up recently, I figured I may as well give them a shot.

I legit haven't played this game in over 30 years. Every kid I knew had it, so I'd take a crack at it often back then, but to be honest... I really hated it. It was still fairly new at the time so there were no maps or walkthroughs available for it, so all anyone I knew ever did was run around in circles shooting stuff until they got killed, and it never seemed like anyone ever made any progress. Likewise, every time I ever played it, I had no clue if I was actually getting anything done, and I would get bored of it very quickly. Knowing what I know now, no, I definitely wasn't making any progress at all, back then. But to be perfectly honest, this might be the single most overrated game I've ever played. It might be the most overrated game in all existence. I know someone's gonna yell at me but that's how I feel.

Like, I really can't stand being lost or confused in a game, and I've always been that way. I've got too much sh*t to do, if I'm not making progress I feel like I'm wasting my time. For the first hour or so, I tried not using any guide and just a map, but that was pointless so I started over with a walkthrough. But the guy who wrote it takes a lot of shortcuts in describing things so I still have to do most of the work myself. Like he'll say "Now backtrack to the room with the ((enemy name))" like I know what the goddamn enemies are called, for instance. I flipped through multiple walkthroughs trying to find a good one but they're all like that. And maps are pretty useless because too many of the rooms look almost exactly the same and most of them either lead you in circles or take you to a dead end. This is fun? I don't want to use a video guide because at that point I may as well just let someone else play the game for me. But so many identical rooms makes even having a guide pretty useless unless you know exactly where you are already. Can't even remember how many times I'd read something like "Go back to the room with the two doors and bomb the floor right in front of the left door, then fall through the floor," only for it to lead nowhere, only to THEN find out that I'd read the map wrong and I actually needed to do this in the identical room on the floor above me. I'm apparently very close to the end of the game, but I had to stop because I got stuck in a room I apparently wasn't supposed to be in yet, and there was no way out of it without the Ice Beam, so I had to get myself v e r y s l o w l y killed just to I could get the password and take a break. Ah, "trap rooms" with no escape, that's something from the NES days I sure don't miss.

At the absolute least, this game desperately needed an onscreen map. If I wasn't using a walkthrough telling me where every single false floor, wall and ceiling were, which doors go nowhere, etc., this one game would take me the rest of my goddamn life to finish. It's not even like the game is difficult; except for having to die on purpose just to get myself out of the room I was stuck in, I hadn't died at all since getting the second Energy Tank. It's just too much flying blind, backtracking, getting lost in circles and all'a that sh*t that's the problem. I've got all the upgrades and beat both the sub-Bosses but most of my time's been circle-jerking around and I can't really say it's very much fun.

There ARE things I like about it, though. Like for an early NES game, the graphics are good. And I like the music and the sound effects and stuff. And I like the weapons upgrade system and the very basic concept of what the game tries to do. I just think the execution is pretty broken. Basically, when I'm running around shooting enemies, it's fun. When I'm lost and trying to figure out which one of several near-identical rooms I'm in just so I can get my bearings, it's not fun, but THAT is most of the "gameplay". I really wish it was more of a basic action game than a f*cking hedge maze simulator.

I really, REALLY want to like this game - and this series - but I'm almost done with the first one and it's been more annoying than anything. So, from someone who'd know... does this series actually get better, or what? I don't mean graphics and audio, that's a given. I mean, do they actually become fun and involve more than just walking in circles hoping to finally make progress? Because as it is, I'm suddenly really nervous about even trying the rest of the ones I have, if they're all as cryptic, confusing, and counter-intuitive as this one. Should I even bother? I want to, I've been wanting to for a long time, but I was really looking forward to this one, too, and... eh.

I guess I should have known. People have been trying to "sell" me on this game for years, but the stuff they were saying just sounded bonkers. Like "Man, I remember when I was a kid playing this game... I had all these maps I drew on 87 sheets of graph paper, and I spent like two years bombing every wall, floor, and ceiling in the game trying to figure out what to do next, I had no idea where to go or what to do... it was awesome!" And I'd be like, "Uhhh... the first thing you said totally contradicts the second thing you said." Sure didn't SOUND "awesome" but I always figured they either weren't explaining it well or there was just something I wasn't "getting". Turns out, no, it's a total circle-jerk and some people just like dicking their time away aimlessly. But I generally don't like that kinda thing.

Sigh. I don't know. It was getting late (and my wife was getting annoyed; she thinks the game's awful) so I took a break so I could finish it tomorrow.

Should I even bother with the rest of them? I mean, contrary to how it probably sounds, I don't HATE it, but... it isn't very much fun and I'm mostly just trying to finish it to cross it off a checklist, at this point. If they're all more or less the same then I'm definitely gonna have to space them far apart, at the very least. I originally wanted to do like a marathon of at least a couple of the games, but now I'm having serious second thoughts.

At least it only takes a couple hours to finish. And if I ever do play it again I'll have a slightly better idea of what I'm doing. But that's kinda backhanded, ain't it?

Ah well. Here's hoping they get better. As is, I'm kinda shocked this became a huge franchise. I guess it went over huge just because it was so "different" from everything else on the NES when it came out. And it definitely is "different" from the Mario and Zelda stuff... just not in any GOOD way that I can really think of.

[Leo656]

Got some cool stuff in the mail!


Mystical Ninja starring Goemon (N64) has been on my list for a while since I really liked the SNES game as a kid, and it finally came down to a reasonable price. Ghostbusters (Genesis) is a repro cart as the authentic one has gotten pretty ridiculous in price.

Even more exciting (and unexpected, as these came from Japan and I had no notice they'd even been sent out, yet)... the Super Famicom collection grows!

