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Old 11-13-2020, 10:11 PM   #10421
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Not me, sorry.

I played Ghostbusters (NES) for the first time in a long time. I got to Gozer thanks to the staircase glitch (die twice, then open one of the doors and "die" from a ghost popping out, and your "lives" loop back around to 255 making you almost guaranteed to make it up the stairs; pretty much the ONLY way to get past this part without Game Genie). I did good but I didn't manage to beat Gozer. I swear I almost did, but in the end I couldn't pull it off. Hopefully one day. I maintain that the game isn't AS bad as its reputation; it's repetitive but it only takes about an hour to get to the final boss if you play it right, so that's not a big deal. That staircase level is absolutely ridiculous, though.

I found someone online selling a repro cart of New Ghostbusters II (NES), which originally came out only in Europe, so I picked that up. I played it a little bit once on an emulator and it was pretty cool. Better than the regular Ghostbusters II game we got, at least. Should be here next week.

I also picked up a repro cart of Ghostbusters for Genesis, but that might take a while to get here yet. I only ever get reproduction carts if its a translation of a game that never came out over here, OR as a last resort. The Genesis Ghostbusters is over $100 most times so yeah, nah, repro it is. I could've gotten that for $5 at Funcoland back in 1999 or so, but I didn't even own a Genesis. Really kicking myself for that now.

I was also picking away a bit at Final Fight (SNES) the other day. I remember playing it a little bit in the arcade but I don't think I ever played the SNES version. I got pretty far but I couldn't get past the fourth Boss fight, and then I got tired. I'm sure I'll crack it eventually though.

Back to the subject of repro carts, I picked up a snazzy American translation of Super Back to the Future II (SNES) that wasn't too expensive. Even got a sharp-looking case for it, too. Haven't played it yet, but it looks pretty cool.
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Old 11-14-2020, 05:52 PM   #10422
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So last night I played and beat Super Back to the Future II (SNES) for the first time. Pretty good!

It has a very distinctive "Japanese" art style, but overall I feel like it works very well. The character sprites are large and colorful, and given that it's a SNES platformer I don't feel like the "super-deformed" art style hurts anything. A lot of similar games used a similar style but they weren't always as eye-pleasing. This was a repro cart, translated from the original Japanese version, but it looks, sounds and plays SUPER smooth.

The music is good and doesn't distract from or interfere with the gameplay. It's mostly various remixed versions of the BttF theme, but they're all pretty good and fit the levels quite well.

The difficulty is overall pretty easy, but there are a few challenging spots. You can usually power through once you get the level layout memorized. The levels are short, with a small number of branching paths to find power-ups and such. Marty is on his hoverboard the entire time and all you can do is speed up and jump, so it's a very simple game to figure out. Most levels are simply about collecting coins and reaching the Goal, while avoiding or destroying enemies. Standard SNES platformer stuff, but the levels are short enough with just enough variety so that it never feels boring or repetitive. Some are littered with enemies, while others are more about avoiding traps and landing jumps. There are only a few power-ups, and they're optional, but they can be pretty helpful at times. There are like "vending machines" spread through the levels where if you have enough coins you can buy things like a replacement Hit Point (you get three hits before you're dead, but sometimes you can buy a Hit Point), Invincibility, a one-hit Force Field, or even an Extra Life.

Each level has a handful of Sub-Levels and a Boss Fight. When you die, you can continue from the sub-level where you left off, AND there's a password system in case you need to take a break. I really wish all SNES-era games had those features. There's really no excuse not to complete the game, given its length and the infinite Continues.

The game follows the movie VERY loosely, with all the major plot beats and settings recreated, but you'd still need to have seen the movie to have much idea what's going on... but who hasn't seen the movie? Seriously. As is typical for platformers based on movies, most of the enemies and level layout don't make any sense, but it's fine.

It's not perfect. Your only "attack" is to do a jump, which sends Marty into a flip and makes him mostly invulnerable to attacks and allows him to damage enemies. The only real problem is that it can be tricky to time this in tight spots, especially when fighting Bosses. And if you hit a springboard, it sends you into a "straight" jump rather than a flip jump, so if you bump into an enemy after hitting a spring, you take a hit. If you simply drop off a ledge (rather than jumping) and aren't aware there's an enemy below you, you take a hit. It doesn't happen a ton but can be pretty annoying when it does happen. You pretty much have to remember where the enemies are and plan accordingly, but the levels are short so it's not difficult. There's also some slowdown in a few places when there's a ton of stuff on-screen, but those moments are rare.

The jumping controls could be better. That's probably what holds the game back from being "Great" and instead just "Really Good". Marty doesn't jump as high as he feels like he should, and his maneuverability is pretty slim. Unless you get a good build up of speed beforehand, when you jump you mostly go straight up, without much drift to either left or right, and that makes certain jumping parts harder than they ought to be. Especially when you have to propel yourself upward to a higher platform by landing on enemies. Lots of times you'll just barely miss the platform because you can't get enough drift, and occasionally have to do the entire jumping section over again. Thankfully, you don't take any damage from long falls, and these sections aren't very long or complicated, but it is a minor inconvenience.

My biggest problem with the game is simply that it has no ending. You get the Almanac back from Biff in the tunnel, a very short animated cutscene plays, and then they roll the credits. Nothing about the DeLorean getting hit by lightning, no sequel hook for a possible BttF3 game (they didn't make one for the SNES, but still), not even a text block. Just end credits and that's all. Very disappointing way to end such a good game.

Overall, though, it's one of the better SNES movie-based platformers I've ever played, and I'm baffled as to why it only came out in Japan; the art style may have been a factor but if so, that's silly. We got several games based on BttF in America for the NES and Genesis, ALL bad (or worse), so it makes NO sense to me at all why the only good one to come out during that era was a Japanese exclusive.

Thankfully, you can find American translations on SNES repro cartridges for around $30-40, so no need to import a Super Famicom and the Japanese-text version! Definitely worth it for any Back to the Future fan who ever wanted a nice, simple, straightforward video game based on one of the movies. This one and the Xbox360/PS3 adventure game are the only BttF games worth playing. It's short (you can beat it in about an hour if you know how) and kind of easy, but it's fun and something you can come back to anytime.

I definitely recommend picking up a copy. I paid a bit more for mine because I wanted a case to go with it, but you can get it as just the cartridge as well.

To eBay!
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Old 11-14-2020, 06:33 PM   #10423
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Got a PS5 on launch day. Mostly playing Astro's Playroom to start off... and i'm really impressed by it. It's so beautiful, with lots of interesting platforming gameplay. For a pack-in game it's just about perfect for what it's trying to pull off. When I ordered a PS5, I wasn't expecting the DualSense to be much of a bump over the last controller, but now I'm sold on its capabilities. I hope games take advantage of it.

I also picked up Miles Morales Ultimate edition, and AC: Valhalla (hasn't arrived yet) to keep me busy until Cyberpunk finally comes out next month.

If you have PS+ you don't even have to spend a penny on any launch games. Between astro's playroom and the huge bundle of free games they give you just for having a PS5 + PS+ will keep you busy for a very long time.
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Old 11-14-2020, 08:58 PM   #10424
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zulithe View Post
If you have PS+ you don't even have to spend a penny on any launch games. Between astro's playroom and the huge bundle of free games they give you just for having a PS5 + PS+ will keep you busy for a very long time.
Yeah, it's the same thing with Game Pass.
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Old 11-14-2020, 11:04 PM   #10425
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I pretty much forgot Cyberpunk 2077 is still coming out next month, the game feels like it's now buried with all the next gen hype.
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Old 11-14-2020, 11:55 PM   #10426
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I remember having no problem beating the Ghostbusters game on Sega Master System. Which looks fairly identical to the NES one.
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Old 11-15-2020, 05:16 PM   #10427
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Some differences. Mostly aesthetic/visual but they made the endgame scenario a lot easier on the Master System. Mostly the stairs - you can fight the ghosts in the stairwell on Master System, which you can't do on NES - but Gozer was also tweaked to be easier.