Here we have (according to GameFaqs), Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Chou Senshi in Tokyo Dome and Zen Nippon Pro Wrestling, the first games in the New Japan and All Japan Pro Wrestling series of games, respectively. There were three games in each series; I have the second and third Shin Nippon games already ordered and the third Zen Nippon game is on the way as well, but the seller I bought the second Zen Nippon game from cancelled the order so I have to re-order that one.

Pretty exciting! I never go to play these (although a re-skinned version of Zen Nippon was released in America as "Natsume Championship Wrestling" for the SNES, a game I do have but haven't played it much). The complete boxed copy of Shin Nippon with manual and inserts was only like $5 more than a loose copy. Awesome!

[CyberCubed]

The first Metroid on NES has not aged well at all. As the game goes on it just repeats copy/pastes portions of the map and you always start at 30HP when you die.

Metroid Zero Mission on GBA was a remake of the NES Metroid with better graphics, a map, better play control, actual save points instead of password save, and is one of the best games of the series. Just play Zero Mission which I saw you bought, it's a remake of the original game and addresses all the problem of the original. It came out in 2004 so it's a fairly modern remake.

Metroid is a great series but the first game leaves a bad first impression. Just start with Zero Mission on GBA and then Super Metroid and go from there.

[Leo656]

I actually finished the NES Metroid today. There's definitely a lot of things that had room for improvement, but you could tell that the basic idea was sound. The graphics, music and especially the controls were all very good by NES standards, but the lack of an in-game map as well as that stupid "restart with only 30 Energy Points when you die" thing are some pretty big drawbacks. At least before Boss fights there are places to semi-quickly stock up on EP by entering/leaving a room and killing the enemies again, but it's still irritating.

I was actually figuring on playing Zero Mission next in the series but I'm gonna play a couple of other things first just to detach from it. Based on everything I've seen it definitely sounds like an improvement on the basic idea. I don't have Metroid II yet, so I might go to Super Metroid after Zero Mission, depending.

So once I finished Metroid, I decided to finally check out Zen Nippon Pro Wrestling (Super Famicom). Aside from Fire Pro I haven't played any of the other Japanese wrestling games much or at all, so I was really looking forward to this one. Turns out it's really good!

Zen Nippon came out in 1993, based on the All Japan Pro Wrestling promotion and featuring a number of their most popular stars at the time. For the time, it had a good number of characters - Giant Baba, Jumbo Tsurata, Mitsuhau Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue, Kenta Kobashi, Masanobu Fuchi, Yoshinari Ogawa, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Rusher Kimura, Stan Hansen, Terry Gordy, Dan Spivey, Steve Williams, The Patriot, and Johnny Ace. 16 guys isn't a lot, but it's more than WWF Royal Rumble, which was out in America at the same time.

Graphically, the game is really good, reminiscent but in my opinion slightly better than Royal Rumble. There's a slightly cartoonish look to everything but everything is really colorful and detailed compared to most other 16-bit wrestling games. The animation is mostly very smooth, but there's a few bits where things like dropkicks look floaty, and top rope attacks look pretty odd. But there's a good number of moves per character and they all look really impactful and well-animated.

Control-wise, it plays like a mix-up of Fire Pro and Royal Rumble. Grapples are initiated and moves are executed the same as in Fire Pro, but the timing is much more forgiving and it's more fast-paced like Royal Rumble. It's like the controls are nearly identical to Fire Pro but the speed and overall presentation is more like the WWF games, making it a really cool hybrid of both, to the point where anyone who's spent any time with either would have no problem at all with this. It's very easy to pick up and play and doesn't take long at all to master.

One thing that's a bit different from the WWF games is that there technically aren't "Finishers" to speak of; each wrestler has their Finishing Move but it can technically be done any time for massive damage, rather than something you have to build up to or can only do when the opponent is weak. This makes it a little bit easy to just spam strong moves until you win but it's tougher to successfully pull that off on higher difficulty.

I was able to complete almost all of the game modes in just a couple of hours. There's Singles and Tag Team World Championship Mode, which is the standard "Beat Everyone To Win" type of game, as well as Singles and Tag Round Robin Tournament, a 4-on-4 Survivor Elimination Match, and regular Exhibition matches where you play against another human opponent. There's also a Tutorial mode where Giant Baba teaches you the basic controls, but I can't read Japanese so I didn't mess with that one much (and the controls are very easy to learn anyway). The game really could have used a Battle Royal mode, but otherwise it's got all the standard modes any 16-bit wrestling game should have.

Overall, it's a bit thin on modes but by the standards of the day it's a very good wrestling game and even more fun than the WWF ones, with a good bit more depth to its wrestling engine. I definitely recommend it. Very much looking forward to playing the second and third games.

[shredder orokusaki]

I finished Red Dead Redemption 2 today! And now i continue Ghostrunner, a game made for masters ninjas like me! Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best games ever made and a must play for evryone! Ghostrunner is a must play for all ninjas like me!

[frank_one]

One neat thing about the original Metroid is that it was originally released on the Famicom Disk System so you were able to save your progress, no passwords to write down. The sounds and music were also slightly better on that system thanks to an additional audio chip.

[Leo656]

Just made a verbal agreement to pick up my buddy's Sega Master System with light gun and a bunch of games, along with his Game Gear and the Game Gear adapter that plays Master System games, for a cool $175. No plugs, but I can get those.

That's a sweetheart of a deal. It's nice to have friends in high places.

[Leo656]

Decided to play some more of stuff I never played before, so I jumped back onto the SNES to play some more Super Famicom wrestling games.