I don't own a Master System but I definitely look forward to playing that game again one day. I don't hate the NES version as much as most people do but it definitely needed work.
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Old 11-20-2020, 11:42 AM   #10428
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Most licensed games back in the day were so bad. Games based on movies/tv shows you had to play like less than 10% of them to find one that wasn't horribly playing.
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Old 11-20-2020, 01:09 PM   #10429
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To a point, yeah. I maintain that the original Ghostbusters wasn't AS bad as people say, but that stairwell section ruins it. The rest was a bit repetitive but pretty standard for the time, especially considering it was a port of a two-year old Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 game. People were a lot easier to please back then; the fact that the game had more than one play screen was pretty mind-blowing in itself when the original came out. I had the Atari version as a kid, everybody loved it at the time.

Definitely took some digging to find licensed games that were actually good as time went on, though. It's become a cliche but LJN was mostly to blame for that sh*t, since they put out most of the movie and TV-based games in the NES/SNES era and just didn't care if the developers were making good games or not, they knew that they'd sell no matter what. That really hurt the overall reputation of licensed games, but there were still a few good ones floating around. Back then most of the Disney stuff was still really solid. And of course the Batman '89 movie games on NES and Genesis were great, as was "Batman Returns" on SNES (less so on other systems).

It's not like they were ALL bad but you definitely had to root through some junk to find the good ones. Now they don't even bother anymore, which is kind of a shame. There's especially a few modern super-hero movies that would have made great games if they had the right developer. Ah well.
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Old 11-20-2020, 01:19 PM   #10430
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I mean even well into the PS2/Gamecube era, there were still a lot of crappy licensed games back then. You had some good Star Wars games, James Bond games, and the occasional decent superhero game, but not much else.

The Batman Arkham series basically set the gold standard for how modern superhero games would be and that came out in 2009, and Sony's Spiderman borrows so much from it.
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Old 11-20-2020, 02:53 PM   #10431
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It's more of a crappy licensed games all went to mobile, they still exist in another form. What sucks is that between the sea of crappy licensed games you had some mediocre ones that had flaws but if you liked the franchise they were still enjoyable experiences. I can think of Teen Titans for example, it wasn't going to win any awards but it was fun to play through, same with the Simpsons Game, and now those type of games only get bad mobile games now.
And even then would get some amazing licensed games like say Astro Boy on the GBA. It's not like I bought the bad licensed games so I do miss not having those type of games on consoles anymore. Not every licensed game needs to be a AAA title like Arkham or Spider-Man
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Old 11-20-2020, 09:17 PM   #10432
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A couple of the games I ordered came today. I haven't played any of them yet but I've been looking forward to them for a while.

- Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)
- Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy - The Path of the Superhero (GBA)
- New Ghostbusters II (Repro Cart) (GBA)
-------------

I finally beat Final Fight SNES with Haggar the other night. I keep getting really close with Cody but I haven't cracked it yet. I'm sure I will soon. I really like that game. There's better beat-'em-ups but that one's pretty fun. I haven't gotten the others yet but they're on the list.
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Old 11-20-2020, 09:24 PM   #10433
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Anyone want to add me on Xbox? I have one for the first time in a decade and would be down to play a Halo campaign or anything really.

Prob won't chat much unless the game calls for it but could be fun.

My name is Bartman7683
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Old 11-21-2020, 11:22 AM   #10434
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I'm waiting to get the Mario 64 bundle game pack for the switch.
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Old 11-22-2020, 12:28 AM   #10435
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A couple of games came in the mail today.