Since I'd already played the inaugural Fire Pro and Zen Nippon/All Japan wrestling games, I decided to check out the first in the Shin Nippon/New Japan series: Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Chou Senshi In Tokyo Dome - Fantastic Story, which is a heckuva title.

First off, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at just how similar the Fire Pro, All Japan and New Japan series play. There are some very minor differences to the controls, timing and execution, but if you've played one series you can figure the others out very quickly. Aside from each game having its own graphical style, the major differences between each series is the timing and overall difficulty, with Fire Pro by far being the hardest and this one (Shin Nippon) maybe being the easiest.

Unfortunately, it's scaled back quite a bit from the other two series and lacks a lot of depth on every level, compared to those games. Smaller roster, fewer gameplay modes, even fewer moves per character. It's still good in its own way and has a ton of charm, and by 1993 standards I'd even say it's Great. It's just pretty "thin" compared to most other wrestling games on the market at that time, for a few reasons.

You only get 10 wrestlers, all real-life New Japan superstars from the era. Only 10 characters is pretty standard for the American-released wrestling games of that time, but is pretty anemic compared to Zen Nippon and Fire Pro. Like just about every wrestling game back then, there's nothing secret or hidden to unlock; what you see on the Main Menu is what you get. On the upside, for only having 10 wrestlers in the game, it's All Killer and No Filler, for sure: Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Hiroshi Hase, Great Muta, Riki Choshu, Big Van Vader, Scott "Flash" Norton, Tony Halme (best known as "Ludvig Borga" in the WWF later that same year), Tatsumi Fujinami, Shinya Hashimoto, and Masahiro Chono. Even with only 10 guys, I like this game's roster much better than the All Japan game's list, although that one is awesome, too.

Graphically, this game is great. It came out in 1993 and to that point had the best graphics of any wrestling game on the console in my opinion. The character sprites are HUGE compared to Zen Nippon, the WWF games, and especially the tiny sprites of the first Fire Pro. Some of them could have a bit more detail, but it's incredibly easy to tell who everyone is and the closest thing I could compare the sprites to is something like Street Fighter II or Final Fight; they're all very "Capcom-esque". The moves are all well-drawn and well-animated, maybe the best-looking out of all three different series.

The music is pretty good. Before each match, there's an in-ring introduction where a ring announcer does an intro (consisting of a wall of Japanese text) while they play a clip from each character's music. The music that plays during the matches isn't anything special, but it's typical of these types of games and does the job.

Unfortunately, there's not much to do. There's only two modes: "G-1 Climax", where you beat everyone to win, and Vs. Exhibition in either Single or Tag. At least in Exhibition you can choose to fight the CPU instead of a second human player, which is something Fire Pro didn't let you do. But that's it as far as game modes; no Battle Royal, no Tournament, no Round-Robin. That's a real bummer, because it's a fun game to play but there simply isn't much to actually do. And with only 9 opponents to beat, G-1 Climax doesn't take very long to complete; with an average match taking between 3 to 5 minutes, it should only take about 40 minutes to get through. All you get for winning is a picture of your character with some text you probably can't read, and then a picture of a trophy appears as the credits go by. Again, this was pretty standard for the time, but I wish they at least had an 8-man Tournament option or Round-Robin, like the other games do. Like if you don't have a lot of playable characters, at least add some options to make up for it, y'know?

The controls are very smooth, for the most part. Unfortunately, the game runs really slow and sluggish, on account of the giant character sprites that take up almost half the screen. It's not terrible, and you can get used to it very quickly, but it's an adjustment to be sure. The basic strike attacks play very much like a fighting game - you can do three-hit combos, smack someone out of the air mid-attack, and pressing "Back" is Block - but there's still a Grapple system very similar to Fire Pro, albeit much more forgiving. Unlike the other two series, there's a Grapple button, but you never really need to use it as your opponent will usually grab you first. From there, it's almost exactly like the other two series, just hit one of the three Grapple Move buttons at exactly the right time to do a Strong, Medium, or Weak move. For most guys, when their Power meter turns red, your Strong Grapple will be replaced by your Finishing Move. As I said before, all the moves look great, but everything moves pretty slow, especially running attacks.

The biggest difference that sets this game apart from the others is that you have both a Health and Power meter, with Power more or less being like Stamina in a sense. You can't pin your opponent or make him submit until BOTH meters are just about empty; if he's got no Health, he still might have enough Power to kick out. This is actually something Fire Pro would more or less adopt later on once they integrated their own Stamina system, although it worked totally different in that game. It's not a big deal, it just makes you work a bit harder and the matches last a bit longer than the other two games. Some moves drain both Health and Power, and some only drain one or the other, but it doesn't take long at all to figure out which moves do what.

Sadly, just like everywhere else, the actual number of moves you can do is really scaled back compared to Zen Nippon and Fire Pro. Most characters only have 3 or 4 front grapples and 1 or 2 back grapples. Again, this was a lot more in-line with the American WWF wrestling games than the Japanese ones, where you'd usually have almost twice as many to pick from. It's not "bad", but since this game's matches last a little longer than the average Fire Pro or Zen Nippon games' matches, it gets a little annoying doing the same three or four moves over and over. Also, because of this, a few key moves are flat-out missing, like Vader's Power Bomb or Liger's Brainbuster. Every move in the game is authentic to the characters and they all look really great, but it still feels like they could have put more in.

Overall, it's a really fun game but I can see people getting bored with it rather quickly just because there's not much to do with it. But it's a lot like the old WWF WrestleFest arcade game, which a lot of people still speak highly of, so if you like that then you'll like this. That's actually the single closest wrestling game I could compare this one to. Everything from the graphics to the moves and animation is very similar to that.