- TMNT (Game Boy Advance) - I never played this one. I'll check it out one of these days when I hook my Gamecube and Game Boy Player up.

- Super Fire Pro Wrestling (Super Famicom) - The first Fire Pro on the Super Famicom and the first Super Famicom game I've ever bought. I know that it's primitive compared to the later games but I look forward to playing it anyway. I ordered a Super NES-to-Super Famicom converter specifically to play this and a couple of other wrestling games from Japan, but it hasn't arrived yet. It might arrive by Wednesday. Some of the games I ordered are coming in from Japan so they probably won't be here for a few weeks, anyway. But I really look forward to playing all of them, since I've only read about and watched videos of them.
-------------------

Last night I played and beat New Ghostbusters II for NES. It originally only came out in Europe, for some reason (although the Game Boy version of Ghostbusters II released everywhere was essentially the exact same game as this, only in black and white with slightly worse graphics). Other than "general confusion", I have no idea why it never came out in America; it's not a masterpiece or anything but it's easily the best Ghostbusters game on the NES, although that's not a high bar by any means.

It follows the plot of the movie pretty closely in some respects, with large levels to play through based on scenes from the film. Most levels end with Boss fights (very loosely) based on the movie as well, and on the whole it just feels like a much better interpretation than the "regular" Ghostbusters II game we got over here. The game we originally got felt very generic, and was altogether more about avoiding obstacles and catching power-up icons than "busting" ghosts, and the driving sections they added to keep things from getting stale weren't very good, so it wasn't much of a diversion. The Statue of Liberty level near the end was kind of fun, but way too unforgiving if you didn't have a lot of lives stockpiled; most people who played the original Ghostbusters II game never even made it to Vigo, and if they did, the final stage was a bit of an anticlimax, more of an endurance test than anything. "Beat the stage four times, once with each Ghostbuster, then stand there and watch the 'Boss Fight' essentially play itself." Yawn.

I don't hate the Ghostbusters II game as much as most people do, and I maintain that it CAN be fun if you play it long enough to get the hang of its "quirks", but it's definitely a test of patience and even as a kid I was baffled as to why a better game couldn't come out of such good material. When I heard about and saw pictures of "New Ghostbusters II", I was quite upset that we never got that game instead, or at least in addition to. I played it once on an emulator, but the gameplay of it just doesn't lend itself well at all to playing it on a keyboard. I recently found a reproduction cart at a reasonable price, and I'm very glad I did.

It's a very simple game, but fun and doesn't wear out its welcome. I can see it being a big hit by 1989 standards, easily. Basically, you pick two of the four Ghostbusters - or Louis, in a nice little bonus I guess - and play through five levels from the movie: The Courthouse, the Subway, Peter's Apartment, the River of Slime, and the Museum. You control both Ghostbusters; your main one fires a Proton stream with the A button, and your secondary one traps ghosts with the B button. There's a bit of strategy involved, as sometime there are a good number of enemies onscreen and some of them throw things at you, so avoiding attacks (which kill you in one hit) while catching ghosts becomes most of the challenge. Your primary Ghostbuster is the only one who takes damage, though, which makes things a bit easier. It's not a very hard game at all, though, which might be the "worst" thing about it; the ability to catch and trap ghosts through walls while they can't even get close to you to attack sort of makes certain parts far too easy. It's not always that simple, though, as your second Ghostbuster usually follows some distance behind and can get hung up on obstacles occasionally, so they might not be in position when you try and trap a ghost, in which case the ghost can get free and potentially kill you, but that rarely happens. Most of the enemies have very predictable patterns, but occasionally they'll spawn right on top of where you're standing, so you do have to stay alert. You have to catch all the ghosts in a room before an arrow directs you to the next room, and once you capture all the ghosts you either head into a Boss Fight room or the level ends with a cutscene.