I'm aware that the next two games in the series added more characters and made several other incremental improvements. The second game came in the mail today, so I'm really excited to check it out.

So based on the three Japanese Super Famicom wrestling games I've played so far, the first in their respective series with all their similarities and differences, the best way I could explain them is that Fire Pro is the closest to a wrestling sim, Shin Nippon is the most arcade-style, and Zen Nippon is right in the middle. If I had to recommend one over the others, I would recommend Zen Nippon, simply because the graphics are much better than Super Fire Pro and the AI is much more forgiving.

We'll see how the sequels in each series stack up against each other. Probably about the same; I don't think any of them changed TOO much, they just added characters and features but as far as I know the overall execution in each series remained the same for the duration.

This has been a very fun experiment.

[Leo656]

After playing the first New Japan game for Super Famicom a bit, I decided to move on to the sequel: Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling '94: Battlefield In Tokyo Dome. It's similar to its predecessor, but for a sequel it deviates in a lot of ways, not all of them improvements.

First off, the roster has been doubled, to an even 20 wrestlers (technically 21, but I'll get to that): Riki Choshyu, Shinya Hashimoto, Great Muta, Koshinaka, Nogami, Road Warrior Hawk, Scott Norton, Rick Steiner, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Tiger Mask, Tatsumi Fujinami, Masahiro Chono, Hiroshi Hase, Masa Saitoh, Iukaka, Power Warrior (Kensuke Sasake), Hercules Fernandez (the WWF's Hercules, otherwise known as Hercules Hernandez), Scott Steiner, Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit), and El Samurai, with Muta's alter ego Keiji Mutoh playable with a code. Sadly, there are a couple of omissions from the last game, as Tony Halme/Ludvig Borga and of course VADER were removed, most likely because of their signing to full-time deals with the WWF and WCW, respectively. It's a bummer, especially Vader, but with twice as many guys to pick from (most of them being really big additions) you can't really complain about it. Having the Steiner Bros. by itself is a huge deal, but Hawk, Power Warrior, Benoit and Tiger Mask? That's a great roster, for sure. I was even happy to get Hercules, as I've always been a fan of his and I wasn't aware he was in ANY video games at all until I played this. So that was a pleasant surprise. I was disappointed by the lack of Road Warrior Animal, but he was hurt around this time and Hawk was teaming with Power Warrior as "The Hellraisers" full-time, so I get it. It's just weird to play a game that only has half of the Road Warriors.

The number of modes has been increased as well, thankfully. You still have Vs. mode, as well as "beat everyone to win", but they also added Single Elimination and Round Robin Tournament modes for both Singles and Tag Team matches. So far I played everything except the "G1 Climax" Round Robin Tournament. Between the expanded roster and the additional modes, you definitely get more to do, putting it a lot more in the same league as Fire Pro and Zen Nippon.

In some ways, this game almost doesn't even feel like a sequel, because it looks and plays quite differently. Not as much to be completely unfamiliar, but enough so that it takes some getting used to. The graphics, for example, are almost completely different. They still look great, but the huge sprites of the first game have been shrunk down considerably, although they are a bit more detailed in spots. This feels like a necessary concession, because the upside is that the game speed issues have been fixed, and the gameplay is resultantly much faster and more responsive. It doesn't feel like it's "floaty" or "underwater" as much as the first game and altogether plays much faster. The character portraits are drawn more realistically, and both on the menu screen and during gameplay it's perfectly easy to tell who's who. The sprites no longer much resemble Final Fight characters, but are much more like those found in WWF Royal Rumble. The presentation is pretty great visually, for the most part. You get ring entrances now, complete with music and ring introductions. Some of the guys even have entrance gear like shirts, jackets, or the famous Road Warrior spiked shoulder pads, which they remove upon getting in the ring in a nice touch. You can't skip these scenes, which only gets annoying when you're doing a lot of matches in a row. When you complete one of the game modes and win the Championship, you get a shot of your character sitting at a press table with the Title belt while photographers' flashbulbs go off, as the credits roll by. Pretty neat stuff. The graphics were definitely "shrunk" but since it actually helps the game run faster I'd say it's fine, probably an improvement.

The gameplay itself is also rather different. They removed the Grapple button, so now you just lock-up automatically when you get close to your opponent, just like Zen Nippon and Fire Pro. Instead of having Weak, Medium and Strong Grapple Moves you can perform out of a lock-up, there are only Weak and Strong now, but the overall number of moves per wrestlers has increased by a few, with different moves being executed by hitting one of the directional buttons at the same time as either Strong or Weak Grapple. Also, there are proper Finishers this time, which like in Fire Pro are executed by pressing two buttons at once. So that's a big improvement, even though you can still do your Finisher fairly early in a match AND they don't seem to do as much damage as they should. Furthermore, some wrestlers have one, two, or even three different Finishers depending on the situation and button inputs. The actual way to win a Grapple has changed, though; in the first game, like in Fire Pro and Zen Nippon, you had to input commands at just the right time, and only once, in order to win a Grapple and button mashing was discouraged and would actually force you to automatically lose a Grapple. In this sequel, however, it seems like it's designed around button mashing, making it play more like WWF Royal Rumble or Raw. One guide I found claimed it was still based on timing, but I found button mashing to be the most successful technique, even though I didn't win every Grapple. It's just a bit weird because up to this point none of the other "big" Japanese wrestling games played this way, and also, it never feels like you're in complete control; sometimes the CPU will reverse your advantage and overpower you to perform their own Grapple, and at times it feels like there's nothing you can do to stop or prevent it. It's still easy to get back into things and regain your control with a few well-timed strikes and running attacks, but it also feels like the CPU can win a Grapple anytime it wants to, and that gets slightly annoying at times. I'd say I was in control 98% of the time, but whenever I lost a Grapple I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong or could have done to fix it.