There's a good bit of enemy variety, although only a small number of them actively attack or present much of a threat. Most of them are very easy to simply avoid until you can get close enough to capture and trap them, but in some spots there's at least a good bit of activity on the screen, which is nice. The Bosses are fun to play against but all have fairly predictable patterns, even Vigo. You'll probably die at least once on each of them until you master the pattern but after that they're pretty simple to beat without any problem at all. Slimer in the Subway is hardly even a "Boss", as he gets beaten and trapped in one hit like any other enemy, you just have to time it so you can sneak past his block. The River of Slime, Museum, and Vigo Boss Fights are all pretty good, though.

The character sprites are alright by NES standards; you can tell more or less who each of the Ghostbusters are, although Winston is like a greenish-gray for some reason. It's not like there's no brown hues in the game, so I can only assume that the Japanese people who programmed the game were racist. The ghost sprites like Slimer are pretty good and all of the Bosses are very large and detailed. Vigo takes up most of the height of the screen, a visual that almost makes up for his rather pedestrian fireball attack. Graphically, it looks MUCH better than the tiny sprites of the first Ghostbusters II game, and about ten years removed from the original Ghostbusters on NES.

The music is surprisingly good, too, with some fun "chiptunes" versions of several of the songs from the soundtrack. You get the original "Ghostbusters" theme, of course, but not constantly as in the original NES game. And you also get some pretty decent versions of "We're Back", "Flip City", and so on. I was a huge fan of the movie's soundtrack so it was neat to hear it represented decently on an NES cart.

There's really not much bad to say about it. It's very easy, and very short, and that's about it. But those don't have to be bad things. For an NES Ghostbusters game, it's pretty much exactly what it should be. Peter's Apartment is by far the longest level, and by the end of it things start to feel a bit tedious, to the point where the change of scenery in the next level is welcome. Like, you do the exact same things for the entire game, but the way that level goes on for about twice as long as the others, with most of the rooms looking nearly identical, makes it feel a bit of a slog in ways the other levels simply don't. It's less about what you're doing that becomes repetitive - although it is - and more the fact that looking at the exact same enemies and backgrounds for that long in a single level gets tiresome. But it's not even really a concern, as the game can easily be beaten in about 30 minutes. It'll take longer the first time through until you memorize enemy patterns, and a few semi-cheap deaths are a given regardless, especially in the later Boss fights, but it's a VERY easy game. You get extra lives simply for catching lots of ghosts and earning higher and higher scores, and you get three continues on top of that. So there's really no excuse not to finish it.

Overall, I'm very pleased with it and I wish I'd been able to play it as a kid. It easily would have been one of my favorite NES games and gotten a ton of play. It's very short, and very easy, but MILES better than either of the other two Ghostbusers NES games. There's not much to it, but for a fan, it's a perfect game to pick up, mess with for an hour, and go do something else. Which is refreshing, honestly; going back to some older NES games recently, it's very jarring how much artificial and cheap difficulty was used in order to pad the length of so many games. Not a problem, here. It's not in any way "deep" but it's exactly what it needs to be.

Definitely one of the best licensed games on the NES, doubly-so given how it was based on a movie. Check it out if you're interested and missed it, or are only familiar with the other two Ghostbusters NES games and are curious what one that's actually "All Fun/No Frustration" would be like.

I wish it had the Ecto-1A and a Statue of Liberty level, but I guess you can't have everything.
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Old 11-24-2020, 01:25 AM   #10436
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I just felt like taking pictures of some of the stuff I've gotten recently, including a few things which just came today.

My SNES-to-Super Famicom cartridge converter came today. So now I can play my Japanese Super Fire Pro Wrestling cartridge!

I have more Super Famicom games on the way, now that I have a chance to play them. Very excited, especially since they're so inexpensive!

Couple of Wii U games, New Super Mario Bros. U and Super Mario 3D World. Snatching up some Wii U games while they remain cheap.


Been getting more into the Castlevania series recently. Finally picked up a copy of Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for N64, along with this very nice reproduction of Castlevania: Bloodlines for Genesis. The person who does these reproductions does very nice work, especially on the cases.


More Castlevania reproduction carts. Dracula X (SNES), Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow, and Harmony of Dissonance (GBA). I really do try and get the authentic versions of games whenever possible, but sometimes they're just prohibitively expensive.


Slowly getting more into Metroid. Picked up Super Metroid (SNES) and Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA). Zero Mission is another reproduction cart.


My reproduction cart of New Ghostbusters II (NES), built to play on an American NES console.


My English reproduction cart of Super Back to the Future II, designed to play on an American SNES. I chipped in a few bucks extra for the case. Very slick.


Finally, a few TMNT games. TMNT (Gamecube), TMNT (GBA), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis). Once again, the Genesis game is a reproduction, from the same seller I got the Castlevania: Bloodlines game from. For less than half of what the authentic cartridge costs nowadays, I got the cart, manual, and hardcover case, same as with Bloodlines. Not a bad deal.


My wife usually likes to get me games for Christmas so I'm gonna be slowing down a little bit. If anything I'll probably just buy import games for myself or games that won't fit into her Christmas budget.
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Old 11-30-2020, 06:40 AM   #10437
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For the past few days, I've mostly been playing Super Fire Pro Wrestling on my SNES with a cartridge converter.

I've been a fan of this series for several years now; as a huge fan of wrestling video games I used to read in awe about this awesome Japanese series of games and wish I could play them over here. It's one of the most long-running series in all of video games, with its roots going all the way back to the NES and "Pro Wrestling", as that game's developer, Masato Masuda, would go on to more or less create the Fire Pro series (and the early Fire Pro games definitely show a strong connection with NES "Pro Wrestling"). There have been literally dozens of games released in the series - mostly in Japan - with major releases on the Super Famicom, PC Engine, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, PS2, and now the PS4 as of the recent "Fire Pro Wrestling World", among other systems.

Like a lot of people, the first games I got to play in the series were the Game Boy Advance releases, which were the first ones to be published in English, and I later spent a huge amount of time with the PS2 release. But I always wanted to go back and dig into the roots of the series to see how it evolved. When a friend smartened me up about the Super Famicom cartridge converter, you better believe the first thing I did was order some Fire Pro games!

This series won't appeal to everyone; it's not a fast-paced button-masher series like most wrestling games, and the 2D graphics even in the most recent PS4 release are "quaint" at best and definitely won't appeal to graphics snobs who insist on everything looking photo-realistic. The trade-off, however, has always been a much deeper wrestling engine than whatever competing games are on the market at any given time, along with huge rosters of characters and, later on, seemingly endless customization options.

After not even two minutes playing the first Super Famicom release, I was struck by how little the series has changed in 30 years. The graphics are more primitive than they'd become and the roster and movesets are anemic compared to the most recent game, but the general look, feel, and gameplay was always there right from the beginning. Nothing has "changed" so much as "evolved" within the series, and to my pleasant surprise I was able to jump right into this one pretty quickly, despite only having played some of the more recent additions.

The link to "Pro Wrestling" on NES becomes immediately clear, as well, as the character sprites look and move very much like 16-bit renditions of those in that game. Some of the moves they share are animated identically, and even the wrestlers' stances are almost exactly the same. If you're like me and always wondered why "Pro Wrestling" never got a sequel despite being the best NES wrestling game, well... apparently, it did! In some ways it even feels a bit more like "Pro Wrestling 2" than "Fire Pro", simply because of the graphics and move animations.