There's still both Health and Power meters, but Power has been tweaked a little bit so that its only function is to allow you to do Finishers once you've built the meter up enough. In the first game, if an opponent had lots of Power left he could still kick out even if he had no Health, but here it makes no difference and taking out all your opponent's Health is all it takes to pin them or make them submit.

Sadly, the gameplay, while slightly expanded, isn't perfect. While it plays faster, some of the moves actually look worse this time out, and a few of them even seem to be missing frames of animation. Liger's Shooting Star Press, for example, looks horrible - he jumps off the top rope, does the flip, and then magically cuts to laying on top of his opponent in a pin position, like they forgot to draw the second half of the move. Oddly, while some of the other top-rope moves are animated much better, some of the non-Finisher ones seem to do no visible damage at all, or at least they don't make your opponent's Health meter go down. Likewise, if your Finisher ends in a pin, and your opponent still has Health left, it won't damage their Health meter until after they kick out, making it pointless to do a Pin Finisher until their Health meter is completely empty. And as I said, at times it really seems like the CPU will start winning every Grapple out of nowhere just because. These aren't major issues, but they are disappointing to see. It's still plenty easy to play and win, it just takes some getting used to and doesn't feel as smooth as some of the other games.

The sound is unfortunately inconsistent. The music is good, but the sound effects are rather poor at times. Again, this may be merely the game keeping with Japanese tradition, but the "crowd" hardly makes any noise, only really reacting a Grapple struggle that goes back and forth or counting along with a 3-count after a big move. Otherwise, there's almost no crowd noise. Sometimes, it feels like sound effects just aren't loading properly, as some moves won't have any corresponding sound effect even though they definitely should. When you apply a Submission hold, the ref will usually ask if the opponent gives up, but sometimes he'll just stand there in silence. Even more bizarre, during a pinfall he will always count "One" out loud but sometimes he won't say "Two" and/or "Three". It's very strange.

Overall, it's a really good Super Famicom wrestling game and it definitely improves on the first New Japan game in several ways, but a few odd things keep it from being an overwhelming step forward. It's not bad at all but it feels like it needed just a bit more development time to fix some of the sound and animation issues, and make the Grapple feel more consistent. As is, it's different enough from the first to still make either of them worth playing depending on what kind of mood you're in.

So far all the Fire Pro, New Japan and All Japan games I've picked up for Super Famicom have been really good. I'm still waiting on the rest of the ones I ordered to show up before I can move forward, though.

[Leo656]

So I got bored, and since the post office is taking its sweet time in delivering Super Fire Pro 2, I decided to just go ahead and take a swing at Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3: Final Bout (Super Famicom) in the meantime.

I was a little apprehensive about this one, because all I've ever read/heard about this one is how brutal the difficulty was, to the point where the developer released a revamped "Easy Type" version of the game less than 5 weeks after its release due to customer complaints. So I figured I would just mess with this one a little bit before moving on to Easy Type, which I also bought.

Turns out that while it is a pretty tough game, I would say that the criticism of the difficulty is a bit overblown. For the most part, I actually think it's a little bit easier than the first Super Fire Pro game. I managed to win over 40 matches in a row before I lost once, and most of those were in Championship mode (which has a higher default difficulty than the normal modes). I finally started having trouble very late into Championship Mode, but that's to be expected and anyone familiar with the series should have no problem at all with the other Modes.

Given that I haven't played the second game yet, I can't speak to how much was changed or improved between that one and this one. I can say, however, that it is a very big improvement on the first game in almost every way. The roster is huge by comparison, there are more moves per wrestler, more modes to play with, and, in what would go on to be a major game-changer, the first-ever Create-A-Wrestler feature ever seen in a wrestling game! In reading about the series, it seems like SFPW2 was only a minor improvement on the first, whereas this game seems to be where the series really took off.

The available Modes have been updated a bit. There's "One Night Dream Match" (regular Exhibition mode, which thankfully allows you to face the CPU this time), World Championship (Beat everyone to win), Open League (Round Robin Tournament), Tournament, Elimination (5 vs. 5), and Battle Royal. If you successfully beat everyone in World Championship mode, you unlock Title Match Mode, where you can try and defend your Title against the hidden Boss characters, and if you beat them all you unlock them as playable characters.

World Championship Mode is the main game, and is mostly the same as the first, except for the fact that the new roster is HUGE by comparison, with a whopping 56 Singles matches (or 27 Tag Team matches) to beat before you win the Title. After, you can try Title Match Mode, where you face the 8 hidden Boss wrestlers and try to unlock them. This will absolutely take several hours to complete; thankfully, there's a Save system and Passwords, so you don't have to try and do it all at once.

The gameplay is virtually identical to the first game, except everyone has more moves and several of them were re-animated to look better. Everyone's moveset seems very accurate to real life. You can dive onto an opponent who's outside of the ring, something you could do in NES "Pro Wrestling" but not the first Fire Pro, but other than that most of the gameplay tweaks are minimal.

The biggest changes/additions are to the roster, with an upgrade from around 20 to over 60 playable characters! This was absolutely mind-blowing by 1993 standards, with the Shin Nippon and Zen Nippon games still hovering around 20 characters each (and the American wrestling games having far fewer than that, even). As per usual with Fire Pro, everyone has a fake name, but you can still easily tell who's who. To start with, you get Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Masa Saito, Hiroshi Hase, Kensuke Sasaki, Shinya Hashimoto, Masahiro Chono, Keiji Mutoh, Scott Norton, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Pegasus Kid/Chris Benoit, El Samurai, The Great Sasuke, Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody, Terry Gordy, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Nobuhiko Takada, Kazuo Yamazaki, Masakatsu Funaki, Minoru Suzuki, Volk Han, Dick Vrij, Gary Albright, Ken Shamrock, Genichiro Tenryu, Ultimo Dragon, Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Road Warrior Animal, Road Warrior Hawk, Power Warrior, Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner, Big Van Vader, Bam Bam Bigelow, The Great Muta, Sting, Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, Tiger Jeet Singh, Bad News Brown, Billy Gasper, Barry Gasper, Atsushi Onita, and Koji Kitao. As if that's not enough, upon beating World Championship and Title Match mode, you can unlock Kotetsu Yamamoto, Dory Funk Jr., Terry Funk, Tiger Mask, Dynamite Kid, Rikidozan, The Destroyer, Lou Thesz, and Karl Gotch. WOW!

As if that weren't enough, as mentioned this was the first game to have an "Edit Mode"/CAW feature, where you can create and save up to 12 wrestlers of your own. Sadly, it's not all it's cracked up to be. You can only edit templates of the people already in the game, and while you have full control over editing their Moves, CPU Logic and Behavior, as far as their appearance you can only change the color of their gear and that's it. Furthermore, all the in-game text for this mode is in Japanese, so without near-infinite patience for trial-and-error, most people who only read English probably won't spend a lot of time on customizing anyone. Kind of a letdown, but thankfully other games vastly improved on this concept (as well as being translated into English).

Everything else is more or less the same. The graphics are nearly-identical to the first game's, although the character portraits and in-game sprites are a tiny bit more detailed. Strangely, I kind of prefer those in the first game, as they were "cleaner" and smoother-looking, especially the character portraits. The in-game sprites are also just a tiny bit smaller due to the added detail. To be honest, though, I had to look at YouTube videos of both games side-by-side to really notice much difference, and it's still incredibly easy to tell who's who. Yes, the graphics are very "primitive" compared to those in the Shin Nippon and Zen Nippon games that were out at the same time, but the gameplay and movesets were far ahead of the pack.

On the whole, I really had fun with this one (so far, anyway; I still haven't managed to beat Championship Mode due to the late-game difficulty spike). It's a big improvement on the first Super Fire Pro in almost every way, and despite the consensus about its difficulty, I actually think it's an easier game. This seems to be where the series started getting REALLY good.

[Leo656]

Since I hit a wall with Championship Mode in SFPW3, I decided to take a break from that one. There's only like five more guys I need to beat but the difficulty REALLY amps up right near the end and I just can't move forward no matter what I try. Up to that point I really wasn't having any problems at all but the CPU just completely stops giving you a break after a while. So I doubt I'll ever beat that one. Ah well.

So I decided to move on and try Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3: Easy Type, the game that was released about a month after Final Bout as an "apology" of sorts for the high difficulty. It's 99% the exact same game, just with slightly tweaked difficulty and all of the Hidden Boss characters unlocked from the start. For some reason, they removed the Edit Mode/CAW feature, but given how all the text is in Japanese (thus making it almost impossible to actually get much out of it) it's not a huge loss.

I played a bunch of random matches and was even able to complete Championship Mode and Title Match in Tag Team Mode (with Hulk Hogan and Sting ). I will say that it's almost immediately obvious that they scaled back the difficulty a bit, as hitting the input too early or accidentally more than once isn't AS punishing, and they seem to give you a half-second more time to input your Grapple. I didn't start having any trouble until way, way late in the Championship Mode, at which point it starts to play more like "regular" Fire Pro and your input timing once again has to be perfect.

The only downside - aside from losing the Edit mode, which again is so limited that I barely count it - is that since all the Boss characters are already unlocked in this version of the game, there's really no real reason to play Championship Mode unless you really need a challenge. It still takes several hours to complete due to the sheer mass of characters you need to defeat, and while that can be fun in and of itself, the lack of any reward outside of satisfaction makes the endeavor seem just a little bit pointless.

That said, "Easy Type" is the version of Super Fire Pro 3 that I would recommend anyone play. The Edit feature is so primitive (although not bad at all for a first try at such an endeavor) that losing it is no great loss, and since it's more or less "impossible" to beat Championship Mode in "Final Bout" to unlock the Bosses, having them unlocked by default in Easy Type is more than enough reason to play that version instead, since you have the complete roster available right away.

After I play that one a bit more, I'll probably move on to the next game in the series, "Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special", which is (in)famous for being the very first wrestling game to have a "Story" mode. Really looking forward to that one. After that, I have to wait for the post office to get off its ass and ship me the other games I ordered - all of which are late - before I can continue my exploration of Japanese wrestling games on the Super Famicom.

[Leo656]

Between what I got my wife and what she got me for Christmas, together we added almost 40 games to our library across multiple platforms.

I can't be assed to make a full list right now but we pulled in a great mix of stuff for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and more. So there's some pretty big dents hammered out of the "To Buy" list.

Not a bad way to start the day, all things considered.

[Leo656]

I decided to mess with a couple of the NES games I got from my wife for Christmas.

- Mario Bros.: No, not Super Mario Bros., but the NES port of the arcade game that introduced Luigi. I can't even remember the last time I played this one, although I used to mess with it a lot as a kid. I never owned it, but I used to play it in the arcade when I'd come across it, and my elementary school had a version of it for whatever brand of computers they used to have so I would mess with it occasionally if I got my work done early.