This game would popularize a longstanding tradition in the Fire Pro series, by utilizing real-life wrestlers from all over the world, and giving them fake names and (just barely) modified looks in order to get around copyright issues. And what an awesome roster by 1991 standards! You have Hulk Hogan ("Axe Duggan"), Ultimate Warrior ("Astro Blaster"), Antonio Inoki ("Victory Musashi"), Giant Baba ("Great Shiba"), Genichiro Tenryu ("Thunder Ryu"), Riki Choshu ("Hurricane Rikimaru"), Shinya Hashimoto ("Shinya Hatamoto"), Yoshiaki Fujiwara ("Takashi Fudahara"), Masakatsu Funaki ("Masakatsu Higaki", Mitsuhara Misawa ("Mitsuhide Hikawa"), Jumbo Tsuruta ("Tommy Bomber"), Jushin "Thunder" Liger ("Super Kaiser"), Pegasus Kid/Chris Benoit ("Phantom Guy"), Bad News Brown ("Bloody Allen"), Tiger Jeet Singh ("Mad Tiger"), Road Warrior Hawk ("Knight Blaster"), Road Warrior Animal ("Iron Blaster"), Great Muta ("Blade Musha"), Akira Maeda ("Akira Saeha"), Big Van Vader ("Hitman Saber"), and Stan Hansen ("Star Bison"), with both Rikidozan and Bruiser Brody ("Rikiouzan" and "B.G.Bull", respectively) as hidden Boss characters in Championship Mode, who are only playable with a cheat code. Yeesh!

First of all, having over 20 playable characters in 1991 was HUGE, as the WWF games we got over here at the time generally had about 10, no more than 12, and it would remain that way until around 1998. Secondly, having such a mix of top-name New Japan, All Japan, and WWF guys was unheard of. The series would go on to expand greatly on this as years went on, with later games containing literally hundreds of real-life wrestlers to choose from - although later games would continue to tweak them physically once they started being released in America, to the point where it became tough to tell who was supposed to represent who, sometimes. It's VERY easy to tell in this game, though; guys like Muta and Warrior are identical to their real-life counterparts, and guys like Vader and Liger are "disguised" by simply removing their shirts.

Graphics-wise, the game is definitely very early 16-bit. The character selection screen is beautiful, with large and detailed hand-drawn portraits of each wrestler. In-game, the sprites look like larger, more detailed versions of the NES game's characters, but very quickly over the next few games they would evolve into the more familiar art style they've more or less been using ever since. The audience members are even large and colorful, which is nice. Most of the moves are animated well, with only the basic Body Slam and Liger's Mexican Surfboard Stretch looking off (the surfboard looks particularly bad, as Liger isn't holding onto the guy's arms and thus the opponent just sort of "floats" in the air during the hold). To be honest, the in-game graphics only barely look 16-bit, but as a very early SNES game we'd see a fair bit of that, and it would improve very quickly as the series went on. No entrances - wrestling games wouldn't make that a standard for several years anyway - but when the match starts the lights are dimmed and a spotlight shines over each wrestler, a neat touch.

The audio is pretty good; some of the music tracks that play during matches are still being used in reworked form in some of the more modern Fire Pro games. The sound effects during moves make everything sound pretty devastating, and some of the wrestlers have signature grunts and so on when they perform big moves. The crowd doesn't make a lot of noise except during major moves, but that's a distinct quirk of Japanese wrestling in general so it's actually pretty accurate.

The biggest (and most disappointing) thing I noticed compared to later Fire Pro games was simply the lack of moves. You definitely have more moves per character than any of the WWF games at the time had, but with later games having literally hundreds of available moves and each character using over 50, having about ten moves per character and most of them being shared between several was very jarring. You get used to it, but it gets repetitive using the same moves over and over, especially in the early parts of matches.

There's a Tutorial Mode where Kotetsu Yamamoto ("Ittetsu Wakamoto") from NJPW teaches you the mechanics, but if you don't have a guide or read Japanese it's not worth much. It's also very easy to grasp the mechanics without it. I do recommend using a guide to help navigate the menus, though, as there's almost no English text in the game.