Pretty simple old-school arcade-style game; enemies come out of two pipes at the top of the screen, you hit the ground under them once or twice to flip them over and then run into them to kick them offscreen, occasionally dodging fireballs, icicles and other obstacles. Graphically, it looks a lot like Super Mario Bros. but it sure doesn't play like it. The controls are quite a bit different and that took some getting used to, for sure. The running and jumping are just nowhere near as precise as they would become in SMB, and that's where most of the challenge comes from. Mario can't stop and turn on a dime, he only jumps straight up unless you have a running start, and you can't change direction mid-jump. Overall, it's not too difficult, but most of the times when you die it's because you're fighting the controls more than anything. It's not bad, like a lot of the old arcade type games it's fun in short bursts, but there's not a lot to it and I imagine it would be a lot more fun with tighter, SMB-style running and jumping. I managed to make it to Level 15 before taking a break, which is way farther than I ever got as a kid.

- Gauntlet: Another arcade port, by the infamous Tengen. This is another one I used to mess with as a kid both in the arcade and on NES, but never got very far. There's been a million games like this over the years since: Fight through a dungeon in a top-down perspective while battling overwhelming swarms of enemies, as a timer counts down which also represents your Life meter in that taking hits removes big chunks of available time. Run out of time and it's Game Over, but thankfully there's a Password system because it's a pretty big game. Lots of the rooms have multiple Exits and it's important to take the right one so you don't miss any of the Secret Rooms.

This is one of those "easy to play, tough to master" kind of games, with a lot of trial-and-error involved. It's repetitive, but also very addicting; I ended up playing it for several hours and made it to somewhere around Room 54 I think. Although I know I messed up in a few spots by not finding pieces of the Combination to the main Boss's vault in the Secret Rooms, and the game is literally unwinnable without them, but I don't really care. I was just messing around to see how far I'd get; based on everything I've read I don't actually expect to ever beat this game. I was just happy/surprised to get as far as I did considering I haven't played it in like 30+ years.

Graphically, it's rather primitive, with all the characters and enemies basically looking like generic bundles of pixels. It doesn't quite live up to the arcade, but it's good enough for NES standards. The music and sounds are pretty good; again, not quite as good as the arcade, but good enough. The gameplay is as simple as it gets but the difficulty ramps up very quickly, and the different level designs keep things from getting too repetitive.

Supposedly, the late-game levels are super-tough, especially on single-player, so I highly doubt I'll ever complete it, but it's fun enough to just mess with once in a while. I might try to get my wife to play it with me one of these days, since it's designed to be more of a co-op game anyway.

I also got Double Dragon, Ultima: Exodus, Wizards & Warriors, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for NES, along with a bunch of other stuff, but I started getting tired after a while.
-------

The other games she got me for Christmas were:
- Frogger (SNES)
- Tetris 2 (SNES)
- Namco Museum (Gamecube)
- Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection (Gamecube)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)
- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (Game Boy)
- Spider-Man (Game Boy Color)
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (Game Boy Advance)
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance)
- Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Game Boy Advance)
- Garfield: Caught in the Act (Genesis)
- Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (Genesis)
- Knockout Kings 2000 (PS1)
- Dead Rising 2: Off the Record (Xbox 360)

And I got her:
- Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing (Genesis)
- Mortal Kombat (Genesis)
- Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Genesis)
- All Japan Pro Wrestling Featuring Virtua (Sega Saturn)
- Fire Pro Wrestling S: 6Men Scramble (Sega Saturn)
- Virtua Fighter Remix (Sega Saturn)
- Mortal Kombat II (SNES)
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (N64)
- Need For Speed Most Wanted U (Wii U)
- The Little Mermaid: Magic in the Two Kingdoms (Game Boy Advance)
- Road Rash: Jailbreak (Game Boy Advance)
- Mortal Kombat 4 (PS1)
- Soul Blade (PS1)
- Tekken (PS1)
- Tekken 2 (PS1)
- Tekken 3 (PS1)
- Port Royale 3 Gold (PS3)


Altogether, not a bad Christmas haul!

[CyberCubed]

Only problem with huge gaming hauls is the time it takes to play them all. Old NES games can be knocked out in about a day or two, but a lot of games from later gens take roughly 15 hours to complete, and for RPG's around 30+ hours so it takes some time.

That's why I usually tackle 2D games before 3D games, mainly because you can finish them faster and they don't take that long to play.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Last Ronin

Alright I'm gonna say it....

I think TMNT Tournament fighter for the Super Nintendo is the best and most underrated tournament fighter out there.

It is.

This goes over some peoples' minds, especially since they weren't around during the arcade era, but TMNT Tournament Fighters for the SNES was the best ever console-original fighting game.

I mean the Mortal Kombat games don't count, they were based on arcades. Street Fighter and its sequels were based on arcades. If you liked any of the SNK games, they were based on arcades. They were only good because they were adapting already existing arcade games that were good.

But when you compare the weird stuff like Clayfigher, Ballz, Rise of the Robots and whatever else, TMNT Tournment Fighters was the only all-original from-the-ground-up fighting game that felt legit. It had the speed and combos that would belong in Street Fighter. It had super moves that SF did not have but SNK games did.

It's just too bad the fighting craze hit too close to the end of the TMNT lifespan. TMNT Tournament Fighters 2 improving upon this one would have been beyond awesome.

[Leo656]

Very interesting points. Back then, I only dabbled lightly in fighting games both at home and in the arcade - I always liked them "in theory" but I've never been particularly good at them, and while I've certainly improved a lot since I was a kid, to the point where I can generally complete the campaign mode of most fighting games, I'd still never play against an actual human being.

But I did spend a lot of time on the SNES Tournament Fighters, and it was one of the very first fighting games I got competent enough to complete. I'd spent some time with Street Fighter II and the first two Mortal Kombats, but TE was the first one where I was seriously engaged, I guess because of the subject matter. I rented it often and it was one of the first SNES games I bought from Funcoland once I started working and had my own money.

And you're right; even though I was hardly an expert, especially back then, you could tell there was a difference in quality from the arcade-port fighting games and those developed for home consoles. They just had an altogether different feel, and I think that lasted all the way up until the SoulCalibur games started being developed straight-to-console. And TE not only compared very favorably to the fighters that had been ported from the arcade, but it absolutely blew away anything else in the genre that was developed for home consoles, easily. I don't think a lot of people consider or give credit for that. I know I really hadn't given it much thought; I mostly think of TE insofar as where it stands compared to all the other "SFII rip-offs", in which case it's one of the very best. But I admit, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact of it being a straight-up console fighter on top of that.

The closest thing I can compare it to in THAT respect, being both a SFII clone as well as a ground-up console fighter, is Justice League Task Force, and there's really no contest, there. JLTF is literally not even half the game TE is; like, seriously, from roster to stages to special moves, there's literally not even half as much content, which is pretty shameful considering it came out years later. Not only that, but JLTF is extremely sluggish, and as you mentioned TE plays every bit as good as the arcade port fighters do. It's like night and day.

I've said it many times, but I do think a case can be made for it being the overall "best" TMNT game, for sure, dampened only by the fact that some people plain and simply aren't good at fighting games and thus wouldn't be able to fully appreciate it. But it's an incredibly well-made game, especially considering they just as well could have half-assed it and most fans may not have noticed or cared.

A sequel with just a little bit more of everything would have really been great. A few more stages and throwing in some of the playable characters from the Genesis version would have been great even if that's all they did, but they also could have pulled a "Street Fighter" and nearly doubled the roster, too, if they wanted.

Even now, I'm torn on what I'd rather see come out "tomorrow" - a dedicated TMNT 3D fighter using the character models and engine of "Injustice 2", or a polished-up 2D fighter that plays like an expanded sequel to TE. Either would be fantastic; in a perfect world, we'd have both.

[frank_one]

The only fighting games I've ever appreciated in my whole life are Killer Instinct on the SNES and Street Fighters 2 on Game boy. I must be crazy.

[Icebot]

Just played Super Smash Ultimate, Donkey Kong Country and Splatoon 2.

[Leo656]

I haven't played too much because I'm still fighting a cold, but I felt a little better today so I decided to give Double Dragon (NES) a try.

This is another one I played some of as a kid but haven't touched since... oh, I'unno, 1992, maybe? I never owned it, for whatever reason, I just played it occasionally at a friend's house. I honestly can't remember if I/we ever finished it or not, but I'm pretty sure I never beat it by myself, as the odds of me even playing it on my own back then are rather slim.

It's a pretty good old-school beat-'em-up, simplistic as it is. Due to the limitations of the system memory at the time, you could only have two enemies onscreen at the same time, but it's fine. Levels are short enough so that things don't get too repetitive, and there's actually some decent variety in the enemy types, for such an old game. Some enemies attack with weapons, which you can steal and use against them, which is nice.

One thing that sets the gameplay apart from some of the other, "better" beat-'em-ups on the NES and elsewhere is the Experience and Level-Up system. You earn points for different attacks, and for every 1000 points you earn a Heart, and with each Heart you gain you unlock new, more powerful attacks. You begin the game with a basic punch and kick, but gradually unlock jump kicks, uppercuts, spinning kicks, hair-grab knees to the face, and more. It adds some nice depth and strategy to an otherwise pretty simplistic game, and it's something I wish more beat-'em-ups of its era did. Like, as good as TMNT II and III on NES were, for example, they would have been even better if you could steal enemies' weapons from them and learn new attacks as you went along.

The graphics are pretty good for when the game was made; the sprites are small but still rather detailed and distinctive. And the levels are all pretty unique and stand apart from each other pretty well, and the backgrounds are varied and colorful. Which is good; since there's only four levels it's good that there's not a lot of repetition in the backgrounds or stage design.

Most of the music and sound effects are pretty good, albeit primitive. Although some of the music partway through the first section of Level 3 sounds a bit weird, almost like the game is glitching out, but it passes quickly.

It's definitely got some room for improvement, though. Obviously the graphics and sound are primitive but I generally try and take into consideration when a game was made and not really take points off for that kind of thing. But it definitely feels weird to play a beat-'em-up with no Health power-ups, Continues, or extra lives for X amount of points. It's not an overly difficult game but there are a few places that can rob you of all your lives very quickly. Also, at times the Jump function just seems to not respond, and it's always at the worst possible time. There's not a ton of platforming in the game but I lost more lives in the caverns of Level 3 when my character "decided" to just fall off the ledge into a pit rather than jump than anywhere else in the game. That's probably the most annoying thing of the whole game, for me.

I really like it so far, but I keep getting stuck near the end of Level 3 and decided to take a break since I was very tired and that could be why my jumping failed me. Thankfully, it's not a very long game at all so even with no Continues it doesn't take very long to get through it. I might finish it tomorrow, or whenever I get around to playing it again. I'll most likely pick up the second and third games pretty soon; I don't recall playing the third but I remember playing the second one with my friends more than the first one.