Modes are Championship Mode, Exhibition, 5-on-5 Elimination, and "League"/Round Robin. Pretty standard stuff. Championship Mode is your basic Arcade-style ladder where you beat everyone to win, after which you get a code to input, allowing you to play through it again on a harder difficulty to beat the game "For Real" and see the true ending screen. Easier said than done! Exhibition is two-player only, which annoys me, since I'd like to do a quick match of two random guys once in a while but you can't do that.

Gameplay is Fire Pro, 99% the same as it's always been. Lock up by walking to the opponent, wait for a moment, then hit a button and hope your move hits. As always, it's "Rock/Paper/Scissors" style with weak moves taking priority, especially early on, so if you input a Strong Grapple and your opponent inputs a Weak Grapple, the weaker move will win unless the opponent is already beaten up a bit. Again, given the smaller movesets and the priority system, early parts of matches will see you having to spam the same move a bunch until the other guy is weak, but they do weaken quickly so it only takes a minute or two to begin using stronger moves. Most guys have "Hidden" finishers that you can do by pressing Y+B once the opponent is weak enough. The enemy AI is SUPER aggressive and will completely overwhelm you if you don't play smart. It's an easy system to learn but very tough to master, as the game actively punishes you for button-mashing; once in the lock-up, if you hit the attack button too soon, or more than once, the game automatically cancels your input and you lose the grapple. It takes a LOT of patience to get the timing down, especially during close matches once you start getting desperate.

(Cont.)
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Old 11-30-2020, 06:42 AM   #10438
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Most of my problems with the game are very minor nitpicks, but the biggest one is related to the Championship Mode: It's just WAY too hard at times. I was able to complete the Singles mode twice and get the real ending, but I haven't had much luck at all with the Tag Team mode. The difficulty level on this mode is not selectable, and as such the opponents in the later bouts can be very punishing. But the real problem is the combination of a Time Limit mixed with a "__ Points To Proceed" system. See, you earn various points by how you win, with pinfalls and submissions being worth 5 points, countouts are 4 points and a Time Limit Draw are 2 points, but as you proceed you need higher point totals to fight the next opponent, and it can be very easy to fall behind in Tag matches. It's almost impossible to win certain Tag matches by Pin or Submission within the 10-minute time limit, and spamming countout wins won't give you enough points to proceed, and this is VERY frustrating. I've had to restart matches I completely dominated, simply because the opponents regain health too quickly when they tag thus forcing the match to end via time limit despite me dominating the entire time. Thankfully, this is something later games fixed (and is less of an issue in Singles mode than in Tag mode) but it is very annoying here. Mercifully, after you play through the first round of opponents, when you play through them again to get the "real" ending there is no points system, so you can spam countouts to proceed. It's just annoying, by far the most frustrating part of a game that's not too easy to begin with.

I recommend playing it in Elimination and Round Robin mode until you get the hang of it, as you can adjust the difficulty in those modes and get used to the timing of move inputs and so on. Championship Mode is the game's main attraction, but it's going to completely overwhelm anyone who isn't used to the system and figured out all the shortcuts.

Overall, it's far from the best Fire Pro game I've ever played but it's still a very good wrestling game, arguably much better than the stuff we had over here during that time. The series would go on to MUCH better things, but this is a nice history lesson if nothing else. It's tough, and it's got a learning curve, but it's a lot of fun once you get good at it. Best of all, you can find a copy for about $5-10.

Tentatively Recommended, more fun if you're already familiar with the series or just really liked NES Pro Wrestling and want a game that plays like a direct sequel to it.
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Last edited by Leo656; 11-30-2020 at 06:50 AM.
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Old 12-01-2020, 08:07 AM   #10439
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I finished Hao 4 one week ago(pc) and since then i continue playing red dead redemption 2 which is agreat game!
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Old 12-01-2020, 08:17 AM   #10440
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Alright I'm gonna say it....

